“Get fucked-up drunk!” barked the DJ, sounding like a broadcasting school dropout. “Make out with your lover!” He segued into a nu-metal song and a tall brunette in a pale blue floor-length gown strutted down the shiny catwalk. She flipped her hair, wrapped a long leg around a well-smudged brass pole, and did a little twirl. Then, leaning forward slightly and pressing her breasts against the pole, she unhooked the halter neck of her gown and slowly pulled her dress down to her waist.
I went to the bathroom to put on some lip gloss. “Hey, you’re cute,” said a woman with short black hair and a thick Chicago accent. I recognized her from the group behind me. “Are you a lesbian?”
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“Hey!” I said, riled up. “Just because I like men doesn’t mean I’m not also genuinely attracted to women.”
“Um, there’s already a special someone in my life,” I said, afraid that if I admitted I had a boyfriend she’d really think I was a poseur.
After the dollar dances, I sucked down my vodka and lemonade, waiting for the next girl to get onstage. Soon the dancers flocked around me, asking one after the other if I’d purchase a table dance. After saying no several times–I was waiting for Jessie to come back–Athena approached. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said. “You want a dance?” I felt guilty and I wanted her to leave me alone, so I put a $10 bill in her garter and sat back. She told me to spread my legs and I did, even though I was wearing a skirt. She slid out of one well-worn strap of her gown, then the other, pushed her dress down to her waist, pulled it over her thighs, and let it fall to the floor. Her body was much bigger than mine, but she was well-proportioned. A tattoo of a vine and flowers curled around her whole figure, and she used a lot of makeup to try to hide it. She crouched on the floor, put her hands on my thighs, and slowly pulled herself up, making sure her breasts grazed the insides of my legs. “No fair,” she said. “You’re wearing nylons.”
So if I had it all figured out, why the hell did I pop such a boner at Dreamers? I turned to Katherine Frank’s G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire for some answers. A cultural anthropologist interested in her own admittedly uptight view of the sex industry, Frank spent years working in strip clubs in a large southern town. Though she originally planned to study her fellow dancers, she ultimately changed her focus to the clientele. She concluded that men make a habit of visiting these clubs–especially ones that permit only little or no touching–for only a handful of reasons: the tease, the power trip, the appearance of danger, and, on occasion, to communicate. A trip to a strip club is temporary and rarely life changing. It’s a safe place where your ego can hang out and know that, no matter what, it won’t get bruised. And it’s a place where patrons not only get to look at naked ladies–they get to talk to them too.
After pulling off her dress, she spread my legs with her knees and crawled forward into my lap. She looked me in the eye and coyly smiled, then leaned back and grabbed her breasts. She stood up, turned around and straddled me, and–leaning back over my shoulder–again grabbed her breasts. I repositioned my arm and accidentally touched her boob. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” I said, and I meant it. But she didn’t seem to mind.
