You’ll Find Me in Da (Strip) Club

This past week I finally went to my first strip club! My life has previously been bereft of strip clubs. That’s not to say that I haven’t had other strip experiences. I’ve gone to a few male strip shows. I also recently saw Magic Mike XXL and had a very similar experience as my friend Erin where people basically treated the movie like the strippers were actually there. Yet somehow I hadn’t made it to a real strip club. I’ve even been to Las Vegas MANY times, with guy friends, and they’re always like “no I don’t like strip clubs I don’t wanna go wah wah wah.”

I suppose most people don’t find it concerning that they haven’t been to a strip club, but I will readily admit that the more I can’t have something the more I want it. So when I found out last minute that I was now part of a birthday event involving a strip club, I was ECSTATIC.

And unlike many other things in life, the actual experience did NOT disappoint. Not only did I have a pretty epic time, I also learned several important things about going to strip clubs.

Let’s set the scene! This was a birthday event for one of my male friends. The night started at a bar downtown. I had prepared with a mutual female friend. We had gotten some cash, pregamed, and agonized together over what exactly one wears on a super hot night to go to a bar and then strip club. Our final decision was jean skirts and cute shirts. This was a bad decision, and I will explain why later.

Anywho, so we started downtown meeting our guy friend and one of his friends. I realize if we keep saying friend over and over this is going to get confusing, but I am also loathe to name people who may not want to admit they were involved in this madness, so I’m giving everybody code names. Female friend is now FF, bday friend is BDF, and his various friends are X1, X2, and X3.

X1-3 showed up at the bar as we were drinking and waiting for 10:15, when apparently a limo was coming to get us. I had never met any of the X friends before. They were all males, and all apparently familiar with the strip club life. All were quickly told this was going to be my first time. All begged me to get a lap dance, and I said I’d consider it.

At 10:15 our limo showed up, and this was when I started my learning experience. You see, I assumed somebody had rented a limo from some random limo place. You know, like little girls do for their sweet 16 or prom or whatever. No.

Lesson Learned 1:  Apparently, strip clubs have special limos you can get to come pick you up. You can tell it’s a strip club limo as unlike normal ones, there is a giant tv in the limo playing videos of the strip club. X1 kept recognizing people in the video. X1 may be a little overly familiar with that particular strip club.

We got to the strip club, and first thing I noticed was the ATM in the corner. Here FF and I were all concerned about making sure we had a bunch of cash, and they keep an ATM right in the lobby. I bet it charges a lot though, so maybe it’s still a good idea to bring your own cash.

We were quickly ushered to our table area. We apparently had bottle service, so there was a giant bottle of vodka at our table along with several mixers. We were barely there a minute before the swarm of women appeared.

Lesson Learned 2: If nothing else, this confirmed the age-old adage that everyone has different tastes. There was every possible kind of beautiful woman you could imagine, and the six of us had very different opinions on which were the most beautiful. Several times, all I could think of was the moment in Fired Up! when they're looking around at all the hot girls saying "it's like the hot-chick produce aisle! I don't even know where to start. Do we go from tall to short or blond to redhead? Maybe just iPod-shuffle mode."

Oh and the dances! Let’s talk about that. I ended up getting 3 lap dances over the course of the evening. When we first arrived X3 had spent a few minutes explaining some general rules of the club. A dance is determined by when the song ends. A dance is $20. Shortly thereafter FF decided to buy me a dance.

Lesson Learned 3: Strippers will cheat the dance rules. Okay maybe not all of them, but definitely that first dance I got was the worst. It was like 30 seconds, and then she charged both me, and FF, because neither one of us realized the other had paid. CHEATING I TELL YOU!

Dance 2 was shared with X1, and involved much more talent. Also this was when I realized that strippers smell AMAZING. I don’t know how they do that. I should have asked, as some of them were way more talkative than others. I also noted that the clever strippers took off their ridiculously tall shoes to give lap dances. Very smart of them.

I probably would have been quite happy not getting any more dances at that point, but BDF decided to buy me another one, and I figured it’d be rude to say no to the birthday boy.

Lesson Learned 4: Do not wear a skirt to the strip club. My third dancer was my favorite. She was super nice. They had told her it was my first time there. She led me over to the side and to my shock, pushed my legs apart. This was the beginning of some acrobatic feats my mind can barely begin to process. I probably would have enjoyed the experience more had I not been concerned the entire time that I was flashing the rest of the room.

This also brings up one of the things I never quite learned the entire night – what does one do with their hands? Are you or are you not allowed to touch the strippers?? I thought I wasn’t supposed to, but then I’d look around and people were straight up squeezing things I didn’t think we were allowed to squeeze.

Now I will say one drawback of being a girl at the strip club is you get to peek behind the curtain. I wanted to be dazzled by these women, and I was. But then I’d go to the bathroom and there’d be strippers in there clearly messed up and ruining the illusion. I don’t understand why the strippers don’t get their own bathroom. This is another unanswered question I may have my entire life.

