Play Something Dancy

by Dee Simon

  “Are we going to do this or what?”

  “I dunno. They’re gonna laugh at these IDs,” I replied. Jason sat in the backseat not saying a word.

  “We didn’t take your mom’s car and drive all the way out here just to turn back and head home. We gotta at least try to get in.” For better but usually for worse, Kessler was a great motivator.

  “Okay, I’m down. Let’s go in after this song.” I turned the volume up, and we sat listening to Jim Morrisson wail about being touched inappropriately by some woman and thinking that the same thing was in store for us. I stared apprehensively at the neon-lit entrance, wondering how severe our injuries would be when the bouncer tossed us out. The song ended and I shut the car off.

  “Let’s go.”

  I exited the car and slammed the door shut. Kessler and Jason slowly clambered out and followed behind me as I strode with purpose towards the pink neon-lit doorway. When I reached the entrance of the Vu, I looked back to make sure that they were still behind me, took a deep breath, and pushed the door open. The air conditioning blasted me with a malodorous mix of cool air, cigarette smoke, disinfectant, and cheap perfume. It caused me to sneeze five times consecutively, and I probably would have continued sneezing had the enormous black man standing in front of me not said, “Goddamn, boy, ‘bless you’ ten times.” Regaining my composure, I muttered a weak “thanks” and checked my shirt to make sure it wasn’t covered in mucus. The lobby was also a sex shop, and we surveyed the room in amazement at the vibrators and dildos hanging from the walls, and the bins overflowing with VHS porn movies. I had never seen so much porn. It was overwhelming. I had to steel myself for a few seconds before approaching the fat, frowning cashier with a mullet haircut and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. His large frame was perched precariously on a stool behind a glass counter, and he was casually flipping through a porn magazine. He looked annoyed, as if he was irritated that we were standing in front of him and now he had to do his job.

  “You got an ID? You have to be eighteen to come in here,” he said gruffly, lacking emotion.

  “Sure. Yes, yes, I do. Hold on one second please.” I fumbled around in my pocket for my wallet, pulled out the blue Kmart ID, and shakily handed it to him. “Here.”

  He passively took it from me, glanced at it for a few seconds, and dropped it on the glass countertop. “Long way from home, huh?”

  “Excuse me?” Despite the air conditioning, I could feel that the back of my dress shirt was drenched with sweat.

  “I said you’re a long way from home. Windsor’s about two hours east of here.”

  “Oh yes. Windsor. Yes. It’s far away, but I live here now. I’m in college.” It had completely slipped my mind that I had used a Canadian address on the fake ID, but I felt I saved face by saying that I was in college.

  The cashier was indifferent. “It’s five dollars to get in, and you gotta buy two drinks. And you better tip the girls.” He pointed his chubby index finger at me.

  “Will do. Thanks.” I was so astonished that our gambit worked that my mouth could barely form words. The porno gatekeeper actually believed that I was an eighteen-year-old man from Canada, or more likely, he just didn’t care and wanted my five dollars. Behind me, I could hear Kessler and Jason exhale an audible sigh of relief. I quickly paid the man, grabbed my ID off the counter, and slipped it back into my wallet. I was planning to take special care of that ID as it would be quite useful for our many future visits. Kessler and Jason confidently handed the cashier their identification, paid the entrance fee, and we triumphantly marched through the black curtain into the den of iniquity that our adolescent minds had dreamed about for so many years.

