It's always about the money. Is It?

24 comments

• boomer37

  •

  16 years ago

  Not always... but usually. For every story out there about a true connection being made, there are hundreds where the only connection was with the cash.
• casualguy

  •

  16 years ago

  Maybe she wants you to be a boyfriend. In true boyfriend fashion, you'll have to learn to smack her up if she doesn't bring home the bacon. Just kidding but dancer boyfriends seem to be talked down upon so much here. Dancers are people too and can be nice. It isn't that unusual to me. If you're not thought of strictly as a customer, other things can happen without cash. I like it when 2 nice looking dancers come up to you and say they are going to do a double dance for you compliments of someone you don't even know. I never did find out who that was and they didn't tell me. I'm wondering if the dancers made up that part of the story. I enjoyed the free double dance though.
• casualguy

  •

  16 years ago

  You can feel safer if it's about the money. When dancers seem to not care that much about the money, you'll wonder what they are up to. If you're not careful, you may suddenly have a new girlfriend.
• jablake

  •

  16 years ago

  Normally, it is just about the money. At least that is my experience and even if it isn't about the money doesn't mean there is a real connection----her act, if it is an act, could be done for her own reasons.
• Yoda

  •

  16 years ago

  Shadowcat, I agree with you completely but I think that guys who say it's "always about the money" are coming from a different point of view than you or I. A certain type of customer goes to the club thinking that strippers are readily available as dating material. Smart dancers exploit this weakness to make money. These are the guys who, after failing in their attempt to get free pussy by buying a few lap dances, whine that dancers are only in it for the money.
• FONDL

  •

  16 years ago

  I agree with Yoda. I also think that dancers read customers pretty much the same way we try to read them. They then treat different customers differently depending on that reading. So for some customers, yes, it will be all about the money, and for others it won't. Whenever this topic comes up, I am always reminded of a time when a dancer I knew fairly well was sitting with a customer at the bar while he had lunch. After he left I said to her something like, "Didn't he even tip you?" (He hadn't bought any dances from her or any drinks, he just had lunch, talked to her and left.) To which she replied, "No, but that's OK, I really enjoyed talking with him." It's always been my impression that, as long as they are generally making what they expect to make on a weekly basis, most dancers are pretty philosophical about individual customers - they know some will spend a lot and some won't and they just accept it. They don't mind taking a break with a friendly customer who treats them well but doesn't spend much because they know the big spender will show up eventually. In fact if you want to have any sort of personal relationship with a dancer, you're probably better off not spending very much.
• BobbyI

  •

  16 years ago

  It's definitely not always about the money. They do way too much way too stupid shit for that to be true. There are other motivators. For example huge needs to admired or have "losers" calling up that they can feel superior to.
• parodyman-->

  •

  16 years ago

  Just like some of our "senior" posters.
• jester214

  •

  16 years ago

  It's always about the money, a relationship that is built around money, can not simply just change. If you went totally broke, many would have nothing to do with you, some would. But the ones who did, would only do it because you already had a relationship. Which was built on money.
• ozymandias

  •

  16 years ago

  I'm completely *not* a sugar daddy - I don't make that known per se, but everyone knows it. Strippers know they won't get paid if they sit and talk... I pay for dances only, and I pay precisely the fee, no extras. Funny thing, many dancers wind up as friends. Basic charm and respect are completely underrated. If you are paying people to talk to you, and they don't have either a law degree or a PhD in psychology, you are doing something dramatically wrong. O.
• jablake

  •

  16 years ago

  "and they don't have either a law degree or a PhD in psychology, you are doing something dramatically wrong." :( In either case, it is usually a desperate cry for HELP and can indicate you are doing something dramatically wrong. Ideally, a man wastes his money on a hot female or other sex object! :)
• casualguy

  •

  16 years ago

  You can be friends with a dancer just like any other girl and she can do things that aren't about money. Then there are some guys who aren't that familar with strip clubs and think it's all about the money and think dancers will have sex with them if they bring enough money. Wrong. Well I guess if you're Donald Trump and can offer a few million dollars, doors will open up for you. No one in their right mind will lightly turn down an offer for a one night stand if it means never having to work again for life. A few people have morals or something and still wouldn't do it for a few million.
• SuperDude

