The Strip Club

One day, my fiancé and I realized that neither of us had ever seen the inside of a gentlemen's club and were curious about what one was like. So we headed out that night to head out to a small club on the edge of town and sat down at a quiet table near the corner.

While the novelty of the show wore off almost immediately, the people, in particular the patrons became endlessly fascinating. The two of us began pointing out people we found interesting and keeping an eye on the various dramas taking place that night.

After about an hour someone approached our table and without warning sat down across from us. "I didn't expect to see you here," he said, "This really doesn't look like your kind of place."

I saw his face briefly when a spotlight passed over us, it was the reporter from whom I had stolen a lunch. The look in his eyes told the truth, like a shark, he smelled blood in the water and was looking to attack.

"I'm in a lot of places you'd never expect to see me. Every ghost has a few unusual haunts."

"Well, are you at least enjoying the show?"

I looked around the room briefly, "The people are fascinating. If that's what you're asking."

"So you're trying to tell me you're not watching the girls," he said.

"Not in about the past 45 minutes."

"Then what in the Hell are you doing here?"

"Getting stories, yourself?" I asked.

"I'm a reporter, I'm doing some work for the paper. You on the other hand, are of full of it. There aren't any stories here for you."

"Really?" I asked. "What makes you think that?"

"Look around you. Two-dimensional women, guys foaming at the mouth half drunk and all the scum in between. I'd say it's the making of a seedy crime story, not the type of thing you'd write," he said.

I could read the headline already, "Warlock caught in local strip club with fiancé in tow." Throw in a few sordid lies and you'd have the makings of a great scandal. I had to act fast.

"Strip away the dancers and the terrible lighting and what do you have? You have people who are under an extreme situation who don't think they're being watched. All around you have people responding to their base instincts like no one else was in the room. Where else are you going to get that?"

He thought about it for a minute, "I don't know."

I pointed to one guy near the stage, "You see that guy over there. I overhead a waitress say that he's been here since three this afternoon at that same table. He's been ordering one drink every hour on the hour and he's so regular the waitresses have it ready before he asks. He's watching his money very carefully."

He looked over his shoulder at the man, "Why do you figure he's doing that?"

"I didn't know either at first, but something caught my eye in the light. He's wearing a wedding band. Now, if there's not a story there, then where is there one?"

"I see," he slipped into deep thought for a second.

"Then there's her over at the bar," I motioned in the general direction. "She used to be a stripper here. You can tell by her bag that bears the club name and the fact she hasn't paid for a drink all night. But she's not dancing tonight and won't for a while because of that knee brace. Looks like she banged it up pretty good. But not a single guy has paid her any attention all night and she's been sulking over that since I got here."

"Wow, good eyes."

"So tell me, what story are you working on Mr. Reporter?"

He whipped around in his chair to face me, "Um, I'm doing a report on new laws that affect local strip clubs."

"Does it really take four hours in a club to ask about new laws?"

"What do you mean? I just got here!"

I glanced down at his hands, "Really, the stamp on the back of your hand reads 'Happy Hour' and I believe that ended at six."

His eyes opened wide and he stammered for words, "I-I-I've gotta go, I'll chat with you later."

He got up to walk away but I called him out, "Hey, you didn't tell me if you were enjoying the show."

He just scowled at me and walked off. The headline never appeared.

This entry was posted in Warlock. Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to The Strip Club

  1. NiGhTmIsTrEsS says:

    you really need to get published Raven!

  2. Jem says:

    I agree with Nightmistress, this story is hilarious as well as deep!

  3. Cloud_9 says:

    YES!! That was great. It was kind of CSI crime type of stuff because you were so good with the details. For some reason, the speaker and the repoter remind me of a comic strip, their just so funny. Their's just one thing that bothers me and its that I want more sensory details and imagery. I dont know if its just a personal thing but I like to know what things smell like and what the inside of the building looks like etc, etc. I also really want to know the speakers name and the reporters name too. 🙂

  4. Kiley Shay says:

    For the purposes of describing personality types, I have found the easiest and most accurate terms to be "introspection" and "observation."

    Very simply, we observe objects through our senses. Thus we look at objects to see them, listen to sounds to hear them, touch surfaces to feel them, sniff odors to smell them, and mouth substances to taste them. We can observe what is present, but not what isn't present. Whatever isn't present to our senses we can only imagine by means of introspection.

    Naturally, all of us do both observation and introspection, but it is a rare individual who does an equal amount of each. The vast majority of us, maybe 85%, spend most of our waking hours looking at, listening to, and touching objects in our immediate presence, and very little of our time introspecting, that is, making inferences, imagining, daydreaming, musing, or wondering about things not in our presence… and there is more where that came from.from reading your stories i notice that you are a very observant person… and its truly a gift to be able to take yourself out of ones mind and view things as an outsider lookin in. iam envious of your ability. you can tell so much about a person by just watching them and observing them.i think you can get great wisdom and truth about people and the world we live in by observing others…thanks for sharing all your stories,entries and poems.. i enjoy them immensely. until next time..
    shay

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.