I was drawn to a juiced six-footer with a muscular ass so round I couldn’t believe he could wear anything but a kilt comfortably. He had bad skin but frat-fresh features and was walking around with his underwear tucked under his cheeks, where it disappeared. It was like seeing a big KFC sign on the highway when you’ve driven two hours past dinner time. I had my first lap dancer picked out.
“I don’t mean to embarrass you, but your underwear is down in the back,” I joked. He looked at me like I was an idiot and told me, “I like it that way.” I did not look at him like he was an idiot because I’m a better actor.
“Are you free?” I asked. “I mean, not
free
, obviously.” I was still joking. He was still not.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” he said happily enough, grabbing me by the hand and leading me into the chamber of whores. It was dark, but certainly bright enough to see the beautiful bodies everywhere sitting on the not-so-beautiful bodies. Some guys were grinding into their customer’s laps face forward, some ass-backward, one lithe Brazilian boy was face-humping his trick and winking to a fellow dancer, who was standing stock-still while a creepy—even by backroom-at-the-strip-bar standards—old man was staring at and touching his butt through his Ginch Gonch. There is no judgment in that room. Unless you see me there. Just don’t lose your cellphone in the couch, because when you reach between the pleather cushions, it is going to be a moist sensation not unlike reaching inside a cow to help birth a calf.
My boy sat me down and then wrapped his massive thighs around me, sitting down hard and aggressively rubbing everything he had in the back against everything I had in the front, giving me intense eye contact. This was not the least pleasant thing I’d ever experienced. I was remembering that as a young man, I supposed I’d
never
pay for sex because I’d always know the person thought I was so gross I had to pay for it, so I wouldn’t enjoy it. With each thrust, I seemed to be nudged further and further away from that supposition.
“Hey,” I asked timidly. “What happens in the Champagne Room?” See, I already knew what happened in there, but I wasn’t about to admit I knew and ask him to do it for me. To my surprise, he looked offended and snapped at me, “I don’t do anything sexual.”
Okay, then. Twenty bucks a song, three songs, $60. Thank you for taking my lap dance virginity. Over the course of several visits, my first lap dancer’s personality did a 180. He began doing The Robot around the club in a playful, street-artist ‘80s cap and became a frenetic seeker of extremely friendly dances. He never did disappear into the Champagne Room with me or anyone else, but he talked me into a dance once that I thought would end with me losing my middle finger and became very passionate with his dirty talk. I didn’t like the dirty talk as much as I liked the real talk, like when he volunteered that he longed to make something of himself in college, and was awkward with girls in spite of being—drum roll—mostly straight. I eventually asked him what his girlfriend made of his outrageous ass, to which he replied, “She doesn’t like it. When we first did it, she said, ‘I’ve never seen a
guy
with a butt like that.’ And I said, ‘Is that a good thing?’ And she said, ‘…I don’t know.’”
The most aggressive guy on site during my first visit to The Adonis Lounge was a handsome Eastern European with nary a hair on his lean body. “Let me show you how professional I am,” he urged in a thick accent, insisting. I had come loaded with cash, so I let him show me how professional he was. His style during a lap dance was to announce when each song was over by saying, “We can do four, yes?” It never felt like a question, per se.
Almost all of the dancers were extremely friendly. While the Eastern European pro preferred to purr into my ear about his “virgin pussy” and do convincing porn moans under his breath, others talked about their jobs, their kids, their wives.
I don’t drink, but the bartender was none too friendly, reacting to a joking query about when he would be dancing with a look that seemed like an eyeball punch and a terse, “I. Don’t. Dance.”
That whole first evening was, for me, at times erotic and at other times incredibly aging. Nothing makes you feel like an old codger quite like being in a room filled with them and being treated exactly the same as they’re being treated by a passel of youthful working boys.
One of the nicest boys there, a silky-skinned black guy who looked like you’d meet him in a different kind of bar, date him and bring him home to mama, told us about working as a dancer on a Madonna video.
