Strip clubs

This week's inductee into the "Overrated Hall of Fame" is ... Strip clubs.

Tell me if this sounds like any fun at all. You go out to a nice steak restaurant. Or maybe just a mediocre steak restaurant. Or maybe just a shitty steak joint with the $8.99 all-you-can-eat special. In any case, you are counting on eating some steak. Where you end up going is simply a matter of cost and quality. The end result is all that matters, and the desired end result is you eating a steak.

However, it's not that simple. At the door, some tattooed behemoth who hasn't smiled since the Carter administration tells you there's a cover charge. The higher end the steak joint, the higher the cover charge. Because you are so desperate for steak, because you need that steak, because you swear that if you don't get a hold of some steak soon you're going to do something you'll regret, you fork over the money with no hesitation. And then you are inside.

Ahhh, and now it's time for dinner, a nice hunk of filet mignon, done medium rare of course. Or perhaps you are in the mood for a mid-range cut, so you go for the sirloin. Perhaps you want to get down and dirty with a fatty, greasy t-bone, slathered in A-1 sauce with a side of crispy fries, impending heart attack be damned.

Remember, you came here because you are hungry, famished, starving, goddamn gummy-legged in your dire need of meat. You could have just stayed at home and cooked for yourself, but instead you showered and got dressed and went out because you wanted someone else to do the cooking. Steak always tastes better at a restaurant. You get to your table, and in almost no time at all a moist, juicy, delectable serving of grade-A, prime choice, top of the line steak is plopped right in front of you. It looks fantastic. You want to tear into every ounce of this steak with your drooling mouth. The steak looks up at you with eyes that say, "Oh yes, I so badly want you and you only to eat me tonight, to chew me up and savor my juices and have me running down your chin. If you're still hungry after that, why, you can have another as soon as you're ready." The steak smells divine. Perhaps the server will even cut it open a bit and let you see the pink, moist insides, done exactly the way you like it, allowing even more of the enticing aroma to escape, increasing your desire to lap up that warm, tender, waiting piece of meat.

But then the server says, "Oh no, you can look, and you can smell, and you may even have this steak rubbed up against you, but you will not, under any circumstances, be eating this meat tonight. Not one bite. Not even a lick. You can't even touch it." And for the privilege of being able to drool over the one thing you need more than anything else on the planet on this evening, you will pathetically dole out - one and two at a time - an ample stash of one dollar bills until your drunk ass is broke and your formerly diamond hard cock is now about as useless to you as that delicious steak that is now being shown - but not eaten - to every other swinging dick in the place.

That's how I feel about strip joints. Sure, the women are hot, even when they're not. But what's the logic in wanting something very badly, and then going somewhere to have the one thing you need dangled in front of you all night with no payoff? You don't go to a bar to have the bartender just wave drinks in front of you all night. Why would an insanely horny man subject himself to the frustration of having bare tits and asses shoved in his face all night-for a fee, mind you - and not be able to fully enjoy those bare tits and asses? Perhaps because men are pathetic. Women go see Chippendales and they leave the place laughing and satisfied. A man leaves a strip joint sullen and angry.

I used to hit some strip joints back when I was a very young man, between the ages of 19 and 22. I had a lot of fun, but mainly because I went with fun guys. I didn't hang out with the type of strip club loser who plops his overweight ass in the front row, produces a wad of ones, then proceeds to do the strip club hard staredown for the dancers, that intense (read: rapist scary) non-blinking gaze into each dancer's eyes in an always unsuccessful effort to impart to the naked nymph that this look means that he is all business and much more serious than all these other "losers" who are here just to look at her tits. He, in fact, is better than that. "I am certified stripper boyfriend material," is what he wants his unblinking stare to say.

This look translates into something quite different in stripper language. The stripper, who knows a dollar dumping dupe when she sees one, gets a different message from his gaze, that message being: "I am an easy mark who will tip you all night and believe you when you say that I am the only nice guy in the place tonight, and that you'd definitely date me if you didn't already have boyfriend ..."

I used to go with guys who would spend an hour or two laughing at the whole scene. Don't get me wrong, we weren't above enjoying the bare nakedness of the strippers. Even the subprime dancers in the dives we frequented had bodies that were of higher quality than the pathetic lot of lob-sided tits and bony asses most of us had seen up to that point in our real lives; tits and asses that were bared only after eight Miller High Lifes and two hours of begging. But none of us ogled and tipped under the delusion that this would be the night that one of the formerly-molested-and-now-getting-back-at-daddy semi-hot chicks would find our needy stares and crumpled one dollar bills so pussy-stimulating that she'd have no choice but clock out early for the privilege of fucking one of our underused cocks into shriveled submission.

So we'd go and laugh and joke and even make the dancers laugh, staring into their eyes and ignoring their tits and yelling, "I like your eyes! Staredown time!" Of course, as cool as we played it, somewhere deep inside we probably hoped that this tack would be so original that the coked out stripper would lose her vacant stare and realize that she finally found a customer worth fucking. But that never happened. I know you are shocked.

The best strip club story I have does not even involve one of the strippers, which is unfortunate. A group of us stopped at a strip club after a baseball game. (This was the mid-80s, and since the game featured the Pittsburgh Pirates, we had already seen our share of boobs for the night, but nevertheless, to Sonny Day's strip club we went.) After 10 minutes of watching so-so looking skanks shake their tits for our remaining dollars, boredom began to set in, so we ended up closer to the bar than the stage. Some older woman around the age of Methuselah asked us if we liked the tits on the current dancer. One of us said, "Yeah, they're not bad."

Her reply? She hoisted up her shirt, showed us the scariest set of tits this side of Michael Moore's, and said, "Well, whaddya think about these!"

None of us answered honestly, as the only honest answer would have been a group heave. Instead, we lied and told her they were nice. And that's my most fun memory from my strip club period, which should tell you just how overrated they are.

So after a few years of intermittent strip club visits, the minor thrills wore off. When you're male and that age, all you want to do is fuck. Or at least shoot your load. And I'm talking every few hours. (Here's hoping you didn't eat at the Pizza Hut I worked at when I was pulling a double shift with that perky titted Kathy from the next borough over.) So going to a strip club made no sense, because it would just make your blue balls bluer. And it still makes no sense. One would think that middle age would have resurrected my desire to see strange naked tits dancing just a few feet or even just a few inches from my face, but that hasn't happened. Because I know I can't touch them without suffering a club to the head from the film school dropout of a bouncer.

So it's no strip clubs in the life of this 40-something guy. If I want to get all hot and bothered for some chick I have no chance in hell of banging, I'll go stare at that cute chick Shelly, who tends bar at the Outback. I know I'll never get to paw those luscious tits, but you can bet your last three crumpled dollar bills that I'll be enjoying the steak.

Ned Bitters is, in fact, overrated. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.