By ELISABETH EAVES
Paris
"IT’S happened again. Another innocent man who just wanted a few lap dances claims to have been victimized by an exclusive New York strip club, Scores.
This time it’s an executive from Missouri named Robert McCormick, who, treating himself and friends, ran up a $241,000 bill at Scores on his corporate American Express card two years ago. American Express is now suing him for refusing to pay up. Several other unhappy customers have also sued Scores over large bills.
These don’t seem to be cases of bill padding. American Express sought signed receipts from the club before bringing its suit against Mr. McCormick. In the most recent suit against Scores, meanwhile, the plaintiff’s justification is simply that he was drunk when he signed his bills.
Nevertheless, the Manhattan district attorney’s office is investigating allegations of overcharging at Scores. To which I say, as someone who has worked in strip clubs, you’ve got to be kidding - there’s no such thing as "overcharging" in this industry.
Does Christian Dior "overcharge" when it sells a handbag for $13,000? That depends on how you look at it. If you see the handbag as a few pieces of stitched leather, the price is grossly inflated. If you see it as a source of heady self-worth - a passport to an exclusive club - then it’s hard to say what price would be too high.
This is the economic logic relied on by purveyors of luxury goods. It’s not about the utility of the product. It’s about making the customer feel as if he has arrived.
Strip clubs, particularly high-end ones like Scores, provide a luxury service. That $3,000 price tag on a bottle of Champagne isn’t just for the beverage; it’s part of the price of the experience. Mr. McCormick probably didn’t go to Scores strictly to see topless women, or even for the physical contact and potential sexual gratification of a lap dance. Both experiences can be had in simpler, cheaper ways.
Rather, he and his colleagues probably went because being surrounded by fawning, semi-naked, Champagne-flute-wielding women was for them a symbol of success. It’s like hiring a chauffeured limousine: a taxi would get you there, but without the aesthetic experience.
When I worked in a Seattle peep show, I had a customer who told me his name was Excalibur and quietly slipped me his poetry. Part of my job, in that moment, was to make him feel like a Knight of the Round Table. This required only a show of curiosity and respect. He must have found those things hard to come by in the real world, though, because he paid me well to help spin the illusion.
With many customers, fawning is key. What a stripper sells is not her ability to dance or take off her clothes, but her ability to suspend the customer’s disbelief.
If she is doing her job right, his bald spot and his mortgage cease to exist, and he enters an adolescent fantasy of sexual prowess, temporarily transformed into James Bond, Han Solo and Hugh Hefner all rolled into one. The dancers keep cooing and flattering until the money runs out. It’s not duplicitous; it’s what the patron signs up for.
I have little sympathy for these carping customers. Their complaints are the height of boorishness. It’s acceptable to indulge your James Bond fantasies, but it’s not acceptable, when the bill comes due, to remain convinced that you’re James Bond. The dancers weren’t in it for kicks.
Among strippers I worked with, the most dreaded customers were not the obese or the lame. Rather, we feared customers who thought they were exceptions to the rule. They were just handsome enough, or successful enough, to foolishly think that their own sex appeal was tip enough.
It’s just this kind of guy who would backpedal on a strip club bill and go crying to the courts that he was hustled. Well, sure, the dancers hustled Mr. McCormick, but no more so than the occasional Mercedes dealer. Buyer’s remorse is not an occasion to stiff the seller.
So, gentlemen, pay the bill. A reasonably priced lap dance is not a right."
Elisabeth Eaves is the author of "Bare: The Naked Truth About Stripping."
Now, peeps, I’m with Elisabeth on this one. You have to enter these establishments with one thought in mind, and only one: They are going to try to take every single penny you have and max out your credit as quickly as any jewelry store would. If a used car salesman could sell you a clunker for five times it’s worth, he would. It’s called capitolism. It is your job to get the maximum value for the expense paid. Robert McCormick failed in his assignment. That’s not the dancers’ fault, it’s his. They won, he lost, game over. He taunted Pavlov’s Dog and it bit him. Time to pay the dancer.
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s "No Matter What". I’m a original Badfinger fan as well. It’s not the song I would have chosen, but they did it with the same bone crunching guitars as they would with any of their own songs. It sounded great. This show was definitely worth the money. It wasn’t all that expensive, it was done in a smaller venue ( 2,000ish?), and their wasn’t a bad seat in the house. Teaming up with Cheap Trick was a perfect match. They played to their usually perfect level. 
