Glass Geishas by Susanna Quinn; My Review

Glass Geishas - what a fantastic title.
Geisha are of course the traditional Japanese entertainers, all thick black laquered hair, ivory skin and brightly coloured kimono's, that are a symbol of Japan - and Japanese beauty. But the Glass Geisha in the title are not the precise and careful beauties with many years of training pouring cups of tea.  The Glass Geisha are the wild and crazy hostesses who pour the whisky and keep the salarymen 'genki' (happy) whilst downing glasses full of spirits and mixers that they earn £3.50 comms each on.
How do I know?
Because I was a Roppongi girl once.
I went on dohans, got kickbacks from champagne bars, survived on a diet of booze, strong charcoal cigarettes, sushi and drugs supplied by the club's shadiest customers for a few months in Roppongi, Tokyo's infamous entertainment district.  Like so many other Western girls, we bought a one way ticket and worked through our tourist visa, six days a week, living in cramped accommodation that the locals dubbed 'Pussy Plaza'.
It was awful yet fantastic, but I wouldn't do it again, so I pushed the experience to the back of my mind, not wanting to relive memories which are at times painful and leave me disgusted by the life my naive young self fell into.
Forgotten - until Glass Geishas came along.

I loved reading this book.  The pages flowed like the drinks in the book - page after page just turning through my fingers.  I got it from the book launch, where I was lucky enough to meet the lovely author Susanna Quinn herself, and that was on a Thursday before I went to work at my club nearby.  I started Glass Geishas on my journey home at 5am, and was still reading it in bed as the sun came up.  The images of rain soaked narrow streets and neon lights were too much for me, so I poured myself a gin. And then another. And I laughed and cried and drank more gin until I passed out.
(I'm not recommending that you attempt to read it in this fashion, but it is fun.  Especially if you drink every time they say 'champagne', 'knocked back', 'little glasses of vodka tonic' etc.)
Now for the average reader - girls, you are going to love this book.  It's got a cracking storyline and fantastically detailed description of the strange happenings and secretive world of Tokyo.  Everyone is half-crazy, the industry has turned them into complete alcoholics, and no-one tells the whole story, if they get past lying through their teeth in the first place.
It's written from three points of view - a new girl called Stephanie who is desperate for what she has been told is 'quick and easy' money by her old schoolfriends who are living it up there already - but Julia is distant and weird whilst the other, Annabel, has plum disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving only a diary behind.
The second narrative is based on a cranky Japanese House Mum 'Mama San' who is telling her life story to a Western journo.  She comes out with some real filth on Japanese perversions (actually, the book opens with a shady Rophynol scene, and that's tame compared to what happen's later.)
The third is a string of emails from a hostess who has been there for some time.  I must admit I didn't get this - I thought it clunky and unnecessary, as it was mainly some girl being insecure and moaning about how it was all going downhill.  I suppose that it was included to serve as a reminder of how the hostess industry could really mess with some girls psyches, but then I was half a bottle of gin down at the time and certainly didn't need any reminder of how within a few months I was a shaking alcoholic letting myself get felt up for fifty bucks a song.
Cleverly, this book is not a memoir.  It's a novel.  It has a proper story , with an intriguing beginning, an exciting middle, and a slightly rushed and very neat ending where everything falls into place - hurrah!  In short, the perfect summertime read.  Out of all the books on the entertainment and sex industries that I have read and reviewed, this is one of the freshest and original, and I hope it marks a turn in the tide of the neverending stream of memoirs and now-I've-left-the-industry biographies which is the normal publishing format.
Go buy it.  Glass Geishas ; 356 pages with a gin chaser.  Lovely.

The Love Life of a Lapdancer

She stares into your eyes after you've asked the question, before shyly playing with a strand of her hair.
"Do I have a boyfriend? With this job? Are you kidding?"

So how many lapdancer's really are single and available?

If you walk into a club as a punter and ask all the girls this question, most of the dancer's will say that they are single, with a few lovers on the side.  Some may even say that they are lesbian - and do you want to see her dancing with their girlfriend, who is just over there?

Luckily for you, I have behind the scenes access, and can tell you the truth of what really goes on in the love lives of lapdancer's today.  Here is what I have learnt.... some stereotypical, much of it is very surprising.

