The Strip Club Dating Survival Guide (6 page)

The fees and financial obligations owed by a dancer to the club she works in are often collectively referred to as
taxes
. In other words, the amount of money she earns is a gross, just like for normal wage earners like you and me, her real income is the net amount she makes it home with after paying everything and everyone out at shift end. This does not even take into account
real taxes
that she owes to the federal and state tax collectors, amounts that will largely remain unpaid.

I want to note here that how this all works varies tremendously from club to club. Some clubs will charge more or less, pay the dancers or simply charge them nothing. There may be significant variety in how this kind of thing is handled, but again, this should represent the average situation.

RENT
:
STAGE
FEES

That said, strippers usually get taxed in four different categories; stage fees, often referred to as rent, fees on dances, tip-outs, and tips for service. Stage fees are charged to the entertainers for the right to use the club, its infrastructure and staff. This can either be a flat fee or something keyed to how desirable the shift is.

An example of this would be a club that charges a dancer $20 if they arrive for work anytime between when the club opens and 8PM, $40 if they arrive between 8PM and 10PM or $60 for the right to show up after ten. Clubs tend to charge an escalating fee like this because it encourages girls to show up on the slow times, like the day shifts. They can gradually increase the fees as it gets later because the club knows that dancers will be showing up to work the busy nights no matter how much they are being charged.

Stage fees may be as low as $10 or $20, but in prime markets, such as the clubs in Las Vegas, a $70—$100 fee might be considered a bargain. Some clubs will require the entertainers to pay up front before ever being allowed access to the main showroom and the customers there, while other clubs collect the fee at the end of the dancer’s shift.

RENT
:
DANCE
FEES

Some clubs will also be charging dance fees against the stripper’s take on the action that happens in the club’s various dance areas. In some cases, this will be a flat fee, other times it may be a percentage of the total earned. As I have already noted, this may not be common practice in every club, but it is common enough to mention here. This portion of the fee structure can end up amounting to quite a bit of money depending on how the club handles it.

For example, if a club is charging a $50 stage fee and a 20% Dance Fee, and an entertainer racks up 25 dances at $20 a pop for a total of $500, then her payout to the club at the end of the shift would be $150:

$50 stage fee + $100 dance fee [$500 x .20 = $100] = $150

This leaves the dancer with $350 take home out of what she earned during the shift. While this does not take into account any tips or money she made dancing on stage, $150 is still a considerable chunk to lose before you even walk out the door. And we haven’t even accounted for tip outs yet, another thing that tends to bleed the dancers half to death on the way home.

TIPS

Of course, dancers have to tip all the time. Tips come in two basic forms: tip outs and
tips for service
. The latter of the two is just what it sounds like, tipping for services that occur during the shift. An example of this would be someone on staff getting tipped out by a dancer for putting them on to a paying customer, helping settle a money dispute in the dancer’s favor, the bar staff or VIP Host giving extra attention to an entertainer’s best customer or the manager spending an hour searching for, and recovering, a lost purse or cell phone.

While tips for service are just considered proper etiquette and good karma,
tip outs
 are an unofficial requirement. Most of the time, clubs have some kind of semi-official tip out threshold, somewhere in the 15–20% range. This is how it works: at the end of shift, a dancer owes the DJ a minimum tip equal to 10% or greater of the total amount of money earned before the club takes a cut.

TIPS
:
THE
DJ

Earlier I gave an example of a girl who made $500 in dances, remember? Let us just imagine that she also made about $100 in tips while dancing on stage, so she has a total of $600 in income. She owes her DJ an absolute minimum of $60 [10% of $600] which, if that is what she hands him at the end of the night, will cause her to be viewed as a cheap bitch and liable to receive absolute minimal service from that DJ on the next shift that they work together. He’ll tell everyone working that night what a cheap bitch she is, and most likely attempt to get the manager to do something about it next time she comes in.

TIPS
:
THE
BOUNCERS

In addition to the tip out to the DJ, the entertainers are also expected to hit the bouncers with a 5–10% tip that will normally be shared equally among them. So again referring to our example dancer with $600, the security tip would be $30—$60 depending on the expectations at the club. That amount will be shared out between all the bouncers as I said, meaning that if there are six bouncers splitting $60, then the most anyone can expect to get is $10.

Of course, if you have twenty or thirty girls handing you $10 every night as they walk out to the parking lot these amounts can add up quickly to a new car or a down payment on a house. Failing properly to tip the security guys can not only result in shitty treatment (
see DJ, above
) but may also result in an entertainer not getting backed up at a critical moment during some future shift.

TIPS
:
THE
MANAGER

Although it almost never falls within any kind of official tip out policy, in many clubs the strippers are expected to tip out to the management along with everyone else. Some clubs explicitly prohibit tips to managers from dancers since this
might compromise
management integrity (seriously) instead choosing to force employees to share a portion of the tips they get from the entertainers with their shift manager.

It probably goes without saying that this is at least unethical if not strictly illegal. The staff can ensure that the manager will always take their side in a dispute over tips if they share with him, or at least that’s the general idea. Regardless of how it all goes down though, this is just a shrewd trick that club owners use to get around having to pay managers properly.

