My First Strip Club Experience*

who makes this stuff up?

And that's even given that 1/3 of my "limited experience" took place in a Canadian strip club where everything was remarkably clean and the strippers were strangely polite and wholesome-looking.

http://www.marysclub.com/outsidehorizontal.jpg

ihttp://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v622/dysign/ilx/?action=view¤t=BabyDolls.jpg

plus they gave me pot!

Do your parents know you're gay?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v622/dysign/ilx/BabyDolls.jpg

FAG

Lurker, you sound like someone who is so desperate to show his Sensitive New Age Man credentials to the world that he's completely forgotten how to have fun. There's a tendency among the young & overeducated to wilfully overlook the fact that a) many women like sex too (SHOCKA) and b) not everyone who does sex work is abused, drug-addled, or self-hating.

You still haven't hung out with that "closet slut", have you???

one of my friends said it was basically a pantomime of courtship at its most traditional: the men bring the money, the women shake their tits and asses, everybody smiles nervously.

O T F M!!!

Back in my hometown, I actually knew a handful of dancers who did like sex and who were not crazy or a junky. However I had never seen them preform and I think that there is the key. I saw them as people seperate from their jobs and I never paid what they did for a living any mind. But now having actually seen what they do, I can't help coming out thinking that their profession is highly degrading. In a job where one is reduced to a pair of tits, an ass, and a g-string, it's kinda hard to believe that a girl could be perfectly normal to do it time after time. Andf I know it sounds fucked up and woman hating but it's my opinion and although I wish I could think otherwise, it's what i believe.

It's also kinda funny that Gypsy Mothra brought the connection between strip clubs and the nature of courtship to light beacuse (and perhaps it's just me) everyone there seemed to be into the role playing. And I thought that was tragic for 2 reasons: a) In theory, anyone should attract the gender of their choice. But strip clubs are living proof that it's not so and there are people who will exploit a guy's loneliness and desperation for a money and b)and that there are people on this planet so delusional that will buy into a fantasy no matter how transparent, how fleeting just because they are waving a couple bucks around.

I can not see how that is in anyway 'fun'.

Speaking of stripclubs and Morrissey...I was cleaning out my mailbox
and came across an old message I sent to a friend. Here's an excerpt
about going to a strip club in Portland, OR during the tour last
summer...(names deleted to protect the guilty)
================
So, here's the story...after the fantastic show in Portland (the best
on the tour so far) I ended up with hanging out at the bar (with my
head on the bar) of MOrrissey's hotel. I don't stalk Morrissey at his
hotels, but I'm in the rental car with others who do.
xxx's cousin who lives in Portland is drinking with us, and since
he's Irish, he wants to take us to more nightclubs in Portland to
drink. bbbb and I beg off, preferring to sleep in the car. But
somehow we are persuaded to go to a club nearby that is playing loud,
horrible techno. Fortunately, for some reason we don't go in. I don't
know why, but we go to a place called Mary's Club, which is across the
street.

The strains of the Verve's Bittersweet Symphony usher us inside. Hmmm,
surprisingly good music for a strip club. But they are progressive in
Portland. For example, they allow full nudity in clubs that serve
alcohol. This club is no exception. After I commented about the
music, the owner of the club (presumably Mary) proudly informed me that
the dancers get to choose their own music. They do so by picking
selections from the wall-mounted jukebox to the left of the small
rectangular stage.

I half-expected to see Gary Day in the joint because he's been spotted
at titty bars before. Instead, we encounter bbb and --- at a table
in the second row away from the stage. The first row is a bar right up
in front of the stage. It is reserved for the serious tippers who gaze
up dumbly at the undulating dancers.

This is actually the first time I've ever been in a strip club, I mean
one that caters to straight men. It's not as sad and sleazy as I
thought it would be. There's the smoke, but it's not too bad. The
drinks are watered down, but the dancers are pretty and not scary like
the pornlets I'm used to.

Except there's one dancer whom I did not like. She wouldn't dance to
Morrissey/Smiffs even though I'd tip $20 for it. She knew who they
were (one of the dancers claimed ignorance), but she said the only
SMiths song they had was a cover of How Soon Is Now by Snake River
Conspiracy. It is a foul cover by a vile band. Anyway, she already
played a SRC song, so she refused to play another. That's okay because
I thought she looked like a skank. She looked like a biker
chick with her tattoos. She also had blonde hair but a shaved pussy,
which makes me think she's another repulsive blonde-in-a-bottle type.
Big turn off. But ----- was attracted to her. The dancer had large,
firm boobs. She was a chunky girl, so the big boobs looked believable
on her frame. But when she hung upside-down on the pole, I noticed
that her firm breasts were too firm -- they didn't move naturally.
That's a damn good boob job! But ----- didn't like hearing that. She
protested that maybe this girl was 18 so she could have naturally firm
and high breasts and all. I said, no, if they're that big (and
natural) there's no way they'd stay up like that. I've seen more tits
than a dairy farmer, so I ought to know! ------ further argued that
her own sizable breasts don't move. I disagreed and told her that I've
seen her breasts move (and due to gravity hers are also a lot lower
than the trollope's on stage). She seemed shocked that I'd scoped out
her breasts and said she felt cheap and used. Well, I retorted, would
you feel better about it if I had paid you for the privilege? She said
that was a low blow. Well, of course I look! Don't try to tell me you
don't look, either!

