Her fingers snake between her thighs, trace the lips of her pussy. They
come away covered with a lovely, pale ooze. Her cunt lips are glistening.
Holy shit, I realize, she's sopping wet. She's got a major white on.
Surf's up. She's *creaming*.

My mind is blown, not with desire, but with shock. At exactly this point
she clambers off my lap and stands in front of me, naked, a faint smile
and faraway look on her face, her hand still between her legs. "You're
*wet*!" I exclaim with a shit-eating grin, looking up at her, my voice a
mixture of surprise and amusement. She smiles, holds her dewy finger under
my nose. I must say, it does smell good. Fresh, clean. "Yeah, I know, I
was getting really turned on when you were playing with my feet," she
whispers. Then she brings her finger to my mouth. She's goading me on:
"You like the smell of my pussy?" she coos. "Isn't it nice? Doesn't it get
you horny?" She paints my lips with her wet finger ...


The thing is, I hadn't even planned on getting any laps. An hour earlier I
happened to find myself in the suburban metropolitan NY area, and decided
to drop in on this Jersey club I occasionally visit. The day before, I had
gone to see "Boogie Nights" in the East Village with EYE and had been so
sleazed out by the film that I felt a minor epiphany coming on.
Fortunately, however, it was of the 24-hour variety; now, I was back in
the saddle.

Well, sort of, anyway. Truth be told, I decided recently to quit going to
strip clubs. Well, okay, it wasn't *that* recently, actually it was a few
years ago. Obviously, I haven't fully implemented this plan just yet, but
I'm getting close. It's not a difficult endeavor. That's because I usually
end up thoroughly disgusted with myself after each and every visit. This
response is extremely useful, in that it only reinforces my resolve to
stop going once and for all. I'm not stupid; I'm exploiting this
phenomenon for all it's worth. As I see it, it's a form of aversion
therapy -- the more I go, the more I'm helping myself quit. Since I'm a
very disciplined and goal-oriented person, I've been very conscientious
over the last few years about picking up the pace of my visits in order
reach my ultimate objective of not going at all. I'm almost there now. I
can feel it.

Anyway, as I said, I wasn't planning on getting any laps. I didn't have
very much money and my pants were way too thick for the ultimate lap dance
experience, so I figured I'd just hang out stageside, down a couple of
bottled waters, piss away a fistful of singles and book on out of there
after an hour or so with my honor intact.

As if.

Almost before I can take a seat, one of the house girls, Cindy, hits me up
for a dance. (Cindy is a great looking babe, but a criminally incompetent
lap dancer.) I politely explain that tonight is going to be a lap-free
evening for me. She persists. I resist. Finally she says, "Tell you what,
we'll do a 2-for-1. I'll give you a free dance, since you're a loyal
customer and you never get laps here with anyone but me." (I have no idea
whether or not she actually believes this, but it isn't even close to the
truth.) I resist the temptation to point out that a 2-for-1 dance from her
is still overpriced by a factor of, like, infinity, and for some reason
(could it be ... Satan?) decide to take her up on her offer instead. We
head off to the lap room and I have a typically tedious experience with
her. Not only that, it lasts twice as long as usual. While in there,
however, I see a mocha-skinned, exotic-looking babe giving what looks like
a pretty decent dance to someone else. I make a mental note to check her
out later on.

Meanwhile, I decide that what I need at this point is some good
conversation. I cruise back to the main area and take a corner seat,
awaiting the interlocutrix of my dreams. A dancer I've never seen before
approaches out of nowhere, slithers uninvited onto my lap, engages me in
an impromptu staring contest. Her face is so close to mine that I can't
get a feel for what she looks like. I strain to lean back and re-establish
some personal space. An uncomfortable silence ensues. Finally, she blurts,
"So what do you do?" Her voice is half Fran Drescher, half cocker spaniel.

Let's see, what color is my parachute tonight? "CIA," I lie in my most
officious voice.

"Oh, an accountant? Cool."

