Prologue: Impolite Company

“Suzanne! You got a life inside you that makes people want to have a good time!” His voice had grown hoarse by this late hour, which only enhanced his charm. I love the edgy plainspokenness of a New York accent.

Customers were always filling our heads with compliments. But even now, after all these years, this one still warms my heart. It came from a fireman, a 9/11 First Responder, and was delivered straight from the heart, with tears in his eyes.

I was a dancer at Ten’s World-Class Cabaret in New York City’s Flatiron district. Ten’s was the city’s premier upscale Gentlemen’s Club, frequented by celebrities and wealthy Wall Street types. It was a lively, glitzy place, where the ladies were charming and the champagne flowed. But in the weeks following September 11 the vibe was very different.

We dancers were independent contractors who set our own schedules, so very few of us were working then. Not many customers came in either. Mayor Giuliani was on the news every night, encouraging New Yorkers to resume our daily activities. He told us to go about our business and show the terrorists they hadn't won, but the strip club crowd laid low.

On the few nights I did roll into the club, I didn’t see any regular customers. I certainly didn’t carry on in my usual, lighthearted way. The club was quiet, the mood was solemn. The men who came in had stern faces and they mostly wanted to talk. A young doctor I met said he lived in the neighborhood and had never visited Ten’s but decided to that night because he “didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to be alone.” He’d spent all day at the site, and I swear, his whole body trembled when he told me, “There was no one to save.”

Another man I met somehow managed to avoid talk of the terrorist attacks. Instead, he spent a couple hours telling me about his ex-girlfriend and how he’d loved her. But she was a junkie; he couldn’t help her. In those first few weeks after 9/11, the customers were really intense.

My coworkers were intense too. One night I overheard two Russian girls at the bar feeling guilty about being strippers while the world seemed to be falling apart. “Some people save lives, and look what we do!”

I tried to make them feel better. “We listen to people,” I offered. But it didn’t help. They rolled their eyes at me and looked away, probably thinking, Suzanne is crazy.

And frankly, after a few weeks of this heavy sadness, I was about to go crazy. But then one night (at last!), Richard came in. Richard Behrns was his full name. He’d been one of my favorite customers for several years — since my bartending days. He was a tiny little fellow, short and slim with silver hair, but he was cute and always decked out in exquisitely tailored suits. Whenever I called him at the office, he’d answer the phone with enthusiasm, “Dick Burns here!” Richard was goofy and fun, and I was genuinely delighted to see him.

When good customers (big spenders) arrive at a strip club, they’re usually swarmed by adoring ladies right at the front door. It can be overwhelming, so at Ten’s, there was a policy against it. The rule was that no Entertainer (as the girls were officially called) should approach a guest until he had been seated and offered a drink by a cocktail waitress. The policy was clearly stated in the Ten’s Entertainer’s Manual but only sporadically enforced, especially not in Richard’s case, since he welcomed the attention.

But on this night, I was the only girl to greet him, since I was the only one of his preferred Entertainers (“Richard’s Girls”) who happened to be working. The moment I spotted him, I sprung to life, rushing to him with a big smile. “Richard! So happy to see you darling!” I wrapped my arms around his neck as he spun me around, with my full-length gown circling us. We gaily sashayed our way to the VIP lounge, where we settled in with a bottle of expensive champagne and got caught up like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in ages.

We sipped bubbly and fed each other oversized strawberries dipped in fresh whipped cream. And as we declared our admiration for each other and spoke only of silly things, I could feel my shoulders start to relax, my breath begin to deepen. I was just beginning to feel normal again when a large group of firemen walked in.

Their uniforms were covered in dust; they must’ve come straight from work. I had chills. These men had just spent the day digging for bodies at the World Trade Center.

We weren’t used to seeing this much reality at Ten’s. Everyone at Ten’s was polished to perfection. The club itself sparkled; it was literally adorned in smoke and mirrors. The firemen looked out of place and uncomfortable, dirty and huddled together against a wall.

“Richard, we have to invite them to join us.”

“Yes, we do,” he agreed. “Go get them.”

I ran to them as quickly as my stilettos would allow and approached the one I thought had the friendliest face. Gene was his name, and with a twinkle in his eye and a warm grin, he grumbled, “the beers are expensive in this place.”

