I can't go out anymore...

[AVENguy]

Geez, it's getting so I can't go to a strip club with my lesbian friends and talk nonprofit business strategy without it winding up in the papers...

http://www.divinecaroline.com/article/22079/33996

The article's pretty funny, a lot of "sexual stuff was going on and the asexual didn't appear to care."




2014 Mod Edit: The above link doesn't seem to work anymore, but the article can be found here. For future reference:

The Three Sexkateers
By: Amanda Coggin

The motto, I’ll try anything once, is one that I try to be true to in my life. For one reason, I live in San Francisco and almost anything goes in this city, which is a big incentive as to why I live here. The other is that life tends to be more fun when you treat it like an adventure. I have come to learn that in order for my culture to remain interesting to me, I have to take advantage of the freedom we all have to try new things. One way I practice this is to force myself to meet new people and follow up with them, especially if they live life as an experiment. It’s these connections to new people, the getting to know them and experiencing their worlds, that ultimately makes my own life that much more exciting.

Last Saturday night was one of those adventurous nights. A friend had invited me to see her dance at Chez Badunkadunk—she explained it was a place where women danced for other women,—which intrigued me on many levels. First, my friend had mentioned that there may be burlesque dancing and that anyone could sign up to dance there in the future. I had thought about dancing in public myself, particularly burlesque since I found the outfits so hot, but I had never been sure that I would enjoy doing it in front of leering men. Having women as an audience seemed like a good testing ground if I was ever going to try. Second, I was finally coming out of my cocoon, the one that wraps itself around you after a break-up. My sexual energy was up and running so I was interested in being in sexy, dancing environments since the dance floor was where I often felt sexiest. Lastly, since it was a dance night for women, I figured she must have meant that it was also a dance night for lesbians. Poonam, my Indian friend, was two steps out of the closet. She had just finished her second relationship, and for those of us whom she called friends, we were ready to show her what she had been missing all of those years.

When we got to the club, we chose the couch on the stage next to the stripper’s pole. We wanted to be supportive for my friend, but I am the type of person that if everyone was sitting a few rows back, I would sit in the empty front row.

“I don’t know how into this I will be,” Poonam said, while I stood up to get water and one-dollar bills to tuck into private places.

“Let’s just see how it goes. We’ll stay for my friend and then we can leave and go dancing.” I could tell that Poonam was initially out of her comfort zone while I felt smack dab in the middle of mine.

When I came back Poonam’s friend, David, had showed up with his rollerblades in hand. I knew David only from the fact that he had started the Asexual Visibility and Education Network here in San Francisco. He was tall, dark, and well, asexual, so I made a mental note to pick his brain later in the night to find out why. The three of us chatted and once in awhile turned back to watch the women work the pole. We tucked dollar bills into G-strings and into my friend’s cleavage, and then giggled when one woman laid flat down on top of Poonam and me. While I was open to anything, I have always been quite certain that I am straight. I like looking at a beautiful woman as much as men do (and many straight women would concur), but the one kiss I had with a woman in the past didn’t make my knees buckle, nor did it make me moan with delight like that first kiss with a man. In fact, I had to run away from her after it happened, learning that it had been a ploy by her unattractive boyfriend to try to get a threesome started, back in the day when I might still consider one until I saw what the boyfriend actually looked like.

Poonam started heating up, whispering, “She has a great ass,” as the woman kicked her fishnet stockings in five-inch heels. I started to twirl my hair wondering if I had overstepped my sexual bounds, wondering what sexual preference the crowd pinned me to be. David, our asexual, just kept talking to Poonam as if nothing out of the ordinary were lying out in front of him. So I texted our friend who I knew would be jealous of our outing.

“Where: Chez Badunkadunk, Who: Poonam, David, and Amanda, What: Lesbian lap dances.” We were a three-layer salad of lesbian, straight, and asexual, The Three Sexkateers, but the thing is, we all wanted different things.

I watched the room fill with butches in their short hair, their cute, little boy faces, who were dressed in ties and suspenders with pressed white oxfords. They made their way to the front row to slip their dollar bills into the femmes dancing on stage and acted as men might have, without the creep factor that came from a hetero strip club. Some caught my eye until I remembered that they were women. I thought about one of my favorite books on relationships, Intimate Communion, and how the author, David Deida, explained the male-female dynamic in a way that I finally understood. He theorized that relationships needed polarity in order for there to be attraction. He said that since men and women have both a male and female essence, if you have an energy that is more masculine, then you will attract a more feminine partner, and vice versa. So while I was in my natural essence of femininity on this night and almost any night, I would always be attracted to and attract a masculine man. The butch girls that had entered the room were masculine, which is why they caught my eye, but since I was truly only attracted to men, that’s as far as my interest would ever go.

The next woman that came on stage put tea light candles on our table. Toward the end of her act, she shimmied her way over to Poonam and me, and in a high-pitched voice that we could barely hear over thumping music, she asked us to pour the hot candle wax on her breasts. Being the supportive audience member that I was, I obliged, and noticed how Poonam and I went from playful to serious. Neither one of us was turned on by her oohing and aahing as the hot wax dripped down to her pasties, in fact, the act had ruined the moment, so we made our way out of the club to San Francisco’s quintessential gay bar, The Café, for dancing. I watched as butch women checked me out from head to toe, noticing how I rather liked the attention, and stared at other butch women who made out with femme girls. Others stacked themselves in a dance line like sardines in a can, and grinded into each other to get off on the already crowded dance floor. Poonam bumped and grinded her way into other women while I pulled David aside to find out if a scene like this did anything for an asexual.

“I get more pleasure from connecting with people than when it’s this overtly sexual,” he said with confidence.

I told him it was the same for me and then leaned into him for protection as a butch started her move toward my feminine essence.

[cait]

For some reason, that reminds me of the time I was at a club with a stripper friend and made a new friend simply because my friend was hitting men up for drinks. Obviously I was only interested in talking to the guys, and gave them my number and email. Turns out, they were trying to pick up, all I was doing was discussing topics that interested me. All three parties were of course in it for three separate things! I was the only one who ended up getting what they wanted, because my friend didn't even get any drinks bought for her (and I got plenty) and nobody took us home that night either. 8) The life of an asexual is pretty sweet.

[Hayley]

I like that article, it was quite good. The reactions of three different sexualities to a stripper. :lol:

[Cygnus]

That was great. :)

[spinneret]

Nice! Reminds me of going to a strip club with a stripper friend and a straight male friend. We all had fun, but we enjoyed it in different ways.

Cheers to connecting with people. And getting good visibility out of it; that is a good article.

(I'd personally disagree about the strict masculine/feminine dichotomy she has going there, though...but that's another discussion)

[ghosts]

Heh heh heh heh, cool article. :P

[cait]

(I'd personally disagree about the strict masculine/feminine dichotomy she has going there, though...but that's another discussion)

Heh, I was thinking about that, but I wasn't going to bring it up. (But I agree with your disagreement)

[thylacine]

That's cool.

[Guest kos]

Yep, fine article indeed.

[Carsonspire]

(I'd personally disagree about the strict masculine/feminine dichotomy she has going there, though...but that's another discussion)

Heh, I was thinking about that, but I wasn't going to bring it up. (But I agree with your disagreement)

Yep, I agree with both of you. It reminds me of the butch-femme relationship expectations of the 1960s/70s.

This is the best quote of the article:

“Where: Chez Badunkadunk, Who: Poonam, David, and Amanda, What: Lesbian lap dances.” We were a three-layer salad of lesbian, straight, and asexual, The Three Sexkateers, but the thing is, we all wanted different things.

That's such a great image and makes a great point.