All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C. | 
 enlarge | Author: Craig Seymour
Publisher: Atria
Category: Book
List Price: $23.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 298878
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 1416542051
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.77092
EAN: 9781416542056
ASIN: 1416542051
Publication Date: June 17, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20090107232017T
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Product Description
A FRANK, FUNNY, EXPLICIT, AND INSPIRING MEMOIR ABOUT HOW DANCING NAKED IN GAY CLUBS IN THE NATION'S CAPITAL HELPED A COLLEGE PROFESSOR DISCOVER HIS TRUE SELF.I felt that I'd made a transformation as surely as Superman slipping out of a phone booth or Wonder Woman doing a sunburst spin. I was bare-ass in a room of paying strangers, a stripper. After years of wondering what it would be like, I had done it -- faced a fear, defied expectation, embraced a taboo self. It was only the beginning.... All I Could Bare is the story of a mild-mannered graduate student who "took the road less clothed" -- a decision that was life changing. Seymour embarked on his journey in the 1990s, when Washington, D.C.'s gay club scene was notoriously no-holds-barred, all the while trying to keep his newfound vocation a secret from his parents and maintain a relation-ship with his boyfriend, Seth. Along the way he met some unforgettable characters -- the fifty-year-old divorce who's obsessed with a twenty-one-year-old dancer, the celebrated drag diva who hailed from a small town in rural Virginia, and the many straight guys who were "gay for pay." Seymour gives us both the highs (money, adoration, camaraderie) and the lows (an ill-fated attempt at prostitution, a humiliating porn audition). Ultimately coming clean about his secret identity, Seymour breaks through taboos and makes his way from booty-baring stripper to Ph.D.-bearing academic, taking a detour into celebrity journalism and memorably crossing paths with Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, and Mary J. Blige along the way. Hilarious, insight-ful, and touching, All I Could Bare proves that sometimes the "wrong decision" can lead to the right place.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
Fascinating, informative and intelligently written Memoir/Expose December 25, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Craig Seymour writes with the abandon and grace of a wordsmith with years of experience instead of a young writer for whom this is only his second book. Granted he has practice gained from academic studies and from writing for the media as a critic and interviewer of pop stars and those attributes give his book a uniquely credible flavor. But whatever the combination of elements upon which he draws, Seymour simply writes very well, capturing the interest of the read from page one to the last without a moment for pause.
The very amiable Seymour shares his personal life, first as a somewhat sexually identity confused child from an African American family in Washington, DC to his years as a university student when he gradually confronts his early questions of who he is by having the courage to try the challenging aspects that have always been his approach/avoidance conflict under the guise of an academic thesis: he will investigate the culture of gay strippers by first observing and then participating. From Seymour's fluid writing style the reader flows along with him, learning the idiosyncrasies and very humanistic situations he confronts in the world of the physically relaxed stripper bars of Washington, DC.
What makes Craig Seymour's memoir many steps above other attempts to tell-all about the netherworld of strip clubs is his manner of sharing the real responses of both the strippers and the clients who pay for the services. Yes, he does touch on some strange tales of experiences related by other strippers and personally witnessed on his own, but the overall feeling is the discovery of the reasons and motivations on both sides of the dance bar. He also shares his first hand (and rejected) introduction into the other aspects of the porn industry and escort concept and one reason these episodes are touching is Seymour's valued sharing of his investigations with his significant supportive partner Seth, an honesty that pervades all of his reporting.
What this book offers is entertainment and a very well documented evaluation of the years when the most daring strip bars in the country were in the capital city of the nation! Seymour ends his book with his experiences as a celebrity interviewer, and these last chapters seem at first to be far less well written, less interesting that the major portion of the book - until Seymour ties his life experiences together in the last chapter, opening windows of self discovery and the resultant quiet advice that leaves the reader feeling endeared to the writer. This is an important book, not just a passing fance type expose but instead a beautifully wrought slice of American life we should all share. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, December 08
Can't Put Down November 15, 2008
Craig Seymour is a wonderful writer. His latest book "All I Could Bare" had the can't-put-down quality of a great novel.
I'd read and loved his biography of the late singer Luther Vandross and I was anxiously awaiting the release of his latest book "All I Could Bare".
It did not disappoint. It gave me great insight not only into Craig's life as a stripper but also his personal relationship with his boyfriend.
It's official. I now have a HUGE crush on Craig Seymour!!!
Interesting Slice of Life November 14, 2008
This was fun reading and it was interesting to read about the life of a stripper. One always wonders what kind of person does it. He seems sort of a different type from others who go into it and certainly had different reasons but there was enough explaining of other characters so it covered things pretty well. I'm always curious. I wasn't really aware that bars allowed that kind of thing but now I remember going to one in Houston and I was so embarrassed to touch the guy. I didn't want him to think I was just exploiting his body. It sounds like these kind of places don't exist anymore. Would I ever have the nerve to go to one? I don't think so. What else can I say? Good book. Always interested in knowing the experiences and life of gay people. Craig sounds pretty level headed. Oh yes, but one thing. I don't understand how Seth could have put up with that. It's very close to having an open relationship. So when Craig wanted to experience other men sexually Seth took it so hard and it ruined their relationship. That part was quite different from normal relationships.