“Yes they are!” I laughed. “Come with me. Let’s get you some champagne. Bring all your boys.”

Within minutes, the VIP lounge came roaring to life. The DJ turned up the music, and the waitresses popped champagne corks. All the girls gathered and removed their clothes, and our new friends followed their lead. The firemen tossed dusty overalls aside to show off hard-working, fit physiques and official, navy-blue FDNY boxer briefs. Everyone was stripped down, dancing and laughing and clinking glasses.

Cheers! Clink

To life! Clink.

We carried on like this for who knows how long. At some point, the DJ called my name to perform on stage and, jarred out of revelry, I couldn’t find my dress. So I stepped into a random pair of FDNY overalls I’d picked up from the floor and made my way through the writhing chaos of bodies to the Main Stage. Someone put an FDNY hat on my head, and voilà, my outfit was complete, the best stripper outfit of all time in my humble opinion! Until the day I die, I’ll remember how in September of 2001, I danced on a stage in New York Fucking City, wearing an official FDNY hat and overalls, complete with suspenders, over my g-string and stiletto heels. How many people can say that??? I giggle every time I think about it.

When the night came to a close, Gene thanked Richard and me, and with tears in his eyes, made that remark about the life inside me. It still makes me smile as I write this.

When I got off stage, Gene and I locked eyes, and everything else around us became a blur. The club noise, all the people dancing, went mute. And Gene told me just how awful it was to dig through the rubble every day. He would dig and keep digging, hoping to find someone, maybe even a fellow fireman, possibly even someone he knew, who was still alive. Gene described the aching disappointment at finding only one dead body after another, men and women who died in terror and confusion. He said he hadn’t been able to make love to his girl for weeks because every time they tried, the stench of the site was stuck in his nose. I felt his words in the core of my being.

Gene gave me his gas mask and wrote his contact information, including his engine and ladder, on a Ten’s bev-nap. He asked me to please call him if I ever needed anything. I felt the depth of his kindness.

As a stripper, I’ve had countless intimate moments with customers, some almost as powerful as this. I’d actually call them transcendent, and they’re what I’ve loved most about the job. Men tell the truth in strip clubs like in no other place I’ve been. Sure, they may lie about their names or small details that don’t really matter. But they let their guard down and reveal a side of themselves they wouldn’t allow in polite company. So I grew to appreciate how much more raw and real it was to interact with men in impolite company. It’s not only fascinating; it’s an honor. I feel deeply honored that, over the years, so many men have shared their personal truths with me. It’s been a great privilege and an education like no other.

So I’m proud of having entertained the troops! During one of the darkest moments in American history, I did what a stripper could do. I listened to people, and I showed them a rowdy good time. I gave them a little break from a very harsh reality. And a 9/11 First Responder actually thanked me for the work I do!

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Before I became a stripper, I always wondered about these women. Who are they? Where do they come from? Turns out, the customers are curious too. Every night at least one guy will ask, “So, how’d you end up here?”

“End up? I’m not dead yet,” I tell them.

But it is a question I’ve asked myself a million times. How did I become a stripper? Where did I go wrong?

Or did I even go wrong? As a kid, I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. But I did know I wanted to become a wise old woman. My choices may have been unconventional, but they’ve led me toward that goal.

I was raised by a young single mother — and her vinyl album collection. My mom and I bonded over music. We sang our way through every car trip, long or short. I know all the old 70’s tunes. So when Supertramp’s Take The Long Way Home came on the radio during a road trip I took in college, I couldn’t help but sing along. A particular line in the song spoke to me as never before. I actually started to cry — and I’m not a crier. Behind the wheel of my 1983 Chrysler Le Baron, tears streamed down my face as I sang: when you look through the years and see what you could’ve been/ Oh, what you might have been/ If you would have more time.

My boyfriend in the passenger’s seat looked at me dumbfounded. “You’re only 18 years old!” he exclaimed.

Of course, he was right. But I didn’t see it that way. By the time I was 18, I’d woken up to the fact that my childhood hadn’t prepared me for life. I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted to do. I just knew I wasn’t living up to my potential.