I tipped one dancer for playing Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart
and also for "keepin' it real" because she didn't alter her lovely
breasts with horrible plastic surgery. But she didn't dance to the
Smiths cover.

Since we were heckling every dancer to dance to Morrissey or the
Smiffs, one of the patrons at the bar in front of the stage asked me if
I had been to the Morrissey show that night. Of course! He pointed
out a pretty, slim woman wearing the black tour "wifebeater" shirt with
"Morrissey" in olde English script standing in the back. SHe had a
cascade of gorgeous, brown corkscrew curls. She was his co-worker at a
posh restaurant called Pastis (sp?) where Morrissey had dinner that
night. The unfortunate girl asked for the night off to go see
Morrissey. But if she had worked that night, she could've served him
his meal! I asked the guy what Morrissey ate. He said Morrissey had
angel hair pasta with basil and tomatoes. Sounds right.

When a seat in front of the stage became available, this lovely fan
grabbed it and spent the rest of the evening gazing up at all the
dancers. I thought it was odd that she should stare at the women on
stage when she seemed to be way better-looking than them.

The guy who told me about his co-worker was kind of odd in that he
seemed too good-looking to be here, too. I thought he looked so pretty
that he was gay. But he was one of the most ardent admirers of the
dancers and tipped copiously. Later on, I saw him hugging on the
pretty lesbian Mozfan co-worker of his. They were kind of swaying in a
slow dance. I could tell that he was in love with her. But she had
eyes only for the strippers. Seeing her gaze longingly at the peelers
on the stage while she was being hugged by this man was too poignant a
scene for the end of the night. It was such the illustration of "I
Want the One I Can't Have." I thought of the lyrics "Sad-veiled bride,
please be happy. Handsome groom, give her room. Loud, loutish lover,
treat her kindly, though she needs you more than she loves you..."

We stayed until closing... Then I drove to the airport because I had an
early morning flight to Salt Lake City.

Oh yeah, I met Maf (Matthew), the subject of Momus's patron-pop Stars
Forever song, in Portland that night. He seemed charmingly flustered
when I told him that reading MOmus's online tourdiary entry about
illegal sexual practices in Salt Lake City tempted me to engage in the
outlawed practices while in SLC. When I saw him again in Santa
Barbara, he asked if I had found oral sex in SLC. That is another
story for later...

So a) why'd you tell us? and b) if you had to tell us, why not just say you read "a book", and c) wtf is a booksack?

And as for the Sylvia Plath nonsense a) it's funny story b) the detail makes it funnier (i.e. getting into a fistfight while listening to the Cocteau Twins) and c) a sack of books.

Oh and another thing about Strip Clubs: The freaking music! I've never expected to hear a note of Kid Rock ever again!

the only strip clubs i've ever been to were in edmonton, canada, when myself and a photographer and PR got stranded there after our flight to LA on 9/11 got diverted due to the closed american airspace. it was a weird time to be stranded thousands of miles from your loved ones with no idea when you'll be able to go home again, so our heads were all a little fucked up to begin with, but it was a weird night.

we went to one place that our waiter had reccommended, but when we got there, the owner told us that as they do lapdances there they couldn't legally serve teh booze, and the PR - a girl whose idea the whole strip club trawl had been - said we weren't nearly drunk enough yet, so we went to this abysmal place called the pink pussycat, which was like a huge aircraft hangar with chairs and a stage, where disinterested boobless, pubeless, buttless girls cavorted while drunks cheered em on. there was one dancer who didn't dance to Kid Rock, but to some insane penumatic R'n'B track, who was *awesome, and the photog and I got to chat to her later and she gave us autographed posters of her (nekkid, natch) mostly because the photog (6' 4") had dispatched a punter who was hassling her.
we then went on to the original place, chez pierre (i think), an old skool darkened room where the stones had appara once visited. as i'd already raised PC objections to our trip, i was bought the first lapdance - a bump and grind from a mostly naked eastern euorpean girl who whispered filth in my ear while putting her hands all over me. i was at first kind of disturbed by it, then found it insanely erotic for a minute or so, and then everything seemed grubby again when i realised this was only happening because the PR had put her credit card behind the bar. the proprietor later told us that the soundtrack for the dancing was one of a series of mixtapes he'd made for the club from his favourite tunes, each edited to a strict two and a half minutes to maximise profit from the dances. mostly they were cool rock tunes, though i had the misfortune to receive my dance to the lilting tones of chris de burgh's lady in red.
i dunno. i was pretty skeeved out by the whole thing, and wouldn't wanna do it again. but its not like i object to it.

This is a really, really shitty and destructive thing to say.

but hey, what's a man to do in a world full of people who are so evil as to exploit a guy's loneliness and desperation for money?

I think you're inadvertently betraying your sociocultural roots here, S. Clover. However foregrounded the haha-"ironic" dimension may be in NYC, Portland, et al., in most cases strip clubs are very much about "exploiting guys' loneliness and desperation for money" (not to mention women's desperation-for-money). I mean, dude, try talking to an actual real-life stripper, or failing that, at least reading some articles -- this one maybe, though there was a terrific one I saw a while back that really nailed the mutual-exploitation angle, but can't find now...

But, you know, I wouldn't want to interfere with your turning McLurkerstein into the straw man you clearly need him to be! Do continue calling people names when they don't say their shibboleths in the proper order, instead of engaging with them as human beings; it's a truly noble, admirable trait, and definitely makes the world a better place.

