Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America (23 page)

I did have one client I liked, a younger, golden-haired Hasid named Sammy. He specifically asked to be caned, and whenever I brought the rattan down to stripe his buttocks (so hairy there was a kiss curl at the top of the crack), he'd turn to me and say, brighdy, "Tank you, my dahlink mistress." But Sammy, grinning in his undershirt and yarmulke, was unique. The slightly bruised disposition of, the other men left me so shaken and disturbed, I had to quit. Everyone was very nice about my leaving, but all the other dominatrices I knew did look upon me a little pityingly after that.

It's said that everybody in the sex business has their niche, and I agree. There's a supposed hierarchy headed by "she who exerts the least effort for the most money," but really, more than anything, it just comes down to personal comfort. I'm not suited to anything too psychological (dominatrix or phone sex operator), too public (porn star), or too freighted (hooking)—I don't want any of the judgment or the baggage that comes with any of them. The stick bends the other way, too. The call girls I know couldn't be bothered with the complications of stripping and wouldn't for a minute consider working in such public places, where any old person can walk in and gawk at you with no obligation to shell out. Dominatrices are too independent to be bothered with club politics, and a porn actress wouldn't countenance making her money one dollar, ten dollars, twenty dollars at a time, and doing eight-hour shifts standing in too-tight shoes. I like the clubby feeling of being surrounded by the other dancers, and the amateur theatrics of the music, costumes, and lights. Most important of all, I like the premise of being unattainable. At the end of the day, I want to have something that's exclusively mine, something off-limits. So what if I'm not the baddest chick on the block? The fact remains that I need some space between myself and the edge.

While I'm sitting at the table chatting with Alyssa and Elissa, a door off the back of the kitchen opens and a woman I recognize comes out, says hello, grabs a few paper towels, and ducks back through the door. She's a friend of a friend, a long-time call girl with activist pretensions. I've been introduced to her several times, and she always gives the appearance of maintaining vigilant watch over every interior movement. Were her rigid self-control forced out with naive bravado, she might have the charm of a petulant toddler, jutting out her chin and saying "Am so right!" Or, if she fused it with noblesse oblige and some panache, she could be a thoroughly modern Mame. But her inner patrol is pushed forth by sheer, steely force of will. Her mannered words, facial expressions, and measured emotional reach give her the reptilian poise of a politician's wife, but when I look at her closely, I intuit something clicking furiously inside. Everything she encounters is precisely examined, calibrated to her satisfaction, and then a response is fashioned and let out one bit at a time, like water through a series of channel locks.

I know she has the reputation of being well-read and politically conscious, but she gives me the creeps. She's the exact opposite of my posse. Fancying ourselves as smart girls in a dirty business, we re always hamming it up and bursting forth with rowdy, pedantic pronouncements. I love that know-it-all streak—even if we get cut down all the time as being delusional or self-indulgent, we try to cram some ascendance in there anyhow. But this gal shows none of that spirit. She's nothing but glacial calm. What seems to everyone else to be impeccable composure seems to me like complete absence of any detectable personality. I'm polite whenever I see her, but secretly I call her RoboWhore.

The oven timer dings and Ruth hollers, "Leslie!"

There's a thunder of running feet as Ruth's older daughter bounds down the stairs and into the kitchen. She puts on a pair of baking mitts and pulls a tray of oatmeal raisin cookies from the oven.

"Leslie," Ruth calls, "say hi to Lily!"

Leslie stands there holding the tray of cookies and sniffs dryly, then fixes me with a black, poisonous stare. I imagine Leslie lying on a therapist's couch ten years from now, waving her hands—still in baking mitts—in the air and saying, "All I wanted to do was bake some goddamn cookies and my mother was so busy running her whorehouse she couldn't be bothered!"

I walk quickly from the kitchen to see if Ruth is anywhere near ready to go.

Ruth has pulled the coats from the hall closet and is now stuffing them into black plastic garbage bags. I watch as they go in: A black fox jacket with silver fox diamonds on the sleeves, a rust-colored Mongolian lamb jacket, a sheared beaver coat dyed in a modernist pattern of primary colors, a black sheared beaver coat with silver chevrons on the collar and sleeves, and a full-length lynx-dyed fox— off-white with black spots.

