Emily Stripped Bare (Naked Ambition Prologue)

The following essay is the prologue for my memoir Naked Ambition: A Male Stripper’s True Account of Making Girls Behave Badly. It was also my project for the personal essay college course I took during the Fall 2018 semester and received a grade of 100%. What can I say? I’m just that good.

I’m totally hot for Emily, drama and all, but it goes deeper than that…

The phone rang as I showed my body no mercy. Heart racing. Breathing heavy. The sound of metal on metal surrounded me like some avant-garde industrial symphony. My chest and back muscles were pumped and throbbing from the brutal workloads inflicted upon them. Shoulders were next. I moved to train them as if I just had sex and was immediately gunning for another round.

I wondered if Becky thought she interrupted me having sex. Others have asked that when calling me during a workout. This happened more often in the past. My exotic entertainment agency, Hardbodies Entertainment of Arkansas, had once been something of a mini business empire. By April 2018, however, it limped along as I contemplated new entrepreneurial possibilities while attempting to complete my B.A. sometime in this century.

“Are you available for a birthday party a week from this Saturday in Sherwood?”

While I certainly needed the money, I played it cool as always. Enthusiasm is an excellent deal maker, but desperation is a surefire deal breaker one way or another.

“Yeah, I can still get you in for that date.”

As I headed for the locker room to retrieve my scheduling binder, I swaggered past hopeless souls churning out poorly executed deadlifts and curls simply because they could. Becky filled me in on the details. By the sound of her voice, I had her pegged as a fifty-something woman and no stranger to flavor country. She asked me a variety of questions about what my performance entails and mentioned how pretty the birthday girl is. That last point stuck out to me as it’s something clients never mention because it shouldn’t matter. I wasn’t interested in fucking the birthday girl. Not yet, at least.

As for Becky and the rest of her friends…

“We’re a bunch of horny old broads.”

…followed by nervous laughter. Not the sort of women I’d talk into making out with one another for my amusement, as I’m wont to do at times. 

As I sat in an empty corner of the gym and jotted down pertinent details into my black binder of professional debauchery, I couldn’t help but cringe at that statement. Although nominally made in jest, I instantly recognized and felt bad that she was selling herself short. If only she knew the extent of unrelentingly harsh self-criticism to which I had subjected myself all these years, but it wouldn’t have made a difference. 

With no obvious red flags present, I booked the party and had all the information I needed including time, number of women present, and the name of the birthday girl. Emily. I’d get online later and put faces to names, as I do with clients, bachelorettes, and birthday girls. In the meantime, I returned to that cast iron jungle lined with mirrors and resumed my physical catharsis. 

***

A special perk for strippers is entertaining people they find attractive. So, when a guy returns from getting a lap dance and gushes about how the stripper genuinely liked him, his buddies shouldn’t be too quick to laugh at and dismiss his claims. There’s a legitimate chance she may have the hots for him and was extra flirty as a result. She’s still human after all.

The same holds for male strippers. While I take excellent care of all my bachelorettes, birthday girls, and their girlfriends, I admit that it’s exciting to encounter a woman who makes me think, “Yeah, I’d do her.” Not only is this a personally satisfying development when it occurs, but it’s something I can use as an entertainer to further turn up the heat of the moment by making things extra scandalous.

With my workout completed, I arrived home and cooked dinner. Sitting down at my computer to eat, as I do with nearly every meal, I jumped on Facebook to learn about Becky and Emily. My online snooping should come as no surprise to anyone, given what I’m about to do in a strange place full of strange women.

Becky was pretty much what I expected. From there, I scoured her friends for a pretty girl named Emily, and there she was.

Those eyes. That smile. She’s beautiful. So embarrassing beautiful, apparently, that I can only describe her in sentence fragments. “Yeah, I’d do her,” doesn’t begin to scratch the surface in describing my immediate intentions towards Emily. I don’t believe in things like angels, yet not only was there now one right before my eyes but one who is sexy as all fuck. It was truly lust at first sight, damn her.  

