When does stripper shit turn turn into bonifide conversation between friends?
shadowcat
Atlanta suburb
I can tell when but it is so personal that I doubt that most of you would understand. Especially the ones that Belive that It is "all about the money"
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How do you ever know when someone is your friend? In my experience, it starts with a gut feeling that I don't question, and it either gets confirmed over time or proves to have been an illusion or conditional upon on factors like buying something from them.
Having a deep, lasting relationship with a beautiful woman is a wondrous thing, and can lead to a more fulfilling sense of life and its possibilities and purpose. But when you look to another person to improve on your own life by instigating some change from the outside (if only the change, of, arriving and being IN your life in the first place), then you're already fighting a losing battle.
I don't think stripper shit and friendship are mutually exclusive. And I don't think money has anything to do with it. Relationships of all kinds are usually built on the filling of mutual needs. Money can play a part just as much as anything else can. In fact for young women from dysfunctional homes it's often a very real need.
:)
I'm fine with stripper shit, too. What kind of a friend would she be if you couldn't bullshit each other? I was simply accepting the way IGU seemed use the term to mean nothing but a phony sales pitch.
As for denying that money has anything to do with all of this - in a strip club, no less - I think we've gone over that one more than it deserves, so I'll let it pass and hope it continues to make you feel better.
In the context of strip clubs and dancers the only way you will know is to completely remove money from the equation. It has happened to me twice and both of those ladies are friends to me, not dancers. It's much more common to find the gray area that Chandler talked about and honestly thats just fine with me.
And would someone please explain to my why, for example, if a young female friend (stripper or otherwise) was moving and wanted my help, it's OK for me to spend a day helping her move but not OK to give her some money so she can hire someone else to help. Frankly I'd rather do the latter, I hate moving. But many of you seem to think that if I give her money we're no longer friends, which I think is silly.
I agree, and I don't exactly understand the cultural norms surrounding this whole giving-money business. When I was a poor graduate student I had some friends who had "regular" jobs. They probably weren't making all that much -- I recall one had a new Honda Civic Si which didn't have power windows. But they had a regular Thursday night out "with the boys" at a local pub, and the beers were expensive. Over the course of the evening they'd put back four, five, maybe six pints apiece, at $6 or $7 plus tip each. I couldn't afford it, but they were my main social outlet. It often ended up that we would "share a round" and then someone would get my round for me, etc. etc. I didn't like being put in that predicament. Some dudes just liked the idea of throwing money at the problem -- Bookie doesn't have cash! I'll give him MY cash! -- and although that was kind of fun and silly once or twice, I got to where I just avoided it. And other dudes were real accountants about it -- Let's see, Bookie has had two and a third pints and is still holding one third; Fred owes me from last week a quarter of a slice of pizza ... etc.
In the long run, their "lifestyle" and mine meant we couldn't socialize together. I frankly didn't like socializing with people who didn't know about anything other than drinking a lot of pints of beer, anyway, so it was no huge loss to me. They thought of me as the weird one in the bunch, some dude who couldn't hold down a regular job. (In fact, that's still an accurate description of me.)
Anyway, long story shorter, I know what it feels like to have no cash and then be the recipient of someone else's beneficence. I don't like it. It makes me feel like a loser who can't make his own money. There are times when moving something, or doing some other chore, takes two people -- if only, just to have one to hold a door open, or wait at the other end of the telephone line. You can't really hire someone to do a few odd jobs like that -- the effort would merit them earning no more than about $4, tota; but the bottleneck of NOT having someone to do that, and of normal hourly wages, suggests to me that very few laborers would take less than $20, for holding a door open. And then if you pay for something menial like door-holders, you're the "rich guy" on the block, rather than the dude who puts his hands in the pot along with everyone else.
It's a complicated mess. The only real solution, is to be so freakin' rich that everyone wants a piece of you, and you don't give it out just to spite them. I guess being really poor and accepting everyone else's handouts is another solution that many people seem to gravitate toward, but like I said, I didn't like it even when I DID choose to be poor for good (well, they seemed good at the time) reasons, like graduate school etc.
BookGuy, you also are using a different context from the one I'm talking about. I fully understand the situation you are describing. But how about when a group of relatives (say brothers and sisters) get together for dinner, and the guy who can afford it the most always picks up the tab? I think you'll find that's pretty common, and in many cases there's no resentment.
Similarly when you're talking about an older person who is fairly well off and a young person just starting out, I don't see anything wrong with the older person helping the young person now and then. And when I do that with my ATF, she always says she'll pay me back someday (and means it) and I always reply that she can do that by helping someone else someday, and I know she will. Plus her free massages are great. She's the closest friend I've ever had and vice versa, and we never would have gotten there without my being generous in many different ways. And now that she's in a position to return the favor, she does.
(I should save this and paste it every time this topic comes around again.)
In fact, the most telling point I could make is, that nearly every manual on "how to pick up strippers" says that STEP A NUMBER ONE is, to NEVER let her see you as a customer. Only ever interact with her as though it's a "normal" bar; never pay for a dance; don't tip her at the stage, or, if you do, then do so non-chalantly as though you are doing so in order to rent your time at your table, and simply leave the dollar flat on stage rather than ogling her and trying to grope her skin while tucking it under cleavage or clothing straps. So, the way to a stripper-girl's REAL "heart" is (according to all the advice columnists) DEFINITELY NOT through emptying your wallet.
Nothing personal, mind you, Book Guy.
Book Guy, my experience with my ATF is the exact oppposite of what your books tell you to do. I was my ATF's best customer the 1.5 years that she danced. Then she went back to waitressing and I continued to be her regular customer. And it gradually turned into friendship.
Seriously, my single friends always tell me that grocery stores and university libraries are great places to meet hot women. At the grocery, you can find the single girls that are not in a serious relationship by checking out her ring finger, and then noting what's in her cart... no ring, groceries that appear to be "food for one", should be a green light to approach... she's probably lonely and receptive to new acquaintances... She might also be thinking about how she needs someone 'cause she doesn't like eating alone...
But to get back to the original question, I think it depends on the girl. Some girls are into stripper shit, some aren't. And some are so good at it that it's impossible to tell, and others are so bad at it that it's obvious. My ATF was really good at it, which I always found amusing. She used to tell every customer something different just to see if she could remember who she told what, it was a game she liked to play and she's very playful. She's probably the most skillful liar whom I've ever met. She also has a fantastic memory. A most unusual person.
The question isn't whether it depends on the girl. That's a given. Nobody's saying all girls are the same. Some are obviously bullshitting. A few seem to be genuine. As long as they're working at getting our money, there's no way we can tell which of those few are for real. Even they often don't know themselves until they're forced to choose, which usually means when money is no longer a consideration.