Don't Feed the Strippers

by Graham Currin

I hadn’t felt right since I went to Greenville, South Carolina with my roommate Josh. Josh is the kind of guy you hate to love. Six-two and athletic, with eyes and a smile that knocked girls flat on their backs, legs sprawled and ready to go without saying a word. To call him a charmer would be like calling the ocean wet. Opportunity falls into his lap daily, like when he found us tickets to the Georgia football game and sleeping accommodations with the lovely sisters of Delta Delta Delta. But Josh’s problem is that he always feels that something better is just around the corner, a bigger check, a faster car. Which is why at 27, after bouncing from police cadet to bank teller to bartender, he had just started his first nine to five running a temp agency. The blind finally had their one-eyed king. 

Originally, Josh had transportation to Georgia covered with his new Tahoe Suburban that got eight miles to the tank if you turned the DVD players off. But it ended up in the shop the day of departure, much like Josh’s promises usually do. That left us taking my gold Ford Taurus to the rent-a-thumper store to find another car to put the miles on. One painful hour later, our rental engineer Melba kindly told us that all she had on the lot was a green Taurus and a gold Taurus. “I’ll take the gold one,” I told her, and walked back out to my car.

We hit the road. 

First we picked up Josh’s friend “Pinto” who was just down the street in Newport News, Virginia. Pinto was his last name. Brians are a dime a dozen and his surname had stuck, as it usually does for Brians, Ryans, and Steves after the coach bellows it for the thousandth time in practice. I had never hung out with Pinto before, but he was a nice enough guy. His name didn’t imply any crazy quirks, just a small car. Which was fitting, as any vehicle becomes small when three guys are roadtripping in it. 

The next stop was Greenville, South Carolina, where we met Josh’s other friend, Phil and thankfully escaped the dank man-cloud of my Taurus for Phil’s Jeep Cherokee, complete with Armor-All-coated back seats that sent the rear passengers into forced spooning on every turn. Inertia-spawned homosexuality aside, everyone was pumped for the game. Usually, this is the best part of a road trip. Hopes are high. All the plans are in line. The women are waiting to be met and the beers are just being cracked. I asked Josh if he still had our tickets. He said that they were a bit pricey, so he figured we would just scalp some when we got to Athens. We were seven hours from home going to a game still 90 miles away with no tickets. Right on track. 

When we rolled into Athens at one p.m., we knew instantly that the game was going to be awesome because we could hear the stadium from anywhere in the city. Unfortunately, that also meant the game had already started. 

“I thought you said it was a late game,” I said to Josh. 

“It is. A late one o’clock game,” he said with a smile that substituted for an apology. We walked down to the stadium gates and found that the second quarter was half over, and the scalpers were still asking sixty dollars a ticket. We took a straw poll and figured our money could be better spent at the bar. Then tragedy struck. Josh’s phone died, leaving us with no Deltas. We waited around in hopes that maybe one would drop in. By eight p.m., it was time to admit defeat and go back to Phil’s place in South Carolina, as all the hotels were just as packed as the game. We headed back to Phil’s jeep. 

So far, the trip had been innocently mischievous and I nursed my buzz to greater significance in the backseat of Phil’s Cherokee. That’s when road trip hysteria came into full effect. You see, after ten hours in a car, people start to get a little funny. Much in the way mountain climbers suffer from the dizziness of altitude sickness, passengers on long rides get the Roadtrip Giggles. This, combined with a six-pack of Natural Light, led me to the astute observation that any song becomes funny when you sing it in the voice of Scooby Doo. Prince’s “Purple Rain” became “Rurple Rain.” We told the Police’s Roxanne that she didn’t have to “Rhurn on da Rhed Liiiight.” And then, as if God himself called in a request to the radio station, Tom Jones came on with “What’s New Pussy Cat.” Pinto belted it out stone-faced like a trooper, “Rhut’s Rhew Rhussie Cat, Rohhh-oh-ohhh-oh.” I tried to join in but could never get past the “Rohhh-oh-ohhh-oh’s,” and Josh was doubled over in the front seat in tears. 

Fully immersed in the contagion of Roadtrip Giggles, I barely noticed the funny bar Phil pulled into. It didn’t seem like our kind of establishment. Electric pink letters sizzled on the side of windowless stucco: “PLATINUM PLUS.” It sounded like a credit card. Spotting the valet in a tuxedo shirt and bowtie at the door, I asked, “What kinda bar is this?” 

“The best kind,” Phil replied. “The naked kind.” 