It was like the exact moment when I knew I had entered puberty. I was sitting in class a few days before summer vacation when I happened to casually glance in the direction of the cute girl who sat a couple of desks away from me. Without warning, a strange new feeling swept over me. The specifics were vague, but I immediately recognized it as a sexual attraction. Ultimately, it went no further than me throwing rocks at her later. 

My desire to throw rocks at Emily was even more intense. As a stripper, you can bet her sexy ass that she was getting extra-special attention. And, as a man, I had every intention of making a move on her. Emily made a strong impression on my alpha male sensibilities. It’s not every day I encounter a girl who’s even more beautiful than me.

Beyond the erotic sensations, however, the sight of Emily made me reflect upon living a life akin to the immortal words of the great David Lee Roth:

“I found the simple life ain’t so simple

When I jumped out on that road

I got no love, no love you’d call real

Ain’t got nobody waiting at home”

There’s a want for that special girl in my life. It’s something I think about at this late stage of my stripping career. One who possesses the vanity to match mine along with the sassiness to compliment my swagger. A girl who rocks heavy black eyeliner, shares my affinity for leopard print, and owns a smile that could talk me into killing for her. I have no intention of giving up my decadent ways. If anything, they’ve been restricted all these years without the ideal partner in crime present to equally share in the delicious fun night after night. Is Emily that girl? I have no fucking clue, but I’d love to find out just how alive we can make each other feel.

***

As much as I wanted to meet Emily, I questioned hitting on her before an audience of horny old broads and how they would react. I pondered one strategy after another while figuring out a way to take her home with me. The problem solved itself when Becky texted four days later to renegotiate the booking fee by $30. It’s not that she didn’t have the money. Rather, she wanted to run my show. Fuck that. Emily or not, no booking is worth the drama of a troublemaking client. So, I canceled. 

Not surprisingly, Becky went for the jugular in retaliation:

“It’s your loss.”

I immediately wanted to punch her in the face. By my loss, she wasn’t talking about money. She was talking about Emily. It was now clear that Becky always intended for the brief pleasure of Emily’s company to serve as part of my compensation. I was offered a one-hour chaperoned date with a hot girl, after which I would be expected to exit her life forever due to possibly the harshest cockblocking in history. Fuck Becky.

Still, my intuition told me it wasn’t over. I kept waiting for another phone call. It came late on the eve of the party. Although I missed it, the caller left a voicemail.

You might think that anyone attempting to get me back on board would make a conscious show of respect and humility. Nope. Instead, I was introduced to a woman named Charolette via possibly the most passive-aggressive and blatantly insulting voicemail in history. She decided to take the, “He’s a stripper, so he must be a fucking idiot,” approach and acted like she wanted to book me for an entirely different party in Sherwood, Arkansas on the same date that also had a “really pretty” birthday girl for me to entertain. I didn’t bother returning Charolette’s call.

I received a strange phone call from yet another woman on the day of the party who hung up when I informed her it wasn’t happening. For me, that night was spent losing myself in alcohol and music. I attempted to reconcile the mistreatment I had received with the frustration of not being pressed up tight against Emily before carrying her off into the sunset. As I sat in the dark with Rick James and Jack Daniels keeping me company, I attempted to take solace in the disappointment that my new enemies were also feeling that night by their own fault. But it didn’t help.

The drama didn’t end for either side on that muggy late-April night, as I received the occasional strange phone call or text over the succeeding months. While this was nothing new for me, there was a different vibe about these calls and texts. Take the following text exchange for one example:

“Is this Magnum?”

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

And nothing more. I Googled the number and learned it belonged to a makeup artist, which is notable. Does that prove anything? Of course not. But it’s strangely coincidental and not an isolated incident.

In the meantime, I struggled with articulating the entire incident to others beyond the simple explanation that I had booked a party and canceled it a few days later over money. The people who received this watered-down explanation knew I wasn’t telling them the entire story. I took multiple stabs at writing about it, but the results were half-baked at best despite my desire to lay it all out for myself and others. 

