MARY G. is a smart, together stripper-turned-corporate-lawyer. From 1989 to 1991, she danced at bachelor parties in the middle-class and wealthy suburbs of Southern California . While she has seen plenty of esteem-challenged women dance for the compliments and attention of men, she was never one of them: “I was out as a dyke at that point, so I didn't need validation from the men I was dancing for. For me it was a simple equation: Is it safe? Can I get money?”

There was some fear of the unknown in the beginning, like, “Can I really pull this off? Can I pass as a straight stripper?” It was also performance anxiety: “Is the music going to work? Can I gracefully unclip my bra?” In retrospect, if that's your biggest worry, great.

I was never really worried about my safety, because the psychological dynamics of bachelor parties are similar to almost any group: for every bad person, there's the person that wants to do good; for every person that wants to scare you, there's a person that wants to save you. And if you can identify them, you can usually play them off each other.

The best man, for instance, was usually the point-person and the ambassador; and he was the one I would tell, “I am going to end up leaving if you can't keep your friends in line, and I am going to really lean on you. And you have more responsibility, because I trust you. But if your friends cross the line, I'm outta here.” And that can be a real downer: nobody wants to have the stripper running out of the party with half her clothes on; that is not the story you want to tell the next day. Now, as a lawyer, I do these same things to judges that I did to the best man: make them feel like they want to do the right thing and that they are important and special.

At a bachelor party you win or lose people's confidence within the first five minutes. So, to start off, I would walk in and basically outline to everyone, “This is what's going to happen: I'm going to do two sets; the first set is for the bachelor. Then I'm going to take a five-minute break, and then we're going to play tipping games. We'll talk more about that when I come back out.”

When I tell people I used to work at bachelor parties, they say, “Oh my gosh that must have been so chaotic, being in a room full of one-hundred men.” It actually was very structured and more than half the time these guys were scared shitless—so much more nervous than I could ever be—and actually not really even sexualizing the whole experience; it would end up being more of an anatomy class. And they were nervous about being around explicit sexuality with their peers looking at them. They're worried about how they're responding: Are they into it appropriately or are they not into it appropriately? Each and every person in the room was so self-conscious.

I was actually surprised that so many men know so little about female anatomy. I would do vibrator shows and the guys would go and get flashlights. It became not so much an erotic thing; it was more like, “What? That's a vagina?” And these are guys that are about to get married! These are doctors, attorneys, cops, firefighters, feds, frat boys, professors, military people, engineers, bikers, farm workers—anyone and everyone you could imagine.

When we got into the tipping games, the erotic thrill was a little bit more between them. It was, “I'm going to give you five dollars to go and do that to my friend.” It wasn't so much me, me, me; it was more, “I want to see my friend either squirm or have to do something sexual.”

For one dollar, I would take that dollar from anywhere. Typically people would tuck it into the top of their pants or their button-down shirt, or put it in their mouth. There was a lot of unsanitary money exchange going on. For five dollars they could lick whipped cream off of a nipple. For ten dollars, they could lick it off both breasts.

Twenty dollars was the clincher; it was called, “Feed the kitty.” I would take the twenty, roll it up like you were going to snort a line, and they would put it in their mouth. I would have them lay on the floor, and I would crouch over them and I would pick it up with my vagina; there was absolutely no contact, just with the money. I practiced it beforehand with my girlfriend. It didn't take very long to perfect it, but I did figure out exactly how it needed to be rolled up and exactly how much of the twenty needed to be in his mouth in order to do the trick without any contact. And then, by literally looking up at my own vagina with a mirror, I figured out how to do it in a somewhat erotic way. That was the big money maker. Always.

And then I was out of there—hopefully $1,000 wealthier. No, that's not true; sometimes there were other offers that got worked out beforehand or when I announced the tipping games. There could be an oil and vibrator show.

Basically, you're chasing the money; you negotiate the fee, and part of it is gauging, “How much do these people have?” If you overshoot, you lose the whole deal. You know, sixty bucks, one-hundred bucks, 150 bucks, whatever it was—and I would set a certain time limit, one song. If they want another song, “Okay, another eighty bucks.”

Usually the vibrator show was: let me put oil on myself and then I will lay on the ground and writhe to the music and turn a vibrator on, lick it and put it in my vagina. Again, they'd get out the flashlights and were fascinated with, “How big is the vibrator? Is it bigger than my dick? How much can fit in a vagina?”

Sometimes I would pretend to orgasm. And when we did two-woman shows—they never called it a lesbian show—I would always have an “orgasm” with the friend that I worked with; we would almost be laughing. We would grind on each other and we would time it like, “Okay now.” If men actually knew how women orgasm, they would have been like, “That is so fake.” [PULLQUOTE: If men actually knew how women orgasm, they would have been like, “That is so fake.”]

I probably did about 150 bachelor parties in three years. Sometimes there would be three on Friday night and three on Saturday night; other weekends nothing—it was very seasonal. But every party was the same: you have the same stuff, the same attitude; the guys were interchangeable.

But every party was also a little outrageous, because you get this little glance into these people's lives and their environment. For example, I did a show for these farm workers in the middle of this field on their machinery. That was my stage—this flatbed truck and the machinery. The most uncomfortable one was for these professors from the university where I was a student. Super uncomfortable—too close to home. And one time we did a show at a phenomenal winery. It was a super-extravagant party, because these people owned the winery and had a mansion on the property. They laid down probably three- to four-grand for two of us, and gave us each a case of wine.

But whether it was at winery or on a flatbed truck, it was the same thing, the same dynamic. And it really was a great job: I was independent, there was no time commitment, I made great money. I was in and out in an hour, and never saw the people again. In my non-sex-work life, it's like going to a conference and doing a presentation and leaving, versus going to work everyday in the same place. It allowed me the flexibility to do the other things—like get through law school.

Once Mary got her law degree, she stopped dancing. “My only regret is that I didn't save more money,” she admits. “Instead, me and my girlfriend ate sushi every night. It was good living, really good living.”