A stripper and a Hasidic Jew walk into a bar…

Author’s note: I originally wrote this story in 2023. The encounter with Donald took place during my earliest years working as a dancer, more than twenty years earlier. The descriptions of club cuture and language reflect that period.

Recently, I was chatting with a lawyer friend who said, “people love to talk about how diverse New York City is, but when I walk into my office, it’s mostly white and male. Maybe the janitor is Latino.” He works for a white-shoe law firm and I guess that’s how it is — even in 2023.

That kind of workplace would bore me. One thing I really appreciate about working in Manhattan gentleman’s clubs is the diversity of the staff and the clientele. The dancers come from all over the country and all over the world. So do our customers. A variety of languages are spoken in the dressing room — mostly Spanish and Portuguese, but also Russian and Ukrainian. Sometimes I’ll hear Italian or French. The bus boys and restroom attendants mostly speak Arabic or French. The waitstaff and security staff tend to be locals, from New York or New Jersey. But that still allows for a variety of cultural backgrounds and accents. I’ve developed a decent ear for the various Caribbean patois.

There are even some positions at the club where being gay is a requirement. Management doesn’t hire straight men to work in the dressing room. The men who do our hair and makeup are always gay. I think there was one who was actually straight and only pretended otherwise. But he was respectful and never caused any problems.

Trans people have long been welcome too. If the transition is complete and they appear fully female, their auditions are judged like any others. They’re either hot enough to get hired or they’re not.

It’s good when diversity feels normal. The strip club crowd is open minded, not so judgmental.

Except for when the Hasidic Jews show up. That’s when people start whispering.

“Hypocrites!”

“Look at them walking in here in their uniforms!”

“You know they have to fuck their wives through a hole in the sheet, right?”

The first gentleman’s club I worked in was the now defunct Ten’s World Class Cabaret. We had a couple of Hasidic regulars and some girls wouldn’t go near them. But I didn’t have a problem with them. I even got to know one a bit. Let’s call him Donald.

Donald was lounging solo on a black leather sofa so I went over and sat down next to him. After a few minutes of light chit-chat, I suggested, “Let’s have a dance, darling!”

“No, I’m not in the mood tonight,” he said.

“Of course you’re in the mood. You’re here,” I said playfully.

“No, no, not tonight.” Some customers like to decline a dance at first. They want us to win them over.

“What’s wrong, Donald?” Donald’s eyes were green and crinkled at the corners. They were kind eyes. There was a sense of humor in his eyes.

“No sex life,” he said, only half joking.

“I don’t believe that!” And I didn’t. The last time I talked to Donald he told me a story about how he’d paid a waitress at his friend’s banquet hall to be his date for an evening. When she wasn’t interested in sleeping with him, he dropped her off at home and went straight to visit a prostitute. One way or another, Donald got himself laid.

So I asked, “How long has it been since you’ve had sex?”

“A month,” he said, dispirited, and continued to tell me that he was recently divorced, didn’t have a girlfriend and hadn’t found anyone to sleep with in over a month.

“Well, you could masturbate,” I suggested.

“Oh no,” he said, scrunching up his face. “I don’t like to masturbate. It makes me feel…so…humiliated.”

“Humiliated?” I asked, genuinely surprised. “What’s to feel humiliated about when you’re all by yourself?”

“I don’t know,” Donald said. “I just feel humiliated.”

I felt bad for him and could only imagine he was suffering religious guilt. I understood that. When I was a kid, I used to think someone was watching me all the time. If it wasn’t God or Jesus, then it was Santa Claus. Either way, I never everpicked my nose. I used a tissue like I was told.

“Well,” I said to Donald as I stood up in front of him and removed my satin robe, “there’s no reason why you should feel humiliated.” I was wearing a peach nighty with black lace trim — nice girl lingerie. “Why don’t I give you something to think about later so you don’t have to feel humiliated?”

“OK,” Donald said. “I’ll have just one dance.”

I love closing the deal. There’s something so satisfying about finding that moment in the conversation when there’s no way a man can say no to a dance. Donald ended up buying two or three.

By chance, Donald and I crossed paths later in the evening as he was leaving the club. I whispered, “no humiliation” in his ear and wished him a good night.