Free All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, by Craig Seymour Page A

the time were limited to "Don't yawn onstage" and "Don't let them stick your dick in their mouths."
    On one of my first nights, I was dancing onstage when a short, bald guy walked over to me. I moved closer to him and, misjudging our relative distance, poked him in the center of his forehead with my hard dick. Everybody around us started laughing. I kneeled down. "I'm really sorry," I said, embarrassed. But then I saw that the bald man was laughing, too. He spent the rest of the night trying to "accidentally" get me to knock him in the head again.
    Finally, I said to him, "Isn't this getting a little old?"
    "Never," he asked, laughing and stuffing a wad of dollars in my sock. "So, what's your name?"
    "Craig," I said, kneeling down. "What's yours?"
    "Michael," he said, with one hand on my cock. "Are you new here?"
    "I just started working here, but I've been working at the Follies for a couple of months."
    "Well, you're quite good at what you do."
    "Thanks."
    "Hey," he said. "Do you mind if I rub your ass? You have a beautiful butt,"
    "OK, but no fingers."
    "Promise," he said, crossing his fingers.
    Then I turned around and bent over on my knees as he rubbed my ass cheeks. I let him do this for about a minute, then I turned back around.
    "Wow, that was amazing," he said. "You're a beautiful
    "Glad to be of service," I said with a smile.
    "Now, one last thing," he added, tipping me another few bucks. "Will you hit me on the head with your cock again?"
    "I guess," I said, before tapping him on his bald dome again. All his friends started clapping.
    "Thanks," he said. "No bullshit. You've made my whole night, my week even."
    "No problem," I said, giving him a hug.
    The idea that I could make some guy so happy by simply hitting him over the head with my dick and letting him rub my butt gave me a rush. There was something appealing about the whole experience of letting a stranger feel my body. It was all about sensation, skin on skin. And the surprising thing is that for the most part, it didn't feel gross or sleazy. In fact, the whole thing made me feel strangely powerful, like I'd been given a new way to communicate.
    That night, when I arrived home, Seth was already asleep. But as I climbed into bed, after taking a shower, he turned over in his sleep and put his arms around me. I lay there and thought about the lyrics to one of my favorite songs by the seventies soul sister act the Emotions: "Blessed that be the ties that bind." I knew that what Seth and I had was real, grounded, tight, binding.
    But I also knew that there was something equally real going on with me and some of my customers, like Michael. I felt the pleasure I gave to them. There was even something pure and innocent about the way they so nakedly exposed their desires, the way they so openly derived pleasure from someone they thought was beautiful. Sure, the whole thing was based around the exchange of cash, but that didn't solely define what went on or how the customers felt about it. Money was simply how each story began.
    Everything at the club was far more complex than I even imagined before I started dancing myself. This became especially clear as I had the chance to get close to some of my fellow dancers, my comrades in this brotherhood of boys gone wild. Between sets, we'd shoot the shit in the Secrets dressing room, which was really a large, restaurant-quality kitchen due to that goofy D.C. law requiring all bars to be fully equipped to serve food. The talk often ran to occupational hazards like how to keep your dick from chafing after being rubbed all night (most guys used Elbow Grease, but there was a small but vocal cocoa butter contingent) and how to stop those customers who try to stick their fingers up your ass (when you kneel down, sit on the heel of your foot). These discussions bonded us despite our differences. Some of us were gay; some were straight; others figured it out day by day, dollar by dollar. But we all had to grapple with what it meant