Sunday, November 27, 2011

I Know They Don't Care About My Life

Every guy has their reason for going to a strip club. Poor guys who want to feel powerful. You see them sweat as their carefully hoarded dollar bills dwindle. Bald guys who can't get a date. Insecure types who never learned how to talk to a girl. Lonely guys who have nothing else to do and nowhere else to go.

Why do I end up in a strip club every couple of months?

In a word; therapy. The girls there will listen. I know they don't care about my life. That's not the point. A girl is sitting next you totally naked. You don't worry if she is judging you. You can say anything.

Who else can you talk to?

Your business partner? Can't afford to show weakness.

A friend? His wife is friends with your wife so you have to be careful.

A therapist? I've been trained to walk off a heart attack. I never go to a doctor much less a therapist.

But the pressure builds and builds. You lose a big contract. Your foreman gets arrested for drug possession. Your wife keeps pointing out how all her friends went on a ski vacation. The roof decides to leak. Whatever. You have to unwind or you start punching holes in the drywall.

That's where a strip club helps. Of course it's all fake. The saccharine smiles. The fake boobs. Watered down scotch.

But on another level it's as honest as can be. You pay a fee. For this a naked girl sits on your lap and listens.

It's ludicrous. I'm forty, drive a Cadillac, have traveled the world and am fully clothed. The girl is half my age, drove her mothers Hyundai to work, hasn't been out of the state since a trip to Disney World when she was ten and is stark naked.

But she listens for a bit and all is right with the world. That's why I go.