My Date With A Stripper
Okay, I went on this date strictly for the interest of this web page. I wanted to basically go on a date with an exotic dancer and tell the tale. Why did I decide to do this? Well, these women have guys throwing money at them, and get ogled and groped nightly. I'm sure she'd have an interesting story or two...
It's possible that you might think it's not right for me to do this? For instance, a girl called Maya once tricked me into coming to a coffee shop under the idea that she might use me as a test subject for a bogus study she never even ended-up writing a proposal for. So, it's perhaps not honest for me to go-out to lunch with someone for the purpose of making it into a story for the public domain... Yeah, I can see ethical issues at work. But then again, I never ever ever made indications that I was interested in Ariana romantically, I said to Ariana that I wanted to get to know "the real you." So, technically, I was being fairly truthful; I did want to get to know the real her. As do you, obviously, or you wouldn't be reading this.
If you have any ethical qualms about me writing this, then do not read it. Fair enough? Warning: contains some tiny sexual content. It doesn't involve me, however.)
Turn Back Now or Forever Hold Your Peace... By Proceeding Past this Point, you Forfeit the Right to Criticize me on Writing This Story
On the ride home from the strip-club with my cousin, I told him that Ariana agreed to go to lunch with me.
"Beginners' luck." He chortles. He then goes-on to tell me about dates he has had with strippers. "Oh, this one dancer I went with... It was so cool. After work, she'd come-over to my place. You know, she'd make about $700 a night, and she'd spend it on me. She'd cook me steaks and shit. It was real nice." But, bottom line, he says: "Don't trust 'em, NiceGuy. They're just strippers."
Yes, strippers are not to be trusted. And you can read all about it in the latest edition of No Shit, Sherlock Weekly.
Waiting for 'Ariana'
Ariana should be coming soon. (Oh, by the way, I know that's not her real name, but for the sake of simplicity, I'll refer to her as Ariana throughout this... this little unseemly slice of unpleasantness. I mean, seriously, I could've happily lived my life without wasting two hours with her.) I wait at the Olive Garden. Hell, I don't know if she'll even show-up.
In case I have to wait a long time, I'm reading a book on the nadir of U.S. race relations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Very frightening stuff. Seriously, there was a lynching or a race riot every other month back in those days. November, 1898 Wilmington, N.C. riot (30 dead). September, 1906 Atlanta riot (12 dead). 1908 Springfield, IL riot (7 dead). July, 1917 East St. Louis, IL riot (48 dead). The Red Summer of 1919: race riots in a dozen locations- Omaha, Chicago, Knoxville, Charleston, Baltimore, Harlem, New Orleans, Little Rock, Washington D.C., Longview, TX: (unknown dozens dead). November, 1920 Klan attack in Ocoee, FL (47 dead). June, 1921 Tulsa riot (unknown hundreds dead). January, 1923 attack on Rosewood, FL (8 dead, entire town wiped-off the map). The list just goes on and on and on. Really depressing shit; it's amazing that the country emerged in one piece. Now I understand why so many black Americans gave-up hope back in those days. And having a lot of money was absolutely no protection for a black person either; being successful only made him a bigger target.)
So, here I am, reading tales of this cavalcade of misery. I don't really know if Ariana will even come, to tell you the truth. She might be strung-out on crack right now; I might spend an hour here on my own... Fortunately, I notice she shows-up five minutes ahead of schedule. She's wearing jeans and a tight white t-shirt under a leather jacket. Hmm, well, she doesn't look strung-out on crack. Maybe this will go okay after all?
"Hi." I greet her and try to slip the book into my coat pocket. She, however, intercepts my hand and takes the book out of my pocket.
"You've been here a long time, hmm?" She studies the book-cover.
"No, only a few minutes... I was reading that last night and I couldn't put it down..."
"Hmm, doing some light reading?" She asks. She hands it back to me. "I read kids' stuff like Harry Potter."
"Well, I've never read Harry Potter, so I can't judge."
We are taken to our table and sit-down.
"I love the salad here." She takes-off her leather jacket and plops-down into her sear. "Seriously, just put a bowl of salad in front of me, and I'm happy."
We look-over the menu, the waiter comes-by and we order.
Light Conversation
"So, tell me about yourself." I said. "I'd like to know the real you."
"Well, let me tell you about my family..."
From this point, she proceeds to rattle-off the most incredible list of carnival sideshows this side of the Panama Canal. She's never met her dad. Her aunt is an on-again, off-again prostitute. Her 18-year old brother left home and hasn't been heard-from in years. Ariana has two kids, their father is in the military; apparently they divorced after it turns-out he'd been sleeping with other women. Ariana has been having a rather long-running and somewhat costly court battle over custody as well. (Unusually, her half-sister is a borderline-lunatic born-again Christian who can never pass a church without going inside.) Ariana says in a very up-front manner that her family spans the whole spectrum of freakdom. She is breathtakingly honest, though. After about five minutes of hearing about her family, I'd rather read about race riots and lynchings. Hell, I'd rather be the victim of a lynching if it was the only alternative to living in her dysfunctional brood.
