The Strip Club Dating Survival Guide (7 page)

Think about that for a moment. Imagine that every day, when you get up and go to work, you would have to stand in front of the class naked while people say things out loud about you that they would never, ever say in any other situation at all. This somewhat approximates what a stripper goes through every time she walks out into the showroom at the start of her shift. It can be psychologically destructive and frankly terrifying, and it happens
every single time
she shows up to work.

The fun, however, has only begun, for once the girl is out on the floor she now has to approach customers. Remember that dancers are essentially
sales people
, and if they don’t talk to anyone there is
no way
for them to make money. As I’ve just explained though, a dancer just hitting the floor is rarely in any position to go hit up some stranger with any sense of true
personal power.

Thus, strippers will often sort of mill about for a bit in an attempt to avoid directly confronting the customers until their comfort level rises high enough to overcome their anxiety driven paralysis. This is the
approach avoidance
that I mentioned earlier. In the next section we will discuss how a dancer’s psychological distress and coping mechanisms like approach avoidance present you with an opportunity to be more than just some dumbass customer waving dollar bills around.

Chapter 4. Crazy Bitch

When the world slips you a Jeffrey, stroke the furry wall.

-
A
BRAHAM
M
ASLOW,
A
MERICAN PROFESSOR OF
P
SYCHOLOGY ONCE LABELED MENTALLY UNSTABLE DURING A CHILDHOOD PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION, CONSIDERED TO BE THE FOUNDER
H
UMANISTIC
P
SYCHOLOGY AND FIRST DESCRIBED THE CONCEPT OF
T
HE
H
IERARCHY OF
N
EEDS.
R
EALLY KNEW HOW TO SAY, “
G
O FUCK YOURSELF” CREATIVELY.

It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from or where you are going in life, we all share the same set of basic human
needs
. Whether you are a stripper at the local gentleman’s club, a high school football coach, the President of the United States, a garbage man, or some crotchety old retiree down at the senior citizen home, you are under the direct influence of the six
unconscious personality drivers
 that affect every human being who has ever lived.

Understanding these forces can now let you become aligned with the
interpersonal modalities
 of the dancer whom you have selected as the focus of your desire. The six basic human needs are:

• ^Comfort
  
• ^Variety
  
• ^Significance
  
• ^Growth
  
• ^Contribution
  
• ^Connection
  

The aforementioned items are the needs that are quietly driving just about every one of our behaviors in some way or another. These are not things that would be gratifying to have or that we want if we can get them. These are needs. We will, consciously
or not
, seek fulfillment of these needs under all circumstances, and at all times
regardless of the consequences.

Most people seek the satisfaction of the basic human needs perfectly oblivious to the fact that they are doing so and end up causing all sort of serious problems for themselves and the people around them. Complications arising from the subconscious pursuit of the six basic human needs burden pretty much
everybody
.

Both you and the dancer whose attention you covet are uncontrollably affected by the same desire to fulfill these needs at any cost, and understanding this is most relevant especially in the realm of dating. Let’s take some time to review these needs, and to consider what they mean in the real world. Always remember that these drives are not simply things you want, things you should do, or things maybe it would be neat to do when you get around to it someday.

The six basic human needs are compulsory and at work within you every moment of every day whether you recognize it or not.

So let’s look at each of them in turn:

COMFORT

We want a nice home, a solid relationship, predictable routines, a planned vacation, money in savings and a maxed-out IRA, enough pillows on the bed and a comfy chair to sit in during Monday Night Football.

We want to know that if things get rough out there, we can depend on the stable core of our lives for security and protection. This is what drives us to stay in relationships with people we don’t like anymore, work at jobs we hate, and maintain friendships with people from high school that we outgrew years ago.

VARIETY

If the things around us never changed, we would go fucking crazy. We travel to exotic locations, cheat on the people we love, switch jobs, change majors in college, sign up for 500 cable channels when 50 would do just as well, and go shopping for crap we don’t need even if we are broke.

One of the reasons that the solitary confinement of criminals is so effective (as well as cruel) is because it deprives inmates of the ability to satisfy this need in even the smallest, most inconsequential ways.

SIGNIFICANCE

In many ways, the need to feel significant is the most fundamental drive of all. We have the absolute need to feel, and to know, that the things we do matter in some way, no matter how small.

Winning awards, getting promoted, being asked for advice or named as an expert in some area, being openly admired for some trait or skill, getting elected, winning fame by acting in films or making music, and getting a sincere card on Father’s Day are all examples of significance.

The desires that most of us have to raise successful children who then carry on our legacy are another example of the pursuit of significance. At the end of the day, an entry-level Rolex and a cheap tombstone just aren’t enough, we need for our lives to have meant something, and we would all much prefer to find that meaning in our lives while we are still living them.

GROWTH

We have to get better or change in some way otherwise a sense of truly real stagnation sets in. Maybe we go back to school after years in the workforce, learn a new skill, have the opportunity for career advancement, transition from single life to happily married with children, or go from follower to leader.

