Stay out of the champagne room

I’ve been on the street a lot lately – not homeless, just hunting down news.

And when I ride I listen to the radio. It’s usually talk radio. But I broke my routine and messed up a few days ago by tuning into a FM pop/urban music station. And unfortunately a bad song is now stuck in my head.

“I see you windin’ and grindin’ up on that pole…I know you see me lookin’ at you; you already know, I wanna love you…”

In my defense, I didn’t really listen to the lyrics to “I Wanna Love You,” by crooner Akon until just a few days ago. Before that I was just mesmerized like a tourist watching a snake charmer by Akon’s whiny voice. For all I knew he could've been singing about sexy firefighters, what with the pole and all.

But I digress.

I realized after being stuck in traffic and actually paying attention to this song's lyrics that this guy is singing to a stripper about how he wants to love her and fall in love with her and wine and dine her, and even marry her, etc.

So I could only slap my forehead, with an accompanying Homer-esque "D'oh!" when I got a text message from a buddy telling me that he’d met a really cool girl…again…in a gentlemen’s club…again.

This is an intelligent man. He’s decent-looking, law-abiding, a small business owner, dresses reasonably well, and is not bad at conversation. But he still believes that because a “dancer” smiled at him and remembered his name and asked if he had a hard day at work and told him that she too loves Star Trek and thinks Kirk was a better captain of the Enterprise than Picard and gave him her phone number…to the screening/answering service she uses, she actually likes him. She does not!

Chris Rock said in his song tribute to the G.E.D class of 1999 that "No matter what a stripper tells you there is no sex in the Champagne Room," just champagne. There is an analogy. Rock's point was there is no love in the strip club, just illusions.

Unlike Rock, I don’t even think there should be champagne in the champagne room, ‘cause apparently when it flows freely guys like my buddy fall in love.

You have to understand (from what I’ve heard) that once you cross the threshold, once you darken the doorway to the gentleman's club, you are a marked man and will forever be viewed by the employees as a customer only.

And guys, you can’t blame ‘em. How can you expect any woman whom you tried to impress with a few dollar bills to take you seriously?

I’m sure “dancers” need love too. But let them get it from their therapists, or their moms whom they know as auntie, or their dads, or their boyfriends back at the trailer who are old enough to be their dads.

Yeah, this is funny. And my guy is nuts. Or maybe his wig is on too tight or something. He couldn't be getting punked harder if Ashton Kutcher had set this whole thing up.

Seriously, I have no idea how women track down the "right" kind of guy. But if you single dudes want a stable woman who won’t stab you with an ice pick or kick you in the front end of your shorts, or toss your dog out the window, go find her in church, or at the grocery, or the Humane Society, or the book store, or the free jazz concert in the neighborhood park. Or get your older sister to set you up with one of her friends. Or borrow your 1-year-old nephew and take him to the mall and dote on him. You will stink of willing fatherhood. And I've heard women love that.

That’s my word. Just remember, there is no sex in the champagne room. Nor is there potential for real love.