I sip another inch of whiskey before I get eyeslapped by a nipple.

Strippers are more or less hookers in their headquarters. They’re the cynical, miserable, expensive coinflip of the game some call love.

I’m a serial loser at that game so when she asks me for another whiskey I go
“fuck off.”

Of course, she thinks I’m cute. That’s partly because sure, I’m not half as bad looking as the people who actually need to visit a strip joint and partly because she wants to squeeze me for all my money.

See, you’re not getting laid if you buy a stripper a drink. Not even if she likes you.  Oh no. You might settle at the end of her shift but that’s gonna cost you extra. Unless you’re that mythical guy who’s so slick he can get them for free (chances are you’re not), you’re going to pay a full hooker price after buying her a few drinks and pretending like you’re not utterly disgusted with the thought that she’s there, week in, week out, rubbing wet panties against a metal rod for the delight of the drooling working man who spends his hard-earned money on his standard 3AM pretend boner.

Street hookers are easier. You almost never see their clientele and it’s an upfront deal most of the time. In a way, it’s cleaner. Then again, I’m not here to fuck these broads. I wouldn’t pay for something like that – not because I’m cheap, but because if I want to throw money away on empty promises and expensive illusions, I could always start paying my taxes.

A fat and greasy figure stuffs a fat, generous bill in one of the girls’ panties, making sure to tickle her pubes just enough to get some shiny sweat on his nails when he pulls his hand out. In case you didn’t know, strippers stuff their tips into their underwear so their bosses won’t take it away when they finish working. I mean, those guys know better, unlike the depraved fools who clap when one of the girls rubs her oily tits with sketchy sensual gestures. I catch a glimpse of a dude getting a lap dance with his wedding ring clasped around her butt cheek. He’s jonesing for what his wife could never give him.

But that’s not me. She moves on to me and suggestively rubs her thumb against her index finger to suggest payment. So when I tell her to fuck off again, she meows and bats her eyelashes for a while before giving up. It’s half past pathetic.

What I like about strippers is not their acting – you can only fall for that if you really, really want to or you’re really, really dumb. You can’t act stuff like romance when you’re putting up a show for the desperate and the alone, because acting is about planting a new seed, not sucking the pollen that’s already there. I don’t even like getting lapdances. What I like about strippers is their pole dancing.

If you get to see a good pole dance, it’s like seeing good ballet. Actually, pole dancing doesn’t even come from the slums of decadent pay-per-view adventures of the drunken burgeois, but the circus.

So as I’m watching her spin and her panties fly like a boomerang and land straight into the ice bowl, I’m not thinking – she’s Whoever the Hooker with a Motion Promo and slippery clothes. I’m thinking she’s an artist. For two minutes there, she spins and she spreads her legs and does a vertical flip with no hands and it all reminds me of a suave acrobat fairy.

For a minute there, it’s not that I’d want to hit her like a locomotive – unlike every other male with a pulse on the couches around me. It’s about her waving her magic wand of a body and it doesn’t matter that she’s probably got more germs than a Bangkok public toilet, because for a minute I forget that and she’s just a silhouette performing for my eyes and my eyes alone.

And I know this because while all the other pairs of eyes are wet with greed and lust, zoomed in on her boobs and her ass and her fat, custom lips, I’m engulfed in a strange, blind admiration that makes me wish I didn’t have to come here to see this.

I wish I knew a girl who did it as a hobby and saw the spectacle without hunting down the naive and the generous. I wish acrobats were in town. I wish the drinks weren’t this goddamn expensive and I wish I didn’t have to pass through a redlit hallway to get to this show.

But I don’t, so I stay and sigh and when she’s done, the thin female figure I had earlier told to fuck off whispers in my ear that she likes me. I’m not seeing the dance anymore so she’s back to being a drinkmagnet and I’m back to being bitter.

Beauty and art don’t last much in this world, and when they do, it just serves to emphasize how hopelessly you have to dig for it and how rare and improbable it is. But without that, the world would be made of rich drones jonesing for hot callgirls and hot callgirls jonesing for rich drones.