The Pink Pussycat

Thanks to Chappell Roan and her Pink Pony Club hit, I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about a job I had years ago - at The Pink Pussycat in Sydney’s Kings Cross.

I wasn’t a dancer sadly. I have neither the figure, the coordination, the upper body strength, or if we’re getting into it, tidy enough flaps, for that. But long, long ago, when I was a backpacker living in Bondi and hitting most of the cliches of the post-uni gap year, I found myself ‘hostessing’ nights for, what ultimately turned out to be, a drug -lord’s money-laundering business, sandwiched between a brothel and ‘Porkey’s Sex Show’.  I’m not here to tell you it was classy…

… but what it was, was a whole lot of fun. An adventure. Eye opening. And, tbh, probably one of my most favourite jobs ever.

Let’s start at the beginning, because I know you’re wondering how a girl from Manchester ended up in a tits and bits bar on the other side of the world.

Having arrived in Sydney in November in order to spend Christmas watching the fireworks by that bridge, I realised pretty quickly every man and his dog from the UK had the same plan. Given these were the glory days where 30 quid got you $100 and we didn’t have social media so we all thought Oz was wall to wall sunshine and had no idea it ever rained, let alone fucking FLOODED, Sydney was the place to be. Especially in the run up to NYE.

As a result, despite a newly acquired 2:1 in Sociology and my 21yo optimism the world was my oyster (especially in Australia – population 11), I couldn’t get a decent job for love nor money and was earning just less than enough to cover my bed in the 2-bed flat that 5 of us shared, by being a sandwich board. A career choice which didn’t bode well for the rest of the gap year given the deficit. It was hot, boring work and more than a little uncomfortable as whoever made sandwich boards did not cater to 5’2” wearers and so I had to carry the thing in order to walk. So, when the opportunity arose via a friend of a friend, to ‘interview’ for a role hostessing at her strip club, I jumped at the chance. It sounded cool, I could drink on the job, and she’d made over $3K on her best night. I knew all that I needed to know.

The interview was a breeze. I had tits and could work a pen and paper to take drink orders, so I was in.

My job involved hanging out on the door encouraging people to come in, seating them at one of the plastic table settings we hoped the dimness of the club made look classier than they actually were, and taking their drinks orders. Once I’d delivered these, I was then to try to sell them champagne. Whether they or I drank the champagne was of little consequence in terms of commission.  Though it was preferable that they ordered for me because a) I got pretty skilled at drinking a lot in a short time frame and chucking as much as I could get away with around me as I chatted which meant more profits and b) often, the champagne we had in-house was Passion Pop. Now, I don’t care what you think you do or do not know about wine, there’s no one who just paid $100 a bottle that thinks they’ve got a good deal when they pop a plastic cork and their bubbles taste like a pavlova topping.

A good night would see me hanging, chilling and spilling champagne all over myself with the same guy. That was easy. Once you had someone buying, it was just like any other night out, but stickier. A few bottles in, I’d suggest going for breakfast or to the casino – with a minimum cost of $300 an hour so I could leave work. Even now, I wonder how I managed so frequently to chance upon people who were happy to pay this. But they did. I’d get bought breakfast or gamble for an hour or two, taxi back to the club, where they guy’s card was left as insurance, to return their plastic to them (maybe have a last bottle of bubbles) and then head home. Usually via Macca's for a coke and hash brown with the other club girls until the trains started running at 6am and we could get home.

Other nights, I’d have to earn my money in tips serving drinks and bringing in customers. Not as lucrative, but still fun. My time on the steps into the club meant time to chat with passers-by and the prostitutes from next door, or watch the crazy world of early 2000s King’s Cross unfold before me.

It wasn’t all sticky floors and tropical fruit flavoured bubbles of course. I met the odd asshole. I got robbed once and spent hours at the Kings Cross Police Station (do not recommend, busy place). But for the most part, it was the best experience. And a huge confidence boost. I was getting paid for my sparkling company. Legitimately. Of course, I had the odd client wonder if that $300 might get them more, but I was always super upfront. If they wanted nudity, they were literally already in the right place. And if they wanted to touch as well as look, they could pop next door for a lot less than $300 an hour.