These are the ugliest furs I have ever seen in my life.

I help hold open the last bag for Ruth. "Oh, I looove the Gift Center," she says, folding in the black beaver coat. "It's so pretty. And they have a cafe in there so you can have lunch when you shop and make a whole day of it. I'm there at least once a week because it's just so great." Grabbing her purse, she heads into the Jacuzzi room and opens the front door, leaving the bags on the floor in the hallway for me to carry out. "Besides," she says airily over her shoulder as she drifts out the door, "I'm a Jew. We always buy wholesale."

In that moment, I liked Ruth tremendously, this nice Jewish lady with her nice Jewish call girls. Without complaint, I pick up the trash bags bursting with furs and toddle after her.

"Zah way the coat moves when you move, zat is called zah 'sweep,'" Olga tells me. Olga is the proprietress of one of the three fur salons in the Gift Center. Her thick Russian accent, with its dense, drawn-out vowels and jumbled consonants landing solidly on the hard
K
sounds, makes me feel very glamorous.

I spin round and round in front of the mirror, wearing, according to the tag, a black ranched Canadian mink with a Norwegian fox tuxedo and sleeves. I hold the right side of the fox-fur tuxedo in my hand, admiring the way the hem flares out when I spin. I feel a bit guilty about the fox, but minks are vile little rodents, mean-spirited and no more endangered than the common sewer rat. I can't work up much remorse about wearing them. I'm too busy imagining myself as Julie Christie in
Doctor Zhivago.

Ruth went off to another shop to get her coats appraised, down at the other side of the Gift Center. We're separated by dozens of storefronts, full of all kinds of luxury junk—precious gems, cheap cloisonne knickknacks, Chinese lacquerware, knock-off designer handbags, hair accessories, porcelain cats with ribbons tied around their necks, gilt picture frames, and desk accessories made of cut crystal.

"I'll take this one," I chirp happily to a smiling Olga, doing one last spin before the mirror. With its huge fox cap sleeves, the coat makes me almost as wide as I am tall. I look like a fuzzy little linebacker, but I'm so impressed with the fact that I'm standing there in a fur coat, a fur coat that I have the money to pay for myself, that I don't even mind. Soon Ruth will come along and purchase the coat for me using her resale license. I'll in turn buy it back from her at a markup of two hundred dollars, making my total cost twenty-two hundred. A steal.

"Yes, absolutely byoot-eeful," says Olga, slipping the coat off me and zipping it into a long canvas garment bag. "You look like princess."

Ruth drives away from the Gift Center on Division Street. The sun slants through the guardrails on the freeway overhead, casting bright oblong patches of light on the shadowy pavement.

I have unzipped the garment bag and sit quietly in the passenger seat, running my hand over the soft fox collar, lb fill the silence, Ruth tells me about her business. I have the imprimatur of some of her former girls, so she trusts me, which is kind of neat. Even if I'm not anxious to participate, I'll happily listen to gossip from any corner. She brings in girls from all over the country, and many of them travel around the country on a circuit. Sort of like being a feature entertainer or a traveling house dancer, but hooking instead of dancing. They pay rent for a week, or a month, and split the money with her sixty-forty, in the girls' favor.

I remember her daughter staring me down in the kitchen. "How does your older daughter deal with it?" I ask.

"Oh, she's fine…"

Oh, really? I think to myself, remembering the flat rage in her face.

"… and if she isn't, well, too bad. It's my house!"

I'm starting to see why Ruth is regarded as kind of a jerk.

"I did really well this past quarter," she bubbles. "I made fifty thousand dollars."

I nod, feigning approval. I think of Gina, a bikini model who dances at Mitchell Brothers, and how she had just bought a new house in the South Bay and, with the down payment and escrow due, had herself made fifty thousand dollars in the past three months. Dancing.

