From sirkay@paranoia.com

I'm going to write a "review" of the strangest strip club I've ever
encountered. It was long ago, back in the dark ages, and far away, in
an alien world. That sounds like hyperbole and, of course, at one
level it is. On the other hand, it's also true: this place was not in
our time or world if we use 20th Century America as our reference
point. Now, I'm a positive kind of guy and actually enjoy all aspects
of life, including the dancers and the goings on at strip-clubs, so
generally my reviews are positive too. This one is different ... This
place effected me on a number of levels and since this is a special
day, I'm going to attempt to be serious and share some of that. I'll
give the historical review first with no guarantees of accuracy since
it was a while ago and then I'll tell you how I felt/feel ...

THE REVIEW:
The club: I don't remember the name so let's call it the FF
The place: Shinjuku red light district of Tokyo.

I was in Tokyo with a group of colleagues on a business trip and one
evening we decided to head out into the "entertainment district" to
see what fun was to be found. As was typical for the group, we ended
up on a small bar on one of the side streets, where my associates
literally drunk the place dry (I don't drink so I was probably really
there to ensure that everyone made it back home at the end of the
night). This, in and of itself could make an interesting story,
especially if I want to talk about how I was too naive to realize one
of the patrons was trying to get me to go home with his girlfriend -
but that's not the focus of today's ramblings. The other interesting
point was that at the end of the bars beer supply, we weren't allowed
to pay for anything - obviously the entertainment we'd provided was
sufficient compensation! My first exposure to Karaoke - I *don't* do
Karaoke! 

So we found ourselves wandering the streets again somewhat later at
night. Now, in this region of town, pretty much every other building
is a bar or a gambling joint of some kind, so it's not exactly a high
class neighborhood. In fact there were a number of signs on the wall
advertising what seemed to be hourly rates (at that time my Nihon-go
consisted of "Hai" and sushi) so I was wondering where the parking
lots were. Eventually, I realized these were the rates by the hour for
the "love hotels"! I did say I was young(er) and (more) naive, didn't
I?

So, during this wandering, we were continually approached by guys
whose total command of English was "Fucky Fucky show?" - about the
same as my Japanese but in a different sphere. We kept ignoring them
since, even if we were interested (and we were!) we couldn't negotiate
and were paranoid about being ripped off. So we kept wandering.

Finally a guy dressed in a genuine Burberry overcoat came up and said
"Good evening, gentlemen. Would you be interested in seeing a
show?". This clearly had more promise since this guy's English was
better than some of the folk in our group! So we chatted for a while
and he explained that there were strip clubs tucked away in all sorts
of corners of the district and he'd be happy to take us to the best
club in Tokyo. We negotiated for a while and agreed on a mildly
outrageous fee for the whole group (about $50 a head if I remember
rightly) and headed off following this guy.

He lead us through all sorts of twists and turns until we arrived at a
stairway leading down to the club entrance. Since I was the only sober
person in the group, I spent most of the trek talking to our guide and
learned that he'd spent some time in the UK, both at Oxford and in the
Soho district of London (a fair contrast). He told me that many of the
clubs were closed to "gaijin" (foreigners) but that the club he was
taking us to was the best of the open clubs. He was actually a
cultured and reasonable man.

We negotiated the staircase, not all without incident, and then had to
re-haggle the entrance fee with the guy at the ticket window (being
sober has some advantages - the posted fee was much higher) but
finally we made it inside. Our guide departed, having taken his share
of the fee, offering to escort us to other places on other nights if
we were so inclined.

Entering the club was very much like going into the New Century in SF,
at it's most up market, for those of you familiar with that place,
except there was less space in the lobby - this is Tokyo after
all. Things were clean and shiny and generally up market - if anybody
paid the posted fees, they ought be up-market!

The main room had a large stage with a walkway leading to a circular
end stage. Seating was theater style, with a couple of rows facing the
runway and about 6 rows back from the stage. As gaijin we were, of
course, seated in the back row.

Off to the side there were a couple of curtained booths and that was
pretty much the entire club.

So we sat and waited for the show to begin ...

Music started and a reasonably attractive Japanese girl came onto the
stage in a nightdress and danced around for a song. The second song,
she came back on and danced nude. So far, pretty standard ...

The third song, she came back on with a basket of toys and wandered
around the end of the stage, offering customers the chance to insert
various mechanical devices into various body orifices. One of the
curious things was that no one was tipping anything! At the end of
this song she wandered off and we thought we'd understood how things
worked here and began to feel more comfortable. Not that different to
back home ...

A second girl came out. This one a little older and covered in Tattoos
but still reasonably attractive. First and second song, as
previously. For the third song, she also brought out a basket, but the
toys were different: in place of dildos and vibrators this was filled
with food and drink! She repeated the previous girls performance but
with a variety of fruit and vegetables ranging from a carrot right up
to a fair sized melon or two!! And she or the audience ate the veg
after it had served its other purpose. I have to say that, while they
was nothing remotely erotic about much of this performance, it was
curiously fascinating to watch the entirety of a quite large melon
disappear into this dancer's vagina, while I think there was still a
large carrot protruding from her anus. A customer ate the carrot too!
She "swallowed" a melon and then got up, walked around the stage and
began to shake the little pieces that remained of the poor fruit out
of her body as she walked. Her finale was to insert a beer bottle and
to bring it out with the top removed and proceed to drink from it. I
wasn't the only member of the group that felt the need to cross my
legs on seeing this, I'm sure.

So maybe we hadn't quite got the hang of the way this place worked and
were feeling a little less comfortable ... We're not in Kansas anymore
Toto!

