I didn't sleep well last night; I only got around five hours. I'm having trouble not thinking about work and finances and health, and buying holiday presents and sending out cards, so I guess my overly active brain snapped me awake earlier than necessary.

The day was beautiful, a bit chilly but sunny and bright. I went over to Columbus Circle to search for some presents with my usual combination of self-loathing and perfectionism. "Will they like this gift, or think it's a piece of shit?" Well, this year I can't take the number I usually play on myself. I'm keeping it simple and buying people some DVDs I know they'll enjoy. For example, my college age nephew got into Martin Scorsese after I bought him Mean Streets last year, and so I followed it up this year with a deluxe edition of Raging Bull.

At Borders, I saw a new DVD edition of Demetrius and the Gladiators, one of my favorite sword-and-sandal movies. It stars Victor Mature and Susan Hayward, and it's juicy entertainment with just enough colorful paganism and lust thrown into the usual Romans vs. Christians plot. Anyway, the new boxcover design is much cooler and more retro than the one on the DVD I already own, which was illustrated with a boring black and photo of a Roman amphitheater! I guess the video company came to their senses, because they put painted art in the old 50s style on the new DVD box and I'm sure it'll sell much better. I really wanted to buy it just for the new box, but restrained myself. I have the movie on both VHS and DVD; I don't need another copy of it.

I put my holiday purchases on credit card, something I haven't done in the last few years. I was always proud lately that I was able to buy all my gifts in cash, but this year money is tighter than it's been for ages, so I'll have to pay things off piecemeal on the card. But I'm not going to spend too much, so it won't be a disaster--just more annoying, and ego-deflating too.

I hate to have to pinch pennies, not because there's any shame in it, but because it sets off the fear in me that things are just going to get worse unless I can make some big professional score.

Okay, so like a lot of people, I would much rather feel flush than squeezed around Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year, but I hope that next year at this time I'll have been able to turn things around.

ZP is my good buddy, my writer/artist friend who looks like a tall Kafka. I’ve written about his witty, jolly self here many times, and our mutual love for all things about Bela Lugosi. Anyway, ZP’s mother passed away the other day after a long illness. He's dealing with it in a calm, stoic fashion.

She was in her late seventies. I’d only met her a couple of times myself, and she seemed like a stylish, attractive lady. I’ll be stopping by the “shiva” for her this weekend, which is the Jewish practice of sitting at the family’s house for several days of mourning.

No doubt about it, our parents are getting old. We’re getting old...all of us...and no matter how many oddball movies I watch or sinuous strippers I ogle, the gray hairs (even in my eyebrows--yikes!) seem to defy my dreams of escape and fantasy. Reality intrudes like a finger in the back from a stranger...

I’ve been trying to reach ZP over the last day, but it’s been phone tag time as he deals with all the family stuff. With any luck, we’ll talk later this evening.

Meanwhile, I went out to my freelance gig today in New Jersey. I had a productive day and also got in a bit of pleasant schmoozing with my friends there. Although I’ve long preferred the freelance life, sometimes it’s nice to go out to a big office to work and be amongst other people during the day, as opposed to working at home alone. There are several fulltime staffers in the office I really enjoy talking with. If I didn’t discipline myself and get down to work, I could just chat for hours and keep them from their work, too!

When I got back to the city in the late afternoon, I tried to reach ZP but couldn’t. I checked my blog but I wasn’t in the mood to write just then, so I decided to go out to the stripclub for a beer. Since I have coupons for free admission, and I’ve been passing on the lapdances, it’s not a major investment anymore and I can drop in more casually.

I made phone plans to meet my writer/bodybuilder/streetfighter friend Rexx for dinner afterward, then had a quick half-shot of Jameson and headed out to the club. I hurried through the rush hour throngs in Times Square. It’s pretty hectic around quitting time, like a human obstacle course on the sidewalks. In the club, it was nice seeing the familiar faces and figures onstage. I really wanted to be there--to sit, watch, daydream, relax. The barmaid who brought me my Bud Lite was quite friendly and I tipped her an extra dollar more than usual.

This particular club has some very attractive dancers. There is one gal there--let’s call her Veronica--who has an extremely beautiful smile and pleasant manner, on top of a statuesque body with shapely legs. It’s ridiculous: I’m fifty-five, and she has to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight, but whenever I slip a dollar tip into her garter, I feel like a schoolboy with a crush on his teacher. In defense of my idiocy, she seems to have quite an effect on other men too. Veronica is very popular amongst the customers and is always talking to, and dancing for, somebody. I originally met her at a different club where she used to work, and once got a couple of dances from her. They felt sort of mechanical, though, and not as memorable as her luminescent smile. Still, I’ve always remained a sucker for her face. It has a kindly, yet sexy quality, like that of some of my favorite actresses like Frances Drake, Doris Day, and Jane Wyatt. I find myself thinking about Veronica at odd moments during the day, like when I’m sitting on the bus at eight a.m. commuting out to New Jersey. Still, for the moment I’m sticking with tipping her onstage, although if my inner Santa Claus or Hanukkah Henry says it’s okay to splurge, maybe I’ll feel inspired to spring for a lapdance at some point. In a way, though, NOT having her lapdance for me is making her loom more erotically in my imagination--which is interesting and makes me want to continue to just watch her from from the audience.

