All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, by Craig Seymour
Authors: Craig Seymour
Tags: General, Gay Studies, Social Science, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Cultural Heritage
Ads: Link
separate from my personal life and my school life. Seth came in once to see me work, but he didn't stay long. He said it made him uncomfortable, but we didn't discuss it much more than that. Another time, one of my college friends, who had since moved out of town, came into the bar. He knew I'd written about strippers for my master's thesis, but he had no idea that I'd started dancing.
When I saw him, I was kneeling on one of the platforms, my dick still hard from my last customer. He walked up to me, and for a moment I wondered if he was going to touch my dick, which—in the logic of the clubs—would've been weird because he was a friend, not a stranger. But instead he said, "Boy, you really know how to throw yourself into your research," and we both laughed.
By far the weirdest encounter I had with someone I knew, though, happened one Saturday night when I was onstage dancing—or to be more accurate, rapidly swaying—to one of my favorite songs, the club remix of Mariah Carey's "Fantasy."
I was really into it, getting lost in the lyrics ("seems so real but it's a fantasy... it's such a sweet fantasy') and wagging my cock from side to side to the beat, when I looked toward the door and spotted this guy, Doug, who was once in a graduate African-American history seminar with me. We made eye contact and he nervously looked away and raced to the drag side of the club.
"Oh, shit," I thought. I didn't even know this guy was gay and I wondered if he was going to spread what I did around school. My adviser was still the only person at the university who knew I danced, and while I didn't live in constant fear of exposure, as it might be portrayed in the Lifetime made-for-TV movie version of my life, I was anxious about what would happen if word really got out. I knew my adviser could protect me only so much. Even though stripping was legal, I knew that wouldn't count for much if I was up against conservative media pundits, overreacting parents, and nervous university officials. And because stripping and other forms of sex work are so controversial, I doubted that any gay or African-American organization would come to my aid if I got in hot water.
After my set finished, I got dressed and went to look for Doug in the audience for the drag show, but I couldn't find him. I wanted to gauge his reaction. I looked for him the whole night but never saw him.
When I got home, I emailed him: "Hey—were you at Secrets tonight by any chance?" I thought a coy approach was best.
The next morning, he answered: "Yeah, I thought that was you."
"Yep," I responded. "I've been working there this summer, doing ethnographic research for my dissertation. You should've said hi."
"Yeah, well, I wasn't sure it was you."
I figured he was lying about this. After all, I had seen the shock and recognition on his face, but I let it go. It didn't sound like he planned on outing me.
"No prob," I typed.
Aside from these encounters, I never saw anyone else I knew from school at Secrets. That was another reason why I liked working there. I didn't even consider dancing anywhere else until one day Danny came back into the kitchen/dressing room and said he needed to talk to me and another of the club's most popular dancers, Mikey, a twenty-one-year-old white bodybuilder who started stripping after he dropped out of college. "It just wasn't for me," Mikey explained.
Like many of the other boys who paraded their dangling and stiffened wares around the club, Mikey maintained he was straight, but he was unrestrained about his love for the job. He dug the schedule and he especially loved the money. "When I started, I was four thousand dollars in debt," he once told me. "Within three months, I had no debt, beaucoup new clothes and new jewelry, and I was on my way to putting a down payment on a new car."
Mikey didn't even mind getting felt on by a bunch of gay guys. "This is a muscle," he explained to me one night, flexing his baseball-sized biceps, "and this is
When I saw him, I was kneeling on one of the platforms, my dick still hard from my last customer. He walked up to me, and for a moment I wondered if he was going to touch my dick, which—in the logic of the clubs—would've been weird because he was a friend, not a stranger. But instead he said, "Boy, you really know how to throw yourself into your research," and we both laughed.
By far the weirdest encounter I had with someone I knew, though, happened one Saturday night when I was onstage dancing—or to be more accurate, rapidly swaying—to one of my favorite songs, the club remix of Mariah Carey's "Fantasy."
I was really into it, getting lost in the lyrics ("seems so real but it's a fantasy... it's such a sweet fantasy') and wagging my cock from side to side to the beat, when I looked toward the door and spotted this guy, Doug, who was once in a graduate African-American history seminar with me. We made eye contact and he nervously looked away and raced to the drag side of the club.
"Oh, shit," I thought. I didn't even know this guy was gay and I wondered if he was going to spread what I did around school. My adviser was still the only person at the university who knew I danced, and while I didn't live in constant fear of exposure, as it might be portrayed in the Lifetime made-for-TV movie version of my life, I was anxious about what would happen if word really got out. I knew my adviser could protect me only so much. Even though stripping was legal, I knew that wouldn't count for much if I was up against conservative media pundits, overreacting parents, and nervous university officials. And because stripping and other forms of sex work are so controversial, I doubted that any gay or African-American organization would come to my aid if I got in hot water.
After my set finished, I got dressed and went to look for Doug in the audience for the drag show, but I couldn't find him. I wanted to gauge his reaction. I looked for him the whole night but never saw him.
When I got home, I emailed him: "Hey—were you at Secrets tonight by any chance?" I thought a coy approach was best.
The next morning, he answered: "Yeah, I thought that was you."
"Yep," I responded. "I've been working there this summer, doing ethnographic research for my dissertation. You should've said hi."
"Yeah, well, I wasn't sure it was you."
I figured he was lying about this. After all, I had seen the shock and recognition on his face, but I let it go. It didn't sound like he planned on outing me.
"No prob," I typed.
Aside from these encounters, I never saw anyone else I knew from school at Secrets. That was another reason why I liked working there. I didn't even consider dancing anywhere else until one day Danny came back into the kitchen/dressing room and said he needed to talk to me and another of the club's most popular dancers, Mikey, a twenty-one-year-old white bodybuilder who started stripping after he dropped out of college. "It just wasn't for me," Mikey explained.
Like many of the other boys who paraded their dangling and stiffened wares around the club, Mikey maintained he was straight, but he was unrestrained about his love for the job. He dug the schedule and he especially loved the money. "When I started, I was four thousand dollars in debt," he once told me. "Within three months, I had no debt, beaucoup new clothes and new jewelry, and I was on my way to putting a down payment on a new car."
Mikey didn't even mind getting felt on by a bunch of gay guys. "This is a muscle," he explained to me one night, flexing his baseball-sized biceps, "and this is
Similar Books
