My Stripper Story; and, My Apology to Waffles

So apparently Waffles and I are fighting because I suggested that a picture of Very Josie's decolletage left too little to the imagination to publish.  He commented on Josie's site that "...I normally like Gary but boob censorship has got to stop! Down with Gary!"


Now usually I would just go to his house, knock on his door, and kick the everloving shit out of him. But I think he actually might vibe on that.  So instead I'm going to offer an olive branch, and give him what he and the rest of the readers of this little chucklefest seem to want:

All of a sudden I'm thirsty

There.  You happy now?  Take back the down with Gary stuff.  In fact, sing my praises.  Do it now! Or I swear to no god I'll never publish a picture of a set of tits ever again.

Without further ado, then, my two stripper stories, one about the first stripper I saw, the other about the day I decided that strippers suck.

I grew up in Peabody, MA.  US 1 runs through so there are a lot of highway-type businesses; you know, gas stations, diners, etc. And right on the highway, just after the gas station where I used to work (the Rock and Roll Texaco, now a Pump-n-Pantry) and the State Police barracks, there's a strip joint that's locally famous: DB's Golden Banana.  And like so many of my fellow idiot friends, I was taken to the Banana to celebrate my 21st birthday. I absolutely intend this pun: it was a seminal event in my life.

We got seats right up front near the glass and watched with enthusiasm as one pretty girl after another pranced her ass along the stage.  One girl, though, made quite an impression: dirty blonde, big-titted, curvaceous, and (at first) dressed neck to ankles in a white lace body stocking.  To this day, the song "Move It on Over" by George Thorogood brings a faint smile to my face. I lost my license that day; actually physically misplaced it, never to be found again. I didn't care. MMMmmmmm...God, she was pretty. And since I didn't yet understand that, like every female sex worker, she fucking hated men, I was still nestled in the warm and comfortable delusion that she enjoyed her work and her clientele.

I remember her fondly.  I would normally say something like "I wonder what she's doing these days," but I'm reasonably sure, since by now she's around 50 and way past her prime, that she's trolling some street corner offering $10 handies to cover her nut for crack.  Hey, I wonder if that's why they call it crack - because that's what they use to pay for it! Who knew?

Anyway, so that was my first stripper.  Now we fast-forward a few years to my first lap dance. It was - where else? Las Vegas, NV, at a joint called the Palomino, which is apparently a famous place there.  It was a night of firsts for me: I'd never been to a bar that didn't serve alcohol, for example. Also, I had never seen so much of a female body with an explicit understanding that there would be positively no touching.  But I get ahead of myself.

It was a work thing, the reason we were in Vegas.  We'd won some supposedly effort-inducing incentive trip and got a weekend in Vegas, in August.  Quite an incentive for a fat man.  130 degrees and bright, punishing sun.  Just the thing to turn me into Jew Jerky. Yeesh. Anyway, we were all there, bosses and underlings both, and one of my running crew sees a lady who I would like (redhead, curvaceous, dressed in sheer lingerie) and sends her over to me for a dance.

"Care to dance, handsome?" she says to me, so right away I know she's a drunk, a liar, or both.

"No thanks, sweetheart," I demur.

"It's actually all paid for," she says, and points to my boy Stevie, who leers evilly.

So, what the hell.  I let her lead me by the hand to some little side booth and the hustle begins. A waitress shows up. "Drink, sir?" she asks me.

"No thanks," I mutter.

"Maybe one for the lady?"

"Um...sure.  What are you drinking, Jade (or Tiffany, or Cinnamon, or whatever the fuck her fake name was)?"

"Sprite," she says to the waitress, and off she goes.

So Blaze, or Gumdrop, or whatever the fuck her name is, starts taking off her clothes and tells me the dance will start when the next song starts, so that I "get [my] money's worth." Uh-huh. The waitress comes back with a 6-ounce Sprite in a clear plastic cup and says to me, "That's ten dollars."

Ohhhh...I get it now.  That whole drink thing was a hustle from the very beginning.  I was in equal parts pissed off, ashamed for falling for it, and, however begrudgingly, impressed.

Of course, Labia takes one sip and puts it down, never to be gone back to.  Well, you live you learn.  And the bright side is, she is now utterly naked and standing in front of me.  With practiced efficiency she puts a foot on each side of the bench I'm sitting on and, in a show of extreme subtlety, sticks her god damned perfect tits in my face.

I must say, I was impressed.  It was quite an experience.  I knew enough about these things that there wasn't enough money in the world that would be sufficient to get her to let me touch, or be touched by, those magnificent ta-tas. But it was a little much for a 26-year old dude, who has been married for two years at that point, to handle.  To steady myself against the mammarian onslaught, I put my hands down on either side of the bench to steady myself. Unfortunately my hands both hit the tops of her feet, which as I have mentioned were on the bench at the time. In an instant the dynamic of the dance changed.  She leaned in really close to my ear and whispered the following words to me:

"Don't...fucking...touch...me."

I removed my hands as if her feet were carrying plague, the spell was broken, and she started dancing again.

For about 34 more seconds.  Because apparently they use some Euro dance version of songs that last a minute and 15 god damned seconds.  When the song changed she said "thanks, sweetie.  Would you like another one?"

"Another one what?" I wondered to myself, but told her, "no thanks.  Listen, that $10 Sprite, does that go to you or to the house?"

She told me it went to the house, so I tipped her a tenner and got the hell out of there, happy to only be down $20, and however much Steve paid for the goddamn thing in the first place.

When I got back to the hotel room, who do you think the first person I called to tell about it was?  Tootsie, who was at that point my wife of all of about 18 months.

I told her the happy tale, which got her laughing a little bit, and asked me, "so - you gonna do this again?"

"No," I said, and meant it.  I've never paid a woman to have sex with me; I'm sure as hell never again going to pay a woman NOT to have sex with me.

So that's my contribution to Stripper week.  Hope you enjoyed it.  Oh, and Waffles?  Tell the world I'm an awesome guy or I'll do some computer geek equivalent of kicking your ass.