By the time we get to my house, I've had just about enough of Ruth. I thank her for her time and generosity and hoist myself and my new coat out of the green Honda wagon, then stand on the curb in front of my apartment until she drives away.

That evening, I put on a nice black dress, heels, and my brand-new coat, and take the 8 Market bus to the Castro to meet Len for dinner. The Cove is just a basic diner-type place, where people go for quick, uncomplicated meals, so I'm wildly overdressed. Well, the hell with it, drag queens eat there all the time decked out in full regalia before heading out on the town, the fluorescent lights bouncing off their cheap wigs and limning the cracks in their foundation. Besides, I'm kind of bummed that I didn't make spectacular plans for this milestone birthday. I want to feel festive, even if the mood doesn't fit the environment.

Len is sitting at the corner table, in plain view of the entrance. When I come through the door, her eyes widen at the sight of the coat, which has taken on a regal sheen under the hard lights of the diner. When I get to the table, I try to cheer myself up by doing a voguish spin and grandly tossing the coat onto the booth seat.

"Oh,
purr!
" she says, grabbing a puffy fox sleeve and rubbing her bald head against it. "You are Venus in furs!"

Desmond, the waiter, who we both know from the leather scene as "Looking for Daddy Desmond," comes by to take our order. Len tells him it is my birthday and holds up my coat.

"Girl!" Desmond swoons, running his hand along the nap of the fur, as his eyes, always wide and needful, grow absolutely huge. "Oh, girrrrl!"

A few nights after my birthday, I am sitting on the futon couch with my mink draped over me like a blanket, a few roaches racing on nimble, filthy feet over the slick black pelts. Before
Dynasty
is a true-crime detective show—one that adheres to feet but embellishes every detail with a lewd camera angle or fraught commentary, interspersing titillation with a severe emotional yank. This episode is about a rash of prostitute murders in a Pacific Northwest city, and how the killer had evaded the police for years.

The chief investigator is talking about why the murders had never been solved—largely because none of the women were ever reported missing. He also says that when their bodies were found and identified, they were revealed to be prostitutes, lowering to nil the priority for bringing their killers to justice.

"We usually classify this type of crime as 'NHI,'" the detective says, his stubbled chins wobbling as if to defy his tersely held jaw. "No Humans Involved."

This knocks the wind right out of me. I have never heard anything so cold and awful in all of my life. I don't live in a bubble—I know that any foray into the sex business makes you less of a person in the eyes of many. But I didn't know that in the eyes of the law you cease to be a person at all. It's one thing to be considered cheap. It's another to be considered disposable.

Why should I care? That isn't my element. But I do care. I'm different from the faceless women on that show—yet not so different that if I met the same end, the reaction would be more "How could this have happened?" than "She asked for it." Far more chilling than any concerns about myself, though, is this realization, this sudden horrible awareness, that this country has an honest-to-God throw-away class. I have discovered a depth of indifference that I previously would have thought impossible, and I am ashamed that we could ever let it get so low.

I watch the night's
Dynasty
episode, but the hour floats right through my head like so much fluff. The detective show left me numb and profoundly uninterested in any syndicated escape. I switch off the television and walk the long hallway to my bedroom. The covers do nothing to warm me as I lie in bed, so I pull the coat over top of me and tuck it under my chin. I stare at the ceiling, watching the beams cast from the headlights of passing cars track from one end of the room to the other. Absently stroking the fur, I wonder if what I bought myself is anything more than a very expensive comforter. I certainly can't wear it to work—most of the girls are into animal rights and would give me an earful if they ever saw it. I'm not really sure what I'll do with the coat, but it is the most luxurious thing I've ever bought for myself, I know that. And I know that I am twenty-five, fully, unquestionably adult, and things are going to be different this year.

FIFTEEN

You know a stripper is pissed when she calls somebody "honey." I'm more than halfway through my cross-country itinerary, and as I've traveled, I've heard a lot of "honey."

"Honey, we don't allow dirty dancing here," barks an irate dancer to a perma-tanned colleague at the Bush Company in Anchorage. The offender had bent forward and rubbed the top of her head on a customer's crotch during a table dance, i.e., done a "pecker check," and the other girl saw fit to set her straight on the rules.

