On the title page of his new book Stripped: Twenty Years of Secrets from Inside the Strip Club, Brent Kenton Jordan calls it a "satirical parody." That's a legal G-string, a thin floss of lawsuit-avoiding terminology. He fronts the narrative with a "publisher's note" that rather strenuously drives home the satire angle.
No wonder: Stripped is a bare-knuckle account of a seedy business—based on what he says is a 20-year career in clubs here and in San Diego—that names names and describes fraudulent and illegal acts, including his perspective on the infamous G-Sting scandal. Most of the action takes place in Cheetahs, owned by the now-indicted Mike Galardi, from which Jordan admits he was fired in 2003. Written in anger, the book's portrayal of Galardi is, shall we say, less than flattering; various politicians appear by their actual, non-satirical names.
It is, in other words, the sort of book you want wrapped in legal dodges. There are bits of fiction woven into the story, and if you begin to wonder how much is true and how much is exaggerated for effect, well, Jordan would surely say it's true in spirit. The Amazon.com customers who all gave it five-star ratings apparently agree.
On the occasion of his book-signing Saturday (2-4 p.m. at the Borders on Sahara and Decatur), following are excerpts from a wide-ranging conversation with Jordan, and let's front-load this sucker with disclaimers and weasel-wording of the all opinions and descriptions are those of the author variety:
A spokesman for Cheetahs, who spoke on the condition of anonymity ("I don't want him to come after me," he chuckled), said this: "With no animosity toward Brent Jordan, a lot of the information in the book was embellished and not as factual as it could have been." He also described Jordan as "probably the most racist of the bunch," which contrasts with Jordan's rueful demeanor when he describes the racism inherent in the industry. "Some of his book was right on the button," the spokesman said. "But we definitely abide by the rules. If the feds are going to come in and watch us for four or five years, and none of the major allegations he makes—none of the new [non-G-Sting] ones, anyway—have been made by the feds, it makes you wonder."
Of Jordan's allegations of police misconduct, Vice Capt. Stavros Anthony says, "I've been here a year and a half and the current lieutenant has been here for four years. As far as we're concerned, that doesn't happen. If it did happen, they'd be investigated and if it turned out to be true, they'd be disciplined accordingly. We do not tolerate that, absolutely not."
>> I got out of the Army in 1983, opened a little karate school/weight-lifting gym just outside of San Diego, in Pine Valley. Needed something to help support that, because little Pine Valley karate studios and weight-lifting gyms don't make that much money. A friend asked if I'd help out with his bar. So I went down there and tried bouncing. I was about 175 pounds at the time, so I got all the action. You've got a steroid stallion here and a steroid stallion here and me in the middle, so, yeah, I got all the action. That lasted not very long—I was a little hotheaded. Right across the street was a place called Pacers, a strip club. I walked in there and they hired me on the spot. Luck of the draw; timing. And I've been doing it ever since. It was 1983; I've worked at eight different strip clubs in those 20 years, the last 12 at Cheetahs here in Las Vegas, until June of '03.
>> In 1991, when Mike Galardi opened his Cheetahs club out here, I had a friend, a weight-training partner, who was managing for him in San Diego. And I had been working the clubs for some time by then. He said they were going to need some people out here in Vegas. So I came out. Didn't get a spot in Cheetahs right away; got a spot in the original Crazy Horse. Worked there for as long as I could stand it—about two weeks. That place was terrible. Went back to San Diego for about a day, and they called me, said, "Look, we can't lose you. Why don't you come on back and work at Cheetah's."
>> Because no one else could have. It has infuriated me for 19 of those 20 years to read accounts of the strip-club business written by professional authors and—no offense—journalists, who know about as much about the strip-club business as I do about journalism. These professional authors—and Stephens Media Group just released a book from a gentleman on the subject ... he's a great writer, great writing about golf and what have you. But knows absolutely nothing about the strip-club industry. So why did I write it? Who else was going to? You need someone who has been in the business and who can put a couple of sentences together. And there's not that many of us with the interest and the knowledge. So, 20 years of knowledge, and I'm an aspiring writer—I'm a screenwriter. This is what I like to do. Every night a new story. People kept telling me, "God, you got a million stories," and I love telling stories.
So I was kinda dinking around, doing it little by little. Because I couldn't see the end of my strip-club career. It's not something you walk away from. You're being paid obnoxious amounts of money to watch beautiful young ladies take their clothes off, and every so often you get to slap the living piss out of somebody who really needs it. That's not a job you walk away from!
>> After Operation G-Sting—I won't lie to you, I saw an opportunity. Because I knew these politicians, I had to deal with them in the club every night and the whole thing. I finished it up just after I got fired.
Operation G-Sting is where I've been getting most of my press on this book. But really, it's not about a few politicians holding their hands out for money. There are so many more important issues in it than a few dirty politicians, which is pretty minor compared to the other things that're going on.
