A look at loneliness, fantasy, and validation—and why the experience goes far beyond sex.
My sexy friend Sophia asked me to take her to a strip club, because she had never been to one. So I took her to a luxurious, anything-goes place where dancers will get handsy with you if the price is right. We sat at the lip of the catwalk.
“Why do men go to strip clubs?” she asked naively.
I told her to look at a nearby topless stripper giving a lap dance to a Kevin James-looking gentleman.
“You see that guy getting that lap dance?” I questioned, nodding toward the guy.
“Yeah,” Sophia responded.
“When was the last time you did that for your boyfriend?”
Sophia shook her head and crinkles her eyebrows.
“Never.”
“That,” I said, “is the No. 1 reason why men go to strip clubs. Because they’re getting here what they don’t get anywhere else.”
The Girlfriend Experience
I also know married men who frequent strip clubs because they haven’t had sex with their wives in six months, a year, or many years. Consider my friend Bernie (names in this piece are pseudonyms). He hasn’t had sex with his wife in years. He meets strippers in clubs and hooks up with them at motels, but he also buys them dinner and calls them girlfriends.
Then there’s my married buddy Phil who hasn’t completed a sex act with his wife since she got pregnant a decade ago. He talks strippers’ ears off and meets them elsewhere for sex.
And my married friend Brendon politely treats strippers as if they were dry cleaners: Here’s some money—please service me, thanks.
For all three of these typical strip-club guys, strippers listen to them talk at length about anything, with nurturing hands on their arms, wearing next to nothing. To these lonely men in lustless relationships, these women are the opposite of their wives. I’m not saying their wives are villains or that they also aren’t getting their needs met. I’m just telling you what’s going on at strip clubs.
Shy Guys
I’ve observed other men who have no game with women. They’re not undatable. They just don’t know how to dress right, flirt, attract or keep women. They quietly slip dollars here, there and everywhere. Strip clubs are the only places they get intimate—or even positive—attention from women.
Emergency Boobs
Sometimes you find yourself in dire need of emergency boobs. The night of my courthouse divorce, I could’ve reached out to women friends. But I didn’t know any nurturing, stellar listeners who were clamoring to hear me sadly weep on their shoulders.
So on my divorce night, I drove to a strip club for an exciting chat with a gorgeous, naked redhead who stroked my neck and listened intently, while I divulged a therapy session’s worth of grief and celebration.
I got that session for the low, low price of $80, which she happily tucked in her G-string.
Anti-Prudes
Ever since I divorced my anti-Hooters wife, I take girlfriends and female friends to strip clubs to make sure we’re compatible hedonists.
Within five minutes of walking into an all-nude place for the first time with my then-girlfriend Laurel, she euphorically yelled, with boobs in her face, “Why do people go to nightclubs when they could come here?”
She then unleashed her latent bisexuality, and now she’s less repressed.
Meanwhile, I taught supposedly heterosexual Sophia proper etiquette on “how to motorboat” and slip dollars into G-strings, and she asked me to take her back to the club again.
I’ve had many experiences like this with women. All they need is an entree into the world of freedom, and they eat it up. I guess you could say I am the strip-club dreamweaver.
Aphrodisiacs for Couples
I’m not threatened by my partners’ fantasies. In fact, I’m an instigator for the pleasures of the flesh. I help people make fantasies come true, so they can become who they really are.
I’m not the only dreamweaver. I’ve seen countless couples in strip clubs. Some are swingers. But a lot of them just want to interact with strippers so they can go home heated up for action.
Dating Strippers
Other people are attracted only to strippers and sex workers. My tough lesbian friend Jenna goes to strip clubs because feminine strippers are her type: Girls who like girls but take money from men. For Jenna, strip clubs are Bumble in real life.
The Transaction
The big secret about strippers is that they are usually kind and professional. And strip clubs aren’t mysterious. They’re a service station for the human condition. They’re where lonely people feel desired; where couples rediscover heat; where the sexually repressed finally breathe; and where a sad divorced man can compensate someone for catching his tears.