Two things that I was always proud of were that I had never watched the movie Titanic and that I had never gone to a titty bar. “Graham Currin doesn’t have to pay for girls,” I was fond of saying. But as the bouncers came out of the club to make their rounds in the parking lot, it seemed that staying behind wasn’t an option. I just hoped they weren’t showing Titanic inside. 

Pinto and Josh rolled in first. Phil and I only made it a few paces from the car when the valet piped up that we had forgotten to pay him. 

“We’ve already parked,” Phil said. 

“Yeah, but I watch the cars,” said the greasy blonde haired kid. Phil didn’t want any trouble so he doled out a five to the guy. 

“That’s all I’ve got,” Phil told me. I’d have to pay our way in until he could get to an ATM. This was shaping up perfectly. 

I walked past the four-foot tall suits of armor that stood guard at the entrance to Platinum Plus and immediately heard thumping bass and saw the strobes bouncing off of the hallway that led to the main club. I didn’t know how much it cost to get in, but I figured my fifty would cover us and I slid it to the cashier coolly. To my surprise it only cost sixteen for the both of us. Also to my surprise, the cashier handed the change back in two-dollar bills. Seventeen of them. Zoinks Scoob, what in the hell was I going to do with seventeen two-dollar bills?

Oh. Touché titty bar. 

Phil laughed. “I should’ve told you. They only give change in two-dollar bills here. If you buy anything in Greenville, everyone knows where you’ve been.” Phil led the way as I took in the scene. All I knew about strip clubs I learned from TV. Usually it was a horseshoe ring of shady dudes sitting around a girl on a pole. TV was tame. Platinum Plus had a mainstage, two cages, a champagne room, and numerous cubby-holed tables where the dancers could corner you and try to coerce you to the anything-goes VIP room. Full service, they called it. 

We joined Josh and Pinto around a table near one of the cages and sat in chairs that I was sure I wouldn’t have wanted to see under a Dateline special investigation black light. The bass thumped on as a dancer shook her machine gun ass in the far cage. For a moment, Platinum Plus was really sort of, magical. Women in lingerie floated all around us like some giant sex aquarium. I had seen far more lewd displays at dance clubs, come to think of it. The bouncers in their tuxedo shirts gave an air of class to the place. And the house music reminded me of a New York club, the way the beat pounds in your chest and continuously escapes through some tapping extremity out of your control.

Then, from nowhere, a school of dancers wove through the chairs up front. All kinds. They looked like a Dr. Seuss book. Whatever type of girl you wanted, Platinum Plus had. Some were white and some were black. Some were thin and some were fat. Some in red. And some in blue. Some were old. And some were new. Some were sad. And some were glad. And for fifty bucks, some would be very, very bad. 

I was just relaxing into my seat when the first one approached our table and headed straight to me. I’ll pause here to say that a strip club environment is truly a foreign land. It has its own language, rules, and customs. None of which I knew. The kindly Striplandian greeted me in their usual way. 

“Hey big boy. What can I do for you?” 

Seeing the many bars around and the girls dancing in, on, and around them, I said how about getting me a beer. Faux-pas. Her face squished up as she said with a huff, “I don’t do that. Your waitress will be here in a minute.” The guys at the table laughed uncontrollably. Lesson one: a stripper is not your waitress. For forty bucks she’ll give you the old San Francisco handshake, but apparently drink service is beneath her. 

The guys were still laughing when the cage in front of us lit up. A young lady with blue hair and six inch clear platform heels, the native dress in Striplandia, came barreling up the ramp to the cage. She leapt from the cage and swung on a pole that flanked it. Neon glowing toenails flew overhead as she took the poll like a vertical trapeze. I was impressed. We all were. We quieted down as she swung from bar to bar, but not in the herky-jerky way that Olympians do on the parallels. It was always smooth and controlled. 

When she settled back into the cage to converse with an admirer, I asked Josh if there was any other etiquette I should know about. “Not really,” he said. “But they’re going to bug the hell out of you for lap dances the rest of the night.” That sounded cool, I thought, but as soon as he said it, a girl materialized like a vampire beside me. She knocked my foot off my knee, uncrossed my legs, and sat down on my lap. Suddenly I wished I was in one of the suits of armor out front. 

“What’s your name?” she asked mechanically. 

“Uhhh, Armand,” I said. “What’s yours?”

“Scandalous. Want to come backstage with me?” she asked. 

“Uh, no thanks.” 

“Come on. I usually charge forty bucks for three songs, but for you I’ll do thirty,” she said. 

“What’s your tattoo say?” I asked, trying to change the subject. 

“Envy. I’d rather have it on my body than in my life. How ‘bout that dance?” 

Politicians and salesman alike could have learned from Scandalous. She stayed on message and went for the sale the whole time. She eventually called no joy and leapt up to find another target. 

