CITY STREETS / LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
Gentlemen’s Clubs of Louisville, Kentucky
Three women describe what it is like to work in gentlemen’s clubs of a southern city
Seventh Street runs north-south through the heart of downtown Louisville, Kentucky. The largest city in the state and the 39th most populous in the U.S, Louisville, is situated along the Ohio River banks, across the border from Indiana.
Starting at the river, Seventh Street makes its way south through high-rises and glass towers of the Central Business District of Louisville, a city best known for its annual hosting of the Kentucky Derby. At the edge of the town, just after crossing Algonquin Parkway, Seventh Street enters Shively, a suburb of Louisville. With a population of 15,137 and per capita income of only $21,000, Shively is a small city that hovers at the poverty line.
Once a whites-only neighborhood where African-Americans were unable to buy a home, Shively was known for its eight distilleries after the prohibition era ended. Taxes and changing tastes closed down all the distilleries in the 1960s, and budget surpluses quickly became shortfalls. Since then, corruption and scandals have plagued this tiny home rule-class enclave known as “Lively Shively” for its reputation for prostitution and other vices.
The area along Seventh Street, north of Dixie Highway in Shively, is best known for its adult entertainment businesses. Adult bookstores, bars, and strip joints mix in with commercial storage places, used car lots, mobile home parks, and Dollar Express stores.
Geography is the primary reason for this clustering of adult-related businesses along Seventh Street. Churchill Downs, home to the Kentucky Derby, and the Kentucky Exposition Center, a regular venue for the annual National Farm Machinery Show — a primarily male-attended event, are located only a five-minute drive away from the strip clubs. Down the street from the clubs on Seventh Street, the Expo Five Fairgrounds turns into a city of RVs and camper homes for all significant local events.
“Guys are traveling. They’re in town for a couple of nights. Do they want to go sit in a bar and have a conversation with some dude? Or would they like to be with a pretty lady? Come on!” said Suzie (names, places, and situations have been changed for privacy), a former dancer at strip clubs. A statuesque brunette, who retired after a 25-year career in strip clubs, Suzie still wears the look of the tough body-builder and fitness-competition winner that she was. Like many women, she found herself working in a strip club through another woman in the business. “I got married to escape an abusive childhood,” Suzie said. When the marriage turned physically violent, she looked for a way out. “I met a woman who showed me how to make money at these clubs,” she said. Suzie went on to have a successful two-and-a-half decades career as a dancer. “It taught me how to manage my money. I’ve owned and sold many homes, “Suzie said,” I’ve had multiple cars at the same time.”
On the opposite end of the experience spectrum from Suzie is Brandi. She worked at a strip club for eight months — her only time working as a stripper and left to work somewhere else. Brandi is a wild Mohawk-haircut type, who learned to project a softer image inside the clubs to make money. She comes from a religious family and found her way to the clubs through a female roommate’s help. “She worked at the clubs and showed me the ropes,” Brandi said. “I loved it. It was a blast.” Brandi often uses the word “genuine” to describe herself. “Even though we were in a strip club and that’s what the men were there for, I still wanted to make them feel like they’re a person and not just my ticket out of here,” Brandi said.
Unlike both Suzie and Brandi, Effie found her way to the strip clubs through her family legacy. “I am a third-generation dancer,” Effie said. “Both my mom and grandmother were club dancers in Vegas.” Effie is a petite, strong punk rocker, who maintained that image in the club with her grungy get up. Effie has worked nightly at a club for two years, which is a long time for a woman to perform consistently at a club. Most women go in and out of this work on a per need basis and rarely stay that long. Despite her family connections, Effie started dancing at the clubs through sheer desperation. “I was broke and running out of options,” Effie said. “I was living in a craphole apartment with six people. My mother was paying my bills, and I knew something needed to change.”
Inside the clubs
Strip clubs, like any other business, have their inner mechanics and daily rhythms. “Clubs open at 3 p.m., so we get there a few hours earlier to get ready in a large dressing room,” said Brandi. Some women spend hours getting their looks on, and the transformation can often be mind-boggling. “You have to get approved by a manager,” said Brandi. “It has to be an outfit. You can’t just wear a bra and underwear.”
After the manager’s approval, the women head down to the floor and give their name to the DJ, who creates a list for stage calls.
Stripper names are long overdue for a scholarly tome. Roxxy. Dina. Shadow. Cali. Danger. Ebony. Rain. Peaches. Taylor. Blaze. Kitty. Raven. London. Jade. Nina. Dream. Kenya. Jewlz. Asia. Ginger. Breeze. Kiki. Cherokee. Diamond. Baby Girl. Panda. Barbie. A stripper name is meant primarily for anonymity. Sometimes it is all about the hair color, like Raven for a brunette, or Ginger or Scarlett for a redhead. Occasionally, it reflects their ethnicity, like Ebony or Kenya, for an African-American woman. More often, it is all about creating an exotic image, like Jelwz or London or Paris. Rarely though, is a stripper name entirely without some insight into the dancer’s personality or look.
