Comments by FONDL (page 5)

David, you're not on my ignore list. I only put people there who have repeatedly attacted me personally. I think that's it's proper function.

Bobbyl says "I have no idea how strippers do it." In a word, drugs. My ATF once told me that she never ever went to work without first getting high. Not once. And at least in her club, that was pretty common. I think that's true everywhere. That's where a lot of the money goes, which is why they're always broke and complaining about not making enough. That's why extras have become prevalent.

CarolinaWanderer, I was being facetious about the paperoby thing, mine is similar to yours. The reason I raised it is that newspapers are frequently the champions of minimum wage laws and child labor laws etc., and yet they've almost always managed to have gotten an exception for their industry. If that isn't the height of hypocrisy I don't know what is. Keep that in mind the next time you read one of their stupic editorials supporting these kinds of labor laws, they're almost always exempt. As is Congress, who ignores labor laws.

Super Dude says "They think we're dumb and needy." Isn't that how we think of a lot of them? And don't we think a lot of them are gullible? Seems to me they think pretty much the same about us as we think about them - most of them (and us) total losers with a few gems here and there. The trick is to find the gems, which is part of the fun.

I'm sure I'm in the minority here (no pun intended) but I think all people - men and women - are born bisexual. We're taught to have preferences. And our chemistry (eg. testosterone) usually also pushes us in one direction or the other as well, more so for some of us than for others. It's simply more socially acceptable in our society for women to experiment with their own sex than it is for men, so they are much more likely to do so. That's especially true of strippers, especially when there are drugs around. My ATF today is what we would all consider very straight, but when she was a stripper she had lived with a girlfriend for awhile and admits to having sex. Whenever the subject comes up she blames it on drugs, but I doubt if that's the whole story.

GK, I agree. It has nothing necessarily to do with sex or high contact - I've probably had higher contact from 50+ dancers than I ever had with my ATF. So what? She was the most fun to be with. And I ended up liking her as a person more than any other. For me that's more than enough to rate the term. If I went into a club containing every dancer I ever met and liked, I'd head straight for her. Hey maybe that's what Heaven is like - a big strip club in the sky full of all your favorite dancers.

The problem I have with all this genetic and evolutionary crap in explaining behavior is that it seems to me that I have a lot of urges to do things but because I'm an adult I've learned to resist those urges that are inappropriate adult behavior in civilized society. In fact I believe that's what maturity is all about. So when someone argues that we should engage in certain destructive behaviors because we are programmed that way, I assume that person isn't very mature. And frankly I think that's what we're really talking about when we talk about nice guys vs. bad boys. We probably all went though the bad-boy phase at some point during our adolecense, but most of us outgrew it in our eary 20's. The bad-boy act is just one more expression of selfish and self-centered manipulative behavior, which all kids learn at a very early age. Maturity involves the recognition that such behaviors are inappropriate for an adult. An 18 yo bad boy may seem attractive to other 18 yo's, especially since such behavior is often glorified by the popular media. But such behavior by someone twice that age is nothing but childish, obnoxious and disgusting. I've had a lot of friends who remained bad boys into adult life, and every one of them ended up divorced. None of the guys who grew up and became monogamous nice guys did. So who has been more successful with women?

Most waitresses don't get paid minimum wage either and they are employees. The Federal minimum wage law only applies to businesses engaged in interstate commerce and to businesses that have over a certain number (100?) of employees. Some states have stricter requirements. Ask your newspaper boy if he gets minimum wage.

I've been in a couple of clubs where my dancer asked me if I had one, and when I said no she got me one and asked me to put it on before dancing for me.

I think you guys will find that in a lot of clubs most of the girls only make money on Friday and Saturday nights - they work the other shifts just to be allowed to get a weekend night shift. It's always been pretty common for dancers to make next to nothing on other shifts, then make a bundle on weekends. That may not be true everywhere but it's true in a lt of clubs and has been for years.

Again I'll disagree with the premise, that how often you "score" with a girl is the true measure of how well you do with women. Mybe that's how bad boys measure their success, but in my opinion that's a very immature way of looking at it. I doubt if most nice guys figure it that way. Which is maybe why they don't "score" as often, it's not their primary objective.

