“Puppies!” I say, but nobody can hear me over the music. “PUPPIES!” Nothing. I’m just going to have to ride this out. After an interminable amount of time, she stops her gyrations and asks me if I want more.
“NO!” I yell.
“Can I have a drink?”
We’ve ordered a bottle of booze from them for, get this, FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS! And now Upside Down Pussy wants to drink it? No way.
“Yes,” I say, because I am not a man. I am a little bitch.
Stephie has remained wisely sober throughout the evening and, as three o’clock in the morning approaches, she asks if I meant it when I said “puppy.” I nod, shell-shocked. Meghan and her friends are continuing to have a great time, getting lap dances, laughing, drinking. But I am a puddle of goo. I need to get back to my kennel.
We stumble into the night: Meghan, Stephie, Josh and Kasey, the strippers, and me. They want to know what’s next?
“The Green Door?” someone asks.
I shake my head no. I can’t. I just need to go to bed. Kasey wants to go back too, but Josh still wants to drink. Josh convinces him to go out with him and the girls. Stephie, Meghan, and I take a taxi in stunned silence back to the Palms. I feel like I have a yeast infection.
Meghan:
From there it just gets later and, well, darker in every sense of the word. I’m sitting with strippers, on strippers, laughing, drinking, and sharing more life stories and bra tips. I’m dazzled by the liveliness of it all, and start to realize this is why I run to Vegas when I’m low—it’s the one place I can truly let go and not think about being judged by the people around me. As they say, you really can be whoever you want in Vegas. There are no bloggers in
this room, and there are no pundits. No one is calling me a wild child in any other way than as a compliment. I’m an anonymous American, having the kind of good time that goes all the way back to the founding of Vegas in 1905 as a stopping off point for the railroad to refuel and play a few hands of cards.
I end up genuinely liking the girls we are hanging out with. They are warm, friendly, and nonjudgmental, so I’m nonjudgmental in return. They do not seem at all ashamed of their industry and give me a new perspective on exotic dancing. Again, I am not the biggest proponent of the industry, but these girls are really sweet and don’t seem to think of themselves as victims in any way.
As evolved and innovative as I have always felt that America is as a country, our cultural attitude towards sex and women remains something that is extremely unhealthy and puritanical. Is it possible to be an exotic dancer in Las Vegas and find the experience and the profession one of empowerment? I do not know and, like I said, I myself remain conflicted about the industry as a whole. All I know is that Daisy, Jessica, and G-Cup Bitch are each fun, respectful, and thoughtful women who share real insight with us into what it’s like working in the sex industry. They do not come off as victims and seem to understand that they have a level of control over the people who request their services.
Whatever any pundit or politician wants to say, there is no real way to be a woman in the media and not have your relationship with sex in whatever capacity harshly judged. We seem to be regressing as a culture, or at the very least have plateaued, in that subjects such as birth control and a woman’s right to have access to birth control have returned to the forefront of the political landscape. Of all the issues facing America right now, my right to have access to birth control is pretty much the last thing I would have imagined would be a discussion in this election cycle. I mean, isn’t this something we as a country already passed during the feminist movement?
On a personal level, my relationship with what sex on the broader landscape means to me is probably the most difficult
subject to deal with and talk about publicly. Unfortunately, the problem is that in America, women in the media are still treated as either Madonnas or whores. Men still run the media and are threatened by strong women with strong voices; and the easiest and most predictable way for a lot of men to deal with a strong woman with strong opinions is to automatically call her a slut and immediately call into question her morality and life choices.
Being a woman in America right now is confusing and scary, at least from my perspective. I did not wait to have sex until I got married. I do believe that everyone should have access to birth control, and I still worry about the kind of mixed signals that continue to be sent to young women in this country. Arguably the biggest celebrity on the planet, Kim Kardashian, got her start essentially by releasing a sex tape with Ray J. Right now she is a multimedia mogul, with a hugely popular television show, different types of clothing, perfume, and endorsement brands, and is frequently on the cover of most weekly magazines. So on the one hand, as a culture we celebrate celebrity figures, even if they have compromised themselves to the point where they have a sex tape available for viewing on the Internet, and on the opposite hand, the debate over whether or not women should have access to birth control is still part of the national dialogue. Why is there no middle ground between virgin and sex tape?
In my life I want it all, and I hope that I am allowed to have it all. I want to be a strong, empowered, smart woman who speaks her mind but can also maintain a strong connection to my sexuality and femininity. Unfortunately, in my experience women are not really given room to have both: to be smart and strong in the world of politics and own their sexuality. I hope we get to a point as a country where the repression and attitude towards all things related to sex are not so taboo. I hope we can have more open conversations about sex and the dangers of sex without the attitude that if you are talking about sex in a real way, you are automatically judged and stereotyped. I do not know what the answer is. All I know is that I myself feel like, from time to time, the media has tried to
shame me for talking openly about sex and not trying to lie and hide who I am or the kind of life I lead, which at the end of the day really is not so controversial.
The problem with the current attitude in American politics towards women and sex is that it is not a subject that has really evolved much. Being gay is still considered a liability to many people in and out of politics, which is why so many politicians stay closeted. How many times have we been faced with the hypocrisy of egregious political sex scandals, which more often than not involved people who rallied the hardest for a return to moral values in this country? Times are changing, and this generation has an entirely new accessibility to the Internet and sex; as a result, we have to stop turning the other way and acting like this is still the 1960s. I always try to strive for balance in my life. I want America to have a healthy yet realistic relationship with sex. I want women in this country to have the opportunity to be three-dimensional human beings. I want women to be accepted as smart, powerful, intelligent, and in tune with their sexuality without automatically being labeled “sluts” for having those qualities. I want there to be more middle ground, instead of just being put into one extreme category or another. As Michael and I continue to spend an evening delving into the sex industry in Vegas, it continues to bring up weird feelings for me. Getting lap dances and exploring strip clubs with Michael serves as an easy way to reflect on America’s attitude towards sex. I mean, would it be necessary for strip clubs to even exist if there were less rampant repression in this country?
