Water, food . . . and then strippers
Statuesque Becky to Rosie DiManno: ‘There must be, like, 750,000 men in town . . . How can I not make money?’
he perches at the
edge of the stage,
spine arched, and
draws her legs way back over her shoulders, ankles crossed behind the neck, exposing twin globes of buttocks. A young man, beads of perspiration dripping from his forehead, draws forward, tucking himself into the niche of her crotch, as if worshipping at the altar of her splayed flesh. A $5 bill clamped between his teeth, he rubs his face against the pliant flesh, breathing in the woman’s mojo, snuffling, licking at the breasts she pushes toward his slack mouth.
He’s a fireman, she’s a stripper and this is Bourbon St. — decadent, tawdry, bawdy Bourbon St. — where sex was among the first staples of life to return to a paralyzed city.
Water, food, tittie- lation.
It must be understood that New Orleans has been, these past few weeks, an almost entirely male universe: firefighters, cops, National Guardsmen, disaster crews.
They’ve laboured extraordinarily hard. They’ve seen dreadful things. They were traumatized and dirty and stinky. But the French Quarter has always known how to soothe a man’s pain, relieve his loneliness — and separate him from his money.
So, on this dank evening, a night dripping with humidity, a long line has formed outside the entrance to Big Daddy’s — “ Topless! Bottomless!” — where the restoration of power means those postcard- famous legs that swing in and out of a secondstorey window are once again beckoning the lust-lorn, the horny, the tumescent.
Inside, the air is blue with smoke and the patrons, in a state of giddy abandon, are whoop- whooping at the dancers, like wolves baying at a succulent moon. On the stage, Becky Seguin — nearly 6 feet tall, with gams that stretch from here to tomorrow — is demonstrating her remarkable elasticity, swinging from the rotating wheel above a brass pole, launching herself off stiletto heels, smacking at her rump, pulling up the thin tease of her G-string, dropping pendulous breasts into spellbound, upturned faces.
Casually, she plucks extended greenbacks from sweaty hands, whispers sweet words into cocked ears, smiles in appreciation of the applause.
“ These guys are just a fantastic audience,” Seguin tells the Star, after the doorman — greasycreepy Larry, originally from Toronto — negotiates a price for
Sher talking time, a figure equivalent to the cost of three private lap dances. Sometimes, there is no alternative to chequebook journalism. “ They seem real nice and they tip generously. There must be, like, 750,000 men in town right now and they need to be entertained. How can I not make money?”
Seguin has the face of an angel, the gyrating hips of a whore and the pneumatic bosom that comes only from a plastic surgeon. Aged 31, she’s been stripping for 14 years.
“ I should have been an actress, but I ended up doing this. And it is a lot like acting. I just love being up there performing, everybody looking at me.”
Seguin was evacuated to Boston, right after Katrina struck, “ kicking and screaming all the way.” A week ago, she scurried back, anxious for familiar surroundings and the financial windfall that awaited her in a city that had few other of its usual diversions to offer. Some of these men have been away from home for a month. They want beer, they want girls, they want to feel the blood rising in their nether regions.
For 20 bucks, at Big Daddy’s, they can have a private dancer, off in a corner. New Orleans — the only city in America other than Las Vegas that has no closing time — ostensibly retains a strict G- string law for its exotic dancers. Yet even in the shadows, one can see that some of the women are peeling down to nothing. And none of the cops inside this joint seems inclined to make a bust.
Sex and seduction are what makes New Orleans jump and jive. As far back as the 1890s, it was the only U. S. city with pseudo- prostitution — a 38- block red- light district known as Storyville, of which nothing remains except a mural.
Prostitution is no longer legal and stripping doesn’t equate to prostitution. But the French Quarter has become, for better or worse, a Disneyland of T& A, Bourbon St. a boulevard of wet dreams. So critical is the carnal business to the city’s economy that even Mayor Ray Nagin dropped by a strip joint the other day, to see how things were shakin’ ( though he didn’t go inside). The bacchanalia of the Big Easy is what gets up the pinched nose of some critics and why more than a few would like to see the whole metropolis reinvented, sanitized. Hank Erwin, an Alabama state senator, actually claimed that Katrina was God’s punishment on a sinful part of America.
“ New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness,” he said. “ It is the kind of behaviour that ultimately brings the judgment of God.”
Katrina, a wicked dominatrix in her own fashion, caused merely a temporary suspension of the sensuality. The first of the peeler bars to reopen, a fortnight ago, was Déjà Vu, a more upscale establishment, also on Bourbon St. The club has three stages to present multiple performers simultaneously, and a functionary man with a towel to wipe up the dampness on the dancing proscenium — sweat, spittle — just like they do the hardwood on a basketball court.
Here, the dancers look more polished, more expensive, dressed in theatrical costumes rather than the basic peek-aboo panties and bra: one woman in a Scarlet O’Hara confection, crinoline over garter- belt, another done up as a Confederate soldier.
Billy Silva, the “ host” on this evening, explains that the club’s owners — proprietors of about 60 Déjà Vu establishments across the country — made private arrangements to evacuate all the strippers before Katrina. “ We take care of our girls.” The club rushed back to fill the hedonistic void.
“ Sure, it’s business. But we also wanted to show our appreciation for all the volunteer firefighters and the troops who came to our rescue. “We were selling domestic beer for $2 and it’s normally $ 6. We waived the cover charge. It was just our way of giving something back.” Chase ( last name withheld at her request), a statuesque New Orleans native, emerges from one of the private entertainment rooms upstairs. She’s 21 years old. The customers, she says, have been touchingly polite — although she doesn’t allow much touching.
“ Most of these guys have been sleeping in tents. They’re far from home. They like to have a bit of femininity in their lives, something soft and pretty.” She was attending nursing school before Katrina, dancing for tuition. “ And because I enjoy it. It’s a job I love and I’m gonna wear it till the wheels fall off.” The sex sirens on Bourbon St., rest assured, will just keep bumping and grinding, come hell or high water.