I think this lack of mutuality at the strip club points to the extent to which Puritanism still dominates straight, normative sex in America. The guys at the strip club weren't playboy types or hepsters or rock stars who can have sex easily, and they weren't sleazeballs either. With a few exceptions, they were mostly upstanding frat-boy types, and it was easy to imagine engaged in boring jobs and boring consumerism and boring morality. They were precisely the type of guys who can't get laid without feeling sleazy. If I want casual sex, it's very easy to find in the gay world, and in certain parts of the straight world too. But for these guys, they have to resort to this horrible, ego-killing activity in order to get stimulated - and then they aren't even allowed to get off. I can't believe that there are men who do this every week, or every month. Even apart from all of the horrible habits it teaches regarding women, it's just depressing. Paying for sex, and then not even getting off - I just don't get it. Thank God.

In my Jewish tradition, sexual pleasure is a Divine gift. It's not meant to be bartered or sold; it's meant to be given freely - even if I disagree with more traditional Jews about to whom and under what circumstances it may be given. When I am with someone sexually, I am celebrating our bodies, the pleasure they give, and the pleasure that my body and soul give to my partner. At the strip club, there was plenty of casual "sex," but in contrast to the mutuality of giving and taking sexual pleasure, there was only taking - a solid, straight ethos, maybe, but one which assumed the undesirability of the men paying for titillation. We were all so ugly. Unmanned, undesired, unsatisfied. We had the power to pay for women, but all we could have was what we could buy. And all we spent was money.

The strip club is a depraved place. Not, in my opinion, for the sinful reasons that religious fundamentalists provide. And not really for the objectifying, oppressive reasons the feminists give. Primarily, the strip club is depraved because it degrades the soul of the man who goes to it: the God-given libido is reduced to a Id-monster fed at the expense of the ego. I'm by no means preaching abstinence or restraint. I'm all for indulging the id. But the kind of indulgence that I want doesn't involve weird repressive games, layers of deceit, and a total lack of consummation. At the strip club, beneath the illusion, all pleasure was forbidden. No one touched each other, no one sincerely looked at each other, and no one had an orgasm. Is this sex? To me, it's the opposite.

[1]       [2]       [3]       4 Images: Juliana Beasley

At the end of August, Jay Michaelson will be teaching Kabbalah at Burning Man as part of Congregation B'nai Hamidbar, the Burning Man synagogue.

Related articles:

Meditation and Sensuality Jay Michaelson
Sex, drugs, and God in all July, 2003

I hear America Bling-blinging Jay Michaelson
Hypercapitalism as Satanism
June, 2003

Shtupping in the Shadow of the Bomb Marissa Pareles
Jewish sex radicalism in the New World Order
May, 2003

Constriction Jay Michaelson
Dick Cheney and the New Age
March, 2003

yom kippur Sara Seinberg
April, 2003

Far from Heaven: Excavating Paradise Peter Conklin and Dan Friedman
Viewing the 1950s through its own fantastic prism
January, 2003

Go as Far as Possible Jay Michaelson
Life beyond the idea of limits
December, 2002

Top Ten Lessons for New Homosexuals Jay Michaelson
Tips and advice from my first gay year
October, 2002

The Aesthetics of Power Michael Shurkin
The Art of the Press Conference
September, 2002

The Desert and the City and the Mall Jay Michaelson
If the desert feeds the spirit, and Paris delights the senses, what does McDonald's do? May, 2002

Inherently Fuckable Bex Schwartz
Why are rock stars irresistibly attractive, even if they're pale and pimply?
February, 2002