Richard Thruster

Reader Brian M made a pretty good suggestion this morning.

On the old Usenet group alt.sex.strip-clubs, the rule was: “stage name, club, act – pick two”.

I honestly hadn’t thought about it, but it makes sense.

It’s not like I go into these places looking for trouble.  Or to suck on some young thing’s breasts.  But if the opportunity is going to present itself, then who am I to blow against the wind, you know?

Bottom line, from here on out I’ll try to stick to the two-out-of-three rule.  I think it’s probably best for everyone.

Back in September, Reader A. asked me to stop into Spyce over in Old Town.  I made it in back in the Fall sometime, can’t remember when.  Had a great evening with a girl who’s name I already forget.  It was actually as enlightening as it was low-key.  She knew I wouldn’t be buying any dances, but since I was one of only two or three customers in the place, she decided to give me her undivided attention.

She was pretty cute.  Late-twenties, early-thirties.  She had a kid.  We talked about kids, dating customers, different clubs around town, and a couple of douchebags who eventually showed up.  She said despite the fact said douches have more money than God, they’d all end up spending as much as me during the evening.  Yet they thought they were someone as did the manager, so off she went to the champegne room to entertain.  Oh well.

I’ve always wanted to go back there if only to meet up with her again.  In the couple times I’ve been back, she hasn’t been there.  So I guess she’s lost to the ages.  Too bad.

For a while there Spyce was all over the radio talking about their Friday night steak and lobster dinner.  It’s $10 and surely better than $10 worth of Taco Bell, no?  So I decided to check it out after work this past Friday.

Susan at River City Kitty does a much better job describing the interior than I.

The interior of the bar was pretty nice and very nightclubby. The stage sits a mere six inches off of the ground with poles very close to the corners and table seating rather than a rail around the stage; guess what this means? Nightly meetings twixt stiletto heel and customer body parts. They have got to raise that stage or build a rail around it before someone gets an accidental stripper-induced concussion.

The handful of times I’ve been in now, I’m still not sure what to make of the stage set-up.  First off, no one is sure where to put their money.  I like to just set it up on the rail and let the girl take it.  There being no rail, there’s nowhere for me to put it.  I finally figured out I had to just throw it on-stage.  Fine, I guess, but it’s still confusing.  Of course when you’re the only guy sitting at the stage, it’s probably not that confusing after all.

The kitchen is located in a separate room in the back of the club.  It’s basically a lunch counter with a half dozen bar stools.  As I entered, there was a meeting of…ummmm….let’s call them entrepreneurs….at one end of the counter.  I went to the other end and sat down.

“Steak and lobster?” the cook asked.

“Yes sir,” I replied.

He asked me how I took my steak.  I advised medium-rare, and he threw it on the broiler.

I went back into the main room to get my beer and found Selinda taking the stage.  She stopped me in my tracks.  Like Victoria at Pallas, Selinda got my crank turning.  She reminds me of an older version of my senior prom date.  Oh my.  Short red hair.  Nice butt.  Probably 5′3″ or 5′4″.  And the eyes.  Oh my.  She could have had anything she wanted.

Well, almost.  After three songs and lots of attention, it was time to go enjoy my steak.

It’s actually not too bad.  It was a nice strip steak served with a small lobster tail.  Baked potato with all the trimmings.  What the hell else do you want?  And unlike the Acropolis, it’s not served to you whi;e you’re sitting at the rail.  I suppose they could bring it out to the main room, but then you’d have girls descending on you asking you to buy them dinner.  And really, I don’t want to sit and watch you eat.

So I sat back in the back and watched Utah kick the holy heck out of Alabama.  That was kind of fun to see!

After I finished dinner, I rushed back out to the stage to watch Selinda .  And again, she made me feel 17.  Again.  The brush up against my cheek.  The hands rubbing my thighs.  The hot breath on my neck.  It was quite awesome.

Again, Selinda isn’t for everyone.  But she’ll definitely have me back in Spyce and soon.

The other girl working happy hour was Athena.  She’s a taller blonde and much more full-contact than Selinda.  Athena wasn’t on stage 30-seconds before she was straddling me, bouncing up and down, and doing a really awful fake moan.  A complete turn-off.  I’m all for whorish strippers and girls who make like they’ll put-out even if they won’t.  But this kind of act just doesn’t do it for me.  But like a trooper, I put up with it.

