"The louder you get, the more they take off."
And apparently, the more it flops around.
Hips gyrate and pelvises thrust, whether two feet are on the floor or in the air.
If the men of The Cave are not bumping and grinding to some Now That's What I Call Music track, they are in a handstand, rubbing their members against the wall.
The butt wiggles, the body slithers and girls are going nuts.
When one of the predominantly southern Jersey, northern Delaware customers slips a one dollar bill into those snappy-black-wanna-be-Calvin-Klein-speedos, she blatantly disregards the "please be discreet when tipping" policy, grabbing more than just his elastic band when strategically placing her bill.
"This is not AC [Atlantic City]," shouts the Emcee of The Cave. "Do not pull down that slot machine," he says, mimicking a jerking off motion.
•
Who knew that stripping is like football?
Fan demographics for the two "sports" differ drastically, but for Rui Lucas, co-owner and dancer at The Cave -- a place "where guys get naked for girls" -- stripping mirrors football.
Once "you find out what stripping is all about, it's like a football team," Lucas explains. "But instead of going out there and playing football, you're going out there and stripping for girls."
Indeed, the audience is 99.9% women, 99.9% of the time. Women ranging from 18 to 50 -- unless it's Saturdays "21 and over" night-- attend the male revue show. Occasionally a gay couple may venture in, and sometimes it's even a family affair, especially on Fridays and Saturdays. But, not infrequently, the family gets left behind.
Becky Ezzie-Miller, a 33-year-old, stay-at-home mom, left her baby and husband at home in Delaware to celebrate a friend's 40th birthday party. She "skipped over" the part about attending a male revue show and just told her husband that she was going clubbing with her girlfriends.
Ezzie-Miller, a returning customer, is back for more.
"I came one time before this," she says. "We had a ball."
Or balls?
"My aunt almost made out with a guy -- it was so funny," she continues euphorically. The show "is funny, and the guys are gorgeous. They're perfect."
Danette Montes, a 29-year-old New Jersey resident celebrating her bachelorette party at The Cave, also thinks the dancers are the hottest thing since Fabio. She even has a favorite dancer -- Lucas.
"The stuff they do with their bodies is amazing," she says.
She's talking about their handstands and occasional backhandsprings -- all part of a dutiful stripper's repertoire -- and their willingness to wrap their legs, among other things, around a chair. But that's not to say there's no room for improvement -- at one point during the show, a dancer knocks over a chair, not to mention the other dancers struggling with tear-away pants that didn't quite tear-away.
But the crowd, complete with '80s hair and acid-washed mini-skirts, doesn't seem to mind. Adding to the adrenaline-filled -- not to mention liquor-induced -- atmosphere of the audience are drinks ranging from the "blow job" -- disappointingly untopped with whipped cream -- to the "liquid panty remover." For further stimulation, there is a shot guy to help the ladies get the liquor down.
The shot guy comes around bearing test tubes filled with some neon concoction of alcohol. The women hop onto the shot guy and straddle their legs around his waist. He then places the test-tube-filled shot into her mouth and dips her back to make sure that no drop of the shot is left behind. And for a bonus treat, the guy will even grind, twist and thrust while the woman is still conveniently wrapped around him. If you're naughty, you might even get a nice pat on the bum.
•
"This is your club," the Emcee tells the audience. "Your boyfriends aren't here. Your fianc‚s aren't here."
The room temperature of The Cave hovers around that of an actual cave. Naturally, curiosity arises about how the dancers maintain such bulges in such cold temperatures.
"With any guy there's going to be shrinkage involved due to the temperature," says one of the male waiters, dressed only in black briefs.
Yet despite the shrinkage factor, the men of the Cave still get their fair share of women.
Surprisingly, two of the 22 Cave staff members -- dancers, waiters and bartenders -- each have been married for six years. Both co-owners of the club are married, and one has two children.
In all cases -- whether a dancer is married or dating someone -- all the men agree that the girl just has to be "cool" and "understanding" about their job.
"You gotta look at it as a no big deal idea," says Lucas, who has been engaged for eight years to one such presumably "cool" and "understanding" girl.
