Monday, January 16, 2006

Ambrosia, AKA Stripper Logic

It probably happens to a lot of people. Sitting at the coffee table in whatever Starbucks or Applebee’s you and your friends happen to trip into, you start to catch up on old and current friends. Things take their natural course of thought, strung together on the last bead of information just released, “. . . OH! Speaking of heroin, did you hear that Allison’s a stripper now?” or, “. . . yeah, I hate when I wake up in a back alley gutter with my pants around my ankles, too. The blood’s always a bitch to get out. So speaking of first times, did you hear about Allison stripping at La Kolita now?” Everyone has that someone who either used to be a stripper or tried to do it once, they can bring into the conversation.

Women can be very cruel when it comes to this subject. When someone the group barely knows ventures into the fringes of unforgivable sin, women can be rabid but when it’s one of their very own, well, the silence is akin to that which precedes desolation.

I’ve never been much for strip clubs even though I’ve known and probably slept with quite a few lappers. I’ve even paid for a dance or three or ten but to leave the club empty handed was always a revelation. There’s an air of desperation to both sides of the equation known to fit under Stripper Logic. Men and some women, paying for the right to look at a woman who feels compelled to expose herself in order to feel power has always struck me as wasted effort and slightly desperate. I’m not judging here, far from it. I believe anyone can do with their life what they feel, especially if the only person they may hurt is themselves. My penis, weighing in on the matter, is all for women who can dance and get naked all at once and my business mind is definitely down for the entrepreneurial spirit behind making easy money off of jerks who could definitely get it for free if they only applied themselves in the proper manner—albeit some peoples are just born unluckily fugly and need a place like La Kolita to exist.

The trouble comes into play when someone, who may be part of a group which may not be as open-minded or non-judgmental as they profess or hope to be, endeavors into the land of The Pole. There’s no telling why some women chose this lifestyle even when they are the ones spilling their reasons to you. People lie, so deeply, even to themselves.

The usual clichés come to mind: she’s paying for her addiction, she’s seeking the attention Daddy never gave, she’s writing a book about being bad, she’s always been fucking nuts and the ever-classic, she’s paying for college. There’s always going to be the outcast no matter how hard we aim toward the contrary. Some people, even with a load of friends they’ve had for years just feel like the odd outsider. Allison may have felt like the oddball of the clique every time she made an inappropriately dirty joke or did something crazy that made every one of her friends scoff loud enough to elicit her “Sorry” as if she was apologizing not just for her own behavior but for being herself.

Then again, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar . . .
the shortest distance between two points is a straight line . . .
the simplest explanation is usually the correct one . . . and ho’s will be ho’s.

4 comments:

Jules said...

I just found you today. Good stuff. A little dark, but good. Hope you keep it up.

Anonymous said...

Just found you off of Forksplit. Very intriguing blog. Good writing. Are you really in the Navy? Then how the fuck are you in the desert?

SwallowedAlive said...

Forksplit is a great writer and she's become my newest addiction.

Yes, I am Navy and yes I am desert-locked. The military works in strange ways. I've met some Coast Guard out here and some Federal Agents too. This is the strangest deployment I've been on so far, I mean, the access to the internet is weird enough.

Jules said...

I found you off Forksplit, too, BTW.