Yikes. Houston, we have a problem. "No," I say patiently, trying not to
break character, "that's a CPA. The CIA has to do with intelligence
gathering. I'm a spook -- a spy."

"You mean, like, for another club?"

My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. What can you even say to this?
Fortunately, the DJ bails me out: "Donna to the booth," he croons over the
music. "Donna to the booth." I am relieved to discover that my companion
is the eponymous Donna. "Gotta go, bye," she says breathlessly, and
disappears into the cigarette haze.

It's not long before another dancer, a slender brunette in a hot little
black dress, sits down next to me. Her manner is reserved, coy. She lights
up a cigarette, exhales, and shoots me a lewd smile. This looks promising.
I'm certain she's going to hit me with something truly salacious at any
moment.

"So what do you do for a living?" she asks.

Jesus, what is this -- Career Night? "Medical researcher," I lie. 

"Really?" she exclaims. "Then you're just the person I want to talk to!"
She stands up and unzips the top of her dress. Out spill a pair of
medium-sized, perfectly formed breasts. Wow, this sure beats the response
I got with that secret agent rap. I file this information away for future
reference. Meanwhile, the guy sitting diagonally across from me has a
startled look on his face. Oops, no wait -- that's me, in the mirror.

"I'm thinking about getting implants," she says. "What do you think?
Should I go for it?" Ah, so that's what this is all about. Overcome with
the spirit of scientific inquiry, I lean in for a closer look. This girl
must be nuts -- her breasts are beautiful. By strip club standards,
however, they are a tad on the small side.

"Gee, I think they look pretty nice just as they are," I state truthfully.
"Are you sure you actually want to do that?"

She pops them back into her dress and slowly, provocatively, zips up.
"Well, no. That's why I'm asking you. I'm ambivalent."

I don't know if I can handle this responsibility. Doesn't she know that I
come to strip clubs precisely to get away from the stresses of daily
decision-making? I decide to play it safe and opt for a compromise
solution: "Maybe you should get one of them done and wait a couple of
weeks," I offer helpfully. "Then, if you like it, you can always go back
for the second one."

For some reason, my Solomonic wisdom fails to impress her. She flips me a
look of contemptuous disdain, as if she's never heard anything so stupid
in her life. Probably she hasn't. Not surprisingly, she then changes the
subject. "Would you like a lap dance?" she purrs. I'm shocked, shocked by
this development. "Actually, I haven't quite recovered from my last one,"
I say. This is not entirely untrue. She nods, stubs out her cigarette and
walks off without another word. Total time of interaction: about one
minute, and alas, she did not ask me to sleep with her. By Mahoney's Law,
I'm toast.

I turn my attention to the stage. Ah, here comes the exotic looking chick
I saw before in the lap lounge. She calls herself Fatima. I like the way
she moves, so I hit her up for a lap as she finishes her set. Off we go to
the VIP room. We sit down and converse, waiting for the next song to
begin. I learn that both of her parents are from Islamic countries. "Do
your folks know you're an exotic dancer?" I ask. (Pretty nosy of me, now
that I think of it.) She laughs and says that her parents aren't very
religiously observant, but no, they don't know about her avocation. (She's
a student first.) I ask about her major, which turns out to be physics. We
then fall into a long conversation about science, spirituality and
metaphysics, which ends up being only marginally less tedious than my
dance with Cindy. Fatima is quite the yakker. Finally, after about four
songs go by, she commences her dance, which, alas, pretty much sucks,
leaving me 0-for-2 on the evening so far. However, during this humdrum
affair, as I'm stifling a yawn and fantasizing about my ATF from another
club, I espy *another* dancer, a tallish lean blond who appears to be
going the extra mile during *her* dance for a guy sitting across from me.

