Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America by Lily Burana Read Free Book Online

worked as a dancer for five years. She's transitioning into being a feature entertainer and wants to learn how to be more theatrical. This coltish, twenty-three-year-old redhead will also be our pole tricks instructor.
    Lexus, lithe and blonde-bobbed, took dance classes as a child. In a rich, husky voice that's quite startling coming from her pale, cheerleader-cute countenance, she says she started dancing in Philadelphia and now works in central Pennsylvania. Her goal is to learn the basics of transitioning from house dancer to feature.
    Anna, like me, is one of the older girls in the class. Her gypsy-green eyes are lined in smudged black kohl, giving her the desultory look of a veteran rock goddess. After clasping her small lips carefully around a menthol cigarette while lighting it, she says she's been dancing for eleven months in Kentucky. She wants to increase her self-confidence.
    Teresa, a shy and curvy brunette, speaks so softly we can hardly hear her. Ann Marie takes pains to smile warmly at her and coax her to speak up. She danced four years ago in Tampa until her daughter was born. She's not dancing right now, she says, but hopes to return to the business.
    Holly, seasoned as a house dancer, is just getting her feature career started. She's a classic spitfire—long red hair, tiny on the bottom and bodacious on top. She's a thirty-year-old married mother of two and her husband, a cheerful, stocky Mexican in thick, black-framed glasses, is sitting by her side. They drove here from their home in Texas, and can only stay for four days of school, because Holly is booked at a club in Flint, Michigan, next week.
    Gabrielle is a very thin woman with matte black hair and piercing blue eyes. Feature dancing is in her sights. In her four-and-a-half years in the business, she has worked in Texas, Michigan, and Florida. She now lives in the area and is chauffeuring Lexus around for the week.
    My turn: "I'm Barbie. I'm going to spend a year dancing my way around the country. I used to be a house dancer, and now that I'm getting back into it, I decided to come here because when I was doing it way back when, I was never very good."
    When we're finished, Ann Marie introduces our dance instructor, Jade Simone Sinclair. Jade, deeply tanned with rippled abs smartly showcased between white hip-slung sweat pants and a yellow jog bra, has an irrepressible boingy quality. Her brown bushy ponytail bobs as she addresses her students. "I just want you to know that I was once a house girl just like y'all."
    (She's from Texas.)
    "I have made all the mistakes you can make. I have fallen flat on my butt onstage. I have tripped. I have nothing to hide from y'all, because we're in this together. We're going to have a lot of fun this week, and I'm here to help you in any way that I can." She smiles as she speaks, the corners of her mouth pinched and straining in affable flexion.
    We go over the different types of dances:
    Strip-o-grams and bachelor parties— usually a choreographed routine done either solo or with another dancer in a private setting. A set fee is usually charged for a certain predetermined amount of time (half an hour to two hours). Then dancers can take tips from partygoers for additional acts, such as whipped-cream shows, lotion shows, or lap dances. Contact and specialty shows should be discussed up front. Dancers often hire their own security for parties.
    Stage— dancing on the stage in a club, either solo or with other dancers, for one to three songs while patrons watch. Customers may or may not be able to tip dancers personally. If they can, rules vary as to where they may put the tips (on the stage, in your hand, in a garter around your thigh, under your g-string, between your breasts), depending on the club's policy.
    Table— a one-on-one dance between you and a customer, either in the public, main floor area of the club or in a private VIP section. Usually done while standing in front of the customer, on a platform by