For co-owner Donnie Palmucci, trust -- a big factor in most relationships -- is utterly pivotal for maintaining any relationship in this business.
"You gotta have a woman that trusts you, because anyone is going to be jealous," he says.
Significant others aside, however, Cave-going women are not swayed from asking for a dancer's number or even inviting him home.
One dancer recalls being asked, "Hasn't it always been your fantasy to have sex in a limo?" by a customer who then added, "I bet you get asked that all the time."
There is, however, a do-not-date-the-customer policy, and dancers are not supposed to leave with clientele. But such regulations do not prevent dancers and customers from exchanging numbers. Or as Lucas says, "You can't control the phone number situation."
"There are two guys that actually met girls here," he recalls.
•
Dancing to a top-40 music hit and dressed as a Latin lover or, more familiarly, Enrique Iglesias, Lucas appears on stage.
"It makes me want to convert to Latin men," College senior Zoe Harris exclaims.
Harris, more typically found throwing a house party or going out somewhere on campus, says she came to The Cave on a whim just to check it out with some other girl friends. Though she has a boyfriend, Harris says she decided to see what this male strip joint was all about. It was just an innocent and fun way to diversify or take a break from nights out at Penn, explains the first-timer.
Lucas has been preceded by a lifeguard, museum steps "Rocky" and a dancer so fabulous that he apparently needs no theme. The snake-like movement of his body and his back handspring seem to distract the girls from the fact that his performance wholly lacks an overarching gimmick.
Still, most dancers' acts include themes from the likes of Top Gun and Risky Business. Tom Cruise, it seems, is a popular fellow at any age. Rocky, firemen, cops and doctors are also popular characters.
Within every costume, the bare minimum is a piece of cloth most men should never wear -- a speedo-type black bottom that hopefully leaves little to the imagination.
"It's not a tighty whitey type of thing. It's not a g-string," Lucas explains, although it would most likely be a g-string if the City of Philadelphia hadn't mandated that the buttocks area be covered.
•
The Cave is the only male strip club in the tri-state area, and no other club holds shows every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. The club 's high season -- around 300 attendees for Friday night and around 700 to 800 on Thursday and Saturday nights -- lasts until Fall, when most of the bachelorette parties are over. In fact, 80 percent of The Cave's business comes from bachelorette parties and celebrations. College students, though, do comprise a fair portion of the remaining 20 percent. In addition to The Cave, Lucas and Palmucci also run Club Flow -- a nightclub attached to The Cave, and sometimes host to Penn's Greek parties.
Palmucci says he was always interested in the entertainment business and was first exposed to the male revue side of it while he was attending Widener University. At first, dancing was strictly a means for Palmucci to pay his college tuition, but he's stuck with it ever since.
"I just like the entertainment business," he explains. "I like the creative aspect of it. It is constantly changing. I did some modeling and acting, and I danced [at The Cave] for six, seven years."
But as he grew older, Palmucci says he realized it was time to keep up with a "constantly changing" business and make some changes of his own. He switched over to the business side, shedding his entertainer briefs for more of a behind-the-scenes job
Matt Abruzzi, one of the many dancers with Italian heritage, also uses the money he makes from dancing to pay his way through college.
"I'm not going to grow old and gray on this job, but it gets you through college,"Abruzzi comments. "You make a full-time job's salary just by working 12 to 15 hours per week. It's enough for me to live on my own, pay my bills and go to school full time."
Then there's Jodie Starr, a 23-year-old Cave employee who is actually a financial specialist during the day. He went to St. Joseph's and works on the Main Line now.
Neither the owners nor "contractors" -- employees of The Cave are all independent contractors -- will disclose how much money can be made. Private shows, however, cost $200 for half an hour, of which 15 minutes is spent stripping, while the other 15 is spent taking photos and hanging out with the private party attendees.
Abruzzi's scenario seems typical of most Cave dancers -- in their 20s, paying their way through college and doing some modeling on the side. In fact, Lucas used to be a Calvin Klein underwear model.
