“Give me your ones, your fives, your drunkest frat boys yearning for hand jobs in the champagne room, the business men on overnight trips away from their families. Send these, the single fat guys in their mid-fifties, tossed to me. I lift my leg beside the shiny pole.”
It’s hard for me to admit, but for a while, I used to be the strip club guy. I was the guy trying to talk everyone in to going to the strip club at the end of a drunken night. But that was a long time ago. As I’ve gotten older, and slightly more mature, I’ve come to realize strip clubs are nothing more than an arena for unfulfilled expectations and a first hand look at the worst America has to offer. As soon as you pay your cover and walk in, it’s an immediate reality check. It's like the New Years ball drop every year – so much anticipation and excitement. And then just as Ryan Seacrest yells, “3…2…1…Happy New Year!” you think to yourself, “What an over-hyped let down. I’d rather be at home watching the George Lopez show and eating butter pecan ice cream”.
The problems start when you walk through the black tinted glass front door. You’re usually greeted by a scantily clad hostess and a steroid-injected bouncer with a shaved head and goatee, who’s wearing a Wal-Mart suit and looks like he’s the son of King Kong Bundy. And I’m not sure why this hostess is classified so differently than a stripper. Just because you’re wearing clothes that would fit a four year old instead of wearing nothing at all doesn’t mean you should have a “holier than thou” attitude because you’re not officially classified as a stripper. So you pay your $20 cover to this hostess/stripper apprentice, and let the wallet raping begin.
Upon entering the main part of the strip club, the peripherals are completely overwhelming. You immediately hear the voice of a DJ, who obviously wasn’t gifted enough to make the cut for the morning show on the local radio station. The strange thing is, in all the strip clubs I’ve ever been to, the DJ’s sound exactly the same. I wonder if there’s only one strip club DJ in the world with Santa Claus like powers who magically flies around from strip club to strip club every night. The only difference is that Rudolph is nowhere in sight, and the lead reindeer on his team is a female named Skanky. And Skanky The Reindeer only wishes the red and inflamed area on her body was her nose.
The lighting is usually the same in any strip club you go to. It’s the perfect amount of darkness where you can’t see the strippers faces or implant scars, and can’t tell if you’re putting a $1 or $20 into her garter belt. The strip club veteran will separate his money into different wallet compartments before he enters the strip club, so as not to fall prey to the above lighting trap. The couches are usually black and leather (or pleather). Leather is perfect for strip club furniture, because it provides a feeling of classy comfort, but it’s also easy to clean off spills and/or bodily fluids.
The music is also the same anywhere you go. You get a heavy dose of Aerosmith, Nickelback, Kid Rock, 3 Doors Down, Hinder, and every other horrible band that I completely despise. Sometimes you’ll find a stripper that likes to match her music choice to her character. Like Marilyn Manson for a goth stripper, or Kenny Chesney for a hillbilly stripper. I’m not sure what kind of stripper would strip to Passion Pit, so I guess I’m stuck listening to Bawitdaba.
The strip club smell is very distinct. It’s a mix of dollar store body spray, cigarettes, and shattered hopes and dreams. It’s what I imagine Amy Winehouse smells like if you get within 5 feet of her. I’ve often heard this referred to as “stripper smell”. Every male in the world knows what stripper smell is. You could be on any continent, in any country, in any city, on any street in the world, and if you overheard someone say “stripper smell”, you would know exactly the scent they are referring to.
So by now you’ve entered the strip club, done a quick 10 second survey of your surroundings, and have no doubt already been approached by at least 10 different strippers. When you first walk in they swarm like hungry vultures to a carcass. They usually open with the popular, “Want a dance?”. Or sometimes it’s “Hey sexy”, or “Hey big boy”. When speaking to stripper, notice they will not call themselves strippers. They refer to themselves as dancers. Just like the guy mopping the floor at your high school called himself the maintenance coordinator. No, you’re a janitor. So let’s face facts Velvet, you’re a fucking stripper, not a dancer. You can call yourself a dancer when you choreograph a routine to a Buckcherry song with 9 of your other stripper friends, or if one day you become a Laker Girl. So for now, just stick with stripper. Remember, the song playing later when you’re on stage is called, “I’m in Luv Wit a Stripper”, not “I’m in Luv Wit a Dancer.” T-Pain knows what’s up.
So for the rest of the night, you’ll hear, “Want a dance?” over and over again. If you ever get past that and actually engage a stripper in conversation, be ready for a good laugh. First, pay attention to her name. It’s usually something like Destiny, Chastity, or Lexi. I’ve even heard Tiger, Harley, and Candy. It’s really funny when one stripper tries to stand out and goes for an uncommon stripper name, like Joyce. That’s always a gigantic swing and a miss. “Now calling to the stage, Joyce!” It sounds like it’s alumni appreciation night at the strip club and a 70 year old woman in an apron is coming out on stage to perform. And whatever you do don’t get into a personal conversation with a stripper. The last thing you want to do is hear about the fantastic ham sandwich she had for lunch, or how she wore braces until she was in tenth grade. As soon as she breaks character, it’s over. That means when she stops being Cheyenne and starts being Brenda, single mother of two, you need to get up and walk away immediately.