As the club comes alive, the DJ announces the name of each dancer for a stage call. “Each stage call is three three-minute songs, and you come on stage to dance,” said Effie. Each dancer’s goal is to attract the men to their dance area and create a connection. If patrons are sitting at the stage, then they are expected to tip. “We hold out our thongs for tips on stage, which are usually single-dollar bills,” said Brandi.
Private dances
The critical work for women working in the clubs happens offstage.
“In between stage calls, you go around and socialize with the men. Our main objective is to sell private dances,” said Effie. Onstage dances with their one-dollar tips don’t provide much income. The real key to making money is the private dances. “Each private dance costs $40,” said Suzie. “The club keeps $5. We keep $35.” Private dances are also quick. Each one lasts for the duration of a three-minute song. Women quickly learn that the way to make money in a club is to get men to continue to buy additional private dances once they have bought one.
“You have three minutes. You don’t put all your cards on the table in the first song,” said Suzie. “You leave them peaked out before the end of the song, so that way they want another song. You keep intensifying, intensifying, intensifying. It’s like a soap opera.”
Dancers learn that certain moves work better than others. Whispering into men’s ears seems to be an effective method for keeping the soap opera going. “I would tell them how turned on I was by them,” said Brandi. “That’s something all men wanted to hear.”
“Using hair is a big winner,” said Suzie. “Guys like hair. They just fall for hair.”
Emotional connection
“I’ve literally had guys propose to me,” Effie said. “I have had guys tell me, ‘Oh My God! I love you.’ I never say it back. I know they feel more comfortable saying things to me than they would to the average woman, so you just gotta roll with it.”
Feeling a strong emotional connection is common for women working in the clubs. “I would see men that I had a real emotional connection with,” Suzie said. “They became buds. They were safe to play with. Our fantasies clicked.” Brandi confesses to being aroused at times. “I’m a very sexual person, and it happens. I’m human. If that happened, I would be like, ‘Okay! This feels good,’” she said. Some dancers meet their patrons outside the clubs, a big no-no in the business, but generally, this is more for companionship and friendship than a sexual encounter.
Suzie said, “Sometimes, I developed enough of a relationship to where I trusted them, so I’d go to the track with them. I’d go to dinner with them. Sometimes they’d like to take me shopping. They wanted to take me out on New Year’s Eve. But it was never sexual.”
Outside the clubs
How the club work affects the lives of women seems to be a mixed blessing. The positives are many. Money is one that comes up first. Effie said, “Dancing has changed my entire life. I have a beautiful home. I’m financially stable. I remember having to steal food growing up. I just went and bought $400 worth of groceries. It felt so good.”
But beyond the money, women spoke of other benefits.
“I did learn to do a lot of things with my body at the club that my boyfriend was very happy about. He loved that his girlfriend was a stripper,” Brandi said. Other dancers develop a different way about them when it comes to men outside of the clubs.
“When I’m outside the club, men are not paying me. I’m not going to listen to their crap,” said Suzie. “I’m unapproachable to men outside the club.” Effie had a similar change. “I don’t pander to men’s emotions outside of the club,” she said, “They’re not paying me.”
Neither Suzie nor Effie see this behavior as a negative. They see it more as empowerment.
“Before I started dancing, if a man on the street was making me uncomfortable, I would feel like it was my fault,” said Effie,” I would feel like I’m doing something wrong, or that I’m not covering up enough, or I’m wearing too much makeup. I don’t do that anymore. Now I know it has nothing to do with me. It’s been an extremely empowering experience for me.”
Strippers in society
A common thread in women’s lives was the experience of society’s judgment on their profession, starting with their families. “My parents knew about it,” said Brandi, “They were very nervous about my safety, especially my mother. My dad was like, ‘Oh my little girl is showing off all her stuff,’ and that was weird for him. I had to keep it secret from my dad’s side of the family because they’re very Christian. There is such a stigma to it. It really makes me sad because it’s so much more than what it seems.”
Suzie sees the clubs as an opportunity for many women to better their lives.
“They’re all young girls in there for a reason. They don’t want to work at a fast-food joint,” Suzie said, “I don’t blame them. It’s not a living wage. They come from no education and nobody to take care of them. At least they’re smart enough to make a living working at the club. They can go in these clubs and feel pretty about themselves. They can make their own hours and support themselves. They gain self-esteem. These girls are fighters! If we don’t take the same path as other women, that doesn’t make us bad.”
Effie thinks society does not understand them.
“The way the society views us is harsh,” she said. “There are so many uninformed people who think that we all do full-service work, or that we’re all cheap dumb sluts, or that we’re never going to make anything of ourselves. There’s a lot of bad that comes with this work, but usually, the positives outweigh the negatives. And even when they don’t, this job makes you strong enough to fucking deal with it for sure.”