Calvin Klein also seems to be the brief of choice for the dancers. To make their dance routine tantalizing, they wear briefs over their speedo-type underwear, teasing the audience with the idea that nothing stands between them and their Calvins.
According to Emily Dubin, a fellow College senior accompanying Harris, there is definitely something -- sausage? banana? socks? -- packed into those black briefs.
"It's definitely a fake penis," Dubin states. "Those bulges are obviously enhanced."
And Dubin should know -- as an Art History major and Fine Arts minor, she's quite familiar with human anatomy.
Although stuffing is not a requirement, it's certainly allowed.
In case a girl cannot afford a private viewing, a section of the performance boasts a "hot seat." For just $20, the dancer of your choice provides you with an on-stage lap dance.
Sometimes there are contests as well. A popular one is the "sex kitten" contest, where girls are judged on their ability to fake an orgasm.
"It's kinda like having the girls involved in the show," Abruzzi says.
•
The pickings for The Cave are slim and confounded by several different variables.
"Some guys can dance, some guys can't. Some guys are so good looking and can't dance, but girls like them because they are so good looking. Usually there are three to four assets they have," Palmucci explains. "Sometimes we won't see a whole bunch of good guys for a year."
Lucas explains that it's very hard to find a guy with the right combination of looks, physique, dance ability and personality.
"There's no modeling in Philadelphia, no acting either, so the pool we have to pull from is small," Palmucci says.
"Guys that start off as waiters or shot guys [do so] because maybe the personality isn't there yet ... they need to gain more muscle or tone and then they move on up," Lucas adds.
There are the few guys, though, who walk through the auditioning door and find themselves "immediately thrown up on stage." A female judge, appropriately, decides all castings.
For those that aren't so rhythm savvy -- the overwhelming majority -- an in-house choreographer, courtesy of The Cave, is available to help.
"I never danced a day in my life," recalls Abruzzi, who also learned how to dance just by watching other guys move.
"I didn't even start as a dancer," he continues. "I started as a beer tub guy, then a waiter, then a shot guy, then a back-up dancer and for the last two years I've been a dancer."
Like Abruzzi, most of the dancers have worked their way up the ranks. And confidence helps.
Judging from the men who appear on stage, the most important assets -- besides the most obvious one -- seem to be a washboard stomach, bulging biceps and visits to Hollywood Tans. In addition, Lucas has a personal mandate -- no Tarzan-like hair.
"The shaving part -- you can't jump around all hairy," he says. "No hairy apes in the house."
Besides jumping around on stage, dancers must follow a fairly strict diet or work-out regimen in order to maintain their chiseled physique.
For Abruzzi, a"really strict" diet and more moderate workout is the key combination.
"In a course of an entire day, I probably eat two dozen eggs -- never raw like Rocky does -- three, four baked potatoes and two pounds of chicken breast," he says. "I know how to prepare it so that it's healthy, but that it tastes good."
•
Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, The Cave -- located at 700 N. Columbus Boulevard -- provides shows "where guys get naked for the girls." It's the club's unofficial mantra, even if the guys never actually bare all.
The Cave also hits the road, holding shows in D.C., Baltimore and Pittsburgh, and plans on expanding the business in locations better known for bachelorette parties, such as Las Vegas, New York and Boston, where a Chip N' Dales -- a ladies' club -- already exists.
"You could penetrate that market, definitely," Palmucci says, no pun intended. "That might be a whole ... other business, though."
Still, there's no shortage of bachelorette parties, and Palmucci throws out some marriage and divorce statistics to explain the frequency of such fiestas.
"96 percent of women get married, the average age of them is 21. The average age of divorced women is 26, and then the average age of re-marriage is 31," he claims.
Although his numbers don't exactly coincide with those of the Department of Health and Human Resources -- the department states that in 2002, the average age of women to get married is 23 and the average age for a first divorce is 31. A divorce at 31 creates another round of bachelorettes -- and, The Cave hopes, even more bachelorette parties.
And those who do find themselves married may still find themselves at The Cave, at least according to the Emcee.
"You can tell some of these girls will be married and will be here in a couple of years," he says, referring to the women who just keep coming back for more. And more. And more.
