The Lap of Luxury (From A Stripper)
enquiz2001
Florida
The Lap of Luxury
By ELISABETH EAVES
Paris
IT'S happened again. Another innocent man who just wanted a few lap dances claims to have been victimized by an exclusive New York strip club, Scores.
This time it's an executive from Missouri named Robert McCormick, who, treating himself and friends, ran up a $241,000 bill at Scores on his corporate American Express card two years ago. American Express is now suing him for refusing to pay up. Several other unhappy customers have also sued Scores over large bills.
These don't seem to be cases of bill padding. American Express sought signed receipts from the club before bringing its suit against Mr. McCormick. In the most recent suit against Scores, meanwhile, the plaintiff's justification is simply that he was drunk when he signed his bills.
Nevertheless, the Manhattan district attorney's office is investigating allegations of overcharging at Scores. To which I say, as someone who has worked in strip clubs, you've got to be kidding - there's no such thing as "overcharging" in this industry.
Does Christian Dior "overcharge" when it sells a handbag for $13,000? That depends on how you look at it. If you see the handbag as a few pieces of stitched leather, the price is grossly inflated. If you see it as a source of heady self-worth - a passport to an exclusive club - then it's hard to say what price would be too high.
This is the economic logic relied on by purveyors of luxury goods. It's not about the utility of the product. It's about making the customer feel as if he has arrived.
Strip clubs, particularly high-end ones like Scores, provide a luxury service. That $3,000 price tag on a bottle of Champagne isn't just for the beverage; it's part of the price of the experience. Mr. McCormick probably didn't go to Scores strictly to see topless women, or even for the physical contact and potential sexual gratification of a lap dance. Both experiences can be had in simpler, cheaper ways.
Rather, he and his colleagues probably went because being surrounded by fawning, semi-naked, Champagne-flute-wielding women was for them a symbol of success. It's like hiring a chauffeured limousine: a taxi would get you there, but without the aesthetic experience.
When I worked in a Seattle peep show, I had a customer who told me his name was Excalibur and quietly slipped me his poetry. Part of my job, in that moment, was to make him feel like a Knight of the Round Table. This required only a show of curiosity and respect. He must have found those things hard to come by in the real world, though, because he paid me well to help spin the illusion.
With many customers, fawning is key. What a stripper sells is not her ability to dance or take off her clothes, but her ability to suspend the customer's disbelief.
If she is doing her job right, his bald spot and his mortgage cease to exist, and he enters an adolescent fantasy of sexual prowess, temporarily transformed into James Bond, Han Solo and Hugh Hefner all rolled into one. The dancers keep cooing and flattering until the money runs out. It's not duplicitous; it's what the patron signs up for.
I have little sympathy for these carping customers. Their complaints are the height of boorishness. It's acceptable to indulge your James Bond fantasies, but it's not acceptable, when the bill comes due, to remain convinced that you're James Bond. The dancers weren't in it for kicks.
Among strippers I worked with, the most dreaded customers were not the obese or the lame. Rather, we feared customers who thought they were exceptions to the rule. They were just handsome enough, or successful enough, to foolishly think that their own sex appeal was tip enough.
It's just this kind of guy who would backpedal on a strip club bill and go crying to the courts that he was hustled. Well, sure, the dancers hustled Mr. McCormick, but no more so than the occasional Mercedes dealer. Buyer's remorse is not an occasion to stiff the seller.
So, gentlemen, pay the bill. A reasonably priced lap dance is not a right.
Elisabeth Eaves is the author of "Bare: The Naked Truth About Stripping."
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26 comments
On the other hand...I have to applaud his choice of wife. Mrs. Chitown would have had my bags packed within fifteen minutes of the summons hitting the front door.
As far as this CEO, if he had just paid the bill and learned his lesson, he wouldn't be in the pickle he is now. It's all about ego. I guess some guys, when they get that high up and feel that full of themselves, don't know how to take no for an answer. I wonder too, how many guys like this go out and run up bills like this and do pay.
Ego - it can be a dangerous thing. Wonder if he's divorced yet, if he was married.
I suspect his attorneys are currently negotiating the buy-out of his contract with the attorneys representing the employers. An "amicable parting of the ways," in which our Hero will "pursue other interests," is doubtless in the works.
A columnist in today's St. Louis paper discovered that Our Hero was in the Champagne room, where the dancers charge $4,000/hr. a piece. He had ten of them at a time. When those ladies' hour was up, he would signal for the manager to send in another ten, waving his arms like a ground crew member signalling to an arriving flight.