  Surprisingly, the club was very similar to how Jason’s older brother described it. There was a stage in the middle of the room surrounded by chairs and small round tables, and the walls were lined with couches for lap dances. As I grew older, I learned that this is the common design for almost every strip club. It was Saturday night, and the club was packed with guys and half-naked women. We stood there, motionless, for a couple minutes with the curtain open, attempting to mentally process everything. I’m sure we would have stood there longer had the surly cashier not shouted, “Close the fucking curtain!” I released the curtain and immediately came to the realization that we were now “inside the club.” I looked over at Kessler and Jason and saw that they were both grinning widely as they came to a similar realization. The club was dark except for the bright, flashing stage lights and the black lights perched above the lap-dance couches. REO Speedwagon blasted from the club’s speakers while a naked woman swung from the pole on the middle of the stage. Drooling perverts wearing trucker hats threw dollar bills at her from the front row. Practically every couch in the room had a guy sitting on it with a writhing naked woman on his lap. Four massive television screens displayed porn movies. We stood there mouths agape, trying to absorb it all. It was much better than how Jason’s brother described it. We had entered Shangri-La. The DJ turned the volume down and told us to grab a seat in the front row, but we just found the first open table and sat down. This was sensory overload. Our virgin minds could hardly process all the porn, let alone the live naked women dancing before us. We had never even seen a naked woman before. We sat there in silence, our eyes glued on the woman onstage. It took us a minute to notice that there was a bikini-clad waitress standing beside our table, asking us if we wanted to order a drink.

  Since no one else seemed to be capable of articulation, I spoke up for the group. “What do you have?”

  “We have pop and O’douls,” she replied. For those fortunate enough not to be born in Midwestern America, pop is the vernacular term for soda. However, I was in the dark about O’douls.

  “What’s O’douls?”

  “That’s non-alcoholic beer.” Since the Vu was a fully nude strip club, they were not allowed to serve alcoholic beverages. “Would you like one?”

  “Yeah, we’ll have three O’douls.” I looked at my companions, and they nodded in assent, still unable to peel their eyes away from the naked girl onstage. At the very least, fake beer would make us seem more mature than drinking a coke. She returned in a few minutes with our beverages. Kessler paid her and gave her a five-dollar tip, which really seemed to impress her. We watched the next three girls strip onstage, in silence and with undivided attention that was broken only when an attractive blonde stripper in a neon green bikini sat down at our table.

  “Hey, guys, how are you doing tonight?” she asked in a high-pitched, almost Valley Girl inflection.

  We looked at the girl desperately, trying not to focus on her massive breasts barely being covered by a miniscule piece of neon green fabric. I was too scared to speak. I didn’t even know how to respond. I had never spoken to a woman wearing such little clothing. It was Kessler who finally spoke up before it became exceedingly awkward.

  “Ummm. We’re doing good. How are you?” he said, his voice only slightly wavering.

  She laughed, obviously amused by our anxious behavior. “I’m doing okay. Is this your first time here?”

  “Ummm. No, we’ve been here a couple times before. It’s just been a little while.”

  “Oh, okay. Where are you guys from?”

  Jason and I didn’t answer her. We just looked at Kessler, who had tacitly been nominated as the table’s spokesman. Kessler replied, “We’re from Canada originally, but we’re here for college.” He flashed me a smile when he said this, and I knew he was ridiculing me for saying this earlier.

  “Okay, that’s cool. Do you guys go to Saginaw Valley State University? I’m taking a couple classes there.”

  “Ummm. Yeah, that’s where we go. I’m studying theater there. They have a wonderful theater department.” I didn’t know where he was going with this, but it sounded plausible.

  “That sounds awesome. Would you like a dance?” she asked, revealing her true motive for sitting at our table and briefly conversing with us.


