I Didn't Want to Go Home

When my marriage was falling apart and my wife didn't want to have anything to do with me, I found refuge in the strip club here in town. A couple friends and I would go to the club once a month for a lunch-time get-together, but until that point, I had never went there by myself.

What I found out was, I wasn't the only guy there by myself. I realized that when work was over and I didn't want to go home to face the "Ice Princess", I could go to the strip club. I could go in there by myself and sit at a small table in the dark, get a drink (usually a Coke) and feel comfortable. If I did that at an Applebee's or something, I'd feel stigmatized about being there alone. At the strip club, I could sit, listen to music and look at pretty girls for as long as I wanted.

They wanted to talk to me; they wanted to sit on my lap. They were giving me all the attention I wasn't getting at home.

Yeah, I knew that it was just a business transaction in the end, but for 3 or 4 hours, twice a week, I wasn't being ignored or denied a sense of touch. I wasn't happy, but I wasn't miserable either. For me, that was what I needed to help me get through a very rough time in my life.

What can I say, strippers saved my life

I Am Very Much an Introvert

When I was about 13 years old, I had a crush on a girl (my first big crush). She was pretty and popular; I was shy, chubby, and nerdy. Her family was fairly well off; mine lived in a trailer. I never planned to ask her out because of my certainty of rejection. I did, however, make a huge mistake in admitting my crush to a friend. He gossiped about it and eventually the news of my crush made it back to the girl.

I had anticipated rejection were I to ask her out - I never anticipated the cruelty she would show if she merely knew I thought she was cute. She openly and loudly mocked me on a long bus trip. She hugged me and sat on my lap. I had no chance to seek respite from the humiliation - I just sat in stunned silence. I thought she wasn't going to stop stomping until I was dead.

That moment stunted my romantic pursuits for the next decade of my life. I am very much an introvert and social interaction has carried a high cost for me for as long as I can remember. Asking someone on a date added not only carried the fear of rejection, but also a much greater fear of humiliation. I didn't date much. I wasn't very successful when I did, maintaining both physical and emotional distance. With every failure, I reinforced my previous fears and added new ones.

Enter strip clubs, providing a different kind of therapy where my visits to counselors had failed.

I first started going to strip clubs at the behest of my friends, with promises that you can't have a bad night at a strip club. They certainly were entertaining - that combination of drinking, smoking, and nude women was thrilling, in the way breaking social taboos can be.

I kept going once the initial thrill faded, though. Over the following two years after my first visit, I went as frequently as my grad school stipend would allow. I had read about sexual surrogates extensively online and slowly devised my own plan without the high up-front costs. The clear-cut social rules and monetary exchange of strip clubs created a safety zone for me to work through my issues and to work on some of my weaknesses. Things that would cause enormous emotional turmoil previously began to come more easily. I could let someone touch me and there was no mocking that followed; the expectation that it might be used against me faded. Telling someone that they're attractive ceased to carry an emotional cost for me. I worked on other social skills that had never come easily to me, too - making small talk, for instance. I'm still not good at it, but much better than I was before.

I stopped going to strip clubs a number of years ago. As my old fears were assuaged, I found myself capable of pursuing relationships without the self-imposed barriers that had plagued my earlier attempts.

I Have a Fetish for Big Fake Boobs

In high school and beyond, I was extremely nerdy. I hardly had a date or a kiss until my mid-20s. At that point, I became reasonably successful with women, but some of the loneliness from those years remains with me. I am fortunate to have a wonderful fiancee, a great job, and an enviable life (I'm now in my mid-30s). But I still go to strip clubs from time to time on my own, and I have not been able to shake my compulsive porn viewing.

I have a fetish for big fake boobs. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. I don't know where it comes from. When I was a teenager and started finding porn, that's what I was drawn to. During my decade plus of enforced chastity, I disappeared farther into a fantasy life, and now it seems to be inextricably linked to my sexuality in some way. They don't have to be insanely huge - although I like that too - but fake in general is what I go for.

My fiancee is a knockout, and has a great body that I get plenty of enjoyment from, including a naturally fantastic chest on a slim figure. We have a healthy sex life. She considers herself more sexually adventurous than me, and in some ways that may be right. But of course I can't talk to her about the fake boobs thing. It's not that I would even want her to get them. And of course, that's not the type of fetish that she and I could enjoy in the privacy of our bedroom. It's an in your face kind of thing.

So, when the urge becomes uncontrollable, I go to strip clubs. I almost inevitably go for the girls who match that particular description (and there are plenty of them out there, so I know I'm not alone). At the club I go to most often (a few times a year), they are very liberal about the touching rules in the back room. So I play with them, talk to the girls about their implants, and generally indulge myself. I could care less about discussing my life or my problems. And I'm also not that interested in discussing their lives, although that depends on the girl and her personality. I'm there for one reason (well, two...haha), and the girls generally respect that. They see all kinds, and I'm definitely not the freakiest customer they'll come across.

There is a whole community online of people (mostly men, of course) who share this fetish. We share pictures and videos, and discuss porn stars' modifications the way sports fans discuss statistics. Unfortunately, this virtual experience isn't really enough, and sometimes I need the "real" thing. I have gotten better - a few years ago, when I was single, I was going to the clubs multiple nights a week - but I am doubtful if I'll ever get over it entirely. In some ways, I hope so, but in some ways, I don't. It's my little secret, I guess, and I can't really imagine myself without that side of me, sad as it sounds.