“My girl is dancing at Penthouse tonight,” Chuck confided in me, though I suspect I wasn’t the first to hear his confession.
He was trying to convince me to accompany him to the club after CL’s Wine Club event at
ds. Chuck even had three attractive girls with him, one or more of which supposedly really wanted me to go. The only thing more intriguing than nude dancers is women who enjoy watching nude dancers. There was also some talk of Chuck buying lap dances for his lady friends. I figured after a few beers, I too might have been included in Chuck’s philanthropic efforts.
Normally I wouldn’t need much convincing to drink and watch surgically enhanced nudity in motion. The trouble was that I brought a lady of my own, Penny, to the wine tasting, and was uncertain how she’d respond to such an invitation. It was hard enough convincing her that a wine tasting at a health food store would be cool.
To be honest, I too was a bit skeptical of the choice of Wine Club location. But, I changed my mind after watching a steady stream of patrons looking dressed for some expensive gym class involving whale songs and giant inflatable balls. The place was a depot of people wealthy enough to live healthy, active lifestyles, and look great well into middle age — the kind of people who have developed a taste for wheat grass and goji. This is not to say the store didn’t have its share of normal people as well as the token old white dude dressed in a silk robe and wooden clogs like an Asian wizard.
The tasting was loaded with confident business woman types bold enough to show up alone and leave with whatever caught their fancy — usually a bottle of wine and some French cheese. Patrons floated between the sampling booths of cheeses I couldn’t pronounce and multiple bottles of over fifty different wines. No matter how I did the math on the distorted ration of wines to tasters who signed in at the check in booth, the equations ends with people dropping glasses and munching food from the produce section, thinking it part of the complimentary hors d’oeuvres.
When the last of the bottles were emptied or corked, Penny and I ended up sitting outside on one of the Whole Foods’ café tables, debating the pros and cons of strip clubs. Two ladies, Ruthy and Shena sat at an adjacent table, killing a bottle they had talked a wine pourer into giving them. They didn’t notice us at first, nor did they seem to remember telling me something about how they were both in massage school and in need of bodies to practice on.
“Is that Alfie,” Ruthy asked, handing the bottle to Penny. “Well isn’t he the little whore tonight?”
I wasn’t sure if this was called for considering I had only offered my body as a learning tool for their massage education, but Penny seemed to think it warranted. She took a hearty swig from the bottle. When the bottle got dangerously close to being emptied and tossed in the empty parking lot, and the girls began dropping pumpkins they claimed to have purchased from the closed Whole Foods, I told Penny it was time to leave.
“To where?” she asked.
We met Chuck at Penthouse, and much to his credit, we did get in for free just by claiming we were having dinner with him. Of course I’m sure it helps having an attractive girl with me wearing a pink wig, a-la-Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation. (We made a quick stop at Priscilla’s in search of adult-themed Halloween costumes. Regrettably, I backed out on wearing the John Holmes mustache I got for my costume.
“This is like one of those nice strip clubs you see in the movies,” Penny whispered, much to my relief.
All of the dancers had sculpted figures, a full set of teeth, and knew other moves than just the squat and shake.
“That’s her,” Chuck said, pointing to his “girl” – a tall, elegant Asian woman with subtle fake breasts. I was impressed, but I was even more impressed that he wasn’t jealous about her escorting a client to the VIP room.
At our table I was in for another surprise. The $14 calamari came out on a plate the size of a platter, and tasted good enough to distract me from the tableful of dancers taking turns on a thick, trucker-style lesbian. I was in heaven, or at least a comfortable limbo. To one side of me sat Penny who understood a key ingredient in sex appeal is dressing up like someone else. On the other side sat one of Chuck’s three attractive friends who, unlike Ruthy and Shena, was a licensed masseuse. My imagination of all the ways the night could turn out was near capacity.
I started asking questions about Chuck’s dancer lady, and how long he had known her. He explained how the relationship was new, and how she nearly came over “that weekend” for a BBQ he was having, but unfortunately she had to work.
“Have you ever hung out with her outside of work?”
“Not yet,” he said, with an optimistic smile that made it easy to see why three attractive women would follow him to a strip club.
I felt something drop in my stomach. What was wrong with Chuck that he would waste his time pretending to date a dancer when he was surrounded by three ladies who either genuinely enjoyed nude dancers, or at least liked him enough to pretend?
I considered the two performers on stage, both with translucent pasties looking like Vaseline smeared on their chests. I wondered what it was like to legitimately date a dancer. Eventually, would you just end up fantasizing about what it was like to be with her friend who could make her butt cheeks applaud after each bill you slipped in her garter belt? Could men ever be satisfied? Maybe not, but it seemed important not to lose sight of who was sitting right beside you.
I opened my wallet and considered the five dollars-worth of ones the Target clerk gave me after denying my request for $50 cash-back in singles. I decided to pay the bill and take my pink haired beauty home. We had to make plans for the BBQ we were having the next night. Perhaps I would invite Chuck, and possibly his three attractive masseuse friends, and his dancer girlfriend if he wanted, and her dancer girlfriends if she wanted.
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