| <Life after lap
dancing Reprinted from the Toronto Star The car, like its driver, is no longer young but an eye-catcher all the same. It's a 1989 Mercedes-Benz 560 SL convertible, top down, and Mary Taylor is pushing it through the morning traffic at 120 km/h. The licence plate says "PLAY TYM." She pulls off her baseball cap, which has "Hustler" emblazoned across the front, and the wind whips her brown hair into knots. Her German shepherd Keetah is lying behind her seat. "Hey, baby doll," she coos. They cruise into Port Perry, which sits in cottage country north of Toronto, and stop in front of a house hugged by dense trees and bush. Taylor rushes inside, through double French doors, into the living room. It's a big, two-storey house with soaring cathedral ceilings and the sun pouring through picture windows. She stands by the brick fireplace, breathing, taking it in. The showgirl has finally come home. After 21 years as a stripper, Taylor, now 47, got out of exotic dancing in 1997. She had had enough of feeling dirty after performing lap dances. She didn't want to drive home crying and scrub herself raw in the shower. To force herself to quit the business, she had moved out of the 2,800-square-foot house in 1996. She knew she wouldn't be able to afford the $4,000 monthly mortgage and utility bills. She rented the property and moved back into her parents' Scarborough home. "On my last night there, I sat on the front porch bawling my eyes out with Keetah, thinking I would never be able to come back." For the past five years, Taylor has had one objective: To move back into her house. She clawed her way back from the brink of bankruptcy. She started a business, teaching women to strip for their significant others. She appeared on Mike Bullard's television talk show, demonstrating a stripping technique called "stirring the pot" — gyrating the hips. She put out her own video, The Art Of Seduction, and she's written a book on sexy stripping techniques at home, titled Bedroom Games, to be published by Random House. "I don't have any more time to waste," she says, "I just spent so many years doing one thing. I didn't think I was capable or intelligent enough to do anything else." When she wasn't working, Taylor became involved in public causes. She recently became president of the board of directors of Second Base Scarborough Youth Shelter, where she started volunteering in 1993. She also served with the Exotic Dancers Alliance, a group that represents strippers' interests. Formed to protest lap dancing, the alliance deals with issues such as dancer abuse, arbitrary payment schemes, working conditions and the importation and exploitation of foreign dancers. More than a year ago, she left the alliance and started her own group, the Exotic Dancers Association of Canada, to provide support for dancers — like one who turned to Taylor for help recently when she felt tempted to return to the business. The woman found Taylor's Web site, http://www.peelandplay.com/, and called asking for help. Over lunch, Taylor explains that she understands the lure of the business and how hard it is to quit. "I felt like a drug addict," she tells her. "I felt like I was addicted to the money, the attention and the freedom of being so independent. "When I left dancing, my bills starting piling up and I was so used to spending so much money. All of a sudden, your salary is cut down to peanuts. "I kept thinking, maybe I'll just go back for a weekend. Maybe I'll just go out of town where nobody knows me." The young woman came from Romania to strip in Canada after responding to an ad. She barely made enough money for herself. She had to make regular payments to agents in Romania and Toronto who took a portion of her commission. Taylor groans. She knows the story too well. She knows what it's like to start a new life with a resumé that lists "stripping" as her only qualification. "I can't teach you courage," she tells the woman. She offers instead to help her put together a resumé and invites her to join the association. The woman describes Taylor as a "power woman" with "eyes like a shark." Taylor is petite but brassy and loud. She laughs off the woman's description. Taylor picks up her Prada purse. She has to leave. She needs to help her maid pack for the move back to Port Perry and her old house, which she now shares with Howard Linscott, her book editor and best friend. He is now half-owner of the house. On moving day, Taylor's father lugs paintings and clothing into the sunroom. He's a slight, quiet man. They speak to each other in Italian. His face is relaxed as he puts down a framed poster of his daughter in her younger days, kneeling topless on a stage. He doesn't look at it. He's seen it before. Taylor unpacks her clothes. "Want to see what a $2,500 shirt looks like?" It's peach silk. In two closets, she hangs up an Escada suit, some Dolce & Gabbana tops and a slinky black Guess dress. She still has to unpack her life-sized dummy, Bob, which she uses as a prop for strip workshops, teddy bears from former clients and her son's wedding photos. Taylor married at 16, got pregnant and left her husband three years later. She started dancing in 1976 to support herself and her son. Back then, in her early 20s, she performed five 15-minute stage shows for $20 each. In the 1980s, she waded through crowds carrying a small plywood box to stand on and hustled for $5 a table dance. But she wanted more money and fame than that. She revamped her routine with new costumes and new moves and won Miss Nude Eastern Ontario with "little 32A boobies." Her title made her the highly paid "feature dancer" that she strove to be. Leaving her son with her mother, she travelled all over Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, making up to $2,500 a week, stripping as "Ciara Love." However, in the '90s, clubs weren't forking out the big bucks for "feature dancers" — the demand had switched to lap dancing. So Taylor got her breasts augmented to a 34C and went back to Toronto clubs to perform lap dances in private rooms. "It was a horrible experience working in this room where blatant sex was everywhere," she says. "It's not entertainment anymore. It's foreplay. It's all about the bump and grind. "I wouldn't go to work because I couldn't stand the thought of what I had to do to make money. I had to take days off because I couldn't stand myself. "Sometimes you couldn't wash yourself off. You'd just scrub yourself, trying to get clean." She joined the Exotic Dancers Alliance about six years ago, wanting to use her experiences to "save the world." Back then, the group was made up of two ex-dancers, a couple of nurses and a community development worker from the Peel Health department. "When I came along, I was so excited. I was like, `Oh my God, we can finally do something.'" When she left, the group had a quarterly newsletter, had organized health clinics in strip clubs to give dancers hepatitis B shots and secured $20,000 in funding from United Way to improve conditions for strippers. "The woman is driven," says Rhonda Collis, a community devleopment worker with Peel Health. "She's very dedicated and when she is committed to a cause, she is totally focused." Not everyone likes Taylor's determination. She quit the alliance last year because of infighting — which some people say she caused. She brushes off claims that she yelled at people and acted like a dictator. "Come here!" Taylor shouts at Keetah, drawing the dog away from a workman installing carpet at her house. "Sometimes I don't know if she's yelling at me or the dog," jokes housemate Linscott. |