• articles >
• JackKash

JackKash

New York City

To escape, to forget my troubled married life, my stagnant - frustrating work life and fill the time instead with distraction has been the reason for my club forays for over 20 years. I am more myself and at a level of peace when the stars align for a good venture.

I travel a fair amount and the already emotional aloneness of home and work is compounded with the physical aloneness in a new city. The clubs offer me solace in the latter and even some in the former when it is right and devastating reminders of my solitude when it is not.

Most often, my visits are short enough that it's a night, maybe two at the same place. Maybe I'll see the same girl(s), maybe not. Other times on longer trips, I'll club hop because I'm not finding the right mix to satisfy me, to lull me, to dull me, to bring me to the point of my most forgetful. All is distraction. Transience allows me to live in the moment. Any personal, emotional, human connection greatly tempered by my temporary condition. The nature of my travel therefore is conducive to these fleeting acquaintances. I leave with the depression of my imminent return to the restrictive unhappiness of my “real” life while the club experience in that city is already tucked away as a faded memory rekindled briefly when I write my TUSCL review. “$20 cover, reasonable drinks, girl next door types, gave a bit of chat, good grind, YMMV…”

I'm a soul stealer, my gaze fixed in the dancer's eyes throughout her dance, stage or private. What I am pulling through them to myself, I don't know. Something. Life force, energy, a connection to try and fill my abyss. I've freaked out a few dancers with this stare. Many more have returned that gaze with similar intensity, similar hunger, taking from me for themselves. I enjoy the trade and do not avert my eyes. These dalliances never fill my emptiness but they put it at bay for the moment and allow me to live in this different place, away from all I know and with the lie of being free.

Longer trips though, a few days, a week give me a chance to get established at a club I truly enjoy. Or if I'm back in an oft traveled city, a return to the clubs I am fond of in hopes of and sometimes succeeding in finding a dancer from the past. The girls - the dancers - the strippers – my sirens of mythology emerge. Unbeknownst to them at one time or another they have called me to dash my ship against the rocks. I have a litany of names.

The first of them was Jonatha, in New Orleans. Julia, Joe, Christie, Peresia, Jennifer are from various visits to Las Vegas over the years. There's been a few others with a lesser degrees of impact; Amanda in Las Vegas, Kitty in Los Angeles. And then there is the most recent, Veronika in Seattle, whom I think I pine for more than any of the others and the reason why I wrote this article. Like the others, over the course of a few days we talked, had dances and even her stage dances were focused on me much to the chagrin of the guys tipping on the other side.

I'm not too cynical to think that there wasn't some honesty in our mutual attraction and satisfaction in being in each other's presence. Nor am I as naïve as newbie and understand that nothing will ever come of this. I know that as she was touching my face with one hand I (figuratively) was putting money in the other.

And so the sirens sing. They find the emptiness inside me and promise to fill it with the emotional connection I crave if only I bring my life closer to their shore, “dare, leave, join us here.” I don't. I know ruin awaits but that knowledge doesn't make their song any less sweet nor give me the ability to stop hearing it.