Ooh, another question – what is the point of making it rain?? Near the end of the night one guy was just throwing tons of $1 all over the stage as the girl wiggled her butt near him. I understand that if you go up with money they come dance with you. Okay, I get that. Throwing extra money keeps them there longer. But this guy was just continually throwing the money. Like a $1 a second. Surely one can space it out longer? I will tell you now that stripper did nothing extra special for him (that I saw, on the stage. To be fair I have no idea if maybe she went to give him an extra dance later) than she had for anyone else. The sheer amount of money he threw boggles my mind. She couldn’t even pick it all up! They had to give her buckets. BUCKETS.

It seems like for every moment I learned something I just had more unanswered questions, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe one is never supposed to really understand the wonders of the strip club. Maybe it is meant to be a memory clothed in confusion and soaked in alcohol. If nothing else was gained from the night, I am a little more hesitant to ever quit my job and become a stripper. That shit takes skillz.

I Just Wanna Dance

I love to dance. For serious. It’s one of my favorite things in the world.

A little over three weeks ago I hurt my knee. I generally don’t care too much (one can always drink more to ignore the pain) except that I haven’t been able to jazzercise, and since at times I can barely walk I also haven’t really been dancing. It’s feeling a little better today so I’ve been groovin’ around the apartment. Of course that probably means it’ll be worse tomorrow, but that is literally a problem for another day!

Now just because I love to dance, one should not assume I am a “good” dancer, or that I like any kind of dancing. If you said you loved music, would I assume that means you love every genre there is? I mean maybe you do, but you know what happens when you assume.

My brother is actually a pretty decent dancer. He was impressing my friend Kate with his moves last weekend. I was super happy they played Gangnam Style because he loves it and rocks the hell out of that song.

My own love of dancing started young. There are some home videos of my parents playing Paula Abdul songs and me prancing about the living room at like 3 or 4 years old (my brother is also there shaking his diaper butt around a little. It’s pretty funny). I spent half my young years begging my parents to let me take ballet, and finally my friends and I were enrolled at a studio.

None of us were particularly good at that point. I kept with it for a few more years though, dreaming of someday becoming a famous ballerina like my teacher. My dad built me a barre so I could do my stretches and exercises at home. I made gradual progress, as evidenced by my yearly role in the Nutcracker. I started with super small things like the angels behind the Sugar Plum Fairy, a party guest, to mouse, and eventually I was one of the dolls at the party that dances around after it’s wound up. The doll was my favorite. Plus, I was an adorable doll. No, really!

That's me!

However that year my instructor determined I was ready to move to toe shoes and start taking classes basically every day with the more serious students, and I promptly quit. This is actually one of my worst traits; I do tend to quit when things get too hard (this also happened with piano, trumpet, soccer, cheerleading, and god knows what else). After that I took a year of jazz, and then stopped dancing altogether. 

I was ecstatic in middle school when they started holding school dances. My main motivation to move up to high school was the fact that they had dances more often. Everyone else worried about who they were going with and what they were going to wear. I could care less. Honestly I preferred going by myself so I didn’t have to deal with someone the entire evening. Same thing when I turned 21: I was more excited about going to bars to dance than I was about the ability to drink legally. You know that Dane Cook spiel about women going to bars and dancing around their shoes in a circle going “I just wanna dance!” Yeah, that’s totally me.

Now some people have taken this to mean I would enjoy things like going to salsa or swing dancing. Since you don’t know until you try, I have gone to salsa once or twice, and I hate it. Basically it comes down to the problem that I don’t really like dancing with people, and I especially hate dances where someone else is in charge and directing me around. One of my friends claims this is an example of my “control issues,” but I’m not even going to designate that nonsense with a response. I don’t particularly like grinding for the same reasons (not to mention that basically it’s a random person attacking me with their crotch for an extended amount of time, but to music. I don’t see how that makes it better).

My typical Saturday morning

What do I like? I like dancing at bars, weddings, around my house in my underwear, or hell, anywhere that has music playing. I’ll dance in the middle of the store. I’ll dance about in the living room at a house party while everyone stares at me like I’m a lunatic. You know that knee injury I mentioned? Well, this time around it was from jazzercise, but the initial injury was actually back in November, dancing like a madwoman at the office party!

I can’t say I dance particularly well. I dance what I feel, and it’s not super awesome or snazzy. Half the time I feel like I’m really dancing to the wrong beat, or at least not the same beat everyone else is moving to. I mainly dance with my hips, and there have been implications in the past (and outright statements) that I dance like a stripper, but I don’t really see it.

But the best thing is, I don’t even care. You know that quote to “dance like nobody’s watching?” That’s what I do. I dance pretty much the same when I’m in my apartment baking as when I’m out at the bar. If someone offered to teach me to “dance well” I’d probably ignore them, because I have fun the way I dance and it doesn’t matter to me how it appears to other people. I don’t want to think about it, I just want to do it.

This is probably why I love dancing so much.  With everything else in life I am constantly worrying about what other people think and if they’re judging me. When it comes to dancing, I’m honestly have a “to hell with it” attitude, and that’s amazing. Now if only I could apply that to other areas of my life, I’d be set!