“Good job,” Josh said. “They’re just like sea gulls, man. If you feed ‘em they’ll just come looking for more.” 

I‘d seen an interview with a stripper once on one of those TV news shows that purports to investigate the issue of decency while really using it as an excuse to show endless reels of dancers in barely broadcastable outfits. She said that strippers liked the money, but even more they liked the power. And they sure wielded it at Platinum Plus. All eyes were on them. It took so much effort to reject beautiful girl after girl. One would give their relentless sales pitch to each of us, while another circled not far off, waiting to wear us down. 

And it did tire. Over and over it went:

“No.”

“You sure?”

“No thanks.”

“Come on.”

“I’m tired.”

“I’ll wake you up.”

“I’ve got a girlfriend.” 

“So do I.”

“I’m gay.”

“We’ve got some guys here.”

“I’m broke.”

“Goodbye.”

It was a never-ending string of “No’s.” I decided to escape the feeding frenzy for a moment and hit the bathroom only to find another tuxedoed gentlemen manning the sinks with a tip plate. You have to tip everyone at a strip club. The coat guy, the waitress (who isn’t the stripper), the valet who doesn’t move your car. But damned if I was going to give a guy a buck for turning on a faucet. I wiped my hands on the back of my jeans and walked out. Urine is sterile. Which is more than I could say for Platinum Plus. 

I walked back to our table to find Pinto straddled and Phil missing. 

“Where’s Phil,” I asked. 

“Lap dance,” Josh said. 

Another moment and Pinto was being lead away from us. 

“What are you doing?” Josh asked.

“I talked her down to twenty,” Pinto said. “I’m a sucker for a deal.” 

Two men down. Our numbers were quickly shrinking. I looked at Josh, hoping he would stay. He was laughing at Pinto. “Look at her get him. She’s like a velociraptor. You see the first one coming, but ya never see the second one.” I looked as Josh motioned and saw Pinto, now flanked by two girls at the ATM. He was done for. 

With our numbers halved, the girls came even faster. We mowed them down mercilessly. I was a broken record of No. No to Michelle. No to Luscious. No to Valerie and Destiny and Harmony. No matter how melodious your name. No. You can’t get me to go for a walk. Or to the champagne room just to talk. Not in the VIP. Not with Candy. Not with your friend. Not with two tens. No. No. No. I do not want you down my pants. I do not want your skanky lap dance. I do not want good times, thank-you ma’am. I will not pay you, Graham-I-am. 

Then Josh got up. Rut-Roh Shaggy. At least it looked like he was heading to the restroom. But in the meantime, three girls surrounded me. They were asking me so many questions and doing that thing where they rub the back of your head and feel your bicep and marvel at how strong you are, and even though you haven’t worked out in a year you let yourself believe them. I was defenseless. I didn’t want to go to the back room, drink some spiked drink, and wake up chained to a metal headboard, missing my kidneys. But I was out of No’s. They were rubbing my chest and asking me what I wanted, and then I remembered. 

“Actually,” I said. “All I want is for one of you to go get me a beer.”

And in a cloud of teeth sucking and eye rolling, they were gone. 

Josh came back, followed soon by a dejected Pinto who admitted that somehow he had been talked into twice the fee. Some deal. Phil actually came back to us bouncing. He had gotten his stripper’s phone number. They’d had a moment, he said. 

The lights dimmed and the emcee announced that we were all in for a treat as the second shift of more “experienced” ladies came on. Unfortunately for us, Platinum Plus does not offer a pension program for its aging performers. You see, strippers don’t die, they just become waitresses. It was time to go. 

The drive back to Phil’s place was a quiet one, as was the one back home the next day. Except for when we stopped at a Bojangle’s and they asked Pinto if he wanted a combo. We told the cashier no thanks. He’d already had one last night. That kid’s a sucker for a deal. 

I took two showers when I got home. One that night to wash the weekend off, and one the next day to ensure I was rid of all stripper glitter. Attending church the following Sunday had never been more of a necessity. I had a visceral need to return to normal. I just wanted to see wholesome things now. Kids and puppies playing. Fluffy clouds and kindly old church folk smiling and singing. 

I took my seat with my family in the back row at First Fox Hill United Methodist as the choir finished “Sweet Hour of Prayer.” Scooby was unfortunately absent from the vocals this time. When the offering plate came around, I reached into my wallet to figure what I could part with, and all I found were two-dollar bills. I placed all seventeen into the plate as discreetly as I could, but my grandfather saw them and knew something was up. 

“Have a good weekend?” he whispered. 

“Yessir,” I said. “I think so.”