Ray, the Student:

"Normally, I'm really very shy"

o these dancers -- these young men who strip all the way and dance, totally naked, in front of you -- what do they do when they're not dancing?

Some of them will tell you that they're students, just earning a little extra money for school. Some of them are lying. And some of them are telling the truth.

Such is the case with Ray, who really was a student during his nude dancing years. But I first met him when he was finishing his post-graduate education, at Harvard. (And that's the only identifying detail in this interview which I have not changed to protect his identity. Maybe.) He's now a professor at a very well-known university in California.

As I got to know him through my profession, I learned that he is gay and happened to have lived in Washington DC. So I mentioned that one of my favorite places in the world was DC's Chesapeake House, now closed, but at the time the first gay bar in the US to regularly feature male strippers who stripped all the way. He told me that he liked those places, too -- in fact, he had worked at the Chesapeake House, stripping, and at several similar bars! So I called him up and asked him for an interview, in order to round out my coverage of this part of the Men Dancing Naked scene. He agreed, but didn't want pictures of his face to appear.

e explained, chuckling:

I get such little respect around here as it is. I don't mind being naked [on your site] per se, but this institution is such a gossipy place that every computer screen in the joint would have my picture on it in just a few minutes!

irst I just wanted to ask you the question I'm sure you got while you were dancing: what's a nice boy like you doing in a job like this?

Few people asked that, really, because everyone assumed you weren't a nice boy, so it was rare that they actually realized that you were. And I think overall that most of the dancers really were nice boys! At the Chesapeake House, most of the dancers were college students when I was there, and a surprising number were from Gallaudet College -- they were deaf students. There was a whole culture of that, which was interesting.

o you mean deaf and gay, or deaf stripper and gay?

Deaf and gay, but within that there were plenty of strippers. There were 3 or 4 who were stripping at once at one point, but there were maybe 10 or 15 total and they would come to the bar all at one time.

've heard it said that being gay is more common among the deaf. What's your impression?

I have no clue about that. I always thought it would be interesting to do a study of people who are missing various senses, you know? I knew a blind gay man in DC and I wondered how a blind person would "be" gay. For me, being gay is a visual thing; it's what happens when I see an attractive guy. My friend said that he knew he was gay when he could feel a man's deep voice resonating through his body -- and that turned him on. I talk about the visual part of it; I wonder what someone who can't hear thinks about it? There was a book -- did you see it? -- several years ago: Eyes of Desire: A Deaf Gay and Lesbian Reader.

I'll have to look that up!

ow old were you at the time you started dancing?

When I started I was actually old -- like 24. [He laughs.] Old for that. And actually there's plenty of dancers in their 30s. Overall, at that time it was mostly college students -- who were maybe 20.

ow did you first hear about the 'Peake?

I saw it advertised in the Washington Blade. I lived there, saw the ad, and had always fantasized about doing something like that. I went down one evening to watch, and I got there early before they started, and I talked to this nice guy who happened to be sitting next to me -- for an hour. While we were talking -- about politics, which is what everyone normally talks about in Washington -- he asked why I was there. I said, to watch, although I'd had a fantasy to actually dance. He said, I'm the owner, go ahead. I got up and did it right then and there!!

I would then go down there on weekends -- most dancers dance every night, which I couldn't do because I had a full-time job. The other dancers had to dance all night long, which I usually did too, but the owner would let me come and go more than the others. I'd come in, make a couple hundred bucks, and go home. Not bad money, if you can make it! Of course tax free.

ack to your first performance. How did it feel?

Incredibly exciting. It was fun! Fortunately, it was early in the evening, and there was probably 10-15 people in the place or I would have been too nervous. Also, I didn't have a g-string like the others because I didn't expect to work that evening. Anyway, at the Chesapeake House the basic premise was to get naked as quickly as possible and get hard.

hich you did?

Yeah! No trouble!

id you have to play with yourself to get hard?

Yeah. Not much. That was one of the differences with the other dancers; they had to [play with themselves] more than I did. For me it was a fun experience and I didn't have to work all night. And THAT's how you get tips.

ard-ons?