When she turned around and whipped her blonde hair around, I caught a glimpse of a tattoo on her neck that brought a whole flood of memories back.  It was a tattoo of a $100 bill.  It was the same tattoo I’d seen on a girl at Pop-A-Top back earlier in the fall…

Oh, Pop-A-Top! Man.  A friend of mine aptly described that place as scuzzy.  It’s out on Columbia right around 63rd.  It’s a combination bar and jack shack.  The girls spend their whole time on stage trying to get you to “go next door” to this other building where there’s no alcohol and, according to one girl, no cameras.  Then she promised the experience was “guaranteed to blow your mind.”

Hey!  A codeword!  Even I know what that means.  There was no way I was going next door.  That doesn’t mean one girl in particular didn’t try.

As I was making my way toward the door, a girl came up and stopped me.  She started rubbing my belly while eventually reaching inside my shirt and squeezing my nipple.  She starts asking me if I want to go next door, so I decided to play along.  I mean the nipple thing definitely had my attention.

So we go through the negotiation.  It’s $160 to go next door and seemingly there would be no rules once we got there.  She was definitely the cutest girl in the place, so if I was gonna spend $160 on an experience that night, it would be with her.  But my big head overruled the littler one, and I excused myself.

I don’t have to tell you the girl twisting my nipple was Athena, the same girl aggressively dry-humping me at the side of the stage Friday night.  I didn’t have the heart to bring the subject up as even Spyce a rung or two up the club ladder, and I didn’t know if she wanted to be reminded.

I left after about an hour to go meet up with some friends.  The allure of Selinda, though, brought me back around 10.

By then, the club had changed.  No longer was it a lonely little spot with only two strippers working a weird stage.  By 10pm, they were charging a $5 cover and they had a fairly decent crowd.  They definitely skewed younger and clubbier.  But they were respectful for the most part, unlike the frat boy thing you see at Stars or the Dolphin.

I picked a table along one of the walls and waited to see my Selinda again.  Unfortunately she was nowhere to be found.  Instead the night shift had taken over.  They were younger, a hotter.  Lots of 8s and one 9.  Her name?  Mitzy.

She’s 24, blonde, and stacked.  She’s got a perfect body and an attitude to match.  As I took my spot at the stage, she lasered in on me and went to work.  She nibbled on my ear.  Rubbed my thighs.  Twisted my nipples.  See, this is why it’s not such a bad thing to have the stage only 6″ off the ground!  Where else in town can you get a $1 lap dance?  Nowhere!

She found me a little while later and took me back to the couches.  Only in the case of Spyce, its the arm chairs.  We made a little idle chit-chat as she curled up on my lap.  Her breasts were right in my face, and her smooth back and butt were rubbing against my arm.  I had to cop a feel.  And unlike most other dancers, she didn’t move my hand away.  Huh.  It was going to be one of those dances!

As our song started, I looked over to the bouncer.  His back was turned to us as he stood in the door.  It was obvious he wanted to give us our privacy.

Off came Mitzy’s bra, and we commenced the dance.  She rubbed her crotch against mine for what seemed like an eternity before turning around and thrusting her breasts in my face as she came around to nibble my ear.  She worked down my neck and to my chest, pausing to nibble on each nipple.

Note: I don’t know a lot, but I do know this.  If you want to know how to please your woman in bed, pay attention to the things she does to you.  This is almost always an example of what she wants done to her.  Do those things, and you’ll have a happy girl.

Clearly Mitzy enjoyed the nipple play, so at the next chance, I returned the favor.  Was her shudder real or fake or revulsion?  Couldn’t tell you.  I can say breasts were offered more than once, so that says something.

She talked me into a second song, this one involved much more nibbling and panting.  Man, she does a good job.  May I recommend Mitzy at Spyce for all your couch dance needs.

We made some more small talk at the end.  We exchanged our real names, which was kind of fun.  I told her the story of the girl I met at the D2 who had her stage name, her fake-real name and her real-real name.  She thought that was a bit much.  Maybe so, but it made for nice small talk.

My wallet freshly lightened, I left the place around midnight.  I’ll definitely be back.  Not only for the lobster, but for Mitzy.  And maybe I’ll see if I can get Selinda on the couch too.

I texted a friend of mine Wednesday afternoon to find out what he was doing to bring in the new year.  He said his plans involved getting as drunk as possible while staying home.  As fun as that sounded, I didn’t think another year with Dick Clark was going to cut it for me.  I told him my plan for 2009 involved bringing this blog back, hopefully better than ever.  What better night to bring it back, I said, than on NYE.

The only real question I had was where to begin.  Did I go out to Stars and revel with a room full of twenty-somethings and silicon strippers?  Or should I choose something a little calmer.  Perhaps emptier.

