The Seville Series: William Edmund Reau III

From coast to coast, strip club floor hosts slither about in high end clubs, wearing cheap suits, leaving a goo trail of hair gel and oil as they go. Most people don't know what a strip club floor host is. I didn't know what one was until about six years after I started dancing, because they are usually only employed in large corporate clubs. Floor hosts generally work as a bouncer, manager, seating host and agent of sales. All of these job titles rolled into one person can create a conflict of interest for the dancer's well-being. Since floor hosts usually don't make much of an hourly wage, they must hustle dancers to tip them. One way they accomplish this is by finding customers for dancers who aren't good at sales, and work like pimps or match makers, selling VIP sessions for the dancer. Floor hosts expect dancer tips for this service. Another way floor hosts train dancers to tip them is by threatening not to “take care” of the dancers who don't tip. By “take care,” eel floor hosts mean that they will not do their duties as bouncers to protect dancers, not do their duties as managers to mediate problems a dancer may have, and may otherwise avoid a dancer who needs manager approval to do something like end her shift or go upstairs.

William Borea is a floor host at Seville. William and I have a shared fondness for literary arts and martial arts. He is an old man who has made attempts to break into professional screenwriting and acting. As a young man, he studied some psychology. He is a wrestler who is known in the Minneapolis fighting world as Billy Blaze, performing at locations like the Eagles Club and Knights of Columbus in Bloomington. He is part of a tag team called Body Beautiful. Despite his lifelong quest for the limelight, William Borea hasn't managed to leave the dim light of Seville, where he has been sliming it up for many years.

Aside from Jason Ewing, Billy was the primary show floor host. There were other ones who mostly worked upstairs or outside, but Billy and Jason were the show floor duo most of the time. Considering Jason as the alternative, Billy didn't have much competition when it came to who the dancers had to befriend to have things go their way. In authority situations when there are multiple positions, there is usually someone who plays the “good cop.” This individual uses psychological manipulation to get their subservient to open up to them and talk about life. This is a way for them to extract information and stay in control of a situation. Billy was very much a “good cop” character at Seville, but all cops are bad.

When I first started working at Seville, I had a very difficult time getting Billy to help me with things like seating me at a fifteen-minute couch, giving me permission to go upstairs or signing my permission slip to leave. I could tell that he mostly preyed on naive strippers who weren't good hustlers, because that was how he earned his tips. Shortly after I first started working at Seville, I had a concussion and had to leave early a few times because of my post-concussion syndrome. Despite me telling him this, Billy continued to encourage me to stay longer when I said I needed to go. I thought he was a really evil person, but he was a person who I had to get along with in order to have my work shift go smoothly. Some clubs have a set up where there is a podium that one worker stands at and checks out dancers or gives them permission to do a dance. Seville didn't have anything stationary like that, and instead dancers had to track down a floor host to help her out with transactions and tasks. This was difficult to do at times when it was busy and floor hosts were mostly running around to make their own tips. To maximize my profit, I found it helpful to compliment Billy on aesthetic bullshit that he expressed enjoyment about, such as his cowboy boots. Secretly, I thought his cowboy attire was hideous, but I didn't like it when Billy avoided basic manager duties.

Some of the Seville staff thought I needed to work out more often, and openly commented about it. For some reason, Billy felt the need to tell me that if I just jogged a few minutes each day, I would have more energy and my writing would improve.

Due to cosmetic procedures, Billy's face is fairly homely. Whenever I would have to talk to him, I would try to figure out what he had done. It looked like he used some kind of auburn coloring on his eyebrows, goatee and mustache. I suspected he used botox or had a face lift, and I would just think to myself, “What the fuck?”

Billy was smarter than most of the Seville employees. That's not saying a lot since most of them are really dumb, but Billy was at the top, cognitively speaking. Because of Billy's smarts, he was probably onto me quicker than some other people. He is also friends with some of the staff from other Minnesota clubs I had sued. When he spoke to me about club rules, it was difficult to hear him, because he whisper-spoke. That is-- he talked very quietly, so my audio recorder did not pick up what he was saying. If I asked him a yes or no question, he would nod or shake his head without speaking. If he needed to tell me to do something, he would whisper it very close to my ear. On the night that Michael Sigmon came in to yell at me about my dance prices, he summoned 'ole Billy boy to reiterate it to me. Billy is smarter than Michael, so instead of yelling like Michael was, he whispered the pricing rules. Sometimes, communicating with him reminded me of that episode “Hush” on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where nobody speaks and instead talks in motions and gestures. He had a very mafiaesque way, and it was all so his employer could continue to exploit, steal from and abuse vulnerable young women who don't know their labor rights, then deny it in arbitration. That probably isn't what Billy saw himself doing decades ago during college or when he first tried to succeed in show business, but that is his life at Seville.

Despite his background in martial arts and wrestling, Billy didn't do a whole lot with regards to throwing out sexual predators who had assaulted me at Seville. One night during baseball season, a group of Canadians came down to see the Blue Jays play. Drunk and rowdy after the game, one of them reached up and smacked my ass on stage. I grabbed him by the shirt, smacked him, screamed in his ear to never do that again, then bit his ear and left little teeth marks, all while I was on stage and my music was playing. I regret not ripping his ear off with my mouth. Some clubs will fire a dancer for doing that kind of thing, while other clubs will throw out the customer for assaulting the dancer. I wasn't sure what Seville would do, but I knew Billy was near by and saw. I approached him after I got off stage to see what his reaction would be. He was slumped on a stool and didn't mention it either way. The drunken Canadian Blue Jay fan was still wandering around for an hour or so in the not-so-gentle men's club.

Another night, a customer grabbed my ass while he was on a couch and I was moving past him. In response, I grabbed him by the throat and screamed in his ear. In addition to Billy creeping around watching that, Kim Kardashian's ex husband, Chris Humphries was also there. I'm not sure what Humphries was up to, but Billy did nothing to reprimand the customer who had assaulted me. He had no financial reason to make a scene where millionaires were partying. I was happy that Billy didn't interrupt me when I pummeled men, but disgusted in him for not throwing sexual predators out of the club completely. One of the reasons manager Rayner Perez told the arbitrator I was fired was because customers had complained that I am “rude.” In reality, I fought back when I was assaulted and had no help from Scum Billy.

During the end of my employment at Seville, Billy was doing a lot of following me around, spying on me and the conversations I was having with other dancers. Surveillance is something that workplaces do to people who they are threatened by. One dancer who he kept a close eye on when talking to me was a young woman named Tatum Smith. I don't know why he kept an eye on that, but I do know that Tatum Smith has spent time partying at Lake Vermilion with certain other Seville employees in a certain cabin, and I know that Tatum Smith has spent a lot of time rubbing her rear end against Billy while they were in corners or seated at the bar.

I can only use this website as a warning to those dancers who will ever work at Seville or with him in the future. If you have information about William "Billy Blaze" Borea, please email me from the contact tab at the top of this page.

The last time I saw Billy was a couple of shifts before I was fired. I did not tell him that I was leaving like I usually did, and did not tip him like I usually did. He appeared to be upset with me. I smiled at him and said bye. He went out of town after that shift, on his honey moon for the latest of his multiple marriages.