The Little Stripper That Could

If you've ever been to a strip club, excuse me . . . "Gentleman's" club. . . .

Fuck it! We can be honest, can't we? You and I? We may be gentleman before we enter the club, but we're ravenous wolves once we're in. We don't whoop and holler like you girls do in your silly little male strip clubs. We sit and we drink and sharpen our canine teeth, flick our tails, eat red meat and stare at the flesh writhing and wriggling on stage, the jiggly bits appeal to us the most, but the hair is nice, too.

Anyway, if you've ever dared to enter one, you know that at the end of the night it smells like the makeshift locker room of a platoon of Marines behind enemy lines. It smells like men. Sweat, spit and booze (with a hint of urine, vomit and gas). But there is a special kind of stink on amateur night.

Every thing is special on amateur night: the drinks, the crowd, the music, the women . . . especially the women.

A little note about our beloved strippers, whom we adore from afar: I've heard a lot of women complain about what strippers have that they don't. I've also heard a lot of men hem and haw and try to explain. Is it the moves? The pole? The music? The setting?

No, of course not.

We can't have them. That is what they give us that you can't. We can have you, the wife, the girlfriend, the friend with benefits. We have had you. They are there to be lusted after, not to be had. They are a fantasy and nothing more, and they stroke us from the inside out.

Anyway. . . .

Friday night, crowded together, shoulder to shoulder, double drinks in double fists, us men wait for our brothers' wives and girlfriends and friends to take the stage, to make us want them. It's not hard, but it's easy to fuck up. Surprisingly easy.

I can't blame the husband or the boyfriend who "lets" his girl get on stage. There is something powerfully appealing about knowing a whole club of men want your girl, and can't have her. But you can, and will, the moment you close the door behind you and one of you trips the other on to a bed, couch, carpet, dining room table or back seat. Value is about wanting, after all, and the more that want the prize, the more valuable it becomes.

Another note about strippers: The pros get tired, they become routine after awhile. They dance every night, every day, and it's only natural that they start to get the stripper "look". Powerful thighs, tight waist, heavy makeup, long hair, slightly artificial breasts, eyes that are not always the brightest, but are sometimes dimmed to a soulless luster. Oh, we'll still watch and drool and lust after them, but there's a reason clubs are always looking for "fresh" girls.

But tonight's story is about one special would-be stripper who took on a drunken crowd of men that had had already climaxed and fallen flat on its face by the time she showed her eager, slightly oily face in the too-bright halogen swirling lights of this particular sweaty men's club.

We'd stood, brothers in arms . . . or dicks, if your prefer, and showed our appreciation for women, tall and short, curvy and skinny with primped hair and flat hair with trained dance experience and with none, with costumes and with bikinis . . . . We clapped. We threw money. We drank.

Then Jeanie took the stage.

She was not the stripper type. She wore no makeup, or very little. She was too short, with a pubescent figure, flat chested or close to it, freckled, thin and pale. She wore a black unitard with a leather skirt, black pumps, fishnets and strangely . . . cat ears with a bunny tail. Her themes were a bit mixed, but the music pounded irregardless, some techno no one but a German would recognize. Her hair was too kinky with curls, and too washed out, a faded brunette. Her lips were thin and unappealing, and she had the gawky, gangly look of a fawn on its first uncertain venture into the forest.

And we fell in love with her. Or maybe we fell in love with her eyes . . . her eyes were strong and full of glitter. She looked happy. She looked childlike. She looked like she wanted to be there, and like she wanted us. Each and every one of us. She was all wrong for the stripper profession, for the stripper stage, for the club. She belonged in a bus station somewhere with a "runaway" poster in the background.

She did not strut. She did a funny little skip step, her leather skirt somehow tickling our eyebrows. It was hiked too far up her waist, though her strategy was clear, as it did reveal the back of her unitard, which turned out to have been neatly trimmed into a thong. I had a sudden image of her feverishly cutting away material backstage, cat glasses posed low on her nose, freckles bright red on her cheeks, tongue parked at the corner of her thin lips.

She did not perform olympic-style acrobatics on the pole. Her thighs couldn't have held her. She hardly touched the pole. Instead, she played on the edge of the stage. She played us, the crowd, and we wanted her. She did not hang on the edge of the platform and perform scissor kicks, yoga style; she flipped her skirt at us, did a strange, sexy little snake dance, did that strange, slightly stupid dance from the Fifties where you hold your nose and pretend to be sinking down into the ocean, and it was absolutely, drop-dead sexy.

At one point, she made a show of removing one of her heels, sitting with her thin legs exposed, unbuckling a strap, rolling her eyes at us, making us laugh, then poking her leg out into the audience for help. We envied the man who got to remove her shoe. Then she did it again with the other shoe. She wasn't dancing; she was having fun.

