A few years ago, I was invited to a bachelor party by good friends to celebrate the upcoming nuptials of one of our own. Man code dictates that details of the night shall not be revealed, but we had an interesting experience not many people have had, which added a new concept to the idea of a boys’ night out. We went to a place that is called a hostess club.
Since most of us love Latin music, consider ourselves good dancers and are fans of beautiful women, he did his research and we all met up. For those who are unfamiliar, hostess clubs are basically night clubs where women pay attention to, drink and dance with men for a fee. No one knows exactly where they started but signals point to Japan and the traditional geisha girls, where wealthy businessmen spend money on time to drink and speak with women with very little promise of sex. Stateside, these clubs have been around since the 1920s where lonely men would pay a dime per dance to spend time with a woman. Today, it’s transformed a bit since the patrons that frequent the clubs tend to be recent Latino immigrants far from home and looking for company.
As the night began, we arrived at the club and saw scores of nicely dressed women, far more than what we’d see at a regular dance club. The women were of every stripe you could imagine. Tall, short, fat, skinny, Colombians, Dominicans, Mexicans, even a few Eastern European women. The bar was small, but busy, as the men there were buying $3 beers and $5 mixed drinks — way cheaper than anything we had experienced. I noticed immediately that there was no English being spoken. Most of them seemed to be men who recently arrived to the country — working immigrants who probably left wives and families at home and needed a diversion for the evening. The smell was that of a typical dive bar — spilt beer mixed with a bit of sweat.
Being novices, we didn’t know what to expect. At first we stood huddled together in a corner like junior high school boys at a bar mitzvah. You could see the questions written on some of our faces: What was this place? Is this even legal? Then the music got better and, basically, some of us wanted to dance. So we approached some of the women and asked: “So, how does this work?”
The answer was simple. It cost about $2.00 a dance, you dance as long as you want with whoever you approach and in the end, pay them cash, maybe get them a drink, say thanks, and go on your respective way. It seemed simple enough. So while some of us preferred to take advantage of the cheap drinks, others of us tried to see if the buy-a-dance system worked.
It seemed to. The women were surprisingly polite, friendly and even charming. After getting over a bit of the “first-timer” anxiousness, I spoke to a few dancers and started understanding how things worked around there. I asked if they were employees of the club, but apparently, they weren’t. They pay an entrance fee and keep all the
“dance fees.”
The club made money at the door and at the bar. Most of the women were also new to the US and this was a quick way to make money without going nude or selling sex. It all sounded legit to me. One woman, we’ll call her Irene, said she was there because she was a professional dancer and this was her pay-the-bills job and it beat waiting tables. I asked if things ever get dangerous. She responded that besides drunk or grabby guys, most of the time things went smoothly.
After a while you could notice the cliques that had formed amongst the women — the Guatemalans in one corner, the dark-skinned Dominicans by the DJ, the Colombians with tight pants at the bar. The women competed to get the attention of men to dance with. The prize, as it seemed, was to persuade a guy to pay for unlimited time which meant the woman could sit at his table and drink on his dime. I noticed a couple of ladies at the booths, laughing and entertaining the googly-eyed men. If you didn’t get that though — you had to stand. The girls stood all night in their high heels when they weren’t dancing. If there weren’t enough folks on the dance floor, the house announced “ladies choice!” and the women would go out and pull a guy onto the floor for what I guess was a freebie dance to get the crowd going.
As the music alternated between genres, the better dancers stood out, whereas the women who just did a two-step or were there to bump and grind slowly faded to the back. At that point, my crew was beginning to split. Some wanted to stay for the cheap drinks and dancing, others wanted to move on to the next stop, a local strip club for a more traditional bachelor party. After some debating, we left.
The crew’s experience was evenly split. Some of the guys thought it was a great idea. At a traditional night club if you don’t come in with a girl, it is assumed you’re on the prowl, women’s defenses are up and it can be hard to get girls to just dance with you. If they did, they usually expected you to buy them $15 drinks after just one dance anyway. At the hostess club there seemed to be less pressure on both sides. Women were there to dance, you were there to dance with them; no mystery, no need for a back story. It was a chance to just enjoy the music, sweat it out on the dance floor and have a great time.
The other camp felt like the hostess club was kind of a dirty thing, a bit low on the class scale, full of immigrant women being fondled for a couple of bucks during a dance routine. One could argue that happens at traditional night clubs too. Then again, would a woman feel obligated to let a guy grab a cheek because he paid for the dance? I admit, seeing them stand as they waited to dance got to me. Not being allowed to sit seemed especially harsh for ladies in heels.
Then again, during a night out for a typical bachelor party, you aren’t thinking about feminism or money/sex power dynamics. People do things for money because it is in demand and as long as everyone there is a consenting adult, why not? Years later, I asked two guys who went with me this question: “Would you go back?” One gave me a resounding yes, while the other said not in a million years. Assuming everything was legal at that place, it seems like a hostess club was a much less skeezy boys’ night out than a strip club. So depending on the crowd, the day and the mood, if I had to decide between a strip club and a hostess club, I might just choose the hostess club.
Image credits:
Woman in bra- istockphoto.com/Kertlis
Neon sign- istockphoto.com/Photo Critical