Meet the man who cleans Bloomington's only strip club

Inside the only strip joint in the city, the scuffed, charcoal-faded runway is a shared stage. Jerimy Koch trudges to the end of the stage and works his way back.

Except for Koch, 35, it’s not a dance pole he’s grasping, but a mop.

The black lights remain on even as the surrounding overhead lights buzz around the club. The freshly mopped surface glimmers in the red and violet hues.

The women usually walk in quietly throughout the afternoon before the club opens at 3 p.m., before they undergo the transformation into their onstage personas — the dancers who get dressed to get naked.

But when the dance poles are unattended, the runway is silent and the VIP room is vacant — both areas void of the usual sounds of clicking heels and pulsating dance anthems — someone has to tend to whatever is left behind from the night before, tidying up, scrubbing and mopping.

Koch is that guy.

Sometimes in the back room, Koch will discover blood from the occasional fight or stale vomit. On the rare occasion, the more intimate of bodily fluids will turn up.

“You can never really tell,” he says, “it’s usually dried anyway.”

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As the only strip club in the area, Koch says as he wipes down the bar counter, the venue attracts “a little bit of everybody.”

He talks about the men who hurl dollar bills onto the stage, lusting for more skin.

“Some guys, they’ll make it rain,” Koch says. “With the way the economy is, most guys can’t make it rain anymore.”

However, 13 years is a long time to be cleaning bathrooms and back rooms at a strip club.

By day, he boasts a mop and broom, but when the sun goes down and the customers flood in, Koch can be found behind the bar. He mostly loves the job because of the people he encounters and admits he wants out of the cleaning gig.

Every two weeks or so, when he’s the only one at the club cleaning, he holds auditions for the women who apply to be dancers.

Koch does the run-through with the new girls, explains the dos and don’ts and how in Indiana, it is state law that the women cover their nipples.

Above the desk where he sits in the office, a poster of a grinning blonde girl is taped to the wall.

“Do not hire!” is scribbled across the bottom of the printout in pen. “Underage!”

Before Koch met his girlfriend, who serves drinks at the club, he’d spend a few nights a year after Friday shifts watching strip sets and sipping his usual Crown Royal Whisky and Coke.

“You gotta do that every now and then,” Koch says.

Nowadays, he says, the power of the naked bodies has mostly diminished.

“Desensitized is a good way to put it,” he says.

When he cleans at the strip club, he has his routine down to a science. Koch works at the club Monday through Friday, often serving as the closing bartender the nights before he has to wake up, go back to the club and scrub the place down.

He’s at the club by 12:30 p.m. or so and cleans well into the afternoon.

The job never used to bother him, but things are different now, he says.

Between bartending and cleaning, it’s not uncommon for Koch to settle into bed around 6 a.m. Then he wakes up and pushes restart.

“I would ultimately love to find someone else to do it,” he says.

It’s not a change in venue he’s looking for — at least not yet. Koch says he just wants to ditch the cleaning supplies.

A tattoo stretching shoulder to shoulder on his back reads “stand and be true,” a reference from one of his favorite Stephen King series, “The Dark Tower.”

Ask him where he sees himself in 20 years, and he’ll tell you about his aspirations of opening his own bar. But for now, Koch says it’s especially difficult to obtain a liquor license because they are issued in the county on a per capita basis. The question, he says, is whether or not to remain in Bloomington.

Sometimes, he thinks back to when he was 18 and in a Navy ROTC program in high school.

“I always say if I could go back, I would,” he says.

During his cleaning shifts, vendors show up now and then, boasting cigarette cartons and bottles of liquor by the box-full. Koch signs for all of it, and the vendors all know him by name.

“How’s it goin’, brother?” Koch asks.

“Same old bullshit,” the man replies. “We’ve got an easy one today — case of booze, bottles of Jack.”

The tasks tend to vary depending on the day and how much fun club patrons had the night before.

Clorox fumes trail the tired custodian as he trudges from one end of the club to the other — cleaning bathrooms, scrubbing walls, washing the windows and changing the automatic cinnamon aerosol freshener that’s perched atop the VIP room sign.

Koch doesn’t say much. He tries to keep his mind focused only on the cleaning. Nothing else, he says.

He always saves the runway for last, right before the club opens for the evening.

As Koch continues to circle around the club, an industrial broom and dustpan are his close companions. He packs away his cleaning supplies with the exception of his mop.

It’s the end of his time cleaning the joint, so he plunges his mop into the yellow bin of cleaning solution one last time and steps onto the runway — where the dancers typically have dominion. But for now, the stage is his.

After Koch finishes mopping the runway, he retires the rest of his trusty cleaning supplies to join the broom and dustpan in storage. He slugs over to the bar and reaches for the light panel.

Click, click, click, click.   

As he flips down each switch, the club, section by section, returns to its natural dark state.

“It’s a give-and-take kind of business,” Koch says. “You gotta be willing to give a little to get what you get. Cleaning’s not glamorous, but you have to do it.”

The newly cleaned runway shines under the warm glow of the black lights, and the heel impressions disappear in the darkness.

Follow reporter Michael Majchrowicz on Twitter @mjmajchrowicz.