I wasn’t interested in dancing with him, though, which brings up the second hardest part of the night after the constant realization that you’re an old punter: Saying no. It’s awkward and counterintuitive to tell Mr. New Jersey and a known porn star you’re not interested in having them scoot around on your penis like a dog scratching its ass.
Actually, the hardest part is doing the walk of shame to the on-site cash machine. That broadcasts to everyone that you are spending too much fucking money and can’t help yourself. That first night, the patron before me had left a receipt in the machine showing he was paying a $2.95 fee to remove $40 from an account with $470.64 in it. Not cute.
My favorite guy of the night was a whipcord-thin Puerto Rican-born local whose stage show consisted of A-plus dancing. Not in the Lady Gaga backup dancer way, he just had damn good rhythm. Boyfriend material, with only his heterosexuality to get in your way.
I asked him why he was wearing jeans, making him the most overdressed of the night. He confessed that while at first he had been reluctant to disrobe at the club (he was new and as such was still incredibly popular) since so many of the dancers are musclegods, he’d eventually come to see that staying covered (and looking real) made patrons crave seeing more. Under the jeans, he had on a sweaty black G-string, which he later sported around the club once the pretense of unavailability had been, like his jeans, dropped.
He was so in demand I almost didn’t realize he was still there until the end of the night; he’d spent a good deal of time doing a double lap dance with a coworker on a man twice their ages combined, so I waited to see if I could snag him for a few. I did, and he was as good seated as he was standing when it came to dancing. He was also pleasant and conversational. A P.I. by trade (the “dick” jokes write themselves), he was the gold standard among the bar’s workers, almost entirely removing the sleaze factor with his chipper attitude and wholesome looks.
Almost.
Like a lot of the guys, I found him to be extremely forthcoming about his personal life, including things that might not have been good to advertise in case I didn’t find them sexy. For example, he was an ex-military. Okay, I found that sexy. But also, he was a father of two and living with a cougar. He loved pussy and told me that when he was in the military, he had been unable to imagine ever having sex with a man.
“Then, when I realized I had to support my kids, I told myself I would do anything I had to for them. That’s when I got over being with guys. Now it’s no problem.”
He gave me a businesslike run-down of all the things I could do with him in a nearby hotel room if I wanted to spring for one. I didn’t. At least not then. Over time, I became close to him, although I hesitate to call him my friend since the guy I’d gone to the club with continually chastises me for calling any strippers my “friends.” At one point, I was cozying up to so many of them it was beginning to look like the selection of my friends involved a swimsuit competition. He may be right about considering people you meet as sex workers or sex-worker adjacent as your friends, but I did end up in a hotel room with the military dude, shooting him with my expensive new camera at 3 one morning. Not that I was doing anything crazy, like putting myself and my $3,000 camera in a hotel room alone with a person desperate for money. But I felt secure with him, and he loved the camera as much as it loved him. He posed for me. It was give and it was take. It was an interpersonal relationship of a variety I could never have dreamed I’d one day have—here I was paying a cute straight dude to spend time with me, to pose naked. And yes, to give me lap dances. Lots of them. At $20 a pop.
Then there was my aggressive Dominican who was easily the best seducer at The Adonis Lounge. With dramatic eyes and thick, lustrous hair (only on his head…why are men these days as bald as toddlers in the front?), he would use his limited English to tell me pretty lies and writhe on me like I was a prop. He lifted my shirt and sucked my chest right in front of everyone, staring me down while shoving my hand down the back of his pants.
“Touch it, touch
anything
,” he would whisper, conspiring to let me get away with stuff when the guards weren’t looking, panting into my ears like he was in heat. It was a ridiculous heavy-petting session, and a wonderful lesson in how easy men are to fool—it’s because we
want
to be fooled.
