soap sometimes equals a phallus

Hi There writes: “I performed a few weeks ago and this guy told me he liked my...whatever I did. He asked me about my childhood. I told him I had a great childhood. It was true. I had a lot of fun growing up. There was tons of art and artists in the house, because my relatives were all poor so we all lived in one house, like immigrants. In that house was an old man with a swearing problem who painted like some old smelly Italian genius, a bunch of volatile teenagers full of angst in the 70s (one of which was my mother), a crap load of kids that came from those teenagers, (one of which was me), a fat, hard working and very loveable old lady who paid all the bills, a hungry hungry hippos game with all but two or three marbles missing, and the place was crammed with bootleg video store VHS tapes and lots of antiques which had been scavenged from people's garbage. It was a geniune art wonderland.

The kids would get into trouble together a lot. Not real trouble, but kid trouble. We'd break into the fridge and mix shampoo and other bathroom condiments together to make new products. Dangerous, if you don't know what you're doing. But for some reason, the punishment was always much more brutal than the crime. Make a sofa pillow fort - switches to the ass. Moon old man in the kitcken - mouth washed out with soap.

Well, I told the guy that my mouth got washed out with soap as a kid. He related that to rape. It seemed pretty interesting to me. He said it seemed as aggressive and intrusive as rape. What do you make of all of that?”

the first time i ever went to a strip club was five years ago. could i really have made it to twenty-four years old without have gone? i guess so. on this occasion, a number of my friends were going to a gentlemen’s club (yeah, that makes it sound better) for a bachelor’s party.

i was terrified.

what if one of the strippers talked to me? feign deafness. worse, what if one of the strippers touched me? would i die instantly of AIDS? most likely.

without going into too many details, here are a few observations from that night, and the five other occasions of my life where i found myself in a strip club (yeah – it happens sometimes: you just end up there, sometimes with your girlfriend):

* i did not get AIDS.
* strippers in northwestern pennsylvania smell like vanilla. (i know: gross.)
* when you buy beer, all your change comes in one-dollar bills, even if you pay with a twenty.
* never do lines of cocaine off the back of a toilet in a strip club bathroom. (for health reasons.)
* never sit on the floor in a strip club bathroom.
* when the guy standing at the urinal beside you in a strip club bathroom asks you “how’s it shakin’ tonight, fellah?”, do not answer.
* never enter a strip club bathroom.
* strippers are really friendly.
* do not stay at the strip club for five hours.
* do not touch the strippers. in fact, don’t touch anything.
* if the music stops and the stripper has to put quarters into a juke box for the music to begin again, just leave.
* a truck stop + a strip club + plus free coffee + an ex-stripper in her fifties on a CB = the strangest situation of your life.
* when the overhead lights are turned on at the end of the night, don’t look at anything or anyone. just leave.
* it is unwise to eat from a free buffet at a strip club.
* avoid strip clubs that feature fly paper hanging from the ceiling.

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i don’t know if i’ve ever had a dream about strippers.