>> I had to label the book "satire" so I don't get sued.
>> Racial profiling at the door and on the inside. Civil rights abuses. Let's say a group of Caucasian customers comes in and they want to sit down. A bouncer—myself—will look around, find a minority, and make him give up his seat. This is policy.
It's an extremely racist business. I'm not defending this, but [the owners] look at it and go, Who's your demographic? Thirty-to-50-year-old Caucasian males. Thirty-to-50-year-old Caucasian males, for whatever reason, right or wrong, feel very uncomfortable around large groups of minorities. It doesn't make it right and I'm not justifying it; it's some messed-up stuff. And I'm guilty of that. I'm telling you that it happens to be a fact of life. If a 40-year-old businessman walks in and the first thing he sees is 12 25-year-old black men sitting at a table, he's probably not going to stay. Again: messed up, not logical—it's just the way it is.
>> I have nightmares about it today, the most horrible thing I ever had to do ... I have a friend who was working the door with me on the afternoon shift, and his father was black. Now, he was a friend, not an acquaintance—a friend. He was my Brazilian jujitsu instructor. We had a group of black males come in. During the afternoon, Cheetahs doesn't charge—unless you're a minority, and then you'll get charged a cover charge, hoping that you'll turn around and walk out. So I had to charge this group of really affluent-looking black men, then try to explain it to my friend why I did that. I'm haunted by that to this day. I apologize to him in the book. He's a great guy and he probably doesn't think about it today, but it haunts me that I did that. That's another reason I wrote the book, I guess, to purge my soul, maybe.
>> The clubs are life distilled to its essence. So, what have I seen? I've seen strong-arm robbery, brutal beatings. Let's say an unscrupulous bouncer hooks up with an unscrupulous entertainer. She says, "This customer owes me $100." Now, maybe he only got two lap dances, that's $40. There's a $60 difference there. The bouncer's going to lean on him until he gets that $60, or else take him out back and give him a beating. Not to say that a lot of customers don't try to slide on it—there are legitimate collection issues. I'm just saying that's strong-arm robbery.
>> Police abusing their badges to get away with running up huge tabs on lap dances and then not paying for them. The "gold card." Anybody who's ever worked in any service industry knows what the gold card is. If a cop shows his badge, he's not going to pay to get in the door. He's not going to pay for his drinks. It was standard policy at Cheetahs, and any manager will tell you this, first round of drinks free for the cops, half-price after that.
In 20 years, I've never had a moving violation—not one! Am I a great driver or what? C'mon! You get pulled over. "Hey, you're the guy who waved me and my buddies through the door at Cheetahs last weekend. I've got a bachelor party coming up." "Hey, come on down, we'll hook you up!" "Well, you know what, why don't you get this car registered and get a couple taillights for it and maybe not drink so much next time you get on the road, all right? Have a nice day."
>> Cheetahs runs six cash registers. They report two. You know how I know that? Because when the state control board came in to do their audit, I had to carry these cash registers back to the storeroom, the ones that aren't being reported. I'll tell you what that did for me, though: It made me play very, very tight on my own taxes!
>> Again, it's not unique to Cheetahs or the strip-club industry. But you do get to see it every day, all in the same place, when you work in a strip club, because it's life distilled.
>> You see the very best and the very worst of life. The very best, as in: a woman, putting up with the scorn of society, just being looked down upon, so that maybe her children can have a better life than she had an opportunity for. And doing it every day. You can imagine what they have to endure. The vile things a man can come up with to say to a woman.
And then the other side of that coin, you have a 50-year-old man calling a girl over and going, "You look just like my daughter. Can I have a lap dance?"
>> The absolute worst thing I've seen in a strip club? It involved two vice officers, about two weeks before I was fired. When vice officers come into a strip club, they write tickets. This girl's too close. They write tickets. What you do as a bouncer is talk to them, engage in conversation, keep them in a good mood so they don't write these tickets. In any case, I was talking to these two vice officers in the front VIP room and one of them looking over my shoulder goes, "Wow, look at that." I turned around and looked. And this customer has this girl, about 105 pounds worth of girl and he's got her by the butt and he's doing this [mimics yanking a girl violently toward him]. And she's fighting. She's swinging, she's screaming, she's got him by the hair. And he's trying to put his mouth on her, he's grabbing her—he won't let her up off his lap. So I run over and begin re-educating him, I get the girl away from him. So I'm starting on the re-education program, and I figure I've gotta hurry because these cops are coming over and they're going to want to get some stick time on this kid (he was a construction worker). Next thing I know, this cop has this little girl by the arm and he's screaming at her. "What's the matter with you? Don't you have any respect for yourself? Why would you let a man treat you like that?" I dropped the customer and turned to the cop; I called him every name I could think of and chased him out of the club. The reason it is the worst thing I've ever seen is because: to protect and serve. You have two people who are supposed to be the epitome of our civilized society. And they are blaming a woman for her own sexual assault. Which they witnessed. Now that customer knows, and everyone in that room knows, that that cop has absolutely no respect for that woman. The woman's going to remember that—that she can't rely on them for help; can't rely on men. To have the pillars of our society encourage that kind of behavior. That shook me up probably more than anything I've seen. And because I ran a couple of vice cops out of the club, my job was terminated. You just can't do that. Next time they come into the club, if I'm still there, they're going to write tickets until they run out of paper.
