AAAAAAAnnnnnnd now, the next post in Celeb Mashup, aaaaaa six-eight forward from Southeastern Oklahoma State, Deeeeeennnniiissss Roooodman!!!!

Most people who casually talk to me about my stripping career will find that eventually in conversation, I end up bragging about the time that Dennis Rodman purchased a table dance from me. My evening with Dennis Rodman and his entourage is one of my top favorite highlights in my nineteen-year stripping career. My Dennis Rodman encounter is a crown jewel of celebrity encounters. It was an unforgettable event, the details of which still make me shriek with giggles today. In this post, we will examine my history of being a Dennis Rodman fan. We will examine the working conditions and culture of the strip club where I met him. We will celebrate the evening that I entertained Dennis Rodman. Finally, we will unpack my afterthoughts and aftermath of entertaining Dennis Rodman.

I first became aware of Dennis Rodman's existence during the mid-90's, when he started playing for the Chicago Bulls. Growing up in the Chicagoland area and being surrounded by people who enjoyed basketball, the splash that Dennis Rodman made during his Bulls era was prominent in my pop cultural awareness. Rodman made headlines by doing things like dying his hair bright colors, dressing in gender ambiguous clothing, “marrying” himself, and causing a ruckus on the court. Many of his public behaviors were frowned upon during the 90s, especially in the Midwest or socially conservative places. I became a big fan of Rodman for all of those reasons. While I may have sat through dozens, if not hundreds of 90s basketball games at recreation centers, schools, and TV programs, I've never actually cared to understand how the game works. For me, those times were more about people watching. I loved watching Dennis Rodman on TV. I loved how much he upset people in my familial and social settings. He became one of my new favorite basketball players, though I still had no interest in actually understanding the game. I loved how he was different and unruly, and I thought he looked absolutely gorgeous in all of his outfits. I appreciated that he was a special friend of one of my favorite celebrities at the time, Madonna. I thought it was great that Dennis Rodman posed nude for PETA's anti-fur campaign. The 90s is just as much quintessentially about The Chicago Bulls as it is about Kurt Cobain and Monica Lewinsky. The 90s Bulls is not only about Michael Jordan, but his media savvy counterpart and counter cultural revolutionary-- I'm talking about The Worm, the rebound genius, the one and only-- Dennis Rodman. What a time to be alive! While I eventually stopped sitting through basketball games or keeping tabs on Dennis Rodman, I did hear that he hung out with Kim Jong Un. It bothered me that Dennis became friends with Kim Jong Un, but I didn't give it a second thought until one fateful night in the Summer of 2013 at VIP's Gentlemen's Club in Chicago, Illinois.

I hated working at VIP's. It was nothing like Admiral Theatre. For some sociopolitical reason, the whole city of Chicago actually only has three strip clubs. In 2013, those three clubs were called Admiral, Pink Monkey, and VIP's. The suburban clubs outside of city limits all have disgusting, disturbing amounts of physical contact and other undesirable elements to them. The three Chicago proper clubs have celebrities, rich people, and sparse physical contact. VIP's hired me a couple of days after Admiral fired me. VIP's is also located on the North side. The square footage was much smaller than Admiral, and much uglier. The lighting was a cold blue. It was a sports bar with lots of TVs, and a popular place for Chicago cops and their friends to hang out. While Chicago is a mostly Democrat city, the VIP's staff and their friends were predominantly republicans. I never met the owner of VIP's, and didn't know much about him. The head manager of VIP's was Pete Vrdolyak, who is a relative of corrupt Chicago politician Eddie Vrdolyak. Pete wasn't around too much, so VIP's was operated by lower level managers. When I was hired, a retired Chicago cop named Bob ran the club. Bob was very nice and grandfatherly to me in a non-creepy way. Despite my dislike for all cops on principal, Bob and I got along well, and I appreciated having him around for me. A second retired Chicago cop did security at the front, and South Side Irish bouncers such as Rob Reilly and Mark Boyle did security at VIP's. We had several layers of security throughout the building, which was absolutely necessary even on Chicago's North side. South Side Irish bartender Brian Forkin served drinks, and South Side Irish DJ Murph Murphy played the music. These staff members were generally pleasant to me. VIP's also had a cornucopia of sexually harassing bouncers and male staff that I disliked-- mainly Poles, Greeks, and Latinos. I point those aspects out about them, because many Chicagoans still strongly identify with the origins of their ancestors. The male staff at VIP's weren't educated on sexual harassment, so they treated the dancer pool as a dating pool. Most of the male staff were ugly, so this made it extra weird and unpleasant to be around the majority of them. I was infatuated with one Irish/Italian bouncer named Rob Reilly for most of the time that I worked at VIP's, but we seldom spoke or acknowledged one another.

