New Orleans has a textured and macabre history when it comes to the sex industry, particularly regarding house moms–that hybrid of manager, referee and babysitter. One story involves a double murder-suicide, love triangle between two house moms who worked at Scarlet’s in July of 2005. Patricia Tipton and Julie Carreras ended an eight-year relationship and had words with their lover, stripper Lark Bennett, and it ended in their deaths by gunshot wounds fired during the fight in Carreras’ home.
But, house moms are not out for blood. Like strippers, they survive on tips that they accumulate from dancers for the items and care they provide the girls backstage. House moms are hired by strip clubs to enforce the club’s rules about the dress code, schedule and conduct. They’re entrusted with a dancer’s cash, secrets and belongings. The house mom at Penthouse Club on Bourbon Street, Marty Morgan, has the ability to ensure a dancer’s place on the schedule or promptly get her removed from it. She’s the seated goddess Demeter, with her crock pot cheese dip and homemade watermelon soup. Her desk is an encyclopedia of all things stripper-related and her meatloaf is beyond amazing. She’s the eyes and eyelash glue behind the scenes, and she cares deeply for the women in her midst.
After Katrina, people not only lost their homes, pets and families, but their careers as well. Marty Morgan is an ex-Olympic athlete and personal trainer who owned a gym that was destroyed by the storm. After Katrina, she started over.
I spoke with Marty in her apartment in Algier’s Point, a historic enclave perched on the west bank of the Mississippi River, which is linked to the city by a ferry line. It’s been the temporary home of Lucinda Williams and William Burroughs and is known for its immaculately maintained 150 year-old houses and quaint festivals. It’s also the place where eleven black people were shot three days after Katrina by a self-appointed, all white militia. They could have helped the refugees with food and water, since Algier’s Point was dry and unscathed because its levees held. Instead, they stockpiled shotguns and blocked roads with lumber for the ultimate neighborhood watch.
I interviewed Marty while she gave me a soothing footbath in ionized salt. Attached to the plastic tubs were wristbands that transmitted the vibes necessary to detox my entire body through my feet. We watched the water turn rust red, as if a brick had dissolved in hot water.
***
The Rumpus: Where did you grow up and what was it like?
Marty Morgan: I grew up in Farmington, New Mexico. I’m an identical twin out of five kids. I was close with my parents, but they both passed away.
Dad was a salesman and disc jockey and outgoing businessman. I had an at-home Mom who worked for the city and won an award for not missing one day of work in forty years. She died of lymphoma cancer at 5:00pm, the end of her workday.
I came to Baton Rouge to work for Dale Carnegie Company of “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” I took the course where you learn about your fears. Dying is the biggest fear, talking in public is the second biggest. The course was about conquering those fears. I worked for that guy for five years. I also played racquetball, where I met my husband, and we married a year later. This was 1982. We lived in Lafayette. Mal had three kids from a previous marriage; his oldest was eight. It was an insta-family and we had a honeymoon baby. My oldest daughter, Malin, was born in November of 1983.
Rumpus: What jobs have you had in the past; and how did you end up becoming a house mom in a strip club on Bourbon Street?
Morgan: I started working for the largest fitness company in Louisiana Elmwood fitness as a personal trainer and consultant. I loved working with people. I loved being athletic and training people to be more fit. I swam competitively in high school and college, and made it to the 1972 Olympics in the backstroke and breaststroke. I tried to qualify for diving but missed it by tenths of a second. Being at the trials in Cincinnati was the high point in my life. I opened a private gym with a friend. We had our private clientele on La Barre Road. He owned all the Mardis Gras shops. We had that gym for six years. I would also go to people’s homes to train them privately.
My daughter, Malin, had rented an apartment, and she was doing the traveling and dancing thing when she was seventeen at Penthouse. She was helping support our household expenses. I worried every damn night. She worked and went to school. I called the club looking for her one night and they couldn’t find her. The next day she told me, “They don’t know my real name.” My ex-husband was traveling off-shore. He paid child support and helped get the kids into private school, but she was contributing to the household by dancing at the club. After Katrina, when I finally moved back in August 2007, Malin told me they were looking for a house mom at Penthouse, so I applied.
Rumpus: Tell me about how you left New Orleans when Katrina hit.
Morgan: We were going to New Mexico to a funeral. My father-in-law died on a Wednesday and my father died eight hours later. We buried my father in-law as Katrina was moving through the Gulf. We already had booked flights out of New Orleans, and we didn’t realize the strength of the storm. We ended up taking the last flight out that day, and the flight crew came with us. There were thousands of people at the airport hoping to get out. We were at the funeral home, and we’ve always had storms that were no big deal. To have all my kids with me was a blessing; they were all safe. The kids got texts about how bad the storm was. Windows were broken; but we were out of the flood zone in Algier’s Point. Our three cats survived. I worked for Intel and did a computer job while in New Mexico; and after the storm they interviewed us on TV and we felt like celebrities. Two years after Katrina, I came back to New Orleans. Before that, I would fly back on weekends and rebuild our house. That included driving a U-haul with three or four refrigerators and counter tops, things that you couldn’t get at Home Depot; so I redid the house and flew back to New Mexico to work my four days at Intel.
Rumpus: What does the house mom job entail, and how do you feel about the sex industry?
