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Even Keel
The Deepest Cuts
The Deepest Cuts
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"I untie my halter top and toss it to the far corner of the stage." So begins "The Deepest Cuts," a short story told by a stripper who discovers that after eight years of erotic dancing, the slurs and taunts of some of her customers are finally getting to her.
Before the coming of the upscale gentlemen’s clubs, Philadelphia and its near suburbs were dotted with Go-Go bars – small neighborhood taverns with a small stage, or larger bars with two stages and a nightclub-like atmosphere. On these stages, costumed women stripped until they were almost nude. They were called Go-Go dancers – a euphemism from the sixties – they were strippers. But strippers in bars where alcohol fueled libido and sometimes misogyny.
“The Deepest Cuts" is the first of a series of interconnected short stories from my forthcoming novel Women On The Cusp which examines erotic dancing in the Philadelphia area in the early 1990’s. Most of the stories, like “The Deepest Cuts,” focus on the dancers: their experiences and feelings, and the type of people they were. But some of the stories are about the bar owners, the bartenders, and of course, the men who go to watch.
Surprisingly, much of their content is not dark. Despite or maybe because of their sexual energy, good things sometimes happened in the Go-Go bars. Humanity was not dwarfed by the overt sale of sexual display. And often people fought back against the dark. Bonds were formed in these bars. Bonds of cooperation. Bonds of friendship. Bonds of love. I know this firsthand.
Fred Even
Before the coming of the upscale gentlemen’s clubs, Philadelphia and its near suburbs were dotted with Go-Go bars – small neighborhood taverns with a small stage, or larger bars with two stages and a nightclub-like atmosphere. On these stages, costumed women stripped until they were almost nude. They were called Go-Go dancers – a euphemism from the sixties – they were strippers. But strippers in bars where alcohol fueled libido and sometimes misogyny.
“The Deepest Cuts" is the first of a series of interconnected short stories from my forthcoming novel Women On The Cusp which examines erotic dancing in the Philadelphia area in the early 1990’s. Most of the stories, like “The Deepest Cuts,” focus on the dancers: their experiences and feelings, and the type of people they were. But some of the stories are about the bar owners, the bartenders, and of course, the men who go to watch.
Surprisingly, much of their content is not dark. Despite or maybe because of their sexual energy, good things sometimes happened in the Go-Go bars. Humanity was not dwarfed by the overt sale of sexual display. And often people fought back against the dark. Bonds were formed in these bars. Bonds of cooperation. Bonds of friendship. Bonds of love. I know this firsthand.
Fred Even
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