In Dallas, at the Lodge, a haughty dancer swings her thin arm, smacking the hand of a greedily smiling man away from her firm, plum-shaped behind. "Listen, honey, if you touch me there again, I'm going to have the bouncer throw you out of here on your ass."

Me in the dressing room at Prince Machiavelli in El Paso, to the jittery Australian girl seated to my right at the vanity: "Excuse me, but you're stepping on the case for my Kenny Wayne Shepherd CD, honey."

…

I don't think strippers are inherently grouchier than the rest of the population, however, there are plenty of occupational irritants that can set a girl off. The first thing that really, truly pissed me off about stripping I encountered in 1991, when I signed on at Mitchell Brothers: stage fees.

When I start, the fee is twelve dollars for the day shift, seventeen for the night. Then, when dancers at a neighboring strip club organize against their similar stage-fee arrangement, the O'Farrell managers rescind the stage fees. Later, the fees are reinstated, at ten dollars per shift, payable at the beginning of the month when you pick up your schedule, and the fees are nonrefundable. If you cancel your shift, you don't get the money back.

I can't recall any dancer saying she likes paying the fees; in fact, I'd say the stage fees are generally viewed as a pain in the neck. After all, we see no return for our payment. If a bouncer walks us to our car at the end of a shift, we tip him separately. We tip the deejays ourselves. The fees serve no clear purpose—all we know is that we have no choice but to pay them.

My closest friend at the theater is a dancer named Phoenix. Like me, she's an artsy blonde from back East. But unlike me, she radiates a warm glow of sultriness and charisma. Someone once said, "She reminds you of smoky bars, black velvet, the blues." She takes to the stage like a diva supreme, but backstage she is helpful and friendly to the other dancers. When she works, Phoenix doesn't enter her own world, she engages herself in yours. Beneath her charming façade, however, is steely resolve. You do not want to do wrong by Phoenix.

Phoenix gets fired, after being at the theater for six years, and shortly thereafter we go for a walk in Golden Gate Park. The conversation takes a turn toward the stage fees, and the fact that dancers at the Market Street Cinema, a neighboring Tenderloin theater, had filed suit against the management on the grounds that the stage fees they charged the dancers were illegal. This, Phoenix says, has inspired her.

"Did you know that before 1988, Mitchell Brothers dancers used to be paid by the theater?" she asks me.

No, I didn't know that.

"Oh, yeah. We were," she says. Apparently, dancers used to earn an hourly wage, in addition to whatever tips they could make. Then, in 1988, the theater gathered the dancers together for a meeting and told them it was "their choice" whether they wanted to remain employees or give up the paychecks and become independent contractors. Never mind that the actual rules of the theater didn't change—dancers weren't offered the latitude of true independent contractors, but it was still suggested as the better alternative. The dancers went for it, and they stopped getting paid and instead started paying to work.

Phoenix suggests that it's possible that the theater could be forced to stop charging stage fees and reimburse the dancers for the money they'd paid over the years. She wants to wage such a fight; however, she doesn't want to do it alone. Understandable, when you consider that Jim Mitchell had killed his own brother just a few years ago.

I give the idea close consideration. I am a feminist. Certainly concerned with the welfare and well-being of strippers. This seems like an honorable cause, a justifiable one. I'm happy with the luxurious atmosphere and great earning potential at Mitchell Brothers, but I know there's plenty of room for improvement. Phoenix was smart to approach me—she struck my activist chord. I tell her I'm up for the fight if she is, we make a pact, and we shake on it.

But what attorney would help us? We didn't have money to wage an expensive lawsuit, and besides, who would take the concerns of two strippers seriously?

Enter Beth Ross and Elliot Beckelman, two labor rights attorneys Phoenix found through referral. A few weeks after our pivotal walk in the park, Phoenix and I sit down with them and talk it through. They help us determine that what we have, g-strings, girlie shows, and lap dances aside, is a clear-cut wage-and-hour case. We go down the list of what constitutes an employee versus an independent contractor:

"Can you make your own hours?" Beth asks.

