People are way more comfortable in seeing the male form.
I think society is wanting to see the male body.
Are we putting guys at risk of feeling undue pressure
of looking a certain way?
Women also have fantasies.
Women get fed on that too.
Women want to kind of feel more equal,
so the men are playing the game.
491 CJAD.
Now, here's Dr. Laurie.
Welcome to Passion, the show about love,
sex and relationships.
I'm Dr. Laurie Betito, I'm a clinical psychologist
and a sex therapist.
We are talking about-- get this,
the business of stripping.
Not just strippers, uh, we're talking about guys.
Male strippers.
You've got-- you saw "Magic Mike" of course.
Well, you know, this is the real deal right here.
[Music]
I wanted a job where I could make tips.
Nobody wanted to hire some guy. They hire hot chicks.
Where can I get a job being a guy? Ah, the male strip club.
I love being on stage.
I love entertaining people.
Some of those times you turn around for that first move
of the opening, and it's just like waves of screaming.
When I'm on stage and I'm looking around,
and I've taken my clothes off and I can feel the energy
out of the crowd, I can see the faces of these women,
they're focused on me.
It's the ultimate validation right?
Having a room full of people clapping at you,
and telling you how gorgeous you are.
It's like, I get-- I'm nervous but it's more exciting.
I think they get a rush--
A rush, yeah.
You're holding the power of this whole audience in your hand
and actually whip them into a whole frenzy.
I love it.
I'm just born to be on the stage.
[Music]
Every morning I wake up with a joint
and a protein shake. Wake, and bake, and shake.
I try to eat six or seven times a day.
Smoking weed helps, it keeps my appetite up.
This is how you stay in shape. Fish, tomatoes, and avocado.
Whoo, just gotta stab it.
Yeah, right. (chuckles) Alcohol.
Well, I only go tanning maybe once every other week,
but I have very, very pale skin
so I'm fortunate to have found this new product, 'Milano Tan'.
'Milano Tan' is this tanning injection.
It's not FDA approved, and I was watching
some YouTube videos of these doctors talking about it
and they said it can kill you, but I got this great tan.
I hired some guy outta India. He's an SEO specialist.
Search engine optimization specialist,
to make it better so it's easier to find on Google.
So, I do bachelorette parties, birthdays, divorce,
whatever they wanna throw a party for.
I charge... you know, hundred fifty and two fifty,
depending on how far I gotta drive
and how long I'm gonna be there for.
I had no idea what I wanted to be growing up.
You know, I just thought you got to university,
you get a job, you get married,
you have kids and that's how life goes.
Telling my parents was a little tricky.
I hid it the first couple of years,
told them I was a waiter.
And then I decided to move to Montreal
to further pursue my stripping career.
He phoned one day, said he was moving to Montreal,
I took the phone call.
I have to tell you the truth.
I'm a stripper.
And I was just...
very shocked.
I had a hard time, really hard time, with it at first.
But he's still our son so it's like--
you're gonna love him anyways, right?
What can we do?
We can't divorce him, we can't shoot him. (laughs)
My dad, he goes,
'Well, what am I supposed to tell the guys at work?'.
Ed's response was always this:
He's living my dream.
What was that move you did, thatwas a little bit whack?
The one where I went down low?
Yeah--
Just like this and down--
Looked like you were freaking out.
A seizure?
Yeah.
Why you trying to copy my moves--
I wasn't-- I had a seizure.
You did have a seizure.
Remember? Yeah, so...
Brain aneurism--
Brain aneurism, yep, yep. So back to the move.
I met Jeremy at the club. He started as a waiter.
We got along, then we had this
little time a few years ago where
every week we'd go have a cigarette together.
And it would be, you know,
the old guy talking to the young guy
about dancing or about what's going on,
and every week we did for week, after week, after week.
Looking pretty good, eh?
Looks really good.
I have been stripping now for twenty years.
This is Stan. He brought the drugs.
Just kidding.
They can edit it!
(whispering) Shh! Cop!
Oh yeah! Fuck him.
It's pretty cool, I admit.
I never would have thought I'd be working overseas.
