Title: Strippers and drinking -- aw yeah
Music du jour: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Random link o' the day:
The Jon-Jon Diaries
Be Mindful of the Living Force, Young Padawan:
Anakin: "You mean I get to go with you in your
starship??"
Ian: "No, we were just kidding. Fuck off."
Is it bad that I think the Master and Apprentice archive is just so cute? It really is. There's something very appealing about Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn getting it on. You have to know that Obi was jealous of Qui's attention to that little runt, Anakin, and who could miss Obi and Qui smoldering at each other when the kid wasn't around? Tell me you don't see it. You're lying.
Oh, the angst. The sweat. The hair.
See, I really don't dislike men. I can dig male sexuality, as long as it has nothing to do with me.
Speaking of these things, apparently the next Anakin Skywalker has been cast for Episode 2. Anything's better than that rabidly annoying Jake Lloyd. The boy's name is Hayden Christiensen, and I must say, he looks like he'll play opposite Natalie Portman very well. He's got those bedroom eyes and pouty lips. More power to him. Although somehow I have a hard time reconciling this image with the one of the old, puffy-eyed, pasty guy from the first Star Wars trilogy, the old Darth Vader. Yuck.
Marcie Has a Cultural Experience:
I guess I'm just a guy in disguise after all. Steve has a sort-of girlfriend who works at a strip club up in Boulder, and he scored a wad of get-in-free cards for last night, so he invited us along. We rumbled up there in his big old truck, smoking cigarettes and looking for all the world like a pair of blue-collar guys out for a good time. I was decked out in full-blown dyke gear: t-shirt, ripped jeans, Doc Marten boots and one of Cynthia's button-down shirts. All I lacked was a baseball cap and a wad of 'baccy.
I've never been to a strip club before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I did expect to have to check my feminism at the door, or else get thrown out for complaining loudly about how the boobs were fake, liposuction isn't good for you, and why the hell were these girls degrading themselves for primates passing as men? (When, as Cynthia says, they could be degrading themselves for me.) Steve decided that since it's Ian's birthday next week, he would treat us, so we settled in with alcohol and a wad of ones, as I prepared myself to be either disgusted or bored. Unfortunately, I'm not as noble as all that, and I found myself watching a writhing pair of hips and thinking very impure thoughts indeed. I knocked back a couple of sex on the beaches (there is no proper grammatical way to say that, so I won't even try) and watched with interest. This club has four stages; three are in the main room and one is in the smoking lounge. (Yes, there's a separate smoking area; this is Boulder, after all.) The women rotate between stages, doing two songs before they go to another stage, or out to schmooze customers. There's lots of neon, glitter and darkly lit corners, and at the far end of the room is a raised floor area for table dances, complete with comfy chairs. I halfway expected the place to be sleazy, but it reminded me of every other bar I've ever been to, only with barely clothed women walking around. Which is not a bad addition to the decor.
I was surprised, in a clinically detached sort of way, to find that most of the women were quite small-chested. Like everyone else who's never been to a strip club, I had this impression of how everything was supposed to be. And being a lesbian feminist, of course I looked down my nose slightly at strippers, prostitutes, porn stars and other assorted female workers in what amounts to the sex industry. To my surprise, none of the women (except for one) had enormous breasts; nor did they hook up with any of the customers that I could see. None of them looked desperate or unhappy -- which may or may not mean anything -- and in fact, several that I talked to were putting themselves through school at CU. Steve's sort-of girlfriend has a kid and school loans. Not that I suspect she's hurting for cash; those girls were making bank. Bank, I say. I used to think strip clubs exploited women. Now I know better. The only exploitation I saw last night was of men, who were shelling out the bucks as fast as they could lay them on the stage. I saw guys pulling out twenties and stuffing them in womens' G-strings. I saw a guy get pulled up on stage for his birthday while eight women writhed and shimmied around him, at ten bucks a girl, ruffing his hair, rubbing his chest, dancing between his legs, and all he could do was sit there, literally on his hands, and bite his lip. (He had a difficult time walking off stage. Poor bastard.) I saw men pay five bucks per drink and twenty for a table dance, and do it three or four times without even thinking twice.
I think I like a profession where women get to make lots of money off the male tendency to think with the dick instead of the brain.
Of course, they were making just as much money off me as the guys, so this may not be confined to the male gender. I'm such a sucker for women.
Strippers have a way of looking at you while they're on stage like you're the only person in the world. If you place a dollar on the edge of the stage, she'll come over and dance right to you, looking at you seductively, sliding her hands over her body and looking at you like you're the sexiest thing to ever walk the Earth. And you will, oh yes, you WILL find yourself grinning like an idiot and pulling out more dollars, and more, and more. And she'll wink and smile at you when you put the dollar under the strap of her G-string, and tell you things that will make you blush and grin at your own studliness at the same time. Yes, dammit, it worked on me too, and I even knew that's what was going on. Never underestimate the power of paying attention to people.
Look at a person, especially a man, in a way that makes him feel special, and he'll give you the world. Or at least all the money in his wallet.
I was determined that trick wasn't going to work on me, because I'm a girl too; I know how that works. I watched with detached interest a parade of women sliding and shimmying above me on the stage. I admired their bodies, of course, but it was no big deal. I'm an artist; I've seen naked women before. (I'm a lesbian too, which means I've seen naked women in not such an... academic environment, but we won't go there right now.)
Until this blonde girl with the sweet face of a high school cheerleader took the stage. She couldn't, I thought, have been much more than eighteen, the legal age to be a stripper in this state. (You can't drink til you're 21, but you can take your clothes off for strange men at 18. Colorado logic.) She had a soft, rounded body with just the right amount of baby fat layered over wide hips and large breasts, and her curves would stop a train. Oh, but she was lovely. You could tell she wasn't naturally blond -- her dark roots were just beginning to show -- but I didn't care. I was breathless. I laid my dollar on the stage and watched her as she twirled and pivoted around, and then smiled at me. She danced, swaying and turning, doing a couple of moves that made me grin, and then leaned over towards me. She quirked a grin at me and leaned over further , her head right next to mine, and nuzzled the side of my head, then moved back. Her hair dragged over my face; I closed my eyes and rolled my head around, feeling her hair on my skin, exulting in it like a dog rolling around in a warm grassy field. Her hair smelled light and airy, like flowers. Then she pulled back, and the moment was lost in a flash of neon and the cheers of the guys across the stage. But she winked at me as I stammered a "Thank you", and after she was done, I went up to her acting like a schoolboy with a crush and thanked her again.
"For what?" she asked.
For reminding me what it feels like to have a woman's hair on my skin, for reminding me of a woman's scent next to me, for a moment where I could imagine I wasn't in Denver, trying to find something familiar among a group of howling, table-pounding men.
I didn't say that. I just shrugged and smiled foolishly, and went for another drink. And later to the bathroom, to sniffle a little about what I was missing and wanted so badly to find, even in a damn strip club amidst neon and pounding techno music, and fake plastic smiles.
-- marcie.