The next girl looked about 14 and came out for the first set wearing
pigtails and a gym slip. At the end of the second song, as she was
leaving the stage, she shouted something to the audience. Immediately,
most of the guys at stage side seats got up and began to play "paper,
Rock, Scissors". An oldish man (late 50s) in a conservative business
suit clearly won - although what the rules were is still beyond me -
and clambered onto the stage.

The dancer came back onto the stage carrying a blanket. There was a
brief conversation then she pulled down the guys pants and began to
give him a blow job on stage! Some eyes bugged out in our part of the
room. After sucking for a while, she managed to get him hard!! so she
put a condom on and laid back while he fucked her. I won't comment on
the performance but to say that it didn't look like either of them was
having much fun. Eventually, he came, his friends applauded and the
dancer left the stage.

This set the pattern for the next few dancers: the only variables being
how pretty the dancer was and how old the guy was. Young guys were
hard by the time their pants dropped; one old guy never managed to get
hard at all ...

The strangest thing about all this was the normality of it all: some
of these guys were bankers on their way home from the office and had
just stopped off to fuck a dancer on stage, instead of going for a
drink!

After a while, everyone in the front rows got up and formed a line
next to the booths. A couple of dancers, including the bottle opene,r,
went into the booths and the guys began to troop in one by one. The
average time in the booth was less than 2 mins as I remember and often 
about 10 seconds! 

I noticed that our guide was standing by the door, so I wandered over
to ask him what was going on in the booths - did I mention that I was
naive? :-) He replied "masturbation usually" in a perfectly off-hand
manner. I asked the next obvious question and he said "no charge. It's
part of the girls' service to the customers".

I noticed a US military type had joined the line, so I watched and, as
I expected, the service ended just as he got to the front of the
line. Not all facilities are available to gaijin even in the open
clubs.

The show started back up with a set piece by two performers: a lady
dressed as a nun and a very well endowed guy in furs and armor. This
was performed to music with thunder effects and so forth and consisted
of a rape, a beating and various acts of humiliation and bondage on
the girl, including being tied to a pole, anal sex, dripping candle
wax, ... I 'm sure you get the picture.

Then it was back to the three song sets again, with the third song
varying between toys and audience participation.

We'd actually stopped enjoying ourselves long before this point and I
think the only reason we were still there was the kind of "can this
really be happening" kind of mentality that causes people to look at
car wrecks.

We left ...

END OF REVIEW.

MY THOUGHTS:

This was an ugly place. It took me a while to realize why. I enjoy
dancers. I like girls who just do their stage act and won't come
within 10 feet of the customers. I like girls who give really nasty
lap dances. I don't see anything wrong with dancers who choose to go
beyond the bounds of polite behavior as part of their show and I've
seen toy shows in the US that I thought were interesting. I don't even
see anything wrong with prostitution if that's something that the
participants are comfortable with, although that requires a mind set
that I'd find difficult to maintain. I certainly have nothing against
people who embrace alternative lifestyles and enjoy pain, bondage or
humiliation even if I am more a pleasure, freedom and fun kind of guy
myself. So why do I say all this? Well, I don't think I'm too narrow
minded and am happy for people to do whatever they want in their lives
so long as the accord me the same tolerance. Why does this matter?
Because I found this club to be "wrong" and if I had the power, I'd
probably close it down. Why? Well, not because of what was being done
there, but because of the way it was being done.

The girls there had no freedom. They were cattle or property, not
human beings. There can be long arguments about who has control in
most clubs: the customer because he has the money or the dancer
because the customer wants what she's got - but here it was clear who
had control. The club owners were forcing the dancers to do whatever
the customers wanted. This was not the kind of environment I've seen
in any US club. Here, the most abusive the management gets is to
enforce silly rules about dress or behavior; there it was total
control with no allowance for any shred of human dignity.

I'm sure we've all heard stories about the kind of degradation that
women suffer in various brothels in nasty corners of the world. I can
clearly see how, because I saw the same feeling in an up-market strip
club in a supposedly civilized part of the world.

As it happened, I spent the place flight back sitting next to a
western dancer working in Tokyo - I sometimes wonder if people who
are later to become ASS-Cers are born with a sign on them that says
"I live for Strip Clubs" or some such - and we talked about how the
business works in Japan. She told me that sometimes the Western girls
have "power" and the guys go to them if they want to be
humiliated. The girls in the kind of club I was talking about are
generally "owned" by the yaccuza and are almost literally slaves: some
due to drug addiction, some due to debts from gambling or whatever,
some because their families have one of the above problems - and that
for some of them they had no rights, no dignity and no way out! As I
said before this was a "wrong" culture. 

I don't think this could happen in, say, the US because I don't think
it would be in anyone's mind set to take it. I know there are problems
in most clubs and many dancers feel trapped in situations they don't
like sometimes, but even in the worse case here, the dancer has some
power and some dignity. Some manage to thrive and make dancing an
empowering part of their lives. Even some people who do treat dancing
as a different way of approaching prostitution have the control of
choosing to do what they do and setting the financial compensation. I
hope I'm not still totally naive ...

I've never seen a situation anywhere else where something that can be
so beautiful, and many dancers are indeed beautiful, both on stage and
as people, managed to become something so degrading and so
dehumanizing, with so little apparent difference.

As I said earlier, I'm a positive kind of guy and I enjoy clubs and
dancers, and even these days some of the guys that hang out in the
clubs :-), but if all clubs were like this club in Tokyo, I'd take up
Origami and never set foot in a strip club again.

I'm glad they are not!

As I said: a Knight Long Ago (feudal times) and Far Away (an alien
world called Japan) ...

We'll shortly return to your regularly scheduled programming and
apologize for replacing "Mr. Rogers" with "60 Minutes". 

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=    Sir Kay, Wandering Knight Errant   =
= Dragons Slain and Damsels Appreciated =
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