Morgan: Mostly, it’s about financial and emotional counseling and telling dancers to “Get rid of that boyfriend.” I have to maintain a clean area in the locker room and kitchen. I supply tampons, hairspray, deodorant, perfume, eyelashes, makeup, sewing kit, phone chargers, Q-tips, cigarettes, gum, mints, bobby pins, mouth wash, rubber bands, baby wipes, soda, water, scissors, brushes, curling irons, aspirin, Bepto Bismal, Gas-Ex, Midol and anything else you can imagine. I count their money. Actually, I’m the only house mom the girls allow to count their money. I check the girls in, meaning write their names on the schedule, supply lockers and listen to their problems. One girl wanted to talk for two hours because she had to have an operation on her ovaries. I’m behind the scenes, so whatever goes on out on the floor I’m away from it. My goal is to make sure there’s a happy place for the girls working here. I think the job of stripping is hard, and shouldering rejection erodes their self-esteem. If I can help them improve their self-esteem, I try. I make sure they always have a healthy meal available to them. I think of these girls as my daughters; and they do the toughest job in the world, because it’s a constant bashing of self-esteem. But what they don’t understand is those people rejecting them don’t matter.
Rumpus: What is the most disconcerting thing you’ve witnessed while working on Bourbon Street as house mom?
Morgan: Recently, one girl said, “You’ve got to help me, I’ve got to get out of this situation.” She had a pimp who was beating her. She left to get her luggage and shoes out of her car and her pimp kidnapped her, beat her, and took her to Baton Rouge. The next day, she came back and asked for help again.
One of the cocktail waitresses called a cop friend, and another girl drove in from two hours away to pick her up. The barback gave her money for airfare to go home. The dancers all surrounded her. They would do whatever was needed to get her away from that guy. They snuck her out of NOLA and on a flight to Kentucky. It was disturbing, but all of the girls and the barback helped her become the thing she wanted to be. That girl is now a Marine.
Rumpus: I’ve never had a pimp. Why do dancers have pimps? It’s something I’ve never understood. The clubs have their own security. Please explain.
Morgan: Pimps are in and out all the time and they’re dumb parasites. It’s a fear factor. The pimp befriends a vulnerable dancer like a boyfriend. First he becomes her best friend in the world. He manipulates the girl to give him her money for security. The pimps drive nice cars. If he does a boob job for her in Miami, he charges her 100% interest. The girls that have pimps act like it’s a sorority, and amongst the girls and their pimps they keep secrets. When the boyfriend routine wears off, they threaten to take away all of the things the pimp bought with her money. These girls act scared, like they are always looking over their shoulder. Probably, the attraction to a pimp stems from loneliness. I think it’s a daddy thing and a bad boy attraction thing. I know girls who have gotten away safely. Two of them are still back in the club working without pimps now.
Rumpus: How has the recession affected you and your ability to support yourself as a house mom? Do you think stripping is a trap? How can a stripper transition out of dancing and earn a normal living again? How will you?
Morgan: We are a tourist town and there’s a lot of traffic, so we weren’t hit as bad as other cities; but there’s more growth for New Orleans to do.
Before the recession, the girls would make an exorbitant amount of money. The way they spent money was big time. I’ve noticed a huge change as far as what the clientele expects for their money and how clients are reluctant to part with their cash. There’s desperation among the girls. They have to make rent instead of wanting to dance. It takes the fun out of dancing for them. I remember one dancer making 2000 bucks on her first night, and she would be so angry and mean when she didn’t make anything close to that amount. Their lives will never be normal regarding money and earning again, and I want to help them with that. I think stripping is a trap because you’ll never make that kind of fast money. It’s so hard to get away from.
There are girls that want to stop because they found Mr. Perfect. They’re back six months later. If they would invest their money and get some kind of cushion, they could buy a rental property and then step into something different that’s lucrative. One problem is, even on a bad night, they’re making more than most people make in a week, so it’s hard to completely leave the job.
I’m laughing at your last question because I’m as bad as a stripper. Why would I do something else, when I can make more cash in three days than others make in a 40-hour week? My plan is to transition into managing my rental properties and running a bed and breakfast for strippers so they have a place to stay and work.
Rumpus: Do you suffer the same stigma as the adult performers because of your association with strippers?
Morgan: People look at me strangely if I tell them what I do. I usually don’t tell them. I tell them I’m a director of entertainment, or I own a candy store. I like my job and I’ll do it indefinitely. I always associate with strippers in and out of the club, so that’s an eyebrow raiser but I don’t care. My bed and breakfast is designed for dancers to stay and rent while they’re working here. I’m running a bed and breakfast for women who dance as strippers and anyone can see that. I don’t hide that.
Rumpus: How have you helped the girls improve their relationship to money and plan for the future?
Morgan: I talk to girls about investing their money, and I concocted a plan: to show them by example that it can be done. Since January 5th I started collecting five-dollar bills. The theory is that dancers can have $40K a year just in fives if they hold onto them. Now my stack is up to seven thousand and I’m just a house Mom. I make a fraction of the money they make. I tell them they can do it too.
Rumpus: It’s now mid-November. How much have you saved in 5’s?
Morgan: By November I had $9,300 so I bought a 2006 car at a garage sale with 15,000 miles. It’s been ten years since I’ve bought a car. I will have over 10K by the year’s end, entirely in five-dollar bills from tips.
Rumpus: How do you feel about both of your daughters being strippers? Do you hope they will do something different with their lives? Do you want them to get out of the business? Why or why not?
