WHAT I AM about to relate might sound a little or very far-fetched, but believe me when I tell you it is as true as anything you may swear by or on.
I am not even going to put you in a state of suspense by making you read down to the very end to discover what it’s all about. Right up front and centre I am revealing that today’s topic has something to do with a strip club.
And it is towards such a place that I recently and shockingly discovered that a male acquaintance leaves his better half at home several nights a week to go and pay for something from which he gets a lot of enjoyment.
What was initially shocking to me was the fact that I did not happen to be driving by and spotted him easing out of his vehicle in the car part of the premises. Nor did somebody who frequents the place blow the whistle on him.
Rather, it was his very loving significant other, his live blanket when nights are cold, his cool-me-down when he’s hot, his last thing at night and first thing in the morning, who let the cat out of the bag. While chatting from one thing to another over a short glass of dark coconut water recently, she casually told me:
“Al, I want you to talk to this man for me about a very bad habit he has.”
Taken aback, I asked her, “He doing you something wrong?”
She replied, “Al, do you know that he leaves home two or three times a week to go by a strip club?”
“You lie!” was my knee-jerk response of disbelief, as images of him took shape in my imagination, based on scenes from movies and TV and not on any real-life experience about what goes on inside such establishments.
I imagined him like Clint Eastwood, with a fistful of two-dollars in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other, eyes popping from his head at shapely, well endowed, lithesome, acrobatic dancers, teasing and enticingly snaking up and down, spreading out and around a shining pole in the centre of a stage.
But, abruptly, my attention was brought back to reality when his lady replied to me: “Al, I am not lying. Ask him, if you doubt me.”
I did not want to embarrass him but I did want to really know if what she was accusing him of was true and couldn’t believe my ears when he admitted calmly, “It is true. I do leave and go by the place she’s talking about regularly at night.”
“How could you do that and why?” I questioned. So imagine more shock on top of shock when she, not he, answered with: “He goes to buy a soup.”
Hearing that, I assumed she was working a piece of RPB or Gabby double entendre on me until she added: “But it is very tasty cowheel soup that they sell near the club and I don’t mind him going to buy it. My problem is that he goes for it too late at night and leaves me alone and scared in the house.”
A few days later I was telling the story to another friend who, surprisingly, also admitted to leaving his home at night to get a soup at the same place.
He told me: “Boy you couldn’t want to taste a sweeter soup. I live all the way up in Christ Church and drive all the way down there about twice a week to get some.”
I am now left to wonder where they will go to get their soups from if the threat to close down strip clubs becomes a reality.
Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm. Email algilkes@gmail.com
