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  To the Scottish Liberal Democrat, who worked for the RSPB, whom I met in a gay club after a performance in Bournemouth. You said I should write a book about my experiences that tackled all the prejudices. I can’t remember your name, but this is for you.

  Like a loser’s reach – too slow and short to hit the peaks….

  Foreword

  I was advised to write this foreword by several friends who had read the text. Basically, they thought it didn’t do me justice. A couple of them even expressed the view that I come across as negative about the stripping business. In the light of their comments and feedback, I feel it is necessary to state my position clearly. This is not to justify but merely to clarify. What follows is an honest appraisal of the male strip scene in the UK. The emphasis is placed on the word honest.

  Unfortunately, in a society now so steeped in hypocrisy there is little place any more for a candid man. In a domain where the truth has unpleasant consequences, it appears that the vast majority now bow to that hypocrisy. For example, one agent told me this book had the makings of a bestseller if only I was a little less candid. Apparently, the reader needed to love me. I must appear warm and cuddly. Furthermore, I was told virtually all autobiographical material these days is penned by a ghost writer with a healthy sprinkling of fiction to help the story sell to a naïve public. Nobody ever needed to know provided I was economical with the truth. Another agent said that I could be perceived as chauvinistic because of the candid way I have described the behaviour of women on hen nights. Apparently, I should cut out these potential offensive elements. In his defence, a female friend of mine did point out that there are very few references to me having female friends throughout the text.

  I haven’t written this book to try and win friends and influence people. I am highly opinionated but at the same time I am highly analytical. I form my opinions after much analysis and feel I could argue my position with the very best.

  I am someone who has always found it hard to be in step with the mainstram. However, I am extremely passionate about my interests and many things about our modern society make me angry. A fair bit of that anger emerges in this book. I haven’t set out to offend but some people may inadvertently feel that way. This book isn’t designed to make me look good. I’m not a celebrity and the reader will therefore have little interest in what charities I give too or the sacrifices I make to my friends.

  I have tried to give you a totally honest and uncompromising account of life in this off-shoot of the sex industry. So honest in fact, that you, the reader, may decide you don’t really like me all that much at the end I hope you are not too quick to judge. This book started as an anti-prejudicial project. Everything that follows did occur, none of it is fictional. All the characters exist, but the names have been changed to protect their true identities (and potentially prevent me being sued).

  Nick Molloy – June 2008

  [email protected]

  Preface

  I have one of the best jobs in the world. I live out a relatively stress free existence, I’m my own boss, I get to travel, to see different places and I have plenty of spare time on my hands. On the downside, my salary is modest, but the job comes with plenty of ‘minge’ benefits. Short of being a highly paid professional athlete, I can’t imagine any other job I would rather have.

  Yet, given all the above I am beginning to wonder whether becoming a professional male stripper has been worth the ride. I used to have stability in my life. A well paid job, had bought many home comforts. At the tender age of 25, a six figure salary had bought a fast car and a house in Sussex (albeit mortgaged). My girlfriend had moved down from Scotland (we had been dating since we were 18). We were going great and the future looked bright. So bright I had to wear shades.

  However, money has never really been my god. Fulfilment has always meant more to me. Deprived of what I believe was my true calling in life (as a professional athlete), my somewhat warped mind took an opportunity that came along to enter the small, but unconventional world of the artiste or performer. Finally, I would get paid and earn a living out of training my body.

  There have been many highs and a few lows, but as a write my life has been transformed and right now it seems to be disintegrating around me. The rock in my life, my girlfriend of 13 years, seems so alien to the character that I have become. That age old philosophical question of whether we can be different people at different times in our life seems so topical right now. Have I become someone different ? Have I actually taken on the persona of my stage character ? Are Nick and Sexecute now one and the same ?

  I feel like I am currently in a terrible limbo state. My existence brings me so much pleasure, but it is also bringing me so much pain. The pleasure-pain principle is so intertwined as to be inseparable, at least for me.

  I simply wasn’t this emotional when I had my ‘normal’ job and the existence that went with it. Now I seem to ride an emotional rollercoaster. Days, people, meetings, encounters, frissons; they all seem to blend into one another. The boundaries have become blurred and fantasy and reality sometimes seem frighteningly similar.

  I have some difficult times ahead and for the first time in a long time, I feel frightened and alone. Maybe, I should have stayed straight laced after all. My girlfriend has just stated that she “can’t fucking believe me……I have a job I love, a girlfriend that loves me and permission to fuck other women. Yet, I’m still not contented”.

