Aleta was not what you'd call "innocent" or naive but she had never been to a strip bar, either before or since we married. Whenever the topic came up she'd roll her eyes and scowl disapprovingly.
"What do you have against it?" I asked her after dinner one evening.
"Well duh," she said without a pause. "It's demeaning, for one thing."
"In what sense?" I asked, leading her into territory I knew she couldn't defend.
"Oh come on," she said. "Those women are nothing but sex objects. It's dehumanizing."
"Oh, no," I said, "You've got it all wrong. They are sexy women, appreciated by the men in the audience. The girls are having a blast and the men love it."
"Sex is just a commodity for them," she said. "There's nothing personal about it. It's cheap."
"How do you know?" I asked.
That stopped her. She glared at me. "I just know," she finally said.
"No you don't."
Aleta became very focused on clearing off the table and that was that.
A few nights later we were out on the town. Even after six years of marriage we still enjoyed dressing sharp and going out, dancing, having a couple of drinks. I will say I have an attractive wife, especially when she's got a little cleavage going on, legs up to here. It is not unusual for men to ask her to dance when we're out, and it is not unheard-of for them to get a little frisky on the dancefloor. From my point of view, I am glad to know that this hot-looking beauty is with me, and it doesn't take anything away from me if some guy steals a kiss or gets a little handsy on the floor. In fact, it seems to me that after a night like that I reap the benefits when we get home, my beautiful wife is hot-hot-hot and ready for anything. There is also something about that situation that I like, though I can't explain it.
Out of a sense of fairness, I suppose, or maybe because she feels like I do, she sometimes encourages me to ask a lady to dance, especially if she thinks it's somebody I've got my eye on. I don't mind getting some hottie in my arms for a few minutes, and nothing serious ever really comes on it. Some kissing has happened, and actually twice I have been groped rather aggressively on the dancefloor. Poor me. Between Aleta and me this is all part of the game, we are a fairly attractive couple and we might as well enjoy it while we can.
We'd been dancing at Owen's Downtown Hangout, a well known dance place in our city, but there wasn't much going on. The DJ was playing a lot of mellow stuff and there were not many people there. Looked like maybe a convention in town, a bunch of burnt-out guys in suits, some of them hitting the juice pretty hard. So we were taking a break, sitting at the bar, and I said, "What would you like to do?"
"I don't know," she replied, "But we ought to go somewhere else."
"Where?"
"I don't know," she said. "Surprise me."
"Okay, let's go to the El Raton for a drink."
"What's that?" she asked.
"It's a strip club," I said. "We can walk to it from here."
"Why would I want to go there?"
"You might find it educational," I laughed.
"Huh, I can go to school if I want an education."
"Okay," I said. "That's fine. We don't have to go there."
This was a jujitsu move, where you use your opponent's momentum against them. She could not let me claim victory by giving her the last word. I waited.
We nursed our drinks for a few more minutes, watching the few dancers who were in the place, and then she said, "Oh okay then. Fuck it. You want to go there so much, let's go. I'll just keep my mouth shut."
"Oh no," I said, exercising my advanced marital arts. "I don't care if we go or not. If you want to go, we can go."
She glared at me for another minute. She took a swallow and said, "Okay, let's go there."
"Go where?"
"What'd you say, the Rat?"
"El Raton is what I said," I said cheerfully.
"Yeah, okay, let's go there."
"Go where?"
Pause. "El Raton, or whatever you called it."
"Do you really want to go there?" I asked, pulling her in deeper.
"Sure," she said.
"Say it."
"Say what?"
"Tell me you really want to go to El Raton. I don't want to go if you don't want to."
Ooh, if looks could kill. She tried a little jujitsu of her own. "Okay, smart-ass. I really want to go to El Raton. I want to see the strippers. I want to see their tits. Is that better?"
"Perfect," I said, reaching into my wallet for a card to pay the tab.
It was a walk of two blocks. The night was beautiful, cool, breezy, and Aleta was beautiful and radiant, though somewhat pensive. On the way over, she said, "You want to tell me what I'm walking into?"
"Sure," I said. "I've been there two or three times, I guess. You go in and there's a bar on the left, with tables set out on the floor and a stage at the front of the room. The girls dance on the stage, and there's a row of seats right up front. Mostly the more gung-ho guys sit there, and it's good practice for them to tip. They tip by putting money in the dancer's g-string if she's wearing one. If they toss it on the stage she'll get it."
