From: drrath@my-dejanews.com
Subject: [ASSC][AFSD] Destabilizing Parameters

I recently had an experience that got me to thinking about several issues
that have recurrently been raised in this newsgroup over the years (at least
in posts that have been archived in DejaNews -- I don't know what gems we
usenet illiterates have been deprived of).

I will first recount the experience, and then give some of my own thoughts,
which I hope will reopen some of the issues for further discussion by the
group.

I live in New York.  When it became apparent earlier this year that the new
adult zoning regulations were finally going to kick in, my ATF, who was then
working at a club that would be affected, asked me if I wanted to start
seeing her for "bottle-like activities" at her home.  (A "bottle" is local
parlance for a trip to the VIP room.)  The zoning regs became effective, my
ATF stopped dancing, and I started seeing her at home.	Although she made it
clear that "club rules" would still apply, the sessions at first were great. 
The illusion of intimacy was increased tenfold by seeing her in her house.  I
should make it clear that, for me as (I think) for many of us (at least for
the most pathetic of us), the strip-club experience is not just about
groping, but the combination of groping and having the illusion of connecting
with someone who at least pretends to like you and to be the kind of person
that you like (i.e., groping plus good conversation).  (I guess the
strip-club equivalent of "girlfriend sex".)

It wasn't hard to guess how my ATF was supporting herself since she stopped
dancing.  I decided to wait for her to raise it, though, rather than asking
her myself.  She soon went out of her way to tell me she had started
escorting (through an agency on an outcall basis only).  I asked if I could
see her on a full-service basis rather than under "club rules".  She said no.
 She explained that the way she was able to keep her mental health while
escorting was to separate that work from her real emotional life; if she sold
sexual intercourse to someone like me who she knew fairly well, it would be
too personal an experience and would thus be intolerable.  (An obvious
corellary is that she wasn't interested in having non-commercial sex with me,
but I was never so dillusional as to imagine that she or any other dancer was
interested in that. I may be a PL, but I'm not an idiot.)  She claimed to be
surprised that I was interested in having sexual intercourse with her since
she thought that I was looking for "something else" from our sessions.	I,
she claimed, got much more from her than her escort customers do, i.e., a
level of intimacy that was unavailable to them:  I knew her name, I visited
her at home, I knew all sorts of details about her life, etc. (together with
a good deal of pretend seduction, groping, and the like).

While I believe that my ATF was acting in good faith and not playing me, I
could not tolerate seeing her on a "club rules" basis when I knew that full
service was available, in effect, to everyone in New York of my income level
and general level of presentability but me.  It just ruined the whole
experience.  I stopped seeing her professionally (although, curiously, I seem
to run into her around town all the time).

So (while all who are so inclined take some time out to flame me for being
such a PL lame-o), let's move on to the theoretical discussion.  It is
sometimes debated, if mileage is so important to ASSCers, why do they go to
strip clubs rather than prostitutes?  There has also been discussion of the
role of "rules" in the strip-club experience.  What it fundamentally comes
down to is, what are we looking for in the strip-club experience?

I think ASSCers (who I define as serious -- maybe seriously disturbed --
clubgoers who are out for more than just a few beers and a few peeks at naked
women) are after two things, which may really be one thing:  fantasy
seduction and ego gratification.  For all the talk of splooging, I don't
think that's the primary goal, because if that's what you want then it really
is stupid not to see a prostitute instead.  Rather, for whatever reason, we
like various other aspects of the strip-club experience even though in most
clubs in most localities it falls short of actual sex, i.e., the illusion of
the hunt in what is actually a stocked game preserve, the simulated mutual
flirtation, and the feeling that whatever "extras" you're able to obtain are
somehow attributable to your own good qualities.  At bottom (poor choice of
words), ASSCers seem to be more interested in the mental aspects of sex than
the physical.

