I was in Las Vegas for...

I was in Las Vegas for a couple of days before Christmas, and the town was, simply put, a zoo. Add a holiday to a culture already oriented around separating tourists from their money and you get the idea ... anyway, being here and having exhausted whatever minimal interest I had in gambling – why throw good money away when you can spend it on something useful, like a memorable lap dance? – I decided to check out the legendary LV strip club experience. My host noted that notwithstanding the legends, the Strip’s strips have yet to recover from a heavy-handed set of election-year crackdowns, and suggested I try the Palomino, which, being in the separate town of North Las Vegas, was a bit more like the old-time (i.e., 2005 – history is short here) clubs. Apparently it’s the only place in greater LV where you can get full nude, contact, and alcohol at the same time.

New owners, new renovations, trumpeted the shills. In keeping with the rest of LV interior decoration traditions (a style best called Imperial Tacky), there are a lot of colored lights, velvet upholstery, and metallic curtains. It’s a fairly spacious place, and was pretty crowded on a weeknight. There were lots of girls, some on the slightly plus side, but no one unattractive and several stunners. It’s easy to get a dancer’s attention, but once you’ve got it, I have to say that I have seldom felt less up-close-and-personal than during the two personal dances I purchased. For all the good contact (1-way) and grindage, it was like the girls were phoning it in ... to an answering machine. Maybe the high-energy, high-pressure atmosphere of the town, and the all-customers-are-suckers theme of LV culture, fosters this kind of mechanical impersonality. Anyway, I’ve now had the experience, and will happily return to good old repressed but friendly Connecticut, where the girls at least look you in the eye.