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Strip tease

A month ago, I was a straight, feminist woman who had never been to a strip club. I didn’t have to go to one to know I hated them.

Then I found myself at three different ones over the course of a few weeks. My opinion hasn’t changed. There is nothing totally fun and fascinating about these places.

The first one was for a bachelor party. My friend Paul is going to be a father, so my friends thought we should celebrate by staring at some hairless versions of his baby’s eventual exit point. I decided I’d spend the evening with my arms crossed, reminding everyone that every stripper is someone’s daughter.

I didn’t know what do with those crossed arms when “Christa” was giving me the lap dance my friends surreptitiously bought for me. I knew I wasn’t allowed to touch her, so I put my hands behind my head while she rubbed her ample breasts on my face and had her way with my breasts. I blushed and giggled, then reminded myself I was supposed to be having a terrible time.

When she was done, we chatted. I wanted to ask questions that would humanize her and give her a voice, but managed only to blurt out, “Are they real?!” She shook her mysterious mammaries, answering, “Nine grand. I paid for them as a call girl, but I hated the idea of someone taking a 50 per cent cut of my earnings, so now I’m doing this.”

The other girls, she said, resent her for being the hottest. I could have affirmed that she does, in fact, have the best tits but I was too busy respecting her. She said she’s still a call girl from time to time and likes her coked-out clients best because they can’t keep it up, “so, y’know… less work.” Then she showed me a BlackBerry pic of her pre-waxed vulva.

“I didn’t have a dad,” she told me. “He left when I was little, but most of the girls in here had dads who were mean to them, so I think I’m better off. Don’t you?” I nodded.

I was drunkenly dragged to the second club by a bunch of persuasive straight males and one lesbian. Twenty minutes in, purely for research, I was lying face-up on the lip of the stage with a toonie in my mouth: I needed to get the full spectator understanding to properly abhor it. I was one of about 10 people onstage doing the same – mostly men and a few unsavoury girls who were not conducting research. When it was my turn, a perfect woman slithered up my body.

She took the toonie out of my mouth, kissed me on the forehead and whispered, “Thanks, sweetie,” in my ear. She made me feel both pretty and protected. I was disgusted by the whole thing.

There was nothing enjoyable about the third club that the same drunken crew forced me into. The corpulent stripper whipping a birthday boy with her belt? Boring. Making small talk about fatigue with a middle-aged stripper in the women’s washroom while she peed in a stall that had no door? Zzzzz.

Strip clubs are places for girls to dance through their daddy issues for men replenishing their spank banks. I can’t help but feel like I, too, could have ended up on that stage if I’d had a meaner dad, fewer options – and pinker nipples.

news@nowtoronto.com

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