B O X L U N C H

Let's talk about strippers, shall we? That much maligned profession that pays so much and turns women into man-haters. Today in Illinois the band had lunch at a strip joint, unusual in that is served both lunch, alcohol, and naked box. The chicken Dijon was good, but then again the lite was bad so I can't vouch for the Dijon sauce, if indeed it WAS Dijon sauce. 

"Strippers are people too." I think I'll make up some bumper stickers and paste them all over. People put them down as sluts and loose, which may or may not be true. Somehow their money is tainted, as if it too is unclean. Like being a receptionist is so cool. Or a court reporter. Or a dental technician. Yeah, that's a great job. Up to your arms in plaque and bad breath. Yeah, I don't think strippers are stupid to make lots of money; I think they're stupid not to save any of it. These chicks could pool their money and buy Microsoft if they wanted to.  

So we're at this strip joint in Illinois, nice place, casual atmosphere. To be frank, I don't dig strip joints much, they embarrass me. I feel like a fucking letch drooling and pawing all over the beautiful women. And no table dances, please. My nuts would simply shrink up into my abdomen and stay there. It's not the girls, you see. It's me. I'm not that voyeuristic when it comes to being aroused. It's the sights, the smells, the way she laughs at my jokes (she better fucking laugh at my jokes). Strippers are a hardened lot. You'd have to be to mach your tits and crotch into the faces of 300 pound fat fuck bankers and TV repairmen, drool running down the sides of their pork chop jowls and pooling in their little gherkin laps. 

Whatever . . .I hate strip joints that use aggressive tactics to sell drinks or dances. I'm already uncomfortable, I don't need some bitch reminding me every two minutes that I need a beer. A five dollar beer. So I can look at fake tits, ostensibly to become aroused. Sometimes they give you the two drink minimum all at once, which is real bro of them. Here's your two opened beers to suck on while you're gawking at polyester boda-bags swinging in the wind. I watch people get lap dances in strip bars. I role-play a little and try to figure out what goes through their minds; I wonder what they're getting out of this twenty dollar tease. Twenty bucks to have some chick dry-hump your leg. You get hard but then you go soft. Hard soft hard soft. All that money gone and no satisfaction; just a fucking pull on the plug. All directed by the generic moron announcer "Geenntlemeen, let's have a hand for our lovely ladies." Shut the fuck up, Gomer, this isn't Caesar's Palace. It's all part of the strip club culture that I find so un-sexy, so tired, so unoriginal. Titties and beer, is that all there is, titties and
beer? Meet a dancer, invite her to the show, talk her up, drink, crack a few jokes, then go for the hump. 

I once drove for an escort service. A lot of rocker dudes do this particularly slimy job sometime in their lives. Drive the dancer to somebody's house, check his I.D., wait outside while she dances and he jacks off, and on to the next weirdo. I suppose if you're a traveling salesman and you have an expense account it's cool; it's not your money, most of the fuckers I dealt with, however, were not the jet-setter types. More like saliva-less coke chimps with big pupils like lemurs who greet you at the door like they were hoping YOU were the dancer. Then when we drive I have to hear from the dancer in nauseatingly grody detail how shitty the experience was, how she hates men, all men, but she'll take their money, she'll do that, the money's good isn't it bitch, she'll spend it on more pancake make-up to cover the years of money shots and late nites, the crystal meth and fast food and one nighters and failed relationships. There's far worse things than dancing in a nite club, my friend, take a stroll to the back of the free press and meet Candy or Trixie, or Death. That job wasn't a fun time for me. Just another scheme to avoid a day job, another way to cheat the system. 

Strippers are people, too. And just like all the other jobs, this one serves a purpose, so lay off. If some chick wants to flash her tits for money, so what? I do the same thing, essentially. I dance and howl and hoot and swing my pole for money. Money for the gas and food it takes to go to the next club. I feel a certain kinship with strippers that perhaps others don't. I too am in the cold, hard world of the public eye, sometimes glamorous escapist, mostly just boring sitting or recovery. I like what I do; I refuse to do anything else, that makes me either an idiot or a musician or a God.