Divine Revelations: A Spiritual Experience of Strippers

Can you believe there are no male strip clubs in Boston? Neither could I. I was looking forward to writing a column about Boston beefcakes wearing tight Red Sox briefs. Alas; I didn't have the option.

At first glance, going to a female strip club is not especially unusual or alternative. Business deals, bachelor parties, big game nights, fraternity soirees and twenty-first birthday parties regularly populate strip clubs on weekends. On Saturday nights, venues like Centerfolds - a strip club in a Chinatown alley - overflow.

This is why I went at 4 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon.

Going to a strip club was also a personal adventure, for three reasons. First, I'd never been to one. Second, I've been a very vocal feminist since I could speak, committed to the eradication of sex as a social category.

Third, I have the mind and libido of a twelve-year-old boy. Boobies are neat.

Going to the strip club on a weekday afternoon was a deliberate choice. The act of patronage would be stripped, so to speak, of its legitimacy. I expected a stark exhibition of gender dynamics, painful to watch, but compelling as a train wreck. I expected to watch the strippers dance, then become bored; I would mingle with the male patrons and find out their stories, as the novelty of naked women faded into the background. I was right, and I was wrong.

When I arrived, a kindly, soft-spoken bouncer met me at the door. "Don't look so nervous!" he teased gently. "No I don't!" I yipped back. "I mean...I'm not!" (Slick, very slick.)

The girl in the ticket booth, who looked my age, put down her copy of In a Sunburned Country and gave me a red stub. A hallway rose to the lounge, where the main stage was. My eyes had to adjust to near-total darkness. I took a deep breath and ascended the runway, pumped like a boxer coming out to the ring.

And suddenly, there was a naked woman! Right there, in plain sight! In nothing but Plexiglass platform pumps, she shimmied up a silver pole like some hairless marsupial. She climbed impressively high, and then slid down like a practiced firefighter. She was a dead ringer for Lindsey Lohan, with a blonde bob. She had beautiful arcing tattoos over both breasts, and another weaving over the small of her back.

I sat in a dark corner. Getting over the initial shock of seeing exposed jiggling breasts ten feet away, I peeled my eyes away and scanned the dark lounge. The handful of scattered men gave me black looks when I sat down, but that was the limit of their expression. They were mute lumps in the dark. One tall gaunt man in his 60s wore white sneakers, and stared through Coke-bottle glasses. One giant man with hip-length dreadlocks scribbled furiously on a piece of paper, looking up periodically. One younger guy hung around the stage dressed in droopy powder-blue warm-ups, looking like an ill-advised boy band refugee. In his palm was a seemingly inexhaustible pile of bills, which he used to attract the strippers' attention.

Feeling self-conscious, I went to check out the bathroom. There was only a men's room on the first floor, so I was led behind the velvet rope to the ladies' room on the second floor. The single-seater was tiled in gray, with studded metal trim - a nice S&M touch, I thought. Also, there was a payphone affixed to the center of the wall. I wondered about its purpose: the door locked fast.

I came across the blonde stripper upstairs, stacking her tips at an empty table, wearing a long black evening gown with a slit up to her waist. I said hello cheerfully and complimented her on her performance; she grinned widely and thanked me. First asking her permission, I asked if she herself felt sexy when performing. Sometimes, she said, especially when the customers are smiling.

I returned to my seat downstairs. Two brunettes danced in tandem, each of them about my age. Sometimes they seemed distracted due to the low attendance; one woman paused in her routine to watch a Sox play on ESPN. The off-duty strippers sat at the bar, fraternizing with patrons and regulars. In most cases, they are required to do this. Whenever there was a drought in tips for the stripper onstage, they hooted encouragement. No one else did.

The fourth dancer was caramel-haired, wearing a frilly black-and-white number with cutouts over her midsection. She followed the standard three-course meal format: 1) the gown that peeled off like molting skin, 2) a teasing parade in a thong, and finally 3) full-blown shaven nudity. (At one point I remarked to my friend, "What I wouldn't give for one of these strippers to come out with a big ol' shag carpet.")

