The Strip Club Dating Survival Guide (5 page)

-
S
IGN POSTED OUTSIDE A STRIP CLUB IN
S
OUTH
D
AKOTA.

This brings us to the entertainers. The exotic dancers you will find in gentlemen’s clubs come in two basic forms, House Dancers and Feature Entertainers. House dancers are the workaday, 9–5 girls. They normally live somewhere nearby the club; are well known to the staff, other entertainers and the customers. They have regulars that they depend on seeing as often as possible, and consider this club to be their home base.

HOUSE
DANCERS

A
house dancer
 is paying “hard” fees to the club for the right to work there (a subject I will cover in detail in another section.) Additionally, they are paying “soft” fees in the form of regular tip percentages to the in-house staff. These dancers are usually obligated to somewhat theoretical performance schedules dictating what shifts they will work at the club. They appear on stage at regular intervals during the shift as required by management and under the supervision of the club DJ.

FEATURE
ENTERTAINERS

Headline dancers brought in by the club for specific events are known as
feature entertainers
.
They are contracted through adult talent agencies like the Continental Agency, the Lee Network, A-List Features, and Pure Talent Agency, amongst others. The purpose of a feature entertainer’s show is usually to drive business during down times, pull customers from the competition on one of their high traffic days or act as the centerpiece of some kind of event like a grand opening, anniversary or holiday party.

Generally, features fall into one of four categories:

• ^{Porn Stars}
  
• ^{Show Girls}
  
• ^{Freak Shows}
  
• ^Celebrities
  

PORN
STARS

The most common form of feature act these days are
porn stars
. While some of these girls possess true name recognition and a built in draw, the fact that they are in porn does not actually mean that they can pack the house. In fact, the absolute glut of starlets out there and the production values inherent in today’s
gonzo
 porn industry tends to insure that quite a few of the girls working the feature circuit as porn stars are mostly unknown.

Worse still, most porn starlet features apparently couldn’t dance worth a shit if their lives depended on it, seemingly lack any ability or desire to put on a decent show or even bother to stay sober during their appearance. That leaves you, the customer, paying heavily inflated prices at the door and bar to see some girl you’ve never heard of roll around on stage like a clumsy wreck in a cheap, one-size-fits-all costume that was clearly purchased online.

At one time in the club industry, feature entertainers had played a vital role, bringing new costumes, dance routines, games and a level of excitement that would be hard to maintain with just the on-hand, in-house dancers. They also provided a central focus for marketing and promotions in the club, essentially giving the club a new story to tell its customers with each new feature event. As a bonus, a skilled feature dancer often had the ability to inspire the resident house girls to up their game in terms of appearance, costumes and stage performances.

The current domination of low-grade porn star features has made an end to all that, however. The lack of reliability, poor show date performances, unrealistically high appearance fees and low customer turnout associated with porn stars has nearly killed the entire feature segment of the adult club industry. Club owners and managers all over the country have practically opted out of the feature game, tired of all the hassle, expense and low returns, almost exclusively due to the primacy of the porn star feature.

SHOWGIRLS

Showgirls, on the other hand, are dancers who normally have spent some considerable time dancing in clubs as house girls and have little or no experience in the porn industry. These are typically strippers who want to make a career out of exotic dancing but know that their productive time in clubs is somewhat limited. For them, featuring is like career progression, offering financial rewards and recognition not available to girls that never leave the club environment.

Showgirl
features tend to emphasize elaborate costumes, onstage props, some degree of dance choreography (and expertise to back it up) special effects, unique skills and customer interaction games. Most of them spend considerable time working the
contest circuit
, using their victories as a means for establishing
marketable credits
that will make them attractive hires for club owners.

FREAK
SHOWS

Freak Shows commonly involve midgets, but there are also “fat lady” freak shows, as well as girls with freakishly large breasts and shows featuring twin sisters. There are a few performers out there that do a sort of onstage
dominatrix
 gig, and I suppose those would count as freak shows too. Despite what you might think, or perhaps
confirming
your worst fears,
freak shows 
tend to be the most popular kind of feature event booked these days. I personally oversaw several of them and even put together a “fat lady versus midget” event at one point. It was wildly successful to nobody’s immense surprise.

CELEBRITIES

Finally, there is the newest feature category, the
celebrity
 feature. These “features” sometimes will perform as do the other feature types, but many of them take the form of an on-site appearance rather than an actual performance. Examples of Celebrity features would include somebody who gained fame from reality television, were the less-famous partner in somebodies leaked sex tape or became known as the mistress that broke up some famous guy’s marriage.

In short, so-called Celebrity features are generally obnoxious bores with an astonishing short shelf life and little to no actual draw in a gentleman’s club. I’m not exactly clear on who originally thought this semi-celebrity snake oil was such a brilliant idea, but I have yet to see one of these events work to the benefit of the club and its customers. The Internet is already full of enough pictures of self-centered drunk girls striking “duck face” poses without you driving down to a strip joint to meet them in person. Avoid these feature events if the club you frequent is foolish enough to pay for them.

