The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

In my final year at university, I was virtually friendless. One guy on my course, Rich (short for Richard), must have taken pity on me because he started inviting me to the pub to hang out with his friends, Colin and Rob, who were also in our course. Rich’s girlfriend, Sarah, often joined us too.

Rob, however, didn’t seem to like me much; in fact, he almost seemed to resent my presence. One night, when I got up from my chair and announced I was heading home, Rob let out a cheer, as if his favorite football team had just scored a goal.

Sarah was one of the most attractive women I've ever seen. She had blonde hair, soft eyes, and a girl-next-door vibe. She looked a bit like Sheridan Smith, but without the air of council estate menace that said if you got on her wrong side, she'd smash you in the face with a Tesco's pork shoulder. No, Sarah was an angel straight from heaven. How Rich and her were a couple, I'll never know, as Rich was the complete opposite of her: whereas her hair was golden, his was greasy; her face was glowing, his was chubby; her eyes were gentle and soft, his were bleary and bloodshot. Plus he had this enormous chin like Jay Leno's, he wore XXL shirts and I heard this one time, he broke a children's swing just by sitting on it. It was like Scarlett Johansson dating the Fat Controller from Thomas the Tank Engine. Like Princess Fiona and Shrek. Beauty and the Beast. These things may happen in movies but they just don't happen in real life. I once told Rich I thought his girlfriend was hot, and he grinned as if understood perfectly what I meant. Then he said, "You should ask her for a shag. She'd probably say yes." I never did ask his girlfriend for a shag, but who knows? Maybe she would have said yes. If she fucked a whale like Rich it wasn't too far a stretch to imagine she'd fuck a weirdo like me.

One night we went to the pub where we each drank roughly six pints of beer. Then we drove to a strip club in Rich's car. The memory of that car trip is strangely clear to me. I was in the back seats with Rob and Colin. Rich was driving. Sarah was next to Rich, in the passenger seat. Rich, Rob, and Colin (the "lads") were chatting away to each other about the upcoming strip club. Meanwhile, I was silent, as I almost always was back then. I knew I should talk but I felt anxious, as I did in most social situations, and I could never think of a single thing to say. But I've Got a Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas was playing on the car's stereo and I had the alcohol from six pints of beer coursing through my veins. It was the perfect song for that night because indeed I did feel that it was going be a "good good night".

We pulled up in a car park in Birmingham city center. The strip club was called Legs 11. It didn't look like a strip club. The building was part of Birmingham's Chinatown and as such, it was in the style of a Chinese pagoda, with multi-tiered sloping roofs the colour of jade, and elaborate red patterns on the outside walls. It looked like a place Buddhist monks would come to pray.

I'd passed this strip club many times in my life, as I'd grown up in Birmingham and often passed it on my trips to the city centre. But I've never dared to go inside.

First, we had to pay a ten-pound entrance fee. This was not ten pounds between us. This was ten pounds each. But I thought it must be worth it, and besides, I'd never been to a strip club before so at least it'd be a new experience.

Then we were in the strip club proper. My eyes fell first on a woman walking down a flight of stairs, a woman who was unusual in that she didn't have any clothes on, apart from a pair of knickers.

Rich saw me looking and nudged me. "I love strip clubs because whenever I walk in, there's like a pair of tits in your face. And it's like, whoa! A pair of tits!"

Unfortunately, I didn't share Rich's enthusiasm. I'd had one beer too many at the pub earlier and now was feeling rather strange. On the one hand, I felt surprisingly sober, but on the other hand, I felt completely devoid of any emotion, as if a surgeon had injected local anesthetic into the part of my brain that produced joy, fear, anger, sympathy, and all the rest of the emotions, and had left me feeling dead and numb inside. I felt nothing. It's a strange reaction to drinking six pints of beer, as you'd think I'd be drunk-dancing instead, pinching the girls' arses, causing a scene and generally having the time of my life, as drunk people do, but no.

The next thing I knew, I was being handcuffed on one of my wrists. I looked up to see a woman dressed in a bikini and a police hat. She didn't seem to be a real police officer, but if she was, then she should have been reprimanded for failing to wear her uniform because she was basically naked except for a few pieces of fabric covering her rude bits.

The woman gently tugged on the handcuffs to indicate she wanted me to go with her. I looked around at my mates for help. They were all watching and laughing. The woman tugged again, harder this time. So I smiled, shrugged, put my drink on the bar, and went with her. I decided to go with it. I thought my mates must have paid her to do this. I thought they must have slipped her some money and told her to come and give me a lapdance.

