7 Days In Savannah: Lady Lou's

7 Days in Savannah is a recollection of my time growing up and being a young man in Savannah, GA. All stories are true and relayed to the best of my memory.


I have a confession to make. I used to be a bad boyfriend. Well, not bad bad, but I did some stuff that could be considered not cool. Chalk it up to youth, but when I was in college, I used to frequent a booty club and my girlfriend didn't know. Knowing her, I know she would not have approved, so I just didn't tell her. Let's go ahead and make that confession sound even worse. I used to go after I left her house. I never rushed out of there so I could go see strippers, but instead of just going straight home, I would stop off at Lady Lou's for a dance or three. I could make all kinds of excuses, but the fact is this: I liked looking at naked women, so I did.

Let's talk about Lady Lou's. It was a dump. A hole in the wall spot on Montgomery Street, right across from the Salvation Army store. As far as I know, it's now a sports bar, but back in 95-97, it was the place to go to see strippers. They never advertised themselves at a strip club. In fact, I don't even know how I found out about it, but once I went, I was hooked. The best thing about the club, was the girls didn't look like your stereotypical strippers. They were just hot girls that you'd see in the hood. And there was no pole dancing, VIP rooms or routines, just booty shaking and lap dancing. If you were lucky, you got a seat in the corner where it was really dark, but if not, it didn't really matter. The girls were still gonna get freaky directly under the spotlight. Oh, and one other thing... it was highly illegal. Lady Lou's had neither an adult club license or a liquor license.

On this night, I was hanging out with Lisa at her sister's house like we did just about every Friday night. I wanna say that we had went to a movie and then came home so she could babysit her niece while her sister went out to the club. That's how it usually happened. I had talked to Kareem and Tori and they mentioned that they were gonna hit up Lady Lou's that night. So when the Lisa portion of the night was over, I decided to meet them up there. It was no more than 5 minutes away from Lisa's sister's crib. I pulled up, paid my two dollars (yes, $2) and looked around the club. I didn't see my friends there, but I sat down anyway. I ordered a Michelob ($2) and preceded to find a girl to give my $3 (yes, $3 for a lap dance) to. As I looked around, I saw another one of my homeboys, Mike, in the corner getting a dance. I tipped my beer to him and he raised his plastic cup at me. I continued my search for the perfect stripper as Aaliyah's One In A Million came on. I loved the beat on that song, so I got the closest attractive stripper to me, and ponied up my cash. As her body gyrated to the Timberland beat, and she got a lot closer than strippers do now a days, I felt a tap on my shoulder...

"Rashan?"

I looked up and saw a tall woman with long black bushy hair. I recognized that face anywhere. It was Kasey. Kasey was a good friend of mine back in high school. She was even a better friend to Kareem and another one of my homeboys, Chavon. She dated both of them. I hadn't seen her probably since graduation, but I heard rumors that she had turned gay. It surprised the heck out of me seeing her in the strip club.

"Kasey? What you doing here?"

"Working. What are you doing?"

Then I noticed what she was wearing. A red bikini set. Well she was wearing for about 30 seconds. Then it was on the floor. Oh snap! Kasey is a stripper. I wasn't prepared for that one. She wasn't exactly the type that you would think of when you think of strippers. Now that I'm older, it does make more sense given her childhood, but all I was thinking was I went to high school with this girl. We were good friends for awhile there. She dated two of my homeboys. I don't wanna see her naked.

I tried to concentrate on the dancer in front of me, but Kasey kept making small talk. Asking me about this person or that person, all the while dancing naked for some other dude. It felt weird. Obviously, most of the strippers went to high school, but none of them went with me. It was the first time that I had experience with someone I knew. All I wanted to do was just enjoy my dance, but my mind was racing. When Aaliyah went off, I paid my dancer and Kasey came and sat down next to me. Great! Now, instead of just seeing her naked, she was sitting next to me naked. And talking to me naked. It was just so weird. This may not make sense to you, but I had very few platonic friends that stayed completely platonic, but she was one of them. I didn't want to see her like that. Plus, it felt like a violation of friendship since Kareem dated her. I tried my best to expedite her leaving.

"Hey, don't you have to go make that money?"

"Nah, I'm good. I can talk for awhile."

"I don't want you to get in no trouble. Just call me and we'll catch up."

"You still got the same number?"

"Yeah, it's the same. Go get your money!"

"You want me to dance for you?"

"NOOOOOO!!!"

Okay, that's what I thought. I was really said this..

"That's a little weird, isn't it. I've known you since middle school."

She moved on and as soon as it was possible to leave without looking too conspicuous, I trotted to the door. As I exited the club, I wondered if I should tell Kareem that I saw his high school girlfriend butt booty naked shaking for dollars. I decided against it for the time being. I squeezed past the police officer that was working security and got in my car. As I was pulling off, I was nearly hit by a police paddy wagon. Then I saw 3 more cop cars coming in the same direction. I figured that the weekly Friday night shooting was in the area. It wasn't until I talked to Mike the following Monday that I found out what really happened.

The police raided Lady Lou's and took all the dancers and customers in. Luckily, only the owners got real charges, but I was so glad I left before it went down. Can you imagine me trying to explain that I was at an illegal strip club when I was supposed to have been home? That wouldn't have went over well with Lisa. They shut Lady Lou's down. It did reopen, but it didn't stay open very long before they got raided again. Luckily, I was nowhere near there that night. I'm glad Kasey was there that night to run me out of the club.