From marc182@primenet.com

Most of us keep our club going selves separate from our "straight"
lives.  We watch what we say and who we say it to. But sometimes
the two cross anyway.

One Friday night in July I was standing in the Cactus Moon with "M".
M is a friend from BSC (Before StripClubs). I've known him for
eleven years. Whenever we are both uninvolved we tend to get
together. We go to some single's hangout and depress each other.
This night we were at the Cactus Moon, a country bar in Tucson. My
girlfriend was in Japan for six weeks and he was between psycho-
girlfriends, so it was the perfect time to meet. In general I don't like
country bars, but those little denim skirts and cowboy boots were
starting to get to me. We were being typical guys-out, complaining
that the place was lame, and debating if we should leave.  I was
cool either way. I just wanted to know what that little filly in the
leather frilled skirt would look like on stage, but didn't express the
words. My cool was broken when Carrie and Courtney from Ten's
flew by on their way to the restrooms, "Hey Marc! We're over behind
the back bar. Get over there!"  M looked at me and blinked, I looked
back and said, "Well M, would you like to leave, or would you like to
go hang out with topless dancers?" To his credit, he actually
seemed to hesitate before he said, "yeah sure, I guess we could do
that."

Behind the back bar of The Cactus Moon is dancer hangout. All the
usual suspects were there. Courtney (gymnist) and Carrie
(goddess), dancers from Ten's, looking fresh from their trip to the
lady's room; Chris, a male stripper from The Neon Moon, a male
stripclub a half a block from Ten's (those two clubs should have a
tunnel dug between them to handle the dancer traffic between the
two); Jeff, the owner of Ten's; a bouncer or two; a sugar-daddy or
two; and a half dozen dancers I didn't know. "So, you know these
girls through Jasmine?", M asked. He knows that my girlfriend is a
dancer, but none of these girls were from her club. "No, she knows
them, but she met them through me." He looked perplexed at this,
and asked, "How much time do you spend in stripclubs anyway?" I
didn't answer, he really doesn't want to know.

Conversation was fairly light. Who's dancing dirty this week, who
just dumped her scummy boyfriend, what club just got busted, how
to get rid of nipple-latex rash.  M was in absorb mode, listening to
everything.

As midnight approched the group mind decided that it was time to
leave. Bars in Arizona close at one. Straight clubs are fine, country
bars suck, and for fun nothing can beat a stripclub.  "Well M, would
you like to go to a stripclub with a bunch of off duty dancers?" To his
credit....

We showed up at Temptations at 12:00 straight up. There must be
some kind of professional courtesy amoung club owners because
having Jeff, the owner of Ten's, amoung us got the whole crew in
free. We took over the VIP, clearing out the extant high-rollers
without a shot fired. Drinks were ordered. Carrie set her goal at
getting a dance from someone named Mercury. The drinks that
came were not the usual little stripclub things in thick walled
glasses, they were big tumblers full of liquid spirits. Carrie lost
interest in her order, a shot of Goldschlager, when Mercury showed
up, so she offered it to M  M looked at me with one eyebrow up,
'should I?' It was a tumbler 1/4 full of the raw stuff. In the uncertain
light of the club the gold flecks were dark motes in smokey fluid. I
shook my head, 'don't do it man'. He sniffed it. 'No, don't do it', I
willed at him. He slammed it. I pushed my MGD away, having
suddenly become the designated driver.  Good luck on the 24ct
hangover dude. Carrie got her dance from Mercury, it was good, I
understand why she wanted Mercury and only Mercury. Everyone in
the group enjoyed it.

While M stared at Carrie (did I mention that she's a goddess?)
Courtney and I talked about the rest of the weekend. We'd been
planning to go tubing down the Salt River for a while now and it was
looking like Sunday was the day. Courtney assured me that Shae
would be going too. It would seem that M wasn't quite as enthralled
with Carrie as I'd thought, because he managed to turn his bleary
gold-flecked gaze to me and say, "Tubing?" I looked at Courtney
with one eyebrow raised in a question mark, and she nodded, so I
said, "Well M, would you like to go tubing down the Salt River with
topless dancers?" To his credit he actually did consider it, "I have a
lot of work to do at the lab (he's a PhD. candidate at the U of A) but I
think I can make it."  Cool, someone I can talk non-dancer shit with
on the river.

break

We all were to meet at the Neon Moon early Sunday morning, like
12 AM early. I could see Courtney and Shae's cars in the parking
lot, but no sign of the girls. "Well," I said to M "they must be inside,
let's go in." Reminder: Neon Moon has _male_ strippers. "In there?!"
M said. "Sure," I replied, "it's after midnight, they won't charge us
cover," giving short shrift to what ever homophobic feelings he was
having.