  Without trying to appear conceited or arrogant, I often feel envious of stupid people. It appears that they derive so much pleasure from simplicity, yet I seem forever bitter and twisted. Whether this is a by-product of intellect, a dysfunctional childhood or even a product of my imagination, I’m not sure. I know that on paper I’ve got just about everything going for me, it just doesn’t feel like it. Maybe I’ve fallen into the trap and I am somehow beginning to mould into a stereotype of something I abhor. The average profile of a male stripper is something I am keen to distance myself from. Yet maybe, somehow, it’s closing in on me……………………

  Chapter 1 – The Formative Years

  Taking my clothes off for a living could hardly be termed my calling in life. In fact to this day, most of my friends who knew me prior to my strip career, still can’t believe it. Those that have ventured out with me to shows pinch themselves when they see me perform. They can’t reconcile how the quiet, reserved person they knew as Nick, somehow transforms into the cocky, gregarious, out-going character on stage known as Sexecute.

  Personally, I don’t understand the difficulty they have in reconciliation. All my life people seem to have under-estimated me and I seem to have been forever proving people wrong. I guess most people don’t talk to someone in quite the same way if they think he could hit you, as opposed to someone who they think never would. I suffer from this. People don’t think I’ll strike and they are continually surprised when I do.

  Quietness should never be interpreted as under-confidence. Quite the reverse in fact. If you are confident of something you should not need to brag about it. If you can deliver the goods, then just get on and deliver them. It is the people that lack confidence that feel the need to replace what they don’t have in ability with a volley of verbal diatribe. This is aimed at displacing the listener and convincing them that the person before them can actually pull off what they claim they can. It has always dismayed me that people are so easily fooled. I often ask why are we so anaesthetized to the lies ? Our whole society now seems predisposed to it.

  I often recount the fairytale from childhood about the emperor and his new clothes. The one whereby the emperor was surrounded by yes men who constantly told him everything he wanted to here. They did this so much so that when the emperor walked out into the street with no clothes
on, everybody still told him that his outfit was great. It wasn’t until a small child shouted out that the emperor had no clothes on that the reality hit home. I often feel like that small child. I’m sure I see the world for what it is. It just seems that so many others choose to see it another way. They wrap it up in cotton wool and package it up in complete divergence to the reality. The great opinion leader, television, excels in this area. Is it a great educational tool providing endless entertainment or the drug of the nation, breeding ignorance and feeding radiation ? Our fascination with tabloidal news reporting would seem to suggest the latter.

  By the age of 28, I had become one of the world’s youngest cynics. Taking my clothes off for a living has become a form of therapy to me. In order that you might understand why this is, a brief overview of my background and what shaped me is required :

  I was born in 1974 in what is known now as Greater Manchester. Both my parents heralded from Salford. Eight years prior to my arrival they had given birth to my sister, both of them were only 16 years of age. They were married at the tender age of 21 and my sister was a bridesmaid at their wedding. I was the planned pregnancy.

  Both my parents were from a working class background and just before I came along they had bought a small bungalow in an ‘up and coming’ (read downmarket) little village called Little Lever, near Bolton. Sometime after I was born, Little Lever achieved the dubious honour and hit the headlines for having the highest number of unplanned teenage pregnancies in the country.

  The early years for my parents were something of a struggle. My mum worked from home making coats. My dad performed various odd jobs until he finally landed something semi-respectable working as a sales rep for a frozen food company.

  In my early years, I was of course oblivious to their struggles or the obvious dysfunction that ruled our household. It is only when looking back at events that it is clear to me that all was not ‘normal’.

  My years from birth to the age of 10, whilst not the smoothest, were my happiest and most contented. I had plenty of friends, no responsibilities and my spare time was dedicated to the pursuit of what economists refer to as utility (happiness). Playing with my friends was the centre of my world and not much seemed to impinge on my happy-go-lucky existence. I was a confident, outgoing, driven child. If I was a youngster today, I believe I would be diagnosed as having Asperger’s Syndrome.

  Asperger’s is essentially a mild form of autism that can cause some learning difficulties. Psychologists debate over precise symptoms but they include difficulties in the basic elements of social interaction, a failure to develop friendships or enjoy spontaneity, a pursuit of specific or narrow areas of interest and a tendency to use and interpret language very literally. Most individuals with Aspergers Syndrome can learn to cope with their differences, but may continue to need moral support and encouragement to maintain an independent life. Adults with Aspergers Syndrome have reached the highest levels of achievement in fields such as mathematics, physics and computer science. Indeed, Hans Asperger described many of his young patients as ‘little professors’. Indeed, researchers and people with Aspergers Syndrome have contributed to a shift in attitudes away from the notion that AS is a deviation from the norm that must be treated or cured, and towards the view that AS is a difference rather than a disability.

  Anyway, I certainly had many of the symptoms and struggled with school at first. For example, to this day I can’t hold a pen ‘properly’ (another symptom). However, I seemed to adapt pretty well and I had an uncanny ability at mental arithmetic. In the latter part of junior school, I was far too quick for the teachers and I was rivalling Carol Vordermann whenever I watched Countdown.