"So... that's my family." She announces semi-proudly. She pauses for my reaction.
"Gosh." I crack a smirk. "In my family, if you don't have a graduate degree, you're nothing." I weakly pound my fist on the table. "Nothing!" I smile wryly.
"Well, I must be precisely shit, then."
"Oh no, no, I'm not trying to compare us at all... that's just the way it is in my family." With some relief, the salad arrives. She really likes the salad, it seems. She forks salad into her mouth at a phenomenal rate.
"Sorry..." She says, dressing dribbling down her chin, a sliver of onion dangling from her lip. She wipes-off her face with the evergreen cloth napkin that seems to be standard for every Olive Garden. "I love this salad. It's my absolute favorite. And I had nothing to eat last night except for some ramen at 3 AM."
"That sounds like a tough set of circumstances to work under. Tell me, it must be a pretty hectic schedule for you?"
"Yeah, I have to dance from, like, 8 PM to 5 AM. And last night was just... jeesh." She cringes. "This morning, I hit the hay at about 6 AM, and I slept about 5 hours before I had to wake-up and come here. I got in trouble for meeting you today, too. So excuse me if I seem a little out of it, I haven't been getting enough sleep. You know, dance all night, do errands during the day. That doesn't leave much time for sleep."
"Oh, I'm sorry about getting you into trouble." I frowned and felt a bit of remorse. "I really didn't mean to."
"No big deal..."
"Well, you must have a few funny stories about work..."
"Yeah." She laughs and takes a swig of water. "I have plenty of those..."
"Why did you get in trouble coming to have lunch with me?" I ask. "You are a free individual, you know. They can't dictate how you spend your spare time, can they?"
"The club manager frowns on this sort of thing... last year, this one girl from the club went-out to meet a customer. A week later, police found her body face-down in a marsh."
"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."
"Yeah, ever since then, they've lectured all the girls about not dating customers. The manager really yelled at me for it. So did the bartender and a few of the other dancers."
"Well, I didn't mean to get you in trouble. I'm seriously very sorry."
"Oh, no big deal. Don't worry about it, you seem harmless enough. Seriously, when I gave you that lap dance you were all skittish. Heh, and that was your first time to a club." As soon as she says this, the waiter-comes over with our drink refills. I think he overheard her saying 'lap dance' and I think he surreptitiously eyes me in a peculiar way. Sheesh, is he catching-on about who I am in relation to who she is?
"So, tell me about your experiences?" I ask.
"Like what?" Her mouth is full of salad. She's eating like there's no tomorrow.
"Well, is this your only line of work?"
Proposed 2004 Olympic Event: Precision Crotch-Spurting
"No, I kind of have a secret talent." She grins enigmatically.
"Um... what?"
"Well..." She smiles mysteriously and dabs her lips. "You know about female ejaculation?" I nod. I know of it, but I can't say I've ever seen it happen. "Well, I can ejaculate. It spurts out of me and I can sort of do it with a lot of precision." Okay, this conversation is going-off on a really wierd tangent.
"What?" Uh... I'm suddenly not very hungry any more. Something about warm, sticky streams of fishy girl-juice flying all over the place... not when I'm eating. "I'm kind of confused."
"You know, I can make it land in a shot-glass or extinguish a candle." She looks proud of herself. "They hold contests for female ejaculation... ever watch Playboy channel?"
"Sorry, no."
"Well, they have contests for women to jack into glasses and ashtrays. So, anyways, guys will sometimes pay me money to watch me do this outside the club. Sometimes, guys will pay $200 to masturbate in front of them with a vibrator, too." I'm doing my best to keep a straight face, but... ugh, does she really need to... maybe we should lower our voices? There are kids sitting a few tables over. And the waiter is coming...
"Oh look, our food is here." I say pointedly.
Got any Stories That Don't Involve Masturbation?
I carefully load some pasta onto my fork.
"Oh, you're so..." She sighs and shakes her head. "Don't be so neat. Slurp it! Like this..." She crams a huge forkful of pasta into her mouth and inhales. "Fooooooooooooshhhhh." She has patches of sauce all over her chin by the time she's finished sucking it all in. "Like that."
"I've already chopped it up, so it won't suck very well. So, tell me about what went on last night? You sounded like something unpleasant happened."