I put the question to my friend who didn’t hesitate.  Go for the lonely stripper, he said.  See how far it takes you.

Ah.  An interesting proposition.  Could I spend the stroke of midnight on a couch with a stripper.  THAT would be some story.

I spent the early part of the evening at the Winter Hawks game.  They usually do a pretty good job and games against Seattle are always entertaining.  Wednesday night was no different.  Lots of goals.  Lots of fights.  And plenty of folks hanging around having a good time.

The ultimate plan was to head over to Spyce.  I’ve been there once and figured that would be where I would find the lonliest stripper.  This was based on that one experience when I went in on a Saturday night and found two girls in the entire place and two customers.  That is a dead club.  To wet my appetite though, I hit the Hawthorne Strip first.

The Hawthorne Strip has become one of my favorite places in the last year.  It’s quiet.  It has sports on the plasma TV over the bar.  The girls are usually pretty good.  And it’s quiet.  Well, except for the music.  It’s one of those places with no dj, so the girls go over to a juke box and select their set just before hitting the stage.  There’s a fantastic sign on the front reminding girls that they’re in a rock and roll bar and maybe they should leave the emo crap at home.  Generally they stick to rock or 80s.  Either is generally fine by me.  It’s the rap that I can’t stand (*cough*Dolphin*cough*).

I parked in the back and played a little video poker while an innocent-looking brunette worked the pole in front of one guy.  In hindsight I should have parked at the rail since it turned out it was the girl’s last set of the night.  Oh well.  I finished even at poker while I waited for the evening shift to come trickling in.

I rolled over to the corner stage after a few tunes and parked in front of another brunette who I’d walked past as I came in the door.  She had hair almost all the way down to her butt.  It was something else to see.  Unfortunately her dancing style left much to be desired.  She was all frentic motion.  Like she didn’t quite know what to do with herself on stage, so she’d developed this little dance routine that she would go through.  It was like watching an endless loop.  Two times around the pole, walk to the rail, stick foot on rail, pose, walk back to corner, bend over…repeat.  So boring.

From a distance it looked like she had a couple of tattoo sleeves on her forearms.  They turned out to be sleeves from a shirt or something.  Perhaps she was hiding something else?  Or maybe it was her device so she could convince herself she wasn’t really naked while she was on stage.  Different girls use different things to get past that.  It’s interesting.

After her set ended, she lazily came over and asked if I wanted a dance.  She seemed a little off.  I declined.

Next up came a well stacked blonde.  She was solid.  Small breasts, but the rest of her looked great.  And speaking of devices to convince yourself youre not naked.  She wore this leather bondage-type top that drew attention to her breasts while covering parts of the rest.  Yeah, OK…she’s had a baby.  Big deal.  She’s far from the worst looking stripper in town.  Show it off, baby!

After her set, it was back to girl #1 and I’d had enough.

I made my way over to Spyce only to be thwarted.  Turns out every other club in town was also open and there was no parking to be found in Chinatown.  I’ll have to do my review another time.  I definitely want to check out their steak and lobster special one of these nights.  Apparently their kitchen is pretty good.

I headed back east and ended up at Sassy’s.  Not my first choice, but I didn’t really want to drive out to Beaverton or down to Milwaukie.  So Sassy’s it was.

The place was pretty full.  The usual mix of young couples and single guys.  The Vince Neil guy was back DJing.  He does a good job of keeping the girls and the music moving.  I grabbed my Coors Light and hit the stage.  First up was a petite little Asian girl.  I didn’t catch her name, but she was definitely a delight.  She was paying particular attention to an older guy back in the crowd, which was fine.  When it came my turn, she gave a fantastic show.  Great energy and enthusiasm.  You really can’t ask for anything more.

Next up was definitely the hottest blonde in the place.  She was tall and thin with a fantastic body.  Unfortunately, she hates her job.  Or at least that’s how it looked.  When she paused in front of a customer, she’d turn and stare into space.  No eye contact.  No “hi, how you doing?”  And certainly no selling dances.  Such a bummer.

Guys at the rail didn’t seem to care though.  They kept throwing money at her and she kept wanting to be somewhere else.  Blah.

Midnight arrived while the blonde was on stage.  She got into a liplock with another dancer which was intended to get the guys hot, but didn’t really seem to.  The guys with dates were all working their girls while the guys without dates were hooting with their free champagne, happy to be dateless at a strip club.

Had I to do it over again, I definitely would have made the effort to hit a couch somewhere.  But whatever.  I’m a little rusty.

Thanks for checking back in.  Here’s to good things in 2009.