At one point going to see a room full of naked women would be the hottest ticket in town. Nowadays, with inventions like the internet, sliding down a pole for crumpled up one dollar bills has become a lost art form. Half of the reason guys go to a strip club is because they deep down think they actually have a chance taking one of the girls home. In a lot of cases those chances are better than they realize. For the casual costumer, I think that the allure of the strip club has died down a lot. I at least know it has for me. It used to be a paradise for married men who just want a little entertaining variety. Now when I go inside it feels like depressing cesspool of easily transferred germs, desperate loners and food menus that I would never order from. The real question is: Why would I pay cash just to get sexually excited when I can pull up an actual sex show on the internet for absolutely no money at all? Even better, I can just have sex with my wife.
You might make the argument of pixels versus live girls in front of you. Well guess what. I am 35 years old. I have had enough live girls in front of me in my lifetime who have performed way more than the girls in the strip club. After a while you become desensitized to just a scantily clad female pretending to be able to dance. If not then maybe you just haven’t had sex enough. If you are single would you rather spend the same amount of money searching for a girl that will have sex for free in a night club, or feeding singles to a chick that is probably covering up her disgust for you with a pageant smile in a strip club? If I were you I would play the field a little more.
The only people that should really be getting excited about strip clubs are the guys who don’t get any play from females at all. In fact, guys who are sexually active on the regular that show up in strip clubs are really being inconsiderate. This is the one place that some outcast can feel like a handsome person for twenty dollars and you show up and ruin it. It’s like leaving an all you can eat restaurant and then going to get desert at the local soup kitchen. You sick bastard.
I will say I have had fun in the strip club before. It was never just the girls though. It was the experience that you have with your friends when you go. I’ve been out for bachelor parties, birthdays, random Fridays and even a divorce (mine and someone else’s). All of them have not been pleasant experiences, but some are memories I will never forget. I have made it rain, I have balled up singles and launched them aiming for specific body parts and I have slid dollars into very unsanitary places. If you are a female and you are judging me just remember that most guys that you’ve encountered that’s been to a strip club has done most of this too.
All guys are victim to becoming less of a rational grown up when they step into a place like that. It’s because it’s filled with naked women. That is a dream that most men have from ever since they first saw a woman naked. To be surrounded by them. We don’t know how to act when we are handed a childhood dream for 15 dollars and a two drink minimum. We just do what feels right. Strip clubs feel nasty, so what feels right is being nasty. So when we simulate sex on a woman spread eagle with some rolled up Hamiltons don’t judge us. The question you need to ask is “What else was the guy supposed to do?” Obviously she is spread eagle for a reason. They are working for tips. There are only so many places that you can put money on these girls. Maybe the vagina area is where she thought it would be the safest. Did you ever think about that, woman judging me for what I'm typing?
I remember three trips to the strip club very vividly. Two of the times were my freshman year in college. The third time is a story for another day.
The first time was just a pass through. My roommate had a female sponsor when he arrived at school. I don’t even remember what my sponsor looked like thanks to this story. She drove me and my roommate around to grab little items for our room. Then she said she had to take a detour and stop by her job. That’s when she drove up to an ugly old building. I’m not sure what it is about strip clubs in broad daylight, but they always look like they’ve been shut down for years and a possible murder scene to me. She invites us inside because she says it’s going to take a while. I had never actually seen the inside of a strip club until that day. A strip club inside during the day has got to be the saddest picture ever. It was just random lonely men with nowhere to go, spending their hard earned dollars on what can best be described as the D-League of strippers.
His sponsor was slightly attractive, but she decided to shimmy up the pole one time for fun and her fine-factor went through the roof. Suddenly it hit me. I had been away from home for one week and already bumped into possibly the #1 cliché of all time: A stripper dancing her way through college. Welcome to the real world.
My second trip was a lot more eventful. During a long weekend I decided to go home with one of my college friends to Durham, North Carolina. It was definitely a better choice than going home to a city I had not yet forgiven for being subpar. My college friend was a redshirt football player for our football team. Let’s call him…. Dan. Dan hung out with other redshirts that we ended up chilling with that weekend, like…. Joey and his adopted brother…. Jessie (Did I seriously fake-name this group as the characters from Full House?).
On Saturday night the Full House gang and I decided to go to a strip club. We were not old enough to get into any respectable ones, so we headed for one that would obviously allow us to enter. Translation: A place that had no liquor license, not enough security for the crowd and no morals. In the middle of what could’ve been the bad part of either Durham or Raleigh (honestly at night anywhere in those cities borders could’ve been a “bad part”) we decided to enter the shittiest hole in the wall on this side of Michael Jordan’s alma mater.
