Comments by FONDL (page 18)

Wondergirl, to answer your question, I'm not a big fan of imported dancers, I much prefer the all-American-girl-next-door type. (Although I once did have a truly memorable evening with a cute young Russian girl in North Carolina.) But there are plenty of guys here who really like the imports, especially the South Americn girls. What I wonder is how do these girls get into the country? I thought you had to have some special schooling or skill to get in. They don't sneak across the Mexican border, do they? Can anyone anywhere just hop on a plane and come here? If so that's pretty scary.

Woops, meant "freeloaders" not "freekiaders." Although in the cse of my ATF's family, freekaiders might be an apt description for some of them. The sad part about all this is that it seems to me a lot of government programs are encouraging more expert freeloaders not fewer. Poor people are penalized for working.

Book Guy, I agree with you, it seems like working for a living would be easier than dealing with all the government BS. My point was that there are enough government assistance programs that no one needs to be poor. And also that I bet that a lot of strippers were raised in families of professional freeloaders, which accounts for their attitudes and expectations to some extent. And in case you were wondering, my ATF isn't like that at all, she doesn't respect freekiaders either. She's a very hard worker. Which is really surprising given her background. It's one of the things that I find fascinating about her.

Most of the clubs I like best don't have any private areas, it's all public. Which is fine with me, it's usually a lot cheaper that way.

As I recently commented elsewhere, I think different dancers are there for different reasons. One of them is that some girls are looking to continue their high school partying days and postponing growing up for a little while longer. I think that's especially true of many really young ones. And I happen to like girls like that as long as they don't overdo it. My ATF was like that when I first met her. Clubs with a lot of girls like that are the most fun IMO.

It should probably be the bottom 100 - you'd miss too many bad ones if you limited it to just 40.

The question of what dancers do after they "retire" from dancing is one we've discussed before. IMO most dancers don't think of it that way at all, because they don't think of dancing as their career, it's just something temporary. Most of them are either (1) continuing the high school partying and avoiding real life for awhile longer, or (2) dancing to support themselves while they look for or prepare for a real career, or (3) dancing to raise money without having to put in long hours while they raise their kids. I've met very few dancers who thought of it as their career. Hence there's nothing to "retire" from or to.

This whole shot girl-discussion is largely academic for me - I haven't seen a shot girl in many many years and I don't know of a single club that even has one. Maybe it's a regional thing or maybe I just don't ever go to places that are that classy. Are shot girls common in your area?

OK guys, here's a connection between stripping and poverty. My ATF comes from a family where nobody works and everybody is an alcoholic or drug addict or both. But the interesting thing is that none of them are poor, not even close. I have no idea how they do it except that they seem to know how to milk all the various government programs. From which I conclude that if anyone is poor in our country it's their own damn fault, there are more than enough government programs to keep them from being poor if they only take the time to pursue them. I think a lot of strippers come from families like my ATF's, so maybe we should be glad there are such families.

David, you're obsessing over this economy thing. The economy would have to enter a severe depression for it to have the kind of impacts that you envision. Sure some girls may make a little less than before and may even have to work an extra shift now and then and try a little hoarder, but they'll still be doing better than most girls their age. I'm sure they can easily adjust by going to the hairdresser and getting their nails done a little less often. It's not that big a deal.

If we took all the money in private hands in the country and divided it up equally among all the adults, how long do you think it would take before the situation returned to something resembling what we have now? That's why there's poverty.

I've had dinner with my ATF and her mother several times. She's absolutely convinced that we're sleeping together, as is the rest of my ATF's family (which isn't true) - to their way of thinking that's the only way I would be interested in spending time with her daughter. And she doesn't care at all. Don't judge someone else's relationship with their mother according to how you get along with yours. Some girls have more of a sister or best friend relationship with their mother than they do a typical mother-daughter relationship. Especially if they're fairly close in age, as is often the case with strippers.

Bones, here's how I've handled situations like that. I tell the girl up front that I only have x amount of money to spend and I'd like her to get to keep as much of it as possible and the house as little as possible. then I ask her what's the best way to do that - buy her drinks, buy LDs, etc. That usually gets them to stop asking for drinks in a hurry because they usually make a higher percentage off LDs.