I needed to confess my hunger for a hot piece of Emmie Pie to someone in the know, and that someone was Charolette. Why Charolette? Because she afforded me the efficiency of killing two birds with one stone. I could cure my writer’s block by admitting my attraction to Emily and deliver payback for that awful voicemail she’d left me. So, I packaged my confession within a bullshit apology about how everything was my fault and blah, blah, blah… I still managed to brag about having dated other hot girls, because I couldn’t help myself. And because fuck Charolette.

This was no easy task as I would write a couple of sentences, lie down and stare at the ceiling, write a couple of sentences, do some laundry, write a couple of sentences, admire myself in the mirror, write a couple of sentences, go to Walmart, write a couple of sentences, and then dance like no one was watching. Because no one was. 

Finally, my “apology” was complete. It was glorious in its manipulative, vindictive, and discomforting rhetoric. As soon as I hit send, I felt the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders at Charolette’s expense. Bless her heart. She never responded, nor did I expect her to. Because that wasn’t the point. My objective was achieved as I immediately sat down afterward and began writing the first draft of this prologue. 

I could now express in words what had been going through my mind for so long. Not only could I write about it, but I began sharing the story with others to a positive response. This includes telling it at bachelorette parties – complete with voice impressions of Becky and Charolette – to women gathered around me as I stand there in a g-string and sip whatever cocktail they fixed me. The twentysomethings in particular, who always ask for stories, are so taken with my desire that they run through every girl named Emily they know in the slim chance they can introduce us.

***

So, how would things have played out had I performed at Emily’s birthday party? I imagine something like this:

With total authority, I enter through a gate into a middle-class backyard dressed as a cop (Becky requested some pool maintenance guy thing but that’s stupid) who is here to break up the party due to noise complaints from the neighbors. I take note of the recently constructed swimming pool, as Becky has money for pools but not strippers. 

Upon being greeted to the excited squeals of horny old broads and the stench of lingering cigarette smoke, I demand to speak with Emily. The broads point in unison towards my thoroughly embarrassed birthday girl, seated in the middle of my audience like an unbelievably gorgeous flower rising from a compost heap, and I demand she explain to me what’s going on here tonight. After giving me some silly non-answer, I make her stand, bend over, and assume the position. I frisk her by running my hands up between her legs, then tell her I know she’s been in this position before as I enthusiastically thrust and grind my pelvis against her firm, round butt. Once the hysterical laughs subside, I make her take a seat, place her in handcuffs, and inform her that she’s in violation of penal code 6969.

I press play on my phone. The “Bad Boys” theme from COPS blasts from my portable speaker as I straddle Emily, looking into her amazing brown eyes and physically expressing a combination of playfulness and sexual dominance. The music quickly changes to “Salt Shaker” by the Ying Yang Twins. A song perfectly suited for bump-and-grind movements as I dance on my birthday girl. She accepts this hot stranger suddenly all over her. I tear off my shirt and place her hands on my rock-hard pecs, then slowly guide them down my abs. When the belt comes off, I have her stand and assume the position once more for a light birthday spanking. She sits down. I have her grab the waistband of my tear-away pants as I step backward out of them to the delight of my audience. I fall forward and catch the edge of Emily’s chair. Placing my face in her thighs before moving slowly up her legs and along her torso. Stopping to rub my face in her ample breasts, until we finally end up face to face. I know I’m giving her the bedroom eyes and voice. I can’t help myself.

Then comes my signature move when I straddle Emily facing away and fall forward to land on my hands. Simultaneously kicking my legs back and squeeze her thighs as we’re crotch to crotch. The music changes to “Hold On, We’re Going Home” by Drake. This is where the performance takes an interesting and unique turn. The slower song gives me an excuse to take things into more sensual territory. I gently run my fingers through Emily’s long, dark hair and stroke her cheek as I lower myself face to face with her. My chest pressed tightly against her tits. I lose myself in her eyes. Her smile is killing me. I slowly lean in and press my lips against hers.

Pandemonium breaks loose amongst the horny old broads as I literally sweep Emily off her feet and carry her away. To do every naughty thing we’ve already done countless times in my imagination. Her friends threaten to call the cops, but they forget that I’m the law around here. And my ridiculously stunning birthday girl is in dire need of an all-night strip search. The party is dead, but I’ve never felt so alive.

Happy birthday, Emily.