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One time, one night
Strip club reveals strange scene
By Anthony Hauck
Published:
Monday, April 26, 2004
It's 11 p.m. and all is normal in the parking lot on this cool, quiet spring night.
Normal, except for the old man taking a leak directly in the middle of the lot. He has not made even the slightest effort to conceal his act, with the nearest object in the concrete wasteland being a good 50 yards away. It is a comical, if somewhat pathetic scene: an elderly, obviously inebriated man trying desperately to avoid urinating all over himself.
The nearest vehicle to this old man happens to be an eighteen-wheeler parked directly under the Sugar Daddy's sign.
A trucker stopped at a strip club. Is that ironic?�(Insert stereotypical trucker joke here).
Now inside the club, it's just past 11 p.m. The place seems unusually dead for this time of night, with only about 15 patrons. Most are middle-aged, and that might be generous. In fact, if not for the strippers, one might think they were at Thursday night bingo. The place itself, however, is intriguing.� With its excess of mirrors and blacklighting, it borders on becoming a carnival. It does have one other classic strip club attribute: a cumulus cloud of smoke encompassing the entire room.
The silence inside is broken by a loud, deep, Barry White-type voice, which grabs the attention of the thrill-seekers in attendance.�
"Gentlemen, give it up for the lovely Cinnamon."�
There is no applause, no screams.� As Aaliyah blares from the sound system, Cinnamon dances around the stage, pouncing on the first dollar she sees, forcing smiles when she has to.�
A few men can be seen taking quick glances around the room to determine the source of the voice, to no avail.�
"Maybe it's God," a young man to the left of the stage says to his friend.�
"Maybe you're a f-ing idiot, dude," his friend jokingly responded.�
There is no sight of the trucker inside. He's in there, but unfortunately there is no trucker hat to give him away. Cinnamon is followed by two blondes, Tyler and Natalie, much to the delight of the audience. Watching the customers put their dollar bills up on the stage is almost as interesting as watching the action onstage, as each person tries to outdo the other. A young man to the left of the stage casually throws up a dollar with no rhyme or reason, a mistake. Not to be outdone, a middle-aged man sitting in front of the stage and looking almost too professional, neatly creased a five dollar bill, setting it up on stage at the exact moment that Natalie turned her head.�
"There we go," he said to no one in particular, in a creepy voice.
The looks on the faces of the patrons are priceless. As Natalie dances to the punishing sound of Chevelle's "Comfortable Liar," (an interesting selection to say the least) the group of four young men to the left of the stage look like they've been hypnotized, all sitting with the exact same pose, exact same gaze, exact same open mouth.�
"Those guys act like they've never seen this stuff before, and they probably haven't," Natalie says after her performance.�
She is attractive and intelligent.�
"You know, most guys think we're just bimbos, but it's not like all of us want to be doing this. I just have to make a living and because of some of the choices I've made, right now this is what I'm doing."�
She exudes confidence as she speaks.�
There is an awkwardness that exists between the dancers and the patrons. The dancers are playing out their end of the bargain - the glitz, glamour, erotica - but the audience members tell a different story. Ill-advised smiles and deer-in-headlights stares are the chief culprits.�
"Even though they're old, many of them are immature," Natalie says. "We give them the sultry looks to entice them to give us cash, but there is no doubt about it, it can feel stupid - I have to go," she said before she could finish her sentence. She was off to accompany one of the young men to the ATM machine.
It is now 12 a.m. and Sugar Daddy's is just heating up. Natalie approaches the man at the ATM: "Would you like a lap dance, sir?"
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