  •

  16 years ago

  In the movie "Tycoon" the late Raoul Julia, playing Aristotle Onassis, says "Sooner or later all women do it for the money." True stuff.
• casualguy

  •

  16 years ago

  But guys will do it for free.
• gk

  •

  16 years ago

  Shadowcat, when things are "always all about the money"--that still leaves you in control. When things get to be about emotional attachment, things get complicated because you give up part of the control. I like to keep strip clubs and their associates in the 'keep-life-uncomplicated and stress-releaving column.' When we make the lose-control decisions, strip clubs move over to the "complicated column" where they don't belong! Of course it's easy to screw this up. But on the other hand, is's ironic to see how suspicious some take it when the dancer, on her own initiative, willingly spends time in conversation for the sake of companionship and we wonder what's up.
• BobbyI

  •

  16 years ago

  If I was paying a chick for sex and for her it really became about more than the money that would be really weird.
• chandler

  •

  16 years ago

  Always being in control doesn't sound like fun to me. I like surprises, some good, some bad, which means remaining open to emotional involvement and complications. The kind of stuff memories are made of. And yet I realize "it's always about the money". For me, that just frees me to let go and forget about control.
• chandler

  •

  16 years ago

  I think Shadowcat's original post is an example of taking this adage a bit too literally. It doesn't mean that every single thing a stripper does is motivated by money, directly or indirectly. It merely means that without her desire to make money from you, there would be no relationship at all, including all the little kindnesses that can't be explained by a material motive. And that once her chance at taking your money is removed, the relationship is over, immediately or in due course. Therefore, gestures like birthday cakes and phone numbers aren't really evidence of a contradiction to the adage, as countless posts have asked. Maybe it should be rephrased as, "It always comes down to the money, ultimately." Except that's not quite as catchy.
• Book Guy

  •

  16 years ago

  I think many human relationships "come down to the money" in an ultimate sense, though the actual crassness of mere material wealth is shrouded by certain societal factors that make it more palatable. Women are often described as being attracted to men who display characteristics of "good providers" or of "stable emotional lives," and the lower classes seldom bond well with the upper classes, at least not for official long-term unions. Men, too, at least in my socio-economic bracket, are attracted to the female body type which is developed most likely by a suburban middle-class lifestyle, rather than by extreme poverty and uneducation (the "Wendy's fat" we find unattractive) and its attendant many children, strong arms, masculine build from hard labor. We like women who are free to go to the gym, but also free to be frivolous about not eating enough in order to stay slim and girlish. If a woman has to work hard for a living, she ends up blocky, square, much more male than female in body type, to our Western eyes. Then there's dress, clothing, "style," even make-up and hair and fingernails, all of which are in some subtle way markers of social class. So, money is there in our heads. It's just manifesting itself as something different. And, to be sure, many of those money-related characteristics are also related to a lot of other things, too. A girl doesn't get skinny SIMPLY by having disposable income; she's gotta have other things in the mix; but the spare cash can enable a lot of her quest for desirability, where poverty might prevent it.
• chandler

  •

  16 years ago

  Yeah, Book Guy, I had a feeling that one would be coming. Sorry, I think paying a stripper to pretend to be your lover is a difference in kind, not degree, from picking up the check on a date and all the other areas you describe. Sure, there are gray areas. Strippers are not among them.
• Book Guy

  •

  16 years ago

  True, it seems to me, as well, as a difference in kind, not degree. Didn't mean to argue otherwise; just got off on a tangent ...
• BobbyI

  •

  16 years ago

  chandler: "For me, that just frees me to let go and forget about control." So chandler spares the strippers from his control urges, and instead subjugates this board to them. Gee thanks, chandler!
• chandler

  •

  16 years ago

  And a good tangent it was, Book Guy. I was too quick to dismiss it as the kind of follow-up I had expected to see, along the lines of because a lot of things "come down to money, ultimately" a customer-stripper relationship is no different. I can see now that you weren't really going there.
• Book Guy

