“I had a little old lady cut me with scissors once. She was trying to cut my G-string off,” says Scott Layne, owner and president of The Hollywood Men male strip show. “I turned right into her and she stabbed me.” But luckily for Layne, and the men who use their good looks, charm, and dancing abilities to earn dollar bills on Friday and Saturday nights, grandmothers smuggling sharp instruments are a rarity.
Arriving at Los Angeles’ Supper Club on a Friday night to see my first male revue, the line outside the club explodes with young women. Ladies in high heels and minidresses clutch wads of dollar bills and grin from ear to ear. I wonder if it is their first time, too. I wonder whether they’ve heard this is the strip club that prepped Channing Tatum and his castmates for Magic Mike, or if they’ve been here a dozen times before, and those smiles are a product of knowing exactly how far their dollars will take them.
As I scramble to figure out where to enter, a limo pulls up in front of the venue, dumping an entire bridal party — adorned in miniature tiaras and petite white veils — onto the front steps of the club. A woman to my left approaches the bouncer: “How would I go about buying my friend a lap dance?” she asks. There is a palpable sense of excitement surrounding the entry to the club, and an excess of estrogen and Chanel No. 5 clouds my senses. Up until this point, the closest I’ve been to a strip club was a midnight showing of Magic Mike. But tonight I was going to get up close and personal — very personal — with a handful of male entertainers to see what all the fuss is about.
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