Does every strip club have a fat douchebag named Rob working somewhere in the building?! Seriously! I can't make this shit up! What's with all the lowly losers named Rob working in strip clubs across the USA? Rob is overweight. Rob is from the Southeastern United States. Rob has a cropped or crew cut. Rob enjoys cannabis. Rob has at least one child from an unwed relationship, possibly more. Rob is middle aged, but Rob preys on barely legal women despite his unsightly physical appearance and lack of financial resources. While working in the strip club, Rob often has one question on his mind,

“How many of my coworkers would let me stick my boner in them?”

That's actually a photo of him when he was younger. He looks way worse now.

Robert Udovich wasn't the first, and certainly wouldn't be the last, Rob in my career, but what's in a name? A Rob by any other name would still stink.

The other day I had a conversation with a retired stripper, about the phenomenon of ugly dudes who work in strip clubs obtaining much younger, more attractive girlfriends who also work in strip clubs. We concluded that it is because these coworkers spend so much time together in a closed space, around blatant sexual energy, that they become attached to one another. If I was a gross ugly loser guy who wanted a much younger and more attractive girlfriend, I'd probably get a job at a strip club too.

Within my first week of working at Mouse's Ear, I bumped into DJ Rob with dancer Lilith, shuffling around a Knoxville Subway together before work. Lilith looked petrified, her eyes grew big, and she didn't say a word. I immediately figured she must've been fucking DJ Rob and didn't want anybody to know about it. Rob was nonchalant and casually asked,

“Live around here?”

I said I didn't. He prodded me about my rent costs where I live. I was very vague with my answer. Later on at work while I was alone at my locker, Lilith approached me, again with a bizarre expression on her face, to make small talk. She didn't mention Subway, and neither did I. I never told anybody, and never brought it up to her. Rob and I never brought it up together either.

For the first half of my time at Mouse's Ear, barely legal Lilith worked all of the same shifts that Rob worked. About half-way through my time there, Lilith had a mental breakdown and didn't come to work for a while. She then started exclusively working DJ Conner's shifts. She then began spreading rumors that Rob “fucks a lot of the dancers,” though she didn't name herself specifically. I'm not sure she even remembered the Subway incident at that point.

When I was hired at Mouse's Ear in 2019, I was appalled that dancers were instructed to give the DJ ten percent of their take home pay, according to what the DJ calculated our take home pay must've been. Buddy Browning told me this percentage, and the DJs told me this percentage. It struck me as an absurdly large amount of money to be giving a DJ, a number I have never been expected to give before, a number which has never been so overtly dictated to me before. I was shocked by their shameless entitlement.

The DJs at Mouse's Ear also functioned as bouncers. Buddy and Ralph were too cheap to hire security, and the DJs were the only other male workers at Mouse's Ear. Part of the DJ's job was to walk dancers out to our cars at night and ensure we safely got in. That was the time we were expected to “tip” them.

One night early on in my employment, when I decided to be brave enough to resist Rob's financial expectations, I gave him a paltry sum. He counted it as I was getting my keys. Before I was able to get into my car, he stopped me. It was dark outside, we were alone in the parking lot, I was intimidated, and he began ranting about mathematics, about how much he knew I must've made, about how I wasn't giving him enough of my money, about how he felt “gyped,” and how that wasn't fair. My audio recorder picked up all of it. The NLRB heard all of it. I replied to Rob by pretending like I did give him ten percent of what I had, that I calculated it correctly. He accused me of under-charging the customers according to our prices. He insisted that must've explained why he got such a paltry sum. I didn't say anything, just got into my car. In subsequent weeks, Lilith began covertly spreading rumors that I was under-charging customers. I knew she was probably thinking this because she was covertly romantically involved with the DJ, and he was telling her about his paltry tips I was giving him. I never brought that up to Lilith; we remained cordial. Lilith was extremely overbearing with me and other dancers, sometimes offering to count my money for me, in a thinly veiled desire to know how much I was actually making that Rob wasn't getting. She suggested maybe I was bad at math and needed help. At that time, Lilith was unaware that I was more than a decade older than she is, and she was unaware that I am great at math. I just didn't want to give her slime ball boyfriend more of my money, that's all.

DJ Rob has really bad taste in music. He played as much rap and hip hop music as he possibly could, which didn't make sense in a place like Mouse's Ear. Mouse's Ear catered to a more alternative, country, indie, folksy crowd-- the opposite of a rap crowd. Rob repeatedly told me to give him lists of songs which included modern rap music, songs produced within the past five years, and specifically songs sang by men instead of women. I do not know why he would think aggressive rap songs sang by men would arouse the average Mouse's Ear crowd, or why he would want to attract customers who like that music. He was displeased with my 90s hip hop selections, displeased with my Rihanna selections. When I requested Sex Out South by Tech N9ne after he instructed me to request male rappers, he excitedly told me how “hot” the song was, how he was happy I finally picked a good one. He'd play Sex Out South once, sometimes twice per night for me.

Despite Rob's affinity for rap and hip hop music, he used to shout “Proud Boys!” over the microphone all the time. At the end of sets, he'd mumble things like,

“aaaalllllriiiiiieeee, PROUD BOYS! Yeeeeeeaaaa PROUD BOYS! Stay PROUD BOYS!”

It was very strange. I was never able to decipher why he was shouting Proud Boys over the microphone, whether he was trying to subliminally promote that awful organization, or if he was just randomly telling customers to be proud all the time. It made no sense to me. I'd never heard a DJ shout PROUD BOYS over the microphone after a dancer's set before. I did know that his girlfriend Lilith had an affinity for folksy Odinist-leaning paganism. If any of my readers have information about Robert Udovich’s affiliation with The Proud Boys, please contact me.

