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We are told that 300 lapdancing clubs exist in Britain today, double the number of four years ago. I've been to one only twice. The first time, my wife took me to a high-class stripper-filled party aboard a boat; the second time, I visited Brown's in Shoreditch with a friend. Both times I was underwhelmed. I see no pleasure in being surrounded by naked women none of whom will sleep with you. It can only be a masochistic thrill that draws the punters in.
Trading on titillation, these clubs should be classified as sexual entertainment rather than as leisure ventures, a legal loophole that's helped them to proliferate. Residents who don't want them in their neighbourhood should have the right to bar them the way they can prevent sex shops opening. No one wants to pass one on a school run, having to explain to their kids what goes on inside.
Strip-clubs are a wind-up. Visit one and you'll see the biggest cross-section of men anywhere, buying into a retarded fantasy of alpha-male glamour. At Brown's I saw men of every age, colour and social class. I even saw a couple of deaf guys signing excitedly to each other during the breaks between performances.
Well-dressed, affluent older men sat at tables, ostentatiously ordering bottles of Scotch, pretending to discuss business and not notice the girls, as if they spent their whole lives surrounded by beautiful nude women. Younger men stood around joking and giggling, pretending they were having an "ironic" night out. They were all there to watch women gyrate and reveal every bit of themselves but were too embarrassed simply to leer with their tongues out. It's the biggest sham I've ever seen.
But the place was also pathetically sexless, filled with aroused men and naked women, none of whom would get laid. The strippers were there only to milk men for cash. They had bills to pay and, revealed by their caesarean scars, children to raise. Unless he was extremely handsome or obviously super-rich, no man had a hope of taking one home. They had an infinitely greater chance of scoring at a regular bar, yet chose to be there instead.
These clubs just give men a chance to interact - at a price - with women they lack the confidence to approach elsewhere. Gorgeous girls sitting on their laps, they play at being Tony Soprano for the evening. It's not the strippers who expose themselves most, but the men who can't talk to sexy women without paying for it.
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