...the sweeter the juice. That's a popular saying in the black community, one I laugh at regularly, except when it pertains to black strip clubs. There's nothing in the world that compares to a black strip club, except maybe bacon. They're everything a white strip club is, but with more bass, more ass, and way more funk. BSCs absolutely kick ass, and I don't even like strip clubs. However, I can see the allure it has for some men, and in fact, strip clubs ain't all bad. Strip clubs in general provide a valuable service to their respective communities, despite how much those same communities rail against them. They get horny men off the streets, they add tremendously to the local economy (have you ever tried getting money from a cash machine inside a strip club? Some of their surcharges run up to $5 or $10!), and they give numerous wayward women a way to pay for college, since just about every stripper I've ever seen has said "I'm doing this to pay for college." Right, right. If that's so, every $1 bill I give them should be tax deductible, seeing how I'm giving to "charity".

The rap on strip clubs is that they bring a violent and criminal element to the neighborhoods they occupy, which is just total bullshit. Those are some of the safest places on Earth. I mean, how many guys can get mad while looking at naked women? If you put a strip club in Fallujah right now, the war would be over in about a day and a half. I can recall a location in Greenville, SC, where I used to live. This location was the host to a succession of regular dance clubs, and every single weekend there was a news report about a shooting or a stabbing or some sort of altercation. However, public outcry was at a low murmur. In comes Platinum Plus, an established, upscale topless franchise. You would've thought they announced they'd be beating young children and the elderly with dead kittens. People went crazy trying to think of ways to shut that place down. I seem to recall that they went so far as to re-zone a church's property line, extending it enough so that the strip club was in violation of the code that says they have to maintain a certain distance from schools and churches. But in the end, it opened anyway, and…nothing. Nothing bad happened. No shootings, no stabbings, no altercations except for the occasional drunk mistaking a bouncer for someone he could actually ass-kick. Game, set, match. Thanks for playing, conservative Christian Right. Or should I say Christian Wrong?

Personally, I've never been much of an attendee. I just can't see spending the kinds of money you have to spend there, on girls that you have zero chance at whatsoever. I don't care how strong your game is, it's not strong enough to pull a stripper, 'cause she's seen and heard it all. Think of all the bullshit lines and stories a stripper has heard in her career. Only a select few possess the skills and magic it takes to make a stripper swoon. I am most definitely not one of those people. The handful of times I've been, I usually end up just talking to the dancer about her day life. She'll be trying to grind on me, and I'll pull away (strippers are cold and clammy) and ask "So, what do you do when the sun's up?" or "Wow, no track marks…lemme guess - you smoke your heroin". Since I don't get a lot out of it, I typically don't like to go. However, there are times when you just wanna go with your boys, drink a bit, smoke some cigars, and watch some slightly high, seemingly available, and mostly naked women dance to "No Diggity" by Blackstreet. And when Duke is one of those people, you know there's gonna be a story in it. Allow me to tell you about one magical weekend.

It was fall of 1998 (I think). Me, Duke, our good friend JayClay, and Duke's buddy Gevalt all decided to go to hang out in Atlanta with JayClay, who was going to school at Georgia Tech at the time. Duke and Gevalt attended Duke University (hence Duke's nickname, in case you wondered), and I was living in SC, so those two met me in Columbia, SC, and we all drove in my car the 3 hours to ATL. We got to Atlanta around 10pm, tired from work and school and the drive, and we were ready to party. We hooked up with JayClay, who was a local connoisseur of Atlanta's gentlemen's clubs. We trusted Jay's opinion - when I say "connoisseur", what I mean is "expert". This cat went to the strip clubs (SCs) every single day. He was one of those guys who liked to eat the buffet lunch in the SC. I gotta say, eating food from a SC inside the SC is just too much for me. I don't want crabs with my crabs, you know? No STDs with my BLT, please. Aside from that (or because of it), Jay knew where to go. He took us to one of the most upscale and well-known establishments in all of Atlanta: Cheetah 3.

I had heard of Cheetah; I'd seen it a few times on HBO's Real Sex shows, so I was actually looking forward to experiencing someplace renowned. And as we approached the entrance, we saw a famous NFL player (who shall remain nameless, but played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) leaving the club with two smokin' hot blondes. His wife isn't blonde. We knew then that the club was gonna be incredible. We pay the cover, walk inside, and immediately we're inundated with sights and sounds that are damn near indescribable. Wall to wall women. Drinks flowing. Tons of money changing hands. Nirvana. We settle down at a table near the middle of the floor and take in the sights. It was typical stuff…half naked women soliciting money, lonely men paying out large bills to these unattainable women. I gotta tell you, there are few things funnier or sadder than watching middle-aged men spending hundreds of dollars on girls who wouldn't give a shit about them if they were broke. This one guy sitting at the table next to us paid a girl $20 per table dance for an hour straight. A table dance lasts for about 2 songs, or 6 minutes. (In some places, they only dance for one song.) So we're talking $200 spent on a girl who didn't even look back when he ran out of cash. Pathetically amazing. We didn't waste time staring at the other misfortunate fools; we were ready to get our groove on.

