The place where no one has a name

Missouri’s stretch of Interstate 70 is a lonely one. I often make this drive to get from Columbia to Kansas City and take the time to ruminate on my life. Sometimes, a car passes me, and I look over, curious about whether that driver is also lost in thought about his or her own life: regrets, work deadlines, past loves. Two anonymous lives, strangers confined within our cars, passing by on the interstate.

Tonight, I’m headed somewhere else, a strip club marked by a neon fuchsia XXX sign. From the outside, the building looks like a small warehouse with pink walls. One semi-truck and a few cars are parked in the lot. I walk inside through a small, empty entryway. One door leads to a shop with aisles of porn. Another door opens to the strip club.

Before I walk inside the club, a second door opens. A short man with a ponytail, whom I recognize as the bartender, welcomes me inside. I’ve been here before, identifying myself as a journalist working on a story about I-70. The bartender wouldn’t give me his full name then, and he doesn’t now. He won’t tell me the dancer’s name either. The establishment refuses to reveal true identities. Secrets dwell here.

He recognizes me, too, and informs me that though I am a reporter, I am not welcome to take notes or recordings. The bartender offers me a drink — non-alcoholic, as Missouri strip clubs are banned by law from serving booze.

The dancer is wearing lacy pink underwear, a matching bra and a long necklace that hangs between her breasts. She sways her body, her feet in transparent platform shoes, to Marcy Playground’s 1997 “Sex and Candy” in a dark room lit by dim disco lights.

Five men sit around the stage where she dances. One is a middle-aged man who stares as if he could burn himself into her body, as if she just might secretly know the answers to all of his problems.

The dancer shimmies off her bra, and her breasts are fully exposed. She leans down to the first man and pulls his head to her chest. She giggles, turns to the next man, pulls him from his seat and spanks him.

The men throw bills onto stage. The dancer controls their attention. They control her income.

She slips off her boyshorts, but underneath, she wears a black thong. The same law that bans alcohol also prohibits fully nude dancers.

Six years ago, the state legislature passed a law imposing several restrictions to sexually oriented businesses, including strip clubs. But the law doesn’t just prevent nudity and booze. It also requires strip clubs to close from midnight to 6 a.m., dictates that the stage is six feet from patrons and forbids strippers from touching customers.

Aside from not serving alcohol and closing at midnight, this strip club isn’t a stickler for the rules.

The nudity rule isn’t simple, either. The dancer wears heels, a thong and a necklace. But the Missouri lawdefines nudity as “the showing of … the female breast with less than a fully opaque covering of any part of the nipple or areola.” The dancer’s breasts are fully exposed.

I’ve called state agencies without success to find out how strip clubs are regulated. Representatives from the Missouri State Highway Patrol and state and local divisions of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services could not answer my questions. The Missouri Department of Tobacco and Alcohol Controlchecks that strip clubs follow the no-booze rule but doesn’t enforce other parts of the law.

For the men and the dancer, the law doesn’t mean much. For her, it’s a job. And for them, an escape.

I watch the dancer lean down and speak to an older man. I can’t quite hear what they are saying, but she’s laughing, and though his cratered face looks as if he has seen fair share of unhappiness, he’s smiling now.

She is a savior of sorts. He doesn’t know her real name. She likely doesn’t know his.

They are strangers, just passing by one another.