I was a freshman at UCONN, and I wasn’t thrilled about that. I was born to be an Ivy League student, something I’d known since kindergarten when my teachers told my mother that “this child will have to go to college.” My mother’s mother, Nana, gushed with pride. She’d wonder aloud while cooking at the stove, “where will you go? Harvard or Yale?”

Having raised 4 kids, Nana found me unusually curious and eager to learn, so she made it her business to nurture my intelligence. “You’re the smartest of my 5 children,” she would say with a wink. I arrived at kindergarten with advanced reading skills because Nana taught me. She’d take me to the Public Library, where the librarian would protest that I wasn’t old enough for this or that book. But Nana would proudly have me read aloud, and the librarian would always apologize, impressed, as she checked out my books.

So I started out as the smartest kid in class. My elementary school in Mamaroneck, a town in Westchester County, spent a lot of time studying me, which set me apart from my peers and made me feel special. I took countless aptitude tests in which I consistently scored in the high 90th percentiles. The school psychologist took a particular interest in me. I spent lots of time in her office where she’d ask me things like, “how many miles from New York to California?” and “is the glass half empty or half full?”

In third grade, the teachers convinced my mother to allow me to skip fourth grade altogether. I learned quickly, I was emotionally mature, and I was taller than all the boys. My mother resisted the idea, but eventually gave in. She didn’t want me in classes with older boys. Her biggest fear was that I’d get pregnant as a teenager as she had.

If we had remained in Mamaroneck, I probably would have continued as a nerd. But we moved to Valhalla (another small town in Westchester) when I was in 6th grade, and I saw this as an opportunity to reinvent myself. By this time, I didn’t like being regarded as “the smart kid.” It was isolating. I was always given my own assignments, separate from the other students. In first grade, the teacher sat me at a desk behind a bookshelf, facing the wall, instead of with the other kids. Except for lunch break, I spent my days alone. When I finally skipped 4th grade, my new classmates didn’t accept me at first and I cried myself to sleep for a while. My mother asked what was wrong, and I told her, “I just want to be normal.”

So on my first day of class at Virginia Road school in Valhalla, I took my teacher, Mr. Napoli, into the hallway for a private conversation. “I don’t want anyone to know I skipped a grade, OK? Can you keep that a secret?”

Mr. Napoli looked concerned. “Stay here for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

He returned with the other 6th-grade teacher, also a man, and asked me to repeat what I’d just told him. In retrospect, it seems super gutsy that at the age of 10, I looked up into the faces of these two male teachers and demanded, “I don’t want the other kids to know I skipped a grade.” I sure was determined to be cool.

They seemed unsettled by my request, and I wasn’t used to having teachers disapprove of me; it didn’t feel good. But what they thought didn’t matter. It mattered what the popular girls thought of me. It mattered what boys thought of me. And from 6th grade on, I started winning that game. I changed my hair and my clothing. I wore makeup, smoked Marlboro Reds (which I purchased for 80¢/pack and stored in my toy chest), and drank my mom’s Midori in the afternoons with my girlfriends. I found acceptance with the fast crowd and in my 10 year old mind it felt like I was living my authentic life. I was a cool chick, not a nerd! It wasn’t my fault school came easily to me.

High school started out the same. I never took classes seriously, never found them engaging. Sure, I did well enough to keep parents and teachers off my back. But really, I saw school as a place to socialize.

Right before I started high school, my mom got married, and we moved to Rye, another town in Westchester. Rye is conservative and wealthy; people there take things seriously and plan their lives strategically. And, during my Junior year, as I sat in the SAT prep course my mother’s new (and soon-to-be-ex-) husband had paid for, I looked around the room, and it hit me. These kids have been preparing for this exam their entire lives! They had parents who invested in them.

This was a new concept. My mother was continuously impressed by my intelligence and resourcefulness. She felt confident that I’d do well in life, and so did I. But once I realized that my classmates were actively being groomed for success, I became wildly insecure and filled with self-doubt.

And then at the beginning of my Junior year — just as I understood what I was up against — everything fell apart. My mom got divorced, and we moved into an apartment above a dentist’s office in Greenwich, Connecticut. Nana was dying of cancer and wasting away before my eyes. My mom found a new boyfriend immediately and spent her free time with him several hours away in New Jersey. I was very much on my own those last two years of high school. I had no idea how to fill out college applications. I’d go on campus tours and find I was the only kid who wasn’t accompanied by a parent. I’d read the student loan applications, and my heart would sink when I saw that schools “expect families to make sacrifices for their children’s education.” There was no one to sacrifice for me.

