Q. Forget all the 'ancestral family business of stripperherding bullshit', how did you really get into the titty bar industry?
ME: "All right, ya got me. My family haven't been stripperherders since the Viking Age, I made that up because it amuses me. The thought of my Dad and Grandad being strip club bouncers makes me chuckle. My Grandad would've probably perved on them a bit while telling them endless tall tales that were always built around a kernel of truth. He was a mere 5' 10".
My Dad on the other hand, while only 6'2" on a good day, would've tried to fuck as many strippers as he possibly could before he got fired cuz ole Pop was a fucking horndog. I think back on some of Dad's 'girfriends' and shudder. My Pappy banged some truly hideous bitches in his time, the memories of some still haunt me to this day. I can't recall a single hot chick ever, shockingly plain is the best one that comes to mind and Pop offered to hook me up with her.
I was maybe 9 or 10 at the time and quite frankly freaked out about the thought of a gaunt biker ho rummaging around in my undies, which is what I thought sex was at the time. Remember that I grew up without the benefit of instant online porn. I never actually saw honest to goodness moving picture porn til I was fifteen, so bear with me. It was a different time.
While I told my Dad I didn't really want to be undy-rummaged by a crackhead, I did have the presence of mind to ask if I could have a new Matchbox car instead, hoping Pop might feel vaguely weird about offering one of his offspring some subcontracted defloration.
Dad bought me one. Score.
What I chose turned out to be a Vauxhall Guildsman and it became one of my favorite cars. I called it "Forty" because even as a child I was super creative.
I later discovered that Vauxhall never actually made the Guildsman, but that it was a concept car based off submitted drawings from the public or some such weird British nonsense. Falking Limeys....
But I digress. How did I get my first titty club job? Simple. Up until 1999, most of my jobs had been either a cook, or working at one particular warehouse for 9 years. There were a few other varied jobs in there too, for I am a man who doesn't like to be unemployed for more than a week or two, but for the purposes of this discussion, let us say that I was either a cook or a warehouse stock puller.
When my life sorta fell apart in 1999, I moved outta The Town, and headed East, eventually ending up in Another Town™ a few hours away. I had moved in with some friends, two of which were hot chicks. Serious hot. They eventually got into the stripper trade and one day one of them asked me if I wanted a job being the 'chef' at the upscale club they both worked at because their present 'chef' had stolen so much food from the club that it had to switch distributors because it was $6K in debt to its current one.
I said 'yes'.
So it was 1999 and my first strip club job was cooking in an upscale club. I made a lot of money doing it, about $800-1000 cash a week, most of which I spent on blow.
Not proud of that and certainly don't recommend it, but there you go. It was the culture of the club from the top down and I just wanted to fit in.
And it turned out I really liked cocaine. Sue me.
Next question....
Q. What's the most you've ever made in a night?
A bit over $2000. This from a super generous sporthlete who personified the antithesis of the stingy, self absorbed professional which seems to be the industry standard. I also found nearly the same amount on the patio in an envelope one night and put it in my pocket, expecting someone to ask about it and thoroughly ready to return it because that's the kind of douche I am.
No one ever asked about it at all. Nothing. Nada. Not so much as a peep. Found out it was from a perpetually drunk rich guy who didn't even bat an eyelash.
So I fucking kept it, split half of it with the other Floor Dudez, which I didn't really have to do, and it was a good night.
On the other side of the coin I've had plenty of nights where I've just made my less-than-minimum-wage hourly rate and not a red cent more. They're not common, but they happen. Like asteroid strikes.
Next question.
Q. How many titty bars have you worked at in your career?
I'll let the Count field that one for me.
In two states right next to each other on one big ass continent. Narf 'Murrika, bitch. Jingo!
Let's move on.
Q. Fine. Who is you favorite all time dancer to work with?
That's impossible for me to answer with any certainty. I worked with a lot of girls over the years and I've liked a lot of them. I guess if I had to name a favorite, I'd dodge it by saying that there's a certain metatype of stripper that I like working with the best and that's The Operator.
Operators are strippers who are deadly focused on making money, single minded like carnivorous plants or blood-horny makos. They were put on this miserable ball of spinning mud for one purpose and one purpose only: to take delusional mens' money and convert it into one of history's great shoe or handbag collections, or even, in some cases, a fucking financial empire.
I like them because they almost never get drunk, they're seldom junkies and they know how to play the game and run all the dry hustles. They encourage the customers to buy them drinks that get sipped at, left behind and dumped in toilets because they realize that the club has to wet it's beak too and they have power over the mongoloids shambling about the club.
The whole club ecology runs on the premise that the customers are the prey and that every facet of the business (the Dancers, the Floor Guys, the Waitresses, the Bartenders, etc etc...) is its own pack of predators looking to take down the biggest money-elk. Often we are at direct odds with one other, each tribe doing what it can to fuck the other one over.
But every now and then, in a well run club, all the cred-a-vore clans come together in a feeding frenzy of well orchestrated shim-shammery and glitter-fraud which nonetheless makes a well to do customer happy for some reason and leads to money permeating all the layers of the club-o-sphere.
Even the kitchen sometimes.
You know, for a guy supposedly on hiatus, I'm still delivering the goods. I guess the dozen or so comments I was deluged with when I announced my time off really spoke to me. The way I see it, I'm giving upwards to fifteen people a reason to live by posting some new content. I feel good about this.
Coulda hadda mora picturras,
-The StripperHerder
