Bring On the Dancing Girls...

Both Miranda and Irie say the money they make for dancing is hard to hold on to, since it's cash and it arrives in clumps. They seem to know that sooner or later they won't be getting paid like this to get naked and dance. Miranda has even taken a bartending job.

"My first day was Wednesday. I was there from 10:30 in the morning until five in the evening. I made five dollars an hour and I made nine dollars in tips. And I was aching. My body hurt."

Miranda went to school to be a travel agent but doesn't want to sit in an office. She knows the down side of less glamorous employment, but she's a bit more pragmatic with her new pursuit: "I saved that nine bucks."

Rick's owner Watters, a thin, hiply dressed former tax-law attorney, waxes economic when describing what is traded for coin at his cabaret.

"When you're getting a table dance, the commodity that is being sold is not necessarily the girl's nakedness two inches in front of your face or twelve inches away. What is being sold is human attention. It's an attractive young female focusing her entire energy on you for the duration of the table dance." (That's 20 bucks for three or four minutes of human attention.)

Watters views himself as a bit of a pioneer, a Daniel Boone of buck nakedness.

"Rick's has been here for ten years. When I first got in the business, topless clubs were far different than they are today. They were seedy places with sticky carpets."

(Now these temples of patriarchy have nice carpets, fancy furniture, decent food and high prices.)

"This is the age of the voyeur, where non-contact sex is more acceptable," Watters continues. "People are going for monogamous relationships, but they go for outlets where they can become stimulated simply by seeing and not becoming involved." (People are afraid to become intimate with new people; they are sexually frustrated. Business is boooooming.)