>> The absolute best thing I've seen in a club? The quality of human nature. I can give you a couple of instances. There's a woman running for judge in Henderson [Diane Hampton]. I worked with her. What a fantastic individual. What a hard-working, dedicated individual. She happened to be a stripper for about a year. If that costs her this judgeship, people are dumber than even I give them credit for. She's an incredibly high-quality individual. But she's not the only one you'll meet in there.
>> I've seen girls who are in desperate need of money—they haven't even made enough to go home and pay the baby-sitter. To have a girl like that find a wallet on the floor with $1,500 in it and bring it up to me so I can find the owner: That's remarkable. That's incredible. I couldn't guarantee that I would have done it, and I consider myself an upright guy in most cases. You say, That's incredible for a stripper. No, it's incredible for a human being.
>> You go out into a roomful of guys, half of whom are going to say, "Well, your ass is too big and your tits are too small. Get away from me." Can you imagine if a woman told us that? "You're too fat and your dick's too small"? That would end me! That would crush me! How are you going to walk into that club again? And to do it every night, and hear it a hundred times a night. It blows my mind that someone could have that kind of strength.
>> Some will get crushed by it, though.
>> It messes with your head.
Q: To flourish in the clubs that long, you must've had a flexible morality.
>> For society's morality, sure. [Laughs.] I do, and I don't deny it, and I'll tell you I am ill-equipped after 20 years to live in real society. Political correctness? In a strip club? I never had to deal with it! You walk up to a girl and pat her on the butt, that's saying hello! It's part of that atmosphere that you've grown accustomed to. As far as sexual morality goes, yeah, I'm way out there.
>> The criminal morality—sure, I suppose that, too. Because I didn't just watch this stuff go on. I mean, I was there. So I'm not going to lie and say no, I didn't take a guy out back, or no, I wasn't part of some of the fraud that goes on. Fraud as in, Cheetahs holds drawings for Monday Night Football and so forth. None of those drawings are legit. You already have the number up in the DJ booth—I was a DJ for six years—and you call the number and your shill comes up to get his prize. I got a nice snowboard that way; the shill gave it back to me, I bought him a beer.
>> Not only did I put up with it, I enabled it. That's what I was there for; I was there to protect the club. Am I proud of that? No. But I'm not going to lie to you about it, either.
>> What I wouldn't put up with, ever, was: I am not a pimp. And I wouldn't strong-arm people I felt did not owe the money. I would beat a man out of his money if I knew he received some dances and didn't pay for them.
>> I'll tell you the things I have a problem adapting to in the real world. I'm very intolerant of people who speak poorly of or abuse women, especially entertainers. I have a very hard time with people who don't believe me when I tell them something. I'll them something once, and if they don't believe me, I'm very prone to work things out in a violent way rather than in what people consider a civilized manner, because that's the way you dealt with things in the clubs. You'd ask them once, and if they refused, well, I was a bouncer; this is what you do.
>> I'll see women get upset over a sexual harassment lawsuit—you know, "He looked at me wrong" or "He said something wrong"—and I laugh, I can't believe that they could get so upset over something that wouldn't raise the eyebrow of a 20-year-old stripper. "He looked at me funny"? I understand that that's real society. It's just not something I can get used to. I don't know if I ever will. I don't know if I ever want to.
>> I was 21 when I got into this business; I'm 42 now. I'm not sure what the real world's like or how I'd be different today.
>> I've got this white-knight complex. Working with beautiful young women and being their hero does that for me. But I probably had it before, it's probably what drew me to the business. But there's a point where you go from being that white knight to being a bully. I was bullied as a kid because I was so shy; that's why I became a martial artist.
>> When you step over that line from being the hero to being the bully, that's despicable. I couldn't live with myself. What's being a bully? Me fighting someone who's ill-prepared, who hasn't had 8,000 fights, who hasn't trained in martial arts since he was 15. That's not right.
>> I like to think we learn from our mistakes, and I've probably stepped over that line once or twice. And I also like to think we can grow as people, and evolve, and I've evolved from a strip-club bouncer to a storyteller.
Q: Were you an adrenaline junkie? Did you get to the point where you kinda liked it?
