I'm Only Happy When It Rains

At the strip club, that is

I took this photo at noon today at a strip club in Hollywood. I was there working on a story I’ve got coming at Forbes.com. I had been at this strip club before. The first time I was there it was probably the late Nineties, and it was this place where you could see dancers that weren’t like other dancers at other clubs. They had tattoos and did crazy acrobatics and I think one girl had a tramp stamp that read FUCK YOU or maybe FUCK YOU PAY ME. These days tattooed strippers are NBD, but in those days it was a revelation to see dancers who didn’t look like Barbie, who didn’t give a fuck what you thought of them, who danced for themselves not the crowd. In fact, I wrote a story about this place around that time for Detour magazine, where I had a regular column covering the sex beat. But I didn’t remember a lot of that until I was in the club, so I guess it was like time was a circle, and there I was going around on it, back to the beginning, returning to right where I’d started. Before I left, I asked if I could take some pictures and was told yes. So I wandered around the club a little, and the laser lights were going, flashing reds and greens and blues all over the place. I got so I was right at the end of the glowing stage and took the photograph you see here. Later it occurred to me that I’m only really happy when I’m in these interstitial spaces, where I’ve kind of slipped behind the curtain to see what people are really about, and it’s like living in the place that everyone wants to visit but is too afraid to talk about. Then I went outside. The sun seemed really bright. I could see the Hollywood sign on the hill from the sidewalk. The cars were whizzing past, oblivious to my transgression.

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