Lets base it on your average stripclub in a big English city, such as London, Birmingham or Bournemouth.  

There will be 70 girls working on a busy Thursday night.

• 40 girls will be from Eastern European countries.  The Romanians will probably have a husband or baby back at home - they will also be devoutly Catholic and only return home for a huge celebration of religious holidays ie: Easter, Christmas.  
• The Polish, Latvian, Bulgarian and  Russian girls are more of a mixed bunch.  They will probably have boyfriends who are living in the UK, that they met here. 
• 3 girls will be Asian.  They will probably be dating an English man - there is something about 'yellow fever' which will grip a man and make him an incredibly enamoured boyfriend, many Asian girls will get spoilt rotten by their boyfriends, lucky things!
• 5 girls will be from Brazil, and will be single or casually dating either a fellow Latino they met here on one of their many nights out.  Brazilians like to party!!
• There will be two Australian girls, who are single and ready to mingle, if they get a chance in-between jetting off on weekend breaks all over Europe.
• There will be 2 girls from the Caribbean, they will have some funny stories about the dodgy guys they have dated back home but will generally be wary of spreading the love around too much.
• There will be 2 girls from Africa, they will be single but are waiting for someone special...
• As will the single Indian girl. Stripclubs never seem to have more than one Indian girl, I guess they don't see it as a viable career choice...
• There will be 5 English girls who are dating muscly men - a security doorman or a boxer. 
• There will be 3 English girls who have adorable kids at home.
• There will be 5 English girls who have really messed up and twisted relationships with psychotic guys, and they will spend half the night screaming down the phone at the good for nothing, who they suspect is seeing another girl behind their back.  Think TOWIE.
• There will be 3 girls, of any nationality, who are obsessed with footballers.
• Of the Eastern Europeans, 10 of the 40 will not have had sex for at least 3 months. 
• In fact, out of the 70 girls, I'd say 25 would not have had sex for at least 3 months.  I frequently meet dancers who have not had sex for a year or more....
• Oh, and there will be 2 lesbians.  Usually with a butch girl waiting at home, as a lapdancer is quite femme, dontcha think?

So there you have it - observed, as if I was David Attenborough himself in a G-string, the dating habits and mating rituals of the lesser spotted lapus dancerus as observed in an intense and lengthy study in their natural habitat.

Are you surrounded by women asking questions?

January is a slow month for most hospitality and entertainment operations, and the lapdancer's world is no exception.  In fact, it's a worse exception because we are all self-employed and have to pay out a nightly house fee which can run up to a hundred pounds a night.  It's only 5 dances, but when the club is empty, it's a hard struggle, and even the top-earning lapdancers may not make their money back every night.

So you have a bunch of bored, desperate girls, watching the clock and the door.  The moment a guy walks in, a ripple of excitement will run amongst the blonde and brunette manes, the hair will be flicked, tits rearranged, lips pouted - all in a matter of nanoseconds - before a veritable stampede of women will run towards the hapless punter, and surround him.  It's like he has a clipboard announcing who got the lead role.  Five, Six - even TEN WOMEN - around him in a circle, pushing and shoving each other for the best position, shouting out questions in a bid to initiate conversation and grab his attention.

Brunettes 3 & 7, blondes 2,4, twins 5&6 : "hello."
Brunette 1; "Hello, Where have you been tonight?"
Punter; "Wow, hello girls.  There's a lot of you tonight.
Brunette 7: "Yes hello.  Is this your first time here?"
Blonde 2: " Yeah, I don't recognise you."
Twins 5&6: " I don't know, you look familiar..."
Punter: "I've been here before, yeah, but not for a while...maybe a year ago?"
Twins 5&6: Did you play with us?
Punter: "No."
Twins 5& 6: "Did you have a good time?"
Punter: "yes, erm, I can't remember..."
Twins 5&6, Blondes 2&4: "You were drunk!"

note that the twins are getting the upper hand, the brunettes who led the first auditory charge are now lagging behind, so the blondes and brunettes are going to get anxious.