I guess its not so tough for strippers seeing as how they generally have Yale degrees to "fall back on" too.

just another exploited guy trapped in the life, i guess.

xpost Ah, the privileged disapproving of the privileged. Good show!

CODY: You know, I think a lot of people assumed going into stripping that I would start to think of men as, you know, chauvinist pigs who wanted to objectify women. But in fact, I developed a lot of sympathy for men after stripping, because when they are in the club, when they are in that situation, they're kind of powerless, and they're there because they are looking for companionship and they're looking for intimacy. And it was up to us to provide that.

HAMMER: So you kind of felt sorry for them?

CODY: Yes, a little bit.

HAMMER: You weren't just there to take their money and their dollar bills.

CODY: No.

HAMMER: You were actually providing a service of putting a smile on their face?

CODY: Exactly. Which made it all the easier to be condescending.

(P.S. I don't find this point of view, or interview, to be entirely unproblematic...not to mention that it's a CNN interview, and all that that entails...but I'm a hell of a lot more inclined to defer to a stripper's judgment on whether it's appropriate for mutual exploitation to be a part of the dialogue about stripping than I am to defer to Sterling Clover's judgment about said topic.)

"There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips."

With porn, it's like "sure: visual stimulus for masturbatory purposes, makes sense to me!"; with stripclubs, it's more like "here's a whole bizarre roleplaying universe where one gets to feign a sort of Bizarro-world courtship (with little or none of the fun, subtle intricacies that make courtship both delightful and daunting/scary) and roleplay in a way that doesn't seem especially rewarding or worthwhile." Obviously, others' mileage varies on this question, and as a married guy I can only really imagine being at a point where I was like "if I do not see a Live Nude Girl I am gonna die of starvation here pretty quick."

I am very puzzled by how reactionary people get over men claiming they don't enjoy strip clubs; "don't go to them then!" seems like an oblique way of saying "let's not discuss this matter, some people enjoy them, THAT'S ALL!" which resembles the odious "discussing music DESTROYS THE MAGIC" folderol

though finally, yes, the Plath line is priceless, I'd assumed it was a joke - the lighting's much better at the bus stop, if you're so bored in a strip club that you'd rather read you oughta go home and read

I still can't decide whether I think that's utter bullshit or a quite reasonable take on the idea.

There's definitely some truth there. Your friend is also right in that any sexual arousal gets dialed down a lot, especially if you're with a group.

I think the problem is that disgust or casual disinterest of the "I read a book the whole time I was there" variety are the most socially acceptable responses to strip clubs, so conversations about them start to seem a little like roleplaying themselves (even if those are people's genuine feelings).

Fwiw I've never been to one, so I'm saved from having to offer up an opinion about them.

Nah, not really, I just think it's funny that the knives come out on both sides whenever we have one of these threads.

I've had a better time with peep-show booths like the Lusty Lady in Seattle, where the protocol is very straightforward. and the one place I went to in Portland with some friends after a Hold Steady show was kind of great; the dancer looked at me appreciatively when I drunkenly mimed the Magnetic Fields' "Reno Dakota," which was playing as she finished up. the number she had just finished dancing to was Neu!'s "Hallogallo."

while i do believe this is the case for a lot of people, and it does sound pretty harmless put that way, i don't know if it really is just as simple as curiosity being satisfied. especially if it's a habitual thing. isn't this just a diplomatic way of saying that these guys secretly wish they had power over women and are glad of a place where they can "comfortably" exert it? that's a little squicky i think.

squickier than first-person shooter videogames? or pornography, for that matter? i mean, we have lots of ways to sublimate urges.

ok, then paintball tournaments, where you do actually shoot at people. i'm just saying that fantasy roleplaying has a place, even if it's not a fantasy you share or role you relish. stripclubs are big commercial rpg's, in a way.

What's the difference between wanting to have "power over women" and wanting to participate in a sexual (or sexually-charged) experience in which the usual complicated interpersonal negotiations that take place between two people are -- thanks to commerce! -- bypassed, allowing the sexual element to be foregrounded and, essentially, the sole object of discourse?

I mean, I'm sure for some people strip clubs are about the power of getting a woman to do your bidding for $$$ (even though that power relationship is very double-edged at best, as many strippers have pointed out in their writings). But strip clubs, prostitution, pornography -- I'd wager that all of them have, as a large part of their appeal, the desire to have a sexual experience that's solely about sex qua sex. To actually not have to worry about the human being; to enjoy another person as, yes, an object (or, to use a slightly less loaded term, as a means to an end).

[I think this seems more immediately creepy in the case of strippers, because unlike pornography, it happens in person, and (wild tangent alert) unlike prostitution, we don't "code" strippers as inherently dissipated -- and I don't think it's unfair to guess that the average stripper in the U.S., at least, is probably of a higher socioeconomic background than the average prostitute (though I may be wrong). So you're basically, y'know, ogling the girl you might otherwise know from class, or from the house three doors down, or whatever, and putting $5 bills in her G-string.]

I don't know -- on the one hand, I can understand how the human desire for "no-strings-attached" sexual experiences can seem creepy and depressing: it often feels depressing to me, and even though I don't think it's a uniquely male impulse, I'm still willing to acknowledge that women are far more likely to be on the receiving end of its uglier aspects.

On the other hand, I don't know that sexuality is really something that can be expected to follow the laws of mutual respect and whatnot. I suspect we're better off embracing that wilfulness, and acknowledging that there is an amoral, self-centered aspect to sexuality -- and trying to suppress or legislate that aspect out of existence will, I think, just make it stronger.