"I see," Aleta said. "If she's wearing one, huh? So sometimes they're not wearing one?"
"As I recall," I said. "Sometimes the ordinances change or something happens, but this is nude dancers, yes. They start out wearing something. There's a pole on the stage and the girls play something on the jukebox. It's pretty standard."
"I see," Aleta said again. "Let's not sit in the front, okay?"
"Sure," I said. "The dancers come around asking for tips after they dance, and I think they do lap dances if you pay for it."
"Hmm, I see," she said again. Apparently she had an idea what a lap dance was. "Anything else?"
"I don't think so," I said. "Just have fun."
"Yeah, sure," she said, then suppressed her cynicism. "I'll see what I can do."
There was a kiosk facing the sidewalk, taking five bucks a person to get in. I could hear "It's Raining Men" playing inside. We stepped in the door and stood for a minute to check it out. Aleta's eyes went everywhere, adding it all up, checking out the kind of people who were there, the dancer, the music, the bar. It wasn't crowded, maybe twenty or thirty people. Some single men but it was mostly couples.
We took a table on the far right end, opposite the bar. There were fewer people on this side; I thought it might be more comfortable for Aleta to be able to gawk and look around without being checked out herself. Speaking of which, several men, and several women, turned to watch her settle in to the table. She was definitely looking good, but nobody made a scene or a spectacle, just looked her over. In truth, some of the other wives in the place were looking very fine, too.
We didn't catch the dancer's name. She was lithe and young, smallish breasts and not much of an ass, but she knew how to move it. She was wearing a sparkly white outfit, with a little fringe on the top, and had big smiles for the row of guys in the front. Every minute or so one of them would reach up and tuck a bill in her outfit.
With the next song, she made a big production out of removing her bra. Well once you've seen one of these... She turned her back to the audience, tossed her fringey top onto the floor of the stage, and turned around with her hands covering her tits. Aleta's eyes were fixed on her, studying every move. I felt like she was evaluating the threat, more than appreciating the sexy girl. The dancer danced topless for two songs, then hooked her thumbs into her g-string and started teasing the front row. Sure enough, down it came, tossed onto the heap. She stood and spun around on the pole a few times, kicking her feet to give a quick view between her legs. Then on the next song she got down and dirty. She bent over and put her ass right in front of the faces of those men in the front, who were throwing money on the stage like crazy. Then she sat and spread her legs and ran her finger up and down her pussy. They were going nuts.
From my seat in the shadows, I'd have to say yeah, this was good. Aleta's hand came over to my thigh, under the table, and she slipped it up to give my cock a squeeze. I felt like she was checking, and I also thought it was pretty good that I was having a normal reaction. Like, yes, honey, this is a sexy woman, and yes, honey, I like it.
At the end of the song, the dancer swept up all the money with her hands, grabbed her outfit, and trotted off the stage. A few seconds later she reappeared wearing her outfit, with a tip-bucket in her hand, and began circulating among the crowd, starting at the far end.
"I'm going to give her a few bucks when she comes around," I told Aleta.
"Sure," she said. "Makes sense."
The man who had been in the ticket booth earlier came out on the stage with a microphone. "I'm glad you liked Dahlia," he said, "She's hot, isn't she? A real pro. And remember, she's available for lap dances, we've got private rooms in the back. Now, get ready to have your mind blown by one of the most beautiful and sexiest women our town has to offer. Put your hands together for the beautiful Angelique!" The jukebox began blasting the first bars of "Mothership Connection," and the curtain opened for the next dancer.
Wow, this one got my attention! She was what we call "a long drink of water," tall and lean but with beautiful bouncing D-cup breasts and definitely curves. Her torso tapered at the waist, and jutted out to offer a butt with some meat on it, a full round ass with the tiniest thread of floss separating the cheeks. She wore a sequined red top and g-string and came out writhing like a snake-charmer's cobra coming out of a basket. She had a big smile which she radiated to the whole room before focusing on the row of drooling perverts right in front of her, who were already fumbling for their cash.
I glanced at Aleta to see how she was taking it, and she was white as a sheet. She looked at me as if in horror.
"Are you all right?" I asked her.
"I know her," she said. "That's Monica, from the gym."
"Oh, that's nice," I said. I figured this would make the debauchery a little easier for her to handle.
"Not nice, really," she said. "Weird. Very, very weird. I never thought of her like this. I mean, I've been to her house, I have met her husband. I didn't know she did this." Her eyes were riveted to the stage.
"Pretty girl," I said, casually.