Brunette 1: "Where you from?"
Blonde 2: "You look Italian."
Brunette 3: "You look European."
Blonde 4: " Are you from America?"
Twins 5&6: "You sound English."
Blonde 4: "Have you ever been to America?"
Punter: "Er, yeah...I'm English, yes...I've been to America."
Blonde 4: "I've been to America."
Brunettes 3&7: "I've been to America.  We went together, to Miami - have you been? Whats your name?"
Punter: "I'm John."
All girls:  "Hi John!"
Brunette 1: "I'm Loretta.
Blonde 2: "I'm Tatiana. I'm from Romania." (brushes his sleeve)
Brunette 3: I'm Elena. Bulgaria.
Blonde 4: I'm Lena.
Brunette 7: I'm Tinelina. I'm from Lithuania.

As the make-up of English stripclubs is often 70% eastern European girls, this kinda scenario is not only likely  - its the norm.


Twins 5 & 6: Catherine and Caroline, we're twins.  From France.
Punter: Really? What part of France?
Twins 5 & 6: Well, French Algiers, but we lived a lot in France. On the coast.

Most dancers lies are about their age and where they are from.  But then lots of punters don't believe us even when we are telling the truth ("You're not really English...you can't be?" - this happens to me every single fricking night...)  So the lies even out really, and they are harmless little white lies anyway.


So, as you can see, if you venture into a gentleman's establishment this month you may feel like you are being interviewed in a David Lynch movie, but like Mulholland Drive - it's surreal, but still an enjoyable hour and a half of viewing pleasure.

I turn smokin' hot for Chicago

Drinking is the norm in UK stripclubs - this is one way that we are ahead of the States, as we allow full nudity flashing and gallons of booze in our tittie bars....
So there I was in a VIP a few days back - before I caught the stripper flu which has plagued me all week - with a couple of guys who were over from Chicago, USA, and two hot Eastern europeans.  We were discussing the differences between US and UK stripclubs, and how this one in London compared in particular.  The general consensus from the Americans was that the girls were hotter here, the club looked a lot nicer than some of the dives they'd been to in the US, although there were similar palaces of pussy plushness in the big cities, and finally, the UK was a lot stricter when it came to touching, and laxer when it came to drinking.

Now us girls are pro's, and whilst we are happy to discuss the differences, we are not going to concentrate on the bad points like 'no-touching-at-least-not-that-much-and-definately-not-my-bits-mister'.  So we all started praising about the drinks on the table and the drinks available and the Eastern European girls, true to form, started to yell for something stronger - shots in fact.

A round of shots, nice and clear in their little fluted shot glasses, appear  as if by magic and are shoved on to the table in between the champagne bucket and assorted glasses, packets of fags (smoked outside only), mood-light lamp and a rogue G-string.

The two Eastern-Euro's take charge.  Now these girls resemble the Tsar's sister's, with long straight sweeps of dark chocolate hair, Pocahonta's style, and big dark almond eyes - they look like a pair of beautiful slim Russian ballerina's, although I recall they were from one of the satellite's - Estonia, or Lithuania.  But don't be fooled by their dainty frame - these girl's can knock back the hard stuff, as they were eager to demonstrate.

"Letch drink wiv no hands, yezzz?!?" said the first prima-ballerina.

The Chicago guys whooped and hollered as she artfully pulled her long tresses out of the way, crossed her hands behind her, and gracefully bent down - no crouching here - and grabbed the glass in her mouth, pulling herself back up in a graceful flick as she knocked the shot back.

"Ummm, yummy" squealed the first prima ballerina in pleasure.

"Ohh, yez, itz my turn, yez?!?" said the second prima ballerina in her husky accent, and she was the epitome of grace as her long lean body leant down and gobbled up the shot, all legs and no-hands, flashing a dazzling smile in the lamplight as she did so.

The Chicago guys were very impressed - hell, so was I - and whooped and hollered for me to perform a similar trick myself.  The two prima ballerina's had made it look so easy that I was sure I could also drink a shot with both hands behind my back, so I bent over, lowered myself onto the shot glass, grabbed it with my teeth, and knocked it back..... Ta Da!!!!

However, as I came back up the two prima's were screaming and the Chicago guys were whooping and hollering and now waving their arms in the air and I could smell burning .... burning hair in fact.....

My hair!

As I'd leant down over the table my uber-flammable bleached tresses had got too close to the lamp, which unbeknownst to me hid a lit candle.  Whoosh! Like a tinderbox bits of blonde went up in Elnett flames.

