Monday, November 28, 2005

Saturday: Hockey and Hooligans

Saturday was the bachelor party of Ryan "The Great Dane" Knudsen. The evening started out as all bachelor parties should: drinking in the parking lot of a Hilton.

Then we all went to the Chicago Wolves game. For those who don't know, the Wolves are Chicago's minor league hockey team. On this evening, the Wolves' opponent was none other than the Omaha Ak-Sar-Ben Knights. Behind only the Cleveland Browns, this is the worst name in professional sports. My hatred of their name is not as deep as my hatred for their goalie Brent Krahn. That smug son of a bitch. Despite my incessant attempts at getting into his head, with such total burns as "go back to Omaha," "you suck Krahn," "this ain't the 'Wrath of Krahn'," and "hey Krahn, I've obtained your address, and currently there are four masked men holding your wife hostage until you start letting up more goals," he only let up 2 goals. His wife's body is currently desolving in a bathtub full of acid in Hell's Kitchen.

Then we went to some bars in Naperville and got lit.

Unknown female sources expressed their displeasure about the possibility of Ryan going to a strip club during the evening. As my boy Snoop might say, a bachelor party without strippers is like Harold Melvin without the Blue Notes: you'll never go platinum.

Ladies, listen up and listen up good. The following rant is meant to inform you about the goings on at strip clubs so that you can rid yourself of any irrational fears or concerns you might have about your man going to a strip club. Myself, I'm lucky enough to have a wife that doesn't care if I go to a strip club every now and then (granted, she might start to get pissed if I went there all the time). She's been to strip clubs, and therefore, she doesn't see what the big deal is when other women flip out about them. Hell, she's even called me from a strip club. That's when I knew she was the one.

Forbidding your man from going to a strip club is essentially telling him that you don't trust him. All it does is create resentment. Guilt trips may work when it's just a matter of him going to a bar to watch a game with his buddies, but trying to tell a friend that you can't go to a strip club at his bachelor party because your girlfriend/fiance/wife doesn't want you to is such a kick in the dick. He's not going there to blow his load, sexually or financially. In fact, if he's going there for a bachelor party, his main goal is to make sure the bachelor has a good time.

If he is the bachelor, for shit's sake, just let him have one last night of debauchery. It's a rite of passage--a male bonding experience. His friends take him out, get him liquored up, and then take him to a strip club. A guy's bachelor party is the one day where his buddies pay for everything and the one day he gets to feel like a king before he gets married. Even worse than having to tell your friend that you can't go to a strip club at his bachelor party is being the bachelor and trying to tell your friends that your fiance doesn't want you to go to a strip club. It's completely emasculating, or so I would assume. He's not going there for some last-minute fling. If he wanted to have sex with someone other than you, he would get a hooker or an ex-girlfriend.

Anyway, here are what I perceive to be the concerns (correct me if I'm wrong) of those women who refuse to "let" their boyfriends/husbands/fiances go to strip clubs, and the truth regarding those concerns:

Your Concern: If he goes to a strip club, it means he's some sort of sexual deviant.
The Truth: It's just a form of entertainment.
It seems to me that many women think that strip clubs are some sort of bastion of sexual perversion. From what I've heard, male strippers are pretty aggressive and often times inappropriate, so maybe that's where this concern comes from. Female strippers, on the other hand, are rarely aggressive because they don't need to be. If they come over to your table and ask you if you want a dance, they don't care if you say "no" because someone else in the club will say yes. In the end, though, a strip club is just entertainment. You see some girls dancing and maybe throw a dollar or two on the stage if you're particularly impressed. And what's not entertaining about watching a woman slide down a pole upside down while licking her own boob?

Your Concern: He's going to a strip club because he wants to get off.
The Truth: Guys don't go to strip clubs for sexual reasons.
Guys go to strip clubs knowing damn well that it is a touch-with-their-eyes-only situation. I can't stress this enough: there is no touching at strip clubs. Guys aren't allowed to touch the strippers. No touching, no kissing, no sucking, no fucking. Not on the floor, not in the lap dance chairs, not in those dimly lit couches in the corner, not even in the VIP room. There are big bruising bouncers all over the club watching you like hawks to make sure that you do not touch anything but the chair you are sitting in and your wallet.

