Romancing the pole

One of the most magical moments in my life (that doesn’t involve my children or their children) was the weekend that my husband asked me to marry him. We had been dating for about a year when we decided to take a trip to New Orleans. We had never been away together (In fact because I had my oldest son so young, I had never actually been on any trip without my kids – except for one spectacularly wild weekend on a college campus when I was about 20) so I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity for us to solidify our relationship. I did my normal pre-trip preparations – checking out books on the destination, researching hotels in the area, downloading driving directions and hours of operation and ticket prices for local entertainment venues, identifying area hospitals and Red Cross offices, and then compiling all of the information into three identical and neatly organized travel folders – One to carry with me, one for my mother in case she needs to find me and one for the trunk of the car just in case I lose my first copy. (Did I mention that I am terrified to travel?)

When we arrived in New Orleans (pre-Katrina) it was like landing on an entirely different planet! At this point you should understand that my entire adult vacation experiences include a week at Disney World and Sea World and one weekend in Chicago, so you can imagine how the host of drag queens, street performers, and drunken debauchery sparked my imagination! Everything was outstanding. We visited the cemeteries, the Aquarium of the Americas, Jackson Square, Anne Rice’s House, and, of course, the French Quarter! New Orleans French Quarter is fantastic! We walked and drank Hurricanes, window shopped and drank Hurricanes, listened to live Jazz and drank Hurricanes, visited a Voodoo Shop and drank Hurricanes, and after about 3 hours of Bourbon Street and 15 Hurricanes my husband got down on one knee, looked up at me lovingly, and said, “I love you! I love the kids! Would you marry me?” I melted; it was like a fairy tale. I mean, how many of us get a second chance at real love. I inhaled deeply and I answered the way every man in love hopes for and screamed, “Are you fucking with me?” (A lady, wearing a bedazzled tee shirt, Bermuda shorts, a sun visor and fanny pack, who happened to be passing us at the time assured me he wasn’t) And so, we became engaged! And what do all newly engaged couples do? That’s right! They go to a strip club! (Calm down, we were in New Orleans it’s like a law there. Plus, it was either that or a drag club and given the tender and intimate nature of the celebration that would have just been tacky!)

Now, I have been to strip clubs before, well one actually. My friends and I went to amateur night at our local strip club. A girl we knew (not necessarily liked) was entering and we went to heckle. However, she ended up arriving at the club and passing out in the bathroom before hitting the stage. We found her crumpled around the toilet dressed as a schoolgirl (or maybe Gogo from the Kill Bill movies, I’m not sure). My friends and I decided to show mercy on her and carried her out of the club. Michelle took her arms and I took her legs (which lead to the revelation that she came in without underwear, obviously she had prepared to dance to a very short song…, but I digress) and after making sure she was safe we went home. But even after all of that, I had never seen anything like a New Orleans strip club. These women were gifted to say the least, the very least. Women were dropping to splits and popping back up on beat, swinging round and round on the bright shiny poles (sometimes upside down) holding on with only one leg, and gyrating into more positions in a single lap dance than I had during my entire 4 day stint of Yoga and Pilates that I learned from a video I check out at the public library (Side note: I pronounced Pilates – “pie-lates” – until my sister corrected me, unfortunately I had mispronounced it no less than 15 times publicly before she “smartened me up”!). I could not believe the moves on these chicks! Did you know that there are women who can squeeze their butt cheeks together so quickly and forcefully that they make a clapping noise. It was magnificent (like that Statue of the Virgin Mary that cries). That night was so romantic! Here I was, engaged for nearly 45 minutes, drinking what I believe to have been my 16th Hurricane, stuffing dollar bills in the g-string of blue-eyed black woman, while she danced on my table in Lucite platform heels to Warrant’s Cherry Pie. That just screams commitment, love, and marital bliss! Am I right?

The next morning we woke up incredibly hung-over and incredibly broke and incomprehensibly he still wanted to marry me. But why? I can’t make my ass clap, I can’t work a pole, I have a trick knee, and my brief foray into thong underwear went very, very badly! Maybe it’s because I have raised four children to respect and love themselves, as well as each other. Or perhaps, it is because I have chosen to learn from my mistakes rather than to wallow in them. Or it could be because I have loved him more freely and honestly than I ever thought was possible. To tell you the truth, it could be any of those things but it is probably because I can drink like a sailor without throwing up and that night, back in our hotel room, I did my own striptease (except I was wearing plain white underpants and my favorite Keds’ tennis shoes). I guess he just loves me because I'm me!