Tripping on Tears Read Free Page A

mailing it in, waiting to get off stage and try to make some money with the private dancing. The only individuals who seemed to be having a really good time were the guys who were drawn to perverts row , the seating around the edge of the stage on which the stripper danced. I never paid a visit to the row, preferring instead to keep my distance.
    The strip club world is all fantasy. That is one of the reasons why I found it so boring. I didn’t believe for one second that any of the dancers who sat down at our table and paid special attention to me were in fact really that interested in my life. This was usually proven true when they finally got around to asking me for a private dance; the second I turned them down, and they realized I wasn’t willing to drop my hard-earned money on them, their interest in me didn’t dwindle, but simply died. Guys don’t realize that the minute you walk through those strip club doors you are entering a world of fantasy where nothing is real. To the dancers you are a giant dollar sign—their means of making a living. And to me that is fair. That’s the unspoken contract that exists between men and dancers within that world. Unfortunately not all guys got it, and some of them fell in love with the dancers, spending a fortune on them. When some of the dancers realized this, those who had lost their humanity and only saw men as dollar bills, they were able to take the fantasy out of the club, stringing these guys along for vacations and other ill-gotten gains. I know one dancer who took a guy, an executive from a bank, for leather furniture, a big screen TV, and an allowance worth thousands of dollars for at least four months, before he realized she wasn’t going to sleep with him. She’d pulled the ultimate con, because she didn’t have to engage in sex to get these items. She also liked to test her admirers, who were hopeful of one day getting into bed with her, by calling them up in the middle of the night and saying she wanted a coffee. Surprisingly, many of them would get out of bed, go to a coffee shop, buy her a coffee and deliver it to her apartment, where she would promptly take the coffee and close the door on them. They were hoping for a late night booty call, based on their considerate actions, but were just played and used, this particular dancer defining her power and reveling in it. Nonetheless, they kept coming back for more abuse, at least for a while.
    My friend wasn’t like these guys. He was actually dating Candice before she decided to become a dancer to help pay for her college courses. She was actually a nice girl who danced for a reason and kept it clean, which probably accounted for the fact that amongst the girls at the club she worked at, she was probably the worst earner. She did make enough to look after her needs, and that was all she cared about – that was adequate. It was when I got together with them that she would regale me with stories of what went on behind the scenes of the average strip club. The stories were fascinating; it was like Dorothy pulling back the curtain in T he Wizard of Oz and realizing the Wizard was just a man. Her stories stripped the strip club of its illusion and presented it as a dreadful place where dreams went to die, and where many women/dancers lost their basic humanity after dealing day-to-day with men who had an unhealthy view of women and their place in our world. No matter how you stacked it up or tried to spin it, strip clubs and the relationships formed in them, are dysfunctional and serve no purpose in society at large. I found all of this fascinating.
    Looking to pay off my student loans as well, and supplementing my meager journalist pay, Candice got me a job at the strip club, first as a doorman and then as a bartender. It was here that my first book was developed. I realized that no movie or TV show had ever accurately represented the environment of the strip club, so I set out to do exactly that, showing it in