Free Spent by Antonia Crane Page B

couldn’t find anyone to cover me and I didn’t get my raise,” Sybil said. Black girls were allotted fewer shifts and hardly ever worked in the Private Pleasures booth. Busty girls had to find busty dancers to cover their shifts. Black girls had to find other black girls to cover theirs. If we didn’t find a girl to cover within our “type,” we would be missing from the schedule the following week as punishment. In response, we organized. We elected a union organizer and shop stewards. We hired an attorney and got to work. We dressed up in skimpy outfits and passed out free condoms in baskets on Market Street holding up signs that said “Support Your Local Stripper.” Our community buzzed with the delight of making change happen, but we showed up to work churning with anxiety. If show directors caught us talking onstage, they would write us up. They fired us for tiny infractions while we researched unions and union busters. Management used every single tactic in the union-busting manual including a poster-sized check for ten grand made out to the union with a sign that said, “Don’t write this check,” implying that union dues would break the bank, and we’d be better off without the union.
    My work place had become a chaotic war zone, but one in which we felt strong and bonded by our determination. We were going to make the world a better place for strippers. We were also scared of the possible repercussions. We taped flyers to the mirrors in the dressing room that said “Bad Girls Like Good Contracts” and left a copy of the book “Confessions of a Union Buster” on the dressing room table. My legs ached from riding my bicycle from the Lower Haight to North Beach in order to avoid being even one minute late, which would get me fired. Velvet whispered to me “watch it. There are moles onstage.” Later that day, Summer was fired for talking onstage about the union. She had a young son and no other job. We walked out in protest and stayed out of the club for forty-eight hours, scared and broke. Our rage only made us fight harder. In the Private Pleasures Booth, I procured support from my regular clients, like Speculum Man. He always brought his favorite dancers toys and kept them at the front desk in Ziplocs with notes. I did a show for him in Private Pleasures and then we made plans to meet up across the street at The Onion where we gathered signatures from clients and friends to support our union, played pool, and talked about wanting our basic rights. During one lockout, Star arranged for one of her devoted clients to do a show with us outside. He wanted to take us to a construction zone where we would cover ourselves in mud. For a day of posing for him in the hot sun we would make a few hundred bucks each. Afterwards, as I cleaned my ears with a pile of Q-tips, I was elated by the feeling of being unified inside and outside of the club. I called Mom.
    â€œMom, we are trying to unionize at my job.”
    â€œThe clothing store?”
    â€œNo, the place where I took you—the club where I dance. A girl got fired the other day for talking about our union. So we are on a lockout.”
    â€œHoney. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Remember that.”
    â€œThanks, Mom.”
    The dispute took months of long negotiations and meetings. They tried to tire us out by protracted delays in order to test us—to see if we really wanted to go through the trouble to unionize. During one of many tedious contract negotiation meetings, we demanded that they rehire Summer. After several months, we won our election 75-15, becoming SEIU Local 790: The Exotic Dancer’s Alliance. The Lusty Lady was the first strip club in the United States to successfully unionize. By then, I had already moved over to the full-contact lap dancing clubs to make the real money. But knowing we had won made me dance with a new determination and