You walk into Vegas Airport
and there's whole billboards of Thunder from Down Under.
Thunder from Down Under is the best male review.
Not just in Vegas, but anywhere in the world
because the guys are very talented, very good-looking.
It's an Australian product in America.
There's acrobatics in the show,
pretty fu-- some cool breakdancing, you know.
They love women,
they have that wonderful Australian accent.
I couldn't fake an Australian accent if I tried.
It's a show, it's--
it's not just guys throwing off their clothes,
and girls go crazy for it.
Alexander! (cheering)
Alex Biffin is just an amazing guy.
Because of his attitude, the way he looks,
his work ethic, the way that he gets along with people.
He will become the face of Thunder.
He's the kind of person that we, as Thunder,
want to be known as.
There's a charisma, there's a chemistry
that oozes from Alex both on and off the stage.
He's got the terrific height.
I think he's got what I call 'soap opera' good looks,
or romantic novel cover good looks.
And he loves what he's doing.
He loves performing.
[Music]
Ah, so you work at a gay bar in Montreal.
And you're not gay! (laughs)
I've been born and raised here in Montreal.
How old are you?
Twenty six.
Twenty six years old, how long you been doing this?
A year and a half.
All right, how did you-- like, why... stripping?
It's his job, and he needs it to pay off his bills.
Like, you're gonna go strip, right?
I didn't think he was joking, he said it with a serious face.
I was raised in a-- an Asian home.
We live in this conservatism, and that drove me nuts,
and this is kind of like an outlet.
It's a rebellion.
It is a rebellion!
It's more than an outlet! (laughs)
Question. Do your friends know that you strip?
They all know.
Do your parents know that you strip?
No, they don't.
They don't?! They don't.
I don't tell my father what I dobecause he would just flip.
He wouldn't be able to believe it,
and, I don't know what would happen.
My mom had cancer. Breast cancer when I was, I think, twelve.
Seemed like she had a bad cold
and it wouldn't go away.
We found out that it was breast cancer,
that it was so far in
that we were just kind of waiting for her to die.
Good, how are you?
I'm pretty good thanks.
Yeah?
Haven't caught up with you for a while.
Yeah, I know. Been a while.
Sometimes you miss a lot of family functions.
I've missed a few weddings now. You miss your parents.
You-- you also miss Australia sometimes.
Where are you now? Is that--
Are you in Vegas somewhere?
Y--Yeah, in the Excalibur Hotel.
I'll give you-- I'll give you a tour.
There you go.
How's that steak? Very tender.
Yeah, it's very good
This is filet mignon.
I think that's the way you should treat your parents.
I think so too.
How's work been dad?
Busy.
Oh, that's good.
I find it's hard to live with my father, that's why I moved out.
He's a big reason why I haven't experienced much in my life.
I was raised with a lot of 'Don't do this, don't do that'.
'No no no'.
It's like he couldn't see anything positive
in what I did, or what I wanted to do.
I had to get out of the house to-- to keep growing.
I never liked my childhood.
I never really wanna bring it up and--
and talk about it because I didn't see anything there.
When I was a kid,
I never knew what I wanted to be when I was older.
I think I never really wanted to grow up,
and even now, I feel like part of me is sometimes still a boy
You know. I-- I don't consider myself fully a man.
[Music]
There's ladies nights in the gay bars--
Mm hm.
So that women can also go watch the male strippers.
There is one ladies night a week because when women come,
it's like they take over the place.
They-- they scare off the men?
Seriously?
They scare us. They scare everybody.
They work each other up, sort of a mob sensation,
they just sort of spur each other on.
When I whip it out, the crowd goes crazy.
The high that I feel, and the energy from those women,
there's no drug on the planet that could match that.
I-- I'm high all week just thinking about,
wow, those three hundred girls
were really screamin' hard for me this week, you know?
When dancing for women,
you-- they-- they want to be entertained, you know?
It's more than just taking off your clothes.
When you got to see a lot of strippers,
female strippers only need to walk around
and spread their legs, and guys'll throw money at them.
We have to do a whole theme, a whole act.
