Excerpts from "Lapdancer" #1

Titles Posted Later Today

I thought it would be fun to take the next couple of months to revisit my first book "Lapdancer", as I have a new book called "Juliana Beasley/ Sete 2010 coming out in the spring this year.

The following is a short story taken from an interview that I did back in 1999-2000 with a manager from a strip club in Monsey in Rockland County in New York state. The owner told me that I would have to work there to photograph there.

Some of the following photographs have never been published before. Look for more writing and pix in the weeks to come.

I dance a set of 20 minutes, rush to the changing room, grab my Contax, attach my heavy Quantum battery to the side of a g-string that would begin to sag from the weight of it , and hit the floor. In in a half hour's time, I have to play producer, convincing customers to let me photograph them with dancers, collect model releases and snap shots. I hear my stage name over the speaker, "Now, performing Nico!" I dash back to the dressing room, put away my equipment in my duffle bag and reapply my make-up and run back on the stage with a stellar smile on my face.

“The Million Dollar Question”- John

I started out working as a bouncer at a place called Erotique back in the early ’80s. It was the first big club to come into the area, a big strip club. And it was not nude. It was just topless, and there was no alcohol and no lap dancing. Then I went to another club called T & A. Again, no alcohol, no lap dancing. I came here in the early ’90s, and it was totally nude. And so the girls were up on the bar getting their money and stuff. And then one girl came up to me and said, “A guy wants a lap dance.” I had never heard of it. So I went back to my boss, and he knew less than I did. And so what we did is, we put about six chairs towards the back of the club and said, “These are chairs you can lap dance in.” And at that time we told the girls to charge ten bucks per song, and we would get three bucks out of it.

And it got so popular, it was like a mad house, the line to get in and sit on these chairs. And the funny thing was, they did it in front of everybody else. Nobody got shy, nobody was embarrassed. Me, I would have been embarrassed with an erection with a pretty girl sitting on me and everybody else gawking. Because at that time you did have people leaning against the posts or whatever, just looking at the customers with the girls. And the girls didn’t seem to mind—and they were pretty girls.

Eventually my boss, he got this idea. We took out part of the kitchen and we turned that into a lap dance room. We put like little cubicles up, with no doors because we wanted to see what was going on, and made like eight to nine stools. And then the girls were charging twenty-five bucks, and we would charge the customers five dollars just to get into the room. It just took off. People were coming here not to see the girls on stage, but to do the lap dances. And I always said lap dancing is probably going to put prostitution out of business. And what I meant by that is if a guy comes and gets a lap dance and he puts on a condom and if he does spill a little bit, it’s not going to get it on his clothes. Now there’s a plus; you call that safe sex. I think that’s what a lot of men look at it as. They’re not going to take any disease home. They’re going to come to a place like this and if it happens, it happens—you know, if they have an orgasm. Then they go home to their wives.

I’d never heard of it until we started doing it about nine years ago. I’m sure it happened before. But I think since we started doing it, word-of-mouth got around and now all the other clubs around here are doing it. And we advertise: “The best lap dance around.” And that’s what really works for us. We’re known as the club with the lap dance. We used to be called “Up Close And Personal”—the way the girls got on stage and got up in front of the guy. Believe it or not, some of these guys spend thousands of dollars a day on getting lap dances—a day.

Now we’ve even got VIP rooms in the back, where the guy can go in a little private room. There’s cameras in there. And these guys are paying a buck and a quarter [$125] for a half-hour, so they can get a private lap dance with a girl. It’s amazing. It really is.

They don’t know I have cameras back there. I have two different cameras, one an infrared—they think if they turn the lights off I can’t see them. Because let’s face it, I got to support my wife and kids. And knock on wood, I’ve never been shut down or raided. And a lot of clubs that have total nudity and the lap dances and the private rooms and whatever, they’ve been shut down several times. And we haven’t because of that security system.

The girls go back there. The guys tell them stories about how they like their wives, the position of them when they’re making love. Because I have sound on the cameras, too. And the guy will say, “You know, my wife likes it when she gets on her knees and this and that.” And the girls, you know, they talk back to the guys. Some of the guys like to be insulted. They like to have a girl put her high heel in their balls, you know, stuff like that. Some guys are just really weird. They don’t want to get off where other people can just walk by them or whatever. So the private rooms are worth it to them. And some of these guys are like bankers, or big shots in computers and chemists and all this. They come in, they have women’s clothes beneath their own clothes. So they undress; they got a woman’s bra on or whatever. And the girls spank them a little bit on their rear end. Things like that. But no sex goes on. Some guys don’t even want sex.