  From the age of seven upwards, I was interacting much better and spent much of my time out of the house and with my friends. My dad was in training with his new job. This frequently meant that he went away on Monday morning to some far flung place and didn’t return until late on Friday evening. My mum simply wasn’t interested in the things I was interested in : football, dinosaurs, gamebooks; these were all at the centre of my world and those of my friends. I was walking the mile long journey to school on my own and most nights after school I would play football. We would either hang around on the school fields and play or migrate to the field where Little Lever played their home matches. After football I would return home somewhat reluctantly and if allowed return out again afterwards. My mum rarely allowed me to bring friends back to the house. If I wasn’t permitted to venture back out, I felt imprisoned.

  Football really was the centre of my world. I decided at an early age that I wanted to be a professional footballer. I was reasonably gifted as an athlete, being quick and able at most sports. Only my friend, Stephen, was better at sports in our year group at school.

  My competitive urge seemed to take hold at an early age. Yet, I firmly believe we are as equally a product of our environment as well as our genetics. The men in my dad’s side of the family are all competitive and prone to exaggeration. I was told constantly from an early age how successful they all were at sport and how they were always getting the better of people in nearly every situation. How much of an influence this had on my early development is hard to say, but it almost certainly played a part.

  I decided early on that my narrow field of interest was going to be that of a professional footballer, no matter what the cost. I would train seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year. I remember telling my dad when I was nine years of age that I would never smoke or drink because top sportsmen don’t do that sort of thing. He smiled and said that I would change my mind when I got older. I remember clearly having him a bet that I would not drink when I got older. The only thing I can’t remember was whether there was money involved or not. I won a couple of bets against him where he gave me £10, so maybe it was for £10. He really ought to be paying up someday soon !

  My friend and big rival Stephen, began to play for clubs that could be described as being ‘in the system’. I remember his dad being very humble and supportive towards both his sons, encouraging them to do what they wanted to do. Later in life Stephen discovered women and drink, he didn’t have the necessary discipline to make it as a pro. However, he did go on to coach for Bury and Manchester City. His less talented older brother however, did go on to make it as a professional footballer.

  I remember being aged 10 and Stephen telling me to come and join the club he was playing for. But, ‘I have no way of getting there’, I protested’ (it was several miles from our abode). His dad could take me he said.

  Yet, at the age of 10, my world was about to fall apart. My dad had been training for a couple of years to step into a new role at work. We had hardly seen him, except on the weekends, for some time. His company had been grooming him to run a frozen food distribution depot and an offer had finally come in for him to run a depot of his own. The snag would mean a permanent move for him and his family. I of course, was never party to any negotiations. I think my dad talked things through with my mum, but the decision was a clear cut one. Why would he have trained for all those years just to turn an opportunity down ? Besides, it could lead onto bigger and better things for him, or so he thought. He accepted the role. The house in Little Lever was put up for sale and my parents began to scout for houses in South Wales.

  My protests fell on deaf ears. They thought they were doing me a favour. Little Lever was, and still is, a shithole in the eyes of most people. It had its fair share of typical inner-city urban deprivation problems : teenage pregnancies, violence, drugs. My then teenage sister had gone off the rails at schools, dating a succession of moronic Neanderthal like boyfriends who were well known to the local police. I recall clearly, a time when a gang of 20 or so marauding skinheads chased my friends and I off a football pitch. Needless to say, we didn’t hang around to ask questions. We regularly used to run away from Meagan, the local teenage escapee from the mental asylum, on the way home from school. Yet, these were all side issues in my life and I hardly considere
d them a major threat. All that mattered was football and my mates. All of that was about to change and change radically for the worse……………….

  ===============

  The screams were deafening. They always scream on a ladies night. In fact you could probably dress up a chimp in a fireman’s costume and they would still scream with the occasional shout of ‘get yor cock out’.

  However, there was something different about them on this night. This crowd was actually hysterical, or should I say suffering from hysteria. I can only liken it to some of the old black and white footage I remember watching of the Beatles. Small gangs of girls would scream incessantly and hysterically, apparently for no reason other than being in close proximity of a few Liverpudlians. The very same Liverpudlians could have walked the street unnoticed only a few years before, but now they had become blessed with the benefits of celebrity. The media had hyped them and peer groups demanded the worship of them. According to the media some girls were so overcome by their presence, that they actually fainted.

  In all my time as a stripper, I can say that this level of hysteria is thankfully rare, so rare in fact that I had long ago concluded that the media had made up the story of the fainting girls just to shock and create headlines. After all, why would someone to be so overcome with emotion that they would physically pass out just because they sighed somebody they had read about/seen on television. As a story it is totally bizarre and completely outlandish.