Pole Tales

A professor at NYU discusses common themes found in stripper confessionals: http://www.doublex.com/section/arts/my-life-g-string-round-stripper-memoirs. Essentially, these works pretty much fall into a similar format: smart, articulate, educated woman enters the stripping world and sets herself apart from the others while at the same time offering up some lame feminist stuff to stress her kinship in the struggle.

Most folks who have exposure to stripping (either customers or strippers, themselves) will tell you it isn't really that complicated. Women get into stripping for various reasons (money, maybe?) and men derive a sense of enjoyment out of watching them move around with little or no clothes on. Highly technical, I know, but there you have it. The funniest thing about stripping and strip joints is how the customers and the strippers see each other. For the guy, he thinks the chick staring seductively straight at him and thrusting her pelvis in his direction may really, really actually want him--wow, there's a chance that I've still got it working after all, he's thinking. For her, he looks like a giant $20 bill with wandering hands. Nothing more, unless she's doing a little whoring on the side and sees potential in the size of his--wallet.

I haven't been to a strip joint in years. Not that I'm above going, but I do have an irrational fear of being shot and killed in a strip joint and having people say, "Well, old Taras was a pretty good guy and all but he did wind up getting shot in a strip joint. His wife had him buried in Ozona." Maybe I can work on that. Anyway, the last one I was in was outside of Corpus Christi on a fishing trip. Rough crowd in there: mostly roustabouts and other oilfield trash and I thought I might get my ass kicked a few times during the stay. The girls themselves looked terrified and were not highly attractive. During a lull in the action, one indicated her interest in becoming a border patrol agent of all things. Hope she made it.

Wives are typically not fond of their husbands visiting gentleman's clubs. I think most of them probably understand that the dog they married has gone to them before or still goes to them but they don't really want to know about it. The fact is that in most cases, it's probably one of the safest options--he won't really stand any chance of picking up someone like if he was at a bar somewhere. He'll just throw away some money and come home smelling strange and wanting to rub on her. She'll of course throttle the crude advance and everyone will nod off. Maybe he'll be later able to explain that whopping American Express charge to "Executive Enterprises, LLC."