The Bare Facts September 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Back in the early 1990s, a handsome, young, and affable African American graduate student and teacher found himself nervously attending his first gay strip club to see a live performance by his favorite porn star. Here, customers were allowed to freely fondle the naked dancers. Openly gay but a gay-sex virgin, nervous and slightly apprehensive, Craig Seymour gets his good friend Seth to accompany him.
Excitement soon replaces apprehension and Seymour finds himself falling in love with the clubs as well as his good friend Seth, to whom he ultimately surrenders his virginity. They become live-in lovers.
But as the strip clubs are becoming an ever growing obsession, our hero is able to appease both his lover and his jones by making strip clubs the topic of his master's thesis, with the cautious approval of his school advisor.
Now a club regular, Seymour interviews and gets to know a cast of characters as colorful and crudely affectionate as anything in a Bob Fosse musical.
His first interview subject is dancer Jake the Guess Model, a straight `gay-for-pay' former construction worker who tells his customers he is bi `because [they] like to think there's a chance.'
And then there is Dave, a customer just out of a twenty-one-year monogamous heterosexual marriage and now having the time of his life hanging at the clubs and fondling beautiful young male dancers dangling their eye-level rock hard jewels for his perusal approval.
Dave's favorite dancer is Matt who sports leather chaps publicizing everything usually known as `privates.'
Sassy drag queens, dirty old men, sugar daddies, and dis-effected club owners abound throughout this breezy, affectionate tome.
Author Seymour also learns of and writes about D.C.'s rich gay history, dating back to the 1800s. Then, knowledge of fifty-year-old poet Walt Whitman's love affair with Irish immigrant Peter Doyle, thirty years his junior, was as casual as the then published stories of sexual liaisons between black and white men in Lafayette Square "under the shadows of the White House."
The story of how the gay strip club scene began in the 1960s, where dancers could legally bare all, is beautifully told. The owner of a local bar on O Street, Chesapeake House, offers a pair of sailors $50 each to strip down and dance for his patrons. Soon the club is drawing huge crowds that include the likes of Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Rock Hudson. Other clubs (as well as bath houses) soon open and prosper on O Street, the city's gay red light district.
Although Mr. Seymour's depth and fascinating chronicle of how this charmingly tawdry industry evolves is both interesting and informative, it is his personal transition from thesis writer to booty dancer that makes his memoir a thoroughly entertaining read.
Likable and self-effacing, the author writes thoughtfully, ironically, and humorously about his second job:
"...get on stage, disrobe quickly, try to get a hard-on, and then walk out among the customers, who for a tip--generally a buck--got to stroke, fondle, poke, and prod [your] bod. It was more like sex than dancing, and it had become my job."
He also writes with great care and much soul-searching about maintaining his monogamous relationship with Seth while almost every night allowing strangers and regulars to feel him up.
Seymour's partner is more trusting than most, and it is admirable that the author repays that trust with honesty and a form of fidelity.
However, after six years of being with the only man he's known sexually, the author approaches his partner with a proposition that dooms the romance, if not the friendship.
With the cocaine bust of Mayor Marion Barry, a champion of D.C.'s liberal sexual exhibition laws, restrictions are shortly thereafter imposed on the strip clubs. Customers are no longer allowed to fondle dancers, and dancers aren't allowed to fondle themselves. This, of course, cuts into everyone's income, and author Seymour, now single and sparked on by the success of his thesis, embarks upon a career as an entertainment journalist, which eventually takes him to New York. Thanks to his unique literary gift and ability to ask his celebrity interviewee's frank and probing questions, he quickly ascends the ranks.
His ability to get such stars as Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige, and Mariah Carey to open up and discuss such things as masturbation, size-queendom, secret babies, cheating boyfriends, and mental depression are shocking, revealing, and often quite poignant. His discussion with TLC's Lisa Lopez regarding her romance with Tupac, his death, her premonition of her own death, is particularly moving. Craig Seymour's keen observations of human behavior, particular with regards to his celebrity subjects, are empathetic and caring, always intelligent, never fawning.
Eventually, Mr. Seymour's busy schedule--writing for The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Vibe, the Buffalo News, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, to name a few--become all-consuming, making it nearly impossible for him to have a personal life.
He re-thinks academia, and eventually returns to the University of Maryland to finish his Ph.D. While working as a professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, he hears that the old strip clubs on O Street will be torn down. He returns for a bittersweet farewell that brings him full circle. The year is 2006.
Craig Seymour's warm, witty, and honestly rendered self-examination of his seemingly unlikely but totally plausible life as grad student turned gay stripper, turned journalist, turned college professor, is quite the odyssey, and quite a lesson for us all. There is so much life out there for all of us to enjoy. This story reminds me of the famous quote from Auntie Mame: "Life's a banquet but most poor sons-of-bitches starve to death!"
Author Craig Seymour definitely heard the dinner bell.Looker: A Novel
Great book September 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This was a very well written and entertaining book. This was the type of book I couldn't put down once I started to read it.
I feel that Craig is very brave writing this book seeing he teaches at the college level. I get so tired of people writing stories after they retire and have nothing to lose. It is great to see him write this type of autobiography.
I also learned several things I didn't know before so this book was also educational in a way. I never knew about the strip clubs being cracked down on the patrons touching the dancers at the end. I am ashamed to admit this, but I had no idea about Frank Kameny until I read the book and also learned a couple other things about gay history when he mentioned his research.
This is a very good book to read and you might even learn a few more things about gay history like I did:)
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