There are very few people who get an all-access pass to the strip club dressing room— pizza delivery guys, "boyfriend with the keys" and even taxi drivers are required to wait outside, when providing services to dancers. However, there is one person that is able to skirt all barriers to entry, when it comes to the off-limits areas of strip clubs. And, for some reason, this person is able to profit off of the dancers (as opposed to, ya know, helping them pay their rent). Who is this magical beast? What did she do, to deserve such amazingly special treatment? Ladies, gents and non-binaries, I am here to tell you the saga of...
At first, she seems nice enough. She’s older, but still very pretty. She smells of cigarettes, but also expensive perfume. She doesn’t walk through the club—she transports. One minute, she’s talking to the first-week-on-the- job bouncer at the door (about how she’s allowed in the back) and the next minute, a minor dancer is out a few hundred dollars and suddenly the proud owner of a homemade, hemp G-string. Sure, there are dozens of costume and "stripper clothing" shops in the Portland area that feature quality-made, returnable and unworn merchandise for low prices (see literally any of the advertisers in this magazine that offer such products and services for an example), but somehow, Costume Lady is able to sell her homemade wares at ridiculous markups to women who are getting naked to pay their bills.
There are several reasons for the success of Costume Lady, but not all of them involve mere emotional guilt and hard sales. For one, she is likely an ex-dancer that knows how to hustle a hustler. When a hard-sell stripper of five years meets a harder-sell veteran of two decades, she is confronted with a mirror version of herself—but, one who is much stronger. Imagine Luke attempting to battle Yoda in Empire Strikes Back, or the scene in Neverending Story, where the kid has to avoid the lazer beams from the eyes of those gigantic statues with huge tits. Costume Lady is the final boss in Stripper Karma Kombat—she knows every trick in the book, mostly because her friends wrote that book back when Magic Gardens was still open.
Another reason that Costume Lady is allowed to get away with what she does, is because of who she knows. At least one person reading this column thinks I’m talking about someone specific—and, I may or may not be. But, does it matter? A.C.L.A.B. All costume ladies are bastards! I can’t recall how many times these chicks have stolen from dancers, handover- fist, who end up "not being able to tip" because they spent all their earnings on a custom, tie-dye bikini top that falls apart after the first snag on the pole. Yet, there she is, just waltzing into the dressing room, because she knows one of the silent partners and her daughter used to strip at Deja Vu. Oh yeah, don’t forget that Costume Lady takes up about 98% of the dressing room space before she opens up her bag and starts setting up shop like a Kohl’s employee on Black Friday. Did your purse get stolen while you were on stage? Well, you should have bought those leopard print booty shorts that smell like cat piss.
I may seem out of line here, but let’s take a look at the people who aren’t allowed in the dressing room: drug dealers, GrubHub delivery people, Uber drivers, boyfriends, girlfriends, big money customers, that one bouncer who made an inappropriate joke that one time, off-duty bartenders, off-duty DJs, off-duty dancers (in some cases)...I mean, fuck, the owner usually doesn’t go in the dressing room. So, why is the chick from Oregon Country Fair still pressure selling her crystals to single moms who are just trying to make rent money? And, yes, it’s usually the moms or other in-need-of-actual-income dancers who are guilt tripped into buying from Costume Lady. The new and/or no-bills-or- kids dancers are usually better at emotional blockage and can thus deflect Costume Lady. But, moms and strugglers are empathetic— and Costume Lady knows this. "Oh, she’s just trying to get by and she has kids." Lady, you are just trying to get by and you have kids. Don’t waste money on rejected Etsy shit. Wear two sticky notes attached to some dental floss and hit the stage. It’s a strip club, not a drag show—no one cares about half-rate Costume Lady costumes after the first ten seconds of your act. No one has ever bought a dance because your booty shorts are homemade. Do you own a sexy pirate outfit that you bought at Eva’s Boutique or an erotic set of lingerie from Taboo? That stuff works. But, a crappy, handmade top from Burning Man? Nope, sorry. I, as a customer, will not support someone who doesn’t respect their choice of sexy outfits.
Speaking of drag shows, guess who isn’t allowed at them? If you answered "that tacky bitch from the vintage store," give yourself a wig and learn to walk in heels. Professionally sexy people who rely on costumes don’t go tacky—and, if they do, they go full tacky and dig through the Goodwill bins (sorry, Diva Dott, I gave away your secret). Costume Lady preys upon the economically desperate, the empathetic and the immediate-term thinkers, who rely on guilt and anxiety to guide their decisions. So, perhaps Costume Lady should just run for office, instead of stealing from baby strippers and selling crap that falls apart faster than my analogies.
