There were lots of fantastic pieces that we just couldn’t fit into the anthology, but we’re happy to be able to share some with you here in the Tales of the Trade section of our site.
BY SOLITAIRE
There are many power dynamics at work in a striptease club. Fans of such establishments – and the dancers who work in them – will often say the power rests with the performer. After all, the usually male clientele are defenceless against the barrage of feminine wiles, charm and beauty – and well-practiced sales techniques – that the dancers employ to part them with their cash. Opponents of the clubs, including anti-sex-work feminists, say the power is with the male audience and their wallets, who choose which women to ‘buy’ and which to reject, and that the whole spectacle is the ultimate example of women’s subjugation to men. Both groups would agree that some power undoubtedly rests with management, who can hire, fine and fire girls at will, and are the only ones guaranteed to have full wallets at the end of every night. As an exotic dancer in London for the past seven years, I’d say the reality is complex and ever-shifting. It’s not always about money – but the times when the power games fade into the distance are the ones where money is also the furthest out of the equation. I’ve done charity lapdancing, where I’ve known I’m giving the money away, or bookings where I’ve been paid a lump sum by a venue at the start of the evening to dance for whomever of their customers might want it, and the feeling is very different to a normal shift – the power dynamic fades right to the background. In some ways this is the most enjoyable dancing to do.
Monetary transaction is usually a major part of the performance experience though. In London, there are two main ways we dancers make our money, and the power dynamic involved in each is distinctly different.
In the traditional striptease pubs – some of which have been open in London since the 1970s or even earlier – the dancers work by a practice called ‘jugging’. This involves each dancer circulating around the audience before her stage show collecting a contribution from each member of the audience in a pint jug (at the time of writing, in 2009, the accepted minimum is a £1 coin). There will always be guys who try to avoid paying, by disappearing to the toilets, nipping out for a cigarette, or trying to slip a smaller-value coin in without the dancer noticing. In general though most men pay up happily; some even have special £1 coin holders or moneybags on the table with their coins ready. The dancer then does her show on the stage or the floor area, to her own choice of music and out of her own choice of costume.
In the lapdance clubs, dancers pay a high performance or ‘house’ fee and do a few topless-only stage shows a night for the venue (there is no tipping on the stage shows in London lapdance clubs) in return for being able to work the floor hustling for lapdances. They wear outfits approved by the club – usually long gowns – and lapdance to the music the DJ is playing.
In a traditional striptease pub, power feels clearly centred on the dancer. As I collect my coins, the guys don’t have a choice, as such, whether to pay (unless trying one of the avoidance techniques described, which we dancers all have ways of foiling). If he insists “I’m not paying you”, in most venues there’s a barman or boss or security to make sure he pays up or leaves. As I’ve collected my money already, in theory I can do any show I want to whether I think the audience will like it or not, though of course that’s not a good long-term business strategy! So I take them into account – how old they are, how drunk they may be, whether I’ve had any special requests (and whether I care to indulge them) – as well as the time of day, day of the week, the current atmosphere… I’ll do very different music on a Sunday lunchtime to an audience of five old gents, to what I’ll choose on a rowdy Friday night for a drunk young crowd.
But still the decision rests with me, and if I’m really in a mood at that moment on that Sunday lunchtime to dance to a heavy rock track, wearing thigh-high leather boots and blood-red lipstick, I’ll do it. If I’m more in the mood for a floaty sheer dress, bare feet and some old romantic tune, I can do that too. Whether I pick a three-minute song or a six-minute opus is up to me; whether I take my g-string off two minutes before the end or ten seconds before is my call. I’m my own make-up artist, costumier, choreographer, DJ… and I definitely feel that I hold the power.
In a lapdance clubs things can feel very different. I should say now that I don’t personally like these clubs, and that will obviously colour what I write about the power dynamics in them. Different types of work suit different dancers – a successful and happy club dancer will find the idea of spreading her legs nude for a few pound coins in a jar horrifying. I however wasn’t suited to the clubs (in which I worked full-time for four months, and on-and-off for two years), and the power dynamics I perceived to be operating within them are one of the reasons why.
