“What do you talk to guys about?”

It was early in the night, maybe 9:30 or so, and the club was pretty empty. I had been sitting at the bar with P. for about 20 minutes, listening to his crabby opinions. I had already heard about why he hates the Grateful Dead, how many drivers he’d flipped off in Silverlake alone, and why he had overwhelming urges to run over men pushing baby carriages.

We had now moved on to 9/11.

“I know we did it. We were negligent. We knew that Bin Laden was planning to use airplanes as missiles, and we sat back and let it happen.” He was animated, he was angry, and he was sort of amusing - but not quite amusing enough to keep my mind from wandering.

“Mm-hmm…” I maintained pseudo-interested eye contact with him as I took a big gulp from my lukewarm water bottle and absentmindedly twirled the side tie of my bikini bottoms, tapping my platforms against the bottom rung of the bar stool. I wonder if I locked the passenger side door of my car…

He interrupted himself. “You don’t really care at all, do you?

“What? Yes I do!” I was caught. Damage control! I smiled at him coyly and put my water down on the bar. “No, I was listening. You said Bin Laden, and you are apparently a conspiracy theorist.”

“This is completely boring to you, isn’t it.” He tugged at the front of his blue Hawaiian shirt, and ran his fingers over his half-bald head.

“No, it’s a lot more interesting than what I usually talk to guys about, anyway.” That much was true, and it brought me to the aforementioned question.

“What do you talk to guys about?”

“You know, dumb shit,” I said. Think of something…anything… “I don’t really know. I listen to them talk about themselves.” Good save.

It was partially true. But the reality is that I’m not usually listening at all, mostly because when I do listen, I generally hear bits and piece of the following:

1. how good they are in bed
2. how clever they are in personal interactions
3. how successful they are in business
4. how much they enjoy going down on women (inevitable)

It’s riveting, really. And each of them believes that he’s fascinating and original. To customers, I’m a sounding board, a magic mirror…not so much there to talk, or even to listen, just to reflect whatever it is that they’d like to see.

So it’s not so much that I don’t care, it’s that the stripper/customer relationship doesn’t dictate that I care. Like with my borderline-anarchist, Bush-hating (yet Hawaiian shirt-wearing…almost a contradiction), it dictates simply that I provide the right response, that I buy into their fantasy, and in exchange, they - literally - buy into mine.