The pole is taken by a brunette woman with a flock of butterfly tattoos. As each applicant approaches, his heavy-lidded gaze does the slow, familiar drift from head to foot and back. Maybe I should have worn something lower cut.Įventually a guy in a suit and diamante earrings shows up, collects the forms, and starts interviewing at the end of the bar. I check the box anyway and eye the other girls. What is a hostess? There is no one else in the bar.
Name, age, nationality, previous bar experience, and three check boxes: bar staff, hostess, dancer. I take a seat and study the application form. There are a few tables not claimed by my competition. The woman on stage looks bored as she suspends herself from the pole by her feet, chest thrust out.
I get an application form from the bar and wait while the bartender finds a pen. A blonde woman in towering plastic shoes with LED lights in the soles, rotating slowly on one of the poles in a yellow g-string. One elderly guy in a seat by the catwalk.
Other job applicants already filling out application forms. Low seats surrounding a catwalk with two poles. When I walk into the club this is what I see: a long, low room with vinyl-padded walls. This essay appears in issue 26 of The Lifted Brow, an Australian magazine of letters.
