discussion comment
17 years ago
I believe that in the VIP room of an Indiana club that is a favorite of mine, a rather forward dancer may have pulled my pants down to the point that I was nude from waist to knees. I'm a little unsure as to how that happened, as the VIP room in question was packed...it was "prime time" on a Friday night. The couple that was sitting three feet from me looked shocked...which I can understand, as I was pretty shocked, too.
discussion comment
17 years ago
Here is the article. Obviously (I hope), nobody believes that underaged or emotionally vulnerable people should be in any position that could endanger them in any way. Why the vulnerability of some people should limit the activities of everyone is something I don't understand. The Supreme Court, in some of its pornography decisions, has said that the permissible norms of society are not to be determined by the sensibilities of its most sensitive members.
Other than that, I'm not sure what the man's point is.
BOB HERBERT: Escape From Las Vegas
Amber is 19 years old and on Sunday she caught a flight out of Las Vegas’s McCarran International Airport and went home to a small town in Minnesota, not far from the Iowa border.
I’m rooting for her. She’s low on funds (“I’ve got my ticket, that’s about all,†she said), and she’s at a crucial turning point in her life.
The question is whether she will go off to college in Florida, and stick with it, which she insists is what she wants to do, or whether she will slip back into her life as a stripper and lap dancer, which is so often the start of the descent into the hell of prostitution.
“I hate the dancing,†she told me. “Sometimes I think I don’t have a strong enough mind for it, because of the way people treat me.â€
I met Amber in Las Vegas last week. I was with Melissa Farley, a psychologist and researcher who was asked by the head of the U.S. State Department’s anti-trafficking office to do a study of the sex trade and its consequences in Nevada.
(She published the book-length study this week under the title, “Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections.â€)
Amber’s story is far more typical than many Americans would like to acknowledge. There are many thousands of Ambers across the country, naïve kids from dysfunctional homes who are thrown willy-nilly into the adult, take-no-prisoners environment of the sex trade with no preparation, no guidance and no support at all.
They are the prey in the predatory world of pimps, johns and perverts that goes by the euphemism: adult entertainment.
Amber’s parents are divorced. Her mother, with whom she lives when she’s in Minnesota, is both physically and emotionally ill.
For awhile, she said, she had a stepfather who physically abused both her and her mother.
“He was on meth,†Amber said. “He’d hit us, scream at my mother. We’d make dinner and he’d go into a rage and throw away the whole dinner. So we’d go without dinner that night.â€
Amber was both shy and rebellious and began dancing at a strip club in Minnesota on a dare. That was several months ago.
One afternoon a wrestling coach from her high school came in while she was dancing. “I was topless,†she said, “and I just wanted to crawl into a hole.â€
She saved enough money to go to Vegas and tried out for a job there. “The manager told me, ‘You can’t work for me. You’re too big,’ †she said. “So I didn’t eat for four days. All I had that whole time was one bowl of cereal and some water. It was horrible. I lost 10 pounds and went back. He made me take off all my clothes and dance for him. And then he said I was still too big. You have to be practically anorexic to dance for him.â€
I asked why she continued dancing even though she hated it. Her face took on the puzzled look of a kid who had no good answer for not doing her homework.
“I don’t know,†she said. “It’s not very logical, is it?â€
She got a job at Sheri’s Cabaret on South Highland Avenue, which trumpets to all and sundry that its dancers are completely nude. The owners of the cabaret also own Sheri’s Ranch, a legal brothel about an hour’s ride outside of Vegas.
“It’s unbelievable the way the customers degrade you,†Amber said. “Their hands are all over you and they’re always trying to have sex with you.â€
I asked if she’d ever been tempted to give in. She waited a long moment before answering.
“Sometimes I am,†she said. “Sometimes a guy will offer a lot of money, and I might think that could help with whatever I need for that month. But then I think, I just can’t do that. Nobody should violate my body like that.â€
I asked Amber why she was willing to talk candidly and on the record about her experiences. She said, “I want people to know what it’s like for us. They think we’re just a bunch of lowlifes who like to get naked for money. We’re not. We go through a lot.â€
When I asked her if she ever wanted to get married and raise a family, she was unequivocal.