I hung out with jockeys, businessmen, stag parties, newlyweds…so many people with so many stories. But I was really lucky in my time at The Cat, because on day two, I scored a ‘regular’. Something which took some of the girls years to chance upon. A regular was any guy who came in 3 or 4 nights a week, got the set up and was there to spend on one particular girl. Regulars knew that they needed to supply the hostesses with a constant stream of bubbles to have them hang out. They knew we’d get only half of that money and that it was always appreciated to tip us in greens directly when management wasn’t looking. They knew to ask for their girl on arrival thus bypassing the usual & fairly complicated door system we had to ensure everyone got a prospect early on in the night.

My regular was a 21yo multi-millionaire and CEO of a Sydney metals company inherited from his dad. He had all the things I thought back then you’d ever need in life. A beautiful apartment with a pool and harbour views, a garage full of cool cars, a walk-in wardrobe of designer clothes, and a career already in place he was right at the top of.  

But he was decades younger than his work peers and had gotten his role entirely because of who his father had been, so he had zero pride in any of it and the respect of no one around him. On the outside, it was an easy life. On the inside, he was lonely, felt like a fraud and was super homesick having moved from the UK to Sydney only a year or so before we met to take up the role he’d been born into.

We bonded as 20 something ex pats over the lack of decent crisps choices in Australia and a shared belief that if someone just set up a baked spud van in the square down the road they’d make a killing and we became friends as ‘normals’ in a night time world surrounded by the super beautiful and the super weird.

About half the girls in the club, hostessing or stripping, were ‘normals’. Not exceptionally pretty or gorgeous-figured and not engagingly weird … initially I assumed we’d do worse. Make less money. Get picked to hang out less. But that was never the case. Not back then away. Back then, being normal meant you might well be the girlfriend or the friend. You didn’t look ‘paid for’ and you weren’t scary. You were safe and not intimidating and the idea of perfection that seems to have become the gold standard now, just didn’t hold the appeal that it does today for most lonely customers who walked up the stairs and across the sticky lino of the Pink Pussycat to get a can of mid strength and an hour with ‘a friend’.

The other thing that I found interesting during my time there, was that the stories were never what you imagine they might be. Or not often.

Before I started there, I think I’d assumed people who worked in places like this were there out of necessity and bad luck. But Melody, the 52yo stripper who organised and found the funding for the Strippers and Whore’s annual ball in Canberra every year and was an eloquent and vocal advocate for sex workers & Leonie, the law student who came home every holiday to strip and earn so she could have more time to study at term time, showed me that wasn’t necessarily the case. They also showed me Canberra could be anything but boring when I went there to visit and stayed with Leonie and her male-stripper-by-night, Department-of-Defence-employee-by-day, boyfriend. And his brother who had same day job but moonlighted as an erotic masseur instead in his evenings. But that’s probably a whole other blog...

The clients, I figured ,would be sleazes. Weirdos. Stags. I’m not saying that they never were… but they were also everyone else. Girls on a night out not wanting to be bothered by guys. Shy guys who’d rather the focus wasn’t on them and the shimmying fannies were a firm guarantee it wouldn’t be. Couples who wanted cheaper drinks than they’d get in the meat markets at Darling Harbour.

My time at the club showed me that even in a world that revolved around casual sex and showmanship, you could find moments of real connection, and that friends came in many forms. It showed me I could navigate tricky situations with grace (yes Tracy, I will help you find your glow in the dark clit piercing, but I’m just going to point it out, OK? You can pick that up for yourself thanks). And that I could end up in some really amazing and diverse places if I was just open to the opportunities that the universe sent me.

I have no doubt that the fact I stepped into Network Marketing, have had over 70 different roles/jobs, and have visited more countries than I can even remember (thank you Sean for always being available to check with whether I have been to a spot and give me some reminders about it) are a direct result of my time in The Cat – or stem from that little seed of ‘ok let’s see’ that I let flourish by choosing to go there.

It allowed me to step into something entirely new and alien to my lived experience at that point and it gave me nothing but wonderful and beautiful and hilarious friendships. It created an unshakable confidence in myself and the knowledge that all I’d ever need to be in order to do anything, I already had inside me or around me if I just looked for it.

It showed me that I could face anything that came my way with the skills I had (or learn them on the spot) and gifted me the knowledge that everyone had that within them if they were brave enough to believe it.

It meant that ‘well that’s off the path I imagined’ became synonymous to me with ‘that could take me to some very interesting places let’s go…’  

So I’m with Roan on this one.

‘…there's a special place

Where boys and girls can all be queens every single day.’

And it’s just outside your comfort zone in the realm of slight disapproval. Go there, please. The gift is well worth the cost. Nobody ever grew wings in a box.