I’m happy that a woman comes out of the strip club. The dancers at this place have always given me good tips.
I ask her how her night went, and she says not very good. The past two nights she hasn’t been able to make money; the other girls have been doing disgusting shit and undercutting her.
I ask her how that works.
“I’m a prostitute,” she says, “but I’m a prostitute with morals.”
It turns out that the place I picked her up at on the east side is more brothel than strip joint. She breaks it down for me: They don’t serve alcohol, so they aren’t regulated by the OLCC. There’s a pole and a stage, but the real business is “shows.” Men pay $150, and they go in a room with the girls with a couch, a towel, and speakers playing the country music from the main room. And they have sex with the girls. The girl gets $100, the club gets $50. But some girls will fuck for less, meaning the others get less business.
I pull up in front of her place. I want to turn around and tell her that she has so many other options. She seems a lot more reasonable and perceptive than half the people I deal with.
Instead, I tell her that it’s $17. She only gives me a dollar for a tip. As she gets out, I tell her to take care of herself.
Nobody died and named me Travis Bickle.
I ask her how her night went, and she says not very good. The past two nights she hasn’t been able to make money; the other girls have been doing disgusting shit and undercutting her.
I ask her how that works.
“I’m a prostitute,” she says, “but I’m a prostitute with morals.”
It turns out that the place I picked her up at on the east side is more brothel than strip joint. She breaks it down for me: They don’t serve alcohol, so they aren’t regulated by the OLCC. There’s a pole and a stage, but the real business is “shows.” Men pay $150, and they go in a room with the girls with a couch, a towel, and speakers playing the country music from the main room. And they have sex with the girls. The girl gets $100, the club gets $50. But some girls will fuck for less, meaning the others get less business.
I pull up in front of her place. I want to turn around and tell her that she has so many other options. She seems a lot more reasonable and perceptive than half the people I deal with.
Instead, I tell her that it’s $17. She only gives me a dollar for a tip. As she gets out, I tell her to take care of herself.
Nobody died and named me Travis Bickle.
it didn't occur to me that because i'm a "cute" girlie with pigtails driving a cab that in his eyes/mind/dick/whatever, i'm simply being of service.
six dollar fare. twenty dollar bill!
p.s. he was none of the above. wait. he was a little bit drunk and talked non stop about how he wanted to marry one of the strippers. rich dude on a business (s)trip!
thanks!
Most all of the half-wits I dealt with when I was a night cabbie were not the prostitutes or strippers or other exploited women, it was the disgusting, drooling, smelly, drunken men who seemed to think, thanks to our culture, that their greasy money entitled them to prod, poke and abuse any woman they wanted. I was hired to take them from point A to point B and made my living that way, thank you. Being a female means that most of the time one is stuck in between being the reverent mother goddess or the fuckable whore queen.
Can't just make a damn living and be left alone.
An old boss of mine used to loudly sing the praises of the employees of "Sugar's," in that inimitable East Coast greaseball accent of his. "Those other guys go in there and throw their money around," he would sneer. "I'm not like that. When I go in there, those girls are my friends." That was when we really knew we were dealing with a bona fide moron. Oh, how the employees of Sugar's would mock "Pizza Face," as they called him, behind his back, of course. He even bought one lucky lady a brand-new car, and managed to somehow hide this from his family.
Some working girls I knew went as far as to suggest that at least the johns who pay a prostitute of whatever persuasion for sex, straight up, are at least engaging in an honest business transaction, whereas the ones who pay for the attention, and the attention only, of strippers are simply pitiful sad sacks who deserve to be milked for every last dollar.
I concur. In fact, I won't spend one thin dime in those places. I am glad they are there, though...I make a lot of money off of the johns, too. And, as every night cabbie with half a brain rattling around in their skull well knows, the line between stripper and hooker is a very thin, blurry line indeed.
But hey, aren't we all prostituting ourselves in one way or another, really ?
How you could even begin to compare the trama of becoming a cum receptacle for dozens of dudes, or maybe just their touch-toy and object of verbal dehumanization, with the willing dispensing of money in order to view their idea of "what a woman should be like" is just sick. So they laugh at the johns. So what? It helps distance you from how sick the business is.
Sometimes it's your best choice, sometimes it's not a choice at all. Rarely, you decide to do it because you really want to, but that's so rare it's nearly non-existant. We need to have better choices for women that don't require becoming your jack-off tools.