  •

  16 years ago

  Yeah, I didn't mean to sound like I was totally dismissing the situation as originally raised. The question about whether, with a stripper, it's "just about the money" or not can, indeed, be reduced mindlessly and pointlessly to what I raised, of the "it's always about the money so why discuss it?" variety. But let's not go there. Let's assume we understand one another, when we discuss this situation. Sure, humans have a lot of baggage when it comes to social class and so forth. We know what we're talking about here. The thing that's interesting to me is the way in which the selection process seems (at least from my vantage point) to 'get it wrong' for women. Attractive strippers, for instance, tend to gravitate toward men who look a bit like they can pay, but also who look a bit like what I consider "lower class" men. If you divide (just in theory) America into upper, middle, and lower classes, with the uppers really enjoying full leisure time (they make their money off the stock market and nothing else; work whenever it's fun, and never otherwise; chair foundations, go to Nice on a whim, etc.). Then you'll see, that THIS type of man is actually UNattractive to the typical stripper. What she wants is a man who has disposible income, but also who comes from a social class with which she is mentally familiar. The super-rich elite dude just basically wants to speak about ideas, politics, maybe raising champion poodles or something. The less-rich dude, who DOES have to work but will spend money on a stripper as well, probably wants to talk about his trucking firm or plumbing business. And strippers can "get" him better; he maybe has experimented with drugs and it was a risk for him about getting caught; or he didn't go to college because he brought himself up by the bootstrapts; that sort of thing. So there's this weird disconnect between income, on the one hand, and social mores, on the other, and I kind of perceive strippers (and many young women) to misunderstand male signals and actually select poorly. I see them very impressed with the wealth of a young loser who deals drugs. He wears his baseball hat backwards, baggy jeans, has some gold teeth. Gold! Golly, he must be rich! But not impressed at all with the wealth of a lawyer. He wears a $1000 suit. Clothing? He must be poor. She gets the signals wrong. And anyway, if she's seeking to be impressed by wealth, she should gravitate toward the man who has the most of it, which she doesn't do. See social class interests, above. I find it's that way with women who aren't necessarily strippers, too. A man with a manicure, a "fake" tan, extremely expensive shoes, and a droopy linen kaftan-style open-necked smock shirt came in to a cigar shop where I was hanging once. The females in the shop thought he was really poor, and probably a "sloppy" bad catch type of typical-Ralph-Kramden boorish male, because his shirt wasn't buttoned up. I thought he was really rich, because of the quality of the materials he wore, and because of the pampered self-indulgent appearance of someone who pays for a manicure and a tan; in that sense, he would be a "better catch" for the women, though he might also be self-involved, arrogant, difficult to deal with. Turned out he was a really cool, deferential, "sweet" nice guy -- so, again, the women rejected him for exactly the reasons by which they OUGHT to have accepted him. He inherited controlling shares in a major international shipping firm, which he does not personally run. He is slowly liquidating so he can have bank and investment assets, rather than a company; but otherwise, he's essentially independently wealthy, and frankly, I really liked him. Charming, graceful, kind. The chicks assumed he was a weenie, largely because they thought he was financially poor. And then when they learned he was really rich, they decided he was a rich-prick-weenie-prep-school type. This was not because he came across that way, but because they needed to excuse their bad judgment by trying to remain consistent. So, the money-markers aren't always accurately read. Yes, it is "always about the money" in some sense or other. Men and women both. I want a hot chick with a hot bod. I'm not going to be interested in fucking any female who has gotten either poverty-fat or masculine-sized field-working muscles. I can't help it. It's a cultural norm, a social more. But also, oddly, I don't care if she comes from a really rich family or a really poor family. (Sometimes I tend to assume that the super-rich are too distant from me in context, to the point that we can't communicate. Sometimes, however, I am surprised to learn that they can be just as down-to-earth as anyone else, and that my assumption of their nature is false.) I'm always surprised at how bad chicks are, at reading dudes. They go for the chicken-shit asshole whom nobody would ever want in their foxhole with them, because they assume he's "a great fighter." They go for the slimy manipulative under-handed player with the gift of gab, and they say it's because he's "really genuine." They go for the trash-talking bling-bling wanna-be rapper on the street corner with no job and no education, because "his money impresses me." The old joke. Why will a woman who is interested in skinny men always pick the fat man in a tuxedo over the skinny man in a sweatsuit? Because the fat man in a tuxedo is skinnier. Not, "looks skinner." Not, "seems to take care of himself better." Not, "well, the clothing fooled me, but now I see, he's fatter." Actually, "the guy in the tux is skinnier right now." IS skinnier.