Cultural Capital

Below is one of the saddest, funniest, most fucked-up, succinct quotes from the mouth of a strip club customer (self conscious working class dude) reacting after I told him what I do when I'm not stripping. "Yeah, see, you sound like someone who goes to Columbier University. I sound like someone who got ass-raped on Queens Boulevard." Aaaaand...that's a wrap.

Isfahan-d Job

There's this 55-year old investment banker from Iran, who comes into the club every week or so in a suit and throws money around like it ain't no thing. I like his company a lot. He's handsome, generous, respectful, interesting, and generally just easy to be around. While he'll fondle and grope all the strippers who hang around him (many of them rub his little boner through his suit trousers), he always respectfully pulls out a barstool for me and talks to me about class stratification, Marjane Satrapi, or why the US is always trying to give Israel a huge blow job. (Ironic, since he's part of the devilish finance sector, that he's such a huge supporter of Occupy Wall Street. He told me several times that he appreciates my anti-capitalist stance and, while he's part of the problem, he's a die-hard critic of US neoliberal economic policy.)

Gradually, over the past six months or so, I've tried to break my "political firecracker" mold and get him to see me as a stripper too - talking to him about my favorite sexual positions or telling him about my Persian rug. (Yeah, I try to make "Iran"-nuendo with him - once, when I noted an erection through his pants, I said something to the effect of, "Well, what do you know, Iran does have a weapons program!") Finally, he has started talking more about my ass, tits, lips, hair, and less about whether I think the Occupy movement still has any steam left (my answer to that, by the way, is yes! Just wait'll May 1st, baby.) He said he was reluctant to do that before because he thought I was "too intimidating." (See, MrMike, you're not the only one who doesn't get into politics with their stripper pals!)

I'm on a little hiatus from work for a couple weeks, and on my last day there, he showed up and decided to take me and another girl for a 2-on-1 lapdance. Hurray! I had danced for him once before and knew him to be very generous and not gropey. Once back there, he told the other girl, "I need some help waking him up," and while I gave him a lapdance, she straight up took out his lil dick and started jerking him off! It took me a minute to realize what was happening, because I was straddling his chest and she was on the floor behind me; once I saw that we were in prostitution-territory, I jumped off his lap, told him I'd see him at the bar, and got myself dressed. The other girl gladly took my spot on his lap and started rubbing his bare dick against her crotch. Nice.

He met me at the bar a few minutes later, gave me $100, and said, "I'm sorry about that. I know that had nothing to do with me and that you probably just don't like that other girl. I should have asked you before taking you back there." I quickly corrected him - "It's not that I don't like that girl. It's that I don't like committing arrestable offenses with surveillance cameras overhead."

Really, though? Hand jobs during a lapdance? This girl is definitely not getting paid enough to do this, especially since I'm fairly sure Mr. I-banker would be happy to shell out for a hotel room and a handsome hourly rate for the very same handjob in private.