>> I would agree with that, very much so. I'm scared to death of roller coasters and scared to death of heights. I was pushed out of an airplane several times in the Army, but I never jumped once! But if I can get an adrenaline rush off of a fight, then yeah, I am. And you put yourself in those situations. It gives you a rush. The sex and violence of the industry—great for your adrenaline.
>> I figured it out: At about 1.75 a night, I've been in over 8,000 physical confrontations. I would have to be pretty hard-pressed, I guess, to get that same rush I used to get. And I did use to get it, and I loved it. You know, that feeling of, you're about to die, and you get this huge surge and everything slows down and you know what's coming and you can look a man in the eye and know if he's gonna do it or not.
>> I did some kickboxing to try to get that back a few years ago. I'll tell you who ended that whole career, was a UFC champion, Chuck Liddell—beat me to a pulp in the ring one day. And that pretty much ended my kickboxing career. But in a real fight, for somebody who's been doing it that long to take two or three drunks down is not a big enough trick to get that adrenaline rush anymore. Now I focus all that energy into telling stories.
>> Which is the greater rush? When I was younger, fighting, definitely fighting. Now it's definitely writing. For me now, that's where it's at. If I never have to lay my hands on another human in anger, it'll be way too soon.
>> No other business has to live by a new set of rules each month. Now it's 6 inches, now it's 8 inches, now it's 12 inches, now it's opaque tights, now it's not. This changes every city council meeting for a strip club. No wonder these politicians start doing this, holding their hands out and saying, If you don't want to play by new rules next month, we can help you.
Q: Is corruption inevitable in this business?
>> Yes it is. I'll tell you why. Watch a show like Jerry Springer or Howard Stern when they have a stripper on. That's the stereotype and that's what she's going to give you—she's going to give you what you expect. Sure she's playing a game; nobody can be that stupid and remember to breathe every day. Just like that, certain things are expected of a strip-club bouncer. Certain things are expected of a strip-club manager. And you start living up to these stereotypes. So you are on the fringe of society. And if you're already on the fringe and nobody respects you anyway, it's not hard to step across that line and be corrupt.
>> I hate to defend Mike Galardi, but he's an easy target [of unscrupulous politicians]. Who's he gonna complain to? You want your liquor license? Just take care of me when I come to the club. The guy's an easy mark, and for what? Five thousand, 10 thousand dollars? These politicians sold their city out for what, the price of a big-screen TV? We're not talking about big money.
They call it lobbying in Washington. That's what we called it in the clubs. You took care of the people who took care of you.
>> These politicians are very small-minded, low-end individuals. Five, 10 thousand dollars, get me drunk, I'm happy.
>> If someone says I'm going to make life easier for you for what amounts to pocket change, everyone would do it. Why wouldn't you?
>> Even Mike Galardi, who I butcher in the book, he wasn't always like that. He was sweeping his own floors and taking cigarette butts out of the urinal when I met him. But then these politicians get ahold of him and tell him how valuable they can be to him and how valuable he can be to them, and he becomes the guy I write about.
He read the book, and I think he was hurt that I spoke of him like that, because we had a lot of good times.
>> I'm so grateful to the business for where it has put me. It's given me the opportunity to pursue a dozen things that most people don't get to pursue. I want to be a writer, I want to be a screenwriter—well, I am now. I'm writing screenplays and I've sold and I have an agent.
I learned Japanese in the clubs. Because there's nothing else to do sometimes. For six years, I worked the day shift. The first customer might wander in three hours after we open!
I got to live my dreams; that's what this life has provided for me. The money was good. I used it to purchase homes in San Diego. I own three there now, and my home out here. I'm kind of a slumlord. [Laughs.]
>> My real passion is for telling stories, and this has allowed me to pursue that.
>> The heroes we grew up with—we had Dirty Harry. We had Rocky. These bigger-than-life heroes. And what were those—they were these great stories. My mother started me on Edgar Rice Burroughs, when I was learning to read. These were the books I was weaned on; that's how I learned to read, with these great stories. And I guess the first manifestation of that is, I want to be Tarzan or be Rocky or be that hero. And then eventually you want to be their creator.
>> I tried to write my first novel when I was 12. I remember filling several legal pads. It was an adventure story about a guy who traveled and had to save a damsel in distress. It was set in the mountains. A man outcast from society, on the run, a loner, in the mountains of Canada. You look at it now and you go, Oh, obviously, that's why he got in the business—but nobody's ever asked me that before, so I've never had to break it down. It never occurred to me to look back and go, Let's see, loner, outskirts of society, in trouble with the law—strip-club bouncer. Hmmm. There's a stretch!
>> The entertainers who've read it, I've gotten great feedback. The best comment I've gotten was from a guy I used to work with. He said, after the first chapter, I could smell it. I took that as a huge compliment. The reviews I've gotten have been positive. I'm very proud that it's been banned at Cheetahs, because I know it got under someone's skin. So I've got that going for me.