However after some months she left, because according to her, while the job is ok, the girls are fine and most of the crowd are, her and a lot of the other girls had major problems with stalkers. We're talking, seriously messed up men who assume they have made freinds with the dancers and try to follow them after work/find out where they live. The girls had to have a bouncer with them after work and shit. Fuck that for a job!

Stripping in general seems to want to work around that. Notice the type of personality strippers are supposed to have: they're supposed to come out like they want to show you something; they're supposed to seem powerful, almost domineering, almost predatory. Why? Not because it's sexy, I don't think! But rather because a stripper who seemed too shy or reluctant -- a stripper who seemed like she was really giving up something -- would make men feel like they were oppressing her and hurting her. And that's deeply unsexy. Hence that reverse power dynamic, where the strippers begin to seem in charge, as if they're subjecting the patrons to something -- it's surely more comfortable that way.

The same could probably said for voyeuristic fantasies and peeping toms and so on: I really think their idea might be that they want to look at someone sexually, but from some hidden place where it "doesn't matter," where the woman doesn't even know she's being observed. The desire would be to somehow gaze without consequences -- without intimacy, responsibility, or anything. And it seems like it's hard for plenty of men to fully understand why that gazing would seem invasive or threatening or an issue of power and control, because men have pretty much zero experience of anyone just wanting some removed sexual gratification from their bodies.

Anyway so yeah, I think there are lots of complications in that little jump to power-and-control there.

I have to say that this really does not jibe with any strip club experience I've ever had (in fact, the one time I went to a strip club with gay men was maybe the most irritating visit I've ever had to a strip club; there's nothing that ruins the entire vibe quite like someone you've brought with you loudly judging you for having the nerve to like looking at breasts and vaginas). Also, particularly in the context of bachelor parties, that entire scenario seems to completely miss the two major reasons guys have bachelor parties:

1) Culturally, it's the last socially-acceptable time they get to be "wild" in some way, shape or form with the opposite sex.

2) Culturally, it's the last time it's socially-acceptable to hang out with the guys without responsibilities requiring you to check in with your spouse.

There is a gigantic difference between, say, that one friend who always wants to wrestle (you know you have one) and going out to a strip club with your friends; there's no contact, there's very little fantasy-swapping (mostly because you're all looking at the same thing) and, most importantly, there's not even a remote possibility of someone cumming. Saying that going to a strip club with your friends is merely a way to act out sublimated homosexual desire is about as credible as saying that going to a strip club by yourself is pathetic and creepy; you're so busying decoding the behavior to find the hidden, actual meaning that you're kind of missing the fact that straight guys like to look at naked women.

men have pretty much zero experience of anyone just wanting some removed sexual gratification from their bodies.

This is so key, and I think one of the things that (speaking very generally here) women find most difficult to relate to in men's experience -- in other words, the idea that men want to be found beautiful and wanted for their bodies.

(I say "difficult to relate to" because, for many women, that kind of being-wanted is the bane of their daily existence, no?)

xpost Dan Perry also OTM, the tendency to "queer" (I don't use that word pejoratively) male-male interactions seems deeply suspect to me, kind of a cross between "HAHA U R FAG" and wishful thinking (depending on who's talking)

That's a whole other issue of people who have separate modes of like (a) work, (b) "going out," meaning buddies and drunkenness and chick-searching, and I guess (c) dating/relationships.

As I say, this isn't my theory, but what I understand to be the general therapeutic take on groups of men going to strip clubs; that said, makes perfect sense to me. This isn't a "THESE GUYS ARE GAY!" deal as lurker implies; it's much sadder than that - lots of men (say, oh, 100% of them) wonder what it would be like to have sex with men, but most of them are too flipped out by the potential consequences to their daily lives if they actually took those questions into in vivo situations i.e. having sex with men. Sharing a sexual experience - which is what going to a strip club is, pretty plainly I'd say: a group of men experiencing sexual arousal about/within the same object - without having to actually "do something gay" allows straight men to dip their toe into the water without getting wet.

Admittedly I'm radical on this question: I'd also argue, strongly, that MMF threesomes are about the males experiencing one another's sexuality through the medium of the woman involved. (NB the woman in this scenario is having an entirely different experience.)

I'm not going to flat-out lie and say there's nothing sexual about going to a strip club; that would be silly. I will say that there is nothing inherently sexual about the people you are sharing the strip club experience with, at least not for me.

Now I have nothing against the concept of strip clubs. I see nothing wrong with the idea of guy paying a chick to see their tits. I mean everyone from time to time wonders what that hot boy/girl looks like beneath his/her clothes and usually guilt free. (Well, not me but that's a whole different bag of neurosis.) And if that's all that went on in these places (stripping), then I would be cool. But when I see girls grinding on men's laps, then I think the barriers between roleplaying and reality become blurred. And that is what worries me.

Now if we were talking about a couple of guys sitting around watching porn, well...

(one should add here to nabisco's point that the $$$ is a sort of necessary component of the thing -- its a way of guys feeling that the power balance is more equalized. if guys just paid a flat cover (even one that was large enough to make up for the amount tipped) then the whole thing would probably feel very different.)

because there are always gonna be other men at the strip club, a man going alone to a strip club isn't really going alone: he knows he'll be with a group of men

unless it's a totally lame strip club I guess, or he's there way early in the morning

(and for sure, no question, going to a strip club isn't the same as boning the guys in the strip club. I'm just saying that there's a pretty strong case to be made that the two exist on a continuum, and that that continuum is "enjoying sexual experiences with other men.")