I really love the “mother hen” stripper (or in this case, the “mother cougar”). You know exactly who I’m talking about. She looks 55 years old but is actually 45, as a result of decades of exposure to smoke and self-tanner. She’s a high school dropout who’s had a meth addiction at some point since she started 25 years ago, and still has the same hair style she was rocking in 1987. Her voice is raspy, and her stripper smell is permanent (which means a hot shower or long soak in the bathtub still doesn’t get stripper smell out of her damaged skin and hair-spray hardened hair). She maintains a small, but regular clientele, and has now moved into the role of mentoring the younger strippers. She’s like a backup quarterback in the NFL. Her best days are behind her and she no longer has the talents she used to, but she’s just happy to stay around the game. It’s all she knows. She’s like Charlie Batch. Utterly worthless and painful to look at, but is always smiling because he likes giving pointers to Ben Roethlisberger. If you’re a younger stripper, she’s the one you go to for leftover antibiotic ointment when you get a strange spot on your labia (time to bleach the stage again), or whom you seek advice from when you’re looking for a good plastic surgeon.
The story I love the most is the, “I’m just doing this to work my way through college” story. Really, because most college students needing money work at the student center or babysit. Babysitting versus stripping. I guess in one job you could lose your temper with an unruly 4 year old, and the other you lose your dignity and self-respect on a nightly basis. A true story, I was once in a strip club and my friends bought me a lap dance (the strippers name was Tiger). She told me she was only stripping to work her way through law school. So naturally, I asked her what she thought about the second amendment. I think she muttered “lollipops” and turned around and bent over. Exactly.
Another funny story I’d like to share is an experience I had at a Canadian strip club earlier this year. Normal protocol in a U.S. strip club is when you are sitting in the chairs around the stage and want to give the stripper a dollar, you fold the dollar bill long ways down the middle, and place it on the stage in front of you. The stripper slithers her way over to you, and usually has some creative way to take the dollar from your hand or mouth, either with her hand or fake breasts. It’s a little more complicated in Canada, because in their currency the dollar is a coin ($1=Loonie, $2=Toonie). We watched as the strippers would finish their sets of songs, then try and scrape all the coins off the stage. It was very awkward to watch this naked woman use her fake nails to try to pry under each and every coin to remove them from the stage. It didn’t help that strange oils and stripper sweat were causing the coins to stick a little bit. After a minute or two of frustration, the stripper usually ended up just using both of her hands and sweeping the coins into a pile towards the back of the stage so the next girl could start stripping. It was actually a very demeaning process, because basically these girls are taking their clothes off for loose change. Nevertheless, the bachelor and I were sitting towards the back of the stage, and noticed that a stripper came out and left her drink on stage, but near the back close to us. So naturally we start throwing coins on the stage at her drink, trying to see who can be the first to make their coin in her glass. So as she’s dancing, the bouncing coins keep making a “ting” sound as they hit the stage or her glass. Many of them are rolling across the entire stage, and either hit her or rolled off. So halfway through her last song, she turns around and yells at us, “Stop throwing coins at me!”, to which my friend replies, “I thought you were dancing for money.” I tried to look as innocent as I could, and the only thing I could come up with was, “I just making it rain.” (If you’re not sure what “making it rain” means, this should help: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=make%20it%20rain.
The stripper responds, “It doesn’t work like that.” I knew that, but that’s what makes it so funny. First, making it rain is done with bills only, because after throwing bills in the air, watching them slowly fall to the ground make it seems like it’s “raining” money from the sky onto the stripper. Second, it’s usually done with $20, $50, or $100 bills. That’s why I found it so funny, because not only was I using coins, but I was using $1 and $2 coins. For the rest of the trip that was known as “making it hail.” It was a first for me to see a stripper not only yell at someone mid-strip, but also to have a problem in which the way free money was given to her. Only in Canada.
Because of these sanitary issues, I’m not sure how some people eat in these places. That’s right, many strip clubs have a menu. To go along with your $8 beer, you can usually order bar food like chicken wings or cheese sticks. A lot of strip clubs even have a happy hour. Because nothing should get you more in the mood for a lap dance than finishing off a dozen wings and wiping barbeque sauce and blue cheese dressing off of your face. I just hope the menu items don’t have ridiculous names like the chain restaurants do. I never want to have to order or anything named Sierra’s Spread Eagle Salami on Rye, or Krystal’s Kreamy Corn Chowder. Or anything at all that says roast beef.
With the holidays approaching, I wonder if strip clubs have office Christmas parties? I can just see the sign up sheet for the pot luck dinner:
1. Angel: Marlboro Lights
2. Bunny: Newports
3. Brynn: Ruffles
4. Lacey: Tic Tacs
5. Jade: Gas station wine
I can just imagine the white elephant gift exchange. I’m guessing a lot of used stilettos, dirty garter belts, and leftover antibiotics are wrapped up under the tree.
So I guess my take home message is that strips clubs are OK only for certain, rare occasions. Bachelor party – have fun. 21st birthday – acceptable. Tuesday night at 8:00 – you’re a huge weirdo. Just understand before you walk through that door what the night will inevitably end like. All you’ll leave with is blue balls, an empty wallet, the overwhelming feeling that you want all sons and no daughters, and the urge to drive straight to church. And gonoherpes.
For reference, part of the real inscription on Lady Liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
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