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Latter-day stripper

By By Fred Davis III (Contact)

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

It’s Friday night and Tori, the long-legged brunette, struts in 7-inch heels toward the stage. Wearing a thin black thong and bra, she grabs the pole with her right hand, spins in a swift circle and smiles at the staring men as they sip from longneck beer bottles.

Soon she strips off her top as a 20-something man in jeans — dollar bill in mouth — lies down on the stage.

With the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden” bellowing from the sound system, Tori crouches down, crawls over the man and drags her bare breasts past his face. She snatches the dollar from his teeth and sends him away.

Tori — as she is known on stage — has danced topless for the last five years at AllStars in North Lawrence. While her job implies she shows all, what patrons can’t see is a KU student and National Merit Scholar raised in Lenexa by a conservative Mormon family that adhered to church rules banning pre-marital sex, alcohol, tobacco and caffeine.

Instead they see a girl who dances topless, flirts with customers, performs lap dances for cash and enjoys mixed drinks (velvet hammers are one favorite). She casually smokes Camel Lights and earns $200-$800 a night stripping for a mostly male audience of bikers, college students and blue collar workers until two in the morning on some nights.

This 24-year-old blessed with enviable brains, beauty and body will tell you she enjoys this job and what it has done for her.

“I had very poor self-esteem in high school, and it has gotten much better since I started dancing,” she said.

Still, she insisted that her real name not be used for this story, saying that professors at the University — where she will receive a degree in human biology this spring — might have a “narrow-minded” view of what she does for a living.

Eleven hundred miles away in her suburban Salt Lake City home, Tori’s mother, Janet, bursts into tears over the phone.

“I don’t understand any of this,” she said about her daughter’s lifestyle.

Her younger sister tells her in a text message, “You’re better than this.”

But Tori won’t hear it. She likes her job. She likes the money. She likes the atmosphere and the people she works with.

People like “Big” Will Reed, the burly bouncer-turned-general manager of AllStars who has worked with Tori the last five years. A big brother figure, he said he watches out for Tori’s welfare.

A life once filled with church, school and family is now stripping, college and drinking with friends.

Regardless of her family’s wishes or what others think, Tori declares she has been on her own for the last 6 1/2 years and is doing just fine. She knows her family will never approve of her lifestyle, but in a way, they may have helped get her where she is.

The oldest of four children, Tori and her family moved to Lenexa from Utah when she was two. She remembers watching cartoons and having occasional spats with her younger sister growing up. An intelligent kid, she always did well in school.

“Tori is a very smart girl. I gave her all the brains I had,” Janet said with a laugh.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dominated Tori’s childhood, occupying at least 15 to 20 hours per week. Three hours of church, youth meetings and seminary five days per week from 5:30 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. were just some of her Mormon church activities.

Early on, Tori did what was asked of her, at home, church or school.

At age 15, Tori began to question the Mormon doctrine, including its strict rules on dating (Mormons aren’t allowed to date until 16 and then must do so in groups) and its ban on caffeine. She remembers pleading with her parents to attend events like the Kansas City “Renaissance Festival.”

“I never got it,” she said about the book of Mormon. “I tried, I really did. I just never got the vibe that I should go with it.”

Her mother Janet disagrees. “I don’t think she was ready for the information,” she said.

Janet insisted other teenagers in the Church and their harsh treatment of Tori fueled her discontent. One teenage boy sent e-mails to others calling Tori a “whore” and a “slut,” and warned them to stay away from her, Janet recalled.

“There’s always somebody in a group that gets completely dicked over,” Tori said. “I was that person.”

Janet contended that if Tori had been treated better, things might have been different. “I wished I would have done something sooner.”

The family moved to Utah during Tori’s junior year of high school. Mounting tension between Tori and her parents intensified when she dated a non-Mormon and hung out with friends her mother called “druggies.”

Tori admitted her friends dabbled with alcohol and drugs and that she even tried both a few times. However, she’s adamant that her experimentation was brief and never affected her at school.

Her parents reacted swiftly and firmly to Tori’s behavior, sending her to a drug rehabilitation center. She was isolated and had no contact with friends for five months.