  Kessler bit his lower lip, nervously glanced over at Jason and me for a few seconds, and then back at the blonde stripper with the huge breasts and said, “Yes, yes, I would love a dance.” With that, she stood up, grasped his hand, and led him over to an open couch. Jason and I stared at him with trepidation mixed with envy. I couldn’t believe we were actually inside this place, let alone my best friend had a naked woman grinding on his lap. We watched him for a song or two before the DJ stopped the music to announce the next performer. He seemed really excited as he said her name, and the crowd erupted into a frenzy of applause as an attractive woman walked onto the stage. She was the feature entertainer of the evening, not a regular dancer. Her name was Porsche Lynn, a popular eighties adult film star. At the time, I had never heard of her, but a couple years later I became well acquainted. A crowd of perverts rushed over to claim seats in the front row. I looked over at Jason and smiled wryly as I stood up and grabbed one of the open seats. Jason soon followed and sat next to me. We both had a stack of dollar bills in front of us and focused our attention on the woman onstage. She danced for a bit, and towards the end of the song, she removed her top and crawled on all fours around the front of the stage. She stopped in front of me and picked up a dollar bill from the table and stuck it in my mouth. She slammed my face into her chest and then, squeezing her breasts together, took the dollar bill from my lips. She used the same maneuver on Jason and on pretty much every guy in the front row before standing up and dancing to the next song. She removed the rest of her outfit and crawled around the stage completely nude. I was so enthralled that I didn’t notice Kessler had sat down next to me. He mouthed the words “this is awesome” and threw a handful of singles on the stage. After her performance, we sat down at our table and interrogated Kessler about his lap dance.

  “What was it like? Should we get one?” I asked.

  “You guys have to get a lap dance. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done.”

  “How much was it?”

  “Twenty bucks for two songs. I got four songs and gave her eighty.”

  “Can you loan me some money?” I only had about $40.

  Kessler gave me $40 and repeated his assertion that we had to get a lap dance. I looked around the room to see if there were any available dancers when a young brunette approached our table. She asked if any of us wanted a lap dance and smiled long enough for me to catch a glimpse of her braces. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old. I nodded, and she grabbed my hand and led me to an open couch. She sat down next to me while we waited for the current song to finish.

  “My name’s Michelle. What’s yours?”

  I was too nervous to remember the name on my fake ID and meekly replied, “David.”

  “I like the name David. Have you ever been here before?”

  “Yeah, a couple times. Why?”

  “You seem kinda nervous.”

  “Ummm. I’m not nervous. It’s just that you’re really pretty.”

  She laughed when I said this. “Okay then. Let’s have some fun.” When the next song started, she removed her top and straddled me. Her breasts seemed small, but I really had little basis of comparison. She grinded on my lap for about a minute before shoving her naked breasts into my face. I was already so excited that when I felt her nipple graze my lips, I ejaculated. I tried to play it off that it didn’t happen, but she immediately realized that my pants were wet and jumped off of me.

  “What the fuck? That doesn’t happen till the second song. Jesus.”

  “I’m sorry.” I was so embarrassed that I didn’t know what else to say.

  With a look of sheer annoyance, she said, “Just give me $40.”

  I handed her the money, trying not to make eye contact. She snatched it from my hand and briskly walked away while snapping her top back on. I was left sitting on the vinyl couch alone with a growing wet stain on the crotch of my pants. Not wanting to return to the table, I went to the bathroom and slipped into a stall that reeked of semen and Lysol, and used a wad of toilet paper to wipe away the sticky mess on my crotch. I did the best I could, and then rejoined my friends at the table.

  Kessler was the only one at the table, and as soon as I sat down he asked, “How was it?”

  “It was good,” I replied, trying not to let on that I had just prematurely ejaculated.

  “That was quick. Did you blow your load or something?”

  “No, it was just a short one. Not a full lap dance.”

  “Yeah, I totally blew mine within the first minute, but the chick didn’t seem to care.”

  “Really? Yeah, I blew mine too, but my chick flipped out.” We both started laughing but I was still embarrassed. Jason eventually returned to the table after having a similar experience. We didn’t bother to ask as his self-satisfied smirk said it all. It was almost 2:00 AM, and we had to leave. On our way out, we noticed that Porsche Lynn was posing for pictures. Since it only cost $10, Kessler insisted that we have our picture taken with her. She said for $20 she’d do a group photo, so I sat in the middle of my two friends, and she straddled us all stark naked with her legs spread open. The whole time I was worried that she was going to feel my damp crotch and freak out, but I imagine that’s an occupational hazard in her profession. Her photographer handed us a Polaroid, and now we held indisputable, tangible evidence of the night’s events. We exited the pink neon doorway with our heads held high and our crotches damp, and we rode back in silence the entire drive home thinking about the miraculous experience that we had shared.

