The Pole - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/55/three-women-and-the-sex-industry

Because I'm writing this at work, there are some obvious reasons that there are no pictures to go with this post .

I've done some stupid things in my life. I've done things that I have regretted and that I am not proud of that I will not set out in front of the world right now. I have done some bad things in my life, but I have never been to a strip club.

This might seem like an odd accomplishment, but you have to remember; I grew up in Las Vegas, the home of the strip club. There are hundreds of strip clubs. There are enough strip clubs that it was rare for someone to not know a stripper. Everyone knows at least one. Everyone knows where the nearest strip club(s) are, and it's not rare in any way or form. The tricky part about this is that I have never, and will never, go to a strip club.

This is a sketchy accomplishment because it's one of those things that no one ever talks about but happens all the time in Vegas. Business meetings happen at clubs, friends go for drinks at the clubs, and it's perfectly normal for people to meet up for a night and start at a club and then go out from there. Even for a high school student it was known which clubs were easy to get into because they weren't too strict about ID's as long as you had money to tip, and guys went, but I managed to never go.

Then Alicia introduced me to the idea of The Pole.

The Pole, is a fictional club, that she is going to be the owner of. It's 'classy', has nice food from the kitchen, and is well kept. Alicia has a full business plan, including the outside structure of what the neon sign should look like, to what the inside should be. She's joked about themes on specific days, or anything else. I know that she's just joking, that it will never happen, but slowly, joke after joke, line after line, I have become a co-owner of The Pole, apparently I'm managing the books, Alicia gets the front of the office deal finding new talent and marketing.

I have never, ever been in a strip club, but somewhere, in the history of inside jokes that Alicia and I have with each other, it's a family business that I help fund. The more we talk about it, the more it's a financial investment than anything to do with the industry. It's a job, it's an extra source of income, it's like owning a Mc Donalds. . . just with more real beef. It will most likely never happen, I'd be sort of worried if it did ever actually happen, but just like learning that your co-worker on the weekends works at a club, and you slowly start to get over it and see them as just working a second part time job, owning a club has progressed from being the owner of a strip club, which is wrong and weird, to something that was just a business. The Pole is just an investment, a safe call, a guaranteed return on investment if managed properly.

I have never been to a strip club, but if things go really weird in my life, I just might manage the books of The Pole.