I really liked and was physically comfortable with him, but even though being in a strip club is like watching a movie, all fantasy, like a movie it still has to make some kind of sense or I lose all interest. Even the most outlandish sci fi movie needs an internal logic or it falls apart. With him, he just kept feeding me lies, which would remind me of the falsity of our connection. I mean, I knew he wasn’t rubbing himself on me because he was wildly attracted to me, but I didn’t need that knowledge reinforced. He told me he was gay, but his dorky, Christmas-themed American Eagle boxer briefs with “Unwrap Me” spelled out in ribbons said otherwise, as did his awkward exclamation during our eventual photo shoot, “Yeah, you know…gay power.”
Nice try.
As interesting as these guys were, there were two dancers who really came to define my months-long transformation from strip-club newbie to the guy all the dancers swarmed upon arrival, realizing I was a romantic fool in a 401(k)-hole.
The first was the Brazilian. Slender and pale with dark hair and eyes, he had no body fat, a real model’s torso. He was beautiful, like a young Nick Scotti. I spotted him early on in my journeys to the club, usually seated near the front looking sullen and detached, often in street clothes before seemingly reluctantly throwing on a pair of boxer-briefs.
I got up the courage to ask him for a dance once, and he complied. When I sat, he hunkered down over me and began undulating on me. The first thing he ever said to me?
“I don’t really want to be here.”
Well, of course. But I found it endearing that he wasn’t playing any games and wasn’t worried his distaste for his job might turn me off.
His story was that he was a mama’s boy who lived at home. He wanted to be an actor, so was taking lessons and had no time for a more regular job. Like so many others who danced for dollars, he identified as totally straight. It was okay for me to feel him up, but never in the front and never inside the briefs, even though there was a lot to explore there. He made clear we would
never
be alone together or have sex. This in spite of the boners he would get as he ground on me for up to forty songs. Over time, one other gentleman and I monopolized him—which was the way he wanted it—so that my Brazilian could show up, stay clothed until he saw one of us, get undressed, dance for us one after the other, and then leave with a week’s pay.
During these long sessions, he came to like my nervous sense of humor and told me he liked that I was good-looking and clean.
“Some of these guys,” he sneered. “They stink. I used to tell them, ‘Keep your money, guy. You smell bad.’”
My Brazilian was not a hooker, and he had no street smarts. He was a suburban kid who couldn’t quite believe what he was doing for money, but also couldn’t quite believe how much of it there was and couldn’t turn it down.
We would talk about his career and his goals, with me giving what advice I could. Once, we each disappeared for a week on separate trips. When he returned, I was finally psyched up to try to see if he might let me do more. It was the opposite of most of gay sexual culture, where guys are ready to put their penises in your mouth on “hello.” It was like I’d willingly inserted myself into an old-fashioned male-female construct, where I had to pursue the object of my affection and plead my case. I was pathetic, but it was fun.
Before I could make my pitch, he told me his trip to L.A. had been amazing—he’d flown first class and had stayed at The Standard all week. This caught my attention. I suspected he must’ve been flown out by a john.
“But you don’t have any money…” I started.
“This cool guy came in here and met me and then a movie director flew me out! I didn’t have to pay for anything.”
This was before the sex scandal, but even then it wasn’t hard to guess.
“Was it…Bryan Singer?”
“Yeah! How’d you know, man?” My sullen Brazilian was beaming with excitement.
In reality, it turns out he never had to fool around with Singer, who is openly gay and openly loves beautiful young men. Rather, he just liked having him around as another member of his painfully good-looking guy-harem.
“Are you telling me that you’re an aspiring actor with no experience, and you were recruited by one of the most successful directors on the planet to come hang out with him in L.A., and you didn’t fuck him???”
“No!”
Kids today.
I continued along in a comically unhealthy friendship with my Brazilian until two things happened. One, I asked him about his sex life, and when he told me about his experiences with girls he sounded so disinterested in sex I lost a lot of my interest in him. He was and is beautiful, has a sense of humor and has a body that should be in a magazine, but he isn’t very sexual. Oh, and two, he retired. I hadn’t danced with him in the longest time, but when he told me he was going to do it only one last time and then was hanging up his G-string, I bit for one last, intense dance.