Profile: Lee Ryder, Inserection video booth door guy
December 22, 2008 at 11:21 am by Thomas Wheatley in Profile
Though he’s known to many as one of Atlanta’s first male strippers, 41-year-old Ryder also can be found taking tickets and cleaning up after customers at Inserection’s video booths on Cheshire Bridge Road.
What kind of clientele do you see?
“All walks — young, old, from Nelly to butch to twink to you name it. Even supposedly ’straight’ men who walk in and forget to take their wedding bands off.”
What’s provided to customers?
“We sell condoms to [customers],$2 a piece. If they want larger, they’re $2.50. The napkins, paper towels, hot water and soap is provided.”
When business is slow, how do you pass the time?
“I do my artwork. I draw comic book heroes, like Spiderman, Captain America, Punisher … people like that.”
Do you have a favorite dirty movie?
“I’m the kind of the person who just puts the webcam on. Fuck the movies. I’d rather see a live webcam than watch a movie.”
Do customers hit on you?
“Yeah, of course, that’s going to happen. [Ryder's boyfriend of 15 years] knows it, but he knows I know where home is.”
After the jump, some more of Ryder’s answers. Warning: Some of them are are explicit in nature.
Do male-and-female couples ever visit?
“As a matter of fact, they do. And the first time I seen that, I was just as shocked as everyone else in there. Because most places, in Nashville, they wouldn’t have a woman walk in the place period. Much less having one or two at the door selling tickets as you walk in like we do.”
Have you ever seen any famous faces come to the video booths?
“Other than mine, no.” (laughs)
How do you feel when you arrive at work?
“I feel good about it. I feel like I’m giving [customers] a place to go besides going to the park or taking it to the street. They can be private and not exposed to whatever out in the open. If they didn’t have that place they’d probably be cruising the Tara-Lefont parking lot like they used to do.
What’s your favorite part of your job?
“I guess being somewhere in my element. It’s like the old TV show “Cheers.” I like to be where everybody knows my name.”
When did you stop entertaining and stripping?
“Well, you’re always an entertainer at heart. Used to be one of the best strippers going in the 80s. They didn’t have any [back then]. They were basically all go-go boys saying, ‘Here I am, tip me.’ I’d get up there in costumes, have routines and entertain you, as well as taking my clothes off. After that, I got tired of messing with the boys and went the girls — the queens — and pretty much made my name around town. At 551 there was a pole from floor to ceiling that I’d hang upside down and do sit-ups and shit. They were into that. That’s how my name got spread around town. Being one of the hottest male strippers in the 80s.
Where did you get the name “Lee Ryder?”
“It came from Lee “rider” jeans. And as I kept stripping and dancing, I went to Nashville on one of my first out-of-town bookings. My friend said, ‘We’re going to take you to a bookstore [that’s] like Inserection.’ She said there’s a porn star named Lee Rider we want to introduce you to. I said, OK, I’ve never heard of Lee Rider. We get up there, he’s signing books. I was the 7th or 8th person in line. He said, ‘How do I make this out to you?’ And I said, ‘Well, from what everyone’s been telling me you might as well make it out to yourself.’ And he said, ‘Oh, so you’re this stripper named Lee Rider I’ve been hearing about.’”
Do you ever mingle with the customers?
“I walk by there and say ‘Having fun yet?’ Shit like that, off the wall. Sometimes I’ll go there and hang out and see what’s going on. And they’ll say, ‘What’s this big box here?’ I say, ‘That’s for dancers.’ Then a light goes off in their head: ‘Are you gonna dance here?’ Uhm, no, I do enough here. I’m not dancing here too.”
Can you describe the clean-up process?
“We clean up the paper towels and condoms and papers [customers] use to clean up after they’re done. Then we go back and sanitize it so when the next customer comes in they’re not stepping in it.”
Does Inserection have a giant closet full of napkins?
“We have a huge closet of rolls of paper towels. If that’s what you mean, yes. Sometimes depending on how busy we’ll go through three or four rolls. And these aren’t regular paper towels. Sometimes we’ll go through three or four rolls on a good run of business. There is someone always there to make sure the customer always has those at their disposal.”
What’s your best-selling product?
“I guess that would be what they came there for — sex. Sex sells. The head cleaner … the best ones they sell are pretty expensive. I’ll kid ‘em when they buy ‘em because they have the original bottle of Rush. I say you can buy the good stuff for $23-28 a bottle or you can buy the headache for $13. Take your pick.”
What do you enjoy about working at Inserection’s Cheshire Bridge location?
“People often ask me ‘why don’t you work for one on Piedmont or Roswell Road?’ I’d rather work at Cheshire Bridge because it’s the most notorious one. And where I am that’s where most of my people that I’ve known for years would go to meet their needs and whatever they’re going there for.”
Are there any rules regarding customers interacting?
“Anything [the customers] want to do, they have to take it to a booth behind a locked door. The party room is a lounge where they can sit down and relax, they’re not supposed to have sex [in there].”
Why’d you start working there? How’d you get the job?