Your Concern: He's going to a strip club because he doesn't find you attractive.
The Truth: That has never once crossed his mind.
Be rational. He wouldn't be with you if he didn't want to be. The fact that he goes to a strip club now and then with his buddies doesn't change that fact. While most strip clubs do feature attractive women (hopefully), he loves you and loves the way you look. If he wanted fake boobs in his face everyday, he would ask you to get them. At the very least, he sees a couple good-looking girls and forgets about them as soon as he walks out the door. At the very most, he has some harmless masturbation fodder that he will forget about the next time he sees you naked. But rest assured, any day of the week, he would rather give you the ol' pickle tickle than pay money to look at some 22-year-old silicone-injected stranger with two kids.

Your Concern: He will try to pick up a stripper.
The Truth: He has no plans or hopes (or even a legitimate chance) of trying to bag a stripper.
In fact, if anything, he probably would rather that a stripper's genitals stay as far away from him as possible (or at least 3-6 inches away). Strippers don't want a guy's dick; they want his money. A guy has a better chance of picking up a girl at a bar than he does a stripper at a strip club. Hell, he has a better chance of eating his own shit out of an ice cream bowl on a dare by a half-in-the-bag Boris Yeltsin than he does of picking up a stripper.

Your Concern: He's going to spend a ton of money.
The Truth: He's not going to spend much more than he would if he went to a bar.
First of all, many strip clubs do not sell alcohol, and the pop, water, juice, etc. is included in the cover price. And the clubs that do sell alcohol often include the less expensive drinks (domestic beer bottles, well drinks) in the cover price. As far as paying for dances, there is no requirement that anyone get a lap dance or a private dance. A lot of guys just go to a strip club and watch the girls on stage without giving any stripper a dime. For most of us, it's a rare chance to hang out with "just the guys." That's not to say that some of us don't get a lap dance now and then, but as explained above, it's just entertainment. And I'll be damned if there's anything wrong with buying the bachelor two songs in the VIP room. Granted, if your man is going to strip clubs alone or spending hundreds of dollars every time he goes, then you are probably right to worry. But those kind of guys are usually 50-year-old single men who actually think that the strippers like them. 99% of guys realize that all they are paying for is intangible entertainment that provides them with momentary enjoyment, and therefore, they will not be dropping cash left and right to look at something that they can touch when they get home.

The bottom line is that going to a strip club is a lot more innocent than many women make it out to be. Most men who go to strip clubs are not sleeze balls. They're not going to hook up. They're just going to have a good time with their friends. Don't chastise your man for it. Give him a boys-will-be-boys toned statement like "don't go falling in love" or "don't spend too much money." You can rest easy knowing that he's not going to do either. Better yet, you'll now be considered one of the "cool" girlfriends/fiances/wives among his friends. And to top it all off, your man will respect you even more so than he already does because he will know that you trust him and that you think he's capable of making his own decisions.

Guys (and liberated gals), please forward this to every woman you know, and every man whose girlfriend, fiancé, wife, mother, sister, aunt, grandma, maid, or waitress may be misinformed about strip clubs.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"First of all, many strip clubs do not sell alcohol, and the pop, water, juice, etc."

Lemar, next time I come to Dayton *cough*, you gotta take me to one of these Dry strip clubs and you can buy me a nice pint of Minute Maid or Juicy Juice.

GMYH said...

I wish it wasn't so prevalent, but many zoning laws just can't seem to allow the sale of boobs and the sale of booze in the same establishment. It's a damn shame, too.

Anonymous said...

Also, just to be clear, this post was NOT aimed at Ryan's fiance. She was not one of the "unknown female sources" I was referring to. As far as I know, she could have cared less if Ryan went to a strip club at his bachelor party. There were other women, however, who openly expressed opposition to their respective husbands, fiances, and boyfriends about going to a strip club at Ryan's bachelor party.