Blog and Grind

Photo : "When I go into work, I switch off," Mimi says, adding, "Whatever you want, I'll name the price." (Stephanie Keith for The New York Times)

August 7, 2005
By PAUL BERGER

"WHEN I go into work I switch off. I feel nothing, I have no opinions. I have no sense of shame, no emotion, everything closed, tucked neatly out of sight. In that way you become a negated space, a void for people to fill in however they desire. I'm Mimi the walking, talking doll, the paint-by-numbers English chick, whatever you want, I'll name the price. I'm the cute, young, private table dancer who makes people laugh and does things men in their forties only wish their first wives had taught them." - Mimi in New York

It's 6 p.m. on a Wednesday in the heart of Midtown. In the dim, subterranean light of a gentlemen's club, Mimi is standing behind the bar, her back to a couple of customers who have just walked in. Resting her elbows on the surface in front of her, she bends forward slowly to reveal a blue neon light in the background that is advertising sushi. To her right, on a T-shaped runway bordered by fairy lights, a semi-naked blonde checks her watch, while the D.J. announces the names of the dancers who will appear next on the bar and the stage.

It's been a slow day at the club, almost as slow as July Fourth. But for Mimi, business is about to pick up.
Mimi Feo, as she calls herself, is a 26-year-old graduate of Cambridge University in England. She arrived in New York in February, hoping to begin a journalism career. The problem was that her six-month visa was for a previous job as a chef on cruise ships, not life as a journalist. Her only literary release now is the caustic Web log Mimi in New York (miminewyork.blogspot.com), a venture that was supposed to chart her rise to journalistic stardom but instead recorded her journey into the very different world of lap dancing.

Mimi is still a writer at heart, but her body is now devoted to the dance. She is dressed in a body-hugging, full-length stripper gown and armed with an acid retort for every smart-aleck remark. She oozes self-confidence, but privately she is becoming desperate. Her visa expires at the end of August. Her readers are waiting to see if she will pack up and leave, and if she does, how long before she is back.

It had all started out so well. In February, Mimi began work as an intern for a travel writer and took a job as a waitress to explore the city's immigrant underbelly. In March and April, two stories of hers were published on the Village Voice Web site: "How to Be an Illegal Alien" and "London Snog." But Mimi could not be paid unless she had a journalist's visa.

All she needed for that, she thought, was a couple of clips from British newspapers and a letter from an editor. But they never came. In May and June two British newspapers, The Guardian and The Times, showed interest and then changed their minds.

Even the job working in a strip club started out with better intentions. Mimi walked in one lunchtime in early May seeking a position as a cocktail waitress in a final attempt to find story ideas. It wasn't until her money ran out that she ditched the drinks tray for six-inch heels and a gown.

"These men are paying for that long-ago teenage time when sex wasn't just a given, when sex was something you didn't know whether you could get or not. They're paying for the tease." - Mimi in New York

Every character in Mimi's Web log, including her own, has a pseudonym. Her workplace, one of the better-known gentlemen's clubs in Manhattan, is populated by characters like Mr. High Ranking U.N. official, Mafia Joe and Bambi. Lately, however, they have been eclipsed by the arrival of Eton, an upper-class Englishman who persuaded the stripper to go on a date. Could Mimi in New York be headed for a "Pretty Woman" ending?

Mimi steps away from the bar and disappears into a corner of the club, away from the flashing A.T.M. She has been working since noon, and her shift finishes at 8. She has earned only $90, but in the next 90 minutes she will make an additional $410. The place is starting to fill up. About half of the 20 young women are otherwise engaged in the Champagne Room, a dim, closet-size space that holds half a dozen couples. That leaves only a handful of girls on the club's main floor, and Mimi is in great demand.

In one sense, Mimi achieved a small part of her goal with her employment at the club; strippers, like writers, are treated as freelancers. Dancers pay what is called a house fee to work the floor: $75 during the day and $150 at night. On top of that, they pay a $20 tip to the D.J. and $20 to the house mom (who provides baby oil, bandages and a needle and thread at all times). After that not inconsiderable outlay, everything a dancer earns is profit. On a slow day it may be $200, on an average day nearer $500 or $600, and on a good day $700 or more. Mimi says she earns $2,000 to $3,000 in a four-day week. But these sums are not predicated on giving random men $20 lap dances.

"The way of making money is to build up a relationship with a client, to get the guys to fall in love with you and keep them coming back," Mimi says. "You draw them in by pretending that they know something about you. Guys always want to know your real name. As soon as they think they know that, you start reeling them in. They want a fantasy, but at the same time they want some intimacy. And they want to believe it's real."

"Nothing could induce me to ever give up my dream of being a writer. And the longer I work in a seedy, sweaty world where sex is the currency and my body a hundred dollar bill, the more I know that writing isn't just an escape. It's what I will do for the rest of my life. And this is just a means to make that happen." - Mimi in New York

MANY of the clients who frequent the club are people Mimi would rather not meet, let alone flirt with. There's the 80-year-old who shows up every Saturday, buys a single black currant cordial and watches the women all day. "A lot of the guys are really weird," Mimi says. "They are very rich, very successful, but they turn out to be perverts."

Some regulars can be seen greeting dancers like friends, a harmless kiss on the cheek, a lazy hand brushing a back or shoulder. For $370, they can take their companion to the Champagne Room, where they are rewarded with one hour's undivided attention and the chance to brush against more than just a back or a shoulder.

At the top of the client pecking order are men who pay $1,500 for one hour away from prying eyes in the Blue Room, the only space not monitored by closed-circuit television. Mimi alludes to the fact that although no touching should ever take place, some clients' particular desires can be satiated and a blind eye turned.

And in terms of women, whatever a client could want, the club has: African-American, Asian, Brazilian and East European, short, tall, slim, curvy, natural and enhanced - 200 freelancers in their 20's and 30's, most of them documented workers: single mothers, students, girls who somehow fell into dancing and forgot to get out.
"No one thinks they are going to become a stripper," Mimi says. "It's just someone you know, or chance, that leads you there."

She adds: "There are so many good days when you party and have nice clients and it's fun. And then there are other days when you are dancing for some awful guy behaving like a kid in a candy store. It's very rare that you can find people that ever appreciate you for who you are."

Paul Berger is a contributing editor of "Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture," to be published in the fall.