So, You Want to Hire a Stripper? Better Read This First!
Feb 02 '03 (Updated Mar 19 '03)
The Bottom Line I am not an exhibitionist. It makes me blush just to post this essay. But I thought you all deserved a warning of what male strippers are really like.
Well, it's past midnight in my time zone, which means that it's my 22nd birthday! But to my friends, February 3, 2003 is also known as "The Second Anniversary of Becky's Stripper." Read on for the gruesome details...
I should preface this by saying that I have done embarrassing things when drunk, but my “most embarrassing incident” occurred when I was completely sober. And that's part of what made it so mortifying.
On my 20th birthday, my roommate and I were planning on having a party in our room. We went out to dinner with a few people and then came back to the house. We lived in a beautiful, old mansion that year, so our house was always “the party house” since it had plenty of space. I remember thinking that it was kind of strange that everyone seemed to be in such a hurry to get back by 8:00. Parties at our university never start before 9. About 20 of our friends showed up right at 8:00, smiling with anticipation. None of them had brought gifts, which I also thought was a bit odd, but I didn't suspect that my present would soon be walking through the door.
I was making small talk and trying to get my guests drinks when my friend Bayard entered the room with a huge grin on his face and said, “There's someone here who you haven't seen in a really long time.” Everyone in the room stopped and stared as a very tan, well-dressed man walked in and said, “Where's Becky?” My first reaction was that it was someone I'd known as a child who had had an extreme makeover like they do on those cheesy talk shows. But after about three seconds, I realized that this man was a STRIPPER!
”Oh my God!” I screamed, and ran to the other side of the room, as far away from the stripper as possible. There was a bit of confusion as my roommate tried to find appropriate stripping music. (He hadn't brought his own music, which proved to be a major problem.)
”I don't have any stripping music!” Marisa announced, but we eventually found“Let's Get it On” by Marvin Gaye in her MP3 collection.
By this point, I had calmed down a little bit and prepared myself for the show. I'd seen Showgirls and figured that I'd just be watching a man take off his clothing. He was a bit too burley for my taste, but how bad could it be, right?
I sat down on Marisa's bed, but the stripper took me by the arm and said that I had to participate! “Uh, ok...” I said, cautiously. The song started and the stripper started dancing with me in the middle of the room the way one would dance in a darkened club, not in bright, university housing surrounded by friends! I felt very awkward, as everyone was watching us and the stripper put his arms around me. In all of the photos, I look like I am trying to push him away. At one point, he even pushed me down onto Marisa's bed! My friends were as shocked as I was. They occasionally screamed, but mainly sat there in shocked silence and even looked away because they couldn’t bear to watch. Apparently, it's almost as embarrassing to watch a friend be stripped for (or 'upon', as the case may be) as it is for the intended target!
The only cool thing about the stripper was that he had Velcro clothing, so I got to rip off his shirt and trousers. But once he was unclothed, he told me to touch his stomach, etc., but I wasn't interested. I felt kind of bad that I was rejecting him, but there was nothing I could do about it. Eventually, I would reluctantly touch his (obviously waxed) skin, which was slightly less embarrassing than just saying I didn't want to. It wasn't that he was inherently unattractive, but he just wasn't my type. He looked like he spent all day either in the tanning salon and the gym. How could you be an intelligent, thoughtful person with that kind of lifestyle?
I'm sure that his stripping routine was supposed to last for longer than one song, but when he realized that his audience wasn't into it, he just gave up and sat down (in his g-string! eww!) on Marisa's bed next to my friend Michelle. Plus, “Let's Get it on” was the only even remotely stripper-worthy song in Marisa's collection. There's a brilliant photo of the stripper with his arm around Michelle, who looks like she wants to run away. I felt kind of guilty that we hadn’t been a more enthusiastic audience, especially since he had driven for around two hours to get to our house! Apparently, there are no strippers in my state.
The first person to correctly guess which state the stripper came from will get a free shout-out on my profile page. Leave your answer in the comments section.
There was an awkward silence as we tried to think of how to make small talk with the stripper. Someone eventually asked him if he'd found the place alright, and then he asked if there was somewhere he could go to get dressed. He had just taken all of his clothes off in front of us! Why did he have to put them back on in private? So, I brought him across the room to the common room, and he started putting his clothes on with the door open.
”Ummm... do you want a drink of water?” I asked. I felt really bad that I had been such a bad “strippee.”
I went to the kitchen to get him some water, and on my way back, I passed a university security officer. Panicking, I went into the common room and closed the door, so the public safety officer wouldn't see the stripper.
The stripper looked at me strangely, so I said, “Oh, yeah, sorry, I had to close the door because the university police is out there. I mean, not that you're doing anything illegal or anything, it's just... you know... you were changing... and...”
Oops! So, now it was obvious that I wasn't attracted to him and I'd insulted his profession.
Thankfully, he left and we could eventually start the party. But my face was bright red for the rest of the night. There's a photo of me holding a teddy bear, and, apparently I was walking around with it, telling people, “I just need some innocence!”
My friend Nick kept emphasizing that he thought that the stripper's underwear was padded. “There's no way that there wasn't some type of padding in that G-string! Don't you think so, Becky?” he asked me several times.
”Nick! I really don't want to think about it!” I replied.
The moral of this story is that you shouldn't hire strippers for your friends unless everyone is drunk.
The second moral of the story is that, if you do decide to hire a stripper, you should find out whether or not he/she is going to bring his or her own music!
When we made a house “manifesto” this year (after seeing Y Tu Mama Tambien), the first rule we wrote down was, “No hiring strippers in the house.” But, alas, for me, the damage has already been done. I can’t listen to “Let’s Get it On” anymore without holding my ears and screaming. It brings back painful (but admittedly also hilarious!) memories.
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Epinions.com ID:
beckytcy
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Member: Becky
Location: Boston
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