LAS VEGAS - Clad only in a pair of bikini bottoms and a lobster-red sunburn, a stripper at Sapphire Gentleman's Club turns to the one person allowed to touch her at work.

''Mom, can you put some lotion on my back?'' she asks sheepishly.

Marcy Perez - the club's official ''house mom'' - has just the remedy. She uncaps some aloe vera gel and massages it into the girl's back.

''There's somebody that always needs something,'' says Perez, a cheerful 46-year-old woman who is dwarfed by the girls in their eight-inch heels.

At a number of strip clubs across the country, house moms do more than just help the performers get ready for the next shift. They listen when the girls need to vent and console when a customer gets abusive. They are part coach, part guidance counselor and very much surrogate mothers.

''They're good for everything,'' says Vye, a 26-year-old stripper from Las Vegas. ''They're better than a real mom.''

For many of these young women, a stripper's world is one of stigma and isolation. Many refuse to tell their loved ones how they earn a living. Instead, they pass themselves off as cocktail waitresses or bartenders.

''There are a lot of parents that would disown their daughter if they knew they were strippers,'' said Charlotte Andrews, a longtime house mom at Club Paradise.

For many, family consists of other strippers and the women paid to care for them.

''That's why they come to us,'' Perez said. ''You're the only one who knows the real them.''

On a recent night, Andrews busied herself backstage at Club Paradise, helping one stripper hide her tattoo with makeup and talking to another about an upcoming baby shower.

''They know they can talk to us about anything, where they can't talk to their own families,'' said Andrews, 58.

At Sapphire, Perez provides everything a stripper might need for the night. Bins filled with hair products, makeup and bite-sized snacks line an enormous dressing room mirror. Scents of ''vanilla fantasy'' and ''night-blooming jasmine'' permeate the air as the girls sample from a perfume collection also provided by Perez.

Continued...

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