That’s What Mama’s Do

I’d never experienced a proper den mom until working at my club in Hawthorn. At Deja Vu, there had been a few older seamstresses who specialized in making dancer costumes who would set up in the dressing room with a rack of bikinis we could buy for a markup. These women were quiet and not especially friendly to the strippers. It was always some under the table kickback deal they’d made with a manager or bouncer to set up shop and solicit without getting thrown out. Mama turned all of that on its head. 

Mama is the bathroom attendant and den mom at my current club. She’s a cheerful, light skin black lady with warm red hair and a high pitched voice as sweet as candy. Almost every day she sets up her bathroom shop with everything a stripper could want: from an array of outfits, jewelry, kink collars and harnesses, cigarettes, vapes and Backwoods, candies, body spray, hair spray, combs, brushes, baby wipes, super glue for broken acrylic nails, and a sewing kit among other things. 

Most strip clubs could give two fucks about the women’s room, in spite of the fact that the workforce they depend upon requires sanitary, well-equipped bathrooms. At the Ritz, neither of the upstairs bathrooms set aside for dancers were functional. The toilets were broken and wouldn’t flush, and the doors were busted in from some undisclosed altercation. At Deja Vu the bathrooms often didn’t have toilet paper or the soap dispensers were empty. Mama makes sure our bathroom is tidy and fully operational. I love strippers, but we are an unruly crew at times. We’re professional partiers, who drink and do drugs, which leads to a little bit of sloppiness. Maybe a lot of sloppiness. Mama cleans up whenever we spill our drinks and gives us hugs whenever we’re having particularly difficult nights. The bathroom is a meeting area. It’s our informal breakroom, even though we have other private areas to take a break, it’s comforting to have Mama around.

This Saturday I was wearing my thigh high dominatrix boots, the current model of Pleasers I’ve been giving a go. Everything was running smoothly until I took them off for a dance. I’d been in the Skybox for fifteen minutes dancing on a customer who joked like Groucho Marx.

Groucho: I’ll give you a discount if you wanna fuck me. The first time is free. Afterwards it’s $50 per inch, so $25 in total.

Me: Ha.

Groucho: It’s probably too much math.

Me: It’s not.

He wanted to go for another round, at which point I decided it was time to take off my boots. I love wearing tall boots with eight inch heels, but there comes a point where they pose logistical issues. Additionally, I’d been on my feet for the past seven hours and I needed a break. I finished the dance happily shoeless. I could have spent more time with Groucho, but Toronto Daddy had stopped by and I’d already kept him waiting for nearly an hour. Keeping customers waiting requires a gentle balance of checking in and reassurance. I wanted to spend time with Toronto Daddy, but Groucho was paying me more; however it came to a point where I knew any further delay would be rude. Groucho wanted to go for yet another round and was willing to wait. I explained that I had someone else waiting on me and excused myself. I started zipping up my boots when the zipper got stuck. I figured it was caught on fabric or something, so I unzipped and re-zipped hoping to dislodge the stuck fabric, but it wasn’t happening. I made the brilliant decision to manhandle the stuck piece, and to my dismay, the zipper separated. This was not the kind of zipper that could easily be re-fed together. My boots were coming apart and I didn’t know what to do about it. I hobbled over to Toronto Daddy and sat in his lap considering my options.

Me: This might be the end of these boots. I might have to finish my shift in sneakers.

Evan: It looks complicated. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to repair this sort of thing.

Me: I need pliers or something. I’m gonna go talk to the bathroom lady and see if she has some.

I felt a little defeated as I walked to the bathroom holding my boot up with one hand. I didn’t know if Mama knew how to fix a broken zipper. She was sitting on her stool beside the sink sewing gemstones onto a bikini when I walked in.

Me: Mama, do you have pliers? My zipper is broken.

Mama: Sure, I do. 

She reached into one of her duffles and pulled out a pair of pliers and a mini flathead screwdriver.

Me: I’m afraid I’m gonna break the screwdriver. I need to open the thing up so I can slip the zipper back in.

Mama: I wouldn’t even know how to do that. That’s not how I normally fix zippers.

I struggled for a minute, trying to pry open the zipper to no avail.

Me: Yeah, it’s not gonna work.

Mama: I wasn’t sure how you were gonna do that. Usually I cut the zipper so I can put the piece back on and then sew it so that it doesn’t come undone again.

Me: Oh my god, can you please do that for me?

Mama: You know I can, baby.

Mama took my boot and began to fix the zipper.

Mama: That’s why I’m happy I grew up not having anything. When you don’t have stuff growing up, you learn how to do things-- how to fix things and work with what you have. You get creative because you don’t have any other options. And when you finally have stuff, you appreciate it more. Can you thread this needle for me, babe?

Me: Of course. I know what you mean. I grew up poor too.

Mama: Oops! Dropped my needle. I knew I was gonna do that.

Mama searched around to find her needle and meanwhile I took over the shoe.

Mama: Be careful. You know what you’re doing?