"Oh, yeah. Well, I have the right to refuse any dances if I want. And last night... ho boy. There was this couple... husband and wife... I've danced for them once before and once was enough, thank you."
"So, you refused to dance again? Why?"
"Because... " She shrugs. "That woman... she's worse than any man who has ever come-in."
"Huh? In what way?"
"I dunno... she's really into the female form. Last time I was dancing for them, she was... you know, trying to bite my nipples."
I wince. "Ow."
"Yeah, I'm like 'why don't you become a lesbian if you like women so much?' Jeesh."
"Well, what does your mom think about you dancing? Does she know?"
"Oh, she comes-by to watch sometimes. She thinks that I've got a lot of money, or something. But it's not true. I mean, I've got kids to support and it's tough to save-up money. I live from night to night, basically."
"Well, how well do the other dancers do, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Hah, well I've got to tell you... most of them are crack-heads. Seriously, they dance to get money to buy drugs."
"Well, I mean... I'm sure that's not typical."
"Oh, in my club it is."
Gee, who'd have ever thunk that the world of all-nude dancing would have a seedy underbelly?
The Exploding Dildo
She sips her wine and sits-back in her seat. Absolutely full and content.
"Oh, I've got a really hilarious story... there was this really tall blonde girl who I used to work with at the club. She was really into sex-toys. Seriously, she went-through dildos like toothpicks. The first vibrator she ever got, she burned-out the motor. Overuse." She smiles widely. Again with the masturbation stories!
But still, it's funny. I start laughing.
"No, don't laugh yet... Here's what happened: she was using a vibrator one night. Brand new. Anyway, the batteries cracked-open and acid dribbled-down her legs. She doesn't realize it and she goes to take a shower. When water hits acid, some kind of chemical-reaction takes place..."
I remember something like that from high-school chemistry. "Oh, her legs got fried?"
"Right, she got chemical burns on her legs. She called me-up and was really sobbing 'oh, please, come over and help me.' et cetera."
"Ouch." I shudder at the image.
"She was literally burned from pussy-lip to her knee. And so, she sues the battery company. She claims damage to her legs from the burns. She claims damage to her genitals. Specifically, she claims she can't orgasm after this because the nerves have been damaged. She also claims mental-trauma. She claims she's afraid to use vibrators again because of this." Ariana is smiling broadly. "The battery-maker settles out of court. She gets a half-million bucks."
My jaw drops. I look at her for five, long seconds in disbelief. "Uhh...."
"Yeah."
"Uhhh..."
"Go-on, spit it out..."
"Hold on for a sec." I put-down my fork and put my hands-up to my temples. I run my hands through my hair. "That's well over fifteen times what most people make in a year."
"One exploding dildo. Like winning the lottery, eh?"
I am too stunned to be livid. "Well, at least she gets to have scars on her legs."
"No, they healed-over. I saw them myself. No scarring."
"Um... well, she can't ever have an orgasm again?"
"That was bullshit. She lied. Oh, and that mental trauma thing? The day after she got burned, she went-out and bought another vibrator. It was all refined bullshit. The battery-maker didn't want to have embarrassing headlines and settled before her case could hit the courts."
"That is..." Perjury. Perfidy. Fraud. Quite illegal if it were found-out.
"I know."
I look at her, dumbfounded.
"Furthermore..." she continued. "She called Howard Stern, and his producers offered to have her on the show."
"I've never seen that show..." I shrug. Well, from what little I've seen, I think he's boorish and uncouth.
"Well, sometimes he asks guests to come-on the show to share their outrageous sexual stories... they wanted to interview the woman who got burned by an exploding dildo. You know, and maybe Howard would give her a free boob-job or something. But, she chickened-out. She decided that if her story went under too much scrutiny, they might find-out she was lying and her money might get taken away."
"Ugh."
"Yeah, I know." She looked at the ceiling whimsically. "I could do with a boob-job."
"No, I think you look fine."
"Well, I just want to fill-out a top better."
Saying Goodbye
She has to go do some Christmas shopping, and she has a small list of stuff she's getting for her kids. I give her a quick hug goodbye, and she gives me her cell-phone number so I can call her again in future. I'm sort of glad to see her walk towards her car- and away from me.
In Conclusion:
Ariana... sheesh, I try to be nice, but I think she's plenty f'd-up. I think I should've left her at the club. (Oh, I'll be honest: I wouldn't be caught dead next to her in a plague-pit.) I don't know, maybe she was just trying to shock me. Or maybe she was trying to titillate by bringing-up a lot of sex-related topics, but she just came-off as crude.
Yup, strippers might be fun to look-at and have in your lap... but I wouldn't want to be more than just the most casual of friends with one at the very most.
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"When a woman suffers in silence, the phone is probably out of order." -- Unknown humorist.
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