The moment I took out my notebook, a second doorman rushed over to ask what I was writing. I said the Supreme Court ruling had brought me out and he rejoined aggressively, "I don't see any secondary effects, do you? I don't see any prostitution or drug dealing, do you?" I didn't, though the girls did spend a lot of time working the room and sitting with the men who stuffed the most into their garters. And when I returned to my car at the end of the evening, lo and behold, my car stereo had been stolen. Whether the thief was spurred on by un-G-strung labia I will never know.

We watched all 10 dancers express themselves twice, and each of us could pinpoint our moment when it plunged from intriguing to banal (about an hour and a half for me). Until that crash, the perfect bodies in motion held our attention along several tracks, including the tangential lust generated by watching, with men, a beautiful naked person 7 feet away. But, unlike our fellow patrons -- mostly young, handsome, preppy guys with zombie faces -- we also got to study hair-removal techniques close up and envy/marvel at their flawlessness. All three of us independently went "yeah" and pumped our fists like March Madness fans when one leggy beauty twisted just the right way to summon a whisper of cellulite on her butt for a few seconds.

Angel, Star and the rest used light, music, movement and their bodies to create an illusion, just like any theater performance. (An Erie production of "Equus," featuring naked people, was not prosecuted under the nudity ordinance.) Nudity on stage always packs a dramatic punch, and the strippers' artistic arsenal would be compromised without it.

Angel's crotch, for example, did personalize her expression. Her body was as flawless as the other dancers', but her red pubic hair was less groomed, which helped her craft a sort of heartland tomboy character. Her tips shot up as the night wore on and the men grew maudlin: The girl next door became more appealing than the Vegasy statues. In her dance to Tom Petty's "Free Falling," Angel pulled down her skirt, then her thong, then her top to the titular chorus, which was funnier than any other move I saw.

All the strippers agreed that pasties and G-strings stifle their earnings as well. In her thick Russian accent, Star said, "When you dance in a G-string, it is not so expressive, and guys don't tip as much." Heather, a sullen ectomorph who directed her onstage gaze at the mirror only, praised the wider range of choice, pointing out that "You can express yourself by not taking off your G-string, if you want to say, you know, F.U."

Strip joints aren't the only places where the right to say F.U. is under siege. Last week, the Senate almost passed a constitutional amendment to make flag burning a crime, a debate also framed as conduct vs. expression. The Erie case's precedent, United States vs. O'Brien, found that a war protester who burned his draft card was unprotected by the First Amendment.

All the '60s politics revived to tilt at symbols converged on the café au lait-colored body of Kiya, a stunning Janet Jackson look-alike. For her final number, she started in an American flag bikini top and a long matching skirt. Her song was "American Woman," originally by Canada's Guess Who, appropriated here by hippie throwback Lenny Kravitz.

As Kiya tossed the flag skirt away to reveal Old Glory butt floss, Lenny K. railed at war machines and ghetto scenes. It was all pretty fabulous -- countercultural dissent in sequins, bought and sold back and forth, a sassy, cynical spin on Jimi Hendrix's "Star-Spangled Banner" and guitar-burning at Woodstock.

Kiya shrugged off her bikini and clung to the overhead pole, fluttering her long body like a clean sheet. She flashed her brilliant smile at a big-spender special friend, a dark-skinned black man in a blue suit standing at her pedestal. She caressed his hair, looked tenderly into his eyes and turned him into an ATM. He slid bill after bill into her garter as she steadied herself with one hand to the ceiling.

A chunky white man in his own blue suit appeared at Big Spender's side and briefly jostled for position at the garter belt. A triangle of aggression formed at Kiya's feet as the padded shoulders pushed against each other threateningly. Then suddenly the two men were embracing. Kiya beamed down at them like some morphed hologram of all the world's beauties, and then they took turns pushing bills into her garter. The black guy and the white guy admired the sunflower of money bursting from her thigh, hugged each other again and returned to their seats.

Not expression!? As Redskin John Riggins told O'Connor in another context, "Lighten up, Sandy baby." Kiya's "American Woman" number got commodification, dissent, racial vs. sexual loyalties, power and nationalism into three minutes on and around a tiny stage. I had to admit that a G-string and pasties would have added another layer of hypocrisy, flash and delusion, but I don't think that's what O'Connor was getting at.
salon.com | April 4, 2000

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