What drove me into the shadowy embrace of night and left me standing at the doors of Spike's Topless Danceria on Lake City Way? Maybe I was just bored and alone and had already done everything else there is to do in this starless city of madness and calamity. It definitely wasn't the boobs; I'm as queer as Ricky Martin. (Almost.) Or maybe it was because The Stranger handed me a fistful of petty cash for tips and cab fare, then ordered me to report firsthand on the terrible toll our city's wretched new strip-club regulations had taken upon the poor souls gyrating for dollar bills within.

Thanks to the black-hearted Seattle City Council, strip clubs had recently been skinned of their indispensable filth and forced to adopt certain unnatural practices and strictures. Dancers were now required to remain at least four feet from patrons at all times, and every naughty nook and cranny of the club had to be filled with something called "parking-garage brightness." Vice-obscuring draperies and private rooms were forbidden, and lap dances were punishable by law. There could be no touching, no tipping (except through the communal tip jar), and for many aficionados of the stripping arts, there was no point.

In the wake of the new regulations, word spread of the growing desperation filling the C-cupped hearts and empty bellies of local erotic dancers, whose livelihoods had significantly diminished in the four-foot era. With the lap-dance-loving wankers staying away in droves, the once-profitable job of erotic dancing soon proved no better than manning the drive-through at Jack in the Box. Jokes about Seattle's starving strippers proliferated ("going out for ribs" became hip slang for hitting a Seattle strip club). There'd even been talk of a ballot measure to subsidize alternate career training for displaced dancers, who'd be offered reduced tuition at any of the technical or medical-assisting colleges operating on Tukwila's Andover Park West. But day to day, in the trenches, times were tough.

The four-foot rule had landed especially hard on the shadowy universe of Lake City Way—the streets were desolate and nearly silent, save for the blinking of the Spike's sign, cast in neon red and blue. As I made my way to the entrance, I prepared myself for the rush of delicious naughtiness one expects to have when entering a glittering black jewel of vice like Spike's. But as I pushed through the greasy double glass doors with my coyest smile and valid ID, I found the room inside wasn't deliciously naughty at all. It was as bright as a Safeway in Rio, resonating with the piped-in soundtrack of every strip club everywhere: AC/DC's Back in Black.

Like every other unfortunate soul whose sad fate it has been to linger in the frigid and unforgiving shadows of Seattle for more than 10 minutes, I'd been to Spike's before: a dizzy, drunken night long ago, almost entirely forgotten. What I manage to recall is dank and windowless, otherworldly and dim, heavily draped and rich with secret corners and tempting private rooms. Now all that was gone. Glaring rows of new fluorescent bulbs screamed down upon everything in sight... ugly white light bathed the dusty corners and dirty walls, rudely revealing the darkest secrets of the unspeakable tiles on the floor (the grout! Oh my GOD!). Empty chairs and forlorn tables were stacked carelessly against the walls. The place was as dead as disco and lit up like a tweaker on payday—the combination was eerie.

Even the patrons seemed dusty and bored. No regular businessmen wearing panties under their suits lurked, no drunken bachelor parties whooped or hollered, no shy day laborers from under the viaduct wandered the dusty corners looking for whatever small affection they could negotiate or afford. On this Saturday night the crowd consisted of three depressed-looking guys, seated far apart from each other but all exactly four feet from the sagging wooden stage. The men looked like starving dogs with jock itch—twitchy, hungry, forlorn. Were they out-of-towners, ignorant of Seattle's new sexless stature? Or were they perverts with fetishes for bright lights and distant strippers? God only knows, but one guy looked too old to be breathing, the second was middle-aged and wore a long brown coat, and the last looked disturbingly like Greg Nickels. I swear to God.

Onstage, two very skinny dancers twirled listlessly—both the naughty grad-student type, you know what I mean—while a third tough-looking lass with a nice rack stood by the stage door marked "Employees Only, Do Not Enter." All three of the dancers looked ragged and worried—the sign above the stage door suggested why. Cast in cursive neon were the words "Lap Dance," but the sign was dark—is there anything sadder than unplugged neon?—and the door that once led to the private lap-dance area was now bolted and forbidden, probably used for storage. In the communal tip jar, situated at the base of the catwalk, sat three grimy, lonely dollars.

Gazing at the show, I screwed as much of a polite and inscrutable smile on my face as I could—the smile of a nice gay boy looking nonjudgmentally at a naked lady's coot. I felt as on display as the dancers did, and the whole scene was as erotic as a colostomy bag. I decided not to linger. I'd witnessed what the wretched four-foot rule had done and could report back with accuracy. There was no reason to lurk awkwardly around this neutered bordello. I'd call a cab and search the night for more vivid adventures.