Yeah! What you did -- you would kneel down and let them play with you, so when I say I made a couple hundred bucks it means I kneeled a couple of hundred times. You do work for that couple of hundred bucks!

lot of the people who go to places like the Chesapeake House would imagine that the dancers there were druggies -- party boys with terrible relationships with their parents who lived a life of sin and degradation, and who burned themselves out in a few years and had nothing to show for it later on. You, obviously, disprove that stereotype -- and most of the dancers were students.

True, but one dancer actually killed a client while I was living in DC [laughs uncomfortably], but that was the exception. That was well publicized. It was a bizarre situation which I can't remember the details of. The dancer left with someone at the end of the night and the guy ended up killed and he got arrested for it. I didn't know the dancer all that well and I wasn't there the night that it happened.

hat was the scariest thing that ever happened to you as a dancer?

I don't remember anything scary. It's a stretch [thinks for awhile]. You leave the bars generally half an hour after they close, and in DC they're in baaaad neighborhoods where you have trouble getting a cab. In a few cases I had to walk quite a distance [to catch one]. But I never was frightened by anyone I met or anything that happened in a bar.

hat was the nicest thing that ever happened to you?

[Long pause] The whole thing was nice. The reason I did it is that I was exhibitionistic; it was a high for me. Plus, you really met a lot of really nice people -- people who worked in the bars -- the bartenders and dancers -- these are the type of people I'd never normally meet because I'm so shy, but they're just nice, neat, ordinary people, and the people who came into the bars were also very nice. It was extremely rare when a customer was rude. Some of these were people I would never, ever have gotten to know at the level I got to know them.

hat do you mean by "that level"?

I don't think we ever would have spoken; we were from such different worlds. The fact that I never became close friends with the other people... I felt a bond toward these people, the ones I was working with in particular. To know them as friends.

[I explained that I wondered if, by "that level," he had meant at a sexual level.]

No. Working with these people you NEVER talked about sex. What you were doing onstage was sex. You talked about what they did that day, or movies -- but sex... yes, I had sex with other dancers and stuff like that happened, but that was always: you were standing there in the back room and you both got hard-ons and it just happened, but sex was not something you talked about because that was what you were doing 90% of the time on stage.

id you have an affair with any of them?

No, it was always just there, at the moment.

ou mentioned that there was a back room?

You're stretching my memory! No, not at the Chesapeake House; there was no back room. I know I did have sex at Xxx in DC, and I did in New York at the Xxx. I danced at the Show Palace briefly, and for a longer period of time at the one at 8th Avenue and 46th. Once I also danced at Campus in San Francisco. I was there on vacation or something and happened to be there on their "Amateur night," like 5:30 or 6:00 in the evening, right after work. I won!

n that place you mentioned in New York, the burlesque house, I've often thought that the best show is not the one on stage, but the one in the fluffing room just before each dancer goes out to strut his stuff!

I worked there several times on weekends, and once for one full week. But no, their dancers tended to be these super gorgeous guys who all think they're straight. On any given night, one or two out of the six primary dancers would admit to being gay. I had sex there with dancers who said they were straight -- and it was fluffing as you said it, but that was just one or two times out of a hundred or so. Fluffing was the exception, not the rule. The guys there -- it's a job. They get an erection, they go out, and what they're doing is trying to get a trick (afterwards, from the audience). So they don't want to get off, beforehand, in the back. They're saving it for later.... they're leaving and making 200-300 bucks [with a customer] just to jerk off, they don't even let the person touch them. The few times I left there with a customer he would tell me how refreshing it was -- that I was willing to be touched and I could consummate the act.

onsummate, meaning have an orgasm? Or meaning fucking?

No. I don't do that [fucking] with anyone. I would just jerk off while they watched, or they would jerk me off, or whatever.

o how did the straight guys get hard in the fluffing room?

Usually just jerking off. There's two entrance sides for the stage, left and right. The left side is bigger, but on the right there's a 3-foot wide passage. That's where they'd get dressed and undressed. You were always alone over there. Every now and then there would be some straight [girlie] magazine lying around but I never saw anyone using one to get hard.

assume that one reason that you don't want your real name used is because of your lover?

He knows very little.

ou don't fuck with anyone, for AIDS reasons? I take it that you're HIV negative and plan to stay that way?

Yeah, I don't trust condoms. I hate condoms, and I'm a top. I have fucked using condoms over the past 10 years a few times. But only as a top, never as a bottom. I just don't enjoy the feeling of condoms. They just really mess it up. In fact, me and my boyfriend have never had anal sex -- ever.

hile you were dancing in DC, were you available for dates with customers?

