( Link to Part 1, to be read first)

A journal entry recorded after my second visit to the strip club Babydolls:

Folks, there is a whole range of life on this planet.

I decided to go back to Babydolls tonight, partly because it was kind of fun. Fun as in “Oh, this is kind of fun.” Not “woo-hooo!” like riding a roller coaster, or nailing something you’ve been working on for months. It was fun in the sense of seeing and momentarily immersing in another culture. A group of people that are functioning on a whole different level.

And yet there’s some common bond. A desire to feel attractive, I think. The need for money. The need to make a living. But there’s something else… and I can’t quite articulate what it is yet. So I decided to go back partly because it was fun, and partly because after reflecting on my short visit last night I’m really intrigued with learning and understanding more about what makes a place like that, work. There are thousands of them across the country.

So you go in, and first of all they card everyone. I don’t care if they look like Dr Spock or Dr Ruth or your great grandfather, you have to show ID. Five bucks to get in. It’s a juice bar, which means there’s no alcohol – and thank god for that! I don’t really drink, but it’s not hard to imagine saying, “Oh, man, let’s get loose.” Under the right circumstances, it’s delightful to have a glass of wine or maybe a drink if you’re with someone who is attracted to you and you’re attracted to them; a nice little disinhibitor.But it would be an entirely different thing if they served alcohol in that place. When you’re touching, yielding your personal space to a complete stranger, god! At least you would want to know that they’re not going to throw up on you, or not obey the rules, or just be repulsive.

When I left there, I found myself shaking from being stimulated and delighted, from letting myself become involved. Like exercise, it’s like I felt muscles I almost didn’t know I had. It was like that tonight.

I went in because I really wanted to – this may sound weird, I don’t know – I wanted to learn more about these people. Not just the girls; the guy tending bar, the bouncer at the entryway, even the owner. Of all the things that people can pick to make a living! I’m very fortunate. I’ve gotten to make my living in a way that is exactly what I want to do. I think, in general, people tend to gravitate towards things that they – if not want to do – at least know that they can do. Everyone that’s there in that particular place, is there for a reason.

They work a ten hour night, which seems like a very long time. It’s not like they’re all dancing continuously. But still, that’s a long day. I don’t know how old these girls are. I don’t know if there’s a legal restriction on how old you have to be to dance. It strikes me that there might be, you know, at least a twenty-one year old age limit.

I noticed that the girls who, if they’re performing for you, they look away a lot. I wonder  if you have to! It can’t be too personal, and the rules are very clear cut. You can’t touch them on any, um... erogenous or, you know, forbidden, so to speak, part of their body. You can touch them some; you’re allowed to touch them on their legs or their arms.

I paid ten dollars tipped three dollars for a “table dance” with Chyna, a strikingly beautiful asian girl. Lithe, very strong. She made masterful use of the vertical poles set into the stage. She could with very little apparent effort, hoist her body upside down – something I couldn’t do if I worked out for a hundred years. She was small, but not overtly muscular. She had a ring in her nose and a stud in her tongue. A lot of eye makeup, which I think you need for the stage. I noticed it when she was up close to me during the table dance.

So many experiences tonight, it’s difficult to remember them all.

When I first went in I was looking for Brandy, the waitress. She said she was a freshman, so she’s probably nineteen. She wasn’t working tonight, so I decided to go ahead and get to know the woman who greeted me tonight, which turned out to be Honey, who – as she explained to me in one of our brief conversations – was the house mom. And, of course, I didn’t know what that meant at first, but I thought about it for a minute and I figured it out.

Remember, you’re listening to somebody who has virtually no personal experience with this culture. That's not because I think there’s anything wrong with it, because I don’t. It’s because throughout most of my life I’ve either been in love with and/or involved with a woman, and that's a context in which it doesn’t seem right to allow yourself to become sexually stimulated or emotionally stimulated and involved with any other person. Not just because “that’s off limits,” in an externally imposed moral sense. It’s because I wouldn’t want to do that. I’m a very faithful mate, and that’s not something I regret.

