She work it girl, she work the pole

Chuck,

I met this totally cool chick through mutual friends. The first couple of get togethers were in a group setting. I got up the balls to ask her out and we went on a couple of dates. Things were going really well. On the third date she tells me that she is a stripper. This isn’t her full time job, she is studying but I’m having a tough time coming to grips with this.

What should I do?

D

Yo D,

It’s time to cue up 50 Cent’s ‘Ayo Technology’!

She work it girl, she work the pole

She break it down, she take it low

She fine as hell, she about the dough

She doing her thing out on the floor

Her money money, she makin' makin'

Look at the way she shakin' shakin'

Make you want to touch it, make you want to taste it

Have you lustin' for her, go crazy face it

Now don't stop, get it, get it

The way she shakin' make you want to hit it

Think she double jointed from the way she split

Got you're head f**ked up from the way she did it

She's so much more than you're used to

She know's just how to move to seduce you

She gone do the right thing and touch the right spot

Dance in you're lap till you're ready to pop

If that isn’t the number one strip club song of all time, then Chuck doesn’t know what is.  Well, if you’re a little more white trash in nature, by all means dig out Guns ’N’ Roses ‘Appetite for Destruction’ and throw on pretty much any track off that album.

Either way, that’s a total stinger to run across in the early stages of meeting a young lady. In fact, other than trusted concentration camp commander during Hitler’s reign or head strategist for Al Qaeda, there may not be many worse possible occupations for a potential love interest to have. On the bright side, at least she isn’t a prostitute!

The first question that Chuck needs to ask is where the fuck do you find friends that have strippers in their inner circle? Jesus, Chuck lived a sheltered upbringing!

Ok, Chuck’s calmed down a little.

Look, Chuck can understand your discomfort on a number of levels:

Level 1

The thought of other dudes looking at your girls pink bits is disconcerting. We all like to think that our lady was a virgin when they hooked up with us and the thought of any previous crank action brings shivers of discomfort. Once you’ve settled in with your girl, her past love life drifts off into the distant past. Unfortunately, if your woman is getting her bits and pieces out on a regular basis in this day and age, you are constantly reminded that she wasn’t a choir girl when you hooked up.

On top of that, you’d like to think that you’re the only one getting the goods. In reality, groups of randy fellas are checking out her package each and every weekend with the belief that if they pass around a hat and can fill it up with enough change; she may in fact get familiar with some items from the refrigerators crisper draw.

Lets face it you’re uncomfortable with any other guy checking out your missus – Chuck can appreciate that.

Level 2

Chuck can tell you that there would be a number of buck’s parties that would have been ridiculously boring and uneventful without the services of a professional entertainer who just happens to remove all of her clothing.

Unfortunately society doesn’t recognise stripping as an occupation of any high distinction. Chuck can only imagine the look on your face when you introduce your new love interest to your mother and after being asked how her day was, your date responds “it was fine until I got a nasty burn on my inner thigh because the girl before me didn’t re grease the pole”.

Mothers and society in general just don’t view stripping as a noble form of employment and Chuck’s guessing by your reaction that you don’t either.

Level 3

Since it appears that you have a preconception about stripping as a form of employment, Chuck’s going to assume that you now view your lady friend as a bit of a skank. That’s a little unfair since you don’t really know her too well and have no idea how she lives her life. Look at Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. She was a street level prostitute who easily made the transition into princess simply by having a few extra bucks to rub together and decking herself out in some nicer threads. You’re assuming your girl is a ho!

So what should you do?

You can’t tell her to give up since you don’t know her well enough and you aren’t about to bank roll her through uni are you? Imagine if she found out what you did for a crust and told you to jack it in because she didn’t think highly of it. You’d tell her to eat rocks.

If you really like her, you need to keep moving forward and try to get a solid read on her as a person. You said she isn’t working the pole full-time, she’s just paying her way through uni. It would be smart to check out what she’s studying because any course titled “Call Girl 101” is probably a sign that she’s in no hurry to give up the life. At the end of the day, we all need to makes ends meet and the last time Chuck checked, spinning around a pole in a G Banger wasn’t illegal – in fact Cirque du Soleil charges over 100 bucks a ticket and no mother would ever cast a frown if you introduced your girl as a performer from that troupe would they?

Chuck can appreciate that accepting her job is going to be tough to get your head around. You could start showing up to all of her shows so that at least you are seeing what every other bloke is seeing and you can make sure that the cucumbers in the fridge are of a moderate size so as not to blow her out down there. You could also stop for a second and figure out that her earning power is probably double yours. Once you’ve done that, you can tap all of your networks and get busy filling out her diary – she’s a gravy train!

In all seriousness D, you need to take a deep breath. This isn’t an easy predicament to be in. At the end of the day, this girl clearly has a tidy package and you obviously like her. She may even like you. So take things slow, appreciate her and her body and see how things play out, 3 dates is way too soon to get all high and mighty (Chuck’s assuming that you’re not a man of the cloth, but even if you are, remember that Mary Magdalene was a ho and Jesus let her slide).

On the upside of all of this, if you can work through your initial uncertainty and you do find a long-term future together, think how cheap your bachelor party is going to be – not having to pay for entertainment after all, surely she’d cut you mates rates!

Dapper Dad

Dear Chuck,

I have recently started noticing a new breed of predator… I’ve been out and about quite a lot over the party season as you can imagine and saw it happening on more than one occasion – a man chatting up a woman while he had his kids in tow. I’m just wondering, is this fair game?