Realizing that I am now engaged in a full-fledged game of musical dancers
(remember, I'm the guy who coined the term "monogolapamy"), I politely
dismiss Fatima and return to the main arena. It's not long before the
blond is displaying her charms for me on stage, and I must say, she is
HOT. She has a kind of in-your-face manner that I usually don't go for,
but she also has some great slinky moves and I am into it. Consider my
buttons pushed. I decide I simply must have a lap from her. By this time,
I have about exhausted my cash reserves and so for the first time in my
life find myself actually using a credit card in a strip club to get money
(with a whopping 20% lopped off the top for the house). No doubt this is
an important milestone in the downward spiral of my degradation and
addiction; you all might want to make note of it. I hail my new blond
friend as I am engaging in this financial self-buttfuck, and she patiently
waits next to me while my credit card is authorized and information about
the transaction forwarded to community leaders, the Christian Coalition,
the FBI and several potential future employers.

I never even caught the blonde's name. We head into the lap lounge, and
immediately bump into Cindy, who gives me what I think is a slightly
accusatory look, but maybe I'm just being paranoid. My blond dancer sits
down across from me, lights up a ciggie and takes off one of her shoes.
"My feet are tired," she says. "Would you mind giving me a foot massage
while I finish my cigarette?" I rarely engage in the massage thing at
strip clubs, but would never be so impolite as to refuse a request for
one, so I consent once it is made clear that the meter won't be running
during the procedure. "Not too softly," she says. "I like it pretty hard."
She props her foot on my thigh. I should point out here that none of this
is overtly sexual; it's all quite matter of fact.

I should also point out, however, that she is wearing a short, tight blue
dress and no panties. Her dress is hiked up to her waist, so I have a
striking view of her pussy while I am stroking her foot. (Of course she
knows this.) And a lovely pussy it is, I might add: light brown hair,
neatly trimmed, with inviting lips. Not that good-looking pussy isn't a
ubiquitous sight in this particular lap dance lounge, of course; I'm just
setting the scene for you.

So I start massaging her foot and she smiles and tells me how good it
feels. "This is the life, eh?" I ask. "Sitting here having all your whims
catered to." She smiles again, takes a drag on her cigarette. "Yeah, but
of course I actually spend most of my time catering to guys' whims," she
points out, and I certainly can't argue with that. There's some silence
while I continue to work on her foot. Then Cindy of all people comes by to
talk to her. I'm starting to sweat. She and the blond whisper
conspiratorially to each other for a minute or two, but I overhear enough
of the conversation to be satisfied that I am not the subject of it. I
continue to massage the blonde's foot, occasionally working my way up to
her calf, just for variety's sake.

Cindy finally disappears and my dancer offers me her other foot. I
dutifully take it in my hand and begin kneading it. This goes on for
another minute or two. She has her eyes closed for much of this, just
relaxing. She opens them again and we exchange smiles. Nothing is said. At
one point, while she is looking at me, her hand idly wanders down to her
pussy and gives it a few slow, feathery strokes. I laugh out loud in
appreciation of the stripper shit she's dishing, and she laughs at my
appreciation.

After a total of maybe six or seven minutes of massage, she says, "OK, you
ready?" I indicate that I am. She slowly peels offer her dress and turns
around so her back is facing me. She is completely naked. She leans
forward, places her forearms on the seat of the chair she was just sitting
in, climbs backward onto my lap and rests her shins on my thighs, thus
presenting me with a startling, up close, wide-open rear view of her ass
and pussy. I believe the anthropologists call this "presenting." This is
one of the maneuvers I had seen her pull with the other guy a half hour
earlier, but to be honest, it looked a lot hotter from where I was sitting
then -- i.e., where I could see her face and appreciate what the other guy
was seeing without actually being confronted with it. Not that her ass and
pussy aren't extremely attractive; it's just that there's something almost
disturbingly impersonal about the view I'm getting, because her ass and
pussy are *all* that I am seeing. It's fascinating, to be sure, but it
isn't actually sexy. Meanwhile, she's trying to rub my crotch with one of
her shins, but it's hard for her to do this without losing her balance.

