​The first lap dance I ever gave was to a man with no lap, while the bouncer coached me through it. And yes I got paid for this ludicrous arrangement, and even was tipped rather generously.

You heard me correctly. 

John* had volunteered to “take one for the team” as he said with a guffaw. He was ancient, having a good fifty years on my not even twenty-one year old baby stripper self. 

A gnome of a man, he was barely my height without my heels on (I’m a quarter inch shy of 5’4”) and waddled when he walked. His eyes were squinty looking under the layers of bloated fat resting on his face. And his belly protruded so greatly, that when he sat down, there was no place I could sit.

I looked at Walter*, the tall pony-tailed bouncer in horror. As I struggled not so gracefully into my lap dance shorts (there were rules about coverage at this club), I declared in the loudest stage whisper  “there’s nowhere for me to sit!”

​Public: open to or shared by all the people of an area or country. (Oxford English Dictionary)

We seem to be having a severe language issue in the United States. To quote from one of the greatest movies of all time, when I hear the word “public” used in connection with the word “access”, I often find myself thinking:

I do not think that word means what you think it means” – (Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride)

You see, when I think of the word “public”, images of libraries and city parks comes to mind. Museums like the Smithsonians in DC. Picnics at national lakes. Education being available through schools in the community.

All of these are PLACES that as a citizen of the United States of America I get (mostly) free and (fairly) unrestricted access to. Nowhere in this imagery do I see…

My BODY.

Yet somehow somehow society at large has accepted the false assumption that the nameless faceless “THEY” have the RIGHT to access my BODY. Others are making decisions that attempt to disempower my autonomy over my physical self.