Several times I’ve caught a guy taking out his penis. And I have a buzzer back there. I hit the buzzer, and send the bouncer back there; he tells the guy the dance is over and he has to leave. I tell the guy he can come back another day. But if I catch him again—which has never happened—he’s out for life.

Don’t forget, I used to bounce before I became a manager. I was a bouncer out there for about three years. And what that means is, I was right next to the customers. So I had relationships with customers coming in and talking about sports, about wives, kids, work, etc. And a lot of guys who came in, I got to be close with, to talk to like once or twice a week. Some guys even came in three or four times a week. A lot of guys just like to come here to get away. I’ve been married seventeen years myself and I can understand…well I can’t understand spending that kind of money on these girls, but I understand when they say they want to get away for a while.

I get to see and hear why they really come here. A lot of guys get into an argument with their wives; they walk out, and they go to a bar and drink. The next thing you know, they get drunk, they go home, now they’re getting violent about it or whatever. Here, it’s a juice bar. So when some guys get into arguments with their wives or whatever, they come here, they see a pretty girl. They know they’re not taking a girl home. The girl will make the guy feel like he is royalty. You know, “Hi, honey. How are you doing?” A guy could be a fat slob with no teeth in his mouth, you know, somebody a girl wouldn’t take a second look at. But if he came in here and he spent a couple of dollars on a soda and paid the admission to get in the door and tipped the girl a couple of dollars, the guy would be treated like he was Brad Pitt.

And so he spends a couple of hours in here. And when he goes home, he feels like he’s taken ten, twenty pounds off his shoulders. He comes home and he’s in a much better mood. He speaks to his wife in a much different tone. Maybe he makes love with his wife that night because he came here and got aroused by the pretty women. And he doesn’t tell his wife where he was. Because if he ever told his wife, his wife would call him all kinds of names and think he was coming here and whoring around and whatever.

It’s just to get away where nobody else knows you—not your boss, not your wife, not anybody. And you come here and because you have a couple dollars in your pocket, you get treated like you’re the boss. You know, “Could I get you a soda?” “Hi, honey. Can I get you a match?” “What’s your name?” Every girl comes around to you asking your name. You know, they’ll listen to your story about what’s going on. And even if it sounds like you’re completely wrong, the girl’s going to tell you you’re completely right. And that’s what you really want to hear. It’s sort of a therapy.

I’m not a therapist. I’m not a psychologist. But you know what? I would think—let’s say people that rape girls—I’d rather have a guy come into a strip bar and get a couple lap dances and whatever and go home than go out looking for a pretty woman and raping her. You understand what I’m saying? That could help them also.

There’s a whole bunch of really good reasons why clubs like this should be allowed to operate and offer lap dances. Because some guys…let’s face it, there’s some ugly guys out there; their grooming is not…they smell or whatever. And these guys can come here and get a beautiful woman who would never give them a second look, who give them a lap dance, wrap their arms around their neck and whisper in their ear. It’s almost like a date.

Don’t forget, some of these guys are not married. They will probably lay in bed for weeks at a time while they save up their money and think about, “Wow, I know Vanessa’s going to be there on a Wednesday. I’m working overtime this week. Let me go there and see my baby.” They call them regulars.

These guys get thinking that they’re the only guys in these girls’ lives, know what I mean? They send them flowers, candies, Christmas gifts, all that sort of stuff.

I sit back here with my two bosses and sometimes we’ll see a girl in the lap dance room with a guy, and he’ll put like twelve hundred dollars on his credit card. And our question will be, “Well, Jesus, he’s back there for all this while, why the hell doesn’t he just go down to Atlantic City and get an escort?” I don’t have the answer to that. I really don’t. That’s the million dollar question.

The million dollar question. We often wonder about that around here. Because I can speak for myself. If I was not married or I had problems with my wife, instead of coming here and spending four or five hundred dollars and then going home with a big old hard on, I would probably go somewhere, down to Atlantic City or to New York City, so that I can get an escort that’s kind of classy, and pay the five hundred for I don’t know how long. And then I’m definitely going to get what I went there for.