Honestly, I think you've got a much more cogent/coherent argument if you're talking about pro wrestling.

("and for sure, no question, going to a nice eatery isn't the same as being a cannibal and consuming the guys in the eatery. i'm just saying that there's a pretty strong case to be made that the two exist on a continuum, and tha continuum is 'enjoying gastronomical experiences with other men.'")

I was gonna get around to that next! And then boxing, which happens to be my favorite sport.

No need to get snarky Sterling - I'm not accusing Dan of fearing his inner what-have-you, just advancing - offering, really - the possibility that a group of people sharing an essentially sexual experience are at some level enjoying that experience with one another. I would say, though, that if you go to a diner where cannibals are known to eat human flesh and say "oh yeah but I just ordered the grilled cheese," it's fair to say "yeah but surely you had some interest in cannibalism - you could've made yrself a grilled cheese at home"

though again, I'm not inventing this shit whole-cloth: this is what most of the psych theory I was taught in my schooling had to say about the whole phenomenon, and I hardly think it's such a difficult idea to digest: guys jackin' off together = somehow guys enjoying a gay experience, no? How is a group of guys enjoying their erections together all that different?

xpost sorry Sterl I rather liked your volley there!

That's another of the many things that makes stripping not totally appeal to me -- that when exposed to it I feel a total social pressure to conform to a specific notion of what being a guy means. Bring a stripper into the mix and the only real option is to act like, well, a fratboy (sorry to generalize but that's the best shorthand) -- anything else would leave you looking and feeling inappropriate. (Looking and feeling weird, geeky, gay, prudish, creepy, asexual, like a big pussy, or whatever else.) Which is fine if you already subscribe to that code of behavior, but if you don't it can really chafe to suddenly be in a situation where that kind of thing is really being imposed on you.

E.g. the last time I saw strippers, at a friend's bachelor party, there were people having creepy reactions on either end of the spectrum -- one dude who went scary misogynistic and made a super-creepy joke about raping a stripper, one dude who was totally shyly uncomfortable about the whole thing and stayed out of the room -- and between that you could feel some kind of pressure leading everyone to approach things the same way, kind of settling by pressure and instigating one another to act the way guys are "supposed" to. And it's weird to think that I honestly don't know how many of the guys there are naturally like that, and how many of them just started acting like that because everyone else was starting to, and nobody wanted to be abnormal.

I've been to strip clubs a couple of times. I'm a girl for those of you not up on the latest Abbott news.

The first time I went was with a bunch of friends who had moved out of Boise and were visiting. They heard about this thing called 'Art Night' at a Boise strip joint called Erotic City (sadly, no Prince on the PA). Boise outlawed public nudity unless it was a model posing for an artist, so you'd pay to get into Erotic City and they'd give you a little dollar store pad of paper and pencil, ostensibly to draw the 'models,' who were of course just nudie body-makeup stripper girls in the obligatory lucite stilettos. FWIW, my friends were three gay guys and a very anxious Mormon girl, their buddy, who obviously didn't want to be there.

I was pretty damn curious what it would be like since really the only thing I had seen to know of the experience was 'Bufallo 66' which was way too stylized to be anything like real (Yes? No, obviously.) And yeah, it was skeezy and the girls all talked to me especially like 'finally, someone to sound off on.' It was a very peculiar circumstance: the boys gave me some money to get a dance (back then I was happy to play the mascot who would do things for laffs) and the stripper, a pretty cute girl who looked like a better-fed Faruiza Balk, told me first off to put my tip in my mouth. Then she basically tongued it out of my mouth, a very awkward surprise that I can't imagine was really scintillating even for the voyeurs. She then did the usual routine, windmilling her calves around in an unnatural manner and, while basically venting to me because I was one of the girls. "God, it's been the worst fucking night. Four girls didn't show up, so and so at that table is being a real creep and not tipping, etc." She was doing extra-special stuff, breathing on my neck and things none of the dudes got, and also just sharing her frustrations at the sort of phoniness of it all, neither of which she would do with guys. I found it odd: I mean, I knew the extra visuals were for some kind of mass show, which was really awkward, basically turning me into some sort of male-turn-on accomplice, but I got none of the pretense, no forced flirting or anything, I just got to play the talk therapist.

My cumulative strip club experience has lead me to conclude it's just one of the most forced and awkward situations possible. It's not really healthy in Boise either, the laws are complicated and backward but basically it means bars get 21+ age strippers, "juice bars" let 18+ strip, and the juice bars are always next door to the world's seediest bars from which the biggest old creeps come to give these 'barely legal' women a much harder time than if they were working at a place with an actual bar (with which comes bouncers, security, etc.). So it's fucked on that level. And I agree, it's totally not just cliche but depressing, the uniform and persona the girls adopt (shaved beaver, body makeup, forced idiocy). But sometimes the girls transcend it, I mean they're gloriously athletic and lithe and flexible and beautiful for all that, it's the context and the stifled screams of sexual tension everywhere that fucks it all up.

Ha, my one "abnormal" response that night was that the least "good" of the strippers that night just somehow seemed really nice -- like she seemed really cool -- and so I had this inappropriate desire to, like, talk to her. Which was submerged for the evening, obviously, but I do remember talking to my other friends months later and having them all be like "yeah, she seemed really nice! I wish she could have just hung out for a while!"