Book Guy, maybe you are both right. Maybe she needs to choose a different type of guy in the first place. But maybe she also needs to do things a bit differently than she did the first time around - maybe she was putting forth the effort in the wrong places, things that were important to her but not to him, which is often the case.

To return somewhat to the original topic, I reject the premise that how many different women you sleep with is the primary indication of how well you do with women. In fact I'd suggest the opposite is true - if you sleep with a lot of different women you aren't doing well with them at all. I happen to be a big fan of monogamy, and I'd suggest that, on average, monogamous men are much happier that those who are not.

I've also known several dancers, ATF included, who did it the other way around - they started out as dancers and then become waitresses or bartenders becausee they found that they could make just as much money without having to take their clothes off.

Book Guy, you and I are the same height. And when I stopped thinking about it being a problem, it stopped being one. I learned that from a roommate I had in college who was several inches shorter than me - and he never had a problem with women because he had a lot more self-confidence than I did. Sure some women may care, but most don't. All you need to do is learn to loke yourself, then others will like you too. Stop looking for excuses and appreciate what you have.

I enjoy learning about other cultures, about people whose lives are very different from mine. And young strippers are about as different from me as you can get. And so, provided they have some intelligence, and I wouldn't be sitting with them if they didn't, I want to know how they live and what they think, what their everyday world is like. I don't know why but I find it fascinating. And the fact that she's usually going to be wearing very little doesn't hurt either. In fact I find a girl to be much sexier when she's sitting talking and is oblivious to the fact that she's nearly naked than I do when she's onstage trying to be sexy.

Can;t we have it both ways? Can't the term mean different things to different people? Seems to me that Shadowcat and i use it in entirely different ways. And I have no problem with that. Maybe if I'd never met my ATF I'd use it differently too.

If I may get back to the original point of this thread, it seems to me that the basic premise here is that all women want the same thing. Yet how many of us look for the same thing in women? We're all different. And guess what, so are they.

David, your last post is right on. You don't have to be a wuss to be a nice guy. A nice guy whith confidence will do very well with women. Personally I think self-confidence is the key, not whether or not you fit someone's difinition of a nice guy. Unless the woman is a total loser, in which case who cares?

Bobbyl, I agree. I've said many times here before that I don't even believe that dancers think in those terms any more than your waitress at a restaurant does. Sure there might be a few jerks or super hot guys who stand out, but for the most part we're all just customers. And what's wrong with that? I don't care what a dancer thinks of me, chances are she doesn't think of me at all. The only thing that's relevant to me is how she treats me. And my ATF treated me better (and by that I mean she treated me the way I wanted to be treated) than any other dancer who I had a chance to get to know ever has. Which is why she's my ATF. I don't go to a strip club looking for any sort of personal relationship, not do I go looking for sex. I just want to have fun. And she was the more fun to be with than any other dancer I've ever spent significant time with. That's my definition of an ATF.

Of all the dancers I've ever met, one stnds out clearly as having been the most fun, and given the choice I'd rather spend time with her than any other. Seems to me "ATF" is an appropriate term for such a dancer. Why does anyone have a problem understanding that? I don't get it.

Clubber, I believe that ATF stands for "all-time favorite dancer" which she is and probably always will be, even though she hasn't danced in nearly 10 years. She's also now my closest friend, but that doesn't change the fact that she's my ATF.

I rarely go to clubs at all anymore but it has nothing to do with the economy, I just lost interest. I don't enjoy it as much as I used to so it doesn't seem worth the money anymore. I think in my case a major factor is that the only time that I've ever gone clubbing on a regular basis was about 10-12 years ago when I was going through a period of major depression, and clubbing seemed to help. Now that I'm no longer depressed, most clubs seem depressing to me. So I spend my money elsewhere instead, like going to a nice restaurant or getting a massage (the legitimate kind.)

Minnow, to answer your original quesions, when she was dancing I visited my ATF once a week for about a year. I don't know when I started to consider her my ATF but it probably wasn't until she quit dancing - it came about gradually as we became friends. That was 10 years ago and we're still close friends.

My biggest concern would be that she'd someday decide to contact my wife, which is one of the reasons I've never engaged in any OTC event other than a strictly social one. I've never been willing to give a potentially unstable person that much control over my future. I'm surprised that anyone does.