Breaking the code

COURTNEY WEAVER PROBES THE SECRET RULES OF A HIGH-CLASS STRIP JOINT.

I came away from my talk with Vickie, or "Pansy" as she was known at the strip club where she works, more confused than illuminated. It just didn't make sense to me -- she sat and talked to men about everything under the sun except sex and they threw money at her. She didn't strip naked for them, she didn't touch them, she didn't even drink with them. It sounded about as raunchy as NPR's "Talk of the Nation."

"Guess where I'm going Friday night," I said to Q. on the phone.

He paused. "Somewhere without me, from the sounds of it."

"Correct. Carol and I are going to the 'gentlemen's club' where Vickie works." Now that I'd made the decision and found a perfectly disinterested female friend who'd agreed to accompany me, I was looking forward to the evening. "I wonder if I can write this off on my taxes."

"Nice work if you can get it," Q. put in. "Can I come?"

"No," I said firmly.

"Why not?"

"Because you can't." I had already thought all this through. "It'll change the whole tone of the evening. Besides, Carol has just the right amount of anthropological curiosity that I need."

"I can be anthropological," he whined.

"No." There was a little silence. "Look, I can't explain it, but I don't want a man in the mix. Now, what are you going to do that night?"

"I guess I'll just mop the kitchen floor," he said petulantly. We signed off soon after that, but not before Q. got in a quip about what the world was coming to when he was at home slaving away while his girlfriend gallivanted off to a strip club to see naked women.

On Friday, Carol pedaled her bicycle up to the club, where I was waiting. She was wearing red jeans, a fuzzy Peruvian llama sweater and clogs, with a furry hat on her head. "What's all this?" I asked, motioning my hand up and down.

"Do I look weird?" she asked, pulling at her pants. "I guess I didn't want to get mistaken for one of the working girls."

"No, you don't look weird," I said. "Just sort of like a homeless Inuit." I'd had the same outfit question too, finally settling on basic black. I felt like I looked like a mime.

"It's $10 each," said the well-dressed Asian woman sitting behind an old-fashioned cash register, after two doormen with tuxedos and headset walkie-talkies had opened the heavy doors for us with a flourish. She eyed Carol's hat but said nothing.

"Cheap," Carol whispered. "I wonder if that's because we're women. Or if it's before midnight."

"Get a receipt," I whispered back.

It was only 9:30 p.m., and the shadowy club was mostly empty, with more staff than patrons. At the far end of the room, a large stage showcased a topless dancer entwining herself around a brass pole to the beat of Seal. "Should we sit there?" I pointed to the front. "Or there?" Carol motioned to a little '70s-style shapeless love seat toward the middle of the room, saying, "Here's a good vantage point."

Tiny cocktail tables with single red votives were scattered throughout the mix of couches and armchairs. There seemed to be two types of patrons -- suit-clad businessmen, in groups of two or three, and generic frat boys in athletic shoes and baseball caps. A few were slumped around the stage, watching the shimmying woman with expressions that reminded me of our family Labrador before he got fed.

All around, women in bikini-type bra and panty sets and stilettos were milling around. "OK, where are these sexy dresses Vickie said they had to wear on the floor?" I asked. Some of the girls were dancing snakelike between seated men's legs, gyrating provocatively, while the men stared at them with that same doggy expression. I looked carefully. The men's hands were resting on the armchair, or glued to their knees. After the dance, the woman would sit down next to the man, lean in toward him, laughing as if they shared a private joke. Reluctantly, they'd slip a dress on as they talked.

"Required by law to cover themselves," I said. "But it seems pretty lax. I guess this is what Vickie described as the private dance."

"Uh-huh," Carol said. We watched, spellbound. "Do you get the feeling," she said after a while, "that all these men here know some private code that we don't? I mean, how do they know not to touch, and how much to tip, and what to talk about with these women?"

"Maybe they've been spanked into submission before," I said. The whole retro decor -- with the abundance of brass and chrome, the well-vacuumed wall-to-wall carpet, the big bulb lights over the bar and the formless sofas -- all reminded me of my dentist's office. "It's clean, isn't it?"

"Very," said Carol.

- - - - - - - - - -

N E X T+P A G E +| Invisible women