She dropped her unitard and slowly rolled it down until her ribcage was exposed, then looked at us and blushed. How silly of her . . . she hadn't given us her skirt yet. She was more saucy now, motioning for help with her skirt, then chastising the young man who beached himself on side of the stage like a trained seal. The skirt came off. It went with the man as he was escorted off the stage by a trained gorilla. But she ran after him, whipped him around, flowed into his arms, gave him a quick kiss on the tip of his nose and was away before he could get in a single grope, flashing her bunny tail as she ran.

We were in love. Every single one of us. She wasn't a stripper. She wasn't a Supermodel. She was miles from perfection. She was imperfection incarnate and we loved every freckle, every dimple, every curl because of those imperfections, instead of in spite of them.

She danced for a little while. We didn't want it to end. We didn't want the rest of her clothes to come off, because that meant the show was over.

I wondered if the girls back stage were rooting for or against her. I hoped for the former, but I'm an optimist that way.

When she did finally reveal herself to us in all her naked splendor, it was just that, a revelation. She threw her arms up in the air, threw her head back with closed eyes and let us take her all in, her hip bones, her mound, her freckled thighs, her pubes.

We cheered. Us men. We never cheer for strippers. We yell, we shout, we drool, we moan and growl, but we never cheer.

And now, this is the part of the story where I must reveal the great fallibility of the sport of stripping.

Jeanie did not win. She didn't get second prize. She didn't even get honorable mention.

It was fixed. The crowd voted, but the announcer / club owner did not listen. I found out why the next week when I saw the winner on stage and divined the sordid truth.

She may have not won the money, but she should have. She won us over and without half the natural attributes of the others. She won us over on personality alone.

Next time someone tries to set me up with a girl with a great "personality", I'll think a moment before I make an ugly face. Maybe I'll take the risk. Maybe, just maybe, I'll marry someone like Jeanie, whose beauty really makes the overly used, after school special cliche true . . . it comes from the inside, the light, the sexy, happy heart that fills the eyes, the heart and the palate.

Jeanie . . . you were the winner, no matter what they said.

80% nice + 20% mean

A woman's heart is like an onion. I could spend the rest of my days peeling back the layers, only to be met with more layers. There is no inner truth, only layers.

Women have been called fickle, but then so has love, but then I'm convinced that love was invented by women. It's our fault for believing the lie when our genitalia tells us otherwise. After all, can you really blame the billboards for being broke and fat or yourself?

I always figured women just didn't know themselves, didn't know their true nature and spent every day trying to change who they were in an attempt to find out or were waiting for a man to tell them.

I could be wrong.

Now, I realize, it doesn't matter. Men don't have to understand women any more than a fisherman have to understand fish. That is to say, we must must understand female behavior and ignore the rationalizations that justify it.

Case in point: I happen to be dating a drop-dead gorgeous blonde who is a little bit of a ditz, a little bit of a child and who complains endlessly that I'm "mean". She asks me why I'm mean to her. I ask her why she would be with someone who is "mean" to her. She thinks about it for awhile and replies, "Well, you're not always mean. Sometimes you're really nice."

She's right. Sometimes, frequently, I am really nice to her. I cuddle with her, give her sweet kisses on the forehead, tuck her into bed, pat her bottom, make her laugh and generally encourage her to do whatever she thinks is best for herself.

But the mean parts are where I refuse to give her what she wants. I refuse to fall in love with her, refuse to call her my girlfriend, insist that I don't want a girlfriend and that I've been honest from the beginning only to listen to her rationalize in the following manner:
"Well, I mean . . . what really is a girlfriend? What is a relationship? Y'know, it's just friends and--"

"No, you know what a girlfriend is and what a relationship is, and right now, I'm just not looking for that."

"But, y'know, I mean, I just like being with you."

"I like being with you, too."

Of course, when she refers to me being mean, she could be talking about the time I spanked her until she cried because she wouldn't tell me what I wanted to know.

So I ask her why she would respond to such treatment. She says that she doesn't and that she responds much better to being treated nice.

I performed a little experiment on the off chance that I was wrong. Here's what I did:

I was really nice and sweet and kissed her and held her and whispered nice things in her ear about how beautiful she was and how good she smelled and so on. I slipped my hand under her skirt and tested her reaction. Think of it as a litmus test of sorts, except most such tests don't get you laid.

Dry as a bone. She might have been aroused emotionally, but not physically.

Then I was mean to her. I bossed her around, twisted her arm and forced her into my arms and kissed her hard on the mouth and bit her chin and turned her roughly around and had her bend over the counter while I checked her underwear.

She was wet.

Have I proven my case? She was ready and that was all the signal and reinforcement I needed.

The fact is you girls respond to a man's aggression, our assertiveness, our possessiveness. Yes, sometimes it's too much and it's a turn off, but even then there's a part of you that likes it.

