Untie! 5

It's easy to have strong feelings about sex workers. I've had some strong feelings about them myself. My problem is that I can't be in the same room with them when I'm having strong feelings. I'm not a very natural performer, is what I mean. I don't mean stripping, I mean being entertained. Maybe it would be different if there weren't a hundred leering jerks around, but I doubt it. Even if I was the only leering jerk in the world, I would probably be lousy company.

On my first trip to a strip club, there was this crazy blonde who grabbed my crotch and asked if I was gay. I told her if I wanted that kind of treatment I would have gone to my senior prom. One of the problems with being witty in strip clubs is that nobody makes any money off it. Then this pimp came over and tried take our picture. He must have thought we had really hit it off, because he was very enthusiastic. He kept saying that you can't keep a trick, but you can keep the memories, and then he'd do this little jig where he'd shake his whole body starting from his ankles and going on up to his head. It was the same crazy clown who announced the girls when they were about to dance. Very theatrical. In the meantime, the girl had jumped in my lap and started making faces at the pimp while he hollered "electric!" like a lunatic. He had this chintzy little Polaroid for which he charged ten bucks a pop. I didn't even like the girl, so I told them I was broke on account of being a college student. "Come see me when you've got some bread, son," he said. The stripper gathered herself and gave me a cold look. "You may be in school, but you need some smarts."

Show and Tel is much less of a production than the place I went in college. When we first showed up, I was sort of expecting that kind of experience, with aggressive girls and the shystery staff pimps getting mixed up in everything. But it was much tamer by comparison. Maybe three girls approached me in all, with one being a man--and only the man came back after I snubber him once. Other than that, I had only to avoid eye-contact with the dancers and not yawn too much. There was a guy announcing the dancers but I never saw him. There was a bouncer at the door and the rest of us fine gentlemen; but thankfully there weren't too many of us, either.