My friend Daryl, a brilliant ex-con and comedian who frequents strip clubs because he finds the atmosphere conducive to joke-writing (and no doubt for other reasons), put it best. “Sweetheart, some of these guys who hang out here like to treat the women like dirt. They think of them as some lower form of life. Of course, it never seems to occur to these —-ups that they themselves are in the exact same place, participating in the activity themselves. Or maybe it does. Point is, these dudes got no class or decency. These women are working like anyone else, providing you with a service you paid for, you ignorant —-, and that does not give you the right to treat them like—-.”

One evening about a year ago he and our friend Quint enticed me to go with them to a club, where they hired an exotic dancer to give me a “lap dance.” The dancer was a statuesque Amazon of a woman with ebony skin, a beautiful face, and a voluminous head of curls cascading down her perfectly toned back. When I’m nervous, I always converse, and so, as she gyrated in front of me, and yes, at one point, sat bucking and wiggling in my lap, I introduced myself and started asking some admittedly lame questions like, “So about how many dances do you do in a night?” and “Where did you learn how to dance like this?” At one point she said, “Sweetie, I don’t mean to embarrass you, but these guys paid for me to give you the dance. You just need to relax, ok?” I did my best, but kept asking questions. We chatted about shoes (she complimented mine) and our physiques (we complimented each others’ and discussed what machines we liked to use at the gym). While the experience was not erotic for me, I certainly did appreciate her beauty.

Afterward, she sat down (on a chair this time) and talked with the three of us, seemingly interested in the fact that I was accompanying these guys as a writer (chronicling their struggles is a kind of Gonzo journalism project). Daryl drew her out about why she liked exotic dancing: she explained that it paid the bills and provided her enough leftover income to spend part of the year traveling to places like Bali, Bangkok, and Belize. At one point it occurred to me that, fun as this was, the whole while she was probably calculating how much we were worth in tips. (Was she a very smooth operator or did she really like us? Lord, what a cliché to wonder that about a stripper! And if I, as a straight woman, could fall for this, how do men stand a chance?) Regardless, we had a nice conversation. About half an hour and forty bucks later, she stood up on her full six feet and four-inch Lucite heels, and bid us adieu. We had paid for the illusion that this essentially unknowable (under the circumstances) person was happy to be with us and interested in what we had to say. It was sort of like therapy.

Back to the original point. I’m not necessarily saying this woman had a heart of pure gold, although she did seem nice enough. She was simply doing her job, and it never remotely occurred to Daryl or Quint or me to think badly of her, much less to treat her badly, because of it. If anything, my heart went out to her because I cannot conceive of anyone doing the work she does without feeling, and in some sense being, extremely vulnerable, especially physically.

Regarding the Duke lacrosse players and Crystal Gail Mangum: Call me a bleeding heart, but somehow, the images of these young men and their families on television, celebrating their vindication (although I don’t begrudge them; being accused of a serious crime one did not commit must be terrible), still do not completely erase my empathy for this young woman. And while there is no evidence that she was raped, at least by anyone in that house that night, (and the entire weight of evidence in fact supports their innocence of that alleged crime, and suggests she fabricated or hallucinated the rape story), I am not convinced that the boys of the Duke lacrosse team (who by the way are men, all over 18 years old) behaved like perfect gentlemen, either. At the very least, we know for a fact that at some point, racial epithets were hurled at the strippers. And that no one in that house was kind enough to return to Mangam or to the police, had they not wished to deal directly with her - either that night, or the next day - property of hers that had been lost or stolen: when police showed up at the house two days after that fateful night, they found her makeup bag, $160 in twenties, and her ID.

As another friend, Thinking Man, put it, “She may have been after money, or she may be crazy. Then again, maybe it was some crazy fraternity situation where they were calling her names. They didn’t rape her, but there may have been some altercation there.” While the rape story was fabricated or imagined, I think it’s likely that more than one man in that house made this woman feel harassed and even threatened that night.

Of course, we will never know exactly what happened in that house that evening. The media would have it (after essentially condemning the lacrosse guys for the past year) that the lesson here is “innocent until proven guilty.” Indeed. But to that I would add, in the words of my friend Daryl: “If you’re gonna hire a stripper, you better tip her good, and you better treat her nice.”

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