Morgan: It used to terrify me when she started dancing because of the stigma you mentioned. After I learned what goes on in the club, I worried a lot less. I would like to see both of my girls save their money and invest it so they don’t buy shoes with the cash. I want them to save and be smart with it. I would like to see them get out of the business before it makes them tired or worn out and before they hate it. One of my daughters is pursuing her pilot’s license. The other one is in college doing her elementary education to be a teacher. I would talk her out of that before I’d talk her out of stripping, because the education system in New Orleans is awful.
Rumpus: What’s hard about your job? What’s great about it? Will you do next?
Morgan: The hours are hard. I work from 5p.m.-7a.m. or 9 a.m. so it is long hours. It’s a hard job. Lately, the girls are more frustrated. You can see it; they have flare-ups and say things they would never say before, because the money is harder. Out of 30 girls, three will be drunk and out of control, so I have to deal with them. I tell them when they’re losing their pretty, which is code for “Stop drinking, or you’re going home.”
The hard part is I don’t know what to say. I encourage them to try to think about other lifestyles, and I suggest going back to school. One stripper already started an assistant company for businessmen from out of town. She rents cars for them and arranges all of their appointments and dinners. The nice thing about this job is I can continue construction four days a week because I only work three nights a week. It’s a good cash flow. My fee that the girls are charged is ten dollars per head. What I’ll do next is just run my own stripper orphanage.
Rumpus: Will you adopt me?
Morgan: Didn’t I already?
***
Photos by Romy Suskin.
The Rumpus Sex Blog.
More from Antonia Crane’s Recessions Sex Workers series.
46 responses
House Moms at strip clubs is essential to running a clean, managed strip club. Without them, strip clubs would not run as smooth. She keeps the girls “in check” and the money flowing.
This was a fascinating, fantastic interview. House moms are awesome especially when they are as good as this one.
Hey, I Heart Strippers, It’s true that house Mom’s are under appreciated. They keep the business running smoothly from their desk backstage. Some of them are more like hands-off drifters who supply drugs and Ritz crackers to the girls, but Marty goes above and beyond the call of duty. I had never worked with an enthusiastic and nurturing house Mom like her until I danced at Penthouse.
Great interview, Antonia. I love to hear about non-dancer workers in the club who come to it after other careers. They have such a different perspective.
Great interview, Antonia.
Strip clubs have always depressed me.
“textured and macabre” it’s this kind of first sentence that makes me freely commit to finishing an article. and it was well worth the commitment. thanks, antonia.
I’m not a stripper, but I want Morgan to be my house mom!
Thanks for a smart, insightful interview — a peek behind the curtain at the honest-to-goodness beating hearts that exist in an often brutal industry.
I’ve really been enjoying your articles. It’s cool to see New Orleans (I live in Uptown) get mentioned on this blog.
These house moms are not nice the way you are picturing. I was a hooker for ten years. They are vicious Madams. Perhaps you are one yourself.
I’m a little surprised by your naive question, why do dancers have pimps?
It’s because many strip clubs are run by organized crime with links to prostitution. Often the girls are raped and forced to sleep with clients. Perhaps someone with an Antioch MFA can escape this situation, because she doesn’t seem as vulnerable. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen routinely.
I find this article disingenuous to say the least. Perhaps this particular house mom is not a bad person. That said, she’s profitting off the degradation of traumatized, vulnerable women.
I Heart Strippers says:
House Moms at strip clubs is essential to running a clean, managed strip club. Without them, strip clubs would not run as smooth. She keeps the girls “in check†and the money flowing.
If you read behind the lines of this post, you can find a lot of problems. What the heck does “keeping the girls in check’ means? I Heart Strippers is a strip club. They are concerned with their profits. They see the girls as needing to be kept ‘in check’ — in other words … what?
Why doesn’t anyone here get this?
I Heart Strippers also says, re house moms, “keeps the money flowing.”
Well, isn’t this the point of the house moms, to help the strip clubs, who are pimping strippers, make as much money as possible? What a worthy cause.
Antoniia, if you are an HIV Counselor and have an MFA from Antioch you aren’t really stripper, you’re just occasionally slumming and glaomorizng what amounts to a living death for many vulnerable young women.
You say Marty Morgan is an ex-Olympic Athlete? I’d be interested in knowing what sport, what Olympics ….
Bedelia,
Your experience is not the only one for sex-workers. Why assume bad motives on Antonia’s part, or that her experience is somehow invalid because it doesn’t mirror yours? The Rumpus has never shied away from talking about the problems in the sex industry, but to only talk about the problems is to be dishonest about the people who are part of it. No group is made up entirely of victims.
Antonia, please forgive my comment about you perhaps being a house mom — I dind’t know your background. I’ve read more. I still think house moms are usually, almost always vicious madams, but not you.
Frankly I wish I could delete my a few of my comments above — It was wrong to assume bad motives on Antonio’s part. I’d just found out that the Rumpus was linking to Sex Workers Outreach Project, which is run by a Madam. To me this is horrendous — it’s a big problem in trying to help prostitutes — that pimps and madams infilitrate the organizations (and funds) meant to help them. I was so upset when I found this out — and then I saw this article, which seemed like a continuation of the same.
Brian tell me what your experience in the sex industry is. Also, tell me about the poets that mean something to you, and how poetry has kept you alive. Tell me why you live for poetry.
This is my experience in the sex industry: I was gangruped and held captivate in a New York apartment when I was twenty. A police officer participated in this, so I was to scared to go to the police for help. I was beaten daily and so traumatized it took years to recover. I had a neurological illness which made me mroe vulnerable and the pimps took advantage of this. At the beginning I was forced to sleep with fifteen men a day.