We decided against individual dances, since that would cost way too much dinero. Table dances would be fine. The first girl was ok...nothing special. Typical strip club fare. She was short, blonde, and fairly dumb. Conversation was not her strong suit. We sent her on her way, drank some more, and we sat and chilled for awhile…until we saw her. The hot Asian woman. She was tall, sexy, and gorgeous. I have a thing for Asian women. She was hot – Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese – I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. We summoned her over for a table dance, and she slowly and seductively made her way over to us, like some sort of porn angel. But as she got closer to our table, I knew right away that we were gonna be disappointed. She looked like she'd just swallowed 3 lemons and a lime, and appeared to be less than enthused to provide service to our merry band. Maybe she was having a bad night. Maybe she didn’t like the looks of us. Whatever. When she got up on the table to dance, she refused to take her tube top off completely because, and I shit you not, it would mess up her hair. Mess up her HAIR?? We’re paying this chick $20 a dance, plus tip, and she’s worried about her damned hairdo? Asian or not, we were paying her good money to go topless, and a tube top around your neck does not qualify. I was 2 miles past pissed. I looked at my boys and said "Please, let's pay this hooker so she can go." I learned then that strippers don't like being called hookers, especially when the guys looked like they couldn’t afford her even if she was a hooker. After she managed to close her gaping mouth, Asian Girl left in a huff, and now there was a table full of slightly drunk, horny, and pissed-off guys. Bitter, party of four? Your table’s ready.

Me: "Cheetah sucks. The girls here are all bitches."

Gevalt: "Yeah."

JayClay: "I don't understand, they're usually so nice."

Me: "I'm sure the daytime strippers are just fucking wonderful, but the first-stringers blow moose cock."

Gevalt: "Yeah."

Duke: "Fuck this place, man. Let's go to a black strip club."

Gevalt: "Yeah!"

Having won the vote unanimously, we paid our tab and got the hell out of Cheetah. The music sucked anyway. Duke knew of a place called (fittingly enough) The Gentlemen’s Club, located somewhere in downtown Atlanta. How he knew about that place is still a mystery. As we approached the place, Duke and I laid down a couple of basic facts to Gevalt and Jay.

Duke: “Yo, this ain’t like the white places, ok? It’s different.”

Jay: “Different how?”

Me: “You might get frisked on the way in. Don’t sweat it, just flow with it.”

Gevalt: “Frisked?”

Duke: “Yeah. Or wanded, you know, with those metal detector things. Or both. And since you’ll likely be the only white people there, you’ll probably be celebrities.”

Jay: “What do you mean?”

Me: “The strippers will think you both have a lot of money. Trust us – we’ll be damn near invisible to them.”

Gevalt: “I don’t know…”

Duke: “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

We got to the door of the place, where a large, 300 lb brother in a tuxedo was waiting. He said “Good evening gentlemen, I’ll need to frisk and wand you before you go in.” Jay and Gevalt looked at each other, then at Duke and me, with mild terror in their eyes. We all got frisked and wanded, and Big Tux said “Thank you gentlemen, enjoy your evening.” We walked inside, and the rest of the evening unfolded before us.

The first thing you notice about the black strip clubs is the bass. The bass thumps hard enough to rattle your sternum, and you can feel it in every other bone in your body. No Guns ‘N’ Roses, no AC/DC, no rock in those places, man. Strictly 2 Live Crew. And this place was thumpin’ it hard. The second thing you notice is the near total lack of white people. When the four of us walked in, the total number of white people in the club jumped to 3, with the third person being one of the dancers. The third thing you notice is the quality of the women. In a “white” strip club, the women come in all shapes and sizes, as long as the shape is thin and the size is small. Big breasts are ok there, but big anything else is not kosher. The black spots are more lenient about whom they let dance. It’s not shocking to find mothers there dancing. Or women with scars from surgeries or injuries, such as bullet holes (to use an example). Also, size and shape don’t play nearly as big a role as the size of the ass. No matter what the body looks like, the ass MUST be J. Lo big. That lone white girl in the club dancing? Huge ass. Ghetto booty. Women in those places do not take that drug Noassital. The women there also universally have tremendous rhythm and ability to shake it. These are the women who can do a full split all the way to the floor, then grind the stage while in the split position. It’s an amazing sight.

