Heart On

I met the most awesome guy at work the other day! He was Lebanese American, about 50 years old, and was born and raised in the U.S.

In other words, he was Tony Shalhoub! Adrian Monk! Absolutely adorable! He showered me with bills when I was on stage and told me to come sit with him. I did; he asked me where I was from. I did my standard "If you guess correctly, I'll sit on your lap. If you guess wrong, you buy a dance from me." Irani? Nope! Well, you're too well spoken to be Hispanic. (I'll pretend he didn't say that.) Afghanistan? Nope. Finally, I told him.

He was great, because he kept sticking four or five singles down my dress every few minutes, telling me I had wonderful breasts and should never get implants. (To me, that's code for "I like 'em sort of small!")

"Jesus, you're driving me crazy. Let's go for a lapdance." On the walk over to the lapdance area, he told me that he'd just had a _ put in his heart (can't remember the word) and that he was recovering nicely, but was supposed to avoid overexcitement. Halfway through the second lapdance, he gets up and says "I just got an erection, and I'm not supposed to get an erection, so I need to stop." He paid me for more than the two dances, and excused himself.

So I just got to thinking about erection stuff in the strip club. (If it were a dissertation, it'd be "De-Boned: The politics and poetics of erections in the gentleman's club scene".) I mean, I sort of assume that all guys get a boner during a lapdance, especially if it's high contact, and that ALL guys get hard with the heavy grinding/contact of the champagne room. But every once in a while, you get a character who says something like "sorry about that, I guess you can feel that I'm excited." And I'm like, umm, yeah! Isn't that the whole point?

But then of course, you DO have the other extreme, the rare guy with the raging hard-on sitting and watching the stage set, titillated by all the public displays of breasts, thighs, and ass. I actually met a guy once who came INTO the strip club wearing a condom (and a pair of pants, of course), sat around for a long time, and then blew his load during lapdance grinding. And who can forget the lanky guy in the suit who used to come into the club, sit in a dimly lit corner, and actually jerk off through his pants while watching the stage set!?

I guess we'd be in grave error to essentialize penis behavior in the strip club environment. The sexual fulfillment these boys look for can range from something shy of an erection to something that ends up requiring a mid-lunch hour trouser change!