“No†she said. “I don’t want any of that. I just feel if I get married the guy will change and show his true colors. I don’t want that to happen to me.â€
She swears she’s going to school and will try to find work in the fashion industry.
I asked if she thought she would ever go back to dancing.
“Probably not,†she said.
posted by See You
discussion comment
17 years ago
I have been to Adelita's in TJ, BC, Mexico. To climb up on my well-worn hobby horse, that place is so decidedly a brothel, as opposed to a strip club, that I gently remind FOUNDER of my argument that it should not even be reviewed on this site. (But, since it is, I threw in my $0.20 worth--see my prolix review at the beginning of May. I am now embarassed by the length of the review, but it does reflect how impressed I was with the place.) Adelita's cannot be beaten in terms of a place that you can let your most reptilian-brain-motivated, id-driven, porcine desires run rampant, for a distressingly small amount of money.
My role in the globalization of the world economy is to off-shore my need for extra pussy...and I'm damn glad to do so.
discussion comment
17 years ago
I am so sensitized to this issue, because of stories I have heard (along with everyone else) of PLs being taken for a ride by ATFs, that I have never given a stripper anything other than money in payment for dances, and would be very reluctant to do so unless we had a full-blown relationship outside the club.
discussion comment
17 years ago
Remember, re the evolutionary theory--all of us who are alive today are the descendants of the most successful "seed spreaders"--so all of us have those genes to some extent.
That having been said, I agree with driver 01's "free will" theory.
And, I have to confess that I find myself on the same trajectory that Doug describes...I have pursued a path of sexual license that has moved one step at a time. I'm sure that I never would have had the guts to have an OTC with my secretary, a colleague, etc. But hanging out in strip clubs gave me access to strippers, a group of women whose attitude toward sex is much more free than any women who I normally am around _would admit to__. The next thing you know, I was having OTC.
One thing that encouraged my descent was, as another post-er has referenced, having available money. I once asked myself why I didn't go to strip clubs in my twenties, when I wasn't married, and all these moral issues didn't figure into it. I then realized...I didn't have any spare money. Now I have disposable income, and a flexible schedule in which to spend it. We can see how much good it do with it....As you can see, I have a lot of ambivalence about this whole issue.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, as I approach the middle of my fifth decade, I can tell that my sexual drives are much less than they were in my 20s or 30s. I think that biology will save me.
discussion comment
17 years ago
1990, at age 28--my bachelor party. Went to PT's Centreville (greater East St. Louis metropolitan area). They did the "tie me in a chair on the stage" thing. It was a "joint" bachelor party, with a co-worker who was getting married a week after I did, and at some point, he yells, "I'm tired of being teased, I want to be pleased." We then adjourned to a now-defunct strip club in Washington Park called Main Street. (also in the greater East St. Louis metropolitan area). As soon as we stepped in the front door, I was greeted by two dancers who charged me and said "Take down your pants." Much to my surprise I did, and pleasing ensued.
Two months later, I was trying a lawsuit, and as I was going back to my table from an argument over evidence, the judge calls me back to the bench and whispers to me, "Were you really wearing blue underwear, Counsel?" The story of my bachelor party had a wide reach, apparently.
I did not return to strip clubs until about five years later, when I started to frequent them while out of town on business. My first club in the "modern" era was Colorado Bar & Grill in Houston which is a nice, well-appointed gentlemen's club with very good-looking girls, and, as I recall, about mid-level mileage. A consistent 8. It was quickly followed by visits to another Houston club, now closed, which was called Paradise. It seemed to me at the time to be a whorehouse. I believe that the premises is now occupied by a club called Cover Girls, but I have not been to the club in its current manifestation...I just recognize the address on Little York Road in Houston.
discussion comment
17 years ago
No, unfortunately I'm getting a little cynical as I age, and I don't get as emotionally involved with individual dancers as I used to. I think that was motivated by the distinct lack of mutuality in the attraction that I noticed after the first year or ten that I went to strip clubs.
discussion comment
17 years ago
I agree with Chandler. I apply a functional approach to determining when one is regular. In my case, I decided that I had become a regular at an ESL club when:
the waitresses would get me my customary cocktail as soon as I walked in the club;
the door guys would waive cover;
the VIP guard would waive the lame wristband charge; and
the club manager would come to my table to greet me (and, ultimately, gave me a universal pass to all clubs owned by his employer).
discussion comment
17 years ago
Good heavens, no!!! Someone might whack it off.