She led me behind a curtain to a private room, except it wasn't private because there was already a rich-looking guy in a suit getting a lapdance from one of the club's other dancers. He paid no attention at all to me as the bikini-clad police officer led me into the room and pushed me down into the chair.

And thus began my first-ever lap dance. I felt no emotion at all - no desire, no lust, not even any good-natured "this is all a bit of fun" type of feeling. I felt completely dead inside. The stripper removed her bra, revealing her boobs and nipples. Instead of feeling aroused, I just thought, "There's some boobs". I was ready to call it a night and go to bed. But the stripper had other ideas. She rubbed herself up against my crotch. I felt awkward and sat there, pretending to smile and enjoy it.

"Do you want me to keep going?" she asked.

Her question took me by surprise. Had she sensed I wasn't in the mood for a lap dance? I didn't want to hurt her feelings so I replied, "Sure." Besides, my friends had already paid for it. So she carried on.

At one point, she put her crotch near my face and moved her g-string out the way to show me her vagina. And there it was. The brownish, meaty outer labia; the pink, tender inner labia; and the vaginal opening itself, an ugly old man's lips. Do other men really find these attractive? I thought. It was just about the least sexy thing I could imagine. It was a turn-off, not a turn-on. Her vagina resembled the fatty part of a raw whole chicken from Tesco, like the part you'd cut off and give to your dog. Weren't vaginas just supposed to be holes you put your dick inside? Why did it have all these disgusting, fleshy flaps around it?

"Do you want me to keep going?" she asked again.

It seemed weird that she repeated that, so I said, "I'm sorry? Is this paid for?"

She looked surprised and then laughed. "No," she said.

My heart sank. I thought my friends had set this up for me and paid for it. It turned out I was wrong.

"How much is it?" I asked.

"Forty," she said.

"What?"

"Forty pounds."

Forty of the Queen's pounds just for a fifteen minutes lap dance? Jesus Christ. It would have taken a minimum-wage worker labouring for an entire day to earn the same amount of money I'd just blown in fifteen minutes. Luckily I had my student loan, but still; even that was finite, and in theory, I'd have to pay it off someday.

I stumbled up from the chair. "Can I pay now?" I asked. She led me back outside the private room and to the main bar area, where a big, bald tough-looking guy who might have been a bartender entered 40.00 into a card reader and then plonked it down in front of me. I swiped my bank card through the reader and then entered my PIN, making sure to shield the numbers.

Finally, I went back to my friends. Rich gave me a high five. "How did it go?" he asked.

"It cost 40 pounds," I said.

He laughed. "Yeah, they're expensive," he said.

"I thought one of you'd paid for it," I said. "Because she handcuffed me, like one of you'd paid for it."

But Rich had stopped listening to me and was now staring at a pair of breasts across the room.

A few more girls approached us after that, sensing my money like sharks smelling drops of blood in the water. They were like those charity people on the street who ask if you have a minute to talk about ending famine for a direct debit of just five pounds a month, except these girls were wearing a lot less clothing. I'd already spent a small fortune, wasn't that enough? I wasn't spending any more money here. It was too expensive. Even the drinks were ten pounds each.

"So, do you want a dance?" she asked. She had long blonde hair and fake eyelashes and she wore a weird, unflattering bikini thing that had strings wrapping around her waist several times, like a dominatrix.

"Sorry," I said. And then I said, "I'm gay."

"Really?" she said in surprise. "You're gay?"

"Yep," I said, and took a sip from my glass.

"I can't believe it," she said. "You don't look gay."

My hair was a mess, my clothes were ugly, and I had no effeminate qualities whatsoever.

I smiled and shrugged.

She walked away. After she'd gone, Rob said, "What were you talking about? You're not gay."

"Yeah, but they don't know that," I said. "And like this, they won't pester me for another lapdance."

Rich laughed. "That's a good idea, that."

Anyway, Rich drove us all home and I woke up the next day with a hangover.

The Legs 11 closed a few years later. A police raid uncovered that the staff were spiking the drinks of men with methadone and then charging thousands of pounds on their credit cards, like in the movie Hustlers. Plus the owner was also linked to Albanian organised crime gangs.

Rich and Sarah? They got married, had three kids — Wilfred, Rupert, Penelope — and are still together now. I really wish the best for them.