No. I did nude housecleaning, but I think that was it.

ow much did you charge?

I charged 50 an hour back then. I haven't done that for awhile. I did it in New York a couple of years ago, when I lived there.

id that usually turn into sex?

Sometimes. [There's a long pause.] I'll talk about my dancing. This boy's been around the block too many times. I'm not embarrassed, I just want to keep that in some other compartment.

ow did you meet your boyfriend?

At a sleazy bar in Washington. But not a strip bar. I was there just that night to pick someone up. And that was twelve years ago this coming September!

ow! So what clicked?

Primarily we clicked on an intellectual level. He's an incredibly bright person -- an academic like me. He was at the bar to meet a friend who didn't show up.

re your "around the block" days over?

Pretty much. Not that I don't have fun, but I don't... I'm not going out and getting paid for it!

've been as careful as I can to conceal your identity here, but of course in theory there's the possibility that your boyfriend might find this and read about your past -- and figure out, in spite of the deception, that this is you. If this were to happen, what would you want to say to him?

I don't know! [Laughs uncomfortably.] He and I have led separate sex lives to a large extent, and we know and have been open about that with each other. I know he's meeting and having sex with other people -- and I think that's great and encourage it. If he found out about it, fine, and I'm sure he'd let me know if it bothered him.

o monogamy is not the issue, because you have an open relationship.

I don't want it to get back to him, but if it does I'm not too tremendously worried.

ne more thing -- you said that you're really quite shy. So what is it that lets this shy boy get up and take all his clothes off?

It was a fantasy of not being shy -- the ultimate of not being shy. It always would have been a fantasy, never explored, if it weren't for that chance happening in the bar where I talked for a hour to the owner without knowing it. I would have been just like anyone else [with an unfulfilled fantasy]. When you're shy you always want to be like those who are not shy.

The other thing is that I generally try to do stuff that is a real challenge for me. The stuff I'm worst at is what I have to try to excel in. In high school the only class I got a B in was biology, so of course I majored in biology in college! That's just been a theme. Something that's easy for me -- I just wouldn't want to do it. You don't want life to be too simple, you know?

ow old were you when you first realized you had this fantasy of doing something naked?

I don't know, but I'm sure it was not too long before the time when I actually did it, and that's when I first realized that there were dancers like this. The ads probably inspired the fantasy. When I was a boy, [my strategy about body exposure was] to be as closed as possible. I was embarrassed to be in swimming trunks; high school gym class was horrifying because I had to get naked in the locker room. That's why this -- stripping all the way -- is a matter of overcoming something, overcoming the total fear. It wasn't necessarily a fantasy in the sense of surprising someone -- although of course it is very erotic.

hich is erotic? Surprising someone or just being naked?

Being naked in front of people.

o you know about Toronto, where customers can dance naked in a certain disco?

I probably wouldn't do that, because everyone can do it. It takes away the fun! For me, the fun is that everyone's looking at you, you're naked, you're exposed, you're there.... I don't know why that thrills me, to be truthful. It's still the case for me that giving talks in front of people terrifies me. I teach two hours every week and those two hours are terrifying.

ould you ever teach naked?

[The response is instant, probably because he anticipated my question.] NO! Never! But that's because of the audience [which wouldn't expect it].

You see, often people have wanted to hire me to strip at surprise parties and stuff. I would never do them unless I could talk to the person first. A lot of people are NOT interested in seeing a stripper, they're embarrassed, whatever. There's nothing worse than when you're hired to strip in front of people and they're embarrassed because others are watching them; maybe one on one they wouldn't be so embarrassed. In the strip-show bar, there's no problem because you know all the customers WANT to see you naked; it's consenting adults.

oy, I wish that when I was that age and had the body that I had had the courage to do what you did!

Well, I wish I had the body to do that still! Although I'm in better shape than I have ever been.

ut when I took photos of you 5 years ago you weren't fat.

No, I've never been fat, but I was over my ideal weight. Now I'm at my ideal weight and I feel great. I have a friend who took some pictures of me recently.

Can I put them up on this website? Without your face?

Maybe.

I'll let you see what I've written and then decide. [Indeed, he did.] Thanks!

You're welcome!

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