The hot blonde I'm seeing (who is my age, by the way, and that is kind of refreshing) complains to no end that I think I understand women, but that I really don't. I always respond that I seem to understand enough to get her on her back with legs in the air, and that I've managed to avoid the usual traps that women subconsciously lay for us foolish men.

I'll let you be the judge. You can throw a pie in my face, slap me, throw a drink at me, if you like, and I'll freely admit that I'm not expert at keeping women, but I've never had a problem getting women.

Maybe that's what she means. Maybe the meanness will get her going in bed, but drive her away eventually.

But then, there's the depth. I'm a deep person, a truth seeker, a man open to discussion and learning from his mistakes.

Confusing, no? Not to me, but then I know me and I know what I'm about.

But I'm willing to be publicly educated so I'll put it to you. . . .

Why would a sweet, beautiful woman put up with a man who was mean to her every now and then?

Date Me . . . you know you want to.

I might be married, but you won't know for sure until we've slept together, after which I will absolutely not, under any conditions, call you the next day . . . or ever for that matter. Well, Saturday night when I've had one too many and feeling a little horn--er, lonely, I might call you then.

It's too late in the battle for equality for me, the man, to pay for dinner, or to drive or to dress nice. You'll need your own car and good plastic. Also, you might go ahead and bring some condoms so I don't have to make any extra stops, though if all goes well you'll be picking me up at my place and returning me there after the date. Please lock the door on your way out in the morning. You might also consider feeding the dog, changing the cat litter and cleaning up a little.

On the first date, I promise at some point to pull down your top and go "Brrrrrrr!" between your breasts, because I know you girls love that, the attention, the admiration, etc. I also guarantee to let you go first through every door and up any stairs or escalators for the sole purpose of watching, and commenting on, your ass. I swear to comment on every other halfway attractive woman, pointing out the parts of their body that are supremely better than yours, and giving you a "I'm just kidding" expression, but which will also have that "Not really" gleam in the eyes. I may or may not nod off during your endless chattering. I snore. It's best to let me wake up on my own, otherwise I tend to get violent. You might consider talking less and listening more. I will have endless conversation about drinking, fucking, sports, video games, other women, my life, my interests, things that piss me off, things that REALLY piss me off, and the time I almost stuck my dick in a cow. Laugh. A lot, and nod, and smile, and lick your lips to let me know you're actually listening.

I will bring lots of drama into your life, and lots of chaos. I like games, emotional games, sexual games, board games, bored games, games where I call you lots of bad things, but only to help lower your self esteem. We both know that makes you more manageable and that you secretly love it. I will admit that I'm not much of a hitter, so sadly you'll have to go somewhere else for any physical abuse. I'll take care of the emotional and verbal sabotage though. We're all weak in one area or another; this is mine.

I won't be isolating you from your friends, unless they're married, give good advice or are otherwise unavailable to me. I wouldn't dream of telling you to get rid of any girl friends that I might be able to sleep with behind your back. Don't worry, you'll find out, that's what drama is all about.

I'm not an attractive man, nor am I thin or young, but you should be both young (or look young) and thin. Don't worry, it doesn't meant I won't date you. It only means I get to taunt you with calls of "fatty" and that you have to go to the gym daily and stop eating, but it's okay, because you're doing it to please me and that's what's important. Also, your breasts should be in decent shape, a nice size and not too saggy. You might consider plastic surgery, implants, tucks, etc. Again, you're doing it for me, but you'll need to finance this yourself.

Girls who are exempt from dating me:

• Anyone nicknamed "princess". We don't need two high-maintenance people in the "relationship".
• Anyone with more than one kid. Shoving one kid off constantly on a friend or family member is perfectly acceptable, but after that your house starts to look and smell like kids live, vomit and poop there. I don't want to meet them and I won't be their new daddy. I don't "do" kids, in any sense of the word. Exception: if you have a daughter that is or is nearing 18, but she better be hot.
• Anyone who is already dating (or married to) someone who is already more of an asshole than me. You don't need me and what fun is that?
• Anyone with family nearby, unless you hate them, then we're in business.
• Anyone in therapy. Unless the therapist has a drinking or drug problem.
• Fat chicks. Don't worry, we can still have sex in between your episodes of starving yourself and going to the gym, but we can't be seen together until you can fit it into your size 4 jeans (or smaller).

I drink. A lot. I smoke. All kinds of substances, even dog poop once, but it was an accident. I frequently have problems with erections, so I probably won't last very long, but don't worry, I'll get off. You may or may not. You'll just have to get faster. Also, I don't do oral, but you will, and you'll probably have to learn to love anal and some other rather nasty things. It just depends on the kind of day I've had and how much I've had to drink.

And I'd like to add I'm very open minded. It doesn't bother me if you have tattoos and piercings everywhere or if you think you might be a lesbian or half lesbian or 1/4 lesbian.

Aaron Diaz Hoal

(Originally published 7/23/08)