What was the movie in which a girl urges a boy to put his weezer in a hole that leads into the girls' locker room..and when he does, a Sister who teaches at the school grabs it and pulls for all she is worth?
discussion comment
17 years ago
I may be missing something here, because about half of the clubs I go to have such spaces.
discussion comment
17 years ago
I would try BBF first, with Dancers as a back-up, if you don't want to spend the time driving to Hip Hugger.
discussion comment
17 years ago
lotsoffun201: I think that the secret for Ms Fleiss' male employees will be to avoid reaching climax. Given how easy it is for most women to get sex, I would think that it would also be easy to avoid having an orgasm during intercourse with any woman who has to pay for it.
I don't think the "Studs" will have as much trouble getting it up repeatedly as getting it up at all. Can you imagine if you had to have sex with any woman who approached you with the money...regardless of how fat, old, or ugly she was? And they will be old, fat, or ugly, because any woman who is not one of those three can easily get sex from any of the perpetually horny male members of the population (about 90% of the male members of the population).
discussion comment
17 years ago
It must be a stage for me. Originally, I, too, enjoyed the feeling of familiarity when strippers would talk to me about kids and other personal matters. Now, I would rather keep things in the realm of fantasy, and not know about their outside lives. Perhaps the pendulum will swing back at some point in the future.
discussion comment
17 years ago
No, I've never gotten kicked out of a strip club, although I've done things to merit it, largely involving exposure issues.
HarryC, I avoid getting kicked out at closing time by following Grandmother's advice: "Never be the first or last person at a party." (Grandmother never told me not to let a dancer give me a handjob in a strip club.)
The exposure question reminds me of something a dancer told me at an ESL club that Chandler introduced me to. The dancers were under orders to avoid, or minimize sexual acts that exposed the penis. The dancer claimed that a manager chastised a dancer for giving a patron a handjob while her body was positioned in a way to let passersby see the patron's penis. The dancer was not told to stop doing hand jobs; she was told to adjust the position of her body by 45 degrees, to obsure visibility of the penis. Under these standards, a blowjob was considered less troublesome than a handjob, and straight f**cking, in which the penis largely stays in the vagina, was considered the least problematic.
discussion comment
17 years ago
Due to being married, I have always been very circumspect about giving personal information to dancers. For a while, I even used a different first name, which I wish I had kept doing. I turn down requests for business cards. I now realize that customers are entitled to craft their own persona, just as dancers do, and I wish that I had taken more advantage of that at my beginning of this peculiar hobby.
As far as I know, only one dancer has ever known my last name. I was having an OTC with a dancer from whom I had regular OTCs for a couple of years. In my presence, she called the front desk of the hotel, from the room in which we were staying, and asked the name of the person registered for that room. I was shocked and surprised that they told her. However, she is someone who is now trying to ease back into a "normal" life, and if worse came to worst, we are in a "mutually assured destruction" situation. Besides, for all my paranoia following that incident, I found out that she is actually a very nice girl who I truly believe has no inclination to play the "other woman."
By the way, I thought about complaining to the hotel chain about the unprofessional conduct on the part of their front-desk staff, but I realized that I would rather not write a letter starting out something along the lines of, "I am writing to complain about a recent incident that occurred when I, a married man, was using a room in your hotel to stage an adulterous incident with a young stripper."
To quote a line from one of my favorite movies, "My Father's Glory", "we are never so weak as when we are wrong."
discussion comment
17 years ago
I was at BBF the first week of July, and was quite disappointed. The clientele and dancers seem to have hit a "redneck" stage. I have been a big fan of BBF for the last several years, and hopefully this is a temporary aberration.