One of the guys grabbed the cloth wrapped around the champagne bottle and doused it in the ice before applying it to my head.  Luckily it smelt worse than it was, and only a relatively tiny strand of clip-in extensions had been set alight, so my real hair was un-touched.

After thanking everyone, who were all in fits of giggles at my klutziness, I scuttled backstage and cut out the offending extensions, which stank of champagne and burnt hair.  Once these were gone & I'd sprayed some perfume on I was thankfully back to normal, and rejoined the merry party in the VIP booth, where we all got another few hours!  Hurrah!

I'm glad that I fucked up and maimed my fake hair in front of American's, who always have a good sense of humour for incidents like this, but I've learnt my lesson - don't enter into a space-race with Russian stripper's - I've got too much to lose, not least my fake blonde tresses! 

When a stripclub feels like the Door to Hell

Last night my stripclub, where I have worked on and off for several years, felt strange and alien to me.  The mood, usually filled with jovial first-timer's and plenty of testosterone stag's 'n' lad's, was bitter and misogynistic.  Everyone was leering, ready to spend their pocket money on the plucked and plumed piece of meat which strutted around the club in their skimpy fantasy outfits.  The club was full of guys, and there were only about 50 girls on the floor (during the week you can get up to 70, or even 100).  So theoretically we all should have got along together swimmingly, with everyone earning money and having a good time. The guys would have a chance to enjoy their night out and catch up with their pals without being constantly hassled by hungry women, whilst the girls would have enough chaff to wade through and not much waiting around to do between dances.

Except last night, something wasn't right.

There was a build-up of pressure gradually throughout the night.  The guys weren't biting as per usual - dance here, two more there - and the girls were beginning to get desperate after the chorus of knock-backs.  But that can happen anytime, any night.

The crowd wasn't just stag parties of mainly white commuter 9 - 5ers, but was much more varied than usual.  There were several large groups of black guys, swaddled in bling and loud shirts, nursing bottles of Couvousier, and several more of Asian & Indian guys, who are usually a mixture of clean cut, ironed creases in their button down shirts, and hairy types with funny beards and ponytails.  I'm afraid to say that many stripper's don't like this.  Hmm, how to explain....  Firstly they don't tend to spend as much as their white counterparts, and secondly, well - a lot of stripper's in London are from previously isolated regions of Eastern Europe, or countries without a large ethnic population, and don't like some types of people, and.... I find it really hard to write that some stripper's are racist, as it make's me just as judgemental as them, but I'm afraid it's pretty darn true, goddammit!  So anyway, this was pissing off many of the dancer's, as they couldn't approach as many people as freely as they would like without  compromising themselves, and the guys were really peeved at being ignored by many dancers whilst the remaining gave them a sneer and a super-quick lapdance.

But I think what really freaked me out last night was the music.  It was deep, heavy, and minimal - fine for a rave when I am surrounded by happy gurners who want a cuddle and a lollipop to go with their warm pint, but horrible when you are approaching lot's of strange faces in a dark room and then trying to turn them on by showing them all the crevasses of your naked flesh.  A bit of happy disco or some sing-a-long rock can really help me turn on the charm, and lyrics give the customer's something to relate too.

I remember staring at the mirror thinking 'who am I?' as my mood darkened to the point where my beautiful Mac red lips with extra Lancome gloss seemed to turn into a leer from a child-bride in a clown's outfit.  I got even more sketched out when a really drunk guy who had spent all his money on another girl in VIP early on in the night began to follow me around the club, hovering nearby as I talked to another customer and even trying to join me on stage and at tables.  Thankfully, before the carnival atmosphere got too much and I fell into a complete and utter stripper meltdown, I met an Indian guy who  gave me a couple of hundred over an hour or so.  He was nice to talk to, there was a nice bottle of Bollinger at his table that I could help myself too, and he left a good hour before closing.

As the club was still filled with a weird, menacing vibe, I didn't even bother with my customary tour of the place.  I'd only had a couple of dances apart from the Indian guy, so after tip-out and taxi fare I'd scraped half of what I would consider a usual Saturday night, but I'm not greedy.  I know that when the most familiar stripclub in the world feels like the doorway to Hell, it's not good for my stripper psyche to hang about.