The Lap of Luxury (From A Stripper)

enquiz2001
Florida
Gentlemen - for your reading pleasure. New York Times - 10/25/2005. Maybe you'll want to buy the book.

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."

26 comments

Latest

Officer
19 years ago
to the top
casualguy
19 years ago
I may be in the minority here but I believe the club probably did not present a clear picture of the tab to the guy. He took it to court instead of paying what amounted to blackmail money. I guess in hindsite, he would have been better off to pay the charges even if it was a big ripoff which he may or not have authorized. I guess that's a lesson not to run up a tab for those who don't want surprises from greedy clubs and/or dancers. I don't feel sorry for the guy even though I believe the club took the guy for everything they could.
chitownlawyer
19 years ago
I'm certainly not defending this guy, I just feel sorry for him...the way that you can feel sorry for someone who is dying of lung cancer after thirty years of smoking three packs a day. The way they got into their situation doesn't affect the pitiable nature of their predicament. If anything, the most pathetic pickles are those we get into ourselves.

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.
AbbieNormal
19 years ago
A few things strike me about this whole situation. What kind of club thinks it can charge $4,000/hr for a VIP dance? What kind of idiot pays it? What kind of huge idiot pays for 10 of them? At one time. For hours on end. What kind of incomprehensable idiot puts it on his corporate credit card, where it must be a public record, or at least disclosed to the board? What kind of galactic idiot decides to take it to court where it very definitely becomes a part of the public record? The only possible mitigating factor I can think of is if it was either intentionally or even unintentionally presented to him that the VIP was $4,000/hr, without mentioning that the figure was per dancer. His story makes sense if he thought he was being charged for the room only at $4,000, leading him to believe he had spent $24,000 when the real charge was $40,000/hr. Imagine that, a strip club jacking up the bill. Still, even at $24,000, the questions about this idiot still apply.
minnow
19 years ago
CtL: This guy isn't a poor SOB, he's a dumb & arrogant SOB! Its 1 thing to p*** away your own $$, something else to f*** with public co. shareholders $$. I wonder how many co. emplyees took pay cuts, or wage freezes? How's stock & divedend performance (or lack thereof) for shareholders. To put this in perspective, allow me to present cost of certain things: 1) BBJ... $10K/hr. That's BBJ as in Boeing Business Jet. May 2005 Playboy, p80 had feature on chartering business jets , pegged BBJ @ $8500/hr, probably now $10K with fuel price spike. 10hr RT cost $100K, leaving $140K leftover for reasonable ground time fees for weekend, and lots of party spending $$. $40K/hr for 10 strippers?? Pornstar escort rates reportedly in $1K-$2K/hr range. Something does smell fishy about charges, but they seem defensible to AE, as CT points out. $3K for bottle of champagne?? That's about 1 hour worth of fuel for BBJ. Is any individual worthy of drinking that much $$?? Unless stock performance is similar to Apple or Microsoft heydey, I say jettison that arrogant SOB sans any hint of gold in his parachute. Meanwhile, I'm only paying cash as I go, and counting dances carefully, I'm out...
Officer
19 years ago
he is married---the wife says the credit card was stolen and that her husband didn't run up all the charges---but the guy admits being in Scores--he just says he only spent $20,000
enquiz2001
19 years ago
I have had the unfortunate experience of getting a lap dance and losing count. So I can't be certain if it was me or her, but it was only one dance and I didn't feel like fighting about it.

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.
chitownlawyer
19 years ago
Never. In fact, at the risk of sounding more naive than I am, I will say that I have never felt cheated by a stripper.
Officer
19 years ago
I went once to the Gold Club in Atlanta, which was notorious for overcharging customers. Some guys ran up bills of thousands of dollars at that place and the media was full of stories like the ones about Scores in New York. But I paid in cash and didn't have anything bad happen to me, although I could tell the Gold Club was a real high pressure place.
chitownlawyer
19 years ago
Now you're teasing. But that is a glorious way to think about it.
Officer
19 years ago
Which brings up the question--has anyone here been ripped off or cheated by a strip club? It only happened to me once, at a club in the Soi Cowboy section of Bangkok, Thailand. The club billed me for a dancer's company when they hadn't made it clear that I was going to be charged for it. I should have argued about it, but I chickened out and paid it. It was only about $10 or $15 or so, but the principle of the thing is the most important. I know the strip clubs in Budapest, Hungary are notorious for overcharging customers and giving customers huge bills for thousands of dollars. Then they have thugs beat up customers who won't pay.
chandler
19 years ago
The hourly VIP rate at your club, Chitown, including a reasonable tip is $120 per girl, right? For $40,000, you could have 333 girls for your dancing pleasure. Only 332 when one got called for her turn to go onstage.
chitownlawyer
19 years ago
I live in the St. Louis area, where this poor SOB is just getting crucified in the media. He has just been suspended without pay from his $400,000/year job as CEO of a tech company. He is being referred to as the "lap dunce," and a case of "topless club meets brainless CEO."