This place had everything:
horrible lighting
no id card checks
no tables
busted speakers
patrons still in their work clothes
These strippers that for all intents and purposes circled the room like they had just started a contest for who could make the least amount of money. Do you remember that strip club from “Hustle & Flow”? It was like that, minus the ambiance.
Obviously, me and the Full House crew were in for an adventure. What sounds better: crew or gang?.... Gang sounds little racial because we were all black. Now I’m trying to imagine if there was a white guy there and how it would’ve looked. I don’t think words could describe how hard I just laughed to myself.
No matter what kind of man I thought I was up to that point, I was obviously mistaken. A man is someone that can show control in situations like this, and I had clearly lost all of my control the minute they didn’t card us. After sitting down and surveying the room I realized that all of the guys were lining the perimeter and girls were just walking around campaigning for lap dances with the least amount of joy possible. There was a small stage, but with the lighting being as horrible as it was there was no real hope of enjoying whatever show might be going on. We just sat and tried to play it as cool as a bunch of college freshmen could. Then it happened.
One of the girls, instead of going to the far stage decided to get something started in the space in front of us. I don’t remember what her face looked like. I can say that with confidence, because I can only equate this moment to the first time I saw a girls top come off at a swimming pool. This was a public boob moment. I know we were in a strip club, but it was my first time being in a “public” place to watch a woman take her clothes off. It was exciting. Before that I had been saving the image of a girl I had a crush on jumping up of the pool, not realizing that she left the top half of her bikini in the water. I wasn’t quite sure why I had kept that image in my memory for so long, but now I understand. There is something exciting about naked women in public. So when Faceless Mahoney decided to bring the show to our section I couldn’t help but get excited. Really excited……. Really really excited. The type of excited that requires you to stay seated for a little bit longer than everyone else.
Well, the party is popping now! Did we tip her? Nope. It’s not that we were cheap, but because we were broke college students living off of what our parents called an allowance, and we called bullshit. All I had left after the cover charge was a twenty dollar bill and you can predict what that was supposed to be spent on. It was customary to purchase a lap dance from what I gathered from R rated movies and Too Short Records (maybe even a table dance…. But they didn’t have tables). The sad stripper parade started looking better and better now, and it was without the aid of alcohol. I think the fact that I was a horny 17 year old might’ve helped. I was going to check out every girl and pay the best one for a lap dance. It was going to happen. I was going to be a man about town. Now which one deserves to meet Andrew Jackson? There she is!!!!!!!!!
I am horrible with dates, birthdays, anniversaries, directions, landmarks and appointment times, but I remember exactly what this stripper looked like. Light skinned, long hair (possibly hers), slim body, pretty face (especially compared to the other Predators on this far away planet) wearing a yellow mesh see-through deal, a purple thong and silver lined clear heels.
She must’ve just came on shift because up to that point I was waiting for one of the other guys to pick a random so that I could tease them later. After spotting her I knew what was about to happen. Every guy on our side of the room attempted to get her attention with money in hand. I didn’t feel so stupid because grown men were included in this auction. She decided to work her way around the perimeter one at a time. Jessie was about 6th, I was 7th, Dan was 8th and Joey was 9th. She proceed to give every single guy in that line a lap dance that looked well worth Andrew Jackson (and maybe even an extra Honest Abe if I had it). When she made it to Jessie it had already been a good 20 minutes. We had already waved away the other strippers, opting wait for the obvious bread winner in this operation. Maybe that upset the other workers, but what did we care?
While I sat there next to Jessie as the #1 pick was straddling him I realized that I was not only about to have my first lap dance, but I was also about to get it in front of a room full of people. That’s when sheer terror set in. All of the other guys had their eyes on her, and by default also had their eyes on whomever she was simulation cowgirling (I made up this word). These guys came to see a show, and since the other prospects were so weak, I was about to become a prop in a room full of nasty eyes. Too late to back out now. Jessie’s song is almost over. I noticed him talking in her ear. I had no idea that talking was involved. What should I say? Should I try to sound older? Should I act like I’ve been here before? What should I say? No time to think. She in front of me now!
Here is a transcript of how I remember things:
“How much?”
“Ten dollars baby.”
(my thoughts)
TEN DOLLARS?!
