Just kidding, Mettler’s isn’t a fight club. Most of the dancers at Mettler’s were kindly passive-aggressive Minnesota mayonnaise covered crackers, who held their angst and frustrations inside themselves so tightly packed that if you put a lump of coal up their asses, in two weeks you betcha you would get a diamond, twice the size of Cameron’s in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. These bitches may whisper about you when they think you’re not around to hear them, but they are fairly conflict avoidant when it comes to face to face interaction. That is part of the reason why I was able to stay at Mettler’s so long without any problems. Yes, their personalities are loathsome and gross. Yes, they are fucked up people. But, who cares about them validating your existence when there is money to be made in a busy strip club where customers are not allowed to touch and the DJs play great music. Mettler’s was a gem to be cherished.

This post has “Fight Club” in the title, because there was another demographic of dancer who drove out to Mankato all the time. Like me, they stayed in cheap motels at the edge of town. Like me, they came from faraway lands such as Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Chicago. Like me, they were there to make money. Unlike me, they struggled economically while dancing at Mettler’s, were prostitutes, had a propensity for sloppy violence, and paid people to sew other woman’s hairs onto their heads. Unlike a lot of other clubs, Mettler’s did nothing to prevent the occasionally large numbers of these kinds of dancers from working. Sometimes there would be a few coming into town, and sometimes there would be a whole bunch at once. Sometimes when there were a whole bunch at once, there was some kind of chemical reaction I think, to beat the fuck out of one another. It did not surprise me, as I have danced all over the country and attended a certain high school where I witnessed similar behaviors from teens who were bused in from a neighboring town. However, to many young Minnesota dancers, this type of behavior was surprising. Many Minnesotans are also extremely politically correct, so it seemed difficult for them to discuss anything in a frank manner or to acknowledge it.

The Mankato Free Press and several other papers did articles about one such fight that happened on a chilly Mettler’s night in December of 2016. I had a front row seat to this epic brawl that took place among FOUR of the aforementioned types of dancers. Earlier in the night, one of them had been staring me down as I went about selling lap dances and she sat in a chair wearing a platinum blonde wig. Another one had sexually assaulted me in a work shift prior to that, by playfully squeezing my buttocks. I have no idea what their fight was about, but it started in one of the dressing rooms, proceeded out into the hallway, and briefly ended after the bouncers intervened, before starting up again when one of them zoomed over across the entire show floor with some mace to spray in her competitor’s face. They were all entangled and the weave hairs were a-flyin’. It was wildly entertaining to see these big beefy bouncers attempting to stop four petite females and not succeeding, due to their speed, agility and dedication to whipping ass.

“One of the other dancers said Jordan hit her in the face with a shoe with a stiletto heel, striking her just below one of her eyes with the heel. The other reported that Jordan grabbed her hair and pulled out part of her weave. They also said Strayhorn sprayed them with mace while Jordan was assaulting them, the complaints said.” — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

After it was over and the four were all thrown out and fired, I was pleased that I didn’t have to put up with having those individuals as coworkers any longer. Apparently the chaos continued outside of the club and involved a police chase. The Mankato Free Press likes to publish certain scandalous happenings in the club, but generally it was a wonderful place to work, even if they broke labor laws that I had to sue them for. Maybe you are sitting in COVID quarantine right now reading this, offended by the things that I have written, but I don’t care. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.