3 naked ladies talk about their view from the stages and laps of the 70′s, 80′s, 90′s and today.
For as a long as there’s been music, women have danced for the entertainment and titillation of men. Scheherazade. Minsky’s Burlesque. Cage dancing go-go girls in the psychedelic 60′s. Times Square strippers, pole dancers and lap dancers. Women dance….Men watch.
This entry was originally written and posted on October 14, 2009 at 9:00 am on the now defunct dirtygirldiaries.com
Naked Ladies get around! Look for the 3 Naked Ladies and a new topic every Wednesday on laurishaw.com, $pread magazine online or thedirtygirldiaries.com (all sadly defunct)
Lauri Shaw: At Dangerous Curves, the manager would fine us if we started groping each other onstage, even if there was a packed house cheering us on! I never understood why it bothered him so much.
Rachel Aimee: Managers always seem to be weirdly uncomfortable with girl on girl shows. They claim it’s because they’re worried about getting shut down but I think sometimes they’re just jealous because they think the girls are having too much fun. They can be weird about female customers getting lapdances too—a bouncer once refused to let some guy watch me give his girlfriend a lapdance. He made him sit at the bar until we were finished!
Jodi Sh. Doff: There wasn’t a lot of girl on girl action on stage in the clubs when I worked, but there was always an undercurrent. You can’t help it with that many naked and half dressed women in one place. There’d be little intimations but no actual touching. The State Liquor Authority had very specific ideas about obscenity and girl on girl would’ve put us in the category of the live sex shows and risked the liquor license.
RA: Do you think it’s more common for women to go to strip clubs as customers now that the industry is less taboo?
JShD: Well, single women weren’t allowed in my day–they were assumed to be prostitutes cruising for johns–and couples were discouraged.
LS: Yeah, women had to be escorted by a man. Managers worried that a woman on her own was someone’s angry wife or jealous girlfriend.
RA: Some bouncers are still weird about letting single women in. The women who do get in are usually straight–either business women with male colleagues or girlfriends/wives with their partners–and I hate to say it but most of them are really annoying. They don’t tip, talk deliberately loudly about how the dancers are ugly or fat, take their clothes off and dance all over their boyfriends like they’re trying to compete with us (as if we care!), then get up on stage and dance around like they think they’re really cool. The customers are usually more excited to see a civilian getting naked than a pro so they end up with all our tip money too.
LS: Thankfully I never remember women coming in and doing any of that, but I did see other strange behavior. I’ll never forget this customer at Runway 69. She was a schoolteacher, the spitting image of January Jones. She swore she was straight, and was pretty defensive about the whole thing. Then she started drinking the fake beer.
She thought she was getting drunk. She asked for a lapdance while her husband watched. When I danced on her, she started breathing all heavy and begging me to touch her everywhere. The dance room at Runway was only semi-private. The bouncers were watching. I started getting really nervous that this woman would get me fired.
After the dance, she followed me into the ladies room. She blockaded the door and begged me to get her off! “Please, I’ll pay you, I’ve never done it with a woman,” etc., until her husband pounded on the door and yelled at her that they were going home.
JShD: Girl on girl was pretty unusual even in the dumps. Guys weren’t inclined to pay the cost of buying bottles for two dancers to get them both into the back rooms. It wasn’t my thing, but occasionally I’d work with a girl named Carrie, we looked like sisters. We rocked that “sisters are doing it for themselves” scene one night with a high roller who was pretty drunk by the time we got him.
LS: This girl I knew had been fired from the Blue Angel for making out with a female customer. She claimed the customer was Drew Barrymore! And that it was worth it. My own celebrity experience was almost as cool. Jenna Jameson featured at the Zebra Club in Connecticut. She dived into the crowd and sucked on my tits in front of 400 people.
RA: No way, really?!
JshD: Real girl on girl action was a different story. At the Mardi Gras, Cheryl the bartender was a total butch dyke and her girl, Roxy, danced there. I don’t think you see that anymore, stone dykes working straight strip clubs.
RA: Lots of lesbians work in strip clubs these days. They’re usually femmes, but not always. I worked with a girl whose butch girlfriend would hang out at the club every night, drinking with the customers and encouraging them to tip her girlfriend. Or sometimes she would just pocket their money while her girlfriend distracted them from the stage. They made a pretty good team.
LS: I met plenty of dancers who fucked girls, but fewer that identified as lesbians. Or they’d say they were lesbians, but then they’d go home to their man. I never saw a single girl, either stripping or behind the bar, that I would describe as “butch.”
JshD: Like I’ve said, there was a lot more latitude back then. At the Butterfly, Billie and Loretta were young, gorgeous, and totally hot for each other. I remember walking out of the upstairs lounge one night. They were buck naked on the floor, locked mouth to cooch and cooch to mouth. I liked to bust my neck tripping over them but they paid us no mind. They weren’t thinking about anything but getting off. So everyone got a free show. A pretty hot one.
Posted October 14, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under three naked ladies and tagged strippers.