No. We have to arrive at the theater at least an hour before whatever show we're in starts.

"Does management control the parameters of how you do your work?"

Yes. Phoenix and I tell them about the "drop top" rule, requiring dancers in New York Live to be topless by the end of their first song, and bottomless during the second. How Jim Mitchell would insist at times that the girls do daisy chains on the stage in the Green Door Room. And how, if a customer complains to management that he didn't like a show, occasionally the dancer has to give him his money back.

"Are you allowed to come and go as you please?"

No. In fact, we have to sign out every time we want to leave the building during our shift. Presumably for safety reasons, but still.

"Is your performance ancillary to the basic function of the theater?"

No. As Phoenix says, "Without the dancers, Mitchell Brothers is nothing but a snack bar. And not a very good one."

Regardless of the lip service given dancers about being "independent contractors," Beth and Elliot ascertain that dancers at Mitchell Brothers are employees. Not only are we entitled to an hourly wage, we most certainly should not have to pay for the privilege of gracing the O'Farrell Theater stage. Beth's firm agrees to take the case on contingency.

…

As the weeks pass, Phoenix (whose real name is Jennifer) and I brainstorm with Beth and Elliot. What do we really hope to accomplish? We don't want to be in it for ourselves—we'd like to file a class action lawsuit that will benefit all the dancers. We want every Mitchell Brothers dancer—past and present—to get restitution for stage fees and lost wages. We want true employee status, with everything that comes with it—wages, benefits, worker's comp, unemployment eligibility. And we want Mitchell Brothers to stop charging any kind of pay-to-work fee. Forever. What we want are basic workers' rights; however Phoenix and I feel like we are reaching for the moon. We know that dancers don't appreciate paying the stage fees, but will they stand behind us? The O'Farrell Theater is the best gig in town, and loyalty to Jim Mitchell is fierce, despite the sometimes stressful environment at the theater, despite his shooting Artie.

We can't talk much about the suit ahead of time, for obvious reasons. I have to be especially discreet, because if someone squealed and I got fired,
kaboom,
I could no longer be the class representative for the current dancers. Jennifer, now no longer in the business, agrees to represent the class of former dancers (although the-statute of limitations limits the class to women who worked at the theater since 1991). We quietly start doing research.

We find that this type of suit has several precedents. Dancers in cities around the country—Anchorage, Minneapolis, San Diego, and Pittsburgh—have filed similar suits. And each and every one of them was resolved in the dancers' favor. We are shaky-kneed, but emboldened by this discovery. I am burned out on dancing, but this seemingly righteous pursuit stirs my blood. Things are going to change, for the better, I am certain. And I am going to be an agent of that change.

On a windy day in March 1994, Jennifer and I, in ladylike attire, minimal makeup, and upswept hair, stand between Beth and Elliot on the steps of San Francisco's City Hall and announce our class action lawsuit against Cinema Seven, the parent company of the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater. Flashbulbs pop and reporters scribble furiously on their notepads as we answer questions from the media.

We tell them that we will no longer be silent about the unfair practices at the O'Farrell Theater. We stress that this is a lawsuit about fundamental labor rights. And that while we are scared, we are determined. We will not let the stigma surrounding exotic dancing prevent us from seeking our due.

After the press conference, Jennifer and I walk down Larkin Street, our lapels flapping in the cold spring wind. We grin, exhale with relief, and hug each other.

We have no idea what is going to happen next.

News of the lawsuit spreads quickly. We retreat to Beth's office to call some of our dancer friends at home to see how the suit is being received.

"Hallelujah!" screams one dancer.

"Right on! Thank God someone is finally standing up to those guys," effuses another.

The response is overwhelmingly positive.

But not for long.

The next morning, the theater management holds an emergency meeting. "This lawsuit is an
attack on your rights!.
" Jim Mitchell, now out on $500,000 bail, gravely states from the stage. Of course, the lawsuit is no such thing—in fact, it's the exact opposite. But it's in the theater's best financial interest to drum up opposition. An attorney for the theater sits close by Jim's side.

