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2006-12-28 - 12:36 p.m.

This is part of an essay I�ve been writing. It�s amazing how much unnecessary stuff you get done when avoiding working on something of key importance (like finishing my grad school application). Anyway, I�ll post two sections here. This is the first:

One day Curtis wanted me to go with him to a topless club. I told him strip clubs weren�t really my scene but he was quite insistent, noting it was a regional specialty. Providence, like the rest of the state, had quite a few strip clubs and topless bars. Most towns in Massachusetts have managed to uphold their Puritan heritage by enacting heavy restrictions on any business with nudity on the premises. Anything more risqu� than Hooters finds it almost impossible to stay in business very long.

I remember when a topless place managed to open near my old neighborhood in Boston by finding some legal loophole allowing staff providing �other forms� of entertainment to undress. Apparently, the dancers told old vaudeville jokes before their routine. I wish I had gone just to experience the bizarreness of a stripper doing vintage stand-up, but the authorities went ballistic and closed it down after just a few weeks for violating some zoning code or other.

However, titties are always in demand. Strip joints simply set up shop across the border in Rhode Island, a state founded by a radical among radicals and still maintaining this against-the-grain image. In the seventeenth-century, Roger Williams was exiled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for being too extreme for even the Puritans. He sailed just a little ways south and established the place that would become the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation (most of the Native American tribes who already inhabited the area were killed off within a few decades, of course). Today, Li�l Rhody has gone on from harboring religious extremists to harboring ecdysiasts.

When Curtis announced his interest, I protested that most clubs were in far-off locales, off a highway exit or something. As I had no car, we wouldn�t be able to get there. But he said there was one place right downtown. I knew where he meant. The Sportsman�s Inn was across the street from the headquarters of the town�s main newspaper, the Providence Journal. It was located in a building which had originally been some sort of religious structure. Carved above the front entrance were some crucifixes and words reading �ERECTED TO THE GLORY OF GOD A.D. 1912�. Erected indeed.

I�d never been inside, of course. Like I said, not my scene. But I�d heard about the place�s reputation. Supposedly, it was the most low-down, dirty, raw, and nasty strip joint imaginable. I was told they fleeced the customers on drinks and charged the girls an exorbitant fee for showing their wares. Most of the dancers were either overage (apparently the place was a haven for strippers in semi-retirement) or underweight (apparently it was also a haven for crackheads working towards their next fix). There was an associated hotel upstairs. What went on there, I didn�t even want to consider.

�Aw, man,� I pleaded. �I just don�t want to go.�
�Oh, come on. You�re just afraid. Look, it says in their ad here that during the day they have a free buffet.�
�For real?� It was around lunch time. �Hmm, wait. I don�t know if I want to eat anything that�s been hanging around naked skanks.�
�Don�t be such a snob. It�s free food! I know you Jews like that,� he laughed.

�Shit,� I shook my head. I couldn�t believe I was about to agree to this. �Look, if I don�t like it after ten minutes, we have to go.�
�We�re out of there, straight up.�
I sighed heavily. �Okay, fine.�
Curtis slapped me on the back, �Right on! I�m proud of you.�
I can�t honestly remember, but I�d imagine he made us walk downtown to save bus fare.

� 2006 Geoff Gladstone

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