If I ever get involved with someone else again – I’m starting to tear up a little bit – I will be just as faithful as I ever have been. But our marriage is over, and I need to live. I need to be alive. I need to remember what it feels like to be alive. And I guess that, also, is part of what drew me to allow myself to satisfy... begin to satisfy my curiosity. 

So let’s see, what did we start with? I guess I went in got my drink – my  cranberry juice and grapefruit juice, which is delicious by the way – from Honey. I told her why I was there, and watched for a few minutes. I don’t remember who was dancing first. I think, there were four girls who were taking turns, and I was there long enough tonight – from midnight to I think about two o’clock – to see them go through their rotation. There was a woman with fairly small breasts dancing first. I think she was finishing up her set, doing her last song.

And then Chyna came out. She is a dancer; she knows how to move. Of all the girls tonight, she struck me as being the most “into it” in terms of allowing herself to at least appear to be really enjoying doing what she was doing.

So I went up to the stage. They have chairs seated around the perimeter of the stage. The protocol is, you go up and you have a seat and you place your money, dollars –  these girls do this for a dollar, which is, to me, very surprising – and they will, for the exchange of that dollar, they will do all variety of methods to effect the transfer. Generally they all involve either them or you folding the dollar and placing it between your teeth, and then the dancer will choose one out many possible methods of transferring that dollar from your teeth to her body.

So Chyna received the dollar… something involving between her legs, as I recall. And, man, it was fun. That’s all I can say, it was fun. It’s a whole different thing from when you’re in love with and committed to and devoted to a monogamous mate. Anyway, so I watched Chyna, and I watched her then move to the other “gentlemen” at the stage.

The whole time I was somewhat self-conscious. I took great pains before I went to be clean, to look nice, as opposed to the way several of the other people in there looked, which was like they’d been working an eight hour shift at some sort of labor and that they dropped by on their way home. And that’s not a comment on that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s more a sense of wanting to be considerate to the girls who are, limits notwithstanding – engaging in some very personal contact with people.

There’s no doubt about it. I left there feeling very, very aroused. Not so much in what to me is a familiar and wonderful, wonderfully comfortable sense of being aroused by a meeting of the hearts and minds, but just in a very purely physical sense. I love the imagery of people engaged in sex. I don’t think I’m alone in that, and I’m not really ashamed of it.

My decision to visit this place is really personal, too. It’s wanting to get some kind of validation that I’m not disgusting, I’m not boring, I’m not, you know, repulsive. And admittedly, you know, a girl who is very young taking currency from my mouth or a table dance or a couch dance is not intimacy. It’s something else. It’s pure... amusement. Amusement is the right word. The rules about touching assure it remains amusement, and nothing more. Uh...

Now, before I continue this, let me say, I’m... this is... all I’m wanting to do tonight is get on tape what I feel, and what I experienced, and what I thought about.

Maybe it’s just a place where guys come in, and ogle naked women, and have them rub up against you for a few bucks! So... I say that, not to minimize, on the other hand, but just to say I don’t really know. I don’t know where all this fits in the infinite scheme of things. It’s both fascinating, just fascinating to me, and also a hell of a lot of fun. I’m a little surprised that there weren’t more people in there than there were! And glad, too. It’s nice to not be, you know, bumping up against a bunch of other people in that setting.

I asked the house mom Honey, about her story. How does one decide to do erotic dancing? I don’t even know what the right words are. It’s kind of like being in jail – there’s a whole different language about it. I readily confess ignorance. But how do you get started? Why do you get started? Is it always because you’re desperate for money? Is it always because, you know, it kind of turns you on to do it? It’s a great way to make a living doing something that’s a hell of a lot of fun and stimulating for you as a dancer? I think that there is the potential for a pretty interesting character study there.

I actually liked everyone I came in contact with in there. The bartender struck me as having a bad day. I didn’t have any direct contact with him, but I was up there at the bar talking to Honey a couple of times. But anyway, the girls... and they’re all... You know, another thing that struck me is that they’re all so different. Not just their bodies – and they are very different – but their, for lack of a better word, their aura.

