lip-licking, arse-shaking second off it. I‟ve made some friends for life in those chilly dressing rooms as we safety pinned each other‟s costumes and straightened each other‟s hair. Most of us – whatever reasons we cite, when pressed by the occasional journalist passing through researching the new licensing laws, or filming the „secret‟
world of the strip club for some voyeuristic mock-umentary for those who daren‟t step through the opaque doors and see for themselves – are there at least partly because we love the attention. Of course £600 in a night helps, as does the hours you can fit around studying for 36
your masters, looking after the kids, or writing a book.
But for many of us, we just like to be looked at. Did I say we? Obviously I meant I .
I‟ve had a tendency towards exhibitionism from an early age. I first noticed men looking at me in my early teens and quickly became aware of the power this gave me. As a teenager my girlfriends and I would put on strip shows for each other and talk about what our stripper names would be, and what we would wear. At university we would study in the park and my friend Leah and I would deliberately try to distract the boys playing football by sneaking our legs further and further open as we lay on the grass. We‟d compete with each other, squabbling over which one of us made the bloke do a double take and completely miss the ball, until we got so brazen that one of us would have a skirt on with no knickers, while the other had hot pants so tiny that our pussy lips would be poking out of one side. We‟d wear bikinis and pretend to secretly unfasten each other‟s tops then feign embarrassment when we stood up and they fell off, showing our tits to the whole park. We‟d get so horny that we‟d fuck each other in our little single dorm beds. But we were straight at heart, so I‟d be finger fucking her and telling her all about what a dirty little bitch she was showing her cunt to the footballers and how they were going to come in and fuck her one by one until she could hardly walk. Of course, when I saw the advert in the back of The Stage magazine for table dancers, it was her who came and auditioned with me and we learnt the strip club ropes together. Our two-girl dances were popular because the chemistry between us was real, and we‟d push it as far as we could, sneaking our fingers inside each other‟s pussies where we knew the CCTV couldn‟t quite pick it up; some middle-aged man sat in front of us nearly 37
coming in his pants.
I‟d spent the last year working in Velvet, a slightly sleazy fully nude club, where I‟d built myself up a group of regulars who not only got off on seeing my naked pussy but also on the fact that I just loved showing it to them. Fetishes and turn-ons are subtle, and it can take a while to hit the jackpot of finding someone with the same equal and opposite reactions, and that goes for sex workers‟ and their customers as much as any couple.
With one guy, I would whisper in his ear as I danced, telling him how wet I was, how I loved having a bare cunt in a roomful of men, knowing they all wanted it, but none of them could have it. Every word was true.
Stag parties would get wild. Girls would be putting on lesbian shows and getting fingered in front of everyone.
About half the girls were escorting which was fine, but not something I ever went into myself. Showing off was my thing and I made quite enough money at it. The official story was that the owner had been offered a price he couldn‟t refuse to sell the old club to make way for a new cinema, but everyone knew it was on the verge of being closed down for pretty much being a brothel full of tax evaders.
Bikini was a whole other ball game. In theory a much better run club, with female management and bouncers that didn‟t look like East End gangsters. It had panic buttons, and strict policies on drunkenness and touching and knickers: they had to stay on. My first
The Cowboy's Surprise Bride