Finding The One

I scanned the club looking for any well dressed middle aged man sitting alone. It was early Tuesday night, and the pickings were slim. I saw one skinny white man in his mid fifties bent over a piece of paper with a pair of round glasses perched upon his head. The man looked like if Jack Skellington had flesh. Upon his long wiry body sat a round little head angular features and pronounced eye sockets. He stroked a grey moustache as he conducted whatever business he deemed more necessary than enjoying the talented entertainers gracing the strip club stage. I watch multiple Eastern Block dancers sidle up to him and pitch their sales, but he shot them all down in turn. The rejected dancers clustered to the side of the freeloader, talking shit about him in hushed Russian as he continued leaning against the counter. I decided to try my luck, because maybe was a xenophobe or the type of white man who craves color.

Me: Hi, how’s it going?

Him: I’m great. Waiting for a flight to Bangalore. I’m a pilot.

Me: Oh, that’s cool. Are you working the flight or returning home?

Him: Bangalore is home, for now. Ever been?

Me: No. I’ve never been.

Him: Don’t go. There are other places to visit in South Asia instead of India. I wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for work.

Me: Yeah, I’d never really considered visiting India.

Him: What are you? What’s your mixture?

Me: Oh, um-- I’m Creole Black and Puerto Rican.

Him: Interesting mix. You got a boyfriend?

I lie.

Me: No, I don’t.

Him: Why not?

Me: I don’t want one. I like being single.

Him: You just haven’t found The One yet. When you find him, you’ll settle down.

How revoltingly condescending. There are numerous levels of things I despise about this genre of interaction. To begin with, I don’t talk about my partner because across the board, customers are threatened when they find out that I have a partner. Their boners deflate and their wallets fold back into their pockets. Secondly, I hate the presumed heteronormativity of finding “him”: The One. I know way too many deeply pansexual and gay strippers for this dated notion to still plague the majority of my shallow conversations with customers. Thirdly, why would any man at the club believe that they might be so exceptionally entitled as to deserve anything like The Truth? They manage to doubt every other detail about my life such as my age or emotional stability, but when it comes to my relationship, they accept it with blind confidence. “Oh yes, of course. Strippers don’t have relationships. Who would want to date a stripper?” I wish men were less fragile about the reality that many dancers have long term loving relationships. We’re obviously working at the club, is the fantasy of us being single girls necessary? Why do we even have to have female gender identities when the point is that we’re hot and willing to provide our services? I can work as a stripper; have real intimate interactions with customers that are mutually enjoyable for me and my customers; and then return home to my partner. But this disruption of the monogamous paradigm disrupts their notions of why they live how they do. It’s alarming to me how many people never consider that they don’t have any obligation to live a traditional life. But, I digress.

Me: What about you? Do you have a lady?

Him: I have two, actually.

His main partner lives in Guangzhou but he lives with his side chick in Bangalore. He shows me pictures of the woman in Guangzhou. She’s so utterly out of his league. This gorgeous mid thirties Chinese woman looks like she stepped off of a runway. She’s svelte and wears a midriff exposing crop top as she poses in an ice cream parlor beside a little boy who appears to be her son. I ask if the boy is hers, and the pilot responds that he is.

Him: Nobody believes she’s had a child. I mean, look at her. Absolutely perfect.

Me: She has great abs.

He scrolls through his phone to show me more pictures of her. I feel like I’m intruding, except that I’m not the one showing a stranger my girlfriend’s nudes. He decides it’s appropriate to show me a picture of her bare chested on a couch with a hairy hand tucked into her panties, fingering her. I figure it’s his hand, but the arm lines up in a way that it looks like it could be hers. He clarifies proudly that it is in fact his hand, then scrolls to another picture taken from his POV of him fucking her. It blows my mind how gorgeous women end up with old toads like this guy, but she’s smiling in every picture, so who am I to yuck her yum?

Him: I could never leave her. I never intended to have an affair. It just happened.

Me: How?

Him: I was letting the girl in Bangalore rent a room in my apartment, and she started complaining that her bed was too stiff, so I offered to let her sleep in my bed-- nothing untoward about it. I said I’d sleep on my side and she could sleep on hers, and the first night she stayed all the way on her side and I stayed on mine, but after that… Well, one thing led to another.

He shows me screenshots he’s taken of her during FaceTime conversations. She’s cute, but not stunning like the first woman.

Him: That’s not a very good picture of her.

Me: Holding your phone that close distorts your face. It happens to the best of us.

Him: She calls it her “fat face”. She’s self-conscious about it.

Me: She’s a cutie.

Him: She is, isn’t she? But nothing like Lan Fen. That’s the girl in Guangzhou. The other girl is sweet, but I love Lan Fen.

He scrolls to show me more explicit pictures of Lan Fen.

Me: Maybe if you’d found The One you wouldn’t feel the need to cheat.

I say it spitefully, even though I don’t believe that kind of bullshit. The idea that people cheat because they aren’t satisfied with their relationships is so dated, but I’m annoyed that this man would assert such a notion about my love life and yet hold himself to a completely different standard, cheating on the woman he adores for no real reason other than circumstance and opportunity.

Him: Maybe.

Me: You want a dance?

Him: No, but thanks. I’m actually leaving now.

He waves goodbye to me as he makes his exit. His phone screen is still unlocked and opened to a sext of Lan Fen bent over doggy style. As much as I had wanted to make money from this irritating interaction, I felt some relief watching him leave, knowing I wouldn’t have to continue indulging him any longer.