The dancer demographic at VIP's was unusual compared to most strip clubs. At twenty-seven years old, I was often one of the youngest dancers on a shift. Many of the dancers at VIP's had been there for many years, sometimes since the 90s. In the dressing room, I was sometimes a minority native English speaker. Other languages spoken in the VIP's dressing room were Slavic, such as Polish and Russian. The VIP's dancers fit a lot of stereotypical beauty standards, which included having ugly fake tits and chemically processed hair. I thought most of these Eastern European women were naturally ugly and mean, with pancake asses and limited humor. However, I was on the low-end of sales at VIP's. It was difficult competing with all of the plastic surgery, European accents, and ruthless grit from women who clawed their way up from post-Soviet poverty to the USA. Physical features of mine that normally stand out in strip clubs, such as long limbs, prominent cheekbones, and large eyes, did not stand out among all of the Slavic dancers who had these same features. I felt very unwanted by the VIP's clientele. My money suffered significantly, and I was very sad about it.

In addition to being sexually harassed by ugly male staff and competing with my off-the-boat coworkers at VIP's, there were other problems that negatively affected my self-esteem and income. Because VIP's serves alcohol, the city of Chicago required the dancers to always wear large, thick granny panties, which were administered by the local government. The entirety of breasts had to be covered with two layers of liquid latex, the bottles of which were also determined by the city. My eczema flared up with allergic reactions to the liquid latex, which required the constant application of cortisone cream to my chest and armpits.

VIP's was extremely financially exploitative. Customers usually bought Funny Money Scrip to pay for dances and champagne rooms, which dancers only received a percentage of in actual money at the end of our shifts. Dancers were required to sell t-shirts during regular “features.” Many other misclassifying practices took place that stole our money, energy, and time. We had to pay a large house fee, and tip a significant portion of our income to staff at the end of each night. VIP's was one of the most financially exploitative, misclassifying, rule-enforcing strip clubs that I have ever worked at in my entire life.

I had only been working at VIP's for a couple of weeks when Dennis Rodman came in. He was the tallest person I had ever seen in my life, standing in the threshold between the lobby and modest show floor. It only took me a few moments to realize who he was. His skin was a rich mocha, his flesh full with muscles. He looked like a prime example of human health. He had sunglasses on, even though it was night time, and he was flanked by a small entourage. He looked like he was glittering. He looked magickal. I freaked out internally, but tried not to behave as I did around Sting. I casually walked around Rodman's entourage, pretending not to care. Nobody else in the club seemed to care. Rodman and his group went to the far back end of the rectangular stage, which was in the middle of our small rectangular show floor. At some point, I went upstairs to talk to the “house moms” and makeup artists about Dennis Rodman being there. It was definitely not his first time there, and nobody who worked at VIP's seemed to like him. The women who worked at the club for a long time began complaining that he never tipped or bought dances, and conveyed to me that he basically sits there not talking to anybody besides his entourage. Other dancers advised me that he likes to be left alone. The older women who worked at VIP's during the 90s, including one of the “house moms,” informed me that VIP's is a place where a lot of Bulls from Rodman's era liked to hang out, and that they were some of the worst tippers. The older women had a nickname for Scotty Pippen, who they also disliked. His nickname at VIP's was “No Tippin' Pippin,” a term I have since googled to find is not just limited to VIP's. I was also informed that Michael Jordan never came to VIP's during all of the 90s Bulls glory.

