The Lusty Lady was a theatre. There was a live stage show, an old fashion peep show, and one-on-one sex shows in the Private Pleasures booth. There were video booths where you could watch porn like in an old arcade. The stage show had an endless rotation of three to seven girls, of all colors and shapes, fully nude dancing fourteen hours a day. There were twelve windows, a mix of one-ways and two-ways depending on if you wanted to be seen by the dancers. The Private Pleasures booth had one or two girls at a time and you could get extra attention, have a conversation, and get a more physical show. Both the show and the booth were covered in red carpet, the walls and ceilings covered in mirrors.
The corridors had busy carpets with painted black walls and ceilings, halfway between a cheap motel and a casino hallway. The doors were numbered, and things done behind them we don’t talk about outside the time and place. There are change machines and time is measured by quarters dropped in.
For us, the walk down the hall was quick, purposeful to the black door at the end of the hall with a buzzer. The dressing room had lockers and cubbies for our five- to eight-inch heels. There were mirrors everywhere and a bathroom with a swinging parlor door. There were clocks everywhere in the dressing room, analogue clocks, but the only one that mattered was the small digital one by the entrance to the stage. We all knew it was the referent when any of us shouted, “What’s it on?” We were always aware of the time and would end up owing each other minutes.
I worked with live nude girls. I was one myself. A stripper, a performer, a dancer, a sex worker. I learned to be naked without noticing in an environment where my sexuality was a lifestyle.
The Lusty Lady Marquee had become its own landmark over the years. Never short on clever puns, the sign was always topical and suggestive. The Seattle Art Museum with its Hammering Man and the Four Seasons Hotel and Spa surrounded the Lusty for a couple of years. We were just a block away from Pike Place Market that had been there longer than any other farmer’s market in America and held the first Starbucks. There is some history to this place.
The Lusty showed the industry how to do things better, because it didn’t want to be in the industry at all. The Lusty Lady was started by people looking for a way to support a kind of lifestyle. Pay a minimum wage for live show dancers, as generous as possible. Never ask the dancers to pay to work; this included not being required to file with the city of Seattle for a $200-300 license or having to pay a $100+ house fee per shift. The Private Pleasures booth was split with the house at a decent rate. Our bosses were women, former dancers themselves. Every year for our Christmas bonus we would have a Playday where the employees would take over the theatre, throw a party with lapdances, chances to sit on stage and interact with the dancers, and then split the money.
I am not someone who thinks that sex work isn’t degrading. I am, however, someone who thinks it doesn’t have to be. There is a way to do it right. There is a way to use it for it’s physical and emotional benefits. The degradation of female sex workers is not the worst; at least when I get treated like shit for my fine ass at work I got money and was surrounded by supportive women. When I walk down the street and get treated like shit for my fine ass, usually all I get it spit at or grabbed. As women we’re told that our bodies are dirty, shameful, fallen. Sex work can be a way to take the power of those things back, to try for some balance.
In my few years of stripping in LA and Seattle I’ve never been the only dancer with a Master’s degree. For the most part we are smart, beautiful women who enjoy what we do. When I got a day job at one of the large corporations in Seattle, I developed a new identity with a cheap wig and a new name. I only tell a select few of my friends and none of my family. Not because I’m ashamed but because they would be. We are respectable women.
I’ve been asked in the Private Pleasures booth how I get the courage to do this. How can I take my clothes off and let a stranger watch me masturbate? The answer is – I don’t know. Some days are especially hard. When you don’t feel sexy, have to struggle for parking, have been on stage dancing for four, five, even seven hours, or you’re 45 minutes into an hour booth and you’ve made $20. But most days I love it. There are days when I’ll leave the booth after multiple orgasms and lots of tips, when I get to see guys cum really hard in the live show, or when I get a good angle on some of the other beautiful women I dance with. But in the end the challenge is part of the fun, the collection of stories part of the life. The Lusty was a safe place to live naked.
On the upper floor of a Mexican restaurant downtown, I stood in a room full of Lusty Ladies and support staff when it was announced that the Seattle Lusty Lady would be closing after twenty-five years.
Our stage director, who normally runs the staff meetings, took attendance. We all went around the room saying our names – our stage names. Most of us don’t know each other’s given names. One of the front desk ladies always called me “Pumpkin Panties” after I wore my homemade Jack-Off-O-Lantern panties – bright orange with a Jack-O-Lantern face painted across the butt – in the Private Pleasures booth last Halloween. Some of the girls I hardly recognized without make-up and with clothes on. The stage director stepped aside as the owner came to the center of the room by the pool table. He got straight to the point and waited for questions. The final days would be our largest Playday ever, a 48-hour blowout.
We were devastated by the news, even though it seemed inevitable knowing what we know from our paychecks. A box of tissues made its way around the room, the same blue boxed tissues that were in every booth to clean up the cum, now drying tears.
We were a work family. When someone had a bad day we were there; this wasn’t the first time I’ve hugged a crying co-worker. The Stage Director became a fill-in for the mothers we didn’t have or who didn’t give us enough of the lessons we needed. Being a sex worker is a searching process, a growing process. This is how we pick ourselves up out of poverty. This is where we learn about our sexuality. This is a first job or a transitional job to help us become burlesque stars, aerialists, college grads, day care owners, desk workers, mothers and writers.
The announcement came the same week that the Supreme Court Justice who dissented against Giuliani’s clean up of Times Square retired. It seemed like the fighters for sex workers are tired and can only fight so long. Pee Wee Herman was arrested at one of those New York theatres and one of the Lusty dancers had always carried a Pee Wee doll with her into the Private Pleasures booth. He watched from a safer vantage point, but now Pee Wee will lose again.
