The line of girls outside the club immediately reassured me that I wasn’t totally out of place.  I had feared that I would be surrounded by 20 year old nubile young Paris Hilton look-a-likes, but I was relieved to see that the participants were both old and young, fat and thin, self-confident and nervous – the course had apparently attracted women from all walks of life and indeed each woman there had her own different agenda.  Had I been asked to rate the class and decide who was ‘most likely to become a stripper’ ranging from 1 to 10, with number 1 being ‘most likely’ and number 10 being ‘least likely’, I’d have given myself a 4 or a 5, and yet there were plenty of 9s and 10s there too.  Phew!

After we’d all sufficiently looked each other up and down and formed our own individual first impressions, we were ushered into the building, for most of us the first time we had set foot in a ‘gentleman’s club’.  There was a large dance floor, a raised platform at one end with 2 poles from floor to ceiling.  Chairs and sofas lined the walls, which would no doubt be filled with gentlemen and maybe even the odd gentlewoman later on that evening.  It was still early, however, and our class of approximately 30 females was first divided into 2 groups.  The first group would learn the art of ‘engaging the client and table-dancing’ and the 2^nd group would learn the basics of ‘pole-dancing’ and then the groups would change over later that evening.

Engaging the client involved learning how to walk (or strut) sexily, how to sit down next to a potential client, make brief small talk, ‘close the deal’ and finish by doing a private dance for the client in question.  We learnt that a stripper is really expected to close the deal within the space of just 2 three-minute songs, failing which she must yield to another contender waiting in the wings to take her place.  I wondered how I’d ever manage such a short turn-around.  I wasn’t sure this kind of fast-paced sales was my forte.  I wasn’t inclined to lunge for the jugular so quickly. I was sure I’d be more likely to engage the potential victim into deep and meaningful conversation for 15 minutes, asking him all kinds of inquisitive and inappropriate questions about his life and reasons for his presence at the club.  Perhaps not the most successful or even sexiest tactic!

We had to practise our seduction techniques in pairs.  We were all still relatively self-conscious but slowly warmed up to the task in hand and to each other, especially when the next task involved actually disrobing in front of each other.  We began to chat and find out the motives each of us had for doing the course.  Some were doing it out of curiosity, just for the fun and experience.  Some wanted to learn how to be sexier for their partners.  In some magazines, it had been advertised as a kind of ‘female-empowerment’ class, and so many were women who hoped to gain more confidence in themselves, in their bodies, and hence in their relationships.  Surprisingly very few were those who actually intended to take up ‘stripping’ as a full-time career.   As we learned the basics of slowly lowering our flimsy dresses seductively to the floor, the occasional stroke of a limb, a digit placed tantalizingly in the mouth, turning our bodies a full 360 degrees, I imagine I wasn’t the only one vaguely amused and aroused by what I had got myself into.

The pole-dancing lesson was more challenging.  We had to learn the techniques of spinning around the pole, landing elegantly on the dance floor, facing the right direction, while avoiding breaking an ankle in our high stilettos.  Easier said than done!  By this point, all our inhibitions must’ve long since disappeared, as we all writhed face down on the floor with our bottoms in the air.  I remember thinking that the women’s magazines were right to advertise this course as they did.  Fat, wobbly cheeks, stretch marks, dimples and cellulite were all present, and yet all these women looked extremely sexy because of their apparent (and refreshing) lack of self-consciousness.   This was female-empowerment indeed.