So I ended up at UCONN, my state school. It was inexpensive, and the application didn’t require a personal statement. All I had to do was fill out some basic information, and bam, I was in.

But I felt like an underachiever. I hadn’t even tried. My eyes had been opened to how the achievers live, and I liked it. I wanted to be an achiever; I was born to be an achiever. I was born with the nature part of the equation, but I needed to work on the nurture part.

I unconsciously dulled my anxiety with food and gained a lot of weight. Why was I so hungry all the time? It was clear that I couldn’t trust my own instincts. I was having sex, but not orgasms. What was wrong with me? I couldn’t eat or have sex like a normal person. Why did the basics of life evade me? Was I even human? For many years, I was consumed by anxiety. I felt tortured in my own skin, trapped. When I was alone, I’d look at my body and scream, “I want out of here!”

What rescued me — eventually — was stripping, and thank God I found it! I needed to work on myself. I was all wrong and I needed fixing. And this required not only time, but money. Stripping provided both.

Still, I never imagined that stripping would become a journey in itself. When I began, the plan was to do 50 3-minute dances a night at $20 each. I figured I’d go home with $1,000 cash and get on with becoming the best version of myself. I didn’t know what that would entail, but I knew I’d figure it out. I did, and those years of stripping gave me the resources I needed to evolve. They made me the woman I’m now proud to be.

I discovered too that there have always been women like me. The day I stepped into my clear heels, I took my place among the pantheon of “other” women who made their way outside social norms.

During a 3-month jaunt in Costa Rica, I read the epic tale Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden — in one 18-hour sitting. That’s how engaging I found the story. Golden describes the lives of women from a previous century who lived on the other side of the globe. Yet they were just like my girlfriends and me. The men in Golden’s story were just like the men I encountered at the clubs I worked in.

I also read Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s and was awestruck by how much Holly Golightly’s life in New York was like mine! In the book, she describes herself as a “traveler.” Holly was also a woman naive to the world, surviving on her wits and seeking new experiences with eyes wide open. She had a variety of friends. And in this book, you’ll see the parallels for yourself.

Asked whom Holly was based upon, Capote said she was an amalgam of several young women. He was interested in women who “come to New York and spin in the sun for a moment.” He called them “American Geisha.”

American Geisha. That was me! I too worked in nightlife and was paid to provide charming company. And I liked this life; I liked this version of myself.

My work as a stripper continued far longer than I’d ever imagined. As I approached 40, I grew nervous about “aging out” of the business. I discussed this with my hairstylist and dear friend Izumi, who grew up in Japan and was deeply connected to her culture. Izumi laughed when I told her I was afraid of becoming an old geisha. She said, “It’s OK to be an old geisha. You just have to sing songs about your past loves.”

And that’s exactly what I’ve done in this book. I’ve met so many men along my journey and learned so much from them. They’ve shaped me every bit as much as my mom and Nana did.

Arthur Golden and Truman Capote both did fantastic jobs of describing their protagonists and the worlds they inhabited. But they are both men. So it’s no surprise that their stories are significantly different from mine. Their characters’ primary motivation was to find a rich man who would take care of them. But I was driven by a need to find myself and live with a sense of freedom. Golden’s and Capote’s characters are competitive and mistrust other women. Not me! I found my most intimate female friendships among strippers.

While I’m grateful for Golden’s and Capote’s work, I want to speak for myself, as women do today. So this memoir of an American Geisha offers you my voice and my point of view. I want you to go on my journey with me and be surprised when I’m surprised. Just one spoiler: you’ll see that stripping was integral to my spiritual journey, to finding out who I am, what my particular challenges are in life, and to coming to peace with the world. Everyone on Earth is engaged in a spiritual journey (whether we realize it or not) and though we take different paths, the lessons each of us learns are ultimately the same. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a tennis player, a President or a stripper. What matters is that you learn and evolve.

Suzanne Saturday is the author of No Daddy’s Girl. To receive an email when No Daddy’s Girl is available, click here.

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