And I did not meet one member of a performance art troupe during my ten years as a hooker. I did not meet one woman who was ’empowered’ by her experience with the sex industry. I never saw anyone like Annie Sprinkle or Antonia Crane working. No one I worked with would ever not understand the presence of pimps. I did see a few people dabbling at the outer edges of the sex industry — but they were not ‘in it.’ They had no idea what was realy going on. A pimp wouldn’t try to pull the same things on the member of a performance art troupe member as he would on me, someone alone in the world who had entered the ‘business’ at a much younger age than anyone writing about it on the rumpus.
Correction: above I meant I was gangraped, not gangruped. I was gang raped and held captive.
Brian have you worked in the sex industry? You are man, so your experience must be very different from mine. At the same time, I certainly hope you do not acquiesce to the underground gulag of millions of terrorized, traumatized, often trafficked young women that is the sex industry?
What poets do you love. I love Terence Hayes, Wallace Stevens, Li Young Lee, Boris Pasternak, Tsvetayeva, Akhmatova, Whitman, Frank O’Hara and Kenneth Koch.
I love Rimbaud and Rilke, speaking of:
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Indeed, who can any of us turn to? Who can the prostitutes turn to?
Antonio, please forgive my hasty words. I can see they may have been hurtful, and it wasn’t my intention. I sent you love and wish you all the best with your professional transition. It can be hard, I know that. I just get so upset when I see the sex industry glamorized, because of what I’ve experienced there, and what I saw happen to the many women I worked with. Women better than me, who were murdered. Women who took fatal doses of pills and called their ‘madams’ for help, and the ‘madams’ did nothing, then sent goons to the now dead girl’s apartment to cleanse it of any sign of their association (because that could hurt business).
Brian, I challenge you to a poetry slam, with love. Are we on?
Brian, FWIW the idea of being or not being a ‘victim’ completely disappears when you experience cataclysmic violence – especially if it’s systematic or ongoing.
You are about surviving. If you survive you are guilty, in your mind, because there are others who don’t. To survive you have to acquire some ruthlessness. The ones who don’t survive were usually better people than the ones who do (at least that’s the way I feel about my experience as a hooker). When Primo Levi used to get angry when people would tell him that it was a sign of his goodness (or special destiny) that he had survived Auschwitz. He believed the opposite.
Wallace Stevens wrote: The day is like wide water without sound
When you are experiencing systematic violence in a system that treats you as subhuman, which is what I experienced as a prostitute, the day is like wide water without sound that you can never swim across. There are no victims, only those who make it and those that don’t. But to survive, you have to have sense of who wants to hurt you. And if you get out there, every day you wake up thinking of the people back there that are still being hurt. You want to stop it.
Antonia, please forgive me if I hurt you. Please forgive my mispelling your name too — I’m dyslexic, which must be pretty obvious. You mentioned pole dancing being an art and that you love to dance — I know there’s alot of overlap between pole dancing and aerial dance. I wonder, have you tried aerial? I know some exremely wonderful over-40 aerial dances who went to the art after being pole dancers — they’re doing incredible things — choreography, performances — bringing in dancers from Europe — going to Europe to train. Much love to you, and mea culpa
Brian I found these lines of yours on the internet. They are so beautiful:
I wish I had hair like the bamboo patch
in my front yard, insistent, pliable.
I would send its roots wide for water,
thrust shoots into air, no matter how often
I was cut back. I wish I had hair
sere as sandstone, thirsty for crude, for sulfur.
“sere as sandstone, thirsty for crude, for sulfur”
That’s an AMAZING line – like “that dolphin-torn, the gong-tormented sea” from Sailing to Byzantium.
Dear Bedelia, I was only now alerted to this discussion and am sorry for my protracted silence. Thank you for your input, passion and insights. I often wish more readers would challenge my articles and content on The Rumpus in general because it’s more fun and an opportunity to learn. Isn’t that why we read? My intent with Recession Sex Workers is to portray sex workers as a work force of people from varied backgrounds talking about the work they do. By doing these interviews, I’ve heard incredible stories from tenacious people, like yourself. Mostly, I’ve heard stories about the triumph of the human spirit.
It’s horrible to hear that you were terrorized by many sadistic creeps, but this is not the fault of the sex industry. It is the fault of those awful monsters who stole your youth and sold it. With your logic, Ozzy Osborne is to blame for Columbine. Marilyn Manson is to blame for 9-11 and so on.
I cannot speak for any girls who were sold into prostitution or forced into doing sex work. It’s simply not been my experience. I had what I will call “constrained choice” which means that I saw a viable solution to my money problem, and a way to support myself. I never thought it would turn into 19 years of sex work. Glamourous, it is not.
If you were a hooker for ten years you understand: the back pain, the neck injuries, the stiff hips, the longer and longer amount of time it takes to recover from a night of dancing and little sleep. The brain dead stripper fog that eats away at my creativity, my writing, my personal relationships.
Bedelia, I am an out sex worker, a writer and a feminist. Do you think men want to date me? think again. I’ve chosen this job because it’s important to me. I have never considered myself a prostitute, but LAPD has thrown me in jail and charged me for prostitution. Does that make me a prostitute? I’ve never had a pimp or walked the tracks. but if it helps other women to share their stories and experiences and feel empowered and less lonely, than fuck it, I’m a prostitute.