In a lapdance club, the men don’t HAVE to give the dancers any money at all. It’s our job to work it out of them – with some it will be easy (“Hi, can I tempt you away for a dance? Yes? Great, let’s go”), and with some not so easy. And the men know this. It’s rare to get a sense in a strip pub that the guy is there for a power trip – how much power can there be in compulsorily handing over a £1 coin – but in a lapdance club, I got that impression regularly. I’d often hear “You’re the most gorgeous girl here, I’ve been watching you and hoped you’d come over, we’ll have a dance – we’ll have LOTS of dances – but sit and have a chat first”… “We’ll have those dances, let me just go out for a cigarette”… “Let me just call my office, then we’ll have those dances”… and half an hour and no money later “You know, I feel I know you too well now, I don’t want to pay you to take your clothes off, that’d cheapen things, I’d rather take you out for dinner tomorrow?” – said with a smug smile that implies, “I’ve been playing you all along”.
Yes, I learnt quickly not to fall for such time-wasters’ tricks. Still, it seemed a lot of the power was with the men. They knew that unless they agreed to a dance, I was making no money, and some seemed to get off on that. Many understood that thanks to a house fee of anywhere between £60-£120 per shift, plus the cost of a cab home at 4am, we dancers needed to do several dances just to break even (a pressure exerted thanks to the power held by management to set the fee as high as they liked). For other men it was a power trip to do the opposite and throw their money around, demanding girls get naked – “You, come here, here’s £20 – now get your kit off”.
From my side, I usually found to make money I’d have to employ power games of my own. Manipulative wording to make it harder to turn a dance down, or targeting guys who were clearly drunk and easier led, or pretending to be drunk myself and so giving the impression I may be more likely to break the club rules… I didn’t like those games, I didn’t get a thrill out of staring into the bloodshot eyes of some drunken ignorant overweight foul-breathed punter and leaning in close and declaring in a breathlessly urgent voice, hand on arm: “it’s so rare for me to meet a guy here who turns me on so much, I can’t wait any longer to dance for you, I want to feel your eyes all over my naked body, let’s go” and having him stumbling eagerly to his feet. I felt like a manipulative lying bitch and couldn’t help but consider him an ignorant egotistical idiot for believing my lines.
Once I’d lured my victim away for a dance, I’d be performing to the club DJ’s choice of music – usually bland pop and R’n'B, always cut to three minute songs of course – out of a dress that met the club’s dress code, sticking (most of the time) to the rules set out in the club’s lengthy code of conduct document. One guy said to me once “for the next three minutes, you’re mine”, and that’s sometimes how it would feel. I might be getting really bad energy off a guy, or he might be talking non-stop about what he’d like to do to me and it may be turning my stomach, but then he’d say “carry on” and give me another £20, and while I could have stopped, in theory, I saw it as my job to carry on so I would.
As I’ve said, I wasn’t suited to club work, and probably didn’t always handle situations in the best way. I know plenty of dancers who are happy in the clubs, and who make a game out of the power dynamics, manipulate them to their benefit and get a power trip out of it. But it wasn’t for me. Give me twenty £1 coins from 20 guys in a pub, total control of my own performance and no sense from the audience that they feel they ‘own’ me, rather than £20 from one guy for a dance in a lapdance club, any time. It’s the same total payment for doing what might be seen as the same thing – taking my clothes off to music – but the power dynamic that surrounds it is vastly different.
Even in the clubs though, I was choosing to be there. You can walk out and leave easier than in most jobs; in a major city like London, there’s always another club to go try your luck at the next night. The power/money dynamic felt much more in my favour than in my previous ‘respectable career’ jobs in journalism.
Though the power games are more apparent in lapdance clubs, they exist in the pubs too. On stage, there are still monetary power games going on, even though the financial side appears to have been dealt with already in the jug collection. Among the audience may be loyal customers who provide steady income and need to feel appreciated; a stranger who unexpectedly put a £20 note in; a group of young lads who magically reappeared from outside (without having paid) once your music began. And these groups need to be treated differently, all in the space of one show. This is possible to do as there are different levels of nudity. When and how you remove your clothes, how you present your body, how you angle it, what pole moves you do, who you give eye contact to as you slowly stroke your breasts – these all have an influence on your ‘naked’ form.
