There was a new bathroom attendant selling cocaine. He was dressed and looked kind of like the angry manager. I was afraid it was like a drink minimum. If I didn't buy some cocaine from the guy in a suit like the angry guy, I would get thrown out. I didn't come in for a few months. I think it was around February 2013 I came back one day, and just by chance the parking lot was totally full. The club had been closed for remodeling, and today was the grand reopening. Cabaret Internationale was now Stars. The VIP’s had a table in the middle toward the bar. There was a very cheezy blonde who looked like she could have been a special stripper at some time in the past, a few years and a few surgeries earlier. She was still special to someone. There were some really tacky-looking old guys. The angry well-dressed manager was sitting there also. He didn't have his glasses and I think his mustache was shaved off. He looked younger and goofier, like some kind of young dumb hothead or meathead. A girl pointed to the angry manager at the VIP table and said "that is the owner." I thought that is not the owner, that is the doorman. Then I wondered if it was possible the guy collecting crumpled $5 bills at the door was the owner all along. I decided that was not possible. This was not a good day to meet free-spirit girls. This was a day for old men with fake teeth to hang out with their sugar babies with fake boobs. So I turned around and left. Next time I came in after the grand reopening, it was all fresh faces. They found girls who looked like they should be working at Applebees. There were a lot of new lights and decor and employees, but not a lot of customers. Cabaret Internationale was a little sleazy, but it was also intimate and laid back. There were places you could sit with a girl in the dim light drinking happy-hour beers, and feel sort of private. Now it was more wide open and better lit, and the drink prices were higher. You felt exposed. The Veigles were rumored to have taken a big loss on Cabaret Internationale. They spent some big number, I remember $250k, on the remodel. And they turned the place from something into nothing. Maybe it was $80k. I think $80k is the highest number I could not imagine spending more than on fake marble. I think $250k is the number some stupid stripper actually told me. Cute girls do what they want like cats. I am not talking about the hardened 8 out of 10 girls with hustle, who are with the program. I am talking about a girl who if a guy comes to the strip club and meets her, he will come back to that same strip club the next night, the next month, the next year. If one girl like that passes through town and dances at the same club two days a week for a month, 100 guys will remember her. They will return to the same place looking for what they found. And other girls who come in to dance for a night or a week will meet those guys, and make money. Guys who come in of the street will meet those girls, and regulars will develop. After a year, you have a pretty steady business. And then when a pretty girl passes through town, that is the club she will pick to work at. If the regular girls are not territorial, and the manager is not treating his own issues. No cute girls means the opposite, the guys don’t come back. They don’t feel that unconscious impulse to return to the same place a year later. With no dreamy guys who come in and get drunk and settle for whatever girl is actually there, the regular girls go broke and leave. And after a year you are down to nothing. Cute girls will not submit to predatory sex-addict managers, or the territorial regular girls he recruits in his scam team. The draw of uniquely cute girls, free spirits, freelancers who do what they want, cannot be replaced with any kind of marketing or promotion. A picture of Jessica Rabbit on a flyer doesn't do much when you walk in and the girls are mud. And it makes no sense to pay for a flyer, when a girl who actually looked like that would work there, if the manager would just never look at her or talk to her. One day I think in the Spring of 2013, I went into Stars and sat and stared at the new Applebees waitress girls. I saw the angry manager walking toward me, and wondered what the fuck does this guy want. He said perfectly politely "Can I help you find a girl? If you see one you like, tell me and I will bring her over to you." He acted like the very first time I saw him, like he had never seen me before in his life. II-26