Inside the silver stretch limousine parked in front of a midtown hotel, Tempest begins her erotic gyrations. She is wearing a white translucent G-string and bustier. Music pulsates from eight stereo speakers. Nude centerfold models frolic on a 12-inch color television.
The G-string and bustier disappear.
This $275, 40-minute multimedia extravaganza is among the many services Centerfold Stars` Striptease to Go will highlight in a $30,000 advertising campaign directed at the Democratic National Convention.
It is just one slice of the Big Apple`s legal and illegal sex pie that is gearing up for the 40,000 delegates, alternates, family members, media types and hangers-on hitting town for the political confab beginning Monday.
The Democrats chose New York because it has so much to offer-restaurants, museums and music, The Great White Way. But the city also flaunts the country`s most wide-open erotic mosaic. And the city`s sex trade-from video stores to topless bars to massage parlors to outcall services to S&M bars to sex phone lines to novelty shops-is looking for a big payday.
Sex vendors are doubling advertising and offering special promotions, packages and discounts, vying for a share of the projected $473 million in spending the convention will generate.
Many of the conventioneers will be women, but selling sex, like making presidents, still is predominantly a boys` thing.
”The only reason these guys want to come to New York is because they think they`re going to get laid,” said Sydney Biddle Barrows, the former Mayflower Madam, who was in business during the 1980 convention here.
And whether the convention-goers like it or not, vice cops are determined to protect them from the seamy side of sex for sale. Cops are busting massage parlors and lap-dance salons. The number of undercover cops in midtown has quadrupled, and they are arresting everyone from three-card-monte dealers to phony watch hawkers to streetwalkers.
”We`ll be arresting more prostitutes and spreading the word, `The convention is coming,` ” said Assistant Police Chief Dennis Ryan of the Organized Crime Control Bureau, who is coordinating security for the convention.
The police sweeps extend from 23rd Street to 59th Street and from Third Avenue to the Hudson River.
”There are at least six areas of visible street prostitution,” Ryan said. ”The Eighth Avenue area is probably the worst. They are not only visibly unsightly but dangerous. ”The street prostitutes are mostly druggies. They`ll try to work, no matter the chances of being arrested. That`s why we`re starting now.”
Police are not the only ones concerned about sex and the convention.
Ronald Johnson, the city`s coordinator of AIDS policy, has been meeting with operators of gay and lesbian bars and sex clubs, as well as community groups, including the Gay Men`s Health Crisis, and is reaching out to sex journals and cable-TV sex shows. ”We are seeking voluntary compliance to stay within the state sanitary code that defines and prohibits (public) high-risk sex activity,” he said.
To the more upscale (higher-priced) pros who only work out of outcall, or escort, services, the convention is JV (junior varsity) time.
”Conventions of this size are disruptive to regular business,” said Dolores French, a prostitute and former employee of Barrows` agency.
French worked the Atlanta and San Francisco Democratic conventions.
”Democrats think you should do it for free,” she said. ”Republicans are much kinkier, more demanding in bed, better clients.”
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Most in the sex trade don`t seem to feel that way.
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If there is an erotica attack headquarters, it is Manhattan Video, which will offer conventioneers not only ”Striptease to Go” booking services, but also a Democratic ”X-to-Go” phone line to order Top 10 XXX listings. It will place orders in plain brown paper wrappers and deliver to hotels free.
Owner Richard Kunis is having a convention kickoff party from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. Sunday at The Vault, the city`s sturdiest S&M club.
On Wednesday, conventioneers are invited to bring their camcorders and tape an XXX-rated movie-in-the-making.
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It`s Uptime (Happy Hour) at Stringfellows Presents Pure Platinum. The mirrored doors glide back at 6 p.m. and a cocktailed herd of herringbone-suited men will wander into a room filled with soon-to-be topless and G-stringed, sequined-gowned women.
During convention week, Stringfellows and its West Side competition, Goldfingers, will woo delegates with extra dancers and doubled advertising budgets.
Only Chippendales, where men strip for women, isn`t chasing conventioneers. ”Without knowing how many of the 40,000 are women, it`s a hard market to corner,” said general manager Ray Ryan.
Goldfingers will add 16 women to its 40-woman squad of dancers, hot-oil wrestlers and two-women shower shows. All conventioneers-except unescorted women, which the club does not allow-will be admitted free.
Peter Stringfellow expects his club to draw 50 percent more customers. It is adding 30 dancers, for a complement of 100. He figures delegates can`t miss a flatbed truck pulling a 40-by-15-foot billboard with a pair of women`s legs against the World Trade Center.
Stringfellows also will expand its 4-7 p.m. free buffet and happy hour, and the kitchen will remain open late.
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Women squirming on men is the latest feels-like-sex act here, but it`s also the latest illegal one. ”If you rub genitals, clothed or unclothed, and you`re paying, that`s prostitution,” said Bill Daly, director of the Mayor`s Office of Mid-Town Enforcement.
Cops recently busted Club Ooh-La-La, Fantasy in Motion and Club 52. A fourth, Laps, put up a large sign, ”No More Lap Dancing,” and turned overnight into an X-rated theater.
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A kickback war is on. ”Everybody`s offering $10 to the bellmen, concierge,” said a manager at Noble House, one of five Asian massage parlors operating in Manhattan. ”We`re offering $20.”
During the convention, he`ll send representatives dressed in suits to the delegate hotels to make his offer to concierges and bellmen. A referral card guarantees the finder`s fee.
The massage parlors will offer outcall service during the convention at selected hotels. ”Milford Plaza`s security is really sickening. The Waldorf is easier,” said the Noble House manager. ”The Omni Central Park is tough. The Helmsleys have always had the toughest reputation. We`ve never had a problem with the lower-line hotels.”
Typical fees are $160 for in-house services. Outcalls cost $200 an hour cash, $250-an-hour credit card. The fifth hour is free.
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One escort service has listed only a phone number for 16 years. ”In 1980, business was pretty steady with Democrats,” one worker said. ”Every time the Democrats come, we get busy.”
Maggie from Georgia, 22, studies pre-law and works for $400 per outcall hour for the Party Place. She is one of more than 20 college students she knows who are employed in six different prostitution houses: ”Tuition`s high.”
She only works with certain hotel bellmen. ”I have someone at Milford Plaza and the Carlton,” she said. ”They get $5 to $15, depending on the business. They`re paid on a weekly basis, card to patron, patron to girl, girl turns it into office, somebody goes round to pay him.”
The Russia House is one escort service that won`t be working the convention. The madam said her five young women arrived recently from Moscow. ”They just learned how to be nice to clients at a special escort school,”
she said. ”They don`t do Democrats or communists.”
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”Where are my donkeys?” Helen Wolff asked, rifling through a stack of G-strings. ”I`m loaded with elephants. I need more donkeys.”
The G-strings are just one of several Democratic specialty items at Come Again Erotic Emporium, where conventioneers will get a 20 percent discount and a gift (two condoms in a bag).
Novelty shops are offering everything from freebies (one condom and a key chain at Sizzling Sensations) to ”Around the World in Bed” games ($19.95).
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Wolff, who`s taking out extra ads and ordered red-white-and-blue pasties, donkey pillows and donkey hats, will offer a free workshop, ”A Guided Tour of Erotica,” for groups of 15 or more Democrats.
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At the Vault, on Ninth Avenue, Mistress Carla, a transvestite World War II veteran, sat demurely in suit and hat. Her whip lay on the table. ”It will give me pleasure to whip a Democrat,” she sighed. ”It would give me more pleasure to whip a Republican.”