Business wasn’t particularly good. I had already danced three times and had only made forty-five dollars. Feeling drained, I decided to go downstairs to the dressing room for a while. As I walked through the crowd, one of the men who I had spoken to earlier in the evening flagged me down. I seductively walked over to the man’s table and managed to put on a big smile. The dark-haired man looked me up and down.
“I’m ready for you now,” he said, “call the waitress.”
I quickly summoned the waitress, and to make a long story short, the customer ran up a tab of nearly $2,400. This individual was extremely grabby and demanding. I had to do a lot of talking to keep him under control. When the waitress presented the man with his final bill of $2,400 plus a 15% service charge, he blew up. The waitress didn’t argue with the man. Instead she very calmly instructed him to follow her to the bar. After the waitress left the customer with Mr. M., I walked over to the other side of the bar and waited for the show to begin. In the reflection of the mirror I could see the disgruntled customer and Mr. C. standing face to face, engaged in a heated discussion. Suddenly, I saw Mr. C. bash the man in the face with the black desk phone that was sitting at the end of the bar. The man lost his balance from the unexpected blow and fell backwards into a large, plastic-potted plant. The left side of the man’s face was bleeding profusely. He struggled to get up from the floor while covering the injury with his hand in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Amazingly enough he managed to stagger back over to where Mr. C. was standing.
“You know what, you god damned prick, I’ve got all the money, but if you really want it buddy, you’re going to have to go up my ass to get it!” he exclaimed.
Mr. C. just smiled at the pathetic man’s revelation. “Is that so? Well, I guess we’re just going to have to take you up on your offer, now aren’t we?”
Mr. C. swiftly kicked the man in the stomach. The bartender who had been watching the two men argue came out from behind the bar to assist Mr. C. They dragged the screaming customer into the men’s room and proceeded to beat him some more.
A few moments later, the waitress walked over to where I was standing to ask me what was going on. I told her that the bartender and Mr. C. had just escorted the man into the men’s room to retrieve the money that he owed on his bill. The waitress began to laugh. “Well,” she said, “a beating a day keeps our bills away.” I found her comment to be quite comical. After all, there certainly was some truth to it.
About ten minutes later, the bartender and Mr. C. emerged from the men’s bathroom dragging the customer toward the back exit. Mr. C. pushed the badly beaten man out into the parking lot, slammed the back door closed, and locked it. The bartender resumed his position behind the bar. A few minutes later, Mr. C. removed his sports coat. I noticed that his white short sleeve shirt was drenched in sweat. He wiped his forehead off with a bar towel, lit up a cigarette, and sat down on his favorite barstool as if nothing had happened.
Later on that evening, I decided to ask my boss about the incident that transpired a few hours earlier. Mr. C. smiled sadistically and gave me a blow-by-blow account of what went on in the men’s bathroom with my customer. “Don’t worry; you’ll get paid on this one. The crazy son of a bitch had the money shoved up his ass in a plastic baggy.” Mr. C. commented while taking a drag off of his cigarette. “What happened to the guy after you threw him out into the parking lot?” I inquired. “Who the hell knows? If he’s smart, he’ll start walking to a hospital,” Mr. C. replied. “He didn’t look like he was in walking condition to me,” I remarked. Mr. C. laughed. “I’ll go outside and check on the dope later. Order me a large cheese pizza from Amagetti’s,” he casually said to the bartender. Mr. C.
reached over to one of the newspapers that he always kept at the bar. “Got to check the obituaries,” he dismissively said. “No telling when one of our customers might end up there.” I’m sure you’ll see to it that some of them do,” I commented. Mr. C. snickered, “just think, someday when I’m too old to do this, I can work for a collection agency.” He poured himself a cup of coffee, and I just walked away.
It was my turn to dance on the stage. I had a lot on my mind this particular evening. The last thing that I wanted to do was to entertain a bunch of lecherous men. Working at the Golden Show Lounge had become counter productive for me. I couldn’t make any money at this club, because of management’s “play now” and “pay later” policy. The beatings that the men received when they refused to pay their bills didn’t compensate me for the money I lost. By the time I finished my set, I made the decision to leave the Golden Show Lounge. I just didn’t know what hellhole I was going to work at next.
About a week after I made the decision to leave the club, a friend of mine called me about a strip club that had just reopened. The name of the club was the Vegas Star. Apparently, this club had been closed down for several years as a result of prostitution charges, and had reopened under new management. The friend that gave me the information about the club claimed that there was no mandated prostitution, and referred to the club as a “virtual gold mine.” That’s all I needed to hear. I told my friend that I was definitely interested. The next night, I stopped by the Vegas Star on my way to work at the Golden Show Lounge. I was hired immediately.
I wanted to finish out the week at the Golden Show Lounge. Payday at the club was on Saturday night. This meant that if I had any hopes of retrieving my paycheck, I would have to finish out the week here. I ended up calling in sick on Monday through Friday. I was tired of working at the club and I needed to take some time off. I didn’t go back to work at the Golden Show Lounge until Saturday night. We rarely received our paychecks before 2:30 in the morning. Management had deliberately set it up this way to discourage the dancers from grabbing their money and leaving work early. I didn’t care if I made any money that evening. It was my last night of work at this place, and I just wanted to get it over with. Instead of soliciting customers, I elected to spend the first half of the shift in the dressing room reading magazines and conversing with a few of the other dancers.
The conversations in the dancer’s dressing rooms were usually quite entertaining.
Somebody always had a new bizarre story to tell. The topics of discussion varied.
Sex, drugs, customers, lovers, plastic surgery, and the dancer’s personal problems (which were endless) were some of the topics. This particular evening the discussion revolved around two dancers that had just recently started to work at the Golden Show Lounge. Just a few weeks ago, Amber and Silver decided to leave the state of Florida with the intention of seeking employment at one of the strip clubs around the Chicagoland area. The two women worked together at several of the Orlando and Daytona Beach area strip clubs from 1986 to 1989. It was now 1990. The two attractive dancers decided to try their luck in Illinois after befriending a couple of strippers who resided in Chicago. The well-seasoned dancers from Florida were both very friendly and outgoing. It wasn’t long before they began telling their newfound friends at the Golden Show Lounge stories about the clubs that they had worked at in Orlando.
There seemed to be an unspoken bond between exotic dancers, regardless of what part of the country you were from. Although we differed from each other as far as our personal history and life style, we seemed to share the same attitudes as far as our outlook on life, strip clubs, and customers were concerned. That attitude was negative. I met very few women that actually liked their profession, or men for that matter, especially the customers. Some of the dancers hated the customers more than others, and they made no bones about showing their feelings. Amber and Silver became engaged in a conversation with an older dancer by the name of Dahlia. Dahlia was telling the two Floridians that she always kept a loaded gun under the front seat of her car for protection, because a customer was stalking her.