Let me preface all this by pointing out something that isn’t important to anyone except me: I don’t even like going out on Saturday nights. I think the devil was born on Saturday.
I don’t play with darkness, since as an Anglican Rastafarian, we fear darkness because who lives in the darkness? That’s right. Shetani .
What happened is, we were with a friend and it was his birthday and one of us, can’t remember who, probably Jemo, said, let’s go downtown.
Nothing good ever happens down town but we were tipsy and having the time of our lives and it was someone else’s birthday and why not? It’s a free country. So we found our way to a grimy strip club, huko karibu na River Road, places where the phrase “please hide my ID” was invented for, where even the devil fears to tread.
And I see why. In there, a man was dancing naked on stage; a standard issue male stripper—G-string, chest and ab muscles that look like an insect’s thorax, the look of somehow constantly being soaking wet.
His eyes are awake but his gaze is unsteady, making him appear like both hunter and hunted at the same time. The place oozes sleaze: neon lights on the walls brace themselves against the darkness.
Scantily clad women linger around the bar, choking the air with cheap perfumes and fruity body lotions.
I wouldn’t describe my reaction as shock, but I was shaken. A sign on the wall says beer is on offer—Beer Offer! 400 shillings!—and I curse the president a little bit. Four hundred shillings? That’s enough to kill any man’s libido.
I don’t kiss and tell so you won’t know the name of the strip club, pardon me, gentleman’s club.
I only call it that because you know Kenyan society’s obsession with political correctness, which if you ask me, is only a front for hypocrisy. Isn’t that why corruption suddenly seems more palatable when you call it lobbying. Or prostitution, sex work. Conman? No. How about businessman?
Moral high ground aside, one of the strippers, with a vacant look in her eyes, makes as if to offer me a lap dance but I politely decline because someone’s daughter can smell when another woman looks my way in the streets.
So, she (the stripper, not someone’s daughter) cleans the table and gets on top. Of the table, not me. She says the dance is free, I am only paying for her attention. Which is clever, I haven’t heard that before. But knowing that fire burns, doesn’t prevent burning.
This is a family newspaper so I cannot say what happened next, other than she ended up wearing a suit. And it was her birthday. She was in red heels and nothing else, and that’s how I discovered I like women in red heels (and nothing else).
If the trumpets sounded at that time, I would not blame St Peter for me not making it past his gates, although, being Kenyan, I could “lobby” my way in? Anyway, I have since repented.
In there were men of all kinds. There was even a married man spanking one of the ladies with his ring hand and I had to admire the audacity. He looked like an emoji, most notably the emoji for “eggplant”.
Each was there to wrestle with their demons of loneliness, depression, or sexual addiction for as long as they could afford to. Why was I here? Freedom…or loneliness?
With its numbing emptiness, you discover this is a pretty banal paradise: sex with a stripper is not good. But the idea of sex with a stripper is good. I suppose an argument could be made for the sensation of anticipation; maybe what makes a person happiest is imagining all the music they have yet to hear and fantasising about all the sex they have yet to have.
Maybe I like hanging out with strippers more than my mind is willing to admit. Still, I know what I know.
For me, the thrill is all about the ephemeral intensity. I find the strippers are pressure valves for all the flailing relationships out here. A woman (or man, hey I don’t know what you are into) dances for you, and she dances to the tune of your wallet. It's about power. Isn't it always about power? You are in a fantasy land where you dictate the rules.
Haven’t men always been slaves to their desires? Would strip clubs even exist if they were not based on this false promise? It is like vaccination against attacks on your manhood, although like all vaccinations, the immunity to guilt weakens over time.
In those three to four hours, you believe the fiction and forget your boss who wants you to work next weekend, you banish thoughts of KRA finding a new hobby to tax, and you feel like the ultimate player. You go back to those days when you thought you always had a chance.
It is lowbrow and pathetic, but it’s fun and you are allowed to look and you get to have a few body parts thrown your way too.
What would drive a man to spend money in an institution that generally degrades and strips—pardon the metaphor—away the dignity of women? I wager that this is less of self-interest and more of self-preservation. Prostitution, after all, is the oldest profession in the world, despite what you may make of the Kamiti Prison “nitumie kwa hii number” conmen.
Was I objectifying women or was I putting bread on the table for a young unemployed woman, one who lives in a country with dwindling employment prospects? The sort of moral conundrum between jailing an innocent person or letting a guilty person go free.
Does it even matter? Demons, exorcised. Dragons, slain. I once read something that claimed the hardest work a soul could do was to be aware. Part of me wants this to be true. Why are all these men here? What are they running from…or to? Maybe the most important question is, where can I buy red heels, size 38?
