Out of Singles

Spiral Stairs and I headed up to Atlantic City yesterday as part of a bachelor weekend for a friend of ours. This morning, around 1AM, we found ourselves with the rest of the group at a strip club, where I found myself at first feeling typically awkward.

I have been learning more about stripping and the world of strip clubs from stefanie's blog, but no amount of reading will lessen the weirdness I feel in a strip club. I haven't been to many in my life. The first times I went was when I lived in New York. I had this friend named Mike, who was a minister's son. Mike once dragged us to this place called "Medallions." To this day, my friends and I never talk about what we saw and what happened at Medallions. In the ten minutes we were there, we witnessed acts that may qualify as war crimes under the Geneva Convention.

The few other places I have been to have been far more mellow, but it was never my idea. In fact, I always tried to get the fellas to do something else. One time, I said something to the effect of, "Look, let's forget going to the strip club, and just go and watch the game somewhere and grab a beer." Mike responded, "Why don't we do that while also seeing some breasts." The logic of Mike's point was overwhelmingly persuasive to the rest of the gang.

What do I mean by feeling "awkward?" Uncomfortable. Like a fish out of water. Except I am not a fish and breathe air. And a fish out of water would eventually die. What a stupid expression. Anyway, when I am in a strip club -- always at the insistence of friends -- I find myself wanting to be anonymous. A few years ago, my brother dragged me to a strip club in D.C. I saw a Borders nearby. I excused myself, went to the Borders and bought a Harpers. I sat in the corner of the place drinking an $8 Heineken while reading a long essay about dictionaries while my brother and a friend of his fed a variety of women stacks of singles. It was a pretty fascinating essay. Then, this drunk guy sitting next to me started talking to me. He was from South Carolina, and was at the strip club because it was his son's bachelor party. He then started weeping silently about his ex-wife. I told him about the dictionary essay. It was a weird night.

I am not afraid to admit this: I am intimidated by strippers. In a lot of ways, I can be an indomitable person. Not in the strip club. I like powerful women. I like sexual women. And I am not a moralist about the issue. But, the kind of sexuality strippers wield overwhelms. It is powerful, yet also too remote and unfamiliar. It's that, as well as the possibility that they find themselves stripping after a overwhelmingly sad or painful early life. I can't tune it all out and just appreciate the grind. My mind focuses on the "who" to the exclusion of the "what."

Yet, last night, over time, the experience became pretty tolerable for me. Same reaction from a couple of other dudes in our group who share my unease at strip clubs. As we drove home today, we discussed why, and it may have been this: we were in New Jersey where strippers are not allowed to be nude if the place serves alchohol. So all the women were basically just dancing around in lingerie. I guess that makes them more exotic dancers than strippers, but I admit I am not sure about terminology here.

The dancing was just as suggestive as at a regular (?) strip place, but somehow the extra clothing tempered the vibe. Was it the extra clothing? Why should the appearance or non-appearance of a breast affect any of the issues I identified above? That explanation was so arbitrary to us. But obviously right in a way; when we all inventoried our money this morning, none of us had anything smaller than a $20.