America's Got Talent

Okay:

So Friday was my last day at my old job, and my friends and co-workers did not miss the opportunity to take me out and show me a good time.

A trip to The National Zoo?

A tour of The Smithsonian?

A game of Frisbee?

No. No. A thousand times no.

Try happy hour at a strip club in Chinatown. Now there's a send-off worth getting excited about.

But I jest. The truth is strip clubs aren't really my thing. Especially here in DC where you can't touch the dancers, which is like going to a restaurant with a no-swallowing policy.

And then there's the other thing. We're all sitting at a table by the stage having drinks when my homeboy leans over to me and says, "These are our students when they grow up."

But he didn't say it in an R. Kelly "I can't wait to legally pee on these bitches" kind of way. He said it in a very sobering way. Like, "Doesn't that put this all in perspective for you?"

And it did for a while. But then I realized that exotic dancing is a perfectly legal profession. Sure, there's an underworld of drug abuse and prostitution associated with it, but that surely isn't always the case. None of these girls looked high, drunk or particularly down on their luck. They were just dancing nude. And what I was doing, watching, patronizing the establishment, was also not against the law. Probably not high on the list of things you want to discuss with the parents of your students, but I was certainly well within my rights.

Having gotten it right in my head, I was then able to enjoy myself.

I asked the waitress, a middle-aged, pair-shaped white woman with a big smile, to change my $20 bill.

"Guess which titty," she giggled.

"Excuse me?"

"Guess which titty. The left or the right." Then she squeezed her arms together at the wrist, and pumped her breasts.

I pondered for a moment, then chose. "The right one," I said.

"You got it," she laughed. Then she pulled a sweaty wad of one dollar bills from her right breast.

Then, in an effort to be courteous, I peeled one dollar off the sweaty wad and stuffed in back into her shirt, which she seemed to enjoy.

"Are you gonna get up there later?" I asked.

"Honey," she said. "My dancing days are over."

Then the star of the show hit the stage. I had been hearing about this woman for months. I was told that she had a neat trick that I just had to see for myself.

My homeboy handed me a fistful of ones and told me to go over there and tell her to "Show me some respect." And so I did.

Well.

I'm trying not to be graphic here.

This woman, this very talented special woman, can make a certain body part of hers go "pop" like a champagne bottle. No hands. No special instruments. She just flexes her muscles and out comes this sound that's loud enough to draw a crowd.

I was fascinated. But not in a sexual way. More of a "That's a really neat trick!" sort of way. I guess I just can't imagine how this would be a good thing in bed.

Then, as the crowd began to form, she rolled out one more trick. Again, I shall exercise some discretion here. If you fold a dollar bill length-wise and place it on top of this body part, she can shoot that dollar bill into the air two feet high.

What a show!

Only thing is, the rest of the dancers looked so lame compared to her. She had so much money in her thigh bands, she could barely walk. For an hour's worth of dancing, she must have walked out of there with at least $300.

Probably more.

And so. The bottom line is. There's really no reason to feel sorry for strippers. At least not the good ones.


Thanks for reading.


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Factoid: There is something, however, disheartening to say the least, about leaving a strip club while the sun is still up.