Reviewed by Gary Meyer
(11/29/00)

Shortly after her book was published, the Seattle Art Museum across the street offered Langley a one-woman show, only to renege, caving in to the family values crowd. (Nudes in an art museum -- can you imagine?) This year, Langley's photos finally made it into a group show there. A Seattle Times article about the show reports that she’s still dancing at the Lusty, her meal ticket, while she works on a project about a pair of elderly maiden aunts she calls "eccentric feminists." "I like walking between worlds," Langley says.

Her surprising answers to the questions "Who are these women?" and "Why do they do it?" are intertwined with self-referential case study, the birth of her femme-side persona, the dancer Virginia. "Frivolous! Improbable!...I can play slutty dress-up with no ramifications here...Vanity is a drug to me now, and I'll fuck those mirrors all night long." She enjoys the camaraderie of "frolicking in the playpen with my pals."

The photographs from the customer's point of view are all about fantasy. The mirrors create a constellation of spotlights and an infinite line of dancers clad in heels, boots, elbow-length gloves, and wisps of lingerie, women who've gone through the looking-glass and come out the other side. They spin and kick and split and hang upside down from the pole. Then one of them comes over to your window, maybe attracted by a smile instead of a leer. The dancer's-eye view is surreal; the watchers are chopped by the guillotines of constantly closing window shutters. Sometimes she sees only a torso with a hard cock jutting out of a fly, sometimes a face licking at her high heel, or only a ghostly smear in the darkness.

The candid dressing room/break time photographs are all about transformation, how everywoman becomes the temple dancer, the priestess of need. The most haunting images examine this duality. Veronica is sleeping, hugging a cushion like a teddy bear, her face cherubic, her legs sheathed in fishnets and a garter belt. Mercy is self-absorbed. Except for wearing nothing but glasses and a stocking cap, she could be any office worker with her cup of coffee. Gypsy, a short-cropped brunette, is combing out a blond wig that’s hanging from her jungle-print top.

The most stereotype-shattering shot is the author performing an athletic, nude, full split while clinging to the pole, her expression pure joy. Author portraits are supposed to be turtleneck-clad, in book-lined studies, chin in hand, cat on lap -- not pussy in face. Langley says, "I did not expect to learn so much about my own capacity to take charge of my sexual power and brandish it: I own this!"

Virginia's fellow performers are given an opportunity to speak for themselves in the central section "Dancers Talking." Their multiple talents and acute observations explode the myths that women do this because it is all they can do, that sex workers are brainwashed victims of the patriarchy.

"This is ritual need, ritual behavior."
--Joey

"I changed my mind because the gender stereotyping in ballet really got on my nerves."
--Rio/Satin

"I always say I work in the zoo, and I’m never sure who the animals are."
--Candy Girl

Langley's textual depiction of the customers is just as honest and illuminating. Men in phone-booth-sized cubicles feed in quarters at the rate of three per minute to jerk off while gazing at the unattainable women on the stage, a real-life wet dream. There are obscene demands and rebuffs: "I don’t take orders for quarters." Also tenderness, communication, even worship. "Some men look so astonished at seeing the real thing that it often feels like community service, a lesson in basic biology and science."

There are suits and frat boys and freaks and "flannel-shirted guys wearing lingerie underneath." Also Diaper Man and Pen Man, who inserts a writing instrument into his dick, and the Fucky-Fucky man who writes endearments to hold up against the glass. In Private Pleasures, it's one-on-one with a phone hookup; five dollars for three minutes plus tips, but Virginia finds it difficult work without the support of her fellow dancers and with the impossibility of ignoring her client. "For the most part, they seem nice guys who want to look at my butt."

There's a smattering of kink. On "Play Day," the one day a year when the dancers take over the club, pro dommes are featured and Virginia assists one to get a feel for the experience. Langley visits the home of a dancer who is a professional mistress as well as dominant partner to her submissive husband. Playful spanks are common on stage where five nude women dance and cavort inside a small, mirrored room. Customers perform foot and shoe worship through the glass. Though the activities on both sides are mainly vanilla, this is consensual power exchange with strict etiquette.

The Lusty Lady revolutionizes our perspective. It shows how sex work can be self-expression, not submission; how money can buy communion, not possession; and how women, dancing naked, surrounded by men shooting their loads, can be empowered, not exploited.