Inside we found Courtney and Shae and the rest of our river-tubing
crew. Carrie was a no-show, damn. In all there were six: M and I,
Courtney, Shae, and two other strippers.  The only problem was that
the other two strippers were from the Neon Moon, read: male
strippers, Chris and Hollywood. Great, I was sure I'd look just fine in
my swim trunks next to these two buff tanning-bed bronze dudes.
Well, the ratio wasn't quite what I was hoping for, but the trip should
be interesting.

Geography: I live in Tucson, in South Arizona. Phoenix is North of us
in Central Arizona. The Salt River is North and East of Phoenix.
Normally it would take 2 hours to make the trip from Tucson to
Phoenix.  Due to various disorganized dancer-shit it took us until
sunrise at 5:30 AM to make Phoenix. We arrived at Courtney's
Mom's house and crashed all over the place. M slept with the family
cat. I slept on the couch with a pillow, thinking about my girlfriend so
far away in Asia.  I don't care to comment about how the rest of
them slept.

We got to the river at about noon, way short of our 10 AM goal.
Tubing on the Salt is a very surreal. You park at a big rental center
for inner-tubes. The big yellow striped inner-tubes cost about $6 --
you can of course bring your own tubes but most people rent. You
then pile your tubes, ice chests, boomboxes, and selves onto big
yellow school buses and get trucked up to the starting point.  The
river itself is spectacular, willows along the shore slowly give way to
saguaros on the rising slopes until the giant cacti fade out to richly
colored sandstone cliffs, all domed over by a blue sky unblemished
by even a single cloud. Drifting through all this wonderful scenery
are thousands of people on yellow striped inner-tubes. Some of
people have built giant water-borne boomboxes powered by car
batteries or gas generators. Sheriff helicopters prowl the sky. Weird.

We lashed our tubes together, ice chests in the center, to form a raft
that Huck Finn would have found pathetic, piled on, shoved off, and
cracked the first of many beers. The dancers in the group skinnied
out of their shorts to reveal their swimwear -- dance costumes!
"Hey," Courtney said, seeing my startled expression, "we're
dancers, we can't be having any unusual tan lines!" Oh, ok.  I was
really glad to see that Courtney and Shae looked just as good in the
brilliant Arizona sunshine as they do in their dimly lit club. Very nice.
Chris and Hollywood looked ok in their little cup-and-strap things, I
guess. "Hey Hollywood, do you shave your butt?" "Yes I do." Oh. M
and I gave each other a look and settled into the warm sun and cool
water. After 10 min. of that we slathered on SPF 48 and cracked our
second beers. I felt secure in my baggy swim trunks.

The trip down river was calming. Conversation, water, sun and beer
all buzzed in our heads.  Its always fun to listen to dressing room
talk. They _rag_ on customers, but there is always an implicit
"except for you Marc."  None the less, I still flinch inside sometimes
when they talk like that around me. M and I talked about the
problems of doing infrared spectroscopy on organic/geologic
samples that are essentually opaque (black as tar). The only
excitement was when we literally hit a snag and the smoothly
flowing water suddenly became a torrent of spray over our flimsy
raft.  We got free without loss of life and somehow the raft held
together. I lost the beer I was holding.

While drifting along we passed a number of drunk tailgaters on
shore.  These guys are such losers that they don't even get in the
river, they just sit in their truck beds and shout "show us your tits" to
the girls as they go by. Uh oh, I thought, here we go.  "Fuck that,"
said Shae. "I don't see no $5 tips up there," said Courtney. What, no
nudity? I could not care less, I was having a great time. Sorry guys,
no free show. I'm glad the girls know the value of their assets.

After we got off the river we returned to Courney's mom's house.
Courney's mom is totally cool. She sews dancer costumes in her
spare time. She made the Riddler costume I once disgraced the
stage of Ten's in. She cooked us all dinner. Later Courney's seven
year old neice,  M,  and I watched Jumanji on tape while the
dancers slept in little scattered lumps around the living room.
Dancers have no stamina in day light, they're vampire people.

Marc