Our need to become something more than we currently are, to become one day something we never thought possible is as powerful as any of the other needs on this list. To be denied the opportunity for personal growth and development is tantamount to spiritual murder (or suicide, depending on your perspective.)

People who spend enormous amounts of time and energy advancing their high-level World of Warcraft character to the exclusion of a “normal” social life do so as a means to experience growth when they mistakenly feel it is denied to them in other areas, not because they are antisocial gamer geeks as most people would like to think.

CONTRIBUTION

We all experience the need to contribute, no matter how damn selfish we are. Whether it is picking up the check at dinner, baking cupcakes for the PTA, helping a friend move, mentoring someone, growing our business through our own creativity and dedication, bringing food home for our families, or lending a hand wherever it’s needed without being asked doesn’t actually matter. We want what we do to add something positive to the equation; we want to bring something to the table.

CONNECTION

The drive to make a connection with others seems almost too obvious to list but don’t be deceived by its seeming simplicity. We go to bars, speed date, use online dating services and get high, taking Ecstasy at raves. We have a burning need, each and every one of us, to experience that,
I see you, you see me
, moment of emotional connectedness. No amount of online or distance interactions can replace the spark created by actual 
tactile connection.

Sometimes, just having someone in physical contact with you, whether in a romantic sense or not, is all it takes. Despite wanting something deep, lasting, and meaningful, never forget that we will stop at nothing when it comes to getting our needs met, even if the situations or relationships that provide for what we want are generally negative or harmful to ourselves or the people around us.

So, there you have it, the
Six Basic Human Needs
:
comfort, variety, significance, growth, contribution and connection. 
Which of these do you think are most relevant to you? What about to an exotic dancer at your favorite gentleman’s club, which does she focus on?

The answer, of course, is all of the above.

As I said before, these are needs, and we are pursuing them all the time, at any cost, regardless of the consequences whether we are consciously aware of them or not. If you can become focused on these needs in a conscious way, and pay attention to them as they are being expressed by the dancer you are sitting next to, the chances of forming the relationship you seek for will increase by an order of magnitude.

Ignore these needs, and the words and deeds of your intended paramour will sweep around you like the winds of some tropical storm. Yes, it will be a storm of glitter, erratic behavior, all-hours angry text messaging, jealousy and childish outbursts, but it will be a storm nonetheless.

Avoid all that by simply paying attention and knowing that these forces are at work within the object of your desire as surely as they are at work within you. And they are at work within you, make no mistake about that. It is also helpful and pertinent to understand that every problem every person faces stems from the conflicts that arise from the fulfillment of these six needs.

For example, you love your wife and want to stay in the relationship
(comfort
) but cheat on her with some girl you couldn’t care less about
(variety)
. This may seem somewhat abstract, so allow me to offer an example of what I am talking about here:

You are interested in a dancer who has a boyfriend with whom she is unhappy. You know this because she is constantly texting him in front of everyone and clearly agitated when doing so. She sometimes may even leave the shift early to go deal with issues at home that relate to her relationship with him. You know that this dancer likes being a stripper but seems afflicted by some sort of ennui over her career choice. It sometimes seems as if she is growing ever more despondent about her life choices.

She is a student at a local community college but you have been unable to ascertain if there is ever a projected graduation date for her certification or degree. She clearly wants to do something with her life but has no idea what that should be. She is a person whom you might describe as “touchy-feel-y” and seems to have a close relationship with some members of the male club staff.

What follows is
one possible interpretation
of what’s going on with this girl:

She is a complete head case with imperfect to horrible taste in men. No matter how awesome any guy turns out to be, she will always prefer somebody who treats her like shit. She likes dancing because it can be an easy way to generate income for someone with no skills, work ethic or sense of personal responsibility but hates it because she still has to work and she thinks that is just too
unfair. 
What she undoubtedly would like is some kind of asshole with lots of money to come along and take care of her for the rest of her life.

She is caught in
the community college trap
 and under no circumstances will she ever graduate or do anything with the education that she seems so uncommitted to. She has no goals or priorities and does not have the ability to control herself or make any kind of forward progress in life. She is promiscuous and is probably hitting it with every guy that works at the club, hoping that one of them will be
the one
to rescue her from her crappy boyfriend.

In short, she’s a fucking loser, or at least that’s one way to look at it. When applying the principles of the
Six Basic Human Needs
, however, that interpretation tends to be radically altered:

Many dancers I have encountered have some sort of abandonment issue and/or some sense that they are alone in the world. We could speculate all day about why that is, but honestly it just doesn’t matter, at least for our purposes anyway. This example dancer is sticking around with her jerk of a boyfriend for no other reason than doing so provides a sense of security.

No matter how awful things get between them, there is enough personal history, shared values, memories and latent physical attraction to keep them together and make him her anchor in life. This is the actualization of her need for comfort.

Dancing allows her ability to meet people of the opposite sex under controlled circumstances and to express herself sexually both onstage and off. No matter what she says about it, her life as an adult entertainer provides a level of variety that otherwise could be satisfied only by cheating on her boyfriend.