TEN FUCKING DOLLARS?!?!?!?!?
FOR ALL OF THAT?!?!?!?!?!?
WHY WOULD YOU MAKE IT SO CHEAP!?!?!?!?!?
WHY DIDN’T MY PARENTS GIVE ME MORE MONEY!?!?!?!?!?
(probably because I would spent it in a shitty strip club)
IF I HAD A HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL YOUR FINE ASS WOULD BE PREGNANT BY THE TIME I WAS A SOPHOMORE!!!!!!
(back to speaking)
“Cool”
She proceeded to sit down in my lap, because the DJ had taken a quick break.
“What’s your name”
“Thelonious”
(Every time I talked to a girl in college that didn’t go to my school that I was plotting to do something with I would come up with a name so ridiculous that they’d either laugh or they’d believe me because it was too outrageous not to be true)
She giggles.
“But my friends call me Theo”
“That’s cute. I’m _________ (insert fake stripper name here)”
Then the music starts back up.
She starts with her back to me grinding to the beat. It was happening. I was in a strip club getting a lap dance. A damned good lap dance. Even with the experience I have under my belt now, this one is still in the top five and not just for nostalgic reasons. Then she turns around and straddles me. At this point you might as well say that I was there alone. I lost all contact with the outside word. I think the music even went mute. She looked me in the eyes and I knew exactly what she was doing. She was making sure that I got my ten dollars worth. She leaned over to my ear. I guess this is where the conversation was supposed to pick back up. She whispered two words.
“Fuck me….”
You know how in movies a high school kid or some goofy character (example: Blankman) cums on himself because he’s never had real contact with a woman? Well if this was a movie, and I was playing a Jason-Biggs-esque awkward lead, I would’ve had to buy a new pair of DaDa Supremes. This woman had not only made me forget I was in public and established a connection that blocked out sound, but she had within the length of the song (which felt like 27 minutes) had made me excited enough to want to save her from this cruel world of poles and stages. She did a job on me that no other stripper has been able to do in all of the years since. This might be why I don’t really enjoy strip clubs now.
Well those two words were followed up by her returning to the eye lock and then looking down like she was signaling me to look at something. I looked down and saw her breasts through the mesh top. I was 17. What else was I supposed to do? This resulted in one of the top 3 most disgusting things I have ever done to this day. Through that mesh top…. I sucked on this random stripper’s breast.
The same stripper that had just worked her way around a room of sweaty workers, scavengers and anyone within earshot with a ten dollar bill in their pocket. The same stripper that had probably pull this same stunt a million times in this same establishment. It was the equivalent of the kid in grade school who felt the need to put his mouth directly on the water fountain as if the water wasn’t already coming out in a focused stream of refreshment. It was disgusting of me. I really have no excuse. She asked me to. She even moaned it up to further simulate what was already too close to a sexual encounter.
Then the song was over.
“Good job baby” she said as she took my whole 20 and left me no change.
I guess she decided to take a break afterwards, much to the dismay of Dan who was next in line. In her defense, I’d like to believe she had an American Pie moment as well and had to freshen up. On second thought, she probably had to wipe stranger spit off of one of her nipples.
Dan ended up getting a dance with a chick that was more concerned with counting his ones than actually doing a good job. He got his money worth though (in smacks). He smacked her on the ass so hard that it echoed through the joint. Two times in a row. She was so pissed off (and probably in pain) that I don’t even remember Joey getting a dance from anybody. I’m pretty sure our little group was cut off for the night.
Looking back I’m pretty sure if I had more money I could’ve definitely got her to leave with me. It was an option that I had tossed around in my mind for a couple years, right up until I realized that a certain type of man actually pays for vagina, and I wasn’t that type of man. Rumor has it that that particular strip club was shut down for prostitution the following year. Before we left Jessie had got into further conversations with her, and I’m pretty sure that’s what she was proposing (probably a group rate judging by how she looked at all of us instead of just him). I was so embarrassed about the breast sucking that when Jessie started trying to convince us with “the special deal” I was main one dragging him out of there against his will. I can’t say that I would’ve done the same if I had a pay check though.
A couple weeks ago, while in the barbershop a bunch of guys started talking about a horrible strip club on the outskirts of town and this story instantly popped into my head. My first instinct was to go on Instagram and message Dan to see if he remembers taking me to my first strip club. His reply was funny, and he informed me that the strip club was later converted into a “hipster styled coffee shop”…. if those baristas only knew.
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