I'm at the bar of a strip club, chatting with a stripper I've "dated". In fact, my favorite of all the strippers I've "dated". This is very early in our, fuck, I don't know what to call it, "relationship". Just shortly after the first time we "went out".
Somehow, she starts to talk about her relationship with her boyfriend. This is the longest relationship she's ever had, a few years. And the sex has gotten boring. It's become a chore to have sex with him. She looks for excuses not to do it. But she really likes him as a companion.
"I don't think it's possible for sex with the same person to stay exciting," I say. "But sometimes, in a good relationship, you go through the boring phase and come out the other side. It becomes really comfortable, and amazingly satisfying."
"I don't want comfortable," she says. "I want excitement and variety."
"Well, this is going to sound like a dirty-old-man rationalization," I tell her, "but I don't think humans, as higher mammals, are wired to be monogamous. I think it's unnatural to only have sex with one person for twenty or forty -- or even five -- years. It's a problem."
"So what do YOU do?" she asks.
I am incredulous. Coming from her to me, that's about the least likely question I can imagine.
"You KNOW what I do," I say.
She looks at me inquisitively. I can't believe we're having this conversation.
"I have sex with other people," I say, "but I try to do it in a way that doesn't become part of my real life. I try to keep it somewhere outside my real life. I have sex with . . ."
". . . people that don't mean anything to you emotionally," she finishes for me.
I can't believe we're having this conversation.
"But I don't want to cheat," she says. (I can't believe we're having this conversation.) "I feel like it would be wrong. At my first club, I thought it was OK for me to do two-girl shows in the Champagne Room, because I didn't really like the other girls and it was part of my job. But I wouldn't do anything with customers." (Am I that forgettable?) "And if my boyfriend knew even what I was doing with other women, he wouldn't have liked it."
"I think you have to do something to build a wall around it," I say. "Something that makes it clear that it isn't real. The way I do that is by making sure it's commercial. That one way or another I pay something for it. That way, I can always convince myself that it's just entertainment, not anything that could impinge on my real relationship. Maybe you would build a different kind of wall."
"I sometimes fantasize about picking people up and having anonymous sex with them," she says.
I grab a napkin and scribble "Philip Roth, The Professor of Desire" on it. "You should read this book," I tell her. "At least you'll see you're not the only person thinking about these things."
"Some people say it's good for the other person in your relationship if you do things like that," she says. "That it's OK to do it because it makes your relationship better. What do you think of that?"
"I think it's hypocritical," I say. "I mean, we both have to hide these things. We both know what your boyfriend, or my wife, would say if we asked them if they thought it was good for them.
"I mean, basically, we're both going to go to hell."
I'm beginning to find it actively disturbing that she can continue this conversation while completely failing to acknowledge that we have had sex with each other. I mean, I know I insist that paying for it makes it meaningless. But I don't mean THAT meaningless.
Maybe she suddenly remembers that she's a stripper chatting with a customer. Because finally she looks me in the eye and says:
"I hope you know how . . . refreshing it is for me to go out with you."
"The pleasure is all mine," I say.