![]() ![]() How did a writer from Leavenworth, Kan., wind up writing about the most storied spot in all of Atlanta? During the three years I worked on the project, I often asked myself that very question. I couldn’t believe there was a place like the Clermont: a strip club housed in the basement of a flophouse hotel (which had recently been shuttered for a bedbug infestation) showcasing dancers whose average age is a ripe 46.5. In retrospect, Blondie’s tirade, which attracted every other dancer who was getting ready and which led me to duck out of the dressing room, was her right and her way of telling me I was not welcome. Not only was I invading their turf, but I was doing it while wielding a tape recorder. It is where they can safely bitch about each other and their bosses, chain-smoke, get loaded, tell dirty jokes, cake on makeup, lend things to one another, like bobby pins or a hairbrush, and just let it all (quite literally) hang out. The dressing room is the one and only space at the Clermont Lounge that belongs solely to the dancers. That was my introduction to the Clermont Lounge. She started by informing me, “I’m not gonna talk to nobody unless you pay me,” and finished with a rant about how she knew people like me. They deserved the royal treatment, something like La Perla.īut Blondie didn’t know what I was thinking. I actually was thinking it was such an unfitting way to treat those moneymakers. Blondie pulled off her oversized T-shirt and caught me staring at the Ace bandage-looking sports bra holding down her legendary assets.īut I wasn’t staring because I wanted to see. So there I was, my first night in the famous Clermont’s dressing room, and the diva arrived. ![]() The first summer I moved to Atlanta, back in 2000, I had just started working at CNN, and one of my coworkers recalled a story about a first date taking her to the Clermont Lounge and how appalled she was by it all. Until I took on that project, I’d lived in Atlanta for a decade, but I’d never stepped foot inside the Clermont Lounge. The product of that work is a book, “No Cameras: The Clermont Lounge,” which will be published this holiday season. Three months earlier, in 2010, I had learned that the two owners of the legendary Clermont Lounge, Tracey Brown and Kathi Martin, were looking for someone to document the story of their business, Atlanta’s most infamous strip club. She is the face of the Clermont, but I’d never caught even a glimpse of her before that night. In the mirror I had a clear view of Blondie. I positioned myself in front of a mirror for the rest of the interview while Jessica nitpicked every flaw on her face and pinned her hair up, readying to hide it under a showgirl wig. Jessica, a darling soul who seemed more suited for a life as a flight attendant or executive assistant than a stripper (and who has since moved back home to Ohio), was in the middle of telling me about her nightly inferno when Blondie ordered me out of what apparently was her chair. I was in the middle of an interview with Jessica, a dancer known for lighting her nipples on fire. She strutted in around 9:30 on a Friday night, huffy and sweaty from her hilly, half-mile walk to work. The first time I met Blondie, she kicked me out of the Clermont Lounge dressing room. ![]()
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