All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, (7 page)

I had so many mixed feelings about what it meant to be looked at, and I thought maybe stripping could help me sort some of it out. Maybe I could figure out what my desirability was worth tangibly. Maybe I could use it for my own benefit.

The other thing that attracted me to stripping was simply the opportunity to become the thing that fascinated me. Strippers had intrigued me since that first night at La Cage, and actually working as a stripper would let me understand how it actually felt to do it. It was like trying to get into the mind of someone you have a crush on, to understand them from the inside. This idea excited me.

But it also frightened me. Stripping wasn't illegal, but doing it could have undesirable consequences. How could I explain it to family, friends, and, most important, Seth, the guy I lived with and loved? He'd been cool about my fascination with strip clubs so far, but it would undoubtedly test his support to know that I was showing off my willy and letting customers play with it for a couple of bucks.

Then there was school to think about. Even though I taught two of my own classes, I wasn't really an employee. I was still a graduate student. I didn't know what rights I had or how I would find out about them. Somehow I didn't think it would work to go to the chair of my department and say, "I have this friend who, like, goes here and teaches, and he's thinking about becoming a stripper and wants to know if that would, like, get him in trouble."

Plus, I had to think about my classmates and students, many of whom were old enough to venture into the strip clubs if so inclined. It was so hard to sort out.

But on the flip side, I was also worried about
not
stripping. Was Nico right—did I think I was "too good"? Or not good enough? It didn't seem like the type of thing I would do, but at twenty-seven I didn't want to be penned in by preconceived notions of who I was. So I made up my mind to strip—partly for research, partly because of a bunch of personal baggage, but most important to see how life might change if I exercised my right to bare ass.

8

Two days after dancing at the Follies for the first time, I rushed across the green courtyard of the University of Maryland, racing past the columned brick buildings and the kids playing hacky sack in order to make my 11:00
AM
class. It was late March and the campus was beginning to get pretty again. Maryland is one of those places where you experience four fully realized seasons—scorching in summer, leaf-filled in fall, snowy in winter, and sun-dappled in spring.

Luckily—and a bit uncharacteristically—I was on time getting to the classroom, a big blank space that looked like it had been made over by a minimalist schoolmarm, with its brick walls washed in thick coats of white paint and white blinds hanging from the ceiling-high windows. The students, about two dozen, sat in tiny wooden seats with built-in desks, and rows of fluorescent lights glared from above. One of my first thoughts upon setting my books down was how much more flattering the dim lights were at the Follies.

Standing there in front of the students, I was fully dressed in a polo shirt and some khakis. There were two layers of cotton between my dick and the rest of the world, yet I felt more exposed here. Not in a "Here's my ass" way, but in the sense of "Who the fuck am I to be instructing anybody about anything?"

It was my second semester teaching, but I still felt like I was playing teacher in a community theater production of college life. At any moment I expected a megaphone - wielding director to step in the class, shake his head, and yell, "No, no, no .. ."

It didn't help that my teaching had already come under attack. The course I'd been assigned to teach was called "Introduction to American Studies," but I was allowed to tailor it around my own research interests. I focused mine on gay and lesbian history. I wanted to show my students that there were gay people long before Ellen came out of the closet or Norman, Pedro, and Dan moved into their respective
Real World
houses. Yet this arguably noble goal bit me on the ass, and not in a hurts-so-good kind of way.

During the second week of my first semester teaching, an article ran in a national conservative newspaper condemning my class as an example of all that was wrong and too liberal about higher education. It turned out that one of the paper's reporters had been tipped off about the content of my course and snuck in the first class in order to snag a copy of my syllabus. The moment this hit the news, I received support from all fronts and my department backed me fully, but still it wasn't the way I wanted to kick off my teaching career. I was nervous enough simply standing in front of the class, and this incident increased my anxiety.

I began having panic attacks. During class I would be focused as much on what I was saying as I was on trying to control my face from twitching and my hands from shaking. I mostly did a good job at masking these reactions, but the one thing I couldn't stop was a profuse sweating condition I developed. It started the moment I put on clothes after getting out of the shower. By the time I got to school, my shirt would be completely drenched under each arm. I had to wear multiple layers—undershirts, sweaters, jackets— even when it was warm in order to hide what was going on. It was so fucked up. I had tried to teach a subject I was comfortable with and it had the effect of making me profoundly uncomfortable.

I'd wanted to connect my personal and intellectual lives, but they had never felt more separate. This became especially clear one day when one of my students, a star member of the wrestling team, visited me in my office to tell me how fascinating he found all the gay stuff. As he talked, he leaned farther and farther back in his chair, which was only a few inches away from mine. He spread his legs, bare in a pair of loose gym shorts, and I could see his blue-and-white boxers peek out from around his thigh. The longer we talked, the more he reclined, until his knee lightly pressed against mine. All we needed was some wacka-do, wacka-do music, and it would've been the perfect beginning to a really hot porn scene. But the funny thing about this was that I felt nothing, not the slightest bit of desire.

Here was a guy who perfectly fulfilled my jock fetish, an ideal young male specimen—one you'd want to clone, commission a sculpture of, or just fuck silly. Yet I felt none of the stirrings that I might feel if I saw him on the streets. Nor did I reflexively grab for dollar bills as I might have if I spotted him in a strip club.

Now don't get me wrong, all of this was exactly as it should've been. Boundaries are important in teaching, and I was glad I wasn't lusting after a student. But at the same time, I didn't know if I really wanted a job where I had to check my sexuality—such a major part of who I am—at the door. I was unsure how long I could sustain such a splintered life.