Needless to say, when you are burning through $40,000/hr just on the dancers, you can hit a quarter of a mill pretty quickly. It is not uncommon for me to spend six hours in a club, although not the norm....and my burn rate is considerably less than $40,000 per.
I agree, it is insane to imagine how you can piss away that much money in one evening... but I don't doubt that it's impossible.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/10/21/toples…
NEW YORK (AP) -- American Express is suing the CEO of a communications company for payment of $241,000 worth of disputed credit card charges at a Manhattan topless club.
American Express says in papers filed in state court that Savvis Inc. chief executive officer Robert A. McCormick was in the club Scores in October 2003 with at least three other men.
After McCormick got the $241,000 corporate credit card bill, Savvis called American Express and complained that some of the charges were fraudulent, the lawsuit says. The communications company said its chief disputed all but about $20,000, according to the lawsuit.
"We firmly believe that Mr. McCormick was the victim of fraud," said Deena Williamson, Savvis's deputy general counsel. She declined to comment further.
Lonnie Hanover, a Scores spokesman, said he had not talked to all of the employees involved with McCormick and could not say what the CEO purchased.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday against McCormick and Savvis is at least the third in the past two years involving contested credit card charges at Scores. One patron sued the club after he got a $28,000 bill and another disputed $129,000 in charges.
After a lawsuit last year, Hanover said that "high rollers" visiting Scores' "super elite Presidents' Club" spend thousands of dollars on single bottles of champagne and tip strippers as much as $10,000 for lap dances and for spending time with them.
The district attorney's office has said it is investigating alleged overcharging at Scores.
Hanover said that each time a patron spends $10,000, Scores calls the customer's credit card company to get the charges approved. Scores even fingerprints the customer and requires him to get on the telephone with a credit card representative, he said.
"We got authorization for all of the charges," Hanover said of McCormick's visit. "We followed proper procedures and documentation, and we were paid."
Court papers say American Express asked McCormick several times to provide in writing his basis for calling the charges fraudulent. McCormick failed to respond, and when he was billed again he once again objected to the charges, the lawsuit says.
American Express says McCormick finally responded in writing in September 2004, reiterating that some charges on the Scores bill were bogus, the lawsuit says.
Scores has been paid in full, American Express's court papers say, while neither Savvis nor McCormick has paid any of the charges. Failure to pay is a violation of the American Express corporate credit card agreement, court papers say.
An American Express spokeswoman, Judy Tenzer, said she had no comment.
Costly night at topless club
Ap, New York
The husband of a diplomat has filed a lawsuit saying he has no memory of spending nearly $130,000 for drinks and other services charged to his credit cards during the seven hours he was in the Manhattan topless club Scores.
Tauhidul Chaudhury, husband of a senior diplomat at the Bangladesh Mission to the United Nations, is the second Scores client in two weeks to claim he was stripped of thousands of dollars by staffers who registered bogus charges on his credit card.
Chaudhury says in court papers that after he arrived at the Upper East Side club about 9pm on Oct 23 he became "obviously intoxicated" but Scores staffers continued serving him alcohol and "took advantage of his intoxicated state."
The directory of the permanent mission to the United Nations lists him as the husband of Bangladeshi official Faida Muna Tasneem.
Three people who went to the club with Chaudhury left at 11pm. Afterward, court papers say, Scores staffers continued "supplying Chaudhury with the alcoholic beverages and other services, including causing Chaudhury to be admitted into a private room."
Around 4am, as the nightclub was closing, Scores registered charges totalling $129,626 on four of Chaudhury's credit cards, according to his lawsuit, filed in Manhattan's state Supreme Court.
That's enough to buy 6,500 lap dances -- without tip. At about five minutes per performance, a client would be entertained nonstop for 22 1/2 days. Or he could buy each of 40 guests a bottle of the Krug champagne Scores sells at $3,200 each.
"Chaudhury cannot recall authorising these charges," say court papers first publicised on the smokinggun.com, "and if the credit card receipts do contain his signature he did not possess the requisite mental capacity to authorise these charges."
Chaudhury's court papers complained that the credit card statements he received "only reflect a general total amount billed and do not contain an itemisation as to what service Chaudhury allegedly received from Scores for the charges."
Chaudhury accused Scores in court papers of "wrongful conduct" and asked the court to award him $129,626 plus interest.