Things Consumed

 

Out of My Element: An Evening at a Strip Joint.

"Arlene inside a strip club. I would not miss this! :-)" - Peter

"In all of my years, I would never have imagined that one day, I would be in a strip club with Arlene Graves." - Michael

It is an open secret in my office that one of my colleagues is a cocktail waitress at a Broadway strip club certain evenings each week. This colleague likes the money, likes meeting guys (even though they are the kind of guys who frequent strip clubs), and likes drinking. She believes the club is glam. And so, when making plans to throw herself a 29th birthday party, she immediately chose a room upstairs at the strip club.

As has been explained to me, there are two types of clubs where women take their clothes off: the kind of club where alcohol is served and employees must keep something (anything) covering their lower merchandise; and the kind of clubs where alcohol is not served and employees take all of their clothes off. The sort of club where my colleague is a cocktail waitress is (obviously, by the nature of her job title) one of the former, a so-called gentleman's club, as if gentlemen pay money to see women take their clothes off.

A number of invited guests balked at the venue, and I was one of them: while I believe that women have a right to take their clothes off (and do a wide range of other services while naked) for money, the non-stripper-owned clubs charge the girls for just about everything, and are based on a very exploitative model. I think all the strip joints should be collectively owned by their workers. Also, I find naked women to be extremely boring. (More on this in a separate entry.)

ANYWAY, I also work closely with this colleague, who was excited about having many guests at her party, and knew I could count on Peter (a friend of more than 20 years and someone with previous strip club visitor experience) to attend with me. So I attended my colleague's strip club party.

Struggling over what to wear to a strip club? This was the most stereotypically girly thing I have done in years. The fifth top was the winner: something from the drag queen shop, under a close-fitting cardigan. Everything else was too respectable. Apologies again to Peter for being 40 minutes late.

Highlights of the taxi ride: I took a taxi from my neighborhood down to Broadway ($30 plus tip). My taxi driver provided some entertainment:

-He played country music on his radio, which was amusing, because he is not from this country, and so has no excuse, especially since he was fluent in English and could understand the sappiness being expressed.

-The first country song that came on I actually thought was a parody until it continued too long. It was about having a child eating fast food from the golden arches, spilling it upon himself, and swearing, which inspires his father to realize that he is a bad influence on his child. It was the worst song I have heard in years. It wasn't even as good as Harry Chapin's "Cats in the Cradle" yet was ripping off that song's sentiment, for those of you who are also elderly and remember that song. (And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon, Little boy blue and the man in the moon. "When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when, But we'll get together then. You know we'll have a good time then..." I looked these lyrics up on Google, so that I don't have to admit that I know almost all the words by heart. Ouch.).

-The next country song I couldn't hear, because my ears were bleeding from where I clawed at them to make the noise/pain stop.

-The cabbie ranted about the obvious evils of putting baseball stadiums in cities where they will clog up traffic. (Because baseball is all about managing traffic.)

-The cabbie said a range of unfortunate things about City employees, unbidden and apropos of nothing in particular, not realizing that my husband is one.

-Where Kearney empties onto Columbus, the cabbie was shocked - *shocked* - that the Muni bus turned left onto Columbus from the right hand lane. He noted that Muni drivers are "nasty people who live in the projects." Well then.

-He had no comments whatsoever regarding the fact that I was attending a party at a strip joint. He was no fool: he wanted a tip.

Highlights of the strip club: where the venerable rock venue The Stone once sat is now a topless joint. I was carded by a man who didn't look at me - obviously. The party was held in a private room upstairs, which allowed me to avoid entering the main floor of the strip club, instead simply going to an elevator off the lobby and going straight upstairs.

The room had nice carpet, a stage with a pole, a full bar, several large booths, and room for a DJ and dancing. The bartender wore an improbably tiny outfit, and made terrible drinks, but the crowd was jovial. Strippers were not in evidence, though their shoes were periodically visible behind a curtain at the back of the stage (which one observer termed "creepy"), and they would periodically come out of the dressing room, not completely dressed as is their habit, to make their way to the elevator and the main club, their brightly reflective rear cheeks reminiscent of the rear view of herds of antelope in nature films.

Peter pointed out that, to earn the right to say I had been inside a strip club, I would have to go down to the main floor with him. I was reluctant, but he suggested that the bartenders there would be much better. I agreed instantly.

There were TWO fantastic highlights of the downstairs main strip club area:

-the Belvedere cape cods (a.k.a. vodka with cranberry juice) were tall, strong, and fabulous

-a perky young woman in a blue, sequined sailor suit did a strip routine to a dance-mixed version of the Love Boat theme song. I am known for my sick imagination, but even I could not have made up something so cheeseball/surreal.

The rest of it was a lot like on television, and generally creepy: women gyrating over men with a glazed look in their eyes... *shudder* My main activity was commenting to Peter on how I thought it wiser for the strippers, when working the crowd to sell private dances, to cover up their rear ends somewhat. Thongs may be popular, but they do not suit everyone: some of those women had cheeks almost as abundant as my own. Also, while I could care less in general about women's footwear (beyond Dr. Martens and Chuck Taylors, which are quintessential wardrobe must-haves for any woman who wants to be just like me), the clear-heeled shoes and other remarkable footwear artifacts would make any drag queen drool. In fact, I had only seen such footwear on drag queens until last night. That was educational for me: I hadn't realized that some of those shoes were actually made in women's sizes! This was a revelation.

We returned upstairs to the party, socialized more, danced a little (which included me dancing with a boy who did not appear to be a member of the party, who wanted to know why girls would come to a strip club at all: in retrospect, rather than saying our friend worked there, I should have said we were all hookers and porn stars, though I feared that would complicate subsequent conversations with other guests), socialized further, and excused ourselves without being able to find the birthday girl/hostess, even with her tall shoes.

We were at the club from 10:40 p.m. to 1:40 a.m., at which point we left to beat the post-last-call 2 a.m. rush. I was in bed around 2 a.m., and slept like a baby, if a baby had four cape cods proportionate to its body weight and slept better than I generally do.

Labels: beyond the norm

posted by Arlene (Beth)8:18 PM

Sunday, May 04, 2008