Me: Yeah. I went to school for this, actually.

Mama: Really? That’s so cool. Baby, double it. You don’t want it to slip on you.

Me: I was gonna backstitch to secure it.

Mama: Oh. Wait, let me show you what I mean.

Mama took over and showed me how to catch the loop so the threads crossed over twice.

Mama: It’s less work for you this way.

Me: That makes a lot of sense.

We finished mending the boot and I gingerly slipped it back on. The zipper was catching in the same spot, but I realized I could shift the prongs in such a way that I could gently slip the zipper over the problem spot. As good as new.

Me: Thank you Mama! You’re the best.

I grabbed a handful of ones and put them in her tip tray, then hugged her tightly and kissed her cheek.

Mama: That’s what mama’s do, baby. Now go out there and make your money.

Me: Love you.

Mama: Love you too.

…

Meanwhile, Evan was left out to the wolves, and by “wolves” I mean super hot strippers aggressively soliciting him. I returned and showed off my repaired boot.

Evan: Wow! That’s like a miracle. I have no idea how you made this happen.

Me: Mama can fix anything. Sorry I kept you waiting for so long.

Evan: It’s okay. I got some dances with a few other girls.

Me: That’s good.

I was slightly jealous but also glad Even was being a polite customer. Of course the money hungry hustler in me wanted to completely monopolize Evan’s visit, but I had also left him hanging for quite a long time.

Evan: Your friend was really aggressive with me.

Me: Foxxxy?

Evan: I think so. I was sucking on a lollipop when she came over and sat on me without asking. She took my lollipop and pulled it in and out of my mouth and said, “You want me to do this to your dick?”

Me: Oh my god, that’s so hot. I love her. There’s nothing hotter than sexually aggressive women. If I were him I would definitely have taken her up on the offer, like fuck Selena. Foxxxy is one of my friends from Ukraine. She and I had gotten close a year ago when I’d just started dancing in Hawthorn, but had returned home after a few months. The women from Eastern Europe face a lot of discrimination, but I think I love them most because they’re unapologetic and explicitly provide full service sex work. They don’t keep secrets about what they do, or have any qualms about providing what most customers come to the club hoping to find. Foxxxy is gorgeous and exudes a playful seductive energy I find intoxicating.

Strip clubs are very gay. I feel physically connected with my friends at work in a way I can’t imagine sharing with any of my civilian friends. I have the privilege of watching my friends’ perform sensuality as they hook customers, and it’s hard not to feel enraptured by proxy. Sometimes when I’m doing a double room with another girl, I have to stop myself from going too far. Even when my coworkers are explicitly gay, we tend to keep things professional just because things get messy when you date your coworkers, regardless of profession or “office” style. But it happens. You fake fuck your friends on stage enough times, compliment each other on how sexy they are, and sometimes the act becomes real. 

My friend Lana dated Sissy for a little while. Lana is a light skin amazonian-sized dancer with enormous implants and juicy booty who fills a room without realizing it. She loudly freestyles over songs she likes and goads the audience into chanting things like “Hey! We want some puss-ayy!” Sissy on the other hand is a fussy Mexican woman who never goes anywhere without a red cup full of some kind of booze. She languidly drapes herself across customers while she plays with her pussy. They would perform together on the small stage with a genuine vigor that hinted that neither of them were really faking. Things soured after a while. Lana told me Sissy had a bad habit of saying cruel things when she was high. Lana ended things when she couldn’t handle Sissy’s temper, and took a break from work while the situation cooled. When Lana returned, Sissy avoided her completely. Sissy wouldn’t make eye contact and was visibly ruffled, but Lana is a peacemaker. She pulled Sissy aside and they tearfully repaired their friendship.

There are lots of gay strippers. There are lots of trans strippers. I always say that becoming a stripper involves putting on female drag. Very few strippers dance with their natural hair. They either clip, fuse, or lace in extensions and weaves; glue on wigs; or clip in long ponytails to embody all the things society has decided is “womanly”. We get implants and injections, lifts and tucks, lipo or fat redistribution. I know dancers who go by he/him pronouns outside of the club, who are trans masculine and take testosterone to affirm their gender identity. They confide in me that they’re worried about growing a moustache as much as it excites them. It only adds to the reality that few of our customers would recognize us outside of the club. The men dream of seeing the “real” us, of knowing our real names and waking up beside us, but the reality is that they’ve fallen in love with a convincing fiction. Rina reflected on this with me during a recent LA visit. They go by they/them/he/him pronouns outside of the club. They don’t date cishet men. They sat across from me at my kitchen table glueing on a wig before their shift. 

Rina: I wonder what they’d think if they knew they were getting a dance with a boy.

Most customers are grappling with the changing rules of gender identity. They ponder out loud about the fragile state of the two-gender construct that previously provided order to their lives. If they knew their stripper was a man, regardless of how hot the stripper was, they probably couldn’t cope. So we make it easy for them. We’re “girls” who like “men” and that’s that.