Growing up I was called a prude at the time before I even knew what I was. I had a healthy, exceptionally happy childhood. I turned to stripping not really out of financial need but out of an indirect dare when I was in graduate school. I worked at a bikini bar in LA doing pole dancing, lap dancing, and drinking whiskey a few hours a week. I would tell my Johns that I was a writer and they would invariably ask me about Bukowski. I worked for tips only and after a five hour shift I would leave with anywhere from over $350 to under $10.
The Lusty was something else. When I moved to Seattle out of financial necessity and still couldn’t find work, I turned back to stripping. I felt like the indirect dare still applied and I was doing it for the same reasons, just taking things a step farther.
The Lusty Lady had a handbook and expected workers to show up on time. There was a four-page application and a multi-day audition process. If you were hired you filled out a diagram of your tattoos and piercings. You had to put in a request with a show director to get new ones or to change your hair drastically. After the owner’s announcement our show director told us that she would be volunteering for the next few months, but that didn’t mean we could slack off; the handbook would still apply. There was one change: the ban on tattoos without prior management approval was lifted. A cheer went up in the room and the chatter turned to how the Lusty will mark us, leaving permanent changes to our bodies.
Part of a Lusty Lady’s job, and any other sex workers to a degree, is as therapist. A kind of bartender therapy, providing reassurance that your thoughts and desires are okay and healthy, listening to your secrets without judgment. Losing places like the Lusty Lady is strange to me. How did a place that invited you in to share your kinks in a safe space, get bested by sitting in front of a computer alone? And where will everyone go with his or her kinks? Where is our community sex space? We are getting free porn at the cost of a part of our sexual liberation, just another public space becoming private. Americans talk about Europe, fetishize its plazas and then destroy our own. It is also worth noting that this is the same city that gave us Starbucks, which started as a desire for public places. Don’t we need sex as much or more than coffee?
Free porn won’t watch you jack off. It won’t make you drink a stranger’s cum from a coffee cup. It won’t have a conversation with you with its finger in its pussy. You can’t spray breast milk at it. It won’t notice if you have rubber bands twisted around the base of your dick. It won’t say thank you when you compliment its pussy – it won’t react to you at all. You may get to a similar place but the Internet has turned something as personal as sexuality into something impersonal.
As the last days approached, not much changed. I got lucky on my final stage shift, meaning my ten-minute break came at the last ten minutes of my shift, and I walked off. My last booth was slow. I walked back to my locker as I always did and nothing else happened. I was just left with the feeling that there should be something special happening. These were big moments, endings, and they looked just like ordinary moments.
The final Playday was only my second. This time I was more of a vet, had made more friends with co-workers and got better shifts and jobs. I gave approximately 100 lap dances over 48 hours; they seemed endless and I danced until I couldn’t feel parts of my legs. The first night I had problems driving home because my ankles hurt so badly. Another of my jobs was selling pictures with the dancers. A regular had come in a tuxedo with a red bow-tie and cummerbund to get pictures with his favorite dancer. He posed with them in front of a banner gazing into their eyes; it seemed sweet, like a prom. There were other gentlemen in suits, some with flowers for the dancers. I was called into the booth a couple of times by customers; one who had introduced himself to me as Jackoff, and another who wanted me to play with another girl. Every time I saw a familiar face – the rubber band man, the dildo guy, Jackoff , the talker – I wondered what they would do. We lost our jobs but they were losing something with us.
The Lusty felt alive again for those 48 hours. There was more activity than there had been in weeks. There were lines for the live show. My favorite part of the night was selling and performing in shower shows. I had my older black six-inch heels that I could wear in the hall (the handbook has a stage only shoes policy for the live show) and a pink flowery towel wrapped around me as I walked the halls. We had taken the door off of our dressing room shower. One of my regulars had suggested that I use shaving cream for the shows to get the lather right. The shower shows were something fun and new during an ending. One of my first customers told me that the dimples on my lower back were called Dimples of Venus and I was thrilled for hours.
My last Playday shift was the last shift on the live show, 4 to 6 am on Sunday morning. All the dancers were tired. I was the only one fully naked. For a live nude show we always managed to find plenty of things to wear: skirts, belts, necklaces, thigh highs, cupless bras, waist cinchers, leg warmers, or socks. I had slept for two hours and didn’t have the energy for any of it. Someone came around with whipped cream and sprayed some on my nipples before licking them off. Most of us were too tired to move but I pushed through for the few customers that were there to watch us. At the end we rigged the music to play Private Dancer during the last few minutes and then that was it. Another ending that went by quietly. Some of the girls cried but most of them weren’t even there.
Two weeks later we had a door locking ceremony. During the two weeks we ran the private pleasures booth as long as we could while the live show was torn down. As we stood outside to watch the marquee lights go out in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, families walked by going home from Pike’s Place Market and a little girl asked her mom, “What’s that mom? What are they doing?” I couldn’t hear the answer as she got pulled past us. Since it was light out the lights didn’t seem to fade and I ducked back into the Lusty before getting caught in the background of other people’s pictures. There was a memorial placed out front the next day: a pair of stripper heels and a candle. The Marquee has been moved to the Museum of History & Industry in Seattle. The live nude girls have moved on to continue our education, sit at our nine-to-five jobs, or find new adventures. We may not have a safe place for our lifestyle but we have each other and will always stay lusty.
