The Anticipated Loneliness of the Strip Club

Something about most strip clubs these days bothers me. And no, it isn’t the objectification of the dancers, or the way they prance and grind and pop and swing for dollar bills. I love that shit. That shit is the whole reason that I go to the strip club in the first place. It’s the owners, the designers, the architects of the strip club that usually get it all wrong. And I know what you’re thinking, The premise is simple – men pay to enter, women dance on stage and then come out and try to separate as much money from the men as possible.’ But there’s so much more to it, at least for me. If I could design my own strip club, here are some of the things I would feature:

The Entrance: First off, you have to get the entrance right. It can’t look like you are entering the backalley entrance of some all-night crap-game. No steel doors please. What we need is an entrance, non-descript, but something with a decent lobby to appropriately transition you to the world you are about to enter.

The Lighting: Next, you have to get the lighting right. The worse thing about the strip clubs that I’ve been in (and to be honest, I haven’t been in that many) is that they don’t use the lighting to their advantage to set the mood and tempo of the place. Personally, I feel like the house lights should rise and fall when a new dancer comes out on stage, like the way it does when one goes to the opera, or to see a live play. You have to recognize each woman’s performance as a performance, a three-act play with an opening, climax, and conclusion. As the woman is finishing her dance, the lights would go up (as if to say this act is over) and they would stay up until another dancer is ready to come on stage. So much of sex and sexuality is about picking up on non-verbal cues, about knowing how to read the signals, the signs. Varying the lights would compel the patrons to pay attention even on a subconscious level, and that would help alleviate the biggest downfall of the strip-club (see below).

The Tempo: One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen strip clubs make is not allowing some time to pass between dancers. There have been times when I wanted to go to some owners and tell them: “You know, even a teenagers dick needs to go soft every once in a while”. For god’s sake people, give us five minutes between sets. Let us mill around some, go to the bathroom, get up and get a drink without feeling like we’re going to be missing something. In other words, let the iron cool for a minute before you heat it back up again. I know it seems like a simple concept, but if this doesn’t happen, I think you very likely increase the chance the biggest downfall of the strip-club happening.

The Anticipation: I know I’m going to get a lot of disagreement on this one, but I personally think the strip-club experience would be greatly enhanced if all the dancers didn’t take off ALL their clothes ALL of the time. I think dancers should be prepared to take it all off, but should reserve the right (as part of their professional judgment) to leave the g-string on if they so desire. Frankly, if they feel aren’t getting the enthusiasm (or the tips) they deserve, they should be able to leave it on. Tell the truth, wouldn’t you be more likely to throw dollars at the stage if you though that by doing so you could make something happen?

The Other People: Perhaps Jean Paul Sartre really knew what he was talking about when he said ‘hell is other people’. It certainly is in the strip club. In my perfect world, strip clubs are designed more like opera houses, with a woman on stage below, surrounded on all sides and above by box seats (I know this presents an obstacle to the whole ‘throwing dollars on stage’ thing but we’re really moving away from paper currency anyway). That way, while sitting in my box seat, sending dollars to her via credit card (with her running total of donations flashed on a sign above her head) I could maintain the illusion that I am alone there, in the strip club, with only my melancholy, and a lone dancer taking off (or perhaps NOT taking off) her clothes to comfort me. I certainly can’t speak for anyone else, but the times of my strongest desire to go to the strip club are when I feel the most lonely and detached from the world, and when I am feeling that way, I want to seek out other people who are lonely and detached. And what is the description of a dancer at a strip club if not that? Who are they if not those who have to pretend to pretend to pretend? The truth of the matter is, I don’t go to the strip club to see the dancers, or touch them, or talk to them, I go to the strip club because they are times in my life (hours, days, weeks) when I feel like I am them – just a person going through a series of motions to get paid. And at those times, they are the only people I feel can understand what I’m going through.

The Biggest Downfall of the Strip Club: Boredom, plain and simple. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than that moment of recognition in the club when one asks oneself: “What the hell am I doing here? Isn’t Sportscenter on right now?” And boredom is exactly what happens when one stops being engaged, I dare say, when one stops being surprised by what happens at the strip club. At that to me is the fundamental irony of the strip club. We all know, as humans, that what we crave most is occasional variation, particularly in the realms of sex and sexuality. But most strip clubs these days are an exercise in soul-crushing monotony. Which is funny, because the very thing that most women think men go there to get, something ‘new’, is the very thing that most strip clubs don’t offer.