Strippers and their Patrons Support Spitzer
Stripper says, “It has nothing to do with the job he performs, so why should he have to leave it?”
“Prostitution is the oldest trade in the world, and it’s the norm with politicians,” Brianna Williams, a bartender at the Pussycat Lounge in Lower Manhattan said Tuesday afternoon. “Trust me, I know.”
At a place where men who have hired prostitutes go to watch topless women, no one condemned New York Governor Eliot Spitzer for hiring a girl from a high-end internet prostitution ring last month. But even without the moral judgment, staff and customers at the Pussycat were split over whether or not a resignation is in order now that Spitzer’s sex spending has been revealed.
Behind Williams, 28, wall-to-wall mirrors reflect topless girls in string thongs, crawling on a stage and soliciting dollar bills from a handful of men scattered around the bar Tuesday night. The strippers and bartenders at Pussycat are familiar with escort service fees and friends with girls who work for the agencies.
“Getting sexual satisfaction does not affect your judgment to do your job,” said Sky, 24, a preacher’s daughter from Virginia, as she waited at the side of the bar for her turn to go on stage. “It has nothing to do with the job he performs, so why should he have to leave it?”
Dennis Wilson, a 51-year-old computer programmer, and a regular at Pussycat, shared Sky’s sentiments, but was also dumbfounded by what he called Spitzer’s stupidity. “With his reputation from being the attorney general and being ‘Mr. Clean,’ it just seems stupid,” Wilson said. “He should have known that the bank reports when such large sums of money are withdrawn. It was like he left a trail of breadcrumbs.”
The $5,000 [He actually spent $4,300 on this one girl and some of that was a credit toward a future meeting] Spitzer reportedly used to pay for Kristen, the 5-foot-5, 105 pound escort from the online prostitution ring, Emperor’s Club V.I.P., “was probably a flat fee that paid for whatever he wanted” said Williams. “The Emperor’s Club has a really high-end clientele, so it is not by the hour. You need to see these escorts; they are like models, totally gorgeous.”
Pussycat regular Steve Hanson watched girls dance to E.S.G. and Slim Thug’s “Work That Thing,” from a corner bar stool. The 52-year-old construction project supervisor admitted to having paid for sex before, but never such an outrageous sum.
“It was many years ago, but it only cost a couple hundred dollars, definitely not thousands,” said Hanson, who thinks that Spitzer should resign because of his hypocrisy. “I don’t really think that prostitution is the biggest moral flaw of people. But in his case, it is like a preacher telling a flock how to behave and then going against it.”
Spitzer signed a bill into law in November that cracks down on the customers of prostitutes. The law, considered the toughest human trafficking law in the country, treats customers as the real law-breakers and casts the prostitutes as victims. At the time of its signing, the governor called prostitution “modern-day slavery and among the most repugnant crimes.”
“I think that prostitution should be decriminalized,” said Emily Smith, 28, a stripper dressed in a silver studded white bikini top and matching skirt, who was having a glass of wine at the bar. “But, considering it is illegal, it would be bad for the Democratic Party if he didn’t resign,” she said.
As business picked up around 9:30 p.m. and more strippers arrived for work, they stopped to chat with Hanson and Wilson who bought them drinks from bartender, Trisha Miller. Miller, 29, explained that she really didn’t know what to think.
“As long as it was with his own money, that is his own thing. At least it wasn’t drugs,” she said. “But then again, from a moral standpoint, he cheated, committed adultery and that isn’t right. Plus, he is a public figure.”
Williams argued that “everybody has secrets,” and Wilson agreed saying, “anyone who looks to politicians for moral values is looking in the wrong place.”