I ain't no whore!

On the way home from Shea, I don’t remember how it comes up, but we’re talking about stripping, strippers, people who frequent strip clubs. What else is there to talk about, really, when you’ve just been to your ninth game of the season, you're stuck in traffic, it's ninety degrees outside and the air conditioning in the car's not working?

“It doesn’t make any sense if you think about it,” Z says, “going to a strip club and calling a stripper a ‘whore.’ Whoa! Wait-wait-wait a minute, you’re telling me the girls here aren’t innocent and virtuous?”

“But at the same time, it doesn’t make sense, a stripper getting offended when a guy calls her a ‘whore,” I stick my arm out the window, hoping to catch a breeze somehow snaking its way through the bumper-to-bumper traffic. “Oh, naw yew di’int, mothafucker! I ain’t no whore! I is puttin’ mah clothes back awn until you stop disrespectin' me!”

We erupt into laughter.

“I dunno man,” I shake my head. “Yeah, some chicks have kids to support and shit, but if you have to resort to stripping in order to support them, you probably shouldn’a had them in the first place,” I shrug. “And a lot of people caught in dire circumstances don't resort to stripping. You don’t see any Mexican immigrants coming to America saying, ‘I’ma start waving my exposed penis around for a living!’”

“My grandfather sure as hell didn’t become a stripper when he came to America.”

I guess I shouldn't really be talking. After a few weeks of unemployment, maybe I'll be paying a visit to Scores with sparkly thong and stilettos in hand.

-L