Sometimes

Sometimes it’s sad. Sometimes I look down at the plump young redhead I’m dancing for and see in him the old man I danced for last song. The old man whose fat hung yellow from his cheekbones, whose sexy face was a grimace of despair and hopes still mourned for.

Sometimes when I sit down with an old man and ask how he is he tells me, all in one breath, that he is lonely and his parents are dead and everyone he went to high school with hates him and his only friend, who lives hundreds of miles away, promised him that there was someone out there who really cared. He told him, he said John, you’ve gotta get out and find that person. Go to the strip club. Then he looks up at you, blinking back tears, and says he can’t afford a lap dance but he’d like to take you to a movie.

Sometimes I dance for a truck driver who says he misses naked women on the road but he’s afraid that prostitutes have pimps. He pays me double and espouses my virtues, from strong legs to beautiful hair and a good character, the whole time.

Sometimes they whisper and blush and ask if women really like sex because their girlfriend doesn’t, and I get to play teacher.

Sometimes I make this incredible chemistry and I love it and they love it and it is what it is.

0 comments

  1. Yes indeedy!!!You NAILED iT!!!!

    Lots of men OK ..everyman…in every profession and walk of life from prospectors and lumberjacks to executives …
    They wake up one fine day …look at the guy in the mirror and IT HITS THEM like a …big ol’Chevy engine block landing on your foot with the floor jack …juuussst out of reach…

    They are face to face…with the stark terrifying realization that the things that preoccupied them…work, cars, hobbies, …stuff…somehow kept them from achieving that perfect gleaming effortless (fairytale) union with the “WOMAN” (copyright) of their dreams…that perfect gleaming (soft focus dewy lips) vision…the Playboy bunny and the flying car … INDEED a Playboy bunny IN the right hand seat of a flying car…with you driving (you stud…but only if you buy “right” beer) tossing wee bits of clothing…

    (JUST TRY not to think of this image the next time you do a strip tease) …

    out the window revealing a perfect body that never sags or wrinkles..hmmmnn…seems women have been sold a bill of goods too…

    (indeed I’m thinking an even bigger bill of goods than men have…)

    …REALLY…lets be real here… with any perspective at all…men never expected to have any of that anyway…but we fell for it because we really wanted to belief that we could…

    And yes…men are really shy about what women really want…went into a lingerie store the other day and found my face blushing redder than the lingerie…rather face a hungry bear

  2. I think that more than anything is the reason I want to dance, I imagine this astounding intimacy with strangers who you may never see or speak to in “the real world”

    I wish strippers and whores (and mean thise terms in the good way) had the kind of respect they used to in the good old days when they worked in big temples and not seedy bars, that people came to them for healing and joy and the downright holy sexieness of women.

  3. Actually, I have always see women…most especially strippers and courtesans …as doing powerful healing and bringing spontaneous joy…Emily has brought forward a powerful image.
    People seem to stoop to denigration of things that are fundamental to our human nature…so called base desires…what is base about them…is not a foundation also a base? Without a foundation being satisfied/constructed how can we build on it…we topple over as we have no support where we need it most.

    The common appellation of “whores” merely shows that people recognise and react with fear to their immense power…much the same way that they use “cops” in a denigrative sense…but fear the policeman’s perceived status and power/control over the common citizen. Women who serve others in this way are to paraphrase Davka …the consummate integrators …as professionals they don’t survive/thrive in their environment if they aren’t quick studies of mood/threat assessment/artistic expression/negotiation strategies etc etc. Business schools should almost make stripping a required course…
    Indeed, do they not universally have the widely acknowledged credo of being…”the oldest profession”. Let’s not forget that the profession of surgeons started off in the Middle Ages as barbers…have you seen pictures of the haircuts back then…shudder. I would certainly support a Temple of Courtesans…seem to be doing that already in a very small way. And yes, I find it fundamentally a healing and powerful experience…the sex is less important than the sheer tactile experience of immersing oneself…letting go in the embrace of another…spiritual healing quite frankly…fundamental as breathing

  4. translated by Coleman Barks

    Guest House

    This being human is a guest house.
    Every morning a new arrival.

    A joy, a depression, a meanness,
    some momentary awareness comes
    As an unexpected visitor.

    Welcome and entertain them all!
    Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
    who violently sweep your house
    empty of its furniture,
    still treat each guest honorably.
    He may be clearing you out
    for some new delight.

    The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
    meet them at the door laughing,
    and invite them in.

    Be grateful for whoever comes,
    because each has been sent
    as a guide from beyond.

    Jalaluddin Rumi

  5. nothing feels as good as when you open the mind of someone who didnt know better but hungered for the knowledge and there is no distant shorter than between an enlightened stripper in a emotionally hungry man’s lap.

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