Chyna was obviously having a good time, and yet at the same time she was also clearly acting. She was moving her body in these classically stimulating and pseudo-intercourse ways. As she did, she’d often looking around at the ceiling or to see who was coming in the door, but then she’d bring her eyes back to meet mine and be back in the role. There seems to be an unspoken mutual understanding that it can’t get too “intimate.”

April! All the girls were wonderful, fun and lovely, But I “fell” a little bit for April. I remember when she first came out, noticing she has larger breasts than the other girls – and I like breasts. I’m a “breast man,” I guess. So when she came out, I decided that she was going to be the one that I was going to let myself go with a little bit.

So I laid out several dollars in front of me along the edge of the stage and waited for her to come over. And she came over, and we did one – I don’t know what you call it – tip? Transfer? Contact? I wonder what you call that! But it was typical, for lack of a better way to characterize it. Nothing unusual about it compared to the other times earlier in the night.

The second time she came over, she said something like “How do you want me to take it?” It’s a little foggy, frankly, the details! But I gestured to her eyes: “I want eye contact.” Possibly for all the girls, but it struck me for April in particular, that was a little bit maybe over the line. And it’s not hard to understand why. I mean, “The eyes are the window to the soul,” or whatever. Eye contact is everything in human interaction. Every part of your body is connected through the eyes. I’m sure that people who don’t have sight are also capable of enjoying, not just sex, but a similar degree of connection. There are many ways to touch and connect and have the intimacy, the mating intimacy flow. But the eyes are certainly number one.

But she did hold eye contact. And something happened.

I don’t mean that as a fantasy. I could be wrong. I was curious, that’s why I asked for eye contact in the first place. I was curious what it would feel like. Last night, the first couple times I thought, “Well this is... this is, I mean, this is interesting, and it’s kind of fun, but it’s nothing like... it’s nothing like making love. It’s nothing like connecting.” But with April there was indeed a little... “thing.”

We all have types we’re attracted to, and I guess what I felt or saw in her implies a certain sort of depth, emotional depth, that resonates with me. That’s the part that is most interesting: How close can you get to a real, emotional connection, without actually having it happen? Is that something that one should even do? I wouldn’t want to stay in there any longer in a night than I did tonight. But I will definitely go back, because there’s a lot more I want to learn. There’s a lot more I want to ask. I will do some more at the stage, I will do some more table dances, and I will do some more couch dances. It’s just fascinating.

Toward the end, I went to Honey and I asked her, “What else... what do these girls do? How does it work here?” And I remember I asked her, “These girls do this for a dollar?”

Anyway, so she said, “Well, you can have a table dance, a half a song for five dollars, a full song for ten dollars. A couch dance is twenty-five dollars.”

And I said, “A couch dance? Hmmm. Twenty-five dollars? Tell me what that is.” She said, “Well, they’re topless, and you go back there behind the screen and, and...” move. That’s what it amounts to. The same rules apply. So I said, “I’d like to have a couch dance with April.” I had decided I was going to try that, and then I was going to leave.

April wasn’t around then, but she finally appeared and came over a few minutes later and said, “I hear you’ve been looking for me.” So we walked back there behind the screen to the couch, and it was in the middle of a song, and she said, “We’ll wait until the next song.”

I said, “Honey said you’re a little tired tonight.” She said, “Yeah, a little bit.” I said, “Are you sure you’re up for this?” She said, “Oh, yeah.” I said, “Okay, well, I’m looking forward to it.”

I don’t remember what else I asked her, but I wanted her to know before we started… What did I want her to know? I wanted her to know that I valued her as a human being, and that I understood that she was working.

She sat down on the arm of the couch while we were waiting, and she said, “How are you doing?” And I said, “I’m okay. I’ve been on quite a ride the last couple of weeks. But I’m good, I’m okay. Thank you.”

So then I think I asked her about how does this work. What are the rules? She said where I could put my hands, and “No licking.” Licking! I said, “How about talking? Is talking okay?” She said, “Yeah. Whatever turns you on.” And I said, “Okay.”