Three or four songs of dancing
and entertaining the girls
before we actually take our clothes off.
It's entertaining!
For sure.
It's entertaining.
Karen, welcome to the program.
(on phone) Hello.
Hi.
(on phone) I find it a little unusual that a straight guy
is dancing for gay men, because usually male dancers
dance in front of women for the attention.
They love the attention.
What I find most attractive about dancing for guys is,
I guess, when somebody is attracted to you,
that makes me feel, I guess, appreciated.
The straight guys are pretty comfortable with adoration--
Yeah--
--of a gay clientele. Absolutely, it's flattering.
I'm a very curious person.
I came in to really get to know people,
like, sexually, intimately.
(on phone) I was wondering too,
if maybe you would feel more shy in front of women.
Actually, I do feel more shy in front of women compared to men.
A room full of women you get a lot of cheers,
and a room full of men,
the volume just goes down significantly.
Really?!
Yes.
The experience in dancing for men
and dancing for women is two opposite ends of the spectrum.
Years back, when I was skinnier and I was poorer,
I tried dancing at the gay bar a little bit
just 'cause I was desperate for money,
but now that I'm financially secure,
there's now way in hell
that I'll ever go back to dancing for guys.
Men want sex, and women want entertainment.
When you're dancing for women,
about to pull down your pants and
you just see them, their face, they're just waiting!
They're just--
Show me your stuff!
You know what they want to see too!
Like, I want to see something hard and big and--
But wait a second, because--
Asian guys stripping is unheard of,
it's impossible because the myth is like, stripper has to have,
like, you know, a very sizeable tool to work with.
But us Asians are known for not having...
Yeah.
What we're supposed to have.
I don't think that--
that dick size is the most important thing.
As much as they try to say that cock size doesn't matter,
if you don't have medium to large dick,
and you have a small dick,
then not showing it is beneficial to you.
That leaves at least something out to the imagination.
As a-- an Asian male, there's a stereotype that
I have a small penis,
and compared to all the other dancers,
I do have a small penis.
But, I don't really think they care.
It's--uh, uh, you get it into your head like
'My dick's not as big as
'that guy's', so you get worried about it,
but girls, I dunno, they don't-- they see--
they get everybody for dancers.
I have a fairly large one
so it's my favorite part of the show, is getting...
seeing the reaction on the girls' faces
when I move the towel and they go 'Oh', and scream and cheer.
I don't show my penis very often.
I kind of just mesmerize them,
pull it down a little bit,
but I don't actually take it right down.
Jer likes to swing it around. (laughs)
Speaking of, uh, erections and such,
A: are you expected to have an erection,
and B: if that's the case, how do you get it up there
and maintain it for so long if even what you're looking at,
the men in front of you, are not attracting you?
In our bar, right before we get on stage,
there's a back room where we-- we jerk off,
and, uh, we're watching porn.
You get ready before... you get a hard-on and then you
put on this cock ring that's really tight, tight cock ring
right on the base of your dick and it holds it-- pfft-- hard,
so that way I can do my fifteen-minute,
twenty-minute stage show and at the end,
when I show everything at the end,
I'm rock-hard and ready to go.
Some guys, you know, to stay hard
what they do is they take Viagra or Cialis and--
Okay.
I just refuse to do that becauseit's so bad for your health.
Viagra? I just take a little chunk off the corner
and that gives me that boom for the night, and I'm good to go.
It's great.
And Viagra, you can get so cheap, two--three bucks a pill.
So, at three bucks, I break it three times,
that's a dollar a night for me to have a boner at work
to make me an extra-- 'cause it's gonna make me extra money.
Girls are-- I'm gonna dance for this girl with a boner
and that girl's gonna go 'Whoa, I wanna pay him too'.
My first lap dance, I got-- it was ten dollars
and it was zero contact.
The girl, she was well-known
as one of the nastiest women at the club.
Big, sweaty, sme-- rude, and she had her ten dollars,
as soon as I was dancing for her,
two feet away, I pulled down my pants and I was fully erect.