Michael
: Here’s my thing about sex: you should have it when you want it, how you want it, and with whomever you want it. Our bodies are our own to do with what we like, and if you like hanging out with strippers, great. If you like being with dudes, great. If you like being in a situation where there are two ladies and you, and then there’s another lady in a Wonder Woman costume eating ice cream out of a carton but not letting you have any because you’ve been a baaaad boy, but then she puts caramel all over your tummy
and all three ladies lick it off while you watch, well that’s fine too. In fact, that’s more than fine. That’s awesome.
Now that I’m a father, maybe I’m supposed to be more censorious about sex. But I can’t be. Because it’s not how I feel. No, I don’t want my son and daughter to have sex too early in their lives, but nor am I going to be the one who determines when is the right time for them to start. I was fifteen when I lost my virginity. Writing this as a forty-year-old man, I think about how young that seems to me now. I think about how worried I would be for my own kids if I knew they were sexually active at that age. But here’s the thing: I don’t regret it.
My girlfriend and I had already been together for over a year when we finally decided to take each other’s virginity. We discussed the matter for months before doing it. Honestly, if I’d given my studies as much care and consideration as I gave to the appropriate time to start having sex, I would have been a straight-A student. The most important feature of our decision was also the simplest: we were in love.
There are adults who question teenage love, but I remember the intensity of my feelings for her, and I do not know any other word to express how I felt. We were careful, we were informed, and we made, for us, the right decision. Twenty-five years later, we’re still friends.
That’s all I ask from my children; that they first have love before they first have sex. As they mature, their sexual lives will probably expand to include people they do not love. That’s okay. Human beings are sexual creatures, and I want them to know the act of sex as one facet of their lives as sexual beings. Sex should never be used to repress or punish or manipulate. It is a gift you give to somebody. Sometimes it is a small gift and sometimes large, but it is always a gift.
But sex is also a gift you take. I want my children to know that accepting a gift requires more responsibility than giving one. Giving is easily forgotten, but when we take, we carry a tiny bit of the giver with us. Hence: crabs.
Who we love is less important to me than
that
we love. I hope they feel comfortable enough with their bodies that they are able to talk about sex with their partners, that they are brave enough to know who they are sexually, and to never be ashamed of themselves for what they want.
Sex is powerful, physically and emotionally. When young people don’t know how to handle its power, they are more likely to make mistakes. When we make sexual mistakes as young people, we tend to make them again and again as adults. When my kids decide to have sex, I want them to be well informed, safe, and ready.
I hate that sex is so politicized. It maddens me when politicians try to insert their own values into my bedroom (or the back of my sweet custom van). We are a nation founded on liberty, so let us agree that our orifices are our own, into which we should have the liberty to insert whatever we like. In fact, one of my favorite lovemaking songs is Ray Charles’s version of “America the Beautiful
.
” Nothing gets me going like the image of all those fruited plains.
Meghan:
I think back on how mad I got when then-candidate Obama publicly dissed Las Vegas at a town hall in New Hampshire, saying, “You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices.” President Obama’s comments received a lot of backlash from the city of Las Vegas, which had already been one of the hardest hit by the sagging economy. The city has built a reputation as America’s playground, and though I’m not bringing a kid here anytime soon, it’s only because I don’t plan on having any. One of the most amazing sights here these days is families on vacation. Many people don’t even enter a casino while they’re here; instead they come to shop at stores they can’t find in the Midwest, and eat at big city restaurants while still feeling like they’re in a pretty small town. Add to that the lure for new business being led by Zappos, and you begin to understand how terribly wrong President Obama was to sling shame in this direction.
I was among many voices that came out publicly defending the city. Americans need to take breaks, and no other city provides the benefits and deals that Las Vegas does. Ever since that incident I feel an even larger responsibility to promote the city, and to defend any of us who find a void filled by the entertainment here. And hell yeah, I’m having a good old time tonight, but Vegas doesn’t exist just as an excuse to party. The city is a symbol of many things that are great about America: innovation, impulsiveness, the American Dream of hitting it big, our gambling nature, and that we are a country that would build an entire city based simply on the notion that what happens here promises to stay here. I mean, come on, President Obama, “Viva, etc.”
Salt Lake City, Utah
The X-Men
Meghan:
I always hate leaving Las Vegas, or worse, waking up to leave Las Vegas very early in the morning. As beautiful as the Strip is at night—all lit up, sparkly and seductive in its excess—the city looks depressingly barren and naked in the sunlight. Without all of the neon lights to highlight the architecture of the casinos, it seems monotone and bland, like all the glitter of the showgirls and tinkling of ice cubes have gone to sleep for a well-earned twelve hours. There’s a reason why I usually do my gambling in the daytime, when I have a clear enough head to walk away from the table up a few. The city doesn’t really come out to play until the sun goes down.
Our flight to Salt Lake City leaves at eight, and after two hours of sleep it is only by the grace of God that I’m able to leave my hotel room and make it downstairs to meet Stephie and Michael. My pimp suite ended up crammed with Josh and Kasey, due to a glitch in their own reservation. With all the suitcases and rollaways scattered around the room, packing and winding my way out the door is no small feat.