EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK:

VINCE'S GYM

To Bounce Or To Be Bounced

      The nights that I had to bounce for the female dancers were always a pretty hairy affair. The first night that the women danced about three hundred men showed up to see the women. This was the first strip club in the Eugene Springfield area in years & the guys were starving for carnal entertainment. Most of the guys were loggers, & most of the others were mill workers & ranchers. Nothing worse than a roomful of oversized testosterone driven drunk loggers out of their minds with the morals of a bull elephant in ‘must’.

      Drinking was not allowed in the club. A lot of the staff violated the rule, but they kept the alcohol in the back rooms. Some of the patrons tried to sneak alcohol or they would get plowed out in the parking lot.

      Our job was to prevent trouble by making our presence know. We were there to keep the men from touching the women’s breasts or the more sacred areas; although, perversely, the girls were allowed to kiss the guys who tipped them. The size of the tip often determined how intimate or sexy the kiss could be. A lot of guys would try their best to violate this rule.

      That’s when we had to step in. If we saw the guy attempting a grab or touch we would warn him before it happened. If he touched the girls before we could warn him or if he ignored our warnings then we would have to escort him out of the club. More times than I can count there were guys who like to hurt the girls by pinching, or biting the lips of a dancer during a kiss or trying to burn the girls with their cigarettes or cigars. Some guys would throw things at the girls like cigarette butts or spit at the girls. These guys earned are total attention. The most visible bouncers was Rock & me; Larry & Harry or there on occasion & you had a handful of other guys that were sprinkled throughout the place. Usually they were in the girls dressing rooms doing all sorts of imaginable or unimaginable things.

      I managed to avert a lot of trouble by a combination of being amicable & intimidating. A lot of the loggers or other men are not normally intimidated by a small guy like me, but I would put on a happy crazy act. I would see a guy who was about to break one of the rules. You could often tell by his facial expressions or body language, or a dancer would warn you if a guy was potential danger. I would stand a little behind & to the let or right of the guy who a dancer was going threw her seductive routine.  I would hoot & holler & scream out my approval for the dancer. I would scream & laugh & yes even cuss. I would cuss loud & often. Not the real toxic nastiest of cusses but low level to moderate cuss words spiced into my verbal exuberance for the dancer. Every time I pulled this tack, the guy who was a potential problem would look over at me to size up my physicality.  Most of these logger & mill workers outweighed me by an average of fifty pounds with many of them tipping the scales at three hundred & over.

      Many times I could tell that most of the guys were not too worried about me physically…. at least not initially. I would keep laughing maniacally, as I would pound the table in front of me has hard as I could just shy of breaking my hand.

      I would slam hard & often. Sometimes with jackhammer like speed & force often causing the table to jump up violently, all the while I was laughing & screaming out to the guy, “Isn’t she really fucking beautiful?! “Yeah baby, you are fucking gorgeous!! Then I would add my hand to his shoulder to give him an “affectionate” squeeze to show him my camaraderie. Often the ‘affectionate” gesture would be returned & usually to my arm. This was how a guy can see how muscular another guy may be. I rarely encountered problems if I managed to do this routine to potential problem customers.

      On occasion we did have to escort a person off the premises & on occasion we had to do so with force. It got pretty hairy a few times when a customer would resist or attack us. Luckily the entire time I worked there, I managed to stay pretty much unscathed, (More or less). It really does help to have two or more guys to handle a noncompliant customer. It really helped to have a big guy like Rock to be there. I seen him take a few guys down the same way he could knock sixteen penny nails with one blow of his massive meat hooks.

      My job was not made any easier the nights that I did doubled duty as bouncer & MC. It was the MC’s job to introduce the girls & to talk her up.  The girls really liked it when I was the MC & they would request for me to replace the regular MC just during their dances. Most of the women saw the increased tips & then they all would ask me to MC. I don’t know why but I was very good at getting the customers really worked up, & the more worked up they got, the more they tipped. The bad side to this was that as they got more worked up the tended to be more dangerous. The violence went up exponentially along with the tips when I was MC-ing. It got pretty crazy for me. I would MC to work the customers up & as soon as I would finish with my carnie routine then I would have to patrol the runway & tables vigorously. The upside was that the girls tipped the MC’s & the bouncers & of course dancers tended to go home with the bouncers or the male dancers who were allowed to hang out at the club.

      I noticed a few differences between the male customers & the female customers. The men would tend to be silent & their faces impassive, staring up at the women like lions, staring & silent at the gazelles they were quietly moving in for the kill. Sure, you have the occasional guys scattered throughout the club yelling & cheering.

It was the opposite with the women. The women tended to be very loud & vocal & also very physically active.

      The women would smile, laugh, & chat with the male dancers. I notice that men tended to be very fickle they would lavish attentions on one dancer for a while, then later with another. Men are pigs. The women tended to be much more loyal than their male counterparts. They would focus on one male dancer & lavish all of their attentions on him. There are exceptions of course, but generally this seems to be the rule.