Muscles, Moms, and You: I used to work the floor at a Male Strip Show.
I used to work at a male strip show. To clarify: I wasn’t a dancer (I lack the moves) I just worked the floor. Running drinks, taking orders, and working behind the bar. To further clarify, I didn’t know I was going to be working a male strip show every Saturday night for around 6 months.
The venue (that shall remain unnamed) I worked for was available to hire, and the powers that be had realised that hosting a male strip show in Amsterdam is a guaranteed way to sell out the main hall, and sling overpriced drinks all night to very excited bachelorette parties.
Picture this: the bar and floor staff have just finished up an evening show, and are prepping for the other shows that take place in different parts of the building. A man whose ex stage-name is Mr. Daytona (name changed for confidentiality purposes) walks in. He is large and stressed. We stop what we are doing and go help him set up 200 chairs - this is harder than it looks as Mr Daytona’s organisational and mathematical abilities are less than stellar, and an hour before the muscle boys are due to begin de-robing, we have just found out how many tickets have been sold. We do not have enough space. Tension builds
Around 200 women arrive early, expecting some oiled up torso action to greet them. Instead they get me. And our team, who are a mix of theatre and comedy nerds, students, and not the kind of people that would usually staff this kind of venture. The reactions, to the boys, range from tender middle aged mothers from Liverpool being overall very sweet ‘eh darling where are you from?’ to looks from Russian women with Elvira make-up that make me feel as though a sharp blade is due to be inserted into my abdomen in the very near future.
Here’s the thing. I’m not particularly body conscious, but when you walk into the backstage area to bring the boys their vodka redbulls, and find yourself surrounded by the most chiselled and tanned physiques in the Randstad, you do look at yourself and wonder if your fragile body would have made it past 2 years old in any other era. I’ve said it before, and i’ll say it again - these boys are HUNKS! They’re also very sweet. Unlike Mr Daytona, former dancer, now showrunner, who thinks he’s our boss but isn’t, often running to the bar (where you’re slammed serving his customers) to scream at you that something to do with his show isn’t working, and demands for you, a 23 year old kid who has no idea what he’s talking about, to fix it.
Around an hour into the show I like to have the occasional screaming match with Mr Daytona, a man twice my size, about how he can’t come behind the bar or tell me what to do. We will make up and fist bump next week, because he could kill me. Back in the theatre, the crowd is going wild. Here’s the thing about this strip show - in the parlance of our time, the boys can’t hang dong. By law, the performance can’t be sexual. Instead, it is inherently camp. There is a lot of grinding to Imagine Dragons, and some of the guests are brought on stage to be danced on in a very explicit manner, but the show is more fun than lairy. Like anything else the venue would host - it's a performance, it's a show. It’s not the Male Gaze at all. It feels safe - just risque enough to be fun and cheeky, but not explicit enough to be uncomfortable and gross. As shitty as working it can be, I can’t imagine a reality where you could seat 200 hammered men in this city down, and put on a strip show with women dancing every week, and not create a recurring violent disaster.
