PORTLAND STRIPPER OF DIGNITY

via kimbasinger.it

The Oregonian explains the Portland stripper. BoomerPDX does it better.

Everyone had a stripper story, or ought to.

Like the time they got up on stage just before getting thrown out of the bar.

Or the time the dancers got the crowd so revved up the bartender started flashing.

This isn’t one of those stories.

Instead it’s an anti-stripper story that went wrong, then right.

My date said she wanted to go to a stripper bar with her friend and her date. Strip club double date? Who does that.

I said okay.

The plan was to find the perfect Portland stripper club, listen to few songs, watch the show, then leave.

That was the original plan.

The first stop featured the sort of women the Oregonian’s Elizabeth Hovde wrote about. They looked like victims of guys who turned them out.

Not a good stop. The ladies looked depressed, tired, and frightened. The customers didn’t look much better.

The next stop was a gold mine.

We went in, found a seat, and waited.

During the down time I noticed a woman at the side of the stage. Not a dancer. She couldn’t be. It was a woman I’d seen downtown, on the PSU campus, at a bus stop.

She looked like a young Kim Basinger before the Alex Baldwin years. Stunning is an understatement, but she always wore a ton of clothes layered up so her face just hung out there.

With a face like that it didn’t matter.

That’s the thing with strippers and guys going to Portland strip clubs. Normal says you go for the show, not the skin, though some dancers didn’t get the memo.

The truth seems to be that not all strippers know how to dance. So they walk around naked and call it good. And it’s enough for the usual suspects of ‘good men.’ Just naughty enough to feel bad about.

Inside the second and last stop of stripper Saturday the lady on stage knew the dance and had it choreographed to her music.

ZZ Top can’t be beat.

The lady I recognized on stage-left departed for the dressing room. She’s a stripper? No way. Not the Kim Basinger of Portland.

Suddenly the stage was empty. The original dancer finished and Kim Basinger look-alike took her place.

My date took a restroom break just as the music started. Turns out the ladies’ room and dressing room connect.

Kim the dancer worked through the music and clothing. There goes the hat, the scarf, the vest. She wore enough clothes for an entire ZZ Top box set to play.

My date came back to the table stricken.

The first lady gave her bad stripper story, the sort that seems to go with the territory, not the one about paying for law school.

We had to leave. Now. Let’s go.

So that’s what we did. I couldn’t explain why it was more important to stay.

What would that story be?