Aphrodite

There were many beautiful girls at the strip club.

When we came in we were on time for the pole dancing competition but it looked like it was going to start late. We were met at the entrance by my step-daughter and she had a little cheering crowd assembled; her male roommate and his girlfriend, their stripper roommate and some other guy. It was a strategy because the way you win in the pole dancing competition is by noisy applause.

My step-daughter was drinking caffeine and doing a shot of whiskey. It seemed she was very nervous about competing. She told us, immediately, that we were to be just named Mike and Karen. Even her stripper roommate didn't know our real identities. Her male roommate she had dated before, we knew him as an old and well liked friend. Curiously her boyfriend did not show up for the contest. He may have had a job or boycotted out of principle; he didn't think her Dad should see the strip club where she worked.

I've seen my step-daughter wearing a bikini. She was slightly more clothed. She wore black high heels, a funny little bottom that showed the cheeks of her butt but had the crotch in front tied up with black laces, a generic gray tee shirt, and a pin-striped fedora hat. When it came time for the contest part of her dance routine she immediately whipped off the hat and shoes and tee shirt. Underneath was a black bra that surprisingly covered completely. By far she had the most boring costume of all the strippers participating in the contest.

She told me that the knee stockings I bought her for Christmas are a big hit with her customers. They are rainbow striped. She says it makes the customers think of all sorts of names for her; strawberry short cake, Pipi Longstocking, and things I did not recognize but that seem innocuous enough. Her long blond hair is dyed orange-red with black tips. She brags that she has "the girl next door vibe".

I could not get enough time staring at what was going on between the girls and their customers who were working the floor before the contest. Each girl seemed to have her "take" on what being sexy was and what she was willing to do in terms of touching the customer. A favorite play was to shove her butt in his face and wiggle it vigorously. Some did splits and then touched themselves down there - it seemed that they were discretely removing the thin strip of material that covered their vagina's.

Most all the girls wore thin strips of cloth for a bottom and tops that could be pulled up, pulled down, or pulled apart and show their bare breasts. Some girls would smoosh these breasts into the face of a client. Other girls decided that they would simply forgo any top at all. No tease, just a desperate "look at me". One of the girls cheated in the pole dancing contest and took off her top during her pole dancing routine. She did not get advanced to the next round. What seemed to work better with the judges was to have a top that moved while you danced and gave peeks of your breast. This could be accomplished simply by having a bikini top that was too small - and when acrobatics were done, the crowd got a peek.

I was most fascinated by an older gentlemen, he had white hair and a white beard. The girl who was dancing with him let him touch her breasts and pushed all parts of his body in near his face. The physical come on worked because next thing I knew the two of them were walking toward the private part of the room where lap dances are given. There fake trees and plants are pushed together to form walls. Apparently single dollars pushed across the floor for a girl to show you her breasts does not add up to much money; definitely those girls make the majority of their money with the lap dances. And to get a man a lap dance it seemed that you promised to "go far" with him.

I asked my step-daughter if the older man with the white hair and the white beard was married and she said he was; further, he had two children and multiple grand children. I don't know if he was a lucky man or a bastard, he certainly knew what he liked from life and got it. He liked to have sexual relations with young girls. The feelings of the other people in his life be damned.

My husband noticed that some of the girls while they preformed looked bored - these ones he said wouldn't make much money. I had to think what it is that makes my step-daughter such a high earner. She said that in one top night she earned one thousand five hundred. I bet that this was accomplished by a lot of lap dances. She doesn't get it - being a high earner as a stripper is only a sign of how far you are willing to sexually sell yourself, left yourself be touched, and mess with the heads of the guys. Is seduction an act? Is she just a really good actress? I don't know.

The woman who owns the bar was on the microphone and she kept up a vulgar dialogue while the girls were dancing, at one time saying, "That girl (the stripper) makes me wish I was the pole she's got between her legs. I wish I had a pole. I wish I had a penis. You guys are so lucky you have penises." The way all the people who work in the club talk is like love and sex is being exchanged everywhere - but frankly, the most graphic display I saw was between the old white haired man and his girl and then two girl strippers who were putting on a show with each other. One girl stripper payed the other girl stripper to do a little dance with her, and what I saw, was the the first stripper probably loved the exhibitionism of it. I mean, she payed for it. That dance ended with kisses between the two girls.

Some of the girls who were successful in the pole dancing contest were real athletes. These were the ones who went to gymnastics as little girls, had dancing lessons, and perhaps now worked out at a gym. You couldn't tell that they had muscles, in no way did they look masculine, but they held themselves sometimes sideways up in the air, just their arms gripping the pole. Some would suggestively rub their crotches against the pole. You realized that they were successfully defying gravity when suddenly they let go of the pole and their bodies plummeted to the ground, often ending in a split on the floor. And then, for a few moments, they would hump the floor.

Alas, my step-daughter has some muscles, but not enough as the other girls, and her transitions from one stunt to the next wasn't often smooth. After her first routine my husband turned to me and said, "she has a little way to go", but she made the first cut into the final six strippers. Probably because she had prepared a cheering section. In her second routine she slowed down her dance and her moves a little and the presentation seemed better. This contest really seemed to mean a lot to her. She told us again and again how happy she was that we were willing to drive the distance to come and see her. After she got off the stage she came immediately to me and her dad and said, "Was I sexy?" It seemed for a moment like an up-side-down world, where we, the parents, sitting in a strip club, should be the judge of such a thing. You want your children to grow up and feel sexy, you want them to feel good about themselves physically, but you do not want to be teaching the lesson so late in life under such circumstances.

But I do recall too, that when I first met her at the entrance of the club, my advice to her was, "do whatever you have to to win". It was as far as I could go to say,"go ahead and sell yourself sexually, don't mind that we are here watching, if you win it will have been worth it." I don't know if that is good step-mother advice, but idiot that I am, it was the only advice I could think of.

When we first came into the club she offered us drinks, and my husband had a beer and I had a coffee. Then she offered us a lap dance, with one of the other strippers of course. She said that they could do couple lap dances. I said that we had discussed this very thing in the car coming over, and decided, to decline. But it was another moment of pathos; what she was offering was the best form of welcome that the club had to offer. The way to get us settled in and comfortable; offer us to join the debauchery.

I'm glad I went. It really made my step-daughter glad. The pretty girls were interesting eye candy. Kind of like watching a pornography film but live. I don't watch pornography. It doesn't interest me. The pole dancing contest was a really a contest about skill and athletics and theatrical presentation; it was fascinating.