The Men Who Actually Had Fun at the Strip Club

People imagine every man in a strip club is either a creep or a heartbroken husband sobbing into a vodka soda. Some of them were. But a lot of them were just having a blast — and those were my favorite nights of work.

The happy ones

There was a type. They'd come in grinning, already laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing. They tipped beautifully. They said please and thank you. One guy just wanted to admire a pair of spectacular tits because his wife didn't have them and he thought they were hilarious and magnificent in equal measure. Novelty! A couple of drinks, a lovely chat about his kid's soccer team, a generous tip, and home to his wife by midnight.

The sad ones

Then there were the men who'd arrive looking like somebody had been explaining their failures to them for a decade. They didn't want a lap dance so much as a chair and a woman who'd listen without rolling her eyes. I'd say something sincere — 'you seem like a really decent guy' — and you could watch their shoulders drop three inches.

Those confessions were the ones that wrote my book. Not because those men were saints, and not because their wives were monsters. But because the pattern was so damn repetitive: a good man, a marriage that had turned into a performance review, and nobody at home who seemed glad to see him.

The difference between the happy regulars and the sad ones usually wasn't the club. It was what they were going home to.

What the happy ones had at home

Here's the part people don't expect. The cheerful guys often talked about their wives with real affection. She knew where he was. She teased him about it. Some of them came in with a bachelor party and left early because she'd texted something filthy and he had somewhere better to be.

Those marriages had something in common: play. Novelty. A sense of humor about desire. Nobody was keeping score, and nobody was pretending sex was a chore to be scheduled between the dentist and the PTA.

You don't need a pole. You need a pulse.

I'm not telling you to open a club in your basement — although if that's your thing, mazel tov. I'm telling you the easy joy those happy men had is available at home, between two consenting adults who still find each other funny. Get curious. Be a little ridiculous. Wear the thing, tell the joke, try the new idea you'd both enjoy. Nobody owes anybody anything — but enthusiasm, when you actually feel it, is the most generous gift in a marriage.