This is probably another reason that strippers are not traditionally meant to seem personable. (Ha, it's like they have to do everything in their power to not seem too much like actual people, because that would be creepy.)

Ragingly OTM. I'm sure most men involved get turned on if they get a lapdance (it's generally hard to keep your remove when there are boobs in your face), but just watching the stage or whatever isn't exactly hard-on city.

But when I see girls grinding on men's laps, then I think the barriers between roleplaying and reality become blurred. And that is what worries me.
The reality is, these guys paid for a girl to grind in their lap. They know that. They get to see that skin, up close; get that hair in their face; get the visual from their own eyes' actual perspective instead of from a camera lens. They may not get to act on it right then, but they get to take it with them. Maybe you don't have any need to feed your erotic imagination, what the fuck if others do?

The first time I went to a strip club, it was for lunch, with my (female) boss and a customer of ours. We had wanted to treat him to a spa day for his birthday, which he vetoed and suggested this instead. Once there, we had some excellent fried chicken w/fixin's. Then on a lark, he bought us each lapdances so he could enjoy our discomfort. My boss shrieked through most of it, waving her Nordstroms card at the dancer, saying "take it, take it, just stop!" I had a great time though - we talked about shaving vs. waxing, where she'd got her outfit (at the mall), and laughing at my seriously freaked out boss. The customer was cracking up the whole time. He took me out to a shooting range a month or so later, so I could get over my girly hoplophobia, but that's another story.

my uncle used to produce porn films, so growing up i knew a lot of strippers and porn stars, and some of them were totally normal well adjusted people, and some of them were total headcases-- a lot like you find in the real world. they mostly weren't very well educated, but then again, neither are most people. having known them sort of informed some of my earliest sexual fantasies, in a way that is much more personal than the way most people are introduced to/interact with porn... so maybe i find it easier than some people to deal with how i feel about strippers and porn or something.

my first time at a club was kind of bizarre though. my uncle took me while on a business trip in florida, his ex-girlfriend was a featured dancer in town to dance at a club in miami. he did a lot a lot a lot of blow and he probably gave away $30,000 in tips that night, which got us a lot attention of course. he instructed me to 'choose a girl' and i was a little bit scared that maybe he meant 'choose a girl to bring back to the hotel with you tonight' at first, so i was hesitant for a while. then as i got drunk, i was bored watching him and 'his' five girls all drinking dom and laughing and whatever, so i walked around and kind of tried to figure out who it might be nice to talk to AND to look at/get lapdances from. eventually i picked a girl that awkwardly looked kind of like the stripper version of my girlfriend. she came to the table and in the course of the conversation i discovered that we liked a lot of the same books. she was really into kafka. so we had this conversation about writing and books that was occasionally peppered with lapdances, which by this point became incredibly sexy because i knew that she was gorgeous and smart. eventually she offered to come back to my hotel room (no issue of payment was discussed, but i assume that she meant to be paid), but i had to sadly tell her that as much as i'd love to, and as drunk as i am and really really really really would love to, that i'd feel weird going home and facing my girlfriend. when i got back to the hotel i watched the matrix reloaded, which sucked, and i seriously kind of wished i had brought her back, to be honest. since then, my girlfriend has actually told me that she doesn't have a huge problem with the idea of me sleeping with a prostitute as long as i was safe about it, but that she'd be bothered if i had slept with that stripper because of the kafka thing and the potential for there to be a realer more true connection there.

btw, the sylvia plath thing is totally lame. were you doing that to be ironic or what?

I didn't do the Sylvia Plath thing to be cute or clever, but now I wish I had. I don't know if that would have made me SuperCool or an Ultratwat.

I was simply bored. In fact, I spent about a third of the time during my recent Strip Club adventure reading the club's rule on the table ("AT NO TIME may a dancer ask a patron to buy her a drink...") or watching the Family Guy on the television above the bar. I guess I find Strip Clubs to be too boring/disturbing to be fun.

Perhaps I should have done a couple of lines before i went.

you're talking about people with no hands, or what?

I have tended to view strip clubs as arenas of the kind of gendered power-play Kim describes upthread, but I find a lot of the (presumably) dudes' responses here genuinely enlightening. I'll admit that feeling sympathy for the potential loneliness of male strip club goers is generally the furthest thing from my mind but this comment:

I think one of the things that (speaking very generally here) women find most difficult to relate to in men's experience -- in other words, the idea that men want to be found beautiful and wanted for their bodies.

(I say "difficult to relate to" because, for many women, that kind of being-wanted is the bane of their daily existence, no?

strikes me as really insightful, not least because it makes sense for me of an exchange I had with a (more or less straight) male friend years ago. he sort of incoherently commented that he'd love to be a girl for a day or two in order to dress and fix himself up to elicit random male appreciation. I was utterly befuddled and responded, "but that's the worst part about being a girl." which now that I write it out doesn't seem directly on-topic, except that I think it maybe has something to do with my kneejerk hostility to strip clubs and the evident reality that noncreepy men (and probably many women) don't have the same kind of problem with them. any way. keep saying smart things, people in this thread!

for a second i confused andrei kirilenko with andrei rublev and i was very confused.

my little brother threw up in the bathroom at the strip club at my bachelor party. we were all ready to leave and then it was like, uh, where's your brother? we got him out ok. he's a good kid.

the male-female perception gap is one reason i love hanging out with women. just that sense of getting a different view of the same reality. and i'm often surprised how naive women sound to me when they talk about men, so i can only imagine how naive men tend to sound talking about women. but then at the same time there are a lot of relationships of one kind or another -- parents, siblings, friends, mates, lovers -- that leap those obstacles, so we know they're leapable. we're a kind of interesting species.

