Strip Club Saga

As I've mentioned previously, I have a mental list of things to do before I die. If you're a close friend or devoted reader or both, you'll know, by process of elimination, which one I crossed off my list last night.

1. Donate hair
2. Run a marathon
3. Go to a strip club

Saturday night. My girl friend and I had a drink at Rosen's and then headed to The Annex. It took all of two minutes before a bachelor party struck up conversation with us. The group of men, mostly in their upper 20's, were small-town dorks from Climax, Minnesota, believe it or not. The groom definitely stood out as the most "normal" of the bunch. None of them were particularly attractive nor cool, but boredom was our number one motivation for choosing to hang out with them.

The scene on the dance floor was atrocious. All-around terrible dancers. The guy I talked to the most, a mortician, kept trying to "dance" with me. I'm certainly not the world's greatest dancer, but if you can't at least find the beat, you should save yourself the humiliation by sitting on the sidelines. This dude had NO rhythm or coordination. All I could do was laugh and sort of remain at a standstill because he just kept bouncing around and stepping on my toes. Ouch! I felt like a ragdoll; it was not a pleasant experience.

It was also great how the guys kept trying to hook us up with their friends by slamming us into them. What are we? 12? It certainly felt like a junior high dance. After the traumatizing groping session on the dance floor, the guys invited us to the strip club.

Call me strange, but I have always wanted to go to a strip club. Why? Curiosity! I mean, why wouldn't I want to know what it's like? That, and the fact I spent three months of my introductory sociology class studying strippers. My male professor actually wrote a book on the subject. I'm kind of surprised one of our assignments wasn't to visit one and take notes.

The guys wanted to go to the 418 Club, which I believe is called Whispers now. At least, that was their conclusion. It didn't really count as a strip club though. It was super small and there was only one dude there. We ordered water at the bar and we got the coolest waters I've ever seen! The bottle was rectangular --it looked like a cologne bottle with a silver square top and it said VOSS down the side. How much does water at a strip club cost? $8.50!!!

So the groom, Brady, decided we (me, my friend and him) should ditch his friends and go to a real strip club, Déjà Vu. I'm not really sure why he wanted to hang out with us so badly. Maybe he thought we'd be up for a threesome or something, but I was glad we left Whispers.

I'd always heard women got into strip clubs free and I thought if a guy brought a girl, he got free cover, but apparently not. Or maybe that is only certain clubs, but I thought that used to be the Vu's policy. It was $9 each and then everyone must buy a $9 non-alcoholic beverage, but Brady pretty much paid for everything.

The most surprising thing to me was the physical appearance of the strippers. I'd assumed most strippers were hot, like in the movies, but they're definitely not. Or maybe it's just a Midwest thing. But many of them were overweight with cellulite. I just couldn't imagine! You'd think you'd be inclined to really work on your body if that were your line of work, but wow, that is not always the case.

For bachelor parties, they set a chair on the stage and all the strippers line up and take turns physically abusing the bachelor, more or less. Brady didn't want to take part, though we tried to get him to go up on stage. Eventually he answered his friends' calls so they left Whispers and came to the Vu. His youngest brother kept disappearing to buy private dances.

If you pay $60, you go to the 2nd floor and receive three private dances. If you pay $90, you go to the 3rd floor. I'm not really sure what the $90 gets you, but we almost found out. That is, until we found out the cost. Brady wanted my friend and I to get a dance with him, so he called over a stripper, but my friend and I weren't really paying attention when she was explaining the fees.

We made it all the way up to the 3rd floor, you ride up in an elevator with your stripper as your escort. From what I could tell, there was just one completely dark room, with black lights as the only light. The room, however, is separated into different sections, each with a velvet bench, and black curtains as the only form of privacy between you and the guy next to you getting dry humped.

It wasn't until our stripper explained it was $90/person plus tip, I believe, that my friend and I bailed. Like we were going to pay $90 for that!!! I think I only had like $5 cash anyway. Even though I felt bad about our stripper, I'm glad I got to see the 3rd floor. Perhaps next time I'll get to see the 2nd floor!

Brady stayed with the stripper while we went back down to the 1st floor. His two brothers were the only guys still around and of course, they wanted us to party at their hotel room. For the second night in a row, guys got to be super annoying about trying to get us to go their room. Of course, we never planned on that. Gross!! They were so persistent about it, we had to lie and say we were going to the bathroom and promised to come back, at which point we fled and found the nearest cab to our cars.

I don't know if I can find the words to express why, but it was sort of thrilling for me to be inside the strip club. To know what actually goes on in those places and see it first-hand was sort of a trip! I still think it would just be sort of a tease for men, in that they can't touch the women and most of them would never be able to get women that hot in real life, but then there's the obvious reasons as to why men go to strip clubs.

So from now on, whenever I do something crazy, I'm just going to say I'm doing research for my blog!