Sex & Love

Savannah

The biggest and arguably the best strip club in town cultivates the air of a very orderly, albeit dimly lit Ikea superstore. Approaching the Gold Club Centerfolds can feel disarmingly innocent. It’s casually plunked down on an industrial strip along Folsom Boulevard, with an outdoor paint job in baby blue. The Gold Club Centerfolds warehouse is surrounded by seemingly contradictory pursuits: fitness clubs, an indoor-rock-climbing center and a respectable businessman’s hotel nearby, all draped in innocuous monotone color schemes by day. But by night, the mere proximity of the Gold Club tinges these other establishments with the racy tang of neon, limousines and banner signs seen from the highway, such as: “Live onstage! Hood piercing!”

As you roll into the parking lot and make your way toward the entrance, you cross an invisible border where all the typical politesse of society drops off. There are only two things at play here: sex and money. All other topics become moot. Groups of men, already lubed-up, topple from limos that look more like living quarters than vehicles. Meaty bouncers girding the doors size them up. But the customers pay no attention. They are already in an anticipatory trance, unabashedly rifling the bills in their wallets. Most of them are regulars. They elbow each other in excitement, like 12-year-olds unleashed on a field trip. They are about to see beautiful girls. Lots of them. Naked. And any one of the girls can be theirs (sort of), for the right price.

Inside, the fantasy begins almost immediately. To the uninitiated, the décor might remind one of a low-budget set for Caligula. Your eyes adjust to the darkness and the hypnotic flash of the strobe light. Eventually, profiles of faux Greco-Roman busts reveal themselves. There is a Mount Olympus-like torch that seems to burn eternally. But few people linger for very long on these touches.

Gold Club veterans make a beeline for their favorite girl, fingers and toes crossed that she isn’t already “spoken” for. They scurry past the still-acne-scarred gang of barely-legals, invariably encircling the “cheap seats” around one of two main stages. Locating their favorite lady, the men hurriedly usher her into one of several more-private places, with curtains and high-walled banquettes: the VIP Lounge or the Platinum Room. This is where the hard action takes place, where real money can be spent and earned. Most of the time, that involves a maddening, languorous lap dance. A stunning, naked girl writhes and crawls all over you, fixing you with her eyes and cooing that she wants you and you alone.

If a lady can persuasively transfix an out-of-towner on an expense account for hours at a time, it’s not unusual for a girl to make $600 for a few hours—on her own terms. She can touch, but you can’t. The sturdy bouncer who squints sideways at each lap-dance customer makes sure of that. At a classy joint like the Gold Club, the boundaries are unblinkingly enforced. And because the place is clean and well-managed, makes a relatively high-minded effort at atmosphere and accommodates almost any number of girls—and customers—who want in, it attracts Sacramento’s top stripper talent. So, why then, in a warehouse full of willing beauties, do some get singled out over and over? For the regulars, the answer is always the same: It’s all about a real connection, a level of engagement, a sense of client and dancer being mutually turned on.

This is where the Gold Club’s Savannah (a stage name, of course) comes in. She’s certainly lovely, with a lissome body, Rapunzel-like hair and athletic moves on the pole that remind you of the perils of the theme-park ride the Drop Zone.

And she can dance. But Savannah has a string of regulars who truly convince you that this lady likes her work. Consequently, she is able to pare down her clientele to a few die-hard favorites and still make bewitching money. She’s doesn’t abuse drugs or alcohol, has a full and enriching personal life outside of dancing and plans to retire in a few more years. And with a few more regulars like Glen, who has dubbed himself “the Mayor of Savannah,” there’s no doubt she’ll meet her goals.

At one point, Glen was Gold-Clubbing two or three times a week, just to see Savannah. On average, he spends about $600 bucks on her in a night, but on at least one occasion, he happily parted with $1,500, just to pay for her exclusivity all night. His wife has gotten in on the act now, too, so to speak. Glen says their sex life has never been better.

Unlike a lot of ladies who end up in the sex industry for wrong or unhealthy reasons, Savannah has class, elegance and smarts. She works the business; it doesn’t work her. That’s impressive and very unusual. The only disappointment—and maybe it’s not fair to judge from a distance—was finding out that she recently had been persuaded to get a boob job. She didn’t look like she needed it, and clearly her fans didn’t feel she had any shortcomings. But it’s a catty, catty scene among the ladies out there vying for feature dance spots. Most customers haven’t seen the new Savannah yet. But Patrick, another fervent fan who drives all the way from San Jose just for her, called her after the operation. He wanted to check on her recovery, but mostly he wanted to make sure that her nipples—he’s a nipple man, you see—remained unchanged. She assured him they had. Ahh, fantasy.
11363 Folsom Boulevard in Rancho Cordova, (916) 858-0444.