Going to your first strip club can be an exciting and scary experience. Believe me, I know – I just went to my first strip club yesterday. I loaded my boyfriend and sister (which, by the way, taking your sister to a strip club is a very awkward venture, and you may choose to forgo this step when you take your own adventure) into the car, and we went out to a strip club on the edge of town. The building was unmarked with no windows, and the only signage it had was “18+ SHOWGIRLS” on the outside, so we had absolutely nothing to go off of when we went to attend this strip club. You know what else is extra not-helpful? The internet.

Most strip clubs around here seem to be a bit too low-budget or too low-tech to actually have a website. Considering all we had to go off of was the odd banner on the outside of the building, we couldn’t figure out the name of the strip club to search it on the internet, either. Finally, with a Places application coming to the rescue, we found out only a little bit about the club – and what we found out was only due to user reviews. Unless you’re attending a top-of-the-line club, I’d be prepared for surprises, or the experience to be different from user reviews (after all, maybe they got themselves tossed out).

So, you used your browser to find all the information that you can, but that still includes a half-updated review about the cover fee that you recovered from fucktitties.com, which for some reason, doesn’t seem to be a very reliable source. Now what do you do? The movies always show the main characters giving dollar bills to the strippers. Is that something you should pick-up before you go, or are strip clubs advanced enough to have the technology to give you your ones while you’re there? In our case, when you decide you’re going out to a strip club at 8PM on a Saturday night when all the banks are closed, where do you go? Well, I can tell you where we went. To Wal-Mart. With a debit card. To withdraw lots of money in ones. Yes, mother-with-child behind me in the line, I did see that evil glare. Maybe I just really like soda machines; don’t be so judgmental.

So, now I have large bills for the cover fee and small ones for a tip. We drove our way over there in hopes that 10:00 at night would be late enough for people to be there. Thank god – it was. We walk in, and first impressions are not-so-good. The front desk consists of a guy smoking in a small, 3-foot by 3-foot room where the three of us barely fit. The kicker? The entire window in front of him is covered in metal bars and plexi-glass, aside from a small hole. Identification in hand, we give him our cover fee (which happens to be $10 for women and $15 for men) and walk through the very-heavy door where we are greeted by a large, scary-looking bouncer with chains blocking off the way in.

He kinda eyed up my sister awkwardly, used a flashlight to check her ID, and removed the chain to let her through, then he did the same with me (minus the eyeing portion). For the boyfriend, though, he checks the ID, and then he is patted down for any weapons or drugs. Their policy is to pat down all males who come through a door – even a small, 140 pound guy traveling with two women.

Let me explain the place: It’s pretty darn dark (don’t expect to be able to read your watch), but nothing looks too horribly unclean. There are little strobe lights everywhere, and there’s actually an ATM near the bouncer (but I’m not sure it would give out ones and never asked). There’s a large area toward the opposite end of the entrance where you can watch while the strippers get dressed and chat (loudly) with each other, and towards that end, there’s also a “private” room that has a see-through glass-panel side so the bouncers can moderate for icky activity. Toward the private room, there’s community-like seating where all of the chairs face the stage in a living-room like fashion. The stage is relatively large, with enough room for the stripper to easily use her pole and move around, but it wasn’t any bigger than ten feet. Toward a back corner of the store, was a small adult store which includes a bunch of jelly toys, lots of small-sized lingerie, and stripper platform heels.

This was our next dilemma. Where to sit? There’s the community-style area in the corner, the chairs next to the stage, and the rows of chairs that are further back from the stage. We didn’t know it at the time, but the community-style area is for guys to sit and watch the show from further back, and the not-dancing women will hit up the guys for private dances. The rows of chairs further back from the stage are for watching the dancing when you don’t want to tip, and again, women will flirt with you there to try to get you to pay for a private dance. We chose the chairs next to the stage which, as it turns out, wasn’t a bad place. In these places, the on-stage woman will dance on your lap or right in front of you to earn tips, and there’s a black “ledge” in front of you where you place your tip. The dancer will notice your tip and come over to you. So no, it’s not like the movies (at least in this club) where you place the money in their thongs.

Each girl would be on stage, starting in some lingerie (like what is sold at EdenFantasys). Each woman would dance to four songs, and during the songs, slip off clothing. During their dancing, some would come up and dance on your lap before you had placed a tip, but you got a much more thorough lap dance if you placed a tip. This is where the next awkward comes in: What, exactly, do you do when the person in the seat next to you is getting a lapdance – especially when it is your sister? There’s a naked woman on my sister’s lap grinding her breasts into my sister’s face; like, do you watch the stripper or what? If it’s something across the room, it’s fun to watch what the stripper is doing, but what are the rules of etiquette when it is your sister? You don’t want to stare and be rude about it, but there IS a naked woman next to you, so it’s a fine line. (Which, by the way, my sister adds that you should not wear a mini-skirt to the strip club if you expect to get a lapdance, as having pussy-stubble from a stranger rubbed on your thigh is an awkward experience.)

So you want to get a lapdance, right? Their lapdances mostly included grinding on your lap, pressing their breasts in your face, or sitting on the tip ledge and spread themselves for you. But, how much do you tip? I mean, I feel like a dollar is a bit cheap for the small lapdance that you get, but it’s impossible to tell how much others are tipping. We settled on a couple dollar bills for each tip, but we still never figured out how much you’re supposed to tip.

Really, though, that was about the gist of it. It was neat to see the women strip, and they all wore very sexy heels and moved with grace. Some of them did some very exotic and athletic stripper moves on the stripper pole (like climbing it), while others stuck to mostly floor work and dancing around the pole. There were bigger women, and there were also smaller, more athletic women who danced. When the women weren’t on-stage, it was normal for them to talk to some of the guys there and flirt with them. As this is a bring-your-own-beverage club, most of the middle-aged men who came brought a cooler or couple cans of beer with them to enjoy the show.

I think your experience will vary depending on the quality of the club you attend. We went to a small, rural-type strip club that wasn’t horribly low-class, but it wasn’t high-class either. Some of the women seemed like they really enjoyed it, while sadly, some of the women didn’t look like they were enjoying themselves. We stayed for about an hour an a half, and we did have a good time watching the girls and enjoying the music. Now, I hope you know a little better about what to prepare for when you hit up your local strip club!