Huge hard-on, and all these guys saw me dancing
and they were like,
'The fuck, this guy's got a hard-on for her?',
so they asked me, 'Jeremy, did you just have a hard-on
'for that woman over there?'.
No, I had a hard-on for the ten dollars!
[Music]
[ Music ]
So how much money can you make?
[Music]
How'd you do last night?
I, uh, well last night sucked.
Not for me, I came out seven fifty.
Oh yeah!
Cassandra was here.
She was spending money.
She spent money, I made a hundred twenty five
on my second show, and a hundred and five on my first show.
They were digging it.
It was busy here?
Wasn't crazy busy, but we had customers.
But like-- he had his customer. I dunno, I didn't make much.
She's coming back in tonight, so...
Yeah? Good--
She might buy drinks for us.
Because I'm a stripper, they have
this idea that strippers make enormous amounts of money.
The male stripping business isn't like
the female stripping business. They can work seven days a week
and can be there from noon 'til two,
but we're only open Friday, Saturday, nine 'til two.
Okay, so, a bad night is a hundred and fifty bucks.
That's a-- but that's a Friday night.
A bad night on Saturday night's three or four hundred bucks.
I normally make anywhere from seven to a thousand.
Fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars.
A thousand three hundred one night.
In one night?!
In one night.
Thirteen hundred bucks?
Yeah, and it can go down to zero.
I look around,
I'm trying to make eye contact with girls,
and I don't get turned down too often
because I already know this girl's interested in me
by the eye contact and the look she gave me.
I can read her body language, and her eyes,
and if she's interested.
So once I feel a connection, then I'll approach her
and if she's got twenty bucks-- if she's got lots of money,
throwing me twenty bucks is no problem.
I like to peek in her purse
so when she opens her wallet, if there's ch-ch-ch,
if she's got jewels on her, if she's dressed nice,
her hair's done, you know, her nails are done then,
uh, she's probably got money.
When you put in your time, and you get to be popular,
and you build a clientele, you build a business,
then that's how you make good money.
I'm doing very well, I bought my house, my car's paid off,
I have nice jewelry, and I only work two nights a week.
Money turns me on. That's my two favorite things.
Money, and pussy.
And weed.
Those are my two favorite things.
I kind of like, just coast through life and--
I'm fortunate things just fall into my lap.
Yeah, if my life could have a motto it'd just be...
just be happy. Be chill,
be nice to everybody that's around and...
(whispering) and be quiet 'cause the neighbor's a cop.
It's tobacco officer.
Tobacco.
And live out my life without having a job. (chuckles)
My... you know, main concern, or worry is about him
getting into this world is just the type of environment he--
he could be bringing himself into.
I've definitely got into a few sticky situations.
I've been... I've actually been arrested once
for drunk and disorderly, and... (laughs)
There was one drug in particular that was-- was more--
cocaine-- was more prevalent then...
uhm, that isn't around as much,
but there's other drugs that have taken its place.
Vegas will take you as far and as hard
as you wanna go, and then some.
The boys that live here, they have a house they go to,
they get away from the strip, but when we're here,
we're in the hotel so it's really hard
to get away from all that temptation.
Especially when we finish our show we're not ready for bed,
we're amped up from the show.
We've got-- still got adrenaline running through us,
we might go out for one little quiet drink
and someone goes, 'Let's go here', and you go there
and you club-hop from one place to another.
Why do you think that so many do do drugs,
and drink, and can't do it sober?
I think it's 'cause of a lot of insecurities
because you are challenged in so many ways there.
You-- you-- your sexuality is challenged,
your confidence is challenged, your look.
Everything.
There's obviously lots of guys at the clubs
doing drugs, doing steroids, pushing themselves harder
and harder, and 'I'll just take Creatin.
'From Creatin I'll go into,
'HGH or something', and then it'll go higher
and higher until you're deep into it.
There's a lot of pressure created between the guys.
I'm not good-looking, I'm extremely good-looking.
King so far is my favorite.
I like Jeremy.
You go into work every week and you see the guy that--
who is your competition.
When I walk into a place, people stop in their tracks,
they always have for my entire life, so I stun people.
We like The King because he was a dancer...
Yeah.
