Man, I never thought I would say this, or anything like this, but I went to a gentleman's club yesterday night for the first time in my life, all by myself, and I had a nice time. Honestly it felt empowering in a feminist way, like, you know what, girl? Yes. Take my money, which I cannot afford to give you. This is a form of justice, and I'm ready to admit that.
Either I misapprehended the ritual due to the distance I've maintained from it, or I simply had good luck plus my local place isn't some thrice-haunted slimehole. This fact means that I really can't afford to go very often at all--three times a year? If I'm really into it? The whole thing is a luxury experience, I have learned; like, I'm glad I had a nice button-down on, and it would really represent a badly sunk investment if one had a bad night; ruined by those unfit to call themselves gentlemen is primarily my concern. Certainly couldn't afford such a thing as a private room this time or basically ever. Next time I have zero debt and I own everything I own and I have more than a thousand dollars in the bank, I'll consider socking away the price of a private room. Good luck to me on that front. Signs point to fucking never.
But yeah. Told 'em up front it was my first time, asked for and got a rundown on etiquette and do's and dont's, learned the price of most things (the hidden charges must be seen as the price of admission and did not surprise me, but still), all very chill. The place smelled fresh and ventilated, which was really my main thing.
There were two girls on--Monday night, you know, place was just me and the one dude in there when I arrived, he left after awhile, I left a little after two other guys came in later.
This is one of those junctures where it would be easy to use ugly and misogynist language to dscribe kind of what was going on with staffing choices and how to work an entertainment space and serve the public--all dimensions I am acutely aware of as a professional and as a consumer--but it is just as apt to use much different words and ideas. The short and brutal, old-school way to describe it is they had a thoroughbred and a workhorse playing each to their strengths. The better way to formulate it is they had a professional exemplifying standards of rare physical perfection, performance expertise, and working near-silence and air of unavailable mystique (amplified wholly by copious tattoos from calf to neck), and another professional exemplifying hospitality, warmth, welcoming, relaxing the vibe, and putting all comers more physically at ease with a body more rubenesque, soft, and celebratory of physical flaws. The latter was my first on-the-clock stripper experience, and she made me feel at home very quickly--a talent not everyone possesses!
The funny way to say it is that they had the insanely hot girl who cut herself a lot but you really have to know how to see that, and the English major. Probably shouldn't say that.
When I say insanely hot, sadly, I mean that she was too beautiful, so beautiful that it messes up people and society. She even had short hair, a winning choice in my estimation. I been with a lot of beautiful people of all shapes and sizes, some so beautiful that I sort of expected to wake up at any second. She was perhaps the equal or superior of all comers in every respect, so the optimal dancer for my sequential life experience, I guess--I really didn't think it was possible to see something that remarkable on a Monday night. But there was an element of the pain of the reality of things underneath the fantasy she made so sublime.
Both of these women took amazing care of me and got a lot of my money, and I would like to celebrate that. They were gorgeous in every respect, and I honor their heart and their talent and their labor on my behalf. It was a pleasure to act as a gentleman before them, and to enjoy their company and craft.
*
Beauty. Seen people destroyed by the beauty of another, which is sad but preventable and like, hm. I get it and it can even have a comedic streak, however dark the material. Yet to see people destroyed by their own beauty--that is merely tragic.
Sometimes, when the world is done and the beauty it wanted is used up and irretreivable, there is nothing left, or close enough to nothing that the rest of the story is the most futile of epilogues. There's no good joke there that I can find.
*
Beauty. Suppose I can rap this way, or want to, because I was born with a ravenous love for the stuff, an eye starved constantly for beauty, and because by chance I have beautiful parents who bestowed upon me a beauty of my own, just such one of those beauties the world gets weird around.
Speaking as only a human can speak to other humans, human beings are uniquely beautiful. And when my eye, lover of beauty that it is, looks upon the world of humans, very few in general seem ugly to me, and it is my belief that the ugliness I am seeing is not of the body, but psychic and spiritual ugliness deforming the aspect of the physical. Roald Dahl talks about this in his little book The Twits--maybe this is the kind of occasion to even see if I can dig out a .jpeg I like to keep around to show folks.
Anyway!
Still and all, for reasons difficult to identify, some physiques are beautiful in a transcendental way, some faces composed in such a way as to alter reality. Some people have such beautiful eyes it is difficult to make and especially maintain eye contact. Some of these beauties are so total they remain alluring even when they house terrible thoughts and nothing but pain and boiling vengeance.
It is a strange world, and the surface of things, beautiful though they are, remain nothing more than surfaces; as significant, as durable, and as real as the surface of a pond. The surface--the least pondlike part of the pond--the least real part of anything. Just a membrane, shifting from second to second.
Temporary, even fleeting; like all things, like everything else, like even this ancient, newborn universe.
*
Hey hey what what! Man, still can't believe I went to a strip club. Never in my life!
My mom's voice and visage as it exists perpetually in my psyche, joined over time by other disapproving, judgmental women with their arms crossed who I have allowed to live in there, have all worked extremely, extremely hard to prevent this and are all very disppointed, trying to make me feel guilt about money and the whole rest of it, believe me--but I think they are wrong, despite my great esteem and love for them. It feels important to realize that they kind of have to be, in some fundamental ways.
*
Ok, ok. Lists tomorrow, rest assured. I know. Got you all salivating down your front like a little baby for some lists and then I pull some shit like this. Now your balls are bluer than a mandrill's face.
Sorry to hurt you.
Once a girl told me that she had no choice but to masturbate because she'd been so wet and engorged for so long that it caused physical pain.
Sorry to hurt you.
--JL
*we were sexting. On farcebark messenger. A mistake of youth. If I ever piss off that mandroid or anyone working for that hideous obelisk, they're gonna embarass me badly. With a lot of collateral damage I guess, though it would be good if they could avoid that part. But I've said some real mean things about Meta over the years. Sometimes your opponent knows the best way to hurt you is through others, and God help those others if it's the only way.
Fuck you guys, though. I am not afraid of any of you. Computer nerds. Fucking losers.
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