Strippers Have Feelings Too

Mads, my Norwegian companion, and I were rocking out to a little Morrissey and reading the paper, when Matty, my personal biographer, stopped in.

"Sweet, Morrissey, I love this... the more you ignore me... the closer I get..."

"I know," I said. "It’s hot."

Mads turned the page. He was sitting with his legs crossed, like Jean-Luc Picard on the bridge of the Enterprise.

"So last weekend," Matty said. "I was at this bachelor party. Well, it wasn’t so much a bachelor party as much as a bunch of guys going out and getting wasted and hitting a strip club before some dude I barely knew was getting married."

"So a Poor Man’s bachelor party."

"Exactly."

"And you barely knew the groom to be?"

"Friend of a friend. So anyway, we hit the strip club, and me and a couple buddies weren’t really in the mood, you know?"

"Not in the mood? To see vaginas?"

"Well, it’s Maine, so you don’t see vaginas anyway. And it wasn’t that I wasn’t in the mood to see them, just not to pay for them."

"I got you."

"So my buddies and I are off to the side, watching the action, and one of them comes and sits on my lap."

"A stripper? Just sits right down?"

"Sits right down. And my buddies and I are kinda put off. I mean, she was just trying to get us to buy some private dances."

"Of course."

"And we weren’t having it."

"Well no, you didn’t want to spend any money."

"Right."

Mads adjusted his legs and scratched his crotch, then turned the page again.

"So things are getting kind of uncomfortable, because she realizes this ain’t goin’ no where, and she’s still on my lap."

"Was she hot?"

"Not so much."

"Okay, go on."

"So then she says, get this: 'Oh, I’m sorry, I must be crushing your lap', and she gets up. Then I say, and here’s the crazy thing: 'Oh, you weren’t crushing my lap', like I’m trying to say 'No, you’re not fat.'"

"Well, was she fat?"

"No, of course not."

"Well, I don’t know."

"I just thought it was crazy how all I wanted to do was get this stripper off me, but then I had to be polite because I was afraid she thought I thought she was fat."

"Well, that’s just how it is. Whenever weight’s brought into the conversation, the first reaction of the guy is to say: 'you’re not fat.'"

"He’s right," Mads said from behind his paper. "And it’s not like strippers don’t have feelings to consider too. They’re only human."

"Born to make mistakes."

"Okay, what if the woman in question’s a 300 pound behemoth? What do I say then when weight’s brought into the conversation? Saying she’s not fat would just be disingenuous."

"Then you tell her she has a really pretty face."

Mads put down his paper and uncrossed his legs.

"Strippers really don’t show vagina in Maine?"