“A friend of mine named [redacted] was working there and I’d go hang out with her because Atlanta doesn’t have any 24-hour nightclubs anymore because those assholes in Buckhead can’t act like adults. So [Inserection] got to where they’d stay open Thursday, Friday and Saturday 24 hours and I’d go there and hang out. We got talking, became friends, and they offered me the job out of the blue. They called me to come work here because I’ve been an entertainer in the city for, how many years? I know their faces, might not know their names. But they called me because of who I am and how many people I know.
When do you decide to clean the booths?
“I play it by ear and wait for them to do, what I call, their “customer shift change.” When they start walking out, that’s when I start cleaning. But when they’re busy, that’s when I quit, let them do their thing, and work security at the door.”
On people who break the rules:
“[Misbehaving customers] look at you like, ‘what’s the law going to do?’ They’ll come down here and we’ll say, ‘Well, something must be right, because if we need the law, we’ll call them.’ Which we hardly ever have a problem with … [the clientele’s] pretty well behaved.”
What’s the process of visiting the booths?
“The old part of the place [ed. the booths area was recently renovated and equipped with speakers, revolving lights, and flat screens on the walls] is still intact and you can pretty much go in there and have a partner join you to watch a movie. Basically we tell them one person per booth. We can’t stand back there like hall monitors, put a camera up and watch people. That’s not the thing to do. But mainly they watch a movie, and if they have a partner or company that want to watch a movie with them, I can’t crack a whip and tell them they can’t.”
What kind of movies are available for customers?
“There are over 60 movies — a variety of gay, straight, fetish movies, “trans”-ies. You just have to scroll through the channels. Watch man-women fuck, men-men fuck, women-women fuck, men-that-look-like-women fuck. It’s all there. It’s all right there. (laughs) That’s the reason they call it a ’sexual revolution.’”
What are the rules?
“The rules are: When I’m working there, come as you are or don’t come at all. If you can’t come and be an adult, there’s no place for you being there. If you can’t be open-minded about things and accept it as an experience you’ve never had, then you don’t need to be going out and looking for new experiences.”
The funny moments in the booths:
“Sometimes the volume [on the movies] accidentally goes way up and you hear ‘[erotic moan]‘ and ‘[erotic moan].’ The [employees] gotta yell ‘turn it down.’”
What’s been one of the most memorable experiences there?
“Oh, man. Well, last Saturday night, [redacted], the girl, who works late … You know how girls are, they gotta have a little ‘potty break.’ (laughs) So I sold tickets. And speaking of couples, this straight couple comes in. I sold them tickets and a bottle of head cleaner. They come back and ask me, ‘What’s the box for?’ And I say, ‘It’s for male dancers they’re going to hire.’ I go down the street or something and the manager tells me [that] [redacted] calls him because I wasn’t there, and this couple back there was making noise. They first thought it was the video making the noise. So this couple I let in was making their own show for everybody. While she was going down on him, some other guy was on the box with ‘em going down on him or something or other, and all these people were just watching. They had to throw them out because of that. And I was like, man, I miss all the shit (laughs). What’s funny to me is that just because i told them it was a dancer’s box, they thought, ‘Well we can get up here and do a show.’ I didn’t tell ‘em that. That wasn’t even the notorious [couple] that come[s] in there every week.”
Are they any customers who come in every day?
“Oh yeah, there sure is. And they got to where they come so much that even before I started working there I notice their face. They come so much I’ll discount their ticket from $7.50 to $5. Or I’ll just let them in. Keep ‘em coming in. Throw ‘em a bone every once in a while. Keep the customer coming back.”
What are the Inserection video booths all about? What are they in the big picture?
“It’s a place where you can come to privately pay the door cover, get your sexual thing privately done in a viewing space of a booth to … I don’t know … I guess … I guess, get yourself off or get yourself satisfied. Come view movies, maybe if you want to see that movie you like and if they got it upstairs, they’ll sell it to you. Obviously they do have a copy of it or it wouldn’t be playing.”
What’s the biggest misconception about the video booths?
“I don’t know how to answer that because it’s totally misconcepted all the way around, anyway. Because people don’t know how they can get away with it. The only way it can be misconcepted is if they think it’s a movie theater and people go in there and eat popcorn.”
Do you have any quirky customers you see often?
“There’s one older guy that comes in there who drives a [redacted]. He’ll pull up, park his car, and look for tickets that people threw down to keep from having to pay $7.50. He lives near [redacted] and their location isn’t as active as our location. They’ll sell their [tickets] for $5 and [the tickets are] good at all locations. He’ll buy it up there and then drive down and hang out at ours.”
What do you think about the music?
“I like [the music] for most of the fact that they give me the opportunity and choice to pick it. It says techno so I pretty much don’t give them today’s techno. I give them 80s techno. Other than that we don’t have to really keep it techno. As long as it ain’t hard rock, fucking elevator music or country music, they don’t care.”
Has any store employee ever played Celine Dion over the speakers?
“Oh, no. They play mainly dance music, techno music or Top 40.”
What’s your final bit of advice for someone who’s never visited Inserection’s video booths?
“If they want to come and have an experience they’ve never had at the place, they need to do it. And be open-minded about it. If you can’t come there and be an adult about things, then you don’t need to be there.”
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
Leave a Reply