As a reader, which you are, Bedelia, I encourage you to read Cheryl Strayed’s essay “Pussy Fever” in “Rumpus Women Vol 1” about her hesitation to become an escort and her feelings about the industry in general. I put up my essay on the arrest just for you on my blog as a gift to you http://antoniacrane.com/. I think the sex industry can be an empowering place and a difficult place. It has enhanced my life and it has made me terribly sad. I will machete my way out, Bedelia. Just watch.
As for Marty, the housemom at Penthouse club, she’s no madame. She took me in when I had no place to sleep in NOLA, right after my mom died of cancer because I knew her daughter. I was working at Visions and came to audition at Penthouse because I loved her cooking. She fights for the girls and helps them save their money (by showing them by her example). She encourages them to build a bridge out of dancing, she drives them home, befriends them and sees them as her daughters.
I’m glad this article was deeply personal to you and I hope you will continue to read.
Antonia
Dear Brian S., Thanks for tuning in and for your thoughts. This is so true: “No group is made up entirely of victims” particularly within the sex industry. It’s impossible to generalize about any group, because there are always exceptions.
Best,
Antonia
Thank you, Antonia, for another enlightening and complex article. I want Marty to be my mom!
What an interesting article, another great one in the Recession Sex Worker series, such a great insight into a world so many know very little about.
@Bedelia: I can see you have a really strong experience and your own story. I agree that there are many difficult experiences and at times tragic stories to be told about the sex industry. I’ve been following this series here at The Rumpus and I’ve read a lot of the books out there written by former and current sex workers.
Something you said got me thinking, Bedelia… Antonia asks questions that to those in the industry could be construed as naive, but they’re good questions that a wider, less experienced audience has about this kind of work. She’s a great interviewer in that regard if you think about it a moment. Naturally, your background is different than hers and mine and the next person and so on – that’s why these stories told in these interviews are so great and so important to a wider audience. It’s important that many stories are told about sex work by trade because there are multiple sides and not all of them are negative. There’s been a lot of negative press about sex workers themselves and it’s nice to see these stories – the good and bad together, with this interviewer trying to bring something new out for us all to see.
In general I think this interview and all of Ms. Crane’s interviews manage to shine a positive light on the fascinating people who inhabit they sex industry but they don’t romanticize the industry itself. That’s a critical element and why I can’t get enough of these interviews.
I’m sorry for your negative experiences Bedelia and I hope you can see that a voice like Ms. Crane’s is so important to bring out stories from all areas and experiences in the work, for all of our sakes. The brighter the light shining into this industry, the safer for everyone.
Bedelia, I too am deeply saddened to hear about your experience in the sex industry.
I’d like to know where in NY you were working, and what years? I danced in Manhattan and other places in the 1990s. I worked in the nude clubs, which were considered to be the seediest places in creation, and it’s true that a lot of them were. I knew plenty of girls who sold “extras” in the VIP room as a main source of income. I knew lots of junkies. I also knew college girls and performance artists. But I never once met a girl who had a pimp. Nobody I knew got beaten if she set her limits differently from anyone else.
I did get assaulted in a club in Queens called Wiggles, a place that unfortunately I think still exists. A customer tipped a bouncer to leave us completely alone in a locked room for a lap dance. It’s also true that management didn’t want to help me with this incident, and that the customer was a regular. I’m not arguing that this place wasn’t both shitty and dangerous. But if there had been any actual pimps running the place, I’m quite sure they wouldn’t have let me walk out of there after I knocked out that customer’s tooth.
While I’m critical of the way most strip clubs are run, my experience has been different from yours, and many other girls have had experiences much different from mine. The house mom in this story sounds like a dream; I would be thrilled to work at a place like Penthouse.
Great interview Antonia!
An interesting and provocative thread of responses as well.
Its late but I will attempt a semi-coherent contribution to the discussion anyway.
As an independent, non-coerced, non-substance abusing, intelligent and self actualized prostitute I feel it should be noted that there are many people who enter into sex work of their own accord.
Sure, times have been tough and that is what led me to make this choice.
Yet daily I am aware of that choice and hold plenty of autonomy within it.
Yes, there are too many who are forced and abused. That is a long and complicated discussion with no easy answers.
However for the women who do find themselves in sex work it is indeed women like Morgan that can help make the experience not only less assaulting but perhaps even something they can look back on as a positive learning curve.
Oh how I wish I had my own house Mom around to help me keep things in order. Someone to do the laundry, decipher emails and vet potential clients so I can remain as safe as I have so far. A house Mom to vacuum while I finish my makeup and hair and get myself into the proper mood. Someone to remind me to consider not being careless with my money so I can have that next big trip sooner and maybe even a down payment on a home. I sure could use someone to vent to let alone seek advice like Morgan offers.
A “Mom” who reassures me by her mere presence that my work is valuable.
Hell, even a Madame would be nice some days.
Like Antonia stated this work has enhanced my life and made me terribly sad at times as well.
I saved my money and made a dream come true by traveling though Europe last year. I have not only payed my bills, saved some cash but also been able to have the time and perspective to work diligently and productively on my art.
Yet I find that some of my experiences have left me jaded towards men at times and suspicious of their intent. One can only be surrounded with so much narcissism for so long before it seems like the entire gender suffers from it pathologically.
By the way, I know they don’t.
Surely far from being gang raped and being held captive but a source of angst that I must process and heal from.
Yet I don’t assume everyone else has the same story.
Bad or good.
There are more and more people doing sex work that are absolutely thrilled to be doing it and while it doesn’t change the fact that more and more people are being forced to do it and brutalized in the process it does indicate that there is hope.