He knew how to move.
Jeremy's pretty good-looking though,
he's got a baby-face, and he can shake it and move it.
If a girl's at the club, she has twenty bucks
in her pocket, she wants a lap dance.
She doesn't know who to pick. A, B, C, or D.
Why am I the best? I perform a higher level than most.
I think I'm funnier and I'm better looking than most.
And at the end, I got a nice body.
If this guys beside me, every week
he keeps getting in better shape,
and better shape, and better shape, well shit!
I gotta be in better shape than him so I get that money.
He's very concerned about his body, he eats well,
so I'm just wondering why he wants to poison it
with a bit of weed, but other than that, he's very concerned
about his body so I'm hoping he keeps it as...
clean as he can.
When you step into a-- the stripping world,
you always want to take the fast track,
so falling into steroids
is a very easy thing for strippers to do.
They don't realize that taking it just once in their life
could change their body forever.
You know, this is the acne that I have to deal with.
I've got some scars and whatnot,
but in the club light during work you can't see,
so it's not so bad.
But the front's good. (chuckles)
That is my worst fear. This environment, first of all,
I don't think it's healthy
because you're drinking all the time,
you're womanizing all the time.
But there could be drugs involved, right?
So, Jeremy has made us accept the fact
that he loves weed, but what if it gets deeper than that?
And that's my fear, is how much drugs are going on?
Long as, you know, he keeps a good head on his shoulders
and, you know, doesn't go farther than that,
I think he'll be alright.
I'm very good at sex.
Met lots of different girls.
I just love new pussy.
What scares me?
Blow jobs?
I'm good at cunnilingus, good with my hand.
They're okay.
Probably catching something.
The only thing better than the hottest girl
in the whole world, is any other girl that I haven't fucked yet.
I love my little dog, Gucci. He's adorable.
I bring him to the beach, he's such a chick magnet, like,
he's brining pussy left, right, and center a little bit.
So, my trick is, I put him in the water
close to girls on towels so when he gets out,
he runs over to them, shakes off on them and they go,
'Oh, shit', and I go, 'Oh, ladies, I'm so sorry'--
'It's okay, he's adorable, what's his name?',
'Well, his name's Gucci, baby, what's your name?',
and then I'm in, you know?
This dog's got me more pussy than being jacked ever did.
Didn't you Gucci?
Aren't you the deal sealer?
Don't shed in my house motherfucker!
Now, this has to be one of the best jobs ever
for getting laid.
I can only assume porn star's the only one
that'll get you laid more than being a stripper.
I've been involved in all kinds of crazy stuff
when I was younger.
When you first get this job it's...
it's pretty much, you can live--this job can--
you can live like a rockstar.
I have a girlfriend and I stay faithful to her so--
I don't sleep with anybody else.
Okay.
But, I mean, I do get a lot more attention.
When girls are coming into the bar, they're taking alcohol,
the whole thing's wrapped around dick,
it's attached to me, I'm one of the things on stage,
you're-- you're this big sexual piece of meat.
You know that I actually grab girls by the throat
and push them up against the pillar on a regular basis,
and the entire place whimpers?
And freaks out?
And girls actually want me to do that to them?
It's insane!
Girls at the show,
they're ready to see skin, they're ready to see
some big good-looking guys,
and we play out their fantasies in our costumes
and that sort of stuff.
I think the sexual energy
probably coming from the stigma of Las Vegas,
it's a bit naughty, it's sin city,
everyone wants to get naughty, they wanna get wild
So what better place to come and see a...
a Thunder show?
Women want to be my girlfriend.
I don't know why.
I actually started this job
with a pretty serious girlfriend, um,
it was vey hard on both her, and it was--
hard on me as well, not being able to see her all the time...
I dunno why he has a unique relationship
with his girlfriend.
It's... the more I hear about it, the more bizarre I find it.
We're in an open relationship, which she... kind of offered.
I would imagine if somebody is insecure they
wouldn't really like the idea of,
'Hey, my boyfriend's balls are hanging in another
'girl's face', kind of thing.
When's the last time you saw her?
Last month.
Oh, seriously!
