Lap Dancing

I first had a lap dance when I was eighteen.

All I knew of sexual feelings were the feelings I experienced reading porn magazines, which really turned me on. I loved looking at naked female flesh, seeing the sinuous, seductive curves of their bodies captured on paper.

I'd been to strip clubs before, of course. I'd bought private table dances, where the girl would dance naked in front of you alone for a fee of five dollars per song. Touching wasn't allowed, and I never tried to touch the girls. Some of them would tease closely, moving their breasts to within millimeters of my eyes or lips, but my restraint held.

Then I discovered one that was different. A large strip club, located out of town, one that I couldn't get to until after I was old enough to drive. There were many more girls there than in the small club I had gone to as a teenager. Further away from the prying eyes of the public, more action was happening. Private dances here were something special. Girls would actually brush up against you and you could feel their soft, warm bodies rubbing against your thighs. Some would blow in your ear, or even lick it.

Not all girls did this, but those that didn't soon found themselves running out of customers. The girls who did found themselves with so many customers that they started to hike their prices. Five-dollar dances became $10, then rose to $20.

At that price you would expect a special dance indeed, and you would find it. One day I saw something I hadn't believed possible. A stripper was enconsed in a man's lap and her breast was in his mouth.

Never in my life had I seen such a sight. I could not take my eyes off that fortunate man. In that moment the decision was made. I had to have it too. I could not live without experiencing that pleasure. All hesitation left me; eye and mind and soul was totally centered on that one objective.

I waited and waited for the stripper until her customer finally finished with her, paid, and left. I buttonholed her..can I have a dance? Of course, she said, she just had to go to the washroom first. (I later realized she did that to wash off each man's saliva).

A few minutes later she came and crawled into my lap. During the song, she pulled off her clothes and my hands were over her. I felt the warm smoothness of her buttocks, the gentle smoothness of soft female flesh.

And then, finally, her breast was before me, and I gingerly sucked on it. I could hardly believe it was really happening. I was actually sucking a real woman's breast! It felt wonderful, like an elixir, like an expression of joy and closeness I had hardly thought possible.

I didn't want it to end, but I only had twenty dollars with me and had to stop after that song. But from then on I was hooked. I came back to the club an average of once every two or three weeks for the next four years. Only a minority of the girls actually permitted customers to suck their breasts, but I remembered who these were and made sure I hired them as much as possible. These were usually not the best looking girls, but I didn't care. All of the strippers were attractive, to varying degrees, and more than anything else I wanted a girl who would let me place those sacred mammary glands into my mouth.

Girls varied in their friendliness. Some were no a pleasure at all, delivering lap dances in which they ground into my pelvis so hard it hurt, or wiggled around vigorously in a way that turned me off considerably. My favorite girls were the gentle ones, the friendly ones, who went slowly and caressingly, in a way that, if it wasn't actually love, provided a close enough imitation.

I still remember Vanessa. She went further than any other girl; not only did she let me suck her breasts freely but even undid my shirt buttons and nibbled at my chest. The first time she did this, entirely without prompting from me (and charging no additional fee) it brought tears to my eyes, and I could only stroke her hair and savor the pleasure of her tongue on my chest, sometimes leaning forward to kiss her forehead.

A lap dance typically lasts only five minutes, and I could seldom afford more than two, or, at the most, three. Those scant minutes were the greatest source of pleasure in my life. There was no feeling comparable to the mix of gratitude, affection, sensual delight, and sexual arousal I felt in the arms of a friendly, gentle lap dancer such as Vanessa, or others like her. Lap dancers were the only women I could put my arms around, the only women I could touch, feel, caress, fondle.

Here were women who didn't mind my desire for them, indeed expected it. If they saw a bulge in my pants it only made them smile; if a large wet stain suddenly appeared they didn't mind. Some, in fact, expected the customer to ejaculate in their arms and seemed surprised if I didn't. I usually preferred not to actually ejaculate there, largely because sitting in a couch with my pants still on isn't the most comfortable way to ejaculate, although often the arousal got the better of me and I did climax there in the club.

There is nothing like the female body, nothing like the soft gentleness it provides. I hungered for it when I was apart, deeply longed for the solace, the warmth, the intimacy I felt in the girls' arms. It was paradise, heaven, an escape from stress and pain and worry, a place where I could finally relax and unwind in gentleness and comfort.

Inside the arms of a young naked woman there is no thought of escape and no thought of departure. There is just the warm comfort of her body, the scent of her perfume and her cigarettes, the sweet curvy lips, the inviting softness of her breasts. I could forget the stresses of university, the arguments and combats of my home, the drudgery of everyday life. Here was my paradise, my personal taste of heaven in the arms of Aphrodite.

As Bertrand Russell put it, it provided "an ecstasy so great that I would want to sacrifice the rest of my life for a few hours of this joy." I could never stay away from the clubs for long; no manner of stern resolution to kick the habit would work. It was irresistible.

When a club was crowded - that was something else. In clubs without booths, you could see, albeit dimly, dancers performing on customers, sometimes over two dozen in a single club. The effect was mesmerizing. I remember one visit on a Saturday night to a crowded big-city strip club. Naked young women were slowly moving up and down on customers' laps. Everywhere I turned I saw beautiful, seductive female bodies. For a passionate 19-year-old man, it was an almost spiritual experience. The air was filled with the smell of perfume, drinks, and cigarette smoke; my ears raced to the pulse of dance music. But the girls, always the girls, their bodies entrancing me with their unearthly beauty, the coy expressions on their faces, the little circles they moved their hips in, just inches from their customers' faces.

I would see a girl dance for a man, place her arms around him, feel his hands on her breasts and her buttocks, blow into his ear, surround him with her body. She would finish, he would pay her, and within minutes she would be doing the same to another man. On a busy weekend night she might do over a dozen men in a single evening. Somehow the idea of the beautiful woman treating man after man to the pleasures of her body turned me on enormously.

To me the stripper was larger than life. She was a goddess, a Venus, a creature who merely by removing a few strips of cloth could become the fountainhead of all that seemed precious in the world.

In the Bible they would have called the strip club a house of wickedness, a den of iniquity. It was a house of pleasure, where men felt the pleasure of women's bodies and women felt the pleasure of men's money.

Camille Paglia once said a strip club is a temple where men go to worship women's bodies. For me, at least, that statement is true. The nude female became to me not just the symbol, but the epitome of pleasure. There was no joy in life comparable to the joys a woman could provide, merely by letting me drink in the richness of her flesh by sight, smell, touch, and taste.

Was what I was doing right? I wondered. And yet the girls were often so cheerful in their work. Some could be friendly, warm, and talkative. Sometimes girls would swap jokes with other dancers or customers even while giving a lap dance. More than once I would be observing another lap dance - while the man buried his face in her breasts, she would look up and wink at me.

Those days are long gone now, of course. Laws have changed, the Internet has advanced, clubs have closed, girls have retreated, and I have moved on. But I don't forget the memory of the first touch, the scintillating magic that so mesmerized my youthful mind.