(And again, I should be open about my radical position on this: stadium full of men cheering on sweaty groups of men on a field who push strenuously against one another in an attempt to drive a ball across an agreed-upon barrier? to say nothing of the vocabulary that's grown up around descriptions of said events: "he got real good penetration there," etc.? ritualized no-loss-of-face gay experience imo. I don't mean gay pejoratively in any sense there, ffs. When I said "suck one cock" upthread, I meant it - I think American culture would be a lot better off if more guys felt comfortable satisfying their curiosity on that front instead of becoming predatory businessmen, sports fans who use the first person plural to describe their relationships to their teams, etc)

I think you are compressing a gigantic spectrum of attitudes, behaviors and desires into a tiny box called "gay" here, or at least that's the way you are presenting your argument; it does not de facto follow that looking at naked women with other men implies a sublimated desire to be with those men, which is precisely what your argument is implying. It does imply that men like looking at naked women, regardless of whether they are together or in groups, but for your hypothesis to be valid the lapdances would be happening in full view of all the patrons, not in a private room away from prying eyes.

(This does say something very interesting about bachelor parties, though!)

E.g., one aspect of this that fascinates me is that there's a whole fashion-derived and largely woman-enforced notion of what it means for women to look attractive, and it doesn't match up very well at all with what men find visually attractive. (Even what men find visually attractive in a non-sexual way!) Its point is not necessarily to attract men on that level. But there's a component of it that really is meant to attract male attention -- only it seems calibrated, somehow, to attract a certain kind of attention, to somehow cut through that cognitive dissonance and establish the way men are supposed to be sexually attracted.

Being skinny is a good (weird) example of this. I mean, I get the sense that being a bit un-skinny is more viscerally sexually attractive to men in general -- not necessarily obese, I guess, but definitely not "skinny." And this may seem to read too deep into subtext, but being skinny seems like an attempt to modify the male attraction, to kind of ensure that it's directed at the head and not the body -- to seem more like an animal and less like a pillow. More importantly, there's a whole code there where certain things (like being skinny) get assigned a social value, totally apart from what's actually attractive to men. And that, too, modifies the male attraction, because now what the woman's offering isn't something the man just wants, but something that's acknowledged to be valuable, outside the realm of sex. (I.e. "they don't just want to fuck me -- they're attracted to public, social value here.") In that sense we kind of have a system of like physical attraction as distinct from social attraction, and of course it's mostly women who police one another about sticking to the latter.

I can't remember where I was going with this, except that yeah, of course lots of (all?) men have some desire to be wanted for their bodies -- we never get this at all! We may be less likely to mind the thought that someone just wants to fuck us and doesn't otherwise care who we are -- it'd be refreshing! Yuk yuk, etc. And it seems a bit baffling when women say that it's a bad experience, because we all see the levels on which women really are harnessing and courting and using that kind of attention, and we know that most of them seem to on certain levels enjoy doing that -- so yeah, it can seem baffling and/or hypocritical for women to claim that it's all bad.

Yes yes yes and thank you. This seems like the obvious difference between "stylish" and "sexy", the stylish version being designed to single out only those men whose taste would be in line with that style and/or whatever demographic considerations it represents, so that the dresser's sexuality/attraction is only being displayed/offered to sort of a chosen group. I think this works in little ways for everyone (see every mention of "stripey shirts" on ILX EVAH) but w/r/t Nabisco's point, the more a dress style diverges from what "men" consider "attractive", the more true the rule will be.

Well not to go too much into clothes as the only example of this, but that distinction gets harder to sort out when we're talking about women deliberately showing skin, looking sexy, etc. -- that's trying to pull of something really complicated with male attention! (It may be that in situations like nightclubs, male attention is suddenly at enough of an actual premium that women will bend further and further toward whatever it takes to get it.)

(Oh how banal: it is all about supply and demand, heterosexual people as consumers of the opposite sex, advertisers of their own product, always with the branding!)

I wonder how long it would take the average man to become ambivalent about getting that kind of attention. I really can't tell whether it'd be days or decades.

mph! i don't think that's entirely true. like most men are not going to say, wow that A-line cut is totally perfect for your silhouette, but style plays into which women they notice. i've totally seen dudes on ILX fixate on details like the shape of the glasses a woman wears, etc.

I'm not touching the skinniness thing, because it's too fraught, but I don't think men are innocent in the whole placing a premium on that, either. but this discussion gets depressing quickly, so whatever.

Haha, ask any pretty straight boy who ever worked as a photographer's assistant/design house/etc or was sent to run errands in Chelsea. A friend of mine once had to run around picking up stuff for his boss, one of the items being his boss's really tiny, fancy dog in a stupid fancy bag, and then carry it with him for the rest of his trips, giving all the wrong signifiers. He was a little shaken up about it the next time I saw him!

(those Axe commercials are so gross.)

ahem. or I'm a huge geek.

I like Tracer's phrasing, though, because it suggests another way of framing this male fantasy: "we are impersonally excited by and drawn to YOUR bodies, so why can't you openly do the same for us?" As if we're actually burdened by the attraction/need and would like that to go both ways.

heh. what I dig about you is how you don't dismiss my totally rigorous Buffy-episode example out of hand.