Where I live (PA) remodeling still appears to be quite strong. For years you couldn't get a contractor to return phone calls, so there's a lot of pent-up demand. As a result, construction workers may not be getting as much overtime as they used to but they're still working. Which is typical, by the way, of periods of decline in new construction - when people decide to stay put rather than buy that new home, they will often do some remodeling. And for many trades (eg. roofing) repair and remodel is a much larger market than new construction - there are over 100 million existing housing units vs. only 2 million new homes built in a good year. Don't overestimate the impact of a downturn in new housing construction.

Shadowcat, glad you had fun. And thanks for being so considerate of my tender sensibilities. Chivalry lives on!

Tessie, I think you are taking her comments too literally. I interpreted her remarks to include not only her observations at one club tryout but her years of experience in the sex industry and the many strippers she's no doubt known. I also interpreted her comment about "extras" girls to mean that strippers often degrade those who they don't like, which is consistent with my experience. Using a term like "extras" whether or not it is literally true is just one way of doing that. If you've read many of Wondergirl's posts you must realize that she fires them off quickly without giving much thought to her specific wording. I think a lot of people do that here, including the FONDster.

"... none of the other customers would help her out." So why should you? Are you getting something in return? Do what the other customers do. Or do what I would do - don't go to clubs that hustle you like that.

I'm not OK with any of it, I think it's wrong, which is why I favor less government - a lot less. But you mentioned impeachment - there are no grounds for impeachment, no laws have been broken, which are the only grounds for impeachment. The only recent president who broke laws was Clinton, which is why he's the only president to be impeached. His wife will probably be the next one. And your facts are totally wrong, you've been buying into the liberal lies. You don't seem to mind those.

And how might you have done that, since nobody has been able to find them. There hasn't been an attack on US soil since we invaded Iran and kept Al-Qaeda on the run. I'll bet we don't make it through the next president's term without another attack on US soil, especially if they withdraw our troops from Iraq. That will be interpreted as a sign of weakness throughout the Middle East. And rightly so. MisterGuy, how many presidents can you name who haven't lied to the public, particularly when solidifying support for a war? Every president has done that. It's part of being a successful politician. Do you honestly think any of the people currently running for president aren't telling us lies all the time? How many presidents can you name who once they assumed office did what they said they were going to do? It's a short list.

My strategy (if you want to call it that) with my ATF was always the exact opposite. I delighted in seeing her milk other guys for money by dancing for them but spending the rest of her time with me, knowing that I'd be seeing her later OTC when her shift was over. I always enjoyed seeing her make as much as possible off of other guys, I figured it saved me a bundle.

Book Guy, Denmark doesn't have our problems because they don't have the diverse population that we do. Many other European countries now have the same problems that we do because they've let in tons of immigrants. Their cities now have the same problems that ours do. Mister Guy, just out of curiousity, what would you have done in response to the mass hysteria that followed the 9/11 attacks on NY and DC, when the whole populace (including liberal Democrats and the liberal media) were screaming for the president to do something. If I recall correctly, when Bush announced his attack on Iraq, the entire Congress, including both Rs and Ds, rose up in cheerful support. It's the height of hyprocrisy for those same people to now say it was the wrong thing to do. Maybe it was, but the time to say so was 6 years ago, not now.

Wondergirl, nothing gets by you, does it?

I don't think that strippers on average are any dumber than the customers. Sure there are dumb strippers but there are also plenty of smart ones. I prefer above-average intelligence in a dancer and I've never had any trouble finding it. Many of them are students - I've run into several graduate students dancing. And many others aren't particularly well educated but are intelligent - I usually enjoy girls like that, I think it's a fascinating combination. My ATF was like that when I first met her.

This is an interesting question for me, because if you define slavery broadly to include the more subtle forms of coercion I think the answer is yes. My ATF's crappy family encouraged her to try dancing (she had been waitressing) and when she was dancing she was supporting several lose family members including her mother and at least one brother. They put a lot of pressure on her not to quit. Fortunately she had the good sense to move on. So maybe there's more slavery than we care to admit.

IME nearly all dancers have a set routine, and the only way they will deviate from it is if they really get to know you and/or you ask them to.