The strip club is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
In the half-light of The Griffin, deep in a sleepy London afternoon, time and reality stop.
Here, in stripper-world, things are different.
There is no sense of time passing. There is no outside world with its politics and business and lawyers and declarations. Its negotiations and treaties.
In The Griffin, reality is hazy. It is a dreamy, womb-like space where women in skimpy lingerie stalk the room in absurdly-elevated high heels.
The girls take it in turns to dance on a glittery stage while taking off their clothes. Before they do so, they walk around in the gloom, carrying a glass,and holding it out to each gentleman there. Everyone has to put a pound coin in—at least. Failure to do so will see you thrown unceremoniously out into the street by the seven-foot bouncer who sits sleepily by the door.
And that is it. This same cycle repeats, hour after hour, right into the dead of night. Pound coin after pound coin, girl after girl, and everything bathed in the pink and blue lights that provides the room with its soft-focus, seedy glamour.
And the music—well, the music plays all day and all night. Tough trap beats, trip-hop, reggaton, and the strings of sad, classic ballads swell throughout the room.
The music—and the lights—are the supporting cast. They back up the girls, the ‘sex dancers’ (as Ernst Graf puts it), who are the ultimate stars of the show. But one element could not exist without the other. In this womb, a very specific multi-sensory experience is created, and each part is essential.
Ernst Graf, by the way, has a great line that I very much like:
I am one of those men who when offered the chance of a decent real relationship with a girl, rather than a life of stripclubs, and whores and porn kinos, prefers the life of strip clubs, and whores and porn kinos. It is at least a life of pure freedom, and lack of shackles, or guilt, or shame.
This is a positive spin on a phenomenon that most of ‘decent society’ would regard as sad, ‘politically incorrect’, and even depraved behaviour.
And yet I suspect that many of the men who go to The Griffin regularly feel the same way as he does.
Look at them now—each sitting alone at their separate tables.
The old white-haired man, his head drooping forward into his chest.
The guy with the staring eyes in the corner who just sits there, ignoring even the girls.
The man in the long Matrix-style leather coat who stands by the bar, staring in approval.
No one speaks in these places. Instead, the dancing girls are viewed in respectful silence, as though this were a religious ceremony. And each man, lost in his own dreams, is part of the communal dream that we all share: the girls, the doorman, the bar staff, the DJ and the men.
Ernst Graf speaks of freedom, and yes, there is a sense of freedom in this place: freedom from having to pretend. To pretend not to admire girls merely for their beauty. To pretend not to have that yearning that every man has for sex with girls you’ve never met before: strange, young, beautiful girls.
This is why men come here. And in this womb, you sigh a prolonged and collective sigh of relief.
Of course, most men know—on some level—that all of it is fake. That the sexual attraction the girls mimic is simply bad acting.
And it is this fakery that we love. Because when she is just pretending, and you are just pretending too, and you are both improvising to a pre-written script, then you can relax, just for a little while.
There are no harsh blow-outs here. No soul-crushing rejections.
Yes, it’s a simulacrum. But as simulacra go, it’s an enjoyable one.
But some men, motivated by longing, misinterpret the signs. They get it wrong. They forget that we are all playing a game.
G Lifestyle
One man wears a Star Trek sweater. Yes, really. You couldn’t make this shit up. He is small, bald and looks as though he probably deals with incoming technical queries for an accounting software firm based in Swindon.
There is a small, roped off section which is called the VIP area—absurd, really, in this old London boozer. Star Trek Guy sits there all afternoon with the girl he has chosen to accompany him: a tall English girl, well-spoken and slightly too mumsy and middle-class for this place. She is wearing a Wonder Woman outfit. Star Trek Guy buys a bottle of pink champagne every hour for this privilege at £120 a bottle.
In the peculiar alternative universe of The Griffin, this is ‘G Lifestyle’ behaviour.
Since he is a high-roller, the staff make a fuss of him. At one point, the DJ plays the Star Trek reboot theme music. He plays it at full volume, and Star Trek Guy runs up into the DJ booth to make the Vulcan salute to the crowd.
Later, the DJ announces that it is Star Trek Guy’s birthday. And now Wonder Woman—who had momentarily disappeared into the office—re-emerges with a cake decorated with candles.
Someone must have run to a local store to buy it for him.
Inevitably, the DJ leads the crowd in a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’, as small, bald Star Trek guy walks up joyfully to receive his cake in front before us all from a 6 ft 4 stripper dressed as Wonder Woman.
It is a strangely heartening moment. Until I remember that Star Trek Guy has spent hundreds of pounds on champagne. Until I wonder why, since it is his birthday, Star Trek Guy is in a strip club paying a girl to sit with him.
Sex With A Stripper: How Not To Get It
Later on, Star Trek Guy prepares to leave. We watch him say goodbye to Wonder Woman, and we observe the unmistakable body language denoting polite rejection.
‘Perhaps we could meet up another time . . . somewhere other than here?‘ ‘Oh no, sir, I’m not allowed to do that. The club won’t let me. And I’m so terribly busy right now . . . ‘
Women and sex go terribly wrong for some men. Terribly wrong.
It is easy, when you are discussing game with people who are in the know all day, to forget that there are men out there who have no clue whatsoever. Whose lack of woman know-how is something akin to a black hole. Stephen Hawking says that information sucked into a black hole may reemerge in a separate universe—in Star Trek Guy’s case that would be a second universe where his woman know-how is even more dire.
The player is viewed suspiciously by people at all ends of the political spectrum. The feminists hate him, of course; but so do the tradcons, as well as the alt-right crew, who regard game as antithetical to the goals of a civilised society.
Of course, this is all so much baloney.
But when faced with these views it is essential to bear in mind that Star Trek Guy is out there, buying bottles of expensive champagne for girls he will never be intimate with; who would not give him a second glance in the street.
And then you must consider how much a little rudimentary game knowledge would help him.
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