I moved to the front row, right by the stage, which took some serious 'nads on my part. As soon as she saw me, her face bloomed. She grinned ear-to-ear, openly and unguardedly. "How ya DOIN'?" she shouted over the music. "Great to SEE you! Are you ENJOYING yourself?" At this point, I had become incapable of forming words. I'm sure I looked like a moonstruck lamb. Speechless and agog, I just smiled back and nervously threw a five-dollar bill at her feet. Her grin got wider and she leaned over the rim of the stage, bare breasts swinging. "This song is so stupid," she whispered conspiratorially. She smelled like baby powder and the stale traces of a blow dryer. Then she rolled onto her back and opened her legs in a gigantic V, heels stabbing outward like pitchforks.

She didn't skimp because I was a girl. She relished performing for me. I stayed in the front row thereafter, and each stripper seemed similarly thrilled to perform for me. I have considered whether they knew how to play me, just like they knew how to play the men. That may play a part in it. But since talking to a counselor who has worked with strippers, I can also be confident in my intuition. I was safe to them; I represented no threat. They were genuinely glad to see me.

Because it was a slow time of day, there were only four strippers on duty. The Lindsay Lohan look-alike came around again. I was struck, as I was with all the women, how beautiful she was. At the end of her routine, she squatted in front of me, naked as a jaybird, everything there for me to see: ridges, folds, and petals opening out. I was completely awestruck. It wasn't desire; it was gratitude. I knew, by current social norms, that she was likely stripping out of financial need, self-esteem issues or a history of abuse. But I could only see her as sharing a gift with me, a gift of inestimable value.

When the men clamored for her attention, waving bills, her expression changed markedly. Her eyes went blank and her expression turned vacant. The men didn't paw or harass, behaviors that are not unusual in strip clubs. According to a recent study of Mid-western strip clubs, 94% of strippers experienced harassment or abuse. Patrons make threatening phone calls and follow them to their cars, pelt them onstage or outright attack them. The pervasive attitude is, "If she'd showing her body to me, she must want it. And if she doesn't want it, she shouldn't be showing off her body." They live in a world where they are entitled to access women's bodies with no requisition. To strippers, men mostly represent danger. Unfortunately, they also represent livelihood.

This was a higher-class establishment, and the men kept their hands and insults to themselves. Instead they leaned in, their mouths making O's, smacking their lips, and breathing through their teeth: sad stereotypes in sport coats. Were they the oppressors or just another kind of victim? In either case, they also inhabited this fantasy world.

On the other hand, in my world, these women did work of inestimable worth and value. They deserved reverence and gratitude for their generosity, and as much money as I make in a month. There is certainly precedent for this attitude. Far from being a feminist myth, evidence abounds of prostitutes-as-priestesses in ancient Mediterranean and Mesopotamian cultures. They were masters and teachers of the one craft most sacred to the human race. If their modern descendants aren't paid in heaps of gold and silk, then at the very least, they deserve safe cover, wholesome working conditions and fair wages.

But I don't pretend that the current reality even approaches this ideal. For that reason, I was living a fantasy too.

Whatever I expected going into the strip club, I certainly didn't expect to have a spiritual experience. In researching history of sacred prostitutes, I came across a passage by D.H. Lawrence that echoed my sentiments exactly: "She is getting herself naked and clear of her fear...how sensitive and softly alive she is...how terrible to fail her, or to trespass on her!" In contrast to this deep respect, the strip club was a bare, bleeding pageant of human failings, need ands desires contorted, unfulfilled, and driven to shame.

Radical though it may seem, I live for the day when sex is sacred again. Strip clubs would be like churches, and male and female dancers would shed clothing to a full-blown gospel choir, with patrons shouting praises in the pews. The term "divine revelation" would have a whole new meaning. As it is, I'll think of those women working on weekday afternoons, and can only hope they're honored as they deserve.