Gentlemen’s Club - The Cat’s Pajamas

As I neared the end of the journey of Gentlemen’s Club a few one-on-one interviews with dancer’s partners stood out as amongst the best of the whole project. They were all done in 2019, in Portland and New Orleans, two cities I had chosen to re-visit due to referrals after my earlier travels there. In this blog post I will pull choice quotes from each, in the order of the images displayed here; read them in context in the published book.

Chip, Portland

So, obviously you went through a period where you were struggling with the work she was doing. What do you see the nugget of the problem as being?

My male privilege and playing the patriarch, taking ownership over her body.

But don't you think it's something more based in you? When we go to political terminology and stuff, it's a way of not talking about how we personally feel.

I'm using those terms is because I feel like I still, as an open-minded individual, have stigma around how I view my partner and how I view her body. My hurt and my difficulty in that whole space was because of that ownership I was taking over her. That's why realizing that I was doing that in the moment, because basically I was…my choice was to be with her or not. She really stood for herself. She was like, “I’m not going to choose you or my client.”

She's like, “This is what I do, you're going to either accept what I do or not.” That was amazing for me.

It was so hurtful at first. It was explosive, and I left and just lived in the woods for ten days to negotiate in myself what that meant.

Where did you go?

I went to Mount Hood. I camped out at my friend's place. I restructured their deck, and I was just living in a tent in the forest.

When you were hurt by that, what did that mean?

That I felt that I was less important than this other person. Because he had more money than I had and that's why she was going to give him more attention.

Was it more attention or just some attention?

I think that's something we continue to negotiate, physical intimacy, if that's your work, right? And that's your relationship with a certain person, then you're showing up fully. You come home, you're tired.

That's what I was feeling. She was not giving me that time, so therefore I was relating that I am not successful enough, I don't have enough money to get my own wife's attention. I was feeling like I lost everything that I was holding, as far as making things okay about what she did, which was that fact that I was having sex with her and that was it.

Zachary, New Orleans

How are women who are dancers different than women who don’t dance? From your experience, if you just met some nice guy through work and he’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m dating a dancer,” what assumptions would you make?

Honestly, I feel that a lot of dancers date shitty guys. They either date guys that are really amazing for them, or guys that are just really shitty for them. There’s not much in the middle of the road.

For example, I’ve heard numerous times these couples live together, the boyfriend doesn't have a job, and she’s supporting this guy fully. The girl’s dating a guy that is not holding up his side of the relationship whatsoever. Often coming along with that is treating the girl like trash, verbally putting her down, or even physically abusing them.

I wouldn't be able to sit around the house and let someone else support me. It would drive me insane.

Why do you think it is that women who dance either choose the great guy or the awful guy?

It would be that they are usually stuck in a situation that is familiar and that’s comfortable, and then on the other side of that is most of the girls that do dance have a high amount of confidence. It takes a lot of confidence to get on stage naked in front of a whole room full of people. [Laughs.]

They might not be confident in all areas of their life, but they have a level of confidence that a lot of people don’t, and through having that, they will attract people of higher caliber. A girl who knows their worth goes to the club and the guy says, “I’ll give you $5 to do a lap dance,” they’re going to laugh in their face.

It’s the same thing, where they understand the levels of what they feel they are. They’re not going to accept a lower, bottom-of-the-barrel person for a boyfriend. Dancing teaches a lot of girls to know their worth and only accept what they want.

Ian, New Orleans

Are there times when you find yourself distracted by her work and you guys need to talk about it?

Yeah. Jealousy is always going to be an emotion we’re going to feel. Because I’m susceptible to it, in particular, what has really helped us is when we acknowledge that it will happen.

We’ve got a book, actually, here. There’s nothing in it currently. It’s called “Unpleasant Weather” and any time we have an issue that we’d like to talk about, we write it down and we give it some time. We sit down together, we address it, which we’ve done a couple times. We just haven’t written it down because it’s always been something that’s on the edge.

We’re like, “Okay, we’ll take some time, and we talk about it,” but yeah, jealousy is a huge issue. It’s always going to happen, so what we do is we just prepare. Edison said, “Good luck is the result of preparation.” So, we prepare. We give each other platforms to listen. We hear, and it really mitigates how long of an episode the jealousy ends up being. As long as we reduce the amount of times that happens, and the amount of time when it happens, how long it goes for, we will just increase the happiness in between each.

Anybody that gets wrapped up in a relationship that’s shitty…why do they stay with that person? With dancers, it might be harder for them to get out of that situation because their work consists of putting out that energy that they would otherwise be using to find somebody else.