London, Ontario: Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.


In London, ON it’s the last day on the tour for one of the crew. He is leaving us for a few days to get married. The rest of the crew decide to take him out to a strip club as a celebration. I stay out of the planning, chiefly because if I do it then it’s not like anyone really made any effort—it’s too easy to get the Tour Manager to arrange everything; and its good for everyone to make some kind of effort. Besides, I try to arrange as little as I can outside of work. It’s easy to get fucked-off with being the one who always makes all the arrangements.

In my life I’ve been to about three strip clubs and had exactly one lap dance. They’re just not my thing. I can’t deny that if there’s a woman nearby either wearing very little or removing her clothes then I’ll watch—even if (and I say this not to be coy) I don’t really want to. This place is no exception and while some of the women are good looking mostly the whole environment is cold and completely devoid of any erotic feeling. The pedestrian attempts at atmosphere, such as the low red and UV purple lighting, do not compensate for the lack of heart in the place. Women dance on the stage dressed as schoolgirls or as dominatrix. Sometimes they involve the audience in their dances—say, by grabbing some guy around the head with their knees and shaking him with their thighs while his friends cheer--sometimes they just strip. I feel an obligation to be aroused, but I’m not. I’m all for people having guilt-free fun and enjoying their bodies (even if I can't), and it’s not as if the women dancing in costumes or even—and get this for zany AND erotic--in a giant champagne glass offend me, but it’s just all a bit tired and tawdry. A schoolgirl? Null points for imagination. Still, we’re dealing with primitive urges here so maybe I’m overthinking things…its not as though someone dancing a scene out of a Rene Magritte painting would improve the quality of an erection, would it?

(Or would it?…..)

Cindy says hello to me, or rather to my money, and asks my money if I’d like a dance—she lets me know I’d better be quick as she’s finishing soon. She has a good sales patter; one hand is proffered to shake mine and establish rapport, the other drapes over my shoulder and all the time she stares me down. I wonder if this is how she overwhelms the nervous men who are afraid to initiate any contact. It probably works very well, I thank her kindly and decline. She totters off in her gold bikini and heels but tells me again not to wait too long.

Several patrons are getting private dances in the booths. The women are working hard – looking at the clientele you can’t think otherwise: imagine for a moment you are wearing only your underpants—got that? Now imagine you have to wave your bum in some fat bloke’s face for three minutes at a time, all night long. That’s hard work, however you slice it. I can’t imagine what tips might compensate for this kind of work; ones bodyweight in krugerands at the end of every shift maybe?

All the men in the club appear to think they are players. I can’t think why, they all, to a man, look like wankers--us included, I daresay. I hang around but leave after a polite half an hour. I was relieved to see that almost everyone who had come with our group looked as if they had stones in their shoes. No one looked comfortable or particularly excited to be there.

All that said, I can’t deny I felt a certain charge in the air—women were (technically) available and walking around in their underwear. One doesn’t have an intellectual reaction to that… However, the reality of someone writhing around in front of your face for money just lacks a certain….is it romance, for me? I know someone rented one of the women to go back to his hotel room. He didn’t sleep with her; he just wanted a trophy or maybe company. He got both, on the meter. She got paid and left after four hours. Doesn’t that strike you as abominably sad? And I understand it too, which is what spins me out the most. I think we hate it most when we see someone else’s weakness and it resonates within us. And no one wants to see even a sliver of their own loneliness and sexual insecurity shone back at them, not for a moment. In many ways I’m surprised the guy in question wasn’t burnt as a way of exorcising a certain collective shame…or maybe that’s a little over dramatic. It’s that Catholic spooky-ritual fixation rearing its head again, isn’t it?

My first strip club was in New Orleans at lunchtime. The sallow dancer looked exhausted as she wriggled around in front of us. My friend at the time was very excited and tipped well. I didn’t know where to look. I mean that. Certainly the bony groin in front of us wasn’t an option. Call me strange.

My one lap dance was a couple of years ago. It was embarrassing not only because it was at a stag-party and was therefore a very visible event—I think in some ways being seen by other men to have a lap dance is as much a part of the dance as the dance is, from what I can tell. You are supposed to emanate “I am enjoying this” vibes to the other men so they can admire your prowess. It was also embarrassing because the woman dancing was being very nice and chatty while simulating oral sex and swinging and shaking her breasts around inches from the tip of my nose. The dance may have looked like sex but it lacked any eroticism. Instead of being a public display of red-blooded masculinity it felt like a public charade that I wasn’t buying into. I waited for the song to stop and said thank you. Afterwards I felt stupid; stupid for sitting through it and stupid for not being more into it--I felt like I'd failed some male test: (Doesn't like lap-dances! Hah! What a sap!). The whole premise just felt absurd. It wasn’t foreplay. It wasn’t anything. I guess good dancers are the ones who can make you feel they like doing it for you (and maybe some do? What do I know? And maybe some men don’t care and are happy to be paying for it?). However, I don’t think I can suspend my disbelief that much. Or maybe I’m just so uptight about sex that I can’t deal with someone who’s comfortable with their body when they wave it around very much in my face? Maybe it’s a bit of harmless fun? After all, naked women look great. Who wouldn’t want one dancing only inches away? If I try to imagine when this would feel okay I can only think of somewhere very private with someone I knew was really into it…And even then I'm not sure…

Judging from the clientele at Solid Gold in London Ontario, I am in a minority. Plenty of people seem to enjoy such pleasures just fine. And good luck to them. It wouldn’t do for us all to be the same now.