Since New Jersey is a no-touch state, and the bouncer is the size of a
small SUV and about half as smart, there isn't much to do at this point
except stare. Her butthole can't be more than six inches away from my
eyes. Her pussy is slightly further, the distance between it and the
center of my face constituting the hypotenuse of an imaginary right
triangle formed by the three key components in the scene: her ass, her
cunt and the tip of my nose. I am transfixed by the sight of two holes,
two chasms, their entrances mere inches apart, but leading to two entirely
different universes.

I have a strange urge to fill these holes, an urge borne not of sexual
desire, but rather, solid geometry. They are holes; they simply are crying
out to be filled. And I have the equipment necessary to fill them -- a
finger, a tongue, a nose. I manage, however, to resist the temptation, and
thus avoid an unplanned trip to the hospital.

I continue to stare at her ass. Boy, this is pretty dehumanizing, I'm
thinking to myself. Still, it's a great ass. My eyes drop to her pussy
lips just as she leans even further forward, affording me an awesome
doggie's eye view of her slit. Wow, look at that. There's some whiteness
sticking out slightly between the lips. Oh great, a tampon. She's having
her period. Isn't that sexy.

But wait -- I don't see a string. She shifts her position slightly and the
room light glances off the whiteness. It shimmers transparently. Her
fingers snake between her thighs, trace the lips of her pussy. They come
away covered with a lovely, pale ooze. Her cunt lips are glistening. Oh my
God, I realize, that's not a tampon at all. She's sopping wet. She's got a
major white on. Surf's up. She's *creaming*.

My mind is blown, not with desire, but with shock. At exactly this point
she clambers off my lap and stands in front of me, naked, a faint smile
and faraway look on her face, her hand still between her legs. "You're
*wet*!" I exclaim with a shit-eating grin, looking up at her, my voice a
mixture of surprise and amusement. She smiles, holds her wet finger under
my nose. I must say, it really does smell good. Fresh, clean. "Yeah, I
know, I was getting really turned on when you were playing with my feet,"
she replies. "You like it?" She brings her finger to my mouth.

OK, hold on, now wait just a second. I'm not sure I really want to do
this. I mean, I don't know this girl, don't know who she hangs out with,
don't even know her goddamn stage name, let alone her real one. I don't
know her position on the environment or welfare reform or relations with
China. Do I really want to share this kind of intimacy with her? There are
medical concerns here: while I know the chances of my picking up something
vile from her are extremely small from this sort of contact, they are not
zero. On the other hand, I really hate to be rude. I was raised to be
respectful of strangers, and refusing an offer of vaginal secretions on
the grounds that you fear contracting an incurable, fatal disease sounds
kind of ... I don't know, judgmental or something, don't you think?

I resolve this conflict by adopting a policy of civil disobedience. I
don't pull away, but I don't open my mouth either. She's trying to goad me
on: "You like the smell of my pussy?" she coos. "Isn't it nice? Doesn't it
get you hot?" She paints my lips with her wet finger.

The thing is, I'm *not* turned on. For all of the apparent sexual heat
she's generating, the complete and utter impersonality of our interaction
up to this point -- the fact that it's been so clinical and anatomical,
without even the pretense of human emotional contact -- has left me unable
to respond to her.

I realize this must sound pretty stupid. I mean, anybody who goes to strip
clubs in search of actual intimacy has got to be nuts. On the other hand,
I do think it helps, at least in my case, to at least have the illusion of
intimacy. Even if I *know* it's an illusion.

Socializing or contact? I'll take both, please. I go to strip clubs to
interact with women, not with body parts.

Things cooled down after that. She backed off on the finger challenge, but
(rather considerately, I thought) declined to sit on my lap for fear of
staining my pants. Instead she opted for the
stroke-my-crotch-with-the-front-of-her-shin move, which I've never
responded to that much, to be honest. After a minute or two of this, the
song ended and so did our relationship.

It was bitter cold as I left the club.

SubSonic