Hounds at the Stage

"Look at these fucking guys trying to pretend they're not perverts. We're at a strip joint- we're all fucking perverts. They should embrace it like I do."



Hours into the bleak South Jersey night, we are in search of a strip club that serves both naked women and booze, which is harder to find than I thought. I may or may not be very fucked up, and that Amy Winehouse song is stuck in my head as I lazily hang my cigarette smoking arm out the window... "Try to make me go to rehab, I say "No, no, no."

The place is called "After Dark", and it is the most ghetto strip club I have ever been in. There is one white broad there, and the guys who run this place know their customers- the rest of the girls are black and Hispanic. The guy who walks around like he owns this place is a grimy looking Italian with gold chains strapped to his neck and a tremendous gut that hangs over the front of his black pants. This place is like stepping into an episode of "Miami Vice", minus the "Miami" part.

These girls know their shit though; I watch in awe as one climbs nearly to the ceiling on the pole, then slides twenty feet upside down with her legs spread. I have a big problem with strippers that don't try, and just expect you to throw your money at their heels because they're (almost) naked. I don't pay to see naked girls, I pay... well, yea, I pay to see naked girls. But still, they have to do something and make it worth it. It's similar to how I hate that now at every Dunkin Donuts they have a tip jar that gets filled with change every day. You fuckers pour coffee, and that's what you get paid for, and I'm not giving you my thirty eight cents because you... pour me a cup of coffee. Maybe if they ran it more like a Hooters, with hot young blondes behind the counter instead of old hairy Indian men... I might write them a letter about that.

I go out for a smoke later on, and of course this damn stripper ruins everything. She's sitting on the curb in her knee high boots, talking to some sympathetic soul about her two year old son as she smokes her cigarette. It's easy to forget sometimes that they are people, as they prance around on stage and beg for your money, pushing their breasts together in a vain attempt to feed their children. It always makes me feel bad when they start talking, because you realize that this is their life, their whole existence, sitting outside dressed like a hooker staring into the American night yapping to some frat boy who feels bad for her in his overly drunken state. I have a good time until this shit starts, and then I just feel like an asshole. If the girl is ugly, then it's easy to brush it off... but if, as a few can be, they are truly beautiful, then I despise seeing that hollow look in empty eyes that they all have.

It strikes a deathly fear in me because if I ever had a daughter, I could not handle her living a life that resembles this in any way. It's bad enough that I'd be passing on these genes that are prone to addiction, violence, and constant turmoil... if you put that on a chick that had smoking good looks like I'm sure my daughter would have, it would be a dangerous combination.

It's worth not having kids over shit like that.