There is no evidence of widespread prostitution at Deja Vu in the Valley since it opened eight years ago. Police said the illegal acts typically started as lap dances. Between caring for their children and earning a living, none of them has completed more than a year’s worth of college classes.Īt a Deja Vu nightclub in Tukwila, Wash., undercover police made arrests that led to 70 convictions for prostitution in the summer of 1994. “I’ve worked for everything I have,” said Alicia Erickson, a 24-year-old single mother who in May put a down payment on a modest home in a nice North Side neighborhood.Įrickson and two others plan to earn college degrees and get jobs as a teacher, a stock broker and perhaps a lawyer before they are too old to make money with their bodies. None collects public assistance, and all said that would be more degrading than removing their clothes in public. They have one to three children fathered by men with whom they are no longer involved, and get little or no child support. The four strippers interviewed for this story live in tidy houses decorated for the holidays. But there was no illumination of the private lives of the women who remove their clothes in public. The recent debate over the ordinance at a county commission meeting focused a spotlight where it seldom shines, on people who work or seek enjoyment on the dark fringes of societal mores. Dancers say it will regulate them out of jobs that can pay $30,000 or more a year. County officials say the rule will prevent prostitution. The money - Johnson’s primary income for everything from rent to soccer uniforms - buys a couch dance, also called a lap dance because that’s where the gyrations are performed.Ī new county ordinance would keep dancers out of men’s laps and mandate at least 4 feet between entertainer and customer. When the music stops pounding, she squeezes into a too-small outfit, steps out of the strobe light and into the audience, hoping her dance was erotic enough to entice men to pay $12 for a closer look. Johnson, 30, is an exotic dancer at Deja Vu Gentlemen’s Club in the Spokane Valley.Īt least three times during an eight-hour shift, she strips to her platform shoes, earning perhaps a few dollars in tips for that work. There’s a bunch of men who want to touch her.” “I actually hate her job,” said the well-mannered 11-year-old. He lies, he said, because he doesn’t want people to judge his mother, Angela Johnson. He tells people he doesn’t know or that she doesn’t have a job. But he lies when asked how his mother makes a living. The Boy Scout took an oath to tell the truth.
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