Tori checked herself out of rehab when she reached legal age at 18. She stayed with her parents in Utah for only a few days before her boyfriend and best friend picked her up and drove her back to Kansas.

Tori did not speak with her parents for nearly a year after she left Utah, although she now said she understood why her parents sent her to rehab.

“I was the oldest and they were concerned for my welfare. I still feel bad about them sending me to rehab, because it was so expensive. But it was not necessary,” she said.

Even Janet wonders now if sending Tori to rehab was an overreaction. “I don’t know,” she said. “I still feel badly to this day about it.”

Back in Kansas, Tori enrolled at the University. With her freshman year winding down, she was living in Overland Park and commuting daily and had just left her job at a department store in Oak Park Mall.

Having worked 40 hours a week at the old job to cover her bills, she knew she needed to find a better paying job fast, because she was getting no financial support from her parents.

In high school she had joked about being a stripper. Suddenly the joke turned serious.

She sought the advice of her then-boyfriend. “He was supportive, and not in the creepy ‘I-want-to-date-a-stripper sense,’” she recalled.

She visited Bada Bing in North Lawrence, now called AllStars. The search was over.

Five years later, Tori and her mother still have never discussed her job outside of school. “She doesn’t ask, so I don’t tell,” Tori said.

But Janet knows, and she can’t understand why her daughter chose to dance at a strip club.

“It breaks my heart, but it’s her life and she has to own her behavior,” Janet said.

Tori said stripping was a job, not a lifestyle, although her social life away from AllStars usually involved bars and alcohol.

She said her main reason for stripping 20 to 40 hours a week is simple — the money. Average nights brought in $200 to $300. Good nights can bring in as much as $800.

Lap dances, a staple of any strip club, fetch $20. But Tori has her limits, going as far as to call herself “prude.”

“I won’t dance for creepy guys. If I get a bad vibe, I won’t dance,” she said.

Tori said some men feel they can do whatever they want to a stripper.

“Just because I’m a stripper doesn’t mean you can sexually assault me,” she said. “It’s not worth an extra $20, $40, $200 or $400 dollars to go home angry. My mental and emotional health are much more important.”

Another way she makes money doesn’t involve dancing at all – she just sits and talks with a customer.

“Guys are just paying for the company,” she said.

Tori said she had a few regulars who came in specifically to see her, but she’s really had only one guy become too attached to her. Declining to go into specifics, she said the situation was resolved without incident.

So what makes a good stripper?

“Physical attraction is always a bonus,” Tori said.

She quickly added, “But it’s not the only thing. Guys appreciate being able to talk for an hour or two. They appreciate a girl who’s doing something with her life.”

Tori fits that description.

A role model employee. That’s what Big Will called Tori.

Having danced longer than anyone at AllStars, Tori is a favorite of Big Will. A humanitarian of sorts, the aptly named Big Will, an imposing figure with his moniker tattooed along his left forearm, is the father of a 16-year-old daughter and newborn son.

He claimed he taught life lessons that couldn’t be taught at the University and called Tori one of his prized pupils.

“I’ve seen Tori grow from a young, timid girl, who wasn’t 100 percent sure, to a very confident, independent woman who’s going to be something someday. The confidence she’s developed is unbelievable.

“Girls like Tori make AllStars classy,” Big Will proclaims.

A classy strip club?

“Every strip club is classy,” Big Will quipped. “Just depends on what kind of class you come from.”

Despite coming from upper middle-class Johnson County, Mormon family, Tori had no plans to stop dancing. Sure, her family would love to see her keep her clothes on and return to the Church.

For now, Janet said she just wanted her daughter back, and that it’s about family, not the Church.

Tori wouldn’t rule out a return to the Church, but she wished her mother could appreciate what she’s done on her own: working, paying her own way and finishing her college degree.

She said she would probably walk down Campanile Hill next week for graduation to cap off an enjoyable six-year experience at the University.

As for what her next move will be, she’s applied to medical school and was also considering a career in physical therapy.

Tori understands that her KU education is the ticket to a successful working career, and that she’s not going to strip forever.

“But it’s there if I need it,” she said.

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