With this information, I headed back downstairs to spy on Dennis Rodman from afar. VIP's required dancers to wear tall stupid heels and ankle-length gowns. Because I did not want to spend my own money on a stupid gown, I was wearing a borrowed one from the club. It was tight, purple, and unflattering to my body. Because I had my head shaved several weeks before, I was wearing a pink bob wig. I looked absolutely ridiculous with the heels, stupid gown, pink wig, granny panties, and liquid latex. For some reason though, I just knew that Dennis Rodman and I would have a spiritual connection. So, I strolled around in front of his table, pretending to be searching for other customers to hustle, and quickly glanced at his sunglasses. It didn't take long for Rodman to wave me down, get my attention, and have me come over to the table. He wanted my consent to caress my pink wig, and of course he had my consent. He then invited me, through his lawyer, to give his entourage a table dance. He did not tip anything more than the price of the dance. I don't remember the song I danced to, because I was so excited and flustered. It was a blur. After the song ended, he invited me, through his lawyer, to sit down and hang out with his entourage.

Dennis Rodman's lawyer was a very pleasant, well spoken Jewish man who was sitting right next to him, doing most of the communicating with me. We had a long and lovely conversation about many things, while Rodman quietly sat with his girlfriend. In addition to his lawyer and girlfriend, his entourage included two body guards, who his lawyer told me were plain clothes cops. His girlfriend was a small Lithuanian, with absurdly large fake titties. She referred to him as “Denny” when speaking with him. I felt absolutely magnificent sitting there with his crew. I asked Denny's lawyer if his girlfriend gets jealous of him going to strip clubs. His lawyer conveyed to me that to date Dennis Rodman, that's just kind of how it goes and what a woman signs up for. At some point during the conversation, I asked his lawyer if I could compliment Dennis on how much I appreciated him defying gender norms during the 90s. After receiving permission to do so, I leaned over and told Rodman that I appreciated the way his outfits and personal aesthetics were nonconforming. He nodded his head and politely said thank you. At some point during the encounter, I was called to the stage by DJ Murph Murphy, to dance to Pearl Jam songs. I was later informed by Murph that Pearl Jam is one of Rodman's favorite bands, and that Rodman tips Murph, unlike anyone else at VIP's, for playing lots of Pearl Jam while he's there. I already had Pearl Jam on my playlist, so this worked out perfectly. I returned to Rodman's table after my set. At some point during my conversation with his lawyer, I was invited to their hotel after work, to go swimming and have sex-- sex with who specifically I do not know. I declined the offer. At some point near the end of the conversation, I leaned over and thanked Dennis Rodman for posing nude for PETA's anti-fur campaign, but stated that I was disappointed in him for eating beef. I don't remember the specifics, but this comment upset Dennis Rodman. His lawyer seemed anxious after I said that. I became anxious as well, so I excused myself and left the table. At some point shortly after, I was walking near the bathroom as his ugly girlfriend was walking out of the bathroom. She was upset with me for bringing a message of animal liberation to Rodman, but I didn't care. Deep down, I thought it was funny that I upset scumbag, North Korea visiting Rodman and his girlfriend. Dennis Rodman and his entourage left soon after, which I also thought was fuckin funny.

I was a bit concerned about getting in trouble for upsetting Rodman, so I approached my manager Bob to talk about it. Bob didn't care at all that I upset Rodman. In fact, he called him an asshole in a casual way, and expressed that he was used to dealing with Rodman's moodiness. The other retired Chicago cop who did security at the front also expressed a dislike for Rodman, but nostalgically remembered how he brought Madonna there during the 90's. Bob asked me if I got a picture of myself with Rodman, which I did not. To this day, not getting a picture of myself with him and his crew is one of my biggest career regrets.

I left my shift early that night. Bob usually let me leave early, even though the club wanted him to illegally enforce rules that made dancers work until close. After driving home to my Bucktown loft and tending to my rescue rabbits and guinea pigs, I walked around a hipster part of Milwaukee Avenue by myself, got some tacos at at 24-hour Mexican restaurant, and felt like a high society lady for schmoozing with Dennis Rodman and company. My career could've ended there and I would've considered it a success after my evening with Rodman, turning down an invite for hotel swimming and sex, and pissing him off with an animal liberation comment to such a degree that he left the club. Lights and skyscrapers in the distance, my belly full of vegan tacos, I gleefully strolled around my neighborhood to soak up humanity and the Summer air of Chicago. Dennis Rodman did something for me that night when asking to caress my wig, purchasing a table dance from me, inviting me to hang out with him, and validating my existence when every other dancer had no such success. He made me feel attractive again when I was sad. He picked MOI. He made me joyful. Dennis Rodman thought I was interesting enough to hang out with, and that made me feel good again.