Portrait of the artist as a stripclub patron

Went to a stripclub this weekend. I added it up and it’s been 9 years since I had been to one (for my pal Zac’s 21st birthday) and that was in Florida. This weekend’s was for a bachelor party. As always, I had a few observations.

-This was the first topless and bottomless one I had been to, as I think there’s some sort of legal thing in Florida about it. Anyway, chatting with one of my buddies and in mid sentence looking right at someone’s butthole. Yeah, that’s gross. Not into it.

-The wife hates the strip clubs. I’ve had plenty of invites over the years that she and I have been together and always thought better of it, knowing that like food stuck between your teeth, it eventually festers and causes ‘relationship cavities’. It’s never been worth it for me to watch a girl dance around and have her pretend to like me (besides, I’ve got a hot woman at home who likes me and she makes me lasagna and watches Dexter with me, which would be very expensive if she were a dancer and I had to pay for all that). But this go-around, my wife gave her blessing and I went to support my soon to be married buddy (with the wife giving the addendum of ‘no touching, please’).

For the record, I have no problem with strip bars, morally (I’ve dated several girls who worked in strip bars). I’ve always felt very connected to strippers because I’ve always felt we’re in the same business. People pay us to play a part. Their part is to pretend like they’re very turned on and that the people watching them are all attractive. The parts I’m paid to play are usually gay men or mentally imbalanced people. But we both have to make a living. And I tip very well for theatrics. Costume, character, and on the rare occasions that they have been funny, yep, I tip well for that too. But for the whole experience, I don’t really get it. I guess it kind of depends on someone’s motivation for going. It’s cool to see beautiful people dancing around but I can’t imagine going and thinking that there was going to be some sort of personal connection, or action or anything. Those cats, coming looking for love or understanding, well, that makes me a little sad. In the few strip bars I’ve been to, there is an air of loneliness there. I’m certainly not trying to be judgmental but the majority of dudes I’ve ever seen at one look starved for affection and attention.

-My wife makes fun of me because I’m always curious about the psychology of strippers. She thinks I’m just trying to be diplomatic or high brow, I think. But it is a fascinating atmosphere, if you’re a people watcher (and I am). For instance, I saw strippers playing pool with customers and it made me think, “Do you let the customer win?” Are guys who go to these places into being beaten or do they want to be in control? When I was single, I loved girls who could beat me at stuff. One time, a girl at an arcade beat me at Street Fighter 2. It was smoking hot. Seriously. The girl herself was OK but her beating me pushed her into smoking hot territory. Strippers have to use a lot of psychology, I’d be willing to bet. Figuring dude’s egos out. Not so much the stripping part, because that’s just acting. But the improv part. The walking around talking part. It reminds me of working at the Ren Fest. Except with more breast implants.

- “Because we can never finish it, Lonette. It's frustrating. I'm like a plug without a socket.”
-Brad Pitt in Cool World.
Anyone ever watch that movie? Anyway, it sort of sums up my philosophy on lap dances. Never had a lap dance. I don’t see the point. I think linearly. It’s like riding on a toy train. It isn’t going anywhere except in a big circle. Sure there may be some trees and a little paper boy and some houses and a little general store and a nice little train station with a plastic old lady and her dog…I’ve totally lost my point on this toy train metaphor. Anyway, I don’t get lap dances.

-It’s probably better, if you’re doing a bachelor party, to be with everyone from the beginning. I joined said bachelor party in progress and was way behind everyone and therefore very self conscious and self aware. These guys were having a ball and I was stone sober walking in. Some places you probably need to be a little lit just to walk in, especially if you’re going to have to look at someone’s poop shoot. If I had to make a rule, I’d say two shot minimum before that kind of thing.

-I used to have a charming quality about me. I was very boyish and sweet. A naïve quality, you might say. I was reasonably aware of it at the time. It got me out of jams and it also kept me from being threatening in situations where I didn’t want to be threatening (drunk people wanting to fight, etc.). But then, I started to lose my boyish quality and became man-ish. This isn’t bad. It’s nice to be treated like an adult. However, being man-ish at a strip club is a much different experience than being boyish. Boyish Matt got his hair tussled and was treated like a little brother by the strippers. Man-ish Matt was told he had nice hair (Thank you, Sapphire) but also treated like meat, a MAN with money, a dude to be worked or get the hell out. It made me feel gross. Then I looked around and realized that most of the dudes there were MAN-ish MEN, lonely suckers with a wad of cash. My friend who I sat with for most of the night, he has the boyish quality I once had, and of course, he was treated very warmly and not nearly as creepy as I was. One stripper sat and talked to him for over an hour, talking about her commute I think.

- I was talking to some of my pals and they were clocking something behind me. Thinking it must be something interesting, I turned around and it was a dude getting a lap dance. And everyone was gawking at him. Or the dancer. Or both. Anyway, major staring. I don’t get that. I think that’s like stealing cable. That dude paid for that channel and it’s his channel. Buy the channel if you want to see.

-Lastly, I’ll say that apparently I’m a big nerd. I was talking to my pal (the boyish looking one) about theatre. It wasn’t a drunken conversation because I wasn’t drunk. Perhaps a mild buzz, but the atmosphere was sort of a buzz killer for me. So we’re chatting (he’s an actor too so it wasn’t just me waxing poetic or anything) and a stripper comes up, looks at us and says, “Who comes to a strip bar to talk?” We giggled like goons. “What’s so important that you guys have to talk about it now?” she adds.

“Art,” says Joe with a completely straight face and not at all sounding like an asshole when he says it. He’s a very sincere dude and probably the only person I know who could pull it off. Anyway, she flashed her boobies and said, “I’m art.” I agreed. And then she left us alone. 10 minutes later she had her ass in some dude’s face. 7 hours later I was talking to puppets. This is our art.