So let’s put this all together using the hypothetical stripper who just pulled that $500 worth of dance money and $100 on stage. She is going to pay out $120 in tips, half to the DJ and the other half to the bouncers, leaving $480. We already set the stage fee at $50, and the dance fee at 20%, for a total of $150 in club fees, which leaves our girl with $330. Let’s say that she is accustomed to tipping her manager 5% (in this case $30), so she has $300
after taxes
.

While I am by no means trying to suggest that making $300 for a work day lasting anywhere from 4–8 hours is bad money, you should try to remember what an exotic dancer is doing for that money. Getting naked for strangers, feigning sexual interest in people that she at best couldn’t care less about, being in intimate physical contact with often unattractive customers with foul breath or body odor, being groped, intimidated, sexually assaulted, and bored to death by idiot drunks are all par for the course on any given day.

Of course, we should all recognize that this is the life that these girls choose, and they are getting compensated for it, often quite well. That, however, doesn’t actually make it any easier. If you have some idea that the dancers are living out a cushy, fantasy existence filled with sex, excitement and practically free money, you couldn’t be farther from the truth. Again, this is their choice, not something being forced on them, but it pays to remember that
this shit isn’t easy
for anyone.

WORKING
GIRLS
,
PART
ONE

When dancers arrive for their shift they are normally required to check-in with the manager on duty, letting him or her know that the performer is on premise. In some clubs, this is the point at which the stage fee is paid. Afterward, the entertainer will spend some time getting prepared for her shift in the club dressing room.

Depending on the entertainer and what her day looked like prior to arriving, this period may last anywhere from just a few minutes to several hours. Most girls seem to take 45 minutes to an hour to go from walking into the club wearing sweats and a t-shirt to heading onto the showroom floor in a bikini and platform heels.

Once girls are on the floor, they are usually expected to check-in with the DJ, although how this is handled will vary markedly from club to club. Some places have an automated system that notifies the DJ once the dancer has checked in, but in most places, you wouldn’t know a girl has arrived until she walks up to the sound booth and announces herself.

TWO
MINUTES
,
THIRTY
SECONDS

While we’re sort of touching on the subject of DJs and all that, I’d like to make mention here of the idea of song length, and what it means to you as a guy enjoying himself in a strip club. While you may not realize it, hearing a full length song in a strip club is pretty damn rare. Most clubs aim for a standard song length of 
two minutes, thirty seconds.

This is intended to ensure that things sort of move along nicely, because, believe it or not, it can get downright boring if the same girl is on stage too long. Also, and in some ways more importantly, this is designed to keep the length of songs in the dance area as standard as possible.

Knowing this little fact can also be helpful to you as a customer in the event you do something stupid, like trying to dispute how much you owe for the dances you just got in the VIP. When you are dealing with the bouncer and attempting to explain to him that it was only three songs and not the four that the dancer is claiming, I want you to remember that
he knows
how many you owe.

Why? Because five minutes equals two dances, ten minutes are equal to four dances, and an hour is twenty-four dances.
He’s not guessing how many you did, you are.
So stop looking like a chump, pay the lovely lady, and make your exit gracefully. Tomorrow you can call your mom and borrow money for rent. You’ll live.

WORKING
GIRLS
,
PART
TWO

Once the entertainers have checked in with the DJ they are generally free to do as they like so long as they aren’t breaking any laws or violating club rules and they remain responsive when the DJ calls them to the stage. This is the point when a dancer will first begin to approach customers, get her first set on stage over with and, if the joint serves alcohol, probably hit up the bar for a shot just to get things going.

This first appearance on the main showroom floor is usually a dicey point for any girl’s psyche and has the potential to sort of set the tone for the rest of the shift. Most of the entertainers will be undergoing some kind of anxiety at this point, and experience what is known as,
approach avoidance
. That works like this:

A dancer is standing alone out in the open in a heavily air-conditioned room, inundated with the babble of indistinct conversations of customers and dancers, the blaring of the sound system, the flashing stage lighting, and the clear awareness that she is practically naked. As she makes her way onto the floor, people will pause what they are doing to turn and stare at her, even if only for a moment.

They will look her over, openly judge her with their eyes, and turn back to their friends to critique her physical features and level of attractiveness. The dancer will often overhear nearby customer conversations featuring loud, specific commentary regarding her suitability as a sexual partner,
or lack thereof
.

BAD
DREAMS

Remember those dreams you used to have as a kid when you would show up late to class on the day of the final math test only to discover that you had forgotten to get dressed and were standing in front of your teacher and classmates totally in the buff? As if this dream doesn’t suck enough already, the other students would usually be making fun of you as you stood there, powerless to run away or cover yourself. Then,
because fate is fucking cruel
, you would wake up to your beeping alarm only to realize you had to get up for school because you did, in fact, have a significant math test that day.

Regardless of whether you ever had that specific dream or not (
quit lying, everybody had that fucking dream
), you almost certainly suffered through something similar enough that you can identify with it. Recall the feelings this dream could create in you;
fear, self-loathing, helplessness, panic, generalized anxiety
.
 Imagine having to live through that dream in a waking state, otherwise known as
real life
, every time you went to work.