Yeah, seriously.
There was this period, she didn't see me
for a very long time.
What's very long?
Ah, it was like, maybe two--th--
Two, three months?!
Yeah.
Holy.
She blocked my number from her phone.
Suntory is the kind of guy who doesn't like to give up,
in spite of the tough relationship that he has.
I'm not so sure it's what is good for him,
which is why I worry for him, because it's so taxing on him.
I want a normal relationship, you know?
Mm hm.
Eeh, mm hm.
So, uh, why haven't you come seeme dance?
(laughs) Um...
I haven't seem him perform and I...
I kind of don't want to.
For me, seeing someone naked is very intimate,
and it's something that's...
especially in that kind of environment.
So when's the show?
I would say, for Suntory, there's so much more
than meets the eye.
He's very invested in quality.
In something theatrical.
I'm trying to develop male burlesque.
You say 'burlesque', you think right away,
like, women, you know?
You don't think of-- of men in that.
I'd like to see what could develop out of this.
I mean, we have, like, Chippendales,
but that's the most you can think of when you think of,
uh, male stripping.
These lights here, they're gonna spot down on this line here.
See these white ones?
These little ones here?
Businessman, this is me.
There's a DVD that plays on here that has a little girl saying,
'Oh, I'm home alone', who would you rather
wanna come and visit you, sort of thing.
I'm the first up.
Was it the rough, rugged construction worker?
I'll walk out with my hat and tape measure and do this.
What if the businessman comes
to help me find some 'loopholes' in a contract?
Businessman.
Yeah, a little bit that way.
Yup. You're in the right spot.
Or would it be the postman with the premium package?
And let's not forget the doctor that makes it his duty
to thoroughly check me from head to toe.
And he comes out with the plastic surgeon thing.
You know, giving the girl, like, the examination.
But ladies, let's be honest for a moment.
No one, and I mean no one, gets us more revved up
and thirsty for his goods than--
The milkman, and the milkman comes skipping out here
and stops here, and we'll point at-- when he says milkman,
Or when she says milkman, we'll all point and...
the music starts, the screen goes off.
[Music]
You're gonna go like that, go out.
Three, four, and you're gonna goout.
You're under arrest.
Now put up your hands, and take off your pants.
Wait a minute, take off your pants,
and then put up your hands.
My favorite sort of stripper acts are s--
and I think they've held on for decades,
are the ones where guys are blue collar,
or firefighters, or policemen, or military.
For some reason, there's something about that.
It's such a straight male job.
We are not--a non-tipping show because we believe
if you buy a ticket, everyone's equal.
Have a good time with it.
We don't want, you know
dollar bills thrown in the faces or the crotches of the guys.
It elevates us to a very different level than--
and, this isn't a put-down,
but a guy that's working birthday parties,
or bridal showers, or whatever,
and is knocking on the hotel room door,
coming in in his policeman outfit,
and stripping, and working for tips and stuff.
There's been a complaint in the neighborhood.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, there's all these girls, and no naked men.
God bless, if you're really good at what you do, that's fine.
But we are a show, we're not just strippers.
On to the next one.
Ladies, I have one request tonight.
Please touch me.
(laughing) What?
Isn't that fun! Woo!
(cheering)
[Music]
Lots of questions for you, Suntory.
Someone wants to know is this a dangerous lifestyle?
Some people might want to make more money,
and may feel like they have to, uh, do certain things.
When you're offered a lot of money,
you might feel pressured.
You're going to eventually-- somebody's going to get a price
for you to go against something that-- that you're not.
Is he available-- are you available as an escort?
Does he do that kind of thing? Lisa wants to know.
I do escort.
If you're tempted with the right kind of money--
the right hurdles start to get dropped?
Well, eventually...
people... change.
What does that mean, you do escort?
What-- what would you do?
Hang out with people, go to dinner.
Like-- like a real escort.
You're not talking about s-- so, do you do any sex stuff?
What's your definition of a real escort?
'Cause escorting is, like, it could be prostitution.
That's right. So--
Which is--
So what do you do?
Every client wants something different
What do you do?
Keep people company.
