I'm not dead.

I'm sensing that people think things aren't all that good in my neck of the woods.

That's not really the case.

Yeah, I was more than a little bit upset about the way things are going at work, but that's only part of my life. I choose to look at the good stuff instead.

Like my kids. My son has decided to perform "Who's on First?" as part of his comedy club performance. His biggest problem so far is deciding whether he wants to play Costello, who gets more laughs, or Abbot, who is the boss. Both aspects appeal to him.

My daughter is going through her closet, and removing the clothes that are too small for her. She's deciding which of her friends will get which of her clothes, because they are all fashionable, if too small for her. At her last physical, her doctor told us she has the perfect proportions for a 10-year-old girl. The thing is, she's eight.

Other bits of happy news: The Salad Bar Witch has signalled surrender. When I went to get a salad for lunch today, the old three-compartment containers were gone, replaced by the quart-sized plastic previously reserved for the olive-bar patrons. I briefly considered filling it with olives, but

1. That's a bit too contrarian for my tastes
2. I don't like olives all that much, and
   
3. The witch wasn't around, and what fun would it be if she didn't see me do it?

These events are as much a part of my life as crappy things happening at work. So why stress out? I choose to be happy.

Finally: Once again more than one blogger of note has commented on the same subject at around the same time. This time, the topic is strippers. So, I thought I'd share my limited experience with this subject.

______________________________________________________

About 20 years ago, my friend Steve and I decided to hit a club. It's not something we normally did. In fact, if we weren't completely bored out of our skulls, we probably wouldn't have done it.

In some ways, the boredom was better. It didn't cost as much.

We sat right at the walkway. The table was built right onto it. There was a little two-inch barrier to keep the spilled beer off the walkway, but the dancers would regularly step over it and walk along the bottles and glasses. The girls weren't incredibly ugly, nor heartstoppingly lovely. They were just there. But the best part was the guy sitting next to me. He looked quite normal most of the time. But when one of the girls would walk by, he would sit rigid in his chair, his hands under the table, his mouth opening and closing. Sometimes he would push up under the table, like he was playing an upside-down piano. Really, he looked and moved sort of like Ray Charles did while he was playing--except he was white, he could see, and there was no piano. Steve and I were quite amused. We even thought about tipping him instead of the dancers. For years, whenever we were together, one of us would invariably imitate the guy.

Steve was also one of the guys who took me to a club for my bachelor party. I didn't want to go. Oh, I wanted a party, but not at a strip club.

I was outvoted. It was tradition, I was drunkenly informed.

So we went to a club. Steve and I looked for the upside-down piano guy, but alas, he was not around. Instead we watched nekkid girls. Which was fine. They were buying.

Then they decided to buy me a private dance.

Woo-hoo. Hot dawg. Golly. A private dance.

I was taken into a small alcove, within view of one of the club 'associates.' The walls and floor were covered in brown carpet. There was a cigarette machine. There was a broom closet. There was a chair. There was a nekkid girl. There was me.

The nekkid girl 'splained the rules: I don't touch her. She don't touch me. Got it.

I sat, gave her my best smile and thought: let's get this over.

Shimmy shimmy. Shake shake. The song ends after about 45 secons.

"Great!" I say, rising out of the chair. "Thanks!"

"No, that wasn't enough," the girl tells me. "You get a full song. They'll play another right now."

I sit. My plastic smile facing her plastic tits. I can manage this for one song...

"OK, we have a few announcements to get through here..." says the DJ, and so I get to hear about all of the girls with plastic tits who will be appearing in the coming days and weeks while I sit inches away from a nekkid girl I had no desire to touch even if I was allowed, whose conversational skills were limited to two-to-four syllable responses, with the first syllable invariably being "Ummm..."

A few days later, the song begins, and she dances. Shake shake shimmy shimmy. She displays one part of her body, then another. I smile and nod appreciatively. Yes, yes. That's nice. Those are nice, too.

The song is mercifully short, and I thank her and wish her the best in her chosen career and hightail it for the relative safety of my table, where they were all jealous because I got to spend so much time with this girl.

Yes, my friends andI are dorks. At least we didn't play Risk that night.

The coda to this story is that five years after my bachelor party, my department hires another commercial producer/director. She's a very nice young woman. Smart, creative, funny. She is a classically trained pianist.

She also payed her way through college as a stripper.

A few months into her employment, we talked a bit about her previous job. She wasn't ashamed of it, but it wasn't really something she talked about with most people. I mentioned the upside-down piano guy from a decade previous.

"Oh, you mean Mikey!" she said.

Apparently, Mikey was a regular at the clubs. Turns out he was a highly-paid, highly-skilled engineer who worked at a local Fortune 100 company.

Mikey also liked feet. Whenever a girl with the appropriate footwear walked buy, Mikey would run his hands under the table, following the path of the foot he so desired. Of course, if one of the girls wore the wrong sort of footwear, Mikey would turn his back on the girl and not even look at her.

One night, my friend let Mikey slide a stocking off her leg, and he just about died in pleasure. He also gave my friend a $100 tip.

I haven't been to a club since my bachelor party. I don't miss it. I like women's bodies, but if I can't or don't want to touch it, what's the attraction? It's like ordering dinner, and then just staring at it.

Yeharr