As I rose from my chair, I heard a loud metallic CHUNK! and the club went black. The music died with the lights, air conditioner, pinball machine, and every other electrical device, leaving only a deep, dark silence.

I stayed put. Had things gotten so bad that Spike's couldn't even pay their damn light bill? Standing in the blackness, I heard movement—steps hurrying across the floor, a grunt, a loud CRACK!, then chairs toppling and a sort of high-pitched whine. Then: breathing, staggered dragging, a door slamming shut.

I called out into the dark: "Hello?" I seemed to be alone. With my arms held out before me, I took an exploratory step forward, then another. Soon my shoe hit a patch of something sticky. Then...BANG! Lights.

These weren't the eye-burning fluorescents that had flooded the room earlier. The new light was dim and blue, emanating from battery-powered emergency floods mounted in the corner and casting long shadows that rendered everything in the room a bluish-gray. The sticky puddle beneath my feet was a nearly royal blue, chairs were overturned around me, and everyone was gone. The strippers, the johns, even the communal tip jar. Had there been a fire? A raid? Near the sticky blue puddle under my foot, I saw a thick smear of blue streaking the floor, running from the four-foot stage boundary across the floor and disappearing under the stage door.

Sweat broke out on the back of my neck and my body went cold. Within seconds, a warm wash of reason broke over me: I'd walked in on a private party. That's why the crowd was so sparse. The guys sitting around me earlier had prearranged a clandestine trip to the ostensibly forbidden private back room with the girls, and that's where they all were now. Casting my glance across the room, I saw the bolt on the door marked "Do Not Enter" was thrown back, its padlock missing.

Suddenly, the door was before me. Almost without knowing it, I'd navigated a tiptoe path through the spreading streak of congealing blue, around the upturned tables, and pressed my ear against the door. I listened as hard as I could, but could hear nothing. Whatever was going on—especially if it was canoodling of which the City of Seattle did not approve—I needed to see it.

I leapt back from the door as shots rang out. Not gunshots, but sharp, loud BANGS!, like a hammer falling a half-dozen times, followed by what sounded like a mixture of cheers and moans, all of them female. If this was illicit sex, it was rough and seemingly one-sided.

As I pulled the door open, just a fraction, a warm and meaty blast of air hit my face. It seemed to blow from deep in the back room. Eww. I squinted inside—it was dim, dimmer than the room I was in, and it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust well enough to identify what I was seeing. Then everything swam into focus.

A mass of bloody meat and bone was on the floor. Around it crowded a slew of women—the three dancers from before, plus six or seven more women, all of them thin and barely dressed in underwear and lingerie.

They were eating.

In the flickering shadows of the room, the women drew pieces from the pile and tore in with their teeth, some licking their fingers, some laughing and crying at the same time, all with bright, shining eyes. To the side I saw discarded remnants—the one fellow's long brown coat, the three-piece suit worn by the Nickels look-alike. Small, wet noises came from the twitching bodies the women feasted upon, and I heard myself gasp.

Suddenly, at once, the feasting strippers looked up from their gruesome meal—and straight at me. They neither spoke nor moved, but merely stared with sad, malnourished eyes that seemed to beg my understanding. Slowly, as if possessed of a single throat, the corps of skinny women issued an anguished moan as they held their gory treasures out for my approval, as if to say, "We didn't want to do this!"

I understood. It was the four-foot rule. Deprived of their livelihoods, lacking affection and attention, hungry, desperate, and unable to afford their various accessories and medications, these poor strippers had simply cracked. The desperate slut in me understood completely, and they understood that I understood. These creatures wouldn't hurt me, I was one of them. I could go.

With a sad sigh, I turned away and made quietly for the door.

I was stopped by a nerve-shredding scream, welling up from the room behind me. The exit doors were only a few yards away, I could make it easily...

Sharp-nailed hands clawed deep into my back and jerked me off my feet. Something heavy hit me hard across the head and I felt hot blood run into my eyes before I felt the pain. "I'm really sorry," a skinny, bloody woman in a blond wig whispered in my ear. Then came the teeth—sharp and merciless, ripping chunks from my thighs, arms, neck, wherever a wet set of hungry jaws could find purchase enough to tear. I became aware of my own terrible scream. There would be no escape.

As I moved beyond pain, as vital chunks of myself slid down the gullets of cannibalistic exotic dancers, something in me forgave these hungry, mad sluts completely. But as I spiraled away into nothing, borne away on my own wretched screaming, my final fading thought was, "Fuck you, Greg Nickels."