Needless to say it is people who are empowered in the world of sex work that are capable, knowledgeable and eager to help those who are less fortunate in their circumstances.
Jumping to conclusions sure doesn’t help.
I applaud women like Morgan and thank Antonia for bringing their work to light.
Wow. Thanks so much for this interview. I feel that your question about pimps is not naive at all. I was a stripper for 15 years (’88-2003)in many different locations and many types of clubs,in many different countries and I had never heard of such a thing. The idea of a pimp would have been laughable to us. In fact, back then, we made so much money stripping that the idea of prostitution was laughable. I hear now that it is commonplace.
I had also never worked in a place that had a house mom except at one club in Texas. I didn’t care for her much. She was a bitch, but not a madam on any level. She just wasn’t kind to the traveling girls. Thank you for this lovely insight on a woman who really cares.
I can’t help but be wildly skeptical toward many of these responses. There seems to be a pack instinct at play here, and the fact that all these responses came immediately after Antonia posted two days ago, while my posts had sat there for weeks without comment, seems to indicate behind the scenes organization. Don’t bother denying, I can’t prove it — but it is an interesting pattern.
Antonia, because the Rumpus had rather horrifically linked to an organization run by a madame, I responded too strongly at the beginning, and apologized to you. This is because I know how bad pimps and madams are. You admit you don’t know about them because you haven’t been affiliated with them, which I respect. What I need to explain is that pimps and madams have murdered my friends. They have arranged for the captivity and systemic torturelike abuse of millions of young women worldwide. I hate them, and I want to kill them. It’s something I fight actually, this strong anger that is born from extreme trauma, because it can distort the world and ruin your life. It can make the torturers, the creeps win. I want to kill them but I won’t of course. Blake wrote: “Oh rose thou art sick/ the invisible worm/which flies in the night/ in the howling storm/ has found out thy bed/ of crimson joy/ and his dark secret love/ does thy life destroy.” THe pimps, panderers, and society’s pastiche characterization of prostitution is that invisible worm, destorying the lives of MILLIONs of young women each year.
And I’m sorry, but it IS the fault of the sex industry. I believe you are equating your own sexual freedom with the sex industry here — it’s a common mistake. I think you care about women, and as a lesbian you are drawn to women and want to help them. So perhaps some of your experience in prostitution involves fellow feeling with the women there. This is beautiful — some of the women who have done the most to help prostitutes have been lesbians, such as Edwina Gately, who started a safe house for hookers in Chicago called Genesis House. I think Edwina is a modern day saint.
But to say that trafficking, murder, abuse, gang rape, and kidnapping of young women isn’t the fault of the sex industry is kind of like saying it Hitler wasn’t behind the death of millions in WWII because he didn’t personally shoot them all.
I think your identity as a ‘prostitute’ or a ‘dancer’ is part of your lifestyle, and also part of how you promote your art. Maybe it’s also how you earn a few bucks. I know you also teach dancing, and other things too …. But it’s not who you are. It’s never been what you are, which is a good thing.
Anybody with any meaningful experience in the prostitution ‘business’ (what a euphemism) would immediately recognize my story. THe issue wouldn’t be whether or not prostitutes were ‘victims’ (only the truly privileged can imagine they are not victims — think about it — it sounds almost like role play), but what we can do to help them. And it definitely does not help prostitutes to trumpet their existence as a fantasy of sexual freedom or edgy art. Yes, as artists we want to turn ourselves inside out, and sex is at our center, so we must write about it. All this is a mission.
But we should not profit off the suffering of others. And if we are assuming the identity of a suffering people, we must remember our sisters. Every day.
The point in all my comments was not to attack Antonia, but to remind people who sex workers REALLY are, and what REALLY happens. It makes me more than a little squeamish to read these tut tut scoldings.
A girl locked in a brothel and beaten up on a daily basis, forced to sleep with as many as twenty-five men a day isn’t interested in vain conversation about the different viewpoints of victimization. To me this seems quite obvious.
There’s another ugly side to all of this — many of the people who claim that the sex industry is a cornucopia of benevolence without victims are actually profitting off of the exploitation of women. It’s important to the pimps to to pump the fantasy. It’s how they make money. It’s why the sex industry is no different from blood diamonds.
I want to clarify that I am NOT saying Antonia is profiting off the suffering of others. I am simply imploring her to remember that 99 out of 100 women in the sex industry nave stories like mine. I think those of us who are privileged enough to be writing a column in a high-falutin online literary journal, or in my case, privileged enough to have gotten out of the nightmare, have that responsibility.
Perhaps this makes me boring. But I can’t forget my sisters, or my friends who were murdered.
Antonio it took a lot of guts to respond directly and I appreciate that. I wish you joy and inspiration always.
Antonia I need to also say that my comments here aren’t speaking at all to who you are as an artist — you are an extremely affecting writer possessing abundant gifts. I never meant it as an attack on your art. Your art is sacred to me, and I celebrate you as an artist. Love, Bedelia
Like Bridgette above and many other sex workers who I’ve had the privilege to speak with and befriend over the years, I am only speaking from my experience, which is far from high-falutin but also more fortunate than others. I think it’s divisive to separate ourselves into groups for it causes resentment and hostility. Through my interviews, I’ve heard that tone of divisiveness among sex workers: Porn stars think they’re better than strippers. Escorts think they’re better than porn stars. Strippers think they’re better than hookers. Burlesque dancers think they’re better than everyone. It makes me sad because it’s not helping women as a group at all.
