Harley's

I was standing at the bus stop yesterday and a song came on the mp3 that whisked me back in time. I all of a sudden got nostalgic for Yellowknife again, but I've also been feeling the warm fuzzies towards the place in recent days since finishing "Late Nights On Air". All weekend, I was battling the conflicted feelings of wanting to go back and relive Yellowknife, but with a husband-to-be this time, and remembering how trapped I felt there.

"99 Problems" by Jay-Z changed that.

A few years back, while living in Yellowknife, I got a call one evening from a guy I was sort-of-kind-of seeing. He was nice enough and thought the world of me, but he was dumb as bricks and we had very little in common. I chalk it up to the fact that in Yellowknife, you carouse with people you would never carouse with anywhere else on earth. Anyway, shortly after we met, he went back out to camp where he was a cook. He was to be away for six weeks. A few days before he was supposed to come back, he called to say he decided to stay in 3 weeks more. I was furious so I went for a Walk of Rage (tm). (Sidenote: a Walk of Rage is when something bothers me so much, I have to go for a massively long walk, think things through and walk off all the rage in me. Trust me, it's therapeutic.) So on this Walk of Rage, I was wearing scummy jeans and white polo shirt, sneakers and pas de makeup. I was walking/storming up the main drag in Yellowknife, when I ran into NJ, a woman I worked with, and her husband. It was right in front of Harley's, the local peeler bar. NJ and her husband insisted I come with them to the strip club for a drink and in my agitated state, I agreed.

I never went to strip clubs, unless you count that one time for a stagette. Or when I did a radio documentary on amateur male stripper night. I never went to a strip club on a regular night when female strippers were earning their living. Harley's was a popular place in Yellowknife, and it was nothing for people to stop in for a drink on a night out. I also heard that they had rotating shifts of strippers come to town, but I could be wrong.

NJ and her husband were regulars at Harley's. I did not know this. This provided us with front row seats at the strip club. That month's rotation of strippers knew NJ and Husband by name, and they all came by for a visit. NJ, being very polite, introduced me to them all. I found it unnerving to have a stripper coo my name whilst petting my hand. The "show" hadn't started yet on stage, but it was well underway at our table. I looked away at one point to wave hello to someone I once worked with, and when I turned around, I was face to coochie with a stripper doing the crab walk across the table towards NJ with a shot of Sourpuss between her breasts. I was horrified to see NJ lick boobs and then do the shot. The stripper had a friend with a tray of Sourpuss shots for the rest of us to do. NJ's husband gladly complied, but I turned 10 shades of red and refused to do a shot of anything from the cleavage of a stripper. I do believe they goaded me and called me a prude. I felt odd and old and out of place.

Finally, the show started, which meant the crab-crawling strippers left our table and did their thing. I was shocked at their agility and athleticism. In awe, almost. How, I wondered, can they wear those lucite platform shoes and not slip? How do they not have blisters? I also wondered what their mothers thought and if their fathers were proud. And then I wondered how they practiced? How did they learn these moves? How long did they practice to fllick themselves upside down on a pole?

One girl came out and started dacning to "99 Problems" by Jay-Z. It is a great song and I love it. It's strutting music. It's music to feel tough to. I never pictured it to be a stripper song. With a lyric like "A nigga like myself had to strong arm a hoe This is not a hoe in the sense of havin a pussy..." you never think, this is a GREAT song to strip to. Yet here she was, flicking and squatting and thrusting around the stage. It was one of the most surreal moments of my life.

Now, three years and several lifetimes later, I hear that song and think of NJ's wide eyes and lascivious stare at the woman whose breasts she just drank booze from. Like I said, you do things in Yellowknife you never would anywhere else in the world.

Prudishly Yours,
xoxoSallyt