Christine drives to work around 3 p.m. in her navy blue 2000 Chevy Cavalier. She is dressed casually in Guess Jean shorts and a T-shirt from her high school. Travel bag in hand and thick makeup freshly applied, she walks into the windowless, plain establishment in which she works at least three times a week.
After losing TOPS last semester, she knows that the money she makes tonight will help her pay for her own tuition. In fact, not only will she pay her tuition, she will have money left over for personal use, such as dining in restaurants like Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and buying designer clothes like Big Star denim and Hollister along with M.A.C. makeup.
Christine does not have a conventional job. She is a stripper.
Wishing to remain anonymous by referring to herself as “Christine,” she is an 18-year-old theatre freshman from Gonzales, La. As comfortable with her body as a painter is with a brush, she not only dances for a living but also poses nude for pornographic photos, which have been posted on the Internet.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Holly Danner, Christine’s former roommate, said Christine had been talking about being a stripper since the end of last semester.
“She talked about it when we were looking for jobs,” Danner said. “We’d see ads in The Reveille and joke about it. She was supposed to audition a few times but didn’t.”
After she participated in a wet T-shirt contest in January at the Texas Club, though, she became more serious about it, Danner said.
“She said, ‘I feel like I should be a stripper, do you think I could be one?,'” Danner said.
Christine first worked at 5-7-9, a clothing store in the Mall of Louisiana, starting in January, but that did not last long.
“They weren’t paying me enough and they were making me work too many hours,” she said.
She quit after about a month and opted for something with more pay.
While applying for a job as a waitress at The Gold Club, a local strip club on Bennington Avenue, the manager suggested she try another position.
“The manager saw me and was like, ‘She’s cute, let her try out for dancing,'” Christine said.
Apprehensive at first, she was convinced to take the stage that night in front of customers ready to spend their cash.
“I was shaking and everything,” Christine said. “I could barely take the tips.”
After dancing twice — one number in a green two-piece consisting of a beaded halter top and skirt, the next in only a g-string — the management hired her instantly, she said.
In mid-February she began stripping regularly at The Gold Club — earning in a night what she had made in a week at 5-7-9.
A LIFE-CHANGING JOB
“She was fine whenever she wasn’t stripping — she was normal,” said her current roommate, Stephanie Walker, a computer engineering freshman. “Her ego got bigger. She started to think she could get any guy at any time and any place.”
Danner witnessed first-hand how much Christine has changed in the past few months.
“The first semester at school, she didn’t really show her true self,” she said. “I thought we had a lot in common. She was calm, cool. As time went on, her ego went through the roof.”
Danner moved out Feb. 10 and moved back to her hometown for personal reasons. She said when she moved out, Christine stopped going to class.
Walker believes she is going to flunk out of LSU.
“She hasn’t been to class in two and a half months; she’s already on academic probation and she didn’t take her mid-terms,” Walker said.
Christine, although admitting that she has “fooled around” in the past, is trying to get back on track.
“I don’t like school, but I know I have to go,” she said. “I’m going to have to crack down in the summer and next fall. I know that if I don’t get a career, I’ll end up doing this for the rest of my life. I don’t want to have kids and them know that their mom is a stripper. If I don’t crack down, I’ll be kicked out of school.”
Christine wants to become a professor and teach theatre courses because she thinks that theatre is an interesting subject and she also likes kids.
“I was pre-med, and I took a theatre class and fell in love,” she said. “I was like, ‘I have to do this for the rest of my life.’ It was awesome.”
A DAY IN THE LIFE
On a typical day of work, Christine likes to get to The Gold Club early to avoid paying a house fine. The house fine is in place to ensure that dancers will be there between the hours of 3 p.m. and 9 p.m., Christine said.
If a dancer shows up at 3 p.m., she does not have to pay a fine, but if she arrives at 4 p.m., she is fined $10. Every hour after, the price increases by $5, except between the hours of 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., where it increases by $10. This brings the maximum fine to $40.
Christine said she dances to two songs on the main stage, five to six times a night. She likes dancing to Led Zeppelin, especially “Kashmir” and “Black Dog.” “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” by Def Leppard, is also a favorite.
Between her main stage dances, she does table dances — no-contact dances which take place on an 18-inch pedestal in front of a table of customers.
Occasionally, work is not as enjoyable, due to some of the clientele that frequent the club.
“Sometimes it’s a lot to handle the customers,” Christine said. “There are a lot that are really gross, really obnoxious. They’ll tell you things [and you’re] like, ‘Oh my God, why did you tell me that?'”
One customer last week was particularly sleazy.
“Someone stole my skirt last night,” she said. “The bouncer caught him walking out with it in his hand.”
Even though there are obnoxious customers, normally the clientele are considerate.
“There are a lot of doctors and lawyers that go into The Gold Club,” Christine said. “It’s a little bit of a more classier club.”
Christine said that the club opens at 3 p.m., but it does not get busy until around 9 p.m. The regulars come early, she said.
“I have a regular customer,” she said. “It’s me and two other girls. He sits with us. He doesn’t like for us to sit with anyone else when he is there.”
Then there is the V.I.P. room. Christine described them as semi-private rooms where customers can sit and talk with a dancer, and she can dance for him.
“It’s a whole lot of fun when you get two girls in the V.I.P. room,” she said. “We cut up, laugh, we’re all pretty good friends.”
Not every V.I.P. room customer, however, is a “whole lot of fun.”
Last week, Christine had a customer who claimed to have dated a Las Vegas stripper, and said that he wanted to touch her. She declined.
“He kept telling me all this crap he wanted to do to me, and I was like, ‘Oh God you’re such a nasty old man,'” Christine said.
A SEX OBJECT
Christine, although not practicing, is a Catholic.
“I go to church when I can; I’m kind of lazy about church actually,” she said. “I would like to get more into the religion, but I’m just too lazy about church. It’s something you shouldn’t be lazy about though, but I am and I feel bad. Especially doing what I do.”
As for her profession, she does not necessarily think that it is sinful.
“I know it’s probably not right in God’s eyes, but I feel like maybe God understands because I want to go to school,” Christine said. “I would never be able to make enough money doing anything else.”
Christine, not surprisingly, describes herself as a sexual person.
“I’ve been with a lot of people,” she said. “I won’t lie.”
Her roommates do not agree with some of the choices she makes.
Danner does not have a problem with Christine stripping, but she thinks that she should re-think her decisions to pose nude in pornographic photos.
“I think she should not be doing that,” she said. “She doesn’t take the precautions that she should. I worry about her safety because she doesn’t think about it. She does it for the money or the thrill.”
Walker has seen some of the photos that were posted on the Internet.
“There are hundreds she has taken,” Walker said. “It’s unbelievable how many pictures she’s taken. She made me look at them; I thought it was a one-time photo shoot. I went through them quickly; I was uncomfortable.”
As the photo shoots progressed, the material was worse and worse, with more nudity and close-ups on “specific areas,” Walker said.
Christine makes around $300 per photo session, which includes six to 10 photos of her, as well as a few posing with another female.
She has only been in one pornographic video that was posted on the Internet, but declined to mention exactly what type of material the video contained. She said she will probably stick to photos, and that it is just a fun thing to do right now.
Christine will continue to strip, as long as she needs money.
“It’s fun for people to see you as being sexy and to see you as a sex object, I think,” she said. “Some women don’t think [so], but I do. It’s like we’re all fantasy women. Every man has a fantasy woman, and you’re guaranteed to find one that’s at least like her in the club. Nobody is the same outside of the club, nobody looks the same, acts the same. We all go there, we all have a role to play.”