On the other hand, Dancers has always been my number 2 club in Indy...at the top end, better-looking dancers than at BBF, but lower mileage. With the addition of the new private room, I may have to take a drive out Interstate 70. Of course, at $325 an hour, you do have to pick carefully.
discussion comment
17 years ago
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motorheadFat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life
I second minnow's recommendation for Bare Elegance. It is like a hang out for nude fashion models...but the mileage I got from those models ranged from air all the way to clothed sexual assault.
discussion comment
17 years ago
After I posted a review for Industrial Strip in Hammond, Indiana, I received a very detailed, responsive e-mail from the manager.
discussion comment
17 years ago
I was the "victim" of a double-dance scam a couple of weeks ago at a club in Dallas. I was in a private room with a dancer when a friend of hers, who apparently wasn't busy (and was a lot less attractive than the girl I signed up for), came into the room and just started a two-way. She was a lot more nasty than the first girl, but she had to be, and I would not have chosen to get a dance from her. Bottom line is that I had to pay some money to get rid of the girl.
It was literally the only time that I have felt scammed in a strip club. I was so pissed about the experience that I terminated the experience with the first girl, negotiated down from the figure we had agreed one, and started with a "blank slate" with a new girl (with whom I had a great time, probably better than would have happened with girl #1).
discussion comment
17 years ago
I can't focus well enough to make a double dance worth the money. I think you end up getting one dance (each girl doing 1/2 the normal amount of work) for twice the price.
When I am approached about this, I clutch my chest and mutter, "Two of you? I think that would kill me!"
discussion comment
17 years ago
My first job in my professional career was in Chicago, although that was during the the first Administration of the first George Bush, so largely of historical interest. Loved the firm, hated living in Chicago. I am now living happily in a small Midwestern county seat town.
discussion comment
17 years ago
Dropping stock prices make me more likely to spend money at a strip club, or buy a new suit, or get a steak at a nice restaurant. The decline in the market reminds me of the transience of money, and the fact that carefully-hoarded funds can disappear on the basis of an ill-considered comment by a CEO, or speculation about the health of a government official.. I tend to over-save, and market drops remind me that money exists to be enjoyed, not just saved, and that sometimes you have to live in the here and now, rather than living every day so many years in the future. I had a grandparent die in her sixth decade, a grandfather in his seventh, a grandmother in her eighth, and my last grandparent in his ninth. Who knows where I will fit in this procession? Or maybe I will beat them all to the crematorium. (I am currently mid-fifth decade)
Like FONDL, I am not worried about day-to-day price drops. As a conservative, I was not particularly happy about the action the Fed took Friday morning, although it certainly had a positive effect on my finances.
I look at it this way...would I rather waste my money, or spend it on strippers? If I spend $500 on a stripper, or lose $500 in the value of mutual fund shares, I am out $500 either way..but I had a hell of a lot more fund with the stripper.
discussion comment
17 years ago
Tuesday night I had an outstanding session with a dancer who was frank about the fact that she sought out men with money to dance for. She said that her main screening criteria were age (middle-aged and older); shoes (leather; Aldens, Johnson & Murphys, etc.) and the type of drink the man had (liquor rather than beer). She said that she just can't enjoy dancing for men who seem to hold on tight to a few bucks.
She was a self-admitted materialist, and said that she could be attracted to a rich enough man, even if he was a lot older than her. Her goal is to find a rich man to marry in the next couple of years, and retire from dancing.
discussion comment
17 years ago
Although I have never seen either of them in there, John Goodman and Mark McGuire have been known to go to PT's-Sauget (across the Mississippi River from St. Louis). The girls don't like Goodman, and say he is a jerk.
A local celebrity, August Busch IV, President of Anheuser-Busch, goes to Penhouse Club, next door to PT's, and the girls like him a lot. He brings an entourage and camps out in a reserved VIP room
discussion comment
17 years ago
I'm not a big one on seeing the coochie, whether an innie or an outie.
Reminds of the guy who went to a doctor, and said, Doctor, I look bad, but I feel good." After much research and testing, the Doctor called the patient and said, "Based on my review of the medical literature, if you look bad and feel good, you must be a vagina."
(Condensed from a much longer joke)