One thing I already knew, but learned last night in person, about Stormy Daniels, is that she is a stripper. She dances and choreographs and runs an enterprise that is based on her taking off her clothes in front of people.
She is obviously in charge. She has men who pick up her dollars for her. Literally, from the stage floor, and figuratively, as a well-oiled promo machine. There are photographers and bodyguards and others who dote and plan, with Stormy at the center.
She is a person who will walk across a stage, hold her breasts apart to form a target, clasp them around dollar bills, and say thank you.
The 20-minute show was themed with her as a tartan-skirted teacher, with appropriate songs—- Hot for Teacher, School’s Out, etc. In a suspect segment, she taught sex education to a little person onstage.
Stormy is strong, the way you’d expect a dancer to be. Her back is muscular,, and she moves like Broadway, covering lots of stage ground, with a minimum of classic writhing, until it’s time for tips.
I do not have vast experience in strip clubs, but I was at The Admiral more than once in the 90s, and audience-based women were rarities. Not true here. Women were excited about giving her money.
We were an odd collection— older, and the hubbub was anti-Trump. One clutch of people in line for photos disdained Giuliani for recent disparagement of our performer, given his immense history of infidelity and hypocrisy.
When I got to the glare of the traveling light set, ready for my meeting with the night’s star, she was gracious and kind. I told her how much I appreciated her, and wanted to be in league with her, and destroy kleptocracy. She wrote to me of fearlessness.
She snapped photos like I wanted—- somber, listos.
On the edifice of the Admiral Theater, affixed as an architectural feature on this 1927 vaudeville house, is a quote by Larry Flynt, a hero I wouldn’t choose: “The greatest right a nation can afford its people is the right to be left alone”.
I don’t want to be alone. I want to be together, all of us, fighting fascism, restoring democracy, jailing traitors. I redouble my devotion to this, and ask you the same.