By Carolina Quijano
It’s Wednesday night, and I’m listening to club music and watching a dancer gyrate on a pole. I’m tempted to order a drink and watch the show, but I have to remind myself why I’m here at the Condor Club: to talk to the strippers about dating.
A popular myth states that you never see a stripper outside a club; they are a fantasy confined to the inside. Dancers act like they’re available but never actually are. Yet the dancers at the Condor are different: most met their long-term loves right here, stepping out of the fantasy world of stripping into a real-life relationship. (So much for online dating.) You heard that right — all they had to do to find Mr. Right was don a pair of stilettos and shake it.
Meet the Strippers
Strippers are some of the funniest, most insightful human beings you’ll ever meet, but be forewarned: in a venue known for mind games, these ladies have you beat. They have seen and heard it all, and picked up a few tricks along the way.
Take Valerie, for example. She believes any connection or relationship formed within a club is doomed from the start. Her culture, religion and pretty much everything else in her life are inconsistent with her career choice, which makes it hard for her to respect her patrons.
“I strategize. I find the flawed type of person that sends me into automatic ‘He could never be the one’ mode,” she says. “As soon as I find that, I pursue them with a sense of coldness. I play the game carefully — too carefully — to not get attached. This sends men into a frenzy.”
This tempestuous scenario may be what most imagine dating a stripper would be like. But then you have couples like Astrid and her man, Stephen. Stephen strolled into the Condor to watch a UFC fight and fell head-over-Lucite in love with Astrid and her hypnotic dance moves.
Unsure if Astrid’s interest extended beyond the club doors, Stephen proceeded with caution. “I didn’t pick up on the apparent hints she was giving me to ask her out. I’m pretty oblivious,” he said.
Yet he felt his connection with Astrid was on a deeper level — he knew something was there. Though his friends tried to dissuade him, he continued to visit her at the Condor. Since he enjoyed her company so much, he came up with the idea of asking her to be his “stripper girlfriend.” Astrid would be his safety, so to speak. He would get dances only from her and chat only with her. She would keep other strippers away, allowing the two of them to privately get to know one another even more.
“It would be the perfect setup,” he said. “She could give me all this wonderful conversation, lap dances and company, with none of the commitment. I didn’t think I had a chance, so this arrangement was perfect.”
It WAS perfect, as it opened the door to more conversations and connections. “We talked a lot, and I was basically telling him it was OK to ask me out,” Astrid said. “Finally, while alone upstairs doing a dance, I told him we could have all this in the real world too. Just at that moment, the bouncer knocked on the door, signaling the end of our dance. He asked if we wanted to extend our time, and we definitely did.”
Stephen said, “I had to finish this conversation, so of course I wanted to stay.”
This whole thing went against common sense about strippers and relationships. A dancer’s interest in you MUST be backed with money: you’re in their house, and you play by their rules. And the more “into” a stripper you get, the more money you’re sure to shell out. Stephen’s buddies never thought Astrid was interested in him at first. They ridiculed him, saying that it was her job to make him feel that way. Clearly, they were proven wrong.
Love at First Strip
Rhea had just started her job when she met Karl.
“It was my third day on the job as a dancer, so I had zero expectations,” she told me. “It’s not like you go to a job expecting to meet someone. I had been warned by dancers about giving out my number as a safety precaution. But there I was, having a genuinely beautiful, honest conversation with a handsome man and realized, ‘Holy shit, I’m in a strip club.’ There are no rules when it comes to meeting good people.”
Karl agrees. “It didn’t seem to matter where we met. It’s hard to connect with anyone today, and it had been a long time since I had connected with anyone. To just make a connection was enough — the place was irrelevant.”
Still, in a world where people regard strippers as untouchable objects of fantasy, these stories prove that these ladies are just regular people.
Katana (pictured above) and Charlie were drawn to each other from the instant their eyes met. She is, according to Charlie, “an 11,” while Katana says Charlie has a “million-dollar smile.” Their connection and love surprised Katana.
“If you would’ve told me two years ago that I would meet the love of my life, travel around the world and be dancing topless from 20-foot poles, I would’ve asked, ‘What you are smoking?’ I never thought the course of my life would be forever changed by stepping into those eight-inch heels. Working as a dancer, I’ve been fortunate to change some people’s minds on what stripping is and open up a dialogue about sexuality. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.”
Katana and Charlie are now engaged and living on the East Coast. Katana didn’t find a club she loved as much as the Condor, so she quit working as a dancer.
“I’ve always been passionate about sexuality, and even though I’m not dancing anymore, I still want to express and share it with others,” she said. To that end, she and Charlie have joined forces to start a company together called “Chaleureux,” billed as “the world’s first luxury lubricant for sex.”
“With Charlie’s background as a serial entrepreneur and our shared passion for sensuality, we decided to start this company together, which launches in July of this year,” she said. It’s a match made in stripper heaven.