EYE had a good post about this a while ago, discussing why he doesn't find the
prostitute experience as he imagines it to be an enticing alternative to the
admittedly flawed strip-club scenario.  It came down, as I recall, to the fact
that what you mainly get from a prostitute (he imagined) is a sort of naked
physical act, without all the seductive trappings and the satisfying illusion
that the woman really wants you, or any sense of connection.  ASSCers like the
tease (the part that mainly takes place in your head) -- although we want some
kind of payoff at the end.  And, of course, it's no great achievement to have
sex with a women whom you have paid to have sex with you -- but to get extra
mileage from a dancer, that's something else!

Let's talk about the role of rules in all this.  There was a post a while back
by  an outsider to the group, who remarked that ASSCers seem to like being
subject to club rules. This observation was roundly denounced.  The response
was, in essence, how can you say we like rules when we expend so much energy
trying to evade them?  Just look at Guru!  To my mind, however, the outside
poster had a point.

The rules provide the necessary backdrop for the ASSC experience.  Anything
you get beyond what is allowed you can attribute to your own charm and
canniness. And anything you fail to get isn't your fault (i.e., doesn't
constitute a rejection of you) -- it's the rules.  When the rules are taken
away -- or when they are revealed to be illusory -- then it becomes too much
like real life, where you really are on your own, depending on your own
devices.  ASSCers do not find this pleasant (at least not in clubs).  Look at
the hysteria that broke out on the MSC TUSCL page (and that's hardly a club
where rules loom large) when Brianna Baldwin announced she was going to work
at a Reno brothel.  All the guys who couldn't have sex with Brianna at the
MSC went ballistic, because it was revealed to them that the reason wasn't
any rule (at the MSC, it would have been a rule personal to Brianna) but
rather that Brianna chose not to have sex with them.  So all the tension and
fear of rejection that strip clubs are supposed to let patrons escape from
came back in spades.

And, as noted, the rules give you the opportunity to convince yourself that
you are something special when you are able to bend and evade them.  Guru
doesn't illustrate the ASSCers' antipathy to rules; to the contrary, Guru is
a veritable poster boy for rules.  His gamesmanship (for which I have nothing
but admiration) wouldn't exist without rules.  Then where would he be?
(Probably still someplace far better than anywhere I am.)

Finally, rules make the strip-club experience unpredictable, because you never
know how far you will be able to bend them.  In the full-service situation,
you must know exactly what is going to happen.  At a strip club, you never do.

In my case, then, the knowledge that my ATF was generally available as an
escort (but not to me) ruined my experience with her by (a) making it
impossible for me to suspend disbelief and maintain the fantasy, for the
duration of our sessions, that she was really interested in me; (b) making it
impossible for me to believe that I was, through my own devices, getting
"more" from her than was generally available; (c) removing the pleasant sense
of unpredictability that had formerly permitted me to wonder, at the start of
each session, how far we would end up going; and (d) emphasizing the complete
artificiality of the rules that governed our sessions and hence of the
sessions themselves.  It became impossible for me to imagine that anything
"real" was happening; and without that illusion, the patheticness (I don't
think that's a word, but it should be in this newsgroup) of what I was doing
became all too apparent.

This situation made me think hard about what I, personally, look for from the
strip-club experience.	Although, as I said above, the illusion of
"connecting" is as important to me as the physical stuff, this situation
drove home that it is not all-important.  It hardly needs saying that what
strip clubs really come down to is sex, even if it's a fairly tame variety. 
No one (or, if not no one, certainly not me) is going to pay a woman to sit
around and share intimacies with them if she isn't also missing at least most
of her clothes and stroking you.  But, once you focus on the fact that it's
really about sex, except that you aren't having sex, the whole experience
begins to seem rather hollow and stupid.  Or at least it did to me.  But, for
EYE's reasons set forth above, prostitution (except with someone like my
former ATF, with whom I already have a strong if illusory rapport) doesn't
seem like it would be a viable alternative.  So maybe the answer is that
commercial sexual activity is inherently unsatisfactory (and I should switch
over to rec.arts.orgami or something).	Or maybe I should just lighten up,
have a few beers, and peek at some naked women.

Dr. Rath

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