On that note, there are many resources (not enough but some) that I want to share with you, Bedelia and your friends. Mary Magdeline project http://www.mmp.org/ is for streetwalkers who are trying to transition out of the work. Coyote is both in SF and LA and it’s primarily run by a tremendous woman Norma Jean Almodovar who used to work for LAPD and went to prison for TWO YEARS because she wrote a book called “Why I Left the LAPD to Make an Honest Living as a Call Girl.” If you live in SF, there are many more resources available to you, like sliding scale counseling services that could help you and others heal from trauma.
I hope that telling my story-and you telling yours-will bring more women out of hiding, help them feel less alone. I stand by my experience, that I entered the sex industry as a man-hating feminist lesbian and found that my clients were generous, interesting, lonely people who paid my rent for over ten years in SF. For the record, I’m a queer-identified straight woman, not a lesbian.
Coyote is a horrible organization run by pimps for their own profit. Prostitutes would be too scared to join, and they’d be correct in that assessment.
YOu’re talking about DIVISIVENESS in the industry? There’s big problems with the term sex industry. I’ll tell you right now escorts don’t think they’re better than porn stars. What a strange assertion. Escorts know they’re viewed as the lowest of the low, that society often finds their lives dispensible.
To champion COYOTE is to champion pimps. It’s helping those who exploit the traumatized, abused, often trafficked women. I think perhaps you are unaware of this. Otherwise, it would be unforgivable.
Antonia, I implore you, let go of your ego and think about what your doing here, and how it’s affecting millions of women worldwide.
OK forgive me, I didn’t realize you were a queer-identified straight woman, as you’d mentioned being a radical lesbian feminist, which made me think of Edwina Gately, one of my heroes. I don’t really think of how I am identified in the scheme of such things. I think of the terrorized women in the sex industry.
The problem with the term sex industry is that it’s way too broad. It’s like using the term workers to encompass everyone from volunteer candystripers to those enslaved and forced to work 16 hour days in mines until they die.
Ultimately what the word sex worker does is whitewash the horror of prostitution. It’s just what the pimps want. It reminds me of the way the concentration camps in the Soviet Union were called re-education camps.
FWIW, Antonia, I got out of prostitution 13 years ago and have done extensive work healing from trauma. But trauma as severe as that I experienced in the sex industry can never go away. You have to learn how to manage it. You and I are close in age.
I’m very skeptical of the Mary Magdalene project because they are associated with COYOTE. It’s not uncommon for these organizations to spring up as fronts for pimps. They have access to the most vulnerable young women, and they get well-meant donor’s money. I would discourage anyone from donating to the Mary Magdalene Project.
A more worthy organization is Restore NYC
http://www.restorenyc.org
They were profiled by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times in this piece.
Norma Jean Almodovar entered prostitution way too late to really understand the experience, as she was at least 31 years old.
Sorry, here’s the Kristof link for Restore NYC
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/opinion/28kristof.html
Norma Jean Almodovar didn’t go to prison for writing a book. She went to prison for pimping to members of the lAPD. So to have her running an organization ‘helping’ hookers is a little like having a fox run the henhouse. No hooker will ever trust such a situation. All they will feel is more despair, because even the organizations society holds up as existing to help prostitutes are actually run by the people abusing and exploiting them. In my opinion, any donation to Almodovar’s organization would be wasted.
What Almodovar is doing (her maiden name is Wright) is quite common. She is a pimp pretending to be a hooker. She’s publicizing legalization of prostitution because it will make pimps lives even easier. She’s interchanging the word hooker with pimp, even though those words have extremely different meanings.
Indirectly she’s silencing hookers. It’s a very old trick.
I never knew what kind of support a house mom was supposed to provide until I began working at my second club. The club that I work at is as far from people’s stereotypes about strip clubs as possible, and I started dancing as a practical means to support myself as a student at a private school. It’s a job, and one that I enjoy, but I can identify with Miss Marty when she talks about euphemising her job title to strangers.
When I began dancing, I made it a point to myself not to lie when people asked me what I did for a living. I wouldn’t have lied to someone about working in retail or in a bar, so why should I lie about how I’m getting myself through school now? Soon enough, though, I began telling people that I was a full-time student (true) or freelanced as an art model and copy writer (also true) after having experiencing reactions that shocked the hell out of me when I told people I was a stripper. I still feel a bit of guilt when answering the question, “So, where do you work?”, but feel that it’s more important to protect myself from strangers’ ignorant reactions that it is to prove a point to someone who isn’t open to seeing it.
I try not to be too judgmental, and realize that the people I encounter represent only a tiny cross-section of society, but the group that seems to react most irrationally to finding out what I do for a living are other young women. I find this sad, considering that most strippers are themselves a part of the same demographic. Do we secretly hate ourselves? No. So where does this strong divide come from?
Antonia, this was a great interview. I think that Miss Marty’s work helping the girls at her club makes it worth feeling the need to tell white lies about what she does for a living. The best house moms can convince a girl to stay through tough times and keep her self esteem up in an industry that can really knock a woman’s self image down. Her efforts to set a good financial example for the dancers are above and beyond, and something that more house moms should do.
WHOA!!! Lots of issues, so little space on the Web! chill out folks, I can barely keep up 🙂
First off, I am a longtime 100% fully consenting sex worker as well as an activist and author (link to my blog is above).
Bedelia – What happened to you was an inexcusable violation of your inalienable rights as a human being. It is wrong in every sense of the word and I am so sorry you had to go through that 🙁 The people who did that to you ought to be publicly hung, or perhaps shot by firing squad (sorry…was that overly violent? o well, I meant it).
