never trust a man with a boat

people with boats can be really fucking shady, yo.

a few nights ago, i met a customer with whom i got along inordinately well. he was irreverent, a total smartass, and he appreciated my brain. i met him at the front bar, where he dropped a $20 on me to "stick around." he keeps telling me that he wishes he'd met me outside of the club, and mentions repeatedly that he wants me to come to his hotel room. this is not out of the ordinary, and it's easy to brush off. after he buys me a drink and we talk for about ten minutes, i take him over to a booth so i can work my magic without his buddies around.

i sit through a song, talking, before deciding i need to make more money--great conversation, but i'm starting to become antsy stripper and let's face it, twenty bucks only goes so far. i stand up, and do a few dances during which i have to tell him repeatedly that "if you don't behave yourself i'm going to start charging you extra." i'm only sortof joking; he really can't keep his hands to himself. i mean, some touching is fine, i actually prefer (most) customers to touch me a little bit--it feels less stiff than them just sitting there with their arms glued to their sides while i basically snuggle with them to a beat. but constantly trying to grope me, and refusing to lean back in his seat not only bugs the CRAP out of me (especially that last part. i need to have control over the situation, and when guys lean forward they gain more physical leverage), but also means he receives an inferior lapdance. i can't get close to him and relax while i'm constantly having to police his hands or push him back in the booth so he doesn't knock me over, try and grab me, or overpower me. after two dances he says, "i think i just want you to sit here, since i can't control myself." fair enough. i tack on another 20 to the mental tally i'll give him when it comes time to get money.

so we sit and talk for about 20 minutes, and after another "i wish i'd met you in a regular bar or something" we get on the subject of hooking up with people one meets in bars, and the strategies, goals, statistics therein. i avoid mentioning my assessment of strip clubs as spaces which try and make patrons feel as though they're in a single's bar, only with all the odds stacked in their favor. i don't think it's a good idea to have a discussion about the game with this person; his bubble seems a bit easier to burst than others'. i often have really great conversations with customers about the nature of strip clubs, and they still pay me money. but this one seems like he needs to believe that i would be behaving exactly the same way if he wasn't paying me. fine, i can play along, god knows i've done it before. and then he tells me this story:

a number of years ago he went out to a bar with a buddy, the kind of guy who can regularly pick up two women at once. true to form, his buddy picks up two women, and off they go to buddy's boat. they're expecting a third friend, and suddenly it dawns on my guy that this other friend is much more attractive than him, and thus will undoubtedly usurp his ability to mack on this girl. in an effort to secure any chance he might have of getting laid, he makes his buddy pull the boat out, and eventually they have to break the no-wake rule because the 3rd friend shows up just in time and chases them down the pier. heh.

so they get out to the bay or wherever, buddy goes downstairs to bang his girl, and my guy is up top chatting with the other chick. they're getting along just fine, but he can tell it's just not going to happen, she's not interested, whatever. no big deal, they're just hanging out. pretty soon buddy emerges from down below, and pulls my guy aside to ask how it's going. my guy says, "i don't think anything is going to happen, but it's cool, we're just talking." and then his buddy proceeds to grab this girl by the arm and haul her to a different part of the boat, where he tells her off. "what the fuck did you think you were coming out here for?" "do you know how much it costs to fill up this tank?" he's yelling at her, he's poking her in the chest. all the while my guy is trying to wave him off, because he really doesn't think it's a big deal. wow. "that's fucked up," i say, and he agrees.

here's the punchline: after being told off and guilt tripped for not putting out, for not filling her function as a token warm wet hole, the girl returns to my guy, and snuggles up to him. and then he fucked her.

now i know why he prefaced the story by saying he'd only confessed this to a small handful of people. i'm in shock. i manage to convey how much i appreciate him telling me the story, and he talks about how guilty he's felt about the incident ever since that night. while i'm horrified at the tale, i really am grateful he told me--it's not every day you get to hear stories like that from a virtual stranger, at least not in person (want to read anonymous confessions on the internet? check out http://postsecret.blogspot.com/). but that's one of the things i love about being a stripper--it's the manifestation of my lifelong desire to be a fly on the wall of the men's locker room.

a long time ago, i lived with a boyfriend for a summer, who had to spend a good chunk of his time working at a certain camp for teenagers. his duties included some dorm admin stuff, so he had a room there, and i stayed with him. at night, i would stalk the halls on the boy's floor after they were confined to their rooms, just to see if i could overhear something interesting. i never did. i've always wanted to know how boys talk to each other when girls aren't around, and as a stripper, i believe i get an approximation of that. it works like this: even though they are most certainly aware of our presence as token T&A, they don't care what we think because we're just strippers. also, they never have to see us again, and so it's a relatively risk-free environment. therefore, they don't censor themselves a whole lot around us (and lemme tell ya, it's a rough world out there in the maniverse if some of the stuff i see and hear on a regular basis is actually censored). what's more, i hear all sorts of interesting tidbits that don't have to do with chauvinist underpinnings: i've had people confess all sorts of weird stuff, tell me intimate details of their relationships, talk to me about kinks that i'm sure they don't share with their male friends (like, say, how they want me to fuck them in the ass). often times, the talking i do feels like a therapy session. i'm no stranger to this, and i quite enjoy it--especially when i'm getting paid well.

i know i've got to be onstage in a bit, so we finish our chat and rejoin his friend at the bar for more drinks. he makes another couple comments indicating he wished he had a chance to try his game on me in a "real" bar, and how i should TOTALLY come to his hotel room. i make a joke about him not being able to afford it, to which he replies, "well, i don't want to PAY you." i go, "well that's too bad, because i have to be onstage soon and you owe me sixty bucks." the expression on his face reads as, "?!" and i truly believe he was actually surprised that he owed me money for what had just transpired. "i owe you SIXTY BUCKS?! for WHAT?!" and i'm like, "well, we did two dances, and then you told me you just wanted me to sit there, which i did, naked, for over 20 minutes, and i think i deserve another $20 for that." "but i just gave you twenty bucks!" "yes, and thank you, but that was an hour ago and i considered it a tip." he doesn't budge. i can see him shutting down, getting the kind of attitude i am sometimes on the receiving end of when it comes time to talk about money--but usually that's not until the end of the night when customers are more inebriated and have grown weary of hemorrhaging cash. you can see it in their faces: their bubble bursts, and they just turn on you. they can't deal with acknowledging that they just paid you to be nice to them, so all of a sudden you're a golddigging bitch and they're "not paying anyone else any more fucking money."

over the course of about three seconds, he turns into a pouty child who's determined to get his way. he folds his arms and holds firm in his stance that he's not going to pay me. he says, "how big are the bouncers? i wouldn't mind fighting my way out of here." he keeps bringing up the twenty bucks he handed me--AS IF that's some colossal sum of money. i say, "yes, and thank you for the tip, but that doesn't cover services rendered." he clearly has no idea that i'm AT WORK. "but i thought you liked me." "yes, and i did have a great time with you, but this is my job." his friend, thank god, is no stranger to the strip club game and pulls me aside, apologetic, and gives me all the money in his wallet--forty bucks. "i'm really sorry, he doesn't understand that this is work for you." oh well. i thank him, cut my losses, go on stage, and proceed to forget about it.

the moral to the story: never trust a man with a boat. they'll use their ability to contain you as means to control you. and they have shady friends.