"we are impersonally excited by and drawn to YOUR bodies, so why can't you openly do the same for us?" As if we're actually burdened by the attraction/need and would like that to go both ways.

the times when I've been in mixed company and women have openly expressed impersonal attraction to, ahem, the male form, it seems to make the dudes present kind of uncomfortable. but maybe that's insecurity, because the women aren't talking about them?

Anyway I feel like despite all this talk it's not really anywhere near that black/white for men/women, so maybe the whole conversation is a bit aimless. Plenty of guys managed to turn heads, and plenty of women don't, and in the end I'm not convinced the experience of the hetero sexes in this arena is nearly as different as it starts to seem when we've spent a while picking it apart.

evidently not, but as I say, it's not an opinion I pulled out of my ass (block that metaphor) - I first heard the take from an MFCC with 30+ years' experience who was one of the most respected (and non-radical) voices in the entire Californian therapeutic community - and it's not a "tiny box called 'gay'" - it's an enormous box called "sexuality," which for every man includes heteroerotic & homoerotic urges, but these latter ones are generally frowned upon by society. I'd still argue that the experiencing of sexual feelings in a public space around a shared object (I use the word "object" a little pointedly here) is a largely homoerotic experience, but it's not like I wanna go to war about it with you - you say tomato, I say penis, 'sall good

hetero men are "gay" together when there are no women present, like sports, etc. a woman present enforces the heterosexual norms.

Titty bars are breasts-as-decorations. That isn't gay. It's objectification of women.

(I thought this was a good thread, and from what I can tell many other people here did too -- so, um...)

I have only been to strip clubs in connection with bachelor parties, but none of my experiences made me reach for the Sylvia Plath. Are the strippers only talking to you because you have money? Of course. Are lapdances weird? Yup. But in my mind strippers are not greatly different from the aggressive bartenders and waitresses at legitmate establishments who will flirt with you for a bigger tip.

It comes down to this, if you don't like strip clubs, don't go. If it's a bachelor party, tell your friend the groom that you'll catch up with him before and/or after the stripper part of the evening. I'm not sure who you think you might be impressing with the smug world weariness.

Yes; they have extensive education & experience in human behavior and its meanings. I know I'm kinda outta step in advocating (or at least subscribing to) this kind of orthodoxy, but yes: the opinion of a person whose schooling & career involves the description and explanation of human behavior carries a lot more weight for me than the opinion of somebody who's just sorta comin' up with stuff on the fly. Similarly, I would rather have somebody who went to Julliard explain Mozart to me than somebody who never studied music.

also where's the evidence that there's much more about "seeing boobies with other guys" than "seeing boobies" going on?

also to what degree is it that the "other guys" (to the extent this is a group expedition) make it feel more comfortable to see the boobies rather than vice versa, a sort of safety in numbers game?

The desire would be to somehow gaze without consequences -- without intimacy, responsibility, or anything. And it seems like it's hard for plenty of men to fully understand why that gazing would seem invasive or threatening or an issue of power and control, because men have pretty much zero experience of anyone just wanting some removed sexual gratification from their bodies.

...and the other about women's attitude to being the object of the male gaze.

Well I think there's some severe cognitive dissonance in most women concerning the idea of being found sexually attractive: on the one hand it can be inconvenient, invasive, even degrading, but then on the other hand most women in some way revel in it, court it, expect it, even demand it, or base some bit of their self-worth on it. There's a constant push and pull surrounding that, and some nuanced distinctions being made about the way they want men to be (or not to be) physically attracted to them. And I think the upshot is that women are mostly trying to harness that sexual attention and redirect it into something slightly different.

i didn't mean that anyone on the thread was having trouble getting their point across.

That's right, all behavior is based in attempting to impress others. That's the only way to interpret what happened in that story.

hey on a tangent i'd like to ask sterl what he means by this - do you mean liberal in a legislative sense or in a social? i ask because the nz government has legalised prostitution, which i think is more pertinent to your example than homosexuality (and nz has civil unions as well), but i don't think either strip clubs or homosexuality are exactly socially accepted.

one aspect is even i think that gay culture as such (i.e. expressly gay things) has a large camp and sexually libertine element (that isn't the same as the simple fact of homosexuality, but is sort of homosexuality and then) that extends to strip clubs (if partially as camp/fetish objects) etc.

ingrates

This does not really bring to mind "courtship at its most traditional"!

wow, I went to a strip club last night for the first time (in Toronto, so wholesome and polite, as above) and we ended up at the House of Lancaster/Paradise but we were actually looking for this place:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v622/dysign/ilx/?action=view¤t=BabyDolls.jpg

plus they gave me pot!

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Sunday, April 23, 2006 12:28 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

We couldn't find the place though, we drove up and down Ossington. :(

i'd be shocked if that place were still open!

i had some friends that went on a sunday morning/afternoon (after a night of partying) and said it was both amazing a horrifying.

we found it listed under La Mirage and Baby Doll Club when we were googling trying to find places.. but Paradise ended up pretty fun. Four girls in a nudie bar is still a bit of a novelty I guess, everyone seemed to like us (but no lap dances.. too shy)

ha ha - so what inspired the ladies night out?

One co-worker broke up with her girlfriend this week and needed to go out and stare at some fresh boobies I think! Just one of those suggestions that turned into a "yeah, let's do it!"