The entertainer’s sad stories are similar to the old stand bys but are certainly taken to new, exaggerated heights. While a casino dealer might tell me that he was unable to call in with any advance notice because his grandmother died suddenly, a dancer will say, “My boyfriend and I were kidnapped by drug dealers in the alley off Fourth Street and the bastards murdered my boyfriend. The killers left me for dead and since I was lying in my boyfriend’s blood. I couldn’t move a muscle otherwise I would have called.”

As the owner of strip clubs on the East Coast and West, I have known thousands of topless dancers on a much more intimate level than a typical employer will come to know his or her employees. Understandably, when a girl takes her clothes off in front of another person night after night, when she stands naked before her boss, it’s not just her body that is exposed, she bares her emotions as well and, her whole psychological being opens up. She has less to hide and, therefore, in thousands of cases I have become the stripper’s confident and one of the most trusted persons in my employee’s life.

Every night of the week,