Thanks

Helen

Dear Helen,

A very timely question! Just this past weekend Chuck was at a local area café with his book club posse discussing The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald and lampooning the work of Dan Brown as mass produced tripe when one of Chuck’s fellow female clubbers commented on how cute a middle aged chap looked while assisting his two young sons aged approximately 2 and 4 with their scrambled eggs and babycinco’s.

Not one easily swayed by such things, but intrigued by women getting gooey in the loins over male behaviour, Chuck casually glanced up and over to where this bloke was playing the role of superdad. There he was, smartly attired in his navy blue Ralph Lauren polo, collar ever so casually popped. His salt and pepper hair delicately teased to give him the “I’m too busy with my boys to care too much about my hairdo” hairdo and an expensive pair of leather loafers on his feet. Judging by his outfit and lack of wedding ring, this guy was single and touched up just in case he happened to bump into any available schmoo that may cross his path on a Sunday morning.

Of course this intrigued Chuck, who mentally checked himself out of the book club meeting (the rest of the crew were sick of Chuck’s incredible insight into Fitzgerald’s use of symbolism anyway) and dialled his attention on to the dapper dad. Now that Chuck was hooked, things like how the boys were dressed started to stand out. Both kids were in their finest kiddie clothes, had both been cleaned and primped and were even sporting the same strategically manicured blonde little mops to match dads coif. Chuck’s instincts screamed that dapper dad wasn’t just planning for a chance encounter but was actually on the prowl!

It wasn’t long before Chucks instincts were put to the test. A tidy brunette in the 30-35 price range showed up and plonked herself down directly next to dapper dad and his child accessories. Chuck casually slipped on his sunglasses so that he could basically stare directly at the situation without looking like a downright paedophile. Dapper dad had his routine down pat. Right off the bat he cranked up the kiddie interaction meeting to almost overkill levels. All the boys wanted to do was scarf down their eggs and lick the chocolate off their pseudo coffees. All of a sudden dad was working his bag off to demonstrate what a doting old man he was. After 5 minutes of smothering his bewildered sons with attention, he then moved into

multi-tasking dad by checking his Blackberry and acting like some multimillion dollar deal was going down. Of course, since he was with his boys the deal would just have to wait. What struck Chuck as weird in this whole charade was that the dad didn’t seem to think that the only multimillion dollar deals going down on a Sunday morning were typically of the illicit variety. Just what every woman wants, a drug baron with young kids!

The show didn’t stop there. For part 3 of the show, DD then proceeded to have a conversation with his now stupefied progeny that seemed designed to indicate that they were the latest recipients of MENSA membership. Chuck was positive that he was about to whip the newspaper over to his 2 year old and suggest that he knock off a Sudoku puzzle while he was slurping on his hot drink.

Chuck had to admire the guy’s routine, sure it had a few flaws but he was certainly putting out the vibe and the brunette sitting next to him kept sneaking peaks over the top of her menu and newspaper at the dog and pony show going on, clearly as besotted as Chuck’s book club mates.

And then he made his move.

In this instance, DD leaned over unprompted and made a recommendation off the menu for the young lady. It was as subtle and innocent an opening line as you could get and it came even more insulated and less threatening, wrapped in a 2 and 4 year old. Of course, this then led to what appeared to be a nice and friendly conversation that was distracting enough that the brunette had to tell the waitress to come back at least twice as she hadn’t managed to check the menu.

DD by now had completely forgotten the presence of his young sons and was locked into spitting game at his café prey. She of course was totally smitten by this poor single dad (he probably took the opportunity to lie that his wife had been tragically killed in a kayaking accident), who was spending his morning putting quality time in with his family. It helped that the dude was reasonably attractive, appeared to be successful and could clearly spin his shit.

Chuck leaned back in his chair and considered where this dude could go with this. There was no possible way that he was dragging poontang out of a café on a Sunday morning with two kids in tow. The best he could hope for was to get some digits and organise either a hook up or booty call later when the kids were out of his manicured hair. Chuck had to hand it to him, he had played it well.

And then it happened.

Dapper dad was angling for a phone number when out of nowhere his now unsupervised two year old who had begun standing on the plastic chair, over balanced and sent himself and the chair loudly clattering to the ground. The sound of the crash and the sons immediate wailing caused the entire café to turn their attention to the scene and wonder* simultaneously what the fuck the old man was doing letting his son climb all over the table and chairs.

* Interestingly enough, all of Chuck’s book club members are childless, so rather than wondering about the dad’s parenting skills, began debating whether it was permissible to piss themselves laughing at such an incident since lets face it nothing is funnier than someone falling over. The consensus was that if you could tell within the first second of contact that the kid wasn’t seriously hurt then yes you could crack up. New Reality Bytes rule right there.

Although the child wasn’t hurt, the accident was enough to totally kill dapper dad’s momentum. On top of that, the brunette was rattled as evidenced by the fact that she quickly waived the waitress over and ordered the first thing that she could find on the menu. Was it the accident, the fact that all attention was diverted from her (dapper dad was forced to nurse the son – much to his chagrin) or perhaps she realised that dad wasn’t interested in his kids during the time he was working her over. Who knows?

Dapper dad was scrambling too. Between reassuring his two year old and trying to reel the fish back in that only moments before he’d almost had in the boat, he lost all of his cute super dad coolness. Things got so bad that he even pulled out his deal making Blackberry and asked the brunette to punch in her number – a decidedly uncool move! By now the brunette wanted no part of the family guy routine and politely declined.

And just like that the game was over.

So in answering Helen’s question, yes it is par for the course to chat up women with your kids in tow, it’s even fair to use your kids as bait to big game hunt. However as evidenced by the above tale, it’s a skilled operator who can juggle all the variables involved in using children in such a scam which is why even the most seasoned pro’s live by the old adage - never work with animals or small children!