Secret Society

I’ve always had a need to take things apart and see how they work. Fortunately for me, I got a job taking apart other people's stuff and debugging it. I’ve managed to take a personality defect and turn it into a career. The strip club culture is sort of a secret society. Most people are completely clueless as to how clubs actually operate. This blog is my way of exploring what goes on in the strip club world.

A strip club is one of the few places that people won’t tell you their real names. Outside the club most dancers don’t tell people what they do for a living. Most of the press about strip clubs is exaggerated. The ads for strip clubs don’t help either. It’s hard to tell what they're actually advertising. The obvious reason for the secrecy is security. Every dancer I know has had problems from nosy customers to being outright stalked. When you hear all the stories, you begin to appreciate the nuts that dancers have to deal with. I've heard of customers following dancers to different cities after they get off a shift. You’d think that living several hundred miles away in a different city would be enough to deter most customers from following you home. Unfortunately no. Commuting dancers run into customers where they have no business being. Most customers don’t understand how much is costs to be a dancer either. I bet most would be surprised to learn the dancer will spend more money on stage fees and tip outs than he will at the club.

Besides the physical safety, there's the issue of dancers not wanting their jobs being public knowledge. A lot of times their family and friends outside the club don’t know what they do. Being a dancer is not accepted in a polite society. I’m guessing that I’ve probably met and worked with dancers in my past and never knew it. If I'd found out what they had done in their past, or are still doing, would it have changed my opinion of them? Today, no. Before I started hanging out in strip clubs? Yes, sadly. As much as I’d like to think I’m above stereotypical thinking, I’m not. I used to believe all the strip club clichés; That strippers were one step away from being drug addicted hookers and that people who hang out in strip clubs are future sex offenders. Curiously, I’ve actually become one of those stereotypes.

One of the cruelest pranks I’ve ever heard was committed by a dancer on another dancer. Though calling this a prank is like calling a felonious assault hazing. A dancer secretly took a picture of another in the dressing room with the girl's own phone. Then sent the picture to her mother, who up until that point, didn’t know she danced. Sometimes dancers are the biggest threat to dancers, not customers.

The media doesn’t really do the strip club industry any favors. Most strippers on TV get killed just after opening credits on a crime drama series. I’ve explored this in more detail in my Bad Press blog post. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie or TV show the accurately portrays the life of a dancer. The only place that seems to give some insight into the strip club world is the blogosphere. I have to admit a lot of the blogs and tweets are actually pretty boring. There is usually lots of stuff about stupid customers, broken heels, and makeup. This is probably representative of a greater truth. It’s just another job.