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.

Here’s a guy with an interesting idea for a website.  Only there’s no there there.

Besides, doesn’t Google tell you everything you need to know about sex anyway?  That’s how you found me…

I meant to write this up some time back, but I’ve never sat down to do it.  Well, better late than never.

Back in May I visited one of my favorite places in Southwest Portland.  Had a good time, stayed late, got a few dances, chatted up the girls, yada yada yada.  I texted one of the girls from the parking lot to inquire about another dancer.  I thought she was cute and had never seen her before.  Rather than tell me about the girl, the dancer tells me all about how the club had just fired their manager and things had become chaotic.  Apparently the guy had done too good of a job of cleaning the place up and running off the drugs and the…uhhhh….professionals.  Some of the girls, she said, were letting customers touch them during dances!

This, of course, is verbotin.  When receiving a couch dance, one must leave their hands on the arm rest or the back of the couch.  There is no in between.  There’s usually a very large guy a few feet away to enforce this rule.  So I don’t.  And I figured, naively it turned out, that everyone else obeyed as well.

This new information sort of blew my mind.  Again, I know…naive.  While I’ve had a few opportunities with various dancers (I’ll never forget the girl I had a two-hour conversation with about Freddy Fender), I’ve never followed through.  That’s another story.

Anyway, I couldn’t wait to test this new thing out.  So in July, I visited another of my favorite establishments.  It was a Sunday night, kind of slow.  I took a seat away from the stage and waited for the girls to come around.  Soon enough one did.  A brunette.  Probably mid-twenties.  A couple tattoos.  Stretch marks.  But whatever.  She was cute.  And definitely forward.  Soon enough she had me back on the couch.

I don’t want to get too graphic here, that’s not what this blog is about.  Suffice it to say, she had her chest in my face almost immediately.  After a few moments, her butt brushed up against my hand, which was on the back of the couch.  So I gave her a squeeze, just to see what happened.  Rather than reach up to move my hand away, she repositioned herself so I could slide my hand between her legs.  Meanwhile, she kept one eye on the bouncer a few feet away while she started to rub my crotch.

I’m telling you, it was the weirdest thing ever!  This wasn’t in a jack shack.  This was an over-21 establishment.  And here I was going all third base on a dancer.  Weird!

So after $60 and a breathless sigh, we parted ways.

I’m definitely not going to make a habit of this.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve had a dance since.  I mean after that, where is there left to go?  I mean I suppose I could become this guy (very NSFW), but I’ll leave that to someone else.

I know I’ve been through some fits and starts bringing this blog back from exile.  I appreciate your patience.  I have a few requests to check out some places around town and have a post I’ve been kicking around about the new Stars location in Tualatin.  And I never did get around to telling you why the Hawthorne Strip was my favorite place this summer.  No, that’s not where I got the dance in question.

The Oregonian had a neat article about blogging on Thursday.  There was even a passing mention of yours’ truly in there.  How about that!

Had a fantastic time out at the Dolphin I last week.  Still working to get everything out, but I’m stuck.  I guess that means it’s time to forge ahead into new clubs.  Do I bite the bullet and hit the Devil’s Point and DV8, two places I’ve heard good things about but have been trying like the dickens to avoid.  Or is there someplace else I should check into first?

Here’s something for the CraigsList girls to strive toward.

A Chilean prostitute has auctioned 27 hours of sex to raise money for the country’s largest charity during an annual fund-raising campaign.

Maria Carolina became an overnight celebrity in the conservative Roman Catholic country, making news headlines and appearing on talk shows since she made her unusual donation to the televised charity event, which runs for 27 hours starting on Friday evening.

“I’ve already auctioned off the 27 hours of love,” Maria Carolina told Reuters on Wednesday, saying she had raised about $4,000. “One of my clients already paid. It seemed like a good deed to him.”

You can read the whole thing here.

Perpetual gubernatorial candidate Kevin Mannix has crafted an initiative petition to amend Oregon’s constitution to allow more strict regulation of strip clubs. He’s already created a front group called “Oregonians Protecting Neighborhoods“. No doubt petitions will be circulated in churches starting next spring with an eye toward the 2008 elections. This is a continuation of the Karl Rove strategy from 2004, where Republicans put social issues on the ballot in an effort to lure “values voters” to the polls. Once there, of course, they voted overwhelmingly for George W Bush. No doubt the Republican Party would like to see a similar outcome for their next nominee.

A fascinating name, “Oregonians Protecting Neighborhoods”. What neighborhoods are we protecting exactly? Where in Oregon has a strip club plopped itself down in the middle of a neighborhood? A school? A playground? Where?

Mannix’s website includes a laundry list of laws other states have enacted to regulate strip clubs. The include:

• Zone strip act locations away from churches, schools, and residential neighborhoods.
• Establish standards as to maintenance of the premises, restriction of loitering by minors.
• Require that all areas in which entertainment is provided be visible from the common areas.
• Deny licenses to own or operate strip act businesses to those who have been convicted of certain crimes.

If you ask any club owner in town, they’ll tell you the OLCC already does a bang-up job on all these fronts.  Yet we need additional government regulation beyond those already in place?  What happened to “small government”?

I would suggest the majority of clubs in town, certainly every one I’ve visited, are no different than any other bar in town and the problems the create are the same as the bar down the street.  In fact, I would challenge anyone looking to regulate strip clubs in Oregon to spend a Saturday night outside any club in the area then spend a Saturday in front of a bar and tell me what the difference is.  Go visit Cabaret at 5th and Burnside some Saturday night at 11, then walk down to SW 2nd Ave and tell me where you feel safer.  Which location causes more problems for the “neighborhood”?

I’ve finally gotten around to completing the “clubs” page.  If you click on “clubs” (or here), you’ll now have a one-stop place for addresses and reviews.  I’ll add more as I visit more.

I’m still fumbling my way through this MySpace thing.  If you’d like to be my friend, click here.

A reader sends along this link from a visitor who was in town a few weeks back.

There’s a hint of desperation and rock-and-roll who-gives-a-fuck to the folks dancing and drinking in these places in the middle of the day.

The Cabaret Lounge is especially grim. One might think that the naked girls dancing would be its main attraction. It is not; it’s the video gambling. The zombie brigade lurches in around 3pm, parking themselves in front of a screen with a cigarette in one hand, beer balanced on one knee. They glance at the stage sporadically and toss a few bills at the girl who might be hanging upside down on the pole, or contorted fully nude on the floor.

As such, the girls there have a bitterly philosophical sense of humor about it all; scrawled on the dressing room wall is, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

And that’s why you rarely see me in a club when the sun is out.

Another local dancer claims to have a blog, and I’ve stumbled across a few on MySpace (my MySpace page needs a little work…it’ll be up soon enough).  If you have one (blog or myspace) I’d be happy to add you to the blogroll.