Strip Club Week, Day 1: Welcome to Strip Club Week

Whoops! Wrong stripper.
But that IS a very sexy car!

Even though I've already told my best strip club story, I want to back up a moment and share my overall musings regarding what is referred to by a number of euphemisms, including "adult entertainment," "gentlemen clubs," or, as we'd say when we'd drive across the border into Canada, "the ballet."

I don't know whether I'll have enough posts about strip clubs to fill a week, but "Strip Club Week" on a blog sounds almost as cool as "Shark Week" or "Exotic Hamburger Week."

Or, maybe it doesn't, and it actually sounds misogynist, pathetic, and soulless. But anyway, here's the first post.

Before I'd ever set foot in such a place, my only impression of what a strip club would be like was formed from movies that included scenes in strip clubs, which usually starred Eddie Murphy before he started wearing fat suits or co-starring with children or talking animals, such as Beverly Hills Cop. These movies were mass-market films that presented strip clubs — if I can accurately summon the memories from my mid- to late teens — as tantalizing dens of masculinity where men whooped and hollered and waved rolled-up dollar bills in the air, and the women were not tragically deformed by plastic surgery or drugs.

The women also wore a lot of makeup, never completely disrobed (a rare topless shot was as risqué as it got), and, if I remember correctly, occasionally wore outfits made of feathers. I should note that these movies were made in the 1980s (which could explain the feathers and why the men all seemed to be wearing plaid dress shirts), and they weren't the kind of movies that showed anything seedy, like if Jodie Foster's character grew up and starred in a Taxi Driver sequel where instead of hooking (or maybe in addition to hooking) she worked at Larry Flynt's Hustler Club.

(The movie would end with Travis Bickle showing up with a flamethrower to fry Larry Flynt in his wheelchair, and I know you'd pay to see that.)

Anyway, onto my first (and, alas, not last) strip-club experience...


SPICE UP A BORING EVENING WITH SOME "MINTS"

This is the kind of "mints" photo
I'll be posting.

The first time I went to a strip club was actually a spur-of-the-moment thing. I was a college freshman sitting in a dorm lounge with my brother's former and current roommates (he began attending the same university a year earlier and we lived in the same dorm). It was about 7pm, and a Wednesday, and we were bored, so one of them said to the other, "Let's go to Mints."

I didn't know what Mints was, but I knew it wasn't a candy shop.

It took less than an hour to drive from Buffalo to the Canadian part of Niagara Falls, where the drinking age was 19 and my fake ID from Maryland, I state I'd never set foot in, was more likely to find success. It was already a weird evening because I'd never been out of the country before, and it the oddness increased when we stopped off to exchange our dead presidents for Canadian cash, most of which featured pictures of Queen Elizabeth or some kind of goose.

My friends advised me was to "act normal," though I didn't really know what normal behavior at a strip club was. Specifically, they warned, whatever happens, do not touch the girls. My experiences with women were pretty limited, and I was shy, and I wasn't one of those guys in high school who (if I can digress) would greet certain girls with hugs give them lame neck massages during homeroom when they're looked tired or upset and do the "touch the arm or leg in a supportive way" move to show that I'm listening or to accentuate a point I'm trying to make.

In short, the no-touching rule wasn't going to be a problem.

WELCOME! LEAVE YOUR DIGNITY AT THE DOOR
When we walked up to the club, I could feel the bass of the dance music, and I was impressed with the soundproofing abilities of the facility's construction, because the volume level went from about a 2 to a 15 as soon as you opened that thick entrance door.

The thick-necked Canuck approved my ID, so we went inside. I made a number of observations at that moment which hold true for most of the other strip clubs I've attended:

• The clubs pump some sort of artificial air that's not quite air conditioning, but re-conditioned air conditioning, like the way refried beans are beans that are, uh, fried again?
• Most strip clubs have a particular smell — and I don't mean the smell of old G-strings. It's a smell that I can't identify, some kind of perfume that tells you you're in a strip club. I never smelled it anywhere else in the world (besides at other strip clubs some 400+ miles away) until I walked into an Abercrombie & Fitch. If you want to know what a strip club is like without actually entering a strip club and having to see naked women, go to your nearest Ambercrombie & Fitch and inhale, and don't let the stares of the dimwitted flip-flop-wearing greeters intimidate you.
• The most attractive women working at the club are actually either the bartenders or the coat-check girls; that is, anyone whose job does not involve removing her clothes. Which is some kind of paradox worthy of a doctoral dissertation.

NOT THE KIND OF CLUB FOR WHICH I'D APPLY FOR MEMBERSHIP

It's marketed like a strip club, anyway.

Loud, thumping dance music. Overpriced drinks. Women who would never date me in real life. It all sounded like the clubs I'd go to where the women kept their clothes on. The main difference, besides the taking-off-the-clothes thing, is that at the strip clubs the women act like they're interested in you.

Granted, it's the same kind of attention you'd receive if you entered an animal shelter wearing Lady Gaga's beef tuxedo, but it's very jarring if you're not expecting it. I enjoy the experience, in fact, because it's the time I can be approached by, and then reject, a half dozen or more moderately attractive females who want to spend time a little time with me.

I wasn't so naïve to ever think these women were interested in the cut of my jib — or the cut of anything else — but I did initially feel sorry for these women, believing that they were being exploited or were disrobing in public because of dire circumstances. It was only as I noticed that most of the patrons turned into infantile imbeciles did I realize it was we, the men, who were actually being exploited. It's not the kind of exploitation worthy of a large banner and a march to City Hall, but still!

"AND IN MY DAY, THE STRIPPERS WORE PANTALOONS!"
Three curious facts about my first strip-club experience that prove How Things Have Changed since then:

• The cover was five bucks
• The drinks were five bucks
• The private dance was five bucks

And this was five Canadian dollars, back when the American dollar was as strong as Bill Clinton's libido and for which you can get $1.25 Canadian plus a bottle of Labatt Blue. For a college student, that was still a lot of money to be spending on a night out, but the most recent time I walked into a strip club and saw the "menu" (more on that in a future post) I realized why the older folks still talk about when a bottle of Pepsi cost a nickel.

SO ABOUT THAT "FIRST TIME"
I've already blown through 1,200-plus words already, so I'll end the first installment of Strip Club Week here. I think I need to take a shower and prepare an eye cup full of bleach before I continue.