The Boy and the Cat

"Boy, Kitty, and Renault", Sete, France, August 2009. Juliana Beasley

Last August, a few nights after I arrived in Sete on the south coast of France, I walked up a hill with a backpack filled with my Rollei, film and flash.

I was exhausted. It was 2 or 3 am in the morning. The city was still busy with masses of people you had come to Sete for the Festival of St. Louis! Dancing, plastic glasses once filled with drunken concoctions littered the street, as I called it quits and headed to my comfortable residency home.

Just before hitting the final climb, three adolescents walked past me. An old Renault was parked off to the side on a narrow street. In a few minutes, I had photographed a young man. Not until later, did Gilles Favier, the organizer of my residency with Ce Ta Voir, notice two green glimmering eyes popping out in the back round. Magic does happen.

We are getting close to the end of putting "Juliana Beasley Sete 2010" together.

This will probably be my last posting about the book until it comes out in the early spring or even as early as late winter. But, ya' never know.

Golden Boy out on the Pennisula

"Bryan on His Couch", Rockaway Park, Spring 2008. Juliana Beasley

I mentioned that my friend and subject Bryan Mcquire died out in Rockaway Park over a month ago.

I took these back in the spring of 2008 in his old apartment.

The last image I took in the summer of 2008 on the boardwalk with him and a local Irish woman.

"Bernadette and Bryan", Rockaway Park, Summer 2008. Juliana Beasley

I would like to write a piece about Bryan, but for now, before the summer comes and reminds me that he is no longer part of my summer days out on the boardwalk in the Rock, I will post these images.

The last photographs that I took of him was in his condo. I posted them on this blog back in November of 2009.

On a Lighter Note... Shoes!

Superficiality to save our souls.

Old Photos Posted... John Trainer

"John and Mural in Squat", Rockaway Park, 2003. Juliana Beasley.

John Trainer. I miss him. He died of an aneurysm in 2004. Word went around that he keeled over a display rack of pretzels and potato chips in a local Arab owned botega.

We became friends out in Rockaway Park in the winter of 2002 when I first started going out there to photograph. He was usually the first person I saw when I got off the S Train. He was either passed out under some benches or standing by the radiators trying to keep warm in the MTA station on 116th St. He was flirtatious, but not dangerous. What he lacked in his alcoholic boundaries, he always made up for it with his staid respect for my space, despite his flirtatious ways with me.

I wanted to post these photos. They were shot with my Contax, not the T2 but another awesome Contax 35mm camera before I began to shoot the project much later entirely with my Rollei Twin Lens. All of these photographs have never been posted except the one, "Trainer as James Dean".

On one frigid day, he took me into the squat where he lived. He guided me through a dark hallway, holding my hand as we walked over a beat up mattress under are feet. As he explained to me the way toward the stairs, I held tightly onto him, not only to steady myself, but to catch him from falling over in a drunken state.

As they say the blind leading the blind. He was more disabled, despite knowing the territory than I was as we tried to locate a glimpse of light. My fear dissipated when I realized he was no more than a child afraid of falling.

I had just given him a portrait of himself. He placed the photograph of himself next to in an article from the Daily News that was leaning up against a wall in a special nook where he kept his belongings. He chuckled with pride.

"Trainer as James Dean", Rockaway Park, 2004(?). Juliana Beasley. The photograph that I gave to John.

"Empties in a Dresser at the Squat", Rockaway Park, 2003. Juliana Beasley.

In a low-lit room, I sit on a once dark orange carpet now turned brown through years of spilled beer, bitter cigarettes butts, and rancid dog urine. I look to the ground. I am in a lotus position; like the child I once was, sitting “Indian style” at a friend’s birthday party. Looking down to the carpet…I notice several cockroaches scurrying around me. I am probably more at home than I should be, my Contax on my lap as I change rolls of VC-400.

"Paddy's Amputated Big Toe", Rockaway Park, 2003(?). Juliana Beasley.

No, I am not at a relative’s house, but instead sitting center stage in a circle of frayed and worn Lazy Boys. I am at Paddy’s boarding house in Rockaway Park, surrounded by a bunch of grumbling older Irish men with rosaceous drinking cans of Cobra and Guinness beer, engaging in a silent exchange. They share mutual glances every so often while eyeballing an old television. It sits upon a pedestal—another broken black and white television. The reception is shot; skin tones are fluorescent pink. Occasionally, a cackling grumble spills over.