Keep people company? Literally?
Yes.
Some guys would want to just hugyou.
Some guys'll wanna touch you and try to...
you know, touch your cock, or suck you or...
they ask if they could fuck you
or you could fuck them or suck them.
I'll give you five hundred dollars for your g-string.
And then it's a thousand dollars for the next thing.
And the next thing...
how the fuck did this happen?
So you don't do s-- you don't escort in the tradit--
well, the prostitution side of things.
I don't have sex with people.
Anything else is fine.
I will make a starfish.
They can lick my ass, it's okay.
Their mouth wherever is okay.
Except on my lips.
I don't like that.
I don't like it when guys kiss me.
I guess that's what, um, makes me straight.
There are actually people who escort without having sex!
Wow! Okay.
Yeah, 'cause, like, I found out you don't have to do that.
Money is just money.
It comes and goes
It's not worth losing yourself.
(phone ringing)
Backstage, King speaking.
Good Marshall, how you doing mate?
Thunder from Down Under is a family, you know?
Fucking leech! Fucker!
So if someone's upset or they're, you know,
or they're angry, or they're anything,
it's-- they're always--
they're great to help you get through things, you know?
Hey, is this my hat? I think--
Yeah, no, that's mine.
Mine, no?
Yep, there you go.
'Cause I am the king--
Whoo! Everybody look at me!
Yup.
Hey, between the three of us, the other guys are just fillers.
They're fucked, they're fucked.
We go on and then...
well, there's a couple decent guys.
But...
But-- but we have to get rid of the riff raff.
Hey, they-- they take spots.
We should have a meeting tonight anyways about,
uh, guys wearing shirts on the floor,
and guys sitting on girls. 'Cause...
I'd love to have that meeting--
Because guys're sitting down for two--three fucking songs,
they're not getting paid for it.
And too many waiters are giving--
Taking their shirts off--
Too many waiters are doing lap dances.
Yeah.
What the fuck?
We're the dancers, they should leave their shirts on.
So--
Serve your drink.
Waiters shirts on, shot guys tank-top, lift for body shots--
Just for a second, not this whole thing.
Dancers, shirts off.
And I love Matt, but when he's the great white hope,
and he comes up with no chest,
no stomach, he's riding around like this, it's--
His face is red--
It's gross! Yeah, it's not... it's not cool.
We should get him working out.
We should get, uh, some vodka.
(laughs) That's true, that's true.
See you cuban, hello vodka
Hello vodka, or--
I brought weed, by the way.
And I have mmm....
Yeah, but I'm not doing that.
Okay, no problem, so let's do some weed.
I'm probably not gonna do that...
You're probably not?
No, I'm probably...
Maybe? (laughs) 'No' turned into a 'yes' real quick.
Listen. I'm. Not. Taking. Any. Drugs tonight-- okay.
Okay. Done.
(laughs) I win.
Let's go smoke a joint.
Yeah, let's do that.
I watched you progress at the club.
You were there for a couple years as a waiter beforehand,
so obviously he had to watch somebody.
So who do you think he watched, Guch? Who did he watch?
He's modeled himself after me a little bit.
I'll admit, when I first started out,
Josh I looked up to you, but I-- I surpassed you.
We should all know that I've set the mark for twenty years bud!
Twenty years I've been walking around,
looking like this.
You haven't been.
Out with the old and in with the new, baby.
I don't know many guys that have stripped for very long.
Usually, they do it for six months, a year, a couple--
I don't know. I've seen strippers that are,
like, my age stripping still, and it's kinda like,
wow, he's still up there!
There's no one better-looking than me,
can dance as good as me, no one's as sexy as me.
All these people saying how sexy you are?
Can really eat at someone's ego.
You-- you get bloated with all this ego.
No one thrills crowds--
--Dance better than you! I'm a way better dancer than you.
First of all-- you dance--
Are you crazy!?
Hold on!
You do a couple little moves like-- you look like--
Every time I watch you dance, I think it's Dirty Dancing
from the 1980s!
I'm like, holy shit, is that Patrick Swayze?
Yeah.