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.
AbbieNormal
19 years ago
Shadow, not quite the same. The interest on the 241,000 at 12% comes to $2410.00 per month. If you paid $5,000/month it would take 5 1/2 years to pay it off
AbbieNormal
19 years ago
And hence one of my rules for clubbing. Never run a tab, always pay as you go, cash. If you run out of cash and just "have to" stay, go to the ATM. If you pay as you go the club can never hit you with a bill you are surprised by or can't pay, and you can walk out the door anytime you want.
AbbieNormal
19 years ago
I think there would have to be a lot more itemization on a bill that size and simply inserting a 1 after the 24,000 would be something AMEX would be looking for right off the bat. I think that if AMEX paid, they were satisfied that Scores could prove their case in court. Assuming that what the manager says is true, and that every additional $10,000 requires additional authorization from AMEX, then they should have a complete record of the night's spending as it happened. That said, now that I know that it is only apparently 4 men spending $241,000 I am even more suspicious of Scores charges and the man's state of sobriety. We'd have to get Chitown in here, but "diminished capacity", a bartender over-serving, I'd guess these are some possiblities the customer might want to explore.
chandler
19 years ago
Odd that it came conveniently came to $241,000, not $240,000, so that a 1 oould be inserted after the 24.
AbbieNormal
19 years ago
Well, I'd have to say that if AMEX was willing to pay they at least felt they couldn't win in court, so the documentation must be there. I think the question now is what does Scores charge for some of these things like VIP rooms. In addition, I can't imagine anyone paying $10,000 for a lapdance and company. I'd guess that'd get you a weekend with a top notch callgirl.
metaldude
19 years ago
One of the reasons I never even bring a credit card with me into a strip club.
baddy
19 years ago
I read a article about this that interviews scores manager, Lonnie Hanover (I think?). He said it is not uncommon for high rollers to come in and spend outrageous amounts of money like that, and from past experiences that have a procedure for it. With this customer, every $10,000 dollars they would manually authorize the credit card with AMEX and even require him to talk to AMEX on some of the calls to tell them that he was of sound mind and aware what he was spending. If that is all true, sounds like everything was legit and this guy is just trying to get out cheap.

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.
baddy
19 years ago
Typo, meant to say "I don't doubt that it's possible". Anyways, here is the article I am referring to:

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.
AbbieNormal
19 years ago
Actually, it's worse than I posted. I said $50,000 for the VIP, thinking 10 guys at $5000 a pop, but it would be $5,000/hr for 5 hours, or $25,000, unless they charge $5,000 per person per hour. That means there would have to be another $25,000 in dances or drinks. As I said, skeptical.
metaldude
19 years ago
This is not the first time this has happened at Scores. I remember reading a similar story about a foreign diplomat that had about the same bill. If I find an article I'll post it.
metaldude
19 years ago
Here it is:

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.




AbbieNormal
19 years ago
I find it almost impossible to see how a single visit could run up a tab of $241,000. Think of 10 guys in a $5,000/hr VIP room, each going through one $3,000 bottle of champagne/hr. Assuming they could keep up that pace of drinking for 5 hours, non-stop for the entire 5 hours, the tab for that bachanal comes to $200,000. The first is plausable, spending $25,000 on the VIP room and the second, while rather far-fetched, is possible if you believe they could go through 50 bottles of champagne by sharing with the dancers. But given those two possibilities, $40,000 in dances represents 8 dances per hour for each of the 10 (hypothetical) customers for 5 hours straight at $100/dance. That is a dance every 7.5 minutes (we could assume every other song if they do the 3 minute song there) IF they all pay $100 for every single dance. Either that was a lot more than 10 guys there for more than 5 hours, Scores charges a lot more than $5,000/hour for the VIP and $3000/bottle of champagne, or there is something fishy about all this. I'd like more info, but I am suspicious anyone could do that on a single visit. I also find it suspicious that Scores would allow someone to run up a bill like that.
enquiz2001
19 years ago
Should we applauding his wife? Isn't she turning away from the same reality that the shareholders would be turning away from with this guy? It can't be the first time he has pulled this. Of course, the question for Scores is what happened to discreet billing??????? Oh yeah, he took it to court. Doesn't matter. As to why he took that route, he was probably playing a game of hardnosed chicken. Figured the club would fold or negotiate. He lost. Then again, the sad thing may be that he thinks he didn't. What do you think the split was for the girls and club on the dances? Hope the girls didn't get cheated. Screw him.
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