As we settled down near the back of the club, three strippers immediately appeared out of nowhere and circled around Jay and Gevalt like hungry vultures. “Hey baby, you want a dance?” “You want some company?” “Hey sweetie, how you doing tonight?”. How many strippers materialized in front of me and Duke like magic, you ask? Zero. We were invisible, just like I said we would be. In fact, the only women we saw for the first few minutes were the dancers on stage, and two lesbians buying lap dances for each other. Jay and Gevalt were bewildered, and looked over at us like kids do when strange aunts want to kiss them at Christmas. We shooed them on and encouraged them to interact with the women. They paid the women – 2 for Jay, 1 for Gevalt – and the dances began. Now, I’ve never seen a white woman do this, so I won’t say they can’t do it, but I’ve seen lots of black women rock this move – the booty clap. The booty clap is a technique whereby the woman rhythmically moves her ass in a way that makes her buttocks literally move out and in again, making a clapping motion and sound. It requires a lot of control and a lot of ass, and these women had both. Oh, and in this club, the women were completely naked. So, they were bent over in front of the boys, butt naked, making their asses clap. ‘Awestruck’ is a good word to describe the looks on their faces. Jay just sat there with his mouth open, and Gevalt looked like that kid on A Christmas Story who wanted a Red Rider BB gun from Santa Claus. Joy, pure joy, was radiating from his face. These women could do things with their privates that I’d never seen before. If you want to know what, email me and I’ll tell you. It’s too crazy to even put in this blog.

A hot little chica came over to Duke and pulled him away to a VIP area. See, Duke could roll like that. I don’t know how he swung it, but he swung it, and he was gone. I sat there for a little while, taking in the scene, when a pretty little woman came over to me asking if I wanted a dance. I said sure, why not. She started in, and I did what I always do – I started talking to her. She was the girlfriend of one of the Atlanta Falcons football players, she said. She stripped to make her own money so she wouldn’t have to be dependent on him, which was kinda cool, if you think about it. Anyway, she kept dancing and started getting into it a bit. She was sliding up and down my lap, grinding and bumping, and giving me seductive looks. Since I know this drill, it did nothing for me, but I played along. I was sitting in a chair up against a wall, with my hands in my lap, and she decided to try something out on me. She even said “I haven’t done this before, but I’m-a see if this’ll work, ok?” She squatted to the floor, rose up quickly, and put her right foot on the wall behind me, above my head and planted it there, as though gravity ran sideways. I was impressed; it displayed a level of flexibility and dexterity that I don’t imagine many people possess. She held it there for about 5 seconds.

Then she fell.

Well, fall is a harsh way to describe it. She more like slid down the wall, basically doing a vertical split and landing on me. Recall that she was naked at the time. I immediately drew back – not because she was cold and clammy this time (even though she was), but because about 10 feet away, Big Tux’s slightly bigger brother Big Suit was eyeballing me like I had taken a turkey leg off his Thanksgiving plate. It was when he started walking toward me with malice in his eyes that I got worried. The stripper looked at me without the slightest bit of remorse, shame, guilt, or embarrassment and said “Sorry ‘bout that. You ok?”

Me: “Um yeah, I’m fine – are YOU ok? You’re the one who just did a naked vertical split.”

Strippy: “Ain’t no problem. I’m cool.”

Me: “Um, could you let the angry 300 lb dude know that everything’s ok?”

Strippy: “Him? He’s harmless.”

Me: “He looks pretty damn harmful to me. Please tell him that me no touchy.”

Strippy: (Big sigh) “Aight, aight – damn!”

She made Big Suit back off, which he did while simultaneously staring at me like I just slapped his momma. I decided it would be best to pay her and send her on her way. I couldn’t complain, though – it was still the best lap dance I’d ever had. About 10 minutes later, Duke reappeared from his VIP visit, looking disheveled and very pleased with himself. I asked him what happened, and the bastard wouldn’t tell me! In fact, to this day I still don’t know what happened in that VIP area. All he’s ever said about it is “it was the bomb, man.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but Jay and Gevalt had had roughly 5 or 6 lapdances from the same women, and were subsequently broke and in love with those women. I was also broke, and I think Duke had used a credit card up in the VIP area. Jay went to get some cash from the in-house money machine, and when he returned he said “It’s time to go.” The surcharge at the cash machine was $10. Gevalt didn’t have much to begin with, so we agreed it was time to depart. As we reached the door, we looked back into The Gentlemen’s Club, a place of wonder, delight, and all-nude women.

Jay: “Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn….”

Gevalt: “Yeah.”

Duke: “Didn’t we tell you this place was the bomb? Didn’t we say you’d be superstars up in here?”

Jay: “I know, but…I had no idea…”

Me: “You were getting more play than the pimps in the back corner!”

Jay: “I’m never going to the Cheetah again.”

Duke: “Once you go black, you never go back!”

Gevalt: “YEAH!”

It was a good night. Peace.