Look at this guy? I know you're a trained jazz--
Are you insane?!
I know you're trained--
Trained!
In classical jazz in the '80s, but classical jazz in the '80s
doesn't work on the stage of 2012.
The only thing Jer has is he's younger than me. That's it.
You're gonna have to hang up your g-string, and, that day--
Thank god we don't use g-strings anymore.
Jer? You think you're great. And I know I'm greater.
So I gotta tell you all the time.
Don't you get it? We're in competition.
Alpha male against alpha male, but I'm the big dog!
You're the oldest guy I've ever seen strip.
That doesn't--
When are-- You gotta retire sometime--
This is where you always go!
After--
Everyone's gotta go--try to go low-blow.
Let me get words in! Josh's gotta be the only one talking,
the loudest, has to scream over--
That's not--
Look, you cut me off again!
But--
You cut me off--
You're putting me down! You're--
I tried to say something earlier--
ten minutes ago, it's like--
Okay, I won't say another word.
Come on Jer, what about some other stories?
So, it's mostly all in fun.
Mostly.
[Music]
This is Alexander.
Before you, uh, came to Thunder, what did you do?
Bred horses.
(cheering)
When I get back on the farm, out in the open, around horses
and talk with people that are involved with horses...
feels a bit more like home.
Look at that! Oh man.
I think he's done this before.
Oh yeah?
He actually wants to be a farrier, like,
put shoesies on horsies.
Obviously, it's a lot more in-depth than that.
It's... farrying pretty much is involved from
the shoulder right down to the hoof.
Health of horses' legs,
health of the hooves, how to shape,
how to keep their feet healthy, how keep them well-shaped.
But, in simple man's terms, it's how to put shoes on horses.
I'll just do a little--
Yeah, just file it around like--
I'll just do a little light and then you... yeah cool.
You can always take more.
You can't ever glue it back on when the blood flows.
Look how level that is! Four on the racks! He's done it before.
This ain't his first rodeo.
It feels good to get back to that sort of thing,
you know?
Back to horses, and back to those type of people.
When I eventually do settle down
and decide I want to start an actual family,
I'd like to go back to Australia,
but, um, I think it just depends.
I might meet a nice American girl and it'll depend on her,
I suppose. (laughs)
Every time people see me,
they always go,
'Oh, like all these dancers have tattoos.
'But I don't see any tattoos on you'.
But I have a big one on my back.
It's, uh, the bird of paradise.
It's my mom's favorite flower.
One day she sat me down in front of her,
and she was just like, uh, 'Do you love me?'.
I knew it was 'cause I didn't spend enough time with her.
That's why she asked me that question.
One day, my mom just passed away.
I was, I think twelve.
I stood right in front of her,
and she was lying on the hospital bed,
and like, her skin was really yellow and dry
and she was in this, like position where, like,
her mouth was open as if she just--
the last thing she did was scream in pain.
And I think that's...
at that moment, I finally got it.
That, you know, if you care about somebody,
you should...
you should show it.
'Cause she was a person that really knew how to live.
She wanted to experience so many things.
I only started living after she died.
And because she died.
Wednesday night is my thirtieth birthday party.
And it's gonna be epic.
Like, we're gonna be drinking,
smoking joints, it's gonna be a limo bus
filled with fifteen to twenty people, seventy percent female,
ninety-five percent strippers.
There's stripper poles, girls are gonna be upside-down,
there's gonna be silicone everywhere.
We get to the club,
and we have the VIP booked out just for us, bottle service,
and we're gonna take over the place.
Everywhere we go, our crew is all muscle guys and hot girls.
Everywhere we go, we take over the club. We're the party.
I don't really worry about what comes after stripping,
I know I have a solid ten years left,
but really, twenty-five years left,
but a solid ten years left.
Afterwards, you know, I'm pretty smart.
I want to open a business.
I have the money to open a business now,
I just don't have the motivation, you know.
Opening a business, you need to put your heart and soul
and be there constantly the first two years to be a success.
And I like too much my casual lifestyle right now.
[Music]
[ Music ]
I'm never gonna quit this job.
I'm a stripper.
[Music]