Let me tell you who is really responsible: our government and police. Their mission is to protect and serve; their only moral duty in free society is to defend the individual’s right to life. Instead, while unthinkable horrors were happening to you, they were too fucking busy investigating, arresting, and prosecuting thousands and thousands of girls like Antonia to do anything for you!
According to common law, Antonia didn’t even commit a crime (read the story of her arrest)! For a crime to be a crime, there must be a victim! So why does government at state and federal levels spend so much time and money to investigate, arrest, and prosecute her and so many others for prostitution and other ‘consensual crimes’ that harm no one except perhaps the perpetrators themselves?
I’ll tell you why – for power, and for money. What’s in it for them to rule innocent people? Nothing – so they make so many things a crime that they literally create criminals – ostracize potential dissidents from society as criminals – and cash in. Sweet deal huh…for government and the corporations they represent!
Your tragedy wasn’t caused by the sex industry (and I’ll ignore the reference to Hitler – except to point out that no one in the sex industry has ever held any position of power). Your tragedy and many others have been caused by the CRIMINALIZATION of the sex industry. Why do you think a police officer participated in your abuse with absolutely no fear of getting caught? Because it’s sex work, that’s why! I wrote a column about just this subject – “Cause We All Know That Ain’t Cool” – violence against sex workers and why “they” think they can (and often do) get away with it. They figure that since prostitution is illegal and not acceptable in society, prostitutes won’t go to the police nor will anyone notice if they’re missing 🙁
Never, ever, ever forget your friends who didn’t make it. Although they need to be remembered every day, December 17th is a special day to remember such victims of violence: International Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers. If you would like for your friends to be among those honored next Dec 17, please feel free to contact me anytime and I’ll make sure they are included 🙁 I am deeply sorry for your loss.
I realize that your experience makes it difficult for you to understand that there are individuals who for whatever very different reasons voluntarily choose to become involved with sex work. I can assure you from my own many years of experience that the vast majority of sex workers are doing it voluntarily. That’s not to say that they love their work, but no one is forcing them to do it. Do not mistake my words as minimizing the experience that you have had – if you are only one of a thousand it is one too many. Consenting sex workers would like nothing more than for sex work to be decriminalized so we could fully participate in efforts to bring predators such as those who hurt you to justice.
As far as privilege and division – coincidentally, this has been a much discussed issue of late! All our experiences are different, but we all share common oppression. Concerning Antonia’s supposed ‘privilege’ – let me assure you that up until today I’d never even read her writings – but it’s pretty obvious in reading them that she’s gone through some pretty tough times too.
Norma Jean Almodovar is one of the most influential civil rights activists of my generation and was never a pimp. She did time in prison for acting on her beliefs and because the LAPD wanted to stop her from writing a book revealing their own corruption. Of course, since popular support immediately goes to law enforcement, she only managed to get her book published years later, after the Rodney King videos were made public.
She had tried to expose the same types of crimes by the LAPD years before as she had seen them firsthand as a LAPD traffic cop.
Additionally, SWOP most certainly isn’t run by a madam. Although I don’t share every single one of their viewpoints, I am a member and they do a lot of good in communities across the world. Robin Few, like Norma Jean, was simply a victim of the same police abuse and harassment we all suffer. Believe me – the more one speaks out about such issues – the greater of a target they become.
The term ‘concentration camp’ can be used to describe one thing – concentration camps. Period.
Neither do I want to glamourize sex work and no I do not want my daughter to become a sex worker when she grows up. It’s not a prescription for an easy life by any means, and because of criminalization it is a playground for predators.
Bedelia – I appreciate that you don’t want to hurt anyone and admire you for making that clear even though you disagree with some views expressed. I urge you to at least consider some of mine, even if yours subsequently remain unchanged 🙂
Really good comments here from all involved! thanks!
Kelly James
sincerelykelly.com
P.S. and Antonia – what up beautiful? I enjoyed your writing very, very much. I must say though – as a bisexual woman myself – what in the world is a queer-identified straight woman? xoxo, in any event, do stop by and render my corner of the web a more beautiful place sometime 🙂
Antonia. You opened with this lead: “One story involves a double murder-suicide, love triangle between two house moms who worked at Scarlet’s in July of 2005. Patricia Tipton and Julie Carreras ended an eight-year relationship and had words with their lover, stripper Lark Bennett, and it ended in their deaths by gunshot wounds fired during the fight in Carreras’ home.”
Then you leave us hanging. Not another word about this murder. I surfed around and found references to it in various blogs and it quotes the ages of the house moms, Carreras and Tipton, as 45 and 55 (the pair breaking up) and of Bennette, as being 45.
I thought strippers, like athletes, had to toss it in after about age 32. How did this lady work as a stripper until age 45? Isn’t that unusual? So are you giving us a full story here?
Tell us more.
THIS WAS A GREAT READ!!!!! THANKS
Let’s shake the dust off this one. Loved how Clark’s comment brought everything to a crashing halt. When my spouse decided not to work anymore and I had a five year old and my older daughter and her 3 kids lived with us, I cleaned houses for $15 an hour off the books. We worked every welfare and social service op we could, paid rent and utilities on time, bought pajamas for 25cents a pair at rummage sales and survived. Sex workers ALWAYS have a “reason” why they are in that biz. So many contradictions and inconsistencies in Marty’s story. I am surprised it made it to the Rumpus at all.
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