I don’t really like strip clubs, and given the choice will avoid them altogether.
Sadly, when a man makes a statement like the previous, there aren’t many who will truly believe him, as I’m sure many of you are currently furrowing your brows in an understandable expression of skepticism. It’s not that you’re making any assumptions about me personally, but as human beings you know that I, like you, am possessed with a natural degree of sexual depravity. The miscommunication lies in the fact that people always interpret my words as “I don’t like looking at naked women.” On the contrary, I am a big fan of the female body, probably one of the biggest fans. What repulses me about the notion of strip clubs is not only the concept of paying to be sexually frustrated, but the way in which it is so stigmatized by polite society, creating an atmosphere synonymous with sin and regret.
On the occasions that I have gone to strip clubs, the scene is always the same. The bouncer triple checks my I.D., always handing it back with reluctance and fixing me with a threatening glare, making me feel like I’ve done something wrong before I even cross the threshold. Upon entering the club, the world suddenly becomes ten shades darker, and only a select few spotlights illuminate the stage, while dozens of men sit motionless just beyond the shadows. The girl on stage keeps her eyes down, retreating from reality for the duration of her performance, and I can never decide whether she’s ashamed of herself or disgusted by us. My guess is that she’s ashamed of herself BECAUSE she’s disgusted by us, and who can blame the poor girl? We come in and skulk into chairs all around her, sipping our beers, and holding up dollar bills as our only mode of communication. We create an invisible barrier, behind which she becomes an object for us to exercise our lustful nature, and we become a faceless manifestation of creepiness that she has to endure in order to pay her bills on time. Mind you, this detached relationship is something we adopt by choice, not necessity. When’s the last time you asked a stripper how her day was, or complimented her technique, or showed her any amount of human decency? Probably never.
As a result, the strip club has become like a secret sin dungeon: a popular destination for bachelor parties, business trips, or any group of men seeking a getaway from their sexually repressive home life. As soon as the decision is made, every member of the group is sworn to silence so that when it’s all said and done they can go back to being chivalrous boyfriends and devoted husbands. But why the charade? That inclination to conceal our behavior, to hold these rendezvouses in the darkest corners of the city is precisely what gives strip clubs such a seedy reputation. It’s not the thing itself but our collective attitude toward it. When you come home after being out for a while, and your dog is hiding in the corner with a guilty look on it’s face, is your first reaction not to begin chastising that dog even before you discover what it did? It’s not any type of physical evidence that leads you to assume the dog has done something wrong, but merely because the dog is acting as if it has done something wrong. On that same note, when a man acts ashamed for going to a strip club, one immediately assumes it is because he did something deserving of that shame.
The experience is debasing because we refuse to be open about our perverse nature. Instead, we act as if lust is some twisted aberration that’s been forced upon the human condition, and we isolate it from the rest of our character like a contagious disease. We pretend that that lustful part of us doesn’t exist, so that our female counterparts can go on deluding themselves into thinking that we’re different from the others, that we don’t have the same instincts. Granted, some guys are different, but only in the way they manage their desires, by exercising them in moderation and at regular intervals. The rest of us act like a 13-year-old with his first porno mag, burying our desires just below the surface of conscious thought, only setting them free when no one is looking. I’m not saying that we should integrate strip clubs into our weekly routine or openly exploit our baser nature like some modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, but we should at least be able to be open with each other about what we are.