“Oh, the fuggin’ cunt!”

and a look of half acknowledgement and laughter at the crassness of it all.

The broken windows are covered in a blue tarp and the cold winter gusts whip against them and into the living room. Last week, when I back at home in Jersey, Paddy had thrown a chair out of the window in a belligerent drunken fit. It’s all makeshift and make-do around here. Charlie, Paddy and Deuce, the guy who lives in an adult residence down the boardwalk seem not to care about the chill in the air. Deuce appears at Paddy’s maligned boarding house to sit with the boys. He drinks for free. In his shirt pocket is a Xerox photo of a pet cocker spaniel that he talks about with loving nostalgia.

"Deuce at Paddy's", Rockaway Park, 2003(?). Juliana Beasley

"Paddy as Young Man", Location, Date and Photographer Unknown.

Trainer arrives to the scene and picks up a gallon plastic bottle of generic vodka lying on the floor next to Paddy’s amputated toes. He guzzles it down, sits down on a milk crate. He’s a mooch. Everyone hates John Trainer, the itinerant thirty-something alcoholic. He owes everyone either a drink or a cigarette in this town. He looks like a forlorn Irish James Dean. They say he comes from money and he likes to say it’s his choice for being out on the streets, homeless.

The others tolerate his presence.

I hear a gurgle and look to my right. John is foaming at the mouth. His eyes are rolling back. Boom. Man down. He’s fallen off the crate and presently, is on his back, twisting and bucking. His head is spilled into the kitchen, his torso in the living room. Drool covers his chin. I put my camera down, rush to his side.

“Are you alright, John? I’m right here with you…you’ll be O.K. don’t worry, John.”

The blokes remain careened back in their majesty, completely disassociated from the events. unfolding.

“Throw me a pillow,” I say calmly.

I put it under John’s bobbing head.

Then, “Call the cops!”

I drill like a captain at the helm. I turn John’s head to the side. He won’t choke on his saliva this way. I make sure that his mouth remains agape so that he won’t bite his tongue in two.

This is the shot! This is the action shot. This is the shot that explains in one photograph the level of self-destruction and dire loneliness I have been witnessing for the last several weeks. This is the shot that will make my book complete.

Again, the voice in my head, “Take the picture! Leave his side and pick up your camera!”

I don’t. I can’t. The voice that has always had its way…goes away.

The police have arrived. John has become conscious and returned from the world of cerebral thunderstorms and in congruencies. They strap him to what appears to be a hand truck and pull him through the door. I hold it open. They know John well.

“You’re going over to the Pennisula, John. It’s the best we can do for you”.

I can hear the boredom and callousness in their voices becoming more faint as they roll him down the path and into the darkness of the Rockaway Boulevard.

"John on Boardwalk Ramp", Rockaway Park, 2003. Juliana Beasley

I wrote the following story a couple of years ago for Will Steacy's book project entitled "The Picture Not Taken". When you get the chance take a look at the website. There are some interesting quotes from some interesting photographers.

Intermission Break with Kraftwerk

The eighties would have never been the same for me without Christoph Gielen and these gentlemen.

Scratch a Match and Sete, France

"Madame Li's Home Care Worker", Sete, France, September 2009. Juliana Beasley

Hi All!

I thought a last note might be a photograph from my new book called "Sete 2010". I lived and photographed in Sete, France during September 2009. I learned a lot during the residency. Hard lessons learned, but now the book is being laid out and it will be out in the Spring of 2010.

It was a difficult journey but in the end, I feel like I came away with a lot.

So, here are a couple of images that are about an aging Vietnamese woman living in Sete.

"Madame Li Holding Photograph of Herself as Young Woman", Sete, France. 2009. Juliana Beasley

"Madame Li's Slippered Feet", Sete, France, September, 2009. Juliana Beasley

Happy New Years....

Suggestion:

Write a list of the resolutions you want to bring into the New Year and then write a list of what you want to leave behind in 2009.

Scratch a match and light the list of things you want to put behind you. Do this is in a safe place, don't use fuel such as gasoline.
I like to do these ceremonies over my aluminum sink. Let the smoke take it up to the universe and say, "So, long suckers!"

Peace and love and compassion in 2010!