  The following Monday we showed up at school not as fifteen-year-old boys but as fifteen-year-old men. We told everyone about our weekend exploits and shared the marvels of our experience. But our fellow classmates didn’t believe us. Despite our claims and assertions, they were filled with skepticism, that is, until I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and produced the Polaroid of the three of us with a naked porn star. Their jaws simultaneously dropped to the ground as they stared at the photograph of the naked Porsche Lynn with her legs spread open on our laps. We were the most popular kids in our grade for about two weeks when one of us slipped and told them how we procured our fake IDs. That afternoon, a score of high school kids showed up at Kmart to get their own portrait identification cards. The next time we tried to get into the Vu, the cashier told us to “fuck off” and pointed at the door, but it didn’t matter because we had already conquered that place.

  The Bigger the Bills, the Bigger the Thrills

  The strip club DJ is required to provide the dancer, regardless of the amount of her tip, with an introduction, two songs about three minutes in length, a light show, and a request from the crowd for a departing round of applause at the end of her set. Since most customers pay little or no attention to the man on the microphone, I’d say music selection is the most important aspect of the job. But, at this moment, I want to give credence to the abrupt utterances, the directions, the jargon, the amusing one-liners, and the inane prattle of the strip club DJ. Next time you visit a strip club, try not to focus all of your attention on the bouncing breasts before you and take a brief moment to listen to the DJ’s incoherent babble. I use the term “incoherent” because most strip club DJs are barely audible over the music playing through the club’s sound system. The characteristic muffled vocal prompts customers to sarcastically remark that all strip club DJs sound the same. My first reaction is to dismiss this as an ignorant generalization, but it is somewhat valid. Strip clubs tend to use cut-rate soundboards with built-in voice compressors giving the DJ a tacky, vulgar intonation that sounds more fitting for a monster truck rally or an air show than a gentlemen’s club:

  “Sunday, Sunday, Sunday at the Boobie Bungalow, gentlemen, move up to the tip rail and get ready to see some prime ass and titty action.”

  The reason the cheesy voice seems to fit is because, in essence, strip clubs are cheesy. Perhaps it’s me, but watching a girl dance naked to a Whitesnake song while some fat, balding guy sitting next to yo
u has a rolled-up dollar bill hanging from his mouth and his face buried between some girl’s massive bosom is cheesy. Regardless of how you attempt to justify it, stripping is not a highbrow art form; and don’t bring up burlesque, because modern-day burlesque dancers are just strippers who are too fat, tattooed, and old to work at a real strip club. At most clubs, the DJ is not allowed to perform a stand-up routine and is instructed to say as little as possible. However, we do throw in the occasional one-liners, ridicule the perverts, and playfully mock the dancers. What we are permitted to say over the mic depends largely on the attitude of the management. At the Doll House and other lower-tier clubs I’ve worked at, I had a lot more freedom behind the mic; but at the upscale clubs, it was required to maintain a level of professional decorum. Some managers prefer the DJ to simply announce the dancer’s name for her stage show and advertise the dinner or drink specials once an hour. Their philosophy is that the show is about the girls, not the DJ, and customers do not frequent a strip club to listen to a blathering half-wit who can hardly be heard over the music. While most DJs repeat the same tried-and-true lines, I always strived to inject some originality into my lines. My enthusiasm for a dancer’s introduction was based on two factors: how well I knew the girl and how well she tipped me. When a DJ works at a club longer than three months, it’s inevitable that he will get to know some of the girls on a personal level. He learns specific details about their lives, such as where they’re from, their modeling careers, their porn aspirations, their favorite television shows, preferred sexual positions, etc. If I liked the girl who was about to walk onstage, I would be sure to point out her specific accomplishments or other noteworthy endeavors. For example, I became good friends with a stripper named Natasha who had a successful modeling career outside of the industry. When she took the stage I’d give her an elaborate introduction by announcing: