“Coy” Dancer Reaches Two Milestones During COVID’s Game-Changing

By Thomas Leturgey

Gail Brown turns away from a telephone conversion to answer a question from her daughter, Autumn. The two exchange some information about Gail’s other daughter, Katie. It’s a routine interruption for Brown, who has been dealing with City of Pittsburgh Schools at-home learning for Autumn, 11, and Katie, 10, for nearly a year. It’s a scene duplicated throughout the country as families are working to learn academics remotely, but what makes Gail Brown’s motherly situation unique is her night job.

Now in her 20th year, Brown doesn’t care what you call her vocation: Independent Contractor or Dancer. “I don’t mind ‘Stripper’,” she said during the telephone chat, before adding with a giggle. “A goddess of your imagination.”

Known throughout nightclub venues as “Pinky,” Brown has danced professionally for the past two decades. “A former boyfriend suggested I might be good at it,” she says. “It was near Christmas; I was jobless, a single mother and my two young boys wanted everything.” She met with an agency and a woman there helped get her booked at the “Bottoms Up” club along Rt. 51 in the city’s Overbrook neighborhood. The character of “Pinky” was born and able to land enough money to make a memorable Christmas for sons Axel and Zach. Gail has never looked back.

Through the years she has worked at hot spots throughout greater Pittsburgh, east to Derry Township, Westmoreland County, and west to Weirton, West Virginia. She knows the reputation of all of the clubs and whether the bartenders will offer water to dancers. And a very early incident taught her how to protect drinks from “being roofied.”

The Strip Club business today, much like other outings, are different than a year ago. Brown said a couple of customers recently told her they didn’t know that business had resumed. Many clubs now provide pizza and other food to accompany the beer and liquor sales.

Brown will turn 50 in early June, but she still has a tall (5’11”), slender build (“I do have a bit of a quarantine pouch,” she jokes) and a proactive ability to “re-invent” herself throughout the years. Always a head-turner with a quick sense of humor and understated intelligence she calls “curiosity,” Brown was once intrigued by burlesque, but she has most recently become a “friendly” stripper who spends more time socializing with her regular clientele and newcomers alike than hustling them for money. Brown is hesitant to identify her long-time employer during critical COVID-19 times, and yet performs a unique, much-needed service. “I sometimes dance for older guys who feel uncomfortable looking at other girls who are young enough to be their daughters, or granddaughters,” she continues. Regardless of the unassuming reinvention, she is “funny and seductive. ‘Coy’ I believe is a good word.”

Stage dancing continues to give her a thrill. There’s really no formal training at this level, just a lot of on-the-job improvement, watching others and experience. “There’s a certain amount of energy on the stage,” she says. “I want to give that energy back.”

Four days a week, Brown plies her trade in a “new normal” of entertainment. Venues such as her employer open earlier (6:00 p.m.) and are cleared out by midnight. There is social distancing and some plastic barriers have been installed at bars. Clientele and dancers all wear masks, even though many times a dancer’s face is as much of an attraction as anything else. “Some guys want to see your face,” she asserts. “Pinky” laughs about a one-panel cartoon she saw in which a strip club customer offers the entertainer “Five dollars to see your face.”

Because of a worsening eyesight issue where peripheral vision is limited, a friend drives Brown home at the end of the work day and she has to unwind before turning in. That’s sometimes as late as 2:00 a.m. During the week it’s rough as she has to get up and get the girls fed breakfast and logged in on their computers. Husband Wayne works at an area bank and isn’t home during the day to assist with the girls’ computer classes. Gail’s two sons (now in their mid-20’s) from her first marriage are also home as they pursue careers in robotics and nursing.

“It’s very tough,” she says after backtracking from “Terrible,” in describing online schooling. “The girls hate it. They would prefer to be in school. They want to be in school, learning.” It’s the routine they crave, she adds. Autumn and Katie can’t wait for April 6 when the city schools are scheduled to go back two days a week.

During last year’s shut down, Gail learned how to make bread, hot sauce and pickled onions. Wayne a prolific cartoonist and commission artist, also dabble in geometrical abstract art. “I believe in him,” she says. Some of his work can be found and purchased at DeviantArt.com, under WayneABrown35.

“I will (dance) as long as I can,” Brown says. “Until the joints or eye sight give out.” She holds out hope that she can purchase her own club someday. “I thought I was close a couple of years ago, but that didn’t turn out. I believe I understand what the business is and what it is not.”

Until that day comes, Gail Brown will continue to do the best she can navigating remote learning as well as fire up customers on a suburban, South Hills stage.