couldnât find anyone to cover me and I didnât get my raise,â 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 didnât find a girl to cover within our âtype,â 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 âSupport Your Local Stripper.â 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, âDonât write this check,â implying that union dues would break the bank, and weâd 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 âBad Girls Like Good Contractsâ and left a copy of the book âConfessions of a Union Busterâ 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 âwatch it. There are moles onstage.â 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.
âMom, we are trying to unionize at my job.â
âThe clothing store?â
âNo, the place where I took youâthe club where I dance. A girl got fired the other day for talking about our union. So we are on a lockout.â
âHoney. You donât have to do anything you donât want to do. Remember that.â
âThanks, Mom.â
The dispute took months of long negotiations and meetings. They tried to tire us out by protracted delays in order to test usâto 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 Dancerâs 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