Strip Club Week, Day 2: The Stripper Force-Field

The Mints I dealt with were
curiously nude.

When we last chatted, I was in the middle of my first strip club experience. Let's return to that den of sin!

Mints was the kind of place where a hostess seats your party at a table. I later learned that other clubs let you kind of roam around or hang out at the bar, but at Mints they kept the men on a tight leash. The other things that made the ladies of Mints different from those at other clubs I later experienced in the States:

• They took off everything, and I mean everything
• They worked with a force field

One of my friends called over one of the girls, who was dressed in her not-yet-naked attire. When she showed up, he whispered in her ear and pointed at me. She nodded and gave me one of those "come with me" gestures. I had no choice but to go with her — when a woman in a bikini gives you an order, unless that woman is Joy Behar, you follow that order.



IT WAS NOT CALLED "THE CHAMPAGNE ROOM"

Assume the position.

We arrived in a closed-off room that had a few pairs of chairs spaced apart. I sat in one and she sat across from me. She introduced herself — I can't remember her "name" but I'll call her Agatha — and she we made small talk — very small talk — as we waited for the current song to end.

Then our song began. Then she began.

I sat stiffly (I said stiff-ly, not stiff-y) in my chair with my hands on the arms like the Abraham Lincoln statue on the back of the penny. She started off dancing suggestively in her bikini. I was already uncomfortable because I have a problem making eye contact under normal circumstances, and I was raised to not stare at people. Also, I was raised to not go to strips clubs.

Agatha's routine followed this pattern:

• Dancing in front of me, mostly in her own world but checking every now and then to make sure I was still in my chair
• Leaning into my left ear and blowing — into the ear, that is
• Slowly leaning back and returning the favor on the right side

There was no physical contact the whole time, but I felt the Stripper Force-Field, an invisible perfumed barrier that brushes against you as the girl leans into you. It was a very odd experience at the time because I'm a big fan of personal space, I hadn't yet experienced riding a rush-hour New York City subway, and I think by that point in my life not even a half-dozen attractive women have ever been that close to my face.  

Then she removed her top and presented what was lurking underneath, and here's where it got weirder. The few times I'd seen a topless woman it was in a movie, including that Kelly-McGillis-emerges-from-the-shower scene that I had the pleasure of Witness-ing with my parents and younger sister. I'd never experienced a woman looking at me looking at her in that state of undress. My instinct was to turn away, but I quickly remembered that my role was to watch. So, I watched.

Agatha seemed to be seeking some sort of reaction, so I did the polite thing by nodding and saying something like, "Very nice." I wasn't never a great judge of this sort of thing. I mean, I'm sure there are guys who categorize breasts by size, shape, and other related features, but even today I don't have any sort of checklist when it comes to those categories, and back then I certainly didn't have enough experience to make any sort of judgment.

AND THAT'S NOT ALL

You'll never look at one of these
the same way again.

How could I have forgotten that she's supposed to take off everything? Well, I was soon reminded of this detail, and as she removed her G-string, I became slightly uncomfortable. When the strippers at our table or on stage went au naturel, it wasn't as personal as when it's a one-on-one activity. In the former case, it's like I stumbled into someplace where a woman happened to be naked; in the latter, it's a woman disrobing for my benefit (and her own, too, since I was paying her).

I think the only time I saw full-frontal other than in a clinical setting like biology class was in junior high when some kid showed me a porno magazine (the source of which I've long forgotten) and it quite honestly freaked me out because there was a picture of a woman just lounging in a chaise longue — which, incidentally, is correctly spelled longue not lounge, according to Wikipedia — completely nude and she was smiling like a normal person like the photographer just showed up and was like, "Would you like me to take your picture?" and she was all like, "Sure. I'm naked right now, but I don't feel like getting out of this chair, so I'll just pose right here."

So anyway, the woman was stark naked, and dancing, and turning around and bending down so she could see me upside-down through her legs, and her looking at me the whole time for some kind of approval was making the situation about a million times more uncomfortable than when she just removed her top. Because as little as I knew about judging breasts, I know even less (and still know close to nothing at all) about judging that...uh...area of female anatomy.

Thankfully, she didn't get too close to me at this state of undress, but I was still wishing for a thicker force field.

AND THEN IT ENDED
The song finished, Agatha stopped, shook my hand, and started to put her clothes on. I tipped her and returned to where my friends were seated. We stayed a little longer before heading home. After all, we had classes the next day.

I didn't feel as if I completed a rite of passage into adulthood, I wasn't dying to return (though return I did), and I definitely had no plans to sneak off a strip club by myself (there was an instance where I went to a club with some friends ran into someone from high school who actually was there by himself, which I might discuss later this week).

The experience felt like another one of those things you do at college that breaks up the on-campus routine, like going to Laser Tag or some volleyball tournament. Truth be told, however, if my Laser Tag or volleyball experiences involved women taking their clothes off, those stories would make this a far more interesting blog.