Spent all my money on booze and strippers

Well, no, not really. But I did have a good time last night during Christopher’s field trip to Mary’s Club, said to be downtown Portland’s oldest strip club.

We ended up as a group of about a dozen by the end, but no one unknown to Christopher except Mark and Elaine, who proved to be good sports when I had to cancel our tentative dinner plans with them last night and instead joined us at Mary’s (we had commited to Christopher first and simply forgot when discussing dinner and watching The Seven Samurai with them)

Mostly it was a gang of the usual suspects, including Kevin, Kip and Eric—Barry couldn’t make it, alas, he was working last night. Though I most certainly enjoyed the company I kept last night, I was disappointed that Barry could’t make it last night. Beyond the joy of his presence, I had met him at the end of the ’80s, when most of the comics we read seemed to have some scene or another in a strip club. The nostalgia value would have been interesting. Actually, I believe it was the late ’80s or very early ’90s that one of my favorite issues of Joe Sacco’s Yahoo was done, in which Sacco illustrated a script written by Susan Catherine detailing her experiences on the stripper circuit.

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So, yeah, good people, good conversations—though I often wasn’t looking at the person I was talking to, out of fear of being rude to the stripper on stage while she was performing. Now, the whole stripping thing was odd for me only because it all seemed so normal and inoffensive. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve gone to so many life drawing sessions at Hipbone that people taking off their clothes and presenting themselves has lost a lot of the thrill for me, or if it’s just that a moral circuit in my brain is broken. There are so many things that I just can’t get worked up over: porn, most sex acts between consenting adults, who’s doing whom, people who like 7th Heaven, and so on. Personally I save my rage for acts like rape, torture, racism, land mines in Iraq, not to mention corporate hanky-panky. And a certain Commander-in-Chief often gets my blood pressure up.
I found myself feeling perfectly comfortable at Mary’s Club. It probably

helped that there was a definite feeling that the strippers had some control of their enviroment. The crowd was all in all a good friendly one,  peppered with women beyond our group. Of course there was that one asshole who has to stand out with a swagger and macho talk. He was quickly dressed down by the stripper on stage who took his drink and sent him on his way. She was already my favorite, being as impressively limber and athletic as a gymnast and having done a routine to “Eleanor Rigby”. I mean, she wrapped her legs around the pole, hung upside down and took her top off, and she could keep one foot on the stage while touching the ceiling with the other (damn!). Turns out that she was the mother of our cocktail waitress. A family joint is Mary’s!

The only time I felt faintly uncomfortable was when one customer requested a table dance. This act took place off in a corner, half-hidden from the general club by a video poker machine. It wasn’t anything I saw happening, which was not any different then the act on stage. I think it was the fact that it was happening in a corner, half-hidden, that made it seem furtive and wrong though I know the only intent was discreet.

Or maybe I was reminded by a truly vile segment of Desmond Morris’s TV mini-series: The Human Sexes. He had just finished going on about how women body builders grossly deform their bodies. Cut from a female body building competition to an example of what Desmond deems the natural woman—a skimpily dressed big busted lass preforming a lap dance for some guy. I cannot even begin to describe my rage over this, all from a guy whose own figure more closely resembles the Venus of Willendorf than the presumed male ideal of Arnold Schwartznager.

But beyond that, my only discomfort came from the usual bar nonsense like cigarette smoke and some guy interupting the conversation Elaine and I were having to ask if either of us played pool—totally ignoring our husbands on either side of us. We lied about not knowing how and went back to talking and tipping the strippers.

I didn’t find it very sexual though. Not even tiltilating from the sense I was doing something naughty. Again, I’m don’t know if this stems from life drawing or what. Probably just not my thing, which I don’t believe is because I’m a woman. I know and have known woman who are aroused by this kind of display and not with that defiant “If men like it, I’m going to like it” attitude accompanied with either a mad glee or the look one gets before swallowing castor oil.

Stripping and porn in general are odd things with so much meaning and possible meaning for so many people. Some people are angry about it because it’s Wrong. Why it’s wrong splits off into many categories, from God doesn’t like it to it’s demeaning to women. But I don’t believe it is inherently demeaning and, let’s face it, all the clothes I ever owned and all the obscenity laws I lived under were man-made, not divinely requistioned.

I am not so naïve as to ignore the society and culture that we and Mary’s Club exist in. Of course along with sex comes power and the question of who has it— as Ani DiFranco states, “Any tool is a weapon, if you hold it right.” And though there are alternative venues featuring men- or women-only clubs, neither can shake the looming shadow of the forbear they’re a response to: the “Gentleman’s” Club, the Peepshow, 20 Nude Girls 20, XXX, Shag McNasties, and so on.

The first and only other strip joint I have ever been in was in Pittsburgh, where I was attending college—a totally different experience than Mary’s Club. In fact, it was the stereotypical Strip Club, with peepshow in the rear and adult book store attached, along with a sleazy atmosphere. Unlike Oregon, the strippers didn’t lose their thongs—which made it worse somehow. As Becca pointed out to when we discussed strip club experiences, declaring something obscene and then censoring it makes it seem even more obscene than the original thought.

And whereas I would never use my experiences or opinions to invalidate another person’s, the idea that strip clubs or porn incite violence or discrimination against women just doesn’t jive with me. Does it help? No. Nudity is vulnerabilty, vulnerability gives the appearance of a victim.

But I believe those who would harm another would do so regardless. I was molested by a couple of men growing up and I was shown porn to—I don’t know—get twelve-year-old me in the mood? But other adult men in my life then that I later found out read Penthouse would not only never have done that to me, but condemn the men who did.

I guess for me it’s like complaining about the color of the paint on a house while the foundation is crumbling. We are all taught, male and female, from very early on to appreciate a certain type of female ideal form and then our gender training veers off: males are taught that they should want her, females to be her. And just as the allegories of Justice and Liberty are represented by women, so is Sex, draped over cars or hawking electronics.

Really, Pornography just seems so much more honest somehow.