So the music started, kind of a nice slow song. And, umm... she started. And I don’t remember exactly what I said; something like, “You’re very beautiful. You have, to me, just about a flawless body. And I love your breasts.”

I asked her, “Do you like your breasts?”

And she said, “Yeah... I like them better now. I didn’t like them so much before I started doing this.” And all of this is happening while she’s moving in that wonderfully female way, umm... right up against me. It was, ahh... it was magic...al. I mean, it sounds crazy, but it was, it was... unique. It was delightfully unique.

So I said, “What didn’t you like about them before?” And she said, “Oh, I feel... I felt like my nipples were too big.” She was talking, I think, about her areolas. It was pretty dark, but I looked at her breasts again, and I said, “They’re beautiful. Your breasts are beautiful. Your nipples are beautiful.” And she said thank you and just continued moving, moving all of her body. Not just her breasts, her upper torso, but her whole body.

During the course of the dance, she moved from literally sitting on my lap… “grinding” is not the word, but cycling, in an intercourse-type of a way. Oh, my.

Then she moved around to face me, leaned over me, placed her head down between my legs, and then turned so that her rear – her ass – was just clearly being displayed for my enjoyment. She moved through all different kinds of positions. At one point she had her pubic area, barely covered by basically a micro-bikini bottom, never applying pressure, but right there, and moving. And I remember the way she smelled. Her body had a very gentle feminine fragrance. Not at all overpowering, just feminine. But then as her barely cloth-covered vagina was right in my face, the scent shifted from, one of powdered lightly-perfumed skin, to that more animal fragrance. Just in a wonderful, wonderful, wonderfully balanced and gentle way. And suddenly I wanted very much to reach out and stimulate her with my tongue. Of course I didn’t. But after a moment, when she moved around, I said, “You know, it’s... that’s... that one’s difficult. I see now why you have that rule!” Oh! It was wonderful.

So then she turned around and sat facing away from me and really moved her bottom against against my pelvis, rather deeply. I went, “Okay, I’ll play along,” and I rose to meet her. Umm... it was.. it felt good. I can’t find better words. It felt really good.

In these past couple weeks... you know, it’s weird. I’ve felt tears welling up several times while describing this. I don’t know why, exactly. I felt connected, even though it’s a totally artificial one, and she’s taking twenty-five dollars from me for the privilege of having, umm, three and a half minutes or three minutes and twenty-eight seconds or whatever, of “connection.” Nonetheless, it is a connection, and it felt good... it felt good.

As the song was ending, I had her reach into my shirt pocket where I had put and extra five dollars, my last five dollars, for her tip. I said, “Thank you.” And she said, “Well, thank you.”

And as the song ended, it was over. She backed away and the boundary reappeared. I don’t remember exactly what I said; “That was really wonderful,” or something equally significant. But I just wanted her to know that I really, really appreciated her. It’s hard to explain. I wanted her to know that, again, I valued her as a person, and that I appreciated what she had done for me.

As I stood up, I said, “This must be hard to do sometimes.” And she said, “Well, yeah, sometimes.” I can’t imagine that it’s always totally pleasant to do this, to do something so “pseudo-intimate.” She said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Well, I hope that I smelled okay.” Because I did hope that! And she said, “You were one of the good ones.” Then she gave me probably as real of a hug as you would ever want to either give or get there. And I hugged her back, and I said, “Thank you, very much.”And I left.

So I guess, in addition to being curious about the practical side of things, and curious to know what motivates these lovely women to do what they’re doing, I had wondered if it was possible to establish that kind of connection, even if just for a fleeting instant, even if just on the very outskirts of it, to see if that kind of energy flow could happen in such an artificial (and properly so) constrained environment. And I’m delighted to report here that either (A) yes it can – it is brief and light and ephemeral and fleeting, but yes – it takes giving, though, to have that happen. So yes, either it can happen, or (B) I am completely duped, and a mark, and completely full of shit. Probably a little bit of both. What’s the harm? The harm, I guess, is in the risk of becoming addicted, of no longer being able to distinguish between what is simulated and what is real.

I do know I was completely unprepared for anything to feel as real as that couch dance with April felt.