Discomfort Inn

“Is this the kind where they show their vaginas?” I asked my friend
as soon as he got into the car. “Yes,” he said. “So, like, do you think
we have to look at the vaginas while we eat the food?” I asked. He
didn’t know. “What kind of food do you think it’ll be? Will it be dark
in there? Will we be able to see the food before we put it in our
mouths? Is there a chef? Do the strippers cook the food?” I continued.
“I won’t be eating the food, just so you know,” he said. “I feel
nauseated already.” “Oh,” I said.

I wasn’t nervous at all about going to the lunch buffet at Lake
City’s Déjà Vu Showgirls, until it was time to
actually go to the lunch buffet at Lake City’s Déjà
Vu Showgirls. Jokes about “fried clams” and “thousands of
beautiful tater tots and three ugly ones” (thank you, thank you) are
all well and good until the moment when you must physically leave the
car, face the vaginas, and munch the tots.

I did not want to munch the tots.

“Have you been to a strip club before?” my friend asked me
as we drove north on I-5. “Yes,” I answered without thinking. “Wait.
No.” How was it possible that I had never been to a strip club? I felt
like I definitely had, but then again, maybe that was just all the
Flavor of Love and Rock of Love and A Shot at
Love with Tila Tequila talking. Certainly the idea had been
floated (you know, in college) as a silly rite-of-passage
novelty, but I’d never actually gotten around to going. I was on my way
to my first strip-club experience, and it was noon on a sunny day. A
Tuesday, to be specific. Also, there would be fried rice.

We pulled into the parking lot, which was ominously empty. A woman
stood outside in the sunshine, smoking, wearing a “skirt” roughly the
size of an onion ring. I thought about onion rings, and wished I could
unthink them. “Do you think we have to see her vagina later?” “Yes.”
“All right, let’s go.”

What I was to discover inside the Déjà Vu Showgirls in
Lake City wasn’t just a semi-gross buffet and some gently gyrating
buttholes. I discovered that deep inside my liberal, liberated,
sex-positive core, I, Lindy West, am actually Mother Superior at the
Barbara Bush Wet Blanket Academy for Totally Uptight School Marms. I
was shocked, honestly shocked, at the depth of my own discomfort.

There was a cute girl at the front desk—the only female in the
building who wasn’t wearing platform Lucite heels. Her sensible flats
were reassuring. “Hello,” I said, “I understand you have a lunch
buffet, so we just wanted to check it out. For lunch.” “Sure!” she
replied. “The buffet is not here yet, but it’ll be here soon. Sit down
and enjoy some ladies while you wait.” The cover was $5, and an
additional $10 bought us the all-you-can-eat food and bottomless soft
drinks. “So that’s how the buffet works?” I asked. “You guys order
takeout?” “Yep! Today’s Panda Express day!”

We sat down. It was Panda Express day. I had so many questions. “So,
I mean, when you have a boner, are you also hungry? That seems
weird. Do you think this violates some sort of health code? Surely
there are guidelines that regulate the acceptable proximity of bare
buttholes to trays of kung pao chicken.” I examined the bubbles in my
Diet Coke as a series of girls pinched their nipples and wiggled
slowly, half-heartedly, around the stage. There wasn’t another soul in
the place. If we hadn’t been there, I realized with a lurch, they would
not have been dancing at all. They would have been smoking, relaxing,
chatting, drinking Diet Coke. “I feel like I should get an erection
just to be polite,” my friend muttered. A crowd of masturbating
transients would have been preferable to this empty, dark room, all
nipples pointed in my direction.

I am a shy person, and so at Showgirls it wasn’t the nudity that
made me uncomfortable—it was the attention. The first
girl to approach us was named Kitty. She touched me on the leg and
asked if I wanted to go “have some fun.” What was I supposed to say?
The truth was ridiculous (“Oh no, no thank you—I’m just here for
the chow mein”), but I tried it anyway. Yeah, sure. That’s what they
all say.

Taken separately, I am in support of the existence of strip clubs,
buffets, buttholes, orange chicken, and sunny Tuesday afternoons. But
even if I were into ladies—here’s where my PhD in Grandma rears
its head—there was nothing sexy or empowering about this
commodified, artificial intimacy. Was there? It just made me feel
lonely. I asked Kitty if the staff got to eat at the buffet for free.
“Only after 2:00 p.m.,” she told me in her robotic seduction voice. “We
get to eat whatever’s left.”

The food was perfectly standard Panda Express takeout, arranged in a
row of steaming aluminum containers on cocktail tables near the bar. I
took a few noodles, a few chunks of glistening fried chicken, and a
piece of broccoli. Back at my seat, I attempted to spear the broccoli.
The broccoli would not be speared. I tried again. It slipped off the
fork again and fell onto my plate. And again. I was flustered.
“Broccoli is so slippery!” observed a tall dark-haired girl approaching
our table. “And I’m sure those plates are like, totally aaaaaack!”
(Here she pantomimed a paper plate collapsing in half.) “Yeah,
seriously!” I said. We laughed. This girl really understood where I was
coming
from about the broccoli. It was like we were friends,
chatting like normal humans. This made me like her way more
than the other girls, but it also made me want to see her butthole
way less.

“Hey, you!” called a blonde perched on the edge of the stage.
“Hellooooooo!” She pulled her right boob out of her bra and jiggled it
at me, like it was the boob saying “Hellooooooo!” instead of the girl.
I wasn’t sure how to react, so I waved back, using my hand. There was a
noodle hanging out of my mouth. “We gotta get you up here!”
she said. “Oh, no thank you!” I repeated. When I turned back to my
broccoli friend, she had gone. “We need to get the fuck out of here,” I
whispered.

On the drive home, still hungry, we stopped at Tubs Gourmet Subs, my
favorite place to eat in Lake City. My mini Firecracker ($5.79, with
chicken, bacon, jalapeños, garlic, and barbecue sauce for
dipping), and his large Don ($9.79, with salami, pepperoncini, garlic,
provolone, and Parmesan) were hot and satisfying. There were exactly
zero exposed vaginas. No one’s boob spoke to me the entire time.