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The Sinclair Diaries: Part 8

I started out my second evening in Memphis on Beale Street. It was just as I remembered it. The only difference I noticed was that the Pat O'Brien's had closed down. With the street occupied with tourists, I figured getting dinner would take too long at one of the Beale Street restaurants. I walked over to the Hooters a block away, across from Peabody Place, hoping to flirt with some big-titty Memphis belles. It was not to be. The Hooters in downtown Memphis has very ugly waitresses. Out of the thirteen on night shift, only one was fuckable by my standards, and I lost the roulette spin trying to get seated in her section. The real kicker was that even the food at this particular Hooters tasted subpar. At the Hooters back home, the cooks actually care and make the food taste good.

Next I headed to my “go-to” club in Memphis, The Pony. Over the years, The Pony has been a reliable club for me. There are good-looking dancers and the club has a party feel to it. This particular club is probably the closest to being Las Vegas-style out of all of the Bluff City clubs. It appears The Pony is now a chain with additional locations in Huntsville, Starkville, and Poplar Bluff. I think the Memphis location was the original one. The last time I stepped foot in this club was February of 2009.

Pulling into the gravel parking lot, I noticed the large metal statue of a horse had been removed. I headed inside where I was banged with a $15 entrance charge that included cover and your first two beers. Your first beer is given to you at the counter and a small paper ticket is handed to you in order to claim your second beer inside the club. As I was about to walk in, the door girl shouted at me that I needed to tip her. Strike one! The inside of The Pony has one large sixty-foot long stage taking up the center of the club that has three dance stations and two smaller satellite stages. There are always five dancers performing on weekend evenings, rotating each song, which makes for a lot of excitement. I like this because I can always find at least one stage with a girl I want to tip or follow a hottie as she moves through the five-stage rotation. This club attracts a lot of couples for some reason and was packed on a Saturday night. I finally found a place to sit off in a corner. Just then a bouncer came by and told me I had to find somewhere else to sit. Apparently I was sitting in a reserved section for VIP's. I saw no sign denoting this and could not understand why seats had to be kept empty in a club that was almost at standing-room-only capacity. Strike two! I finally found an opening stage-side and got to do some tipping. None of the girls were giving contact to the tippers. You could put the money in their g-string or garter band, but that was it. Two years ago, a few bucks would get you good contact. There must've been some sort of “three-foot” rule or something similar in the last round of Shelby County strip club regulation. This was kind of a letdown, but the club still had some beautiful girls. Kiki is still there and did not look like she aged a single day. Envy put on the greatest pole show I have possibly ever seen. She won a national poledancing competition in Atlanta last year.

I ended up going for some lappers from a stunner from Nashville, flaunting a fit body begging to be fucked. Dance prices were $40 for one or $60 for two. I opted for the latter. The dances are done on benches along a hallway. There is very little privacy; you won't get extras here. The songs are short, but the contact is cautious two-way. My dancer kept putting her nip-nips in my face. I had to take a lick. She reprimanded me by saying she could get in trouble for that. Yes, the glory days of Memphis strip clubs are definitely long gone. In the process of shuffling around I lost my ticket for my second drink. That is the downside to having to prepay for your beer at Memphis clubs. The waitresses here are vultures. I had to turn several away every minute I was in the club. It was getting very annoying and getting in the way of me enjoying my visit. Strike three, you're out! I decided to take off. The Pony is still a decent club, but the staff treating me like a blow-up doll and the horrible customer service was enough for me to bail. Poor lap dance value and the lack of stage-side contact are also knocks against a club that used to be my hotspot.

Despite having a free admission pass for Christies Cabaret, I decided to stop back at the Gold Club since I had a pretty good time there the previous evening. I was hoping the dancer I had been with the previous evening was there again, but that was not the case. This allowed me to sample some of the other talent. The girl who shoved her kittie into my face the previous night was back on stage, and sure enough she backed her clean package into my face again, probably violating stage contact rules. Her thong was much skimpier this evening and my mouth touched her labia. I chatted up some of the girls and learned that some of them began stripping before they were even 18. No wonder dancers now have to get licensed in Shelby County. Proposed legislation from G.A. Hardaway to raise the dancer age to 21 in Tennessee might have a little sense to it, but then again, all dancers in the 18-20 range would just dance in another state until they turned 21. The only way of preventing girls from being strippers before age 21 would to pass that law in every state, and that is highly unlikely. I had one girl try and sell me a dance for $60. Some of these dancers have egos bigger than the universe. Not too long after that, another dancer offered me $10 dances. I took her up on it. It seems like the payout model here is a flat fee to work the shift. Club personnel did not seem to be counting dances in order to administer fees on a per-dance basis. The nice thing about this was that the less egotistical girls could be bargained with. Similar to The Pony, the waitresses were very pesky, constantly harrassing you, looking to sell another beer. I would turn away multiple waitresses one right after the other. Watch out for an older one in her early forties; she was the worst of the lot and got mean when you turned her down. They are money whores just like the strippers, only they keep their clothes on. What these clubs should do is assign each waitress a section so that you only have to deal with one rather than all of them. I ended up closing down the club; Memphis strip clubs stay open till 6AM on Friday and Saturday nights. It was surreal walking out only to watch the sun come up over the horizon. I got a couple hours of sleep and had to start the long journey home.

To summarize, I think the Memphis scene has gone downhill and is a shadow of its former self. Almost no girls providing contact at the stage was a big disappointment. Private dance contact was still decent, but unless you can find a girl willing to negotiate, lap dance will be expensive. I think you can BYOL to clubs, but having to pay the two-drink minimum before you even get in the door is lame if the club is having a poor night and it's not worth sticking around. Waitresses are very pushy. There are still a lot of beautiful women working in the Memphis clubs, but the town is definitely on the downswing since the Purple Palace got shut down. I would not recommend making a special trip here just to monger, but the scene is worth a stab if you have other reasons for coming to the Memphis area.