Back in the good old days
I think the first time I saw pole dancing was back in the mid to late 70’s when I had just gotten out of boot camp and arrived at my duty station at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The city immediately outside the confines of the camp is known a Jacksonville and it consisted of a combination of biker bars, pool halls, tattoo parlors and strip clubs. In retrospect, that’s a pretty enticing cocktail of potential trouble for a young Marine who’s out on his own for the first time. At the time, our reputation for being “Young, dumb and full of cum” wasn’t that far off base.
All those places shared many things in common. The sound of Southern or hard rock in the form of Lynyrd Skynyrd or Van Halen was blaring from the jukebox. You could almost taste the smell of stale beer, rancid piss and age old cigarette smoke when you walked through the door. Bouncers the size of buildings patrolled the places to keep groups of drunken jarheads in their place.
But strip clubs had something that went beyond all that. For it was there that you could see almost naked chicks shimmying up and down the poles that lined the raised walkway they used to conduct their art. Every night a bevy of “beauties” would parade up and down those walkways giving us young Marines that sly seductive smile and a wiggle of their ass in our direction in order to entice us to part with whatever bill we had in our wallets. They danced, I watched, I lusted. I never knew people could contort themselves in such ways on a regular basis.
See, I was eighteen, away from home for the first time, fresh from a Catholic upbringing that was replete with all the trappings that come with Catholic schoolgirls and guilt. Tits and other assorted body parts were kept under lock and key. They were never flaunted and if they were it was in a demure style that left more to the imagination than it did in real life. To me, all of this new found “sexuality” came as revelation, one I was sure to enjoy.
It goes without saying that I parted with many a bill with little or nothing to show for it except maybe the memories I just described. I tried to justify this later in life by reasoning that we could be called off to war in a heartbeat and there were many things that I had never seen or never done. Che sarà, sarà.
The Quantum LeapNowadays though, pole dancing has gained a measure of respect amongst the dance community. It’s gone from the seedy kind of places that I described earlier into what might considered mainstream society. Depending on your tastes you can choose from a variety poles on line for your private use at home. A quick Google search reveals there are pole dancing classes being regularly conducted in almost every big and medium sized town in America.
Some participants claim they do it for the exercise. There’s even a quasi movement afoot for aficionados to turn it into an Olympic sport. Other participants claim they do it for fun and for the exercise. They claim when done properly it’s a good aerobic workout and helps one to stay fit and limber. Of course some still do it for the erotic thrill it might bring to that special someone in your life.
If I had to guess which one of those groups is correct, I’d say its a combination of all three.