Diana and I walked back out into the parking lot of the club. As we approached Diana’s car, we noticed that a very pretty young woman was sitting in the car that was parked to the immediate left of Diana’s. The woman had the passenger side window rolled down and she was smoking a cigarette. She began a conversation with me as I was getting into Diana’s car. “Are you a dancer?” she asked. I told her that I had just been hired at the Ruby Garter. “That’s too bad,” she said.
“You’re going to regret it. That manager is a real asshole. He just fired me an hour ago because my mother called me at his house.” At first I was completely disinterested in what the woman had to say. Then curiosity got the best of me.
“Why would he do that?” I asked. After all, it did sound a little far fetched. My inquiry opened up a can of worms and I was given a lot more information than I had bargained for. According to this person, Casey exercised control over a majority of his female employees. Apparently, most of the women who sought employment at this club were homeless and virtually indigent. Casey, who wasn’t oblivious to the women’s plights, saw their misfortune as an opportunity to capitalize on their earnings.
Casey allegedly coerced the unsuspecting women into moving into his large home in St. Charles. Shortly after the women moved in, he would begin to take control over their money and their personal lives. They never saw any of their hard earned cash. Casey told the women that he was saving their money for them in a vault and that he would dispense it when they were ready to move out on their own someday. The tactics that Casey used on his victims were similar to those employed by destructive cult leaders. In order to gain complete control over these directionless individuals, he made sure that they became drug dependent.
Heroin was the drug of choice. Once he had the women hooked on heroin, he began to have control over them sexually. He threatened to fire them if they were caught having sex with anyone other than him.
Families and friends weren’t to know the women’s whereabouts. Under no circumstances were the women allowed phone calls from relatives or visitors.
Casey’s phone number and address weren’t privy information for anyone to divulge. Those who disobeyed the rules were beaten and thrown out of Casey’s home. He supposedly forced his brainwashed employees to perform an assortment of perverted sex acts with himself, animals, and high-paying customers.
Although I found the woman’s testimony alarming, it didn’t dissuade me from working at the club. In the same token, I certainly didn’t discount what she had told me. Diana and I spent close to an hour conversing with the distraught young stripper. After our conversation ended, we drove to the Lenner’s residence forty-five minutes later. Diana dropped me off directly in front of their house.
As I walked away from Diana’s car that evening, I was suddenly overcome with guilt. I couldn’t believe that I had reduced myself to the profession of stripping.
After all, stripping naked on a stage in front of hundreds of men wasn’t exactly what I would call gainful employment. Nor was it the type of occupation that I wanted to expose Mr. and Mrs. Lenner too. I thought that I had no choice but to move out of their home.
The next day, I informed the Lenners that I would be moving out within the month. When I told them where I had gotten a job, they were dumbfounded. I could tell by the looks on their faces that they weren’t particularly overjoyed with my decision. Concerned for my welfare, the Lenners tried their best to dissuade me from getting involved in the sex industry. According to Jed and his wife, strip clubs were dangerous places that operated outside of the law. Although a part of me knew they were right, I chose to ignore the warning.
3. A New Life at Ruby Garter
The Ruby Garter club looked remarkably different in the daylight. All of the building’s unsightly bruises were exposed. The parking lot was dirty and relatively empty aside from a couple of brand new Cadillacs. Diana dropped me off directly in front of the club’s entrance. Once again I walked up the four chipped concrete steps that led to the inside of the building…only this time, I climbed them alone.
An overwhelming feeling of apprehension came over me as I walked through the front door. I wondered if I had made the right decision. My gut told me that I didn’t, but I proceeded with my self-destructive venture anyhow.
My new boss greeted me the minute I walked into the foyer. Casey escorted me to the dressing room. Unlike the previous evening, the room was empty except for one heavyset woman. He introduced me to the woman and instructed her to show me where I was to put my things. Sunlight, as she referred to herself, pointed to a little freestanding dressing table that was shoved into a small corner.
A few moments later she began to ramble on about her husband, telling me intimate details about their marriage. I pretended to listen to her for awhile and then I changed the subject. I asked her how long she had been dancing. The chubby woman began to laugh as she patted her protruding jelly-like abdomen that was miraculously stuffed into a skintight, blue mini dress. “Are you kidding!” she exclaimed. “I’m too fat to dance. I just mix.”
I had not yet learned the jargon of strip clubs, so I had absolutely no idea as to what the term “mix” meant. Later in the game, I learned that not all the women who worked in strip clubs were dancers. The women who didn’t dance on the stage were referred to as “mixers.” Those women were usually not attractive enough to dance on the stage. Their sole function was to persuade customers to spend money in exchange for their company.
I asked Sunlight if it was mandated that both the mixers and the dancers solicit the customers. Her answer was “yes.” According to her, this was how the club owners and their employees made most of their money. I didn’t like the idea of being forced to solicit men. There was no doubt in my mind that I would have a problem performing this particular part of the job.
It was now approaching 7:00 p.m. The dancers slowly began to flow into the dressing room one by one. I noticed that the ages of the women varied drastically.
The youngest was probably seventeen and the oldest appeared to be somewhere in her late fifties. There was also a broad assortment of flamboyant transvestites gracing the stage of the Ruby Garter. The transvestites were extremely theatrical looking and could pass as real women in the dark caverns of the club. Most of these transvestites had at one time or another worked in the seedy nudie clubs located in the infamous New Orleans’ French Quarter. The female strippers that worked at this club were average looking women with fairly decent bodies, but none of them were beauty queens.
I quickly learned that there were two different categories of dancers that worked at strip clubs: “road girls” and “house girls.” Road girls travel all over the country and worked at a variety of different strip clubs for short periods of time. Two or three weeks were pretty much the normal length of stay. House girls were the club’s permanent employees who worked anywhere from a few hours a week to all night every night. Some of these women had been working at the Ruby Garter for well over ten years.
On my first night, the waitresses taught me how the club operated. The main function of the dancers, other than performing on the stage, was to approach and coerce the customers to spend their money on them in exchange for their company. This was “mixing.” There were two types of mixers: “light mixers” and “heavy mixers.” Light mixers didn’t engage in any sexual activity with the customers. The heavy mixers performed a variety of sexual acts with the male patrons that usually only excluded intercourse.