Stripping provided me a corrective to this. It gave me a platform to express my sexuality in a freeing, over-the-top way. But I didn't know if it would undo all that I had worked for in my career. I had to talk to my academic adviser about it, especially since I planned to write about my experiences in my dissertation.

"So what do you think?" I asked my adviser and strongest on-campus supporter, Dr. Parks. We were sitting in her office. A black baby doll smiled at me from a bookcase.

"You feel that you have to do it in order to get closer to your subjects?" she asked, leaning in close.

"Yeah," I answered. "How can I continue to gain their trust if I'm not willing to try it myself? That's like me saying that I'm 'too good' to do it or something."

"Well, it's a good idea in terms of the research. But it's also a risk. Academia can be a protective place, but it can also be very conservative."

"I know, but I feel like it's something I have to do. It's important, and I'm willing to accept the consequences. That's why I did it the first time without telling you. It's my decision and I'll take the responsibility."

"Well, make sure you're careful."

"Oh, I will be," I said, making a promise that would prove almost impossible to keep.

This conversation with my adviser was the second important talk that I'd had about stripping. The first had been with Seth before I said yes to working at the Follies.

"Just be clear on why you're doing it," he said as we changed the sheets on our bed one Sunday afternoon. We'd recently made a decision to be more diligent about housework since we were now living in our dream apartment—or at least the first we didn't share with creatures that crawled on multiple legs and kept low to the floor.

"What do you mean by
that?"
I asked, making sure I punctuated the last word with a sizable amount of attitude.

"You're doing it because you want to do it,"

"I'm doing it because I need to do it for my research," I protested.

"Whatever. I don't want to fight about it," he said.

These conversations, with my adviser and with Seth, were the ones I had to have, but there were other talks I chose not to have—like with my parents. I never even considered telling them. I wasn't ashamed of what I was doing, and they both knew that I did research on strippers. But I felt there was no way to tell them and then expect them not to worry. It would put an undue burden on them and I didn't want to do that.

I needed a temporary reprieve from all of their best hopes and wishes. It wasn't that I didn't appreciate their concern—and of course, I had nothing but respect for the people who banged "privates" to make me. But I had to find out what my life meant for me. I wanted my epitaph to say more than "He Never Embarrassed His Parents."

Not telling "the folks" posed a number of problems, though. My father still lived in the area and we got together on weekends at least a couple of times a month, so it was hard to explain why I was less available.

My mom lived out of state, but we talked several times a day. How was I going to answer regular questions like "What's going on?" or "Have any plans for the weekend?" I didn't want to lie, but I had to be creative with the truth.

(Oddly enough, another person who I never told I was stripping was the very person who talked me into it: Nico. He disappeared from the scene shortly after our last conversation. At the time, I found it jarring the way people at the clubs would abruptly come and go. But I soon got used to it.)

After my first day at the Follies, I started working there about two Sundays a month. I liked the Follies because the dancers were treated about as professionally as you can be when your job description amounts to strip, play with yourself, let others play with you, repeat. We were even called "artists" in the contract we had to sign, as in "
Artist
will perform five shows per day.
Artist
is to be stripped of all clothing within four minutes of the beginning of the solo performance and for the entire finale," and "
Artist
will conduct himself in an orderly and professional manner at all times, including, but not limited to, proper hygiene during the course of this contract and proper dress when not performing."

I also liked the Follies because it offered some degree of privacy. Though the theater was a local landmark—it hosted gay civic awards ceremonies in the seventies—it was long past its prime in terms of popularity. The Follies customers weren't your average club-goers. These were older guys who were there to watch porn, fondle strippers, and get laid in the back room. It wasn't likely that I'd see anybody I knew at the Follies, and if I did, their being there would say as much about them as my presence said about me.

I worked at the Follies for the entire spring 1996 semester, using my time between sets to prepare for classes or grade papers, red pen in hand. For the most part, things came off without a hitch and I was able to keep stripping separate from the other aspects of my life, except when my mother made a last-minute decision to come to D.C. on Mother's Day weekend, and I had already signed up to work that Sunday. I told her in advance that I'd only be able to hang out with her on Saturday because I had something important to do for school on Sunday. This wasn't really a lie. Nevertheless, things were weird from the moment she arrived.

We hooked up at my grandmother's house and decided to head out for coffee. I took her to the Starbucks in Dupont Circle, the queer mecca of D.C. We had just gotten out of the car and were walking to the coffeehouse when someone called out, "Hey, Craig." I immediately panicked. The voice was coming from a complete stranger in a hooded sweatshirt and baseball cap standing directly in front of us. I was sure it was someone who recognized me from the Follies. I had been stupid enough to use my real name when dancing, and now I was exposed. The stranger made eye contact with me, smiled flirtatiously, and kept walking.

"Do you know him?" my mom asked curiously.

My mind scrambled for ways to explain why this guy knew my name. He was too old to be a student, and my mother knew my boyfriend was Seth.

"No," I answered, trying to be casual. "I've never seen him in my life. I have no idea how he knows my name."

"It's on your jacket," my mother said, pointing to the large embroidered "Craig" on the auto mechanic's jacket I'd been wearing all spring.

"Oh," I said, not sure if this was the real reason he knew my name or not.

The next day—Mother's Day—I felt guilty that instead of spending time with my mother, I was getting paid to be felt up in a dark, smelly movie theater. I called her between every set, saying that I was taking a study break. But I felt like a liar. It was the first time since I started stripping that I wondered if I was doing the right thing.

9