Addicted to stripclubs?
Sex columnist Dorothy Black talks to a strip club frequent flier to discover where the appeal lies.
Stripper
So here’s the story.
X is married with two kids and has a full-time, senior-positioned, demanding job. On the side, and unbeknownst to X’s partner, X likes to unwind at top-end strip clubs.
Well, I say ‘unwind’. I actually mean, ‘go to a strip club after work (during work) with a friend (after concocting some fib about traffic or working late), get completely rat-assed, go wild with the dancers, max the credit card and eventually, at the end of the evening, shag the friend before going home’.
Typical dude, you might say. Yawn. Boys.
Except that X is a woman.
The friend she goes with is guy. Also married, with his own family and set of lies.
In fact, I was supposed to be interviewing him. You know, to get the inside scoop, the insightful nitty gritty, the real juicy from a man who’s a strip club frequent flier... But I doubted I’d get more that the obvious, ‘Tits and ass on tap.’
Boys. Yawn. They have a limited vocab sometimes.
‘It’s easier for him,’ says X. ‘After all, he’s a guy; his wife doesn’t really think twice about it the “golf days” and the “after hours work meetings”.’
I call X on a Saturday afternoon and she divulges info to me over the phone during window periods when hubby’s not home.
There is a ‘before’ date, she says, a night a few years back when it all started. ‘In a matter of hours, I went from being totally prudish and against strip clubs, to being, like, “When are we going again?!”’
It’s pure escapism, X tells me. ‘The world outside just doesn’t exist anymore. Nobody gives a shit; there are no airs and graces; there’s no judgment – anything goes; you can do whatever you want.’
Well, whatever you want if you’re able to drop a few k without blinking.
‘The whole taboo of it appeals to my darker side. I had so much fun when I was single; I felt like I stepped into a cage when I got married.’
I can’t help but wonder why you’d marry anyone that made you feel like that in the first place. And then I wonder how many people out there are living double lives. Oh, I remember, lots. They email me with shit like this on a regular basis.
But back to the strip clubs.
For myself I don’t have any problem with strip clubs and strippers. Maybe with the logistics of management, but, hey, people get treated shit in all kinds of jobs and as X points out (as she’s now become friends with ‘the girls’), all the women that come over do so on their own accord.
Of course, they’re coming from Eastern Europe and who the fuck wouldn’t want to get out of there to anywhere else.
Anyway.
The last time I went to a club, I went with The Don. For a crazy-priced, outrageously short, lap dance I chose the very pretty ass of a very wonderfully perfumed Katja. Only problem was, I wasn’t totally into it, so while she was gyrating her punani in my face all I could ask her was whether she shaved or waxed, cos HELL, that was one very neat pussy.
But that’s just me and I could be in the minority. X reckons more women would go and get totally into strip clubs if there weren’t such heavy societal pressures not to; if it weren’t considered so ‘bad’.
Problem with that idea is that it being ‘bad’ is exactly what appeals no? But yeah, it would be cool if we could all get our skank off without being made to feel like freaks. Or lie about it.
I think about going again, and then about The Don; sitting in the room with Katja, naked and dancing on him. I remember watching him get into it and thinking that all it needed to be cool was for him to make eye contact.
But that wasn’t really our relationship at the time and even if it was I don’t think I would’ve been able to make sexy time with him while she was around (‘They don’t do,’ says X. ‘They let you do.’).
Maybe, simply, I wasn’t drunk enough. Who knows.
X and I talk some more, she confirms the commonly held theory about men : ‘When guys get together, they change. Bad behaviour isn’t restricted to class, race or money. In fact, the more money you have, the worse behaved. Boys will be boys and they don’t need a strip club to do that.’
Sometimes, quite often in fact, I feel so naïve about people. This is one of those conversations. I finish up with X, hang up, go make some coffee and think about Katja. I remember her still. To her? I’m one of thousands of faces she’s danced for; a paying client, nothing more.
It’s probably the reason I’ll never totally get strip clubs or enjoy them 100%. Not sober at least. But oh, how I do like to push those personal boundaries a bit.
Mavericks anyone?
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- Women24