“Let’s do something wild!”

“Yeah, something craaaaazzzzzzy!”

“She’s visiting from out of town. Let’s show her a good time.”

The six of us ladies and our gentleman rolled into Manhattan from Brooklyn to go to the gentleman’s club Lace. We giggled, we whispered, we plotted and we planned. We found parking and met outside our destination. Our gentleman was there not because he’s a wonderful person, but he is, and not because we wanted him to go along with us. We didn’t. He was there because we couldn’t get in to see the ladies dancing… without a man. You never know what a group of wild lesbians may do, so you gotta have a man around to keep them under control.

“Ladies, ladies, ladies you can’t be handing out Planned Parenthood fliers in here. She doesn’t want to hear about her rights!”

So we had our man with us, to keep us in line.

When we entered the club, I paid my $20 and said, “Can I have a receipt please? I know I’ll need to write this off.” The severe lady behind the counter contorted her face, tilted her head and quipped, “A receipt?” “Yes, please,” I chippered. “I need a receipt.” She scribbled the date on a receipt and said, “You can fill in the amount.” Home run, an open receipt. This was going to be an incredible night. I giggled and squealed with delight. This evening had all the makings for a really good time: boobs, smooth skin and complimentary lighting. What more could a girl want?

“Do y'all want to be in the VIP section? You gotta buy a bottle to be a VIP, but I’ll be able to seat you immediately. Otherwise y'all are gonna have to wait.” Lesbians that we are, we quickly did the math. Six of us and a bottle of $60 chardonnay, that’s $10 a piece. Hell yeah, we should do the VIP room. I was feeling like P-Diddy already! Can you imagine my first time in a gentleman’s club and we get to be in the VIP room? We told the big corn-rowed black man in a well-tailored suit of our decision to upgrade, “We would like the VIP room. We’re going to buy a bottle of the wine.”

The big brown teddy bear started laughing, “You gotta buy a bottle of something that’s $320 or more.” A collective lesbian choke. “We’ll just wait for the regular room,” I said. We stood around shuffling back and forth and finally the big teddy bear walked us to our rolling leather seats. We sat down and leaned back in our respective chairs. There were women on two small stages rubbing up on a pole and looking at themselves in mirrors. I wonder how clean that pole is, I thought.

There were women in easy access dresses sitting on men’s laps. There were women in very small g-strings, gyrating, grinding and feeling their breasts while on men's laps. There where women walking in five-inch heels, strutting right past us to sit on a man's lap. They were gyrating, and grinding with an expression like they were working at the check out in the grocery store. They might as well have been saying, “Paper or plastic.” I told my feminist to shut up — women have a choice to be here — and this is all in fun. We twiddled our fingers, sipped on our drinks trying to acclimate to our rowdy environment. Finally, the out-of-towner threw down the gauntlet and bought two lap dances.

Wow, I thought, this is incredible. The one ethnic-looking girl in the club came over and began her dance, hair flinging, natural breast in the out-of-towner's face, titty tweaking and lots of rolling of her hips. The pièce de résistance: she lifted her right leg gracefully above her head spiky heel to the sky. I almost leaped to my feet in applause. “She’s such a good dancer,” I said. “Do you think she could give me lessons?” I whispered. “My lap dances aren’t half as good as all of that!”

After our very talented dancer gave most of the group a dance. I came back to the reality of the room — I looked around at the other women and their check-out counter expressions. I wondered why they didn’t smile and I looked around at a room full of mostly lascivious men and money being passed on their account and then it occurred to me — there isn’t that much in here to smile about.