Mitchell urges the dancers to sign a petition protesting the suit, and to agree to pay the theater's attorney (yes, pay the theater's attorney) to organize a countersuit. Dancers flock to the stage to sign up.

This is just the beginning.

The following Saturday, Jennifer and I host a meeting at her house to brief dancers, past and present, on the basic intentions of the lawsuit. With the intimidation tactics already in full effect, only a handful of women show up. One dancer arrives, eyes alert and cold, her perfectly made-up face a flimsy mask of support She never says so, but she seems to be there to gather information to report to theater management. Of course we welcome her; we have nothing to hide.

Public reaction to the lawsuit is mixed. Some people see us as petulant brats, motivated by greed rather than priciple. You make so much money already, they argue, why should you get any more? Others scoff: You're strippers. You expect fair treatment? Just consider yourselves lucky that you're not a grim statistic or a laughingstock. The local sex activists are confused. Jim Mitchell and his cohort operate a beautiful, long-running theater that raised the bar on quality in the industry. Jim was considered a comrade-in-arms, or at least an unassailable ally. To see him under attack by his own dancers casts him in a different light.

In the theater dressing room, a dancer posts a scripted "manifesto" against the lawsuit. She decries how the lawsuit presumes to speak for her. Dismisses it as condescending and patronizing. "You think you're kicking up dust," she writes, "but you're standing on a paved road." Oy. My own brand of activist rhetoric has cycled around and bitten me on my sequined behind.

Dancers are urged by management to opt out of the class to protest the suit. The majority of current dancers comply. Some assemble counter-organizations and countersuits that are repeatedly thrown out of court. A counter-organization called "Save Our Strippers" plans a benefit at the Great American Music Hall, next to the theater. Dancers are told to sell the hundred-dollar tickets to the customers, or buy them themselves to resell later. When Jim Mitchell pressures a dancer named Mila to buy a ticket, she reacts by refusing flatly and joining Jennifer and me as a named plaintiff in the lawsuit. We are very happy to have another current dancer sign on.

Misinformation runs rampant among the dancers, despite the efforts that Jennifer and I exert. There is speculation that we filed the suit for publicity. (We receive countless offers to duke it out with the opposing side in the press, which we categorically decline.) That we filed the suit for revenge against Jim Mitchell. (This suit, we remind people gently, is political, not personal.) That the suit is a precursor to unionizing attempts. (I've always been against unionizing the sex industry. Union organization in a quasi-legit business seems like a nightmare in the making.) Most off the mark is the rumor we hope to close the theater by bankrupting it.

Shutting down the theater is not our goal. We don't want the dancers' livelihood to be threatened—not to mention, I still work there! I am not yet able to support myself solely as a writer. And besides, in order for the class action portion of the lawsuit to work, I have to continue dancing at the theater so the suit will have a representative for the current dancers.

My first day back at work is the scariest day of my life. A few weeks have passed since we filed the suit, and the tension has escalated. I am so frightened, I can barely bring myself to open the front door to the theater. Dancers stare silently at me as I pass. I sit alone in the smallest dressing room, wondering just how I am going to manage. I had anticipated returning to work a conquering hero. A naked Norma Rae. And now I am verging on pariah status. Another dancer comes in and sees me sitting at the mirror, slowly filling in my eyebrows with an unsteady hand. She immediately turns and walks out. I am blatantly shunned.

As the weeks pass, many of the dancers warm up to me. Quite a few approach with reassurances. "I want our working conditions to improve, too," they whisper. "But I don't want to lose my job." No one is actively hostile toward me, except one little blonde pipsqueak who mutters under her breath about "kicking my ass," which, given that I have about six inches and thirty pounds on her, is an amusing proposition. I heard her in the audience one night when I walked onstage, saying to another dancer, "Let's throw pennies at her head!" I walked right to the edge of the stage in front of her, looked her in the eye, and shouted over the music, "I dare you to try it!"