The American Dream in a Strip Club
My shirt glew with spectacular neon colors set off by the black lights in the dimly lit strip club called “Emerald City” in Port Charlotte, Florida. Cigarette smoke filled the air and burned our lungs as the loud rap played. We soon were able to see the stage in the center of the establishment where a girl clad in high heel boots and a quickly disappearing bikini provocatively displayed herself as she moved to the music and touched herself for the men.
My friends were too nervous to sit main stage in front to get the full experience so we sat in the back and talked to Denver about this and that until he convinced the rest of our troop to sit at the stage to get a full taste of America.
The place was America in all of its honest truth, for its good and its bad, the perfect metaphor for all the hopes of all the poor Italian and Russian and Irish immigrants traveling west in hopes of a better life. And I suppose this was an Ellis Island of sorts, where poor girls who grew up in poor hovels with abusive parents, pederast dads, rapists boyfriends, now stand at the horizon of promise and opportunity, like the millions of tired, poor, huddled masses that came before them. They are given new names, in which to begin their new lives away from the horrors of the past. Here they are able to work their way outta the gutter, with g-strings fulla ones and twenties from lap dances. Hundreds of dollars a night is the beautiful sound of the heart beat of the American Dream, alive and well, committing all the same holy sins that Fitzgerald saw all those long, long years ago.
The women danced, rolling their hips, spreading their legs, using their bodies as power, showing off the beauty of the female form to symbolize to us the beauty of the American Dream's first appearance, what with all the freedom and opportunity to break away from your socio-economic bonds by any means necessary, but deep inside they are empty and sad from a lifetime of hurt and pain and being raped by their users that now all they can do is dance and show off their priceless, holy forms which attract all the perverts and scum of the suburban American towns that want to get their cocks teased for the dollar; who take the priceless female body and reduce it to next to nothing, almost. And I say "almost" because the women are not prostitutes-- they still retain some dignity, and I love them for this: their undying dream and drive to take themselves away from their old past lives that they are willing to sacrifice their own innocence for it. Sad is this state. But sadder yet is the fact the girls were put into such a position in the first place.
It was America reflecting in on itself.
And Denver saw all this. He saw the inner beauty inside them and this is what made him go there nearly every day. “I like the atmosphere in this place,” he said as he took a long drag from his cigarette. “I love women.” I put my arm around him and he smiled at me. It is expected that he lives there, and is friends with all these beautiful dream dancers, for he, too is a Dream; the perfect embodiment of MY dream. He and I are the opposite in the same way that we are the same. We are Yin and Yang, he and I. I love all of his holy immorals and brutal honesty, and he loves me for my innocence and timidity.
My friends were too nervous to sit main stage in front to get the full experience so we sat in the back and talked to Denver about this and that until he convinced the rest of our troop to sit at the stage to get a full taste of America.
The place was America in all of its honest truth, for its good and its bad, the perfect metaphor for all the hopes of all the poor Italian and Russian and Irish immigrants traveling west in hopes of a better life. And I suppose this was an Ellis Island of sorts, where poor girls who grew up in poor hovels with abusive parents, pederast dads, rapists boyfriends, now stand at the horizon of promise and opportunity, like the millions of tired, poor, huddled masses that came before them. They are given new names, in which to begin their new lives away from the horrors of the past. Here they are able to work their way outta the gutter, with g-strings fulla ones and twenties from lap dances. Hundreds of dollars a night is the beautiful sound of the heart beat of the American Dream, alive and well, committing all the same holy sins that Fitzgerald saw all those long, long years ago.
The women danced, rolling their hips, spreading their legs, using their bodies as power, showing off the beauty of the female form to symbolize to us the beauty of the American Dream's first appearance, what with all the freedom and opportunity to break away from your socio-economic bonds by any means necessary, but deep inside they are empty and sad from a lifetime of hurt and pain and being raped by their users that now all they can do is dance and show off their priceless, holy forms which attract all the perverts and scum of the suburban American towns that want to get their cocks teased for the dollar; who take the priceless female body and reduce it to next to nothing, almost. And I say "almost" because the women are not prostitutes-- they still retain some dignity, and I love them for this: their undying dream and drive to take themselves away from their old past lives that they are willing to sacrifice their own innocence for it. Sad is this state. But sadder yet is the fact the girls were put into such a position in the first place.
It was America reflecting in on itself.
And Denver saw all this. He saw the inner beauty inside them and this is what made him go there nearly every day. “I like the atmosphere in this place,” he said as he took a long drag from his cigarette. “I love women.” I put my arm around him and he smiled at me. It is expected that he lives there, and is friends with all these beautiful dream dancers, for he, too is a Dream; the perfect embodiment of MY dream. He and I are the opposite in the same way that we are the same. We are Yin and Yang, he and I. I love all of his holy immorals and brutal honesty, and he loves me for my innocence and timidity.
posted by Tserrof at 10:46 PM
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