Udovich is not a name normally found in the Southeastern United States. I learned that he previously lived in Alabama, but with a name like Udovich, I'm not sure how many generations of Old Dixie Robert Udovich has coursing through his veins. In some ways, I think of myself as more quintessentially Southern than he is, even as I was born and raised in Illinois.

Robert Udovich used to pry into my business all the time when walking me to my car. He must've noticed all the luggage and linens in my back seat, because he'd obnoxiously ask me where my home is, suggest I didn't have one. I said I had a hemp farmer boyfriend who I stayed with up in a holler in Tazewell, when I wasn't in my “apartment” in Knoxville. That was kind of true; I did have a little project I was working on up in Tazewell that was completely unrelated to Stripper Labor Rights, and it did take place on a hemp farm, but the specifics of that are stranger than fiction, and not for this website. Sometimes Rob would ask me for some hemp from this alleged farm in my alleged boyfriend's holler, and I'd just laugh him off before driving away. Rob didn't actually need any of my alleged hemp from some alleged farm in the Tazewell hollers. His girlfriend Lilith was a popular weed dealer in our workplace.

The strip club DJ with a drug dealer stripper girlfriend is a common archetype I've noticed in clubs. It actually serves an important role in union busting, because while the girlfriend is doing something naughty herself, she also has the advantage of getting to know many of the other dancers on a personal level, being privy to their secrets before a lot of other people are able to speak with them, and ensuring that no labor organizing activities are taking place. The DJ's drug dealer girlfriend may spend significant amounts of time schmoozing around the dressing room when not hanging out in the DJ booth utilizing a bird's eye view of the club. It is in the DJ's best interests to have such a girlfriend, but not tell other dancers they are together, in order to spy on any candid conversations that may take place among workers. The Drug Dealer Stripper benefits from insider knowledge of the dressing room camera abilities, which the DJ can tell her more about. DJ Rob and Lilith fit a certain trope, like so many repetitive human behavioral patterns and personality types found in strip clubs, mirroring themselves like fractals spiraling outwards through time and space. The drug dealer stripper girlfriend sits in the DJ booth, spying and telling on dancers, triangulating everything she possibly could, in the cess pool of the club, stinking like semen and bong water and body spray. Yes, I was onto Lilith and the DJ the entire time, and they were aware of my litigious history for much of the time, but they did not know that I knew they knew. It's always important to stay three steps ahead of all these fucking losers, not that that's difficult to do, what with all their drugs combined with garden variety mental illnesses. Yawn.

Robert Udovich was known among the dancers as the mean DJ. He regularly scolded a gothic dancer named Roxy about her Satan worshiping clothes. He regularly scolded Roxy about needing to look more mainstream, insisted she wear wigs to cover her shaved head, and gave her unsolicited advice on how to attract men. Presumably he said these things to her because he thought it would get her more money, and subsequently a bigger tip for him. Roxy would spend hours in the dressing room crying and obsessively talking about the agony of working with Rob, weeping under the dressing room shower to wash away her tears. A dancer named Rhed gave Roxy a pep talk about her hatred for Rob. A dancer named Selexa kept a written list in her purse about why she didn't tip Rob whatsoever.

Eventually I got sick of Rob badgering me for more money when walking me to my car, particularly because he was a single parent who always reminded me that it was for his kid. So, I just gave in and eventually gave him roughly ten percent most of the time. I really liked living in Appalachia and did want to keep my job despite the labor violations. Sometimes if he was walking out multiple dancers and they gave him absurd amounts of money more than ten percent, he'd take it out of their hands while glancing over at me with raised eyebrows.

After I started paying him more due to extortion, he became very supportive of me in the workplace, at least to my face. He stated that I am a great entertainer, stated that the other dancers bullying me seemed like I was “being crucified” for making lots of money. He allowed me to vent about them from time to time, but also got sick of it sometimes, and told me to go tell Buddy and Ralph about it. He never played mean Song War songs, even through all the Alex Cave stuff, even though all the labor rights stuff. He'd play Jeremy by Pearl Jam when I was being bullied, and other uplifting music about hustlers making a lot of money while their “haters” were upset. Perhaps he was doing all of this so he'd continue getting paid, but I much preferred him to DJ Chris Conner.

Sometimes Rob would play “Mr. Jones” when he and little old Ralph were working the same shift. They'd hang out together at the DJ booth while joyful Adam Duritz's beautiful voice and Counting Crows melodies filled the air, everyone was smiling and making money on a warm Summer's night in Knoxville. It was perfect for a moment. Just a moment. I loved those moments. She's looking at you-- no, she's looking at me, sang Adam Duritz.

I still hated Rob regardless. He was always very patronizing in the ways he communicated with the dancers, always calling us “baby girl” in a sleaze ball way. He posted a meme on his facebook in 2019, about how he refers to “emotionally immature” women as “girls,” because they don't deserve to be called women. Alex Cave “liked” that meme.

I was having mechanic problems with my car in late August/early September of 2019, and unable to make it back up to Chicagoland to visit my trusted mechanic up there. Rob referred me to a guy from Michigan who was living out in Loudon, a rural town outside of Knoxville. I can't remember the guy's name, but he was actually a wonderful and affordable mechanic. Rob's mechanic also informed me that Rob's blue Ford Mustang was a piece of shit that just looked nice on the outside, and that Rob had no idea on how to properly maintain his own vehicle. It was an interesting little unexpected deluge of opinions I got about Rob.

On my last night before being fired, when I knew I'd probably never see him again, I handed him five bucks. Maybe it was Stockholm Syndrome. Maybe it was just my way of saying,

“Hey, thanks for playing me nice songs, not doing mean Song Wars, and referring me to a reliable mechanic in Loudon. You are the lesser of many satans, and I truly appreciate that.”

Grey is such a symbolic colour.