One venue where this becomes a major part of the on-stage action is Sunset Strip in Soho, which works differently to the pubs and clubs described. At Sunset, where I danced for two years, the tipping is during the stage show, in the form of £5 notes (the lowest value of paper note in England) upwards. In general the dancing is quite coy, until a punter tips (usually from the front row), where upon he will get a more explicit show performed in front of him for 30 seconds or so.
This venue attracted what we called ‘pussy-watchers’. Pussy-watchers are intently focused on trying to watch your crotch as if it’s the ball in a tennis match. It would be a game to see how far I could make them crane their necks and lean over, sometimes until they looked about to fall out their chairs. It would only be a game if I was making money that day and in a good mood, as invariably pussy-watchers did not tip. Sunset attracts a lot of stingy men, thanks to there being a fully nude show without the obligation to actually tip anything. Some would pay the entry fee then sit there all day, not tipping and not buying drinks, watching the show. Some even bought in sandwiches and flasks of coffee – yes, really.
No tips meant foul moods among the dancers, as we were paid only £20 for a six hour shift, which fell to £10 just before I left. A certain brand of pussy-watcher was the most hated punter – the type that would sit in the second row on a quiet day, and scoot along the seats to position themselves behind each tipper, so as to enjoy the more explicit mini-show the tipper’s money was buying from over his shoulder. Part of the extreme frustration I would feel when this happened was because of my lack of power in that moment – I had to give the show for the guy who had tipped and couldn’t help that the other one was watching. Thankfully the DJ would usually spot this kind of behaviour quickly and put a stop to it.
On a day when no-one was tipping, the dancers would all employ power tactics to maintain some kind of dignity. We still had to get up there and dance, but from doing short songs, treating the stage show as a pole-dance practice session, refusing to make eye contact with the audience, or leaving undressing to the last possible moment, there were ways to frustrate the audience and keep the power in our hands. ‘No cash, no flash’, ‘no pay, no display’, were the order of the day. I didn’t like these power games, and sometimes found that by not even attempting to garner a tip, by wiping the monetary element out of my head all together and instead just enjoying doing my dance, I sometimes got wallets opening that had stayed shut all day. Even so, I have to admit that sometimes, dropping my g-string, sinking to my knees then snaking forward onto the floor while opening my legs as wide as possible – facing towards the non-tipping pussy-watchers, so they couldn’t see the view they most craved – was extremely satisfying.
The most enjoyable dancing for me though is where the power dynamics are least at play. As I mentioned early on, when the direct exchange of money from punter’s wallet to performer’s purse is removed so too are many of the power games. Dancing for a respectful customer who is happy to pay you the going rate for your performance without expecting anything more is the next closest thing (big tips are great, but in themselves create a whole new set of power-plays). As someone lucky enough to go into this job to fulfil a lifetime desire to do so, rather than primarily to meet a financial need, good striptease for me is about a positive exchange of erotic energy. For that to truly happen, both parties need to be equal. Still, the power question is one of the most talked-about aspects of the job. “Is it a power-trip, dancing in front of all those men?” is something I’m regularly asked. The true answer is “On a good day, no”.
Solitaire has been an exotic dancer for the past seven years, fulfilling an ambition she had held since childhood. She has danced in over 30 venues in and around London, UK. Entering the adult industry following a degree in journalism and jobs in financial and fashion media, she was nominated in the Stripper of the Year category in the Erotic Awards and later sat on the judging panel three years running. She is active in the political scene, fighting to prevent UK adult entertainment laws becoming stricter, and is a campaigning member of performers’ union Equity.
Kelly Kennedy did a piece on the strip pubs as well, in the latest issue of $pread. Seems much cuddlier than the old school champagne hustle strip joints I remember from my days….
I really enjoyed this piece.
A brilliant article. Solitaire gives a real insight into the world of a stripping.
Will you dance for me please?!
What a fascinating piece this is. As a punter, I am very interested to hear the view “from the other side”, especially when it is so well written and candid. Thank you beautiful Solitaire.