STAR
FUCKING

The amount of time that you might be in contact with any particular feature dancer is so limited that your opportunity for any meaningful interactions is severely limited. Even if you could quickly hook it up with a porn starlet why would you want to? Are you planning to date her? Before sticking a toe in those waters, I would simply draw your attention to the fact that
she has sex with other men in public for money
. Maybe you’re into that, but for most guys, I think the stress of such a relationship would be too much to bear.

The show girls seem like a better group, many of them are intelligent and hard-working and, despite the fact of what they do for a living, they aren’t cheap whores. For the most part, they are actually just
souped-up
versions of the girls you are already chasing in the club, so what’s the problem? Well, most of them have moved on from the night-to-night, hand to mouth existence of the strip club and are now moms, wives, committed girlfriends or fiancés. They are seeking stability, advancement and career success. Hooking up with some customer they encounter during the course of a three or four day feature assignment seems counterproductive to their life goals just to put it mildly.

Could there be any “heart of gold” porn starlets just looking to meet the right guy (namely you) and leave it all behind them for a new life of monogamous bliss? Sure there are. Are there also show girls whose selfish nature and limited sense of commitment drive them to hit it with anyone possessing a heartbeat and a penis after a couple of glasses of cheap chardonnay? Yes, of course there are. I wouldn’t go betting the farm on you meeting one of them and being
the guy
though.

What about the freak shows? Well, that all depends on you doesn’t it? Do you like midgets and tremendously fat girls? Oddly, most of the “freak” features tend to be married and bring their husbands along to the show in the role of
handler/protector.
 
I suppose it takes all kinds to make the world go round. I would suggest to you that if that if people with unusual physical characteristics, like being a dwarf, are your thing, there are probably better, saner places to meet them than a strip joint. Plus, midgets drink a lot. I mean a lot. Like more than you can imagine. Things can get ugly quick when you are dealing with a
drunken midget in a thong.

That just leaves the “Celebrity” feature. At least here you often have a point of reference. All you have to do is go back and watch reruns of the inane reality show that she was on at one point in her life and see if the person you see there is genuinely someone you’d like to have a truly rewarding and intimate relationship with. Can you imagine holding her hair out of the way while she vomits up tequila for the third time in the past twenty-four hours, facing off with her ex-boyfriend in the parking lot of a bar or picking her up from jail
again
? 

Think all that over carefully before deciding whether or not it would be worthwhile to get involved. Then, regardless of whatever it was you decided there, stay far, far away and let them be
some other moron’s
problem.

The bottom line here is that you should not categorize Feature Entertainers as being people you are seeking relationships with. There are just too many factors working against you for it to be worth the time. The only real exception I will make to this is in the event that you are dating a stripper who is staying in the business, and at some point decides to move into Showgirl featuring.

This brings us to the House Dancers who are the real meat-and-potatoes of any strip joint. These are the girls that you will see any time you go into the club. They are the girls you are most likely to have the opportunity to form relationships with since they will be the dancers most available and accessible to you on an ongoing basis. We’ll take a closer look at house dancers in the next chapter.

Chapter 3. If It Doesn't Make Money, It Doesn't Make Sense

Strippers are people, too. Naked people, who may be willing to pleasure you for a price you negotiate later, behind a curtain in the VIP room.

-
A
LEXANDER
H
AMILTON:
F
OUNDING
F
ATHER,
S
ECRETARY OF THE
T
REASURY IN
W
ASHINGTON’S
C
ABINET; DIED AFTER A DUEL WITH A POLITICAL RIVAL UPON WHOM HE HAD TALKED MAD SHIT DURING THE 1800 ELECTIONS; THUS PROVING THAT OUR NATION WAS BUILT BY SOME BADASS MOTHERFUCKERS.

As I have said previously, house dancers are where the rubber meets the road in strip clubs. They are what you are thinking of when the word stripper comes to mind. These are the girls that I assume you are trying to date if you are reading this, so they are the ones you should come to know best. House dancers come in just about as many shapes and sizes as you can imagine. I have seen the most startlingly beautiful women grace the stages of various
gentlemen's clubs
, only to be then followed in quick succession by women who have no business leaving their house, let alone getting naked in public.

The temperament of the average club entertainer runs the full gamut as well, from aggressive,
bipolar
 nightmares to meek, trusting damsels in distress. Trying to outline who or what defines a stripper is nearly
impossible. 
Instead, let me give you the rundown on how things work in the club for dancers, and perhaps then you’ll begin to see how they might then translate that reality into the way they are dealing with you.

RENT

As we have discussed, strippers are rarely club employees. They are almost always something known as an independent contractor. What this means is that the entertainers essentially work for themselves, theoretically
renting space
from the club. For the purposes of some masturbatory abstraction of theoretical economics, there is a presumption that strippers have a unique service to offer (their dance performances), but they need some kind of facility in which to market and sell their service.

Strip clubs assume all of the cost and risk involved with permitting, legal compliance, advertising, security, insurance, marketing and promotions, labor costs, facility maintenance, management overheads, utilities and consumables like alcohol and food. All of
that
can cost considerable sums over time, which are covered with door charges on the customers, ATM fees, sales of food and drink, merchandise sales, special fees on dances and an elaborate structure of rents, percentages and charges levied against the entertainers that wish to use the club.