After the club, I met Rexx at a midtown diner. I had angelhair pasta primavera, with a light garlic sauce. Something different, and it was good. Rexx just finished up a book proposal so we talked about that for awhile. He noticed that a quartet of female tourists at the next table were fiddling with a digital camera, and he offered to take a group shot for them. It turned out they were from New Orleans and wanted to find a bar to watch the Saints game over the weekend. Rexx gave them a few suggestions. It was funny how one of the women reacted to the picture-taking; she was really reluctant to be photographed, and was relieved when it was only one shot. She was a normal looking middle-aged woman, but who knows? Maybe she wished she looked like a movie star...or a stripper? Or was just dissatisfied with her average self, like so many of us are...

The youngest woman in the bunch was a blonde with a ponytail with a very pretty face. She looked to be about twenty-five, and must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. I could have sworn she was giving me the eye while Rexx was talking about the best bars to see the football game. Usually Rexx gets eyeballed by women when we hang out together, because he’s in such good shape as well as being sixteen years younger than I am, but this gal gave me a very friendly smile too. Nice bonus for Cranky.

When I got home, I saw that ZP had left me a message with the address of his mother’s apartment for the shiva on Sunday, but the answering machine cut off the full message. Phone tag continues...so maybe until he calls back, I’ll think about Veronica for awhile.

Just knowing she's around is a bonus in itself...

Man needs a bonus from time to time in this life!

I am allergic to cats, and have an odd relationship with them. I don’t dislike cats, I find them beautiful and interesting, but I can’t touch them or I start to wheeze, my eyes redden, and my voice becomes croaky. I think cats sense that I have a physical problem and not an attitude which keeps me distant from them, and over the years the felines seem to have accepted this in me, and give me my space, no matter where I encounter them. They don’t rub up against me or jump in my lap or wag their tails in my face. I look at them with friendliness and curiosity; I just can’t pet them. And I get the feeling that they accept my friendliness as enough.

Of course, at gatherings where there are cats, other people pet them, and then when I hug those people goodbye at the end of an evening, invariably I start to redden, wheeze, and croak. Can’t always be avoided.

So what’s the connection to strippers? Well, over the last few visits to stripclubs, I think the peelers have started to understand that I like them, but I just can’t “touch” them in a manner of speaking--in other words, I can’t usually afford to buy lapdances right now. And although they’re not unfriendly, the dancers are starting to give me space and not hassle me for not spending lots of dough. I drink my beer and I tip them onstage, exchange pleasantries, and simply watch the show.

The strippers appear to understand that while the heart is willing, the wallet is slim. Just like the kitties comprehend that I’d love to pet them, but it’s a no-go for Cranky.

Just an analogy that occurred to me last night in the club, watching the girls prettily strut their stuff!

I was sitting in a club a little while ago and thinking, “What would I feel about most of these dancers if money wasn’t part of the equation?" And of course the reality was that most of them looked fine and would be perfectly desirable to my finicky self in the bedroom. Unfortunately and regrettably, the reverse would probably not be true for a lot of us customers if the dancers would run into us in other environments...

A friend of mine had brought up this point once, and I had to agree with him: we wouldn’t turn down a chance to get frisky with probably 90% of the girls in the stripclubs in other situations.

But put a price tag on a girl’s time, and wow, the connoisseur and aficionado comes to the fore in many men’s minds. I know it does in mine. All dancers are appraised far more critically, not so much for their cash value like some sort of chattel, but for the potential of how cash spent on an individual dancer will return a feeling of maximum pleasure to the customer’s brain, loins, and even his heart.

Tonight I was watching a redhead prance around in her skimpy Christmas Cutie outfit. I’ve tipped her onstage but I can’t say that I feel any particular attraction to her...in the club. But when I saw how often she was getting lapdances, I realized that my valuation of her may not be the norm in the customer population of this particular joint. She obviously appeals to many guys. And then I said to myself, “You know, if I met her at a party, and we clicked, I could see feeling perfectly horny for her.”

Maybe money doesn’t change everything, but it certainly affects our perceptions of each other in a way that can build big unfortunate walls between people. Obviously, this doesn’t just happen in stripclubs...and I understand why it might be a process necessary to the successful operation of this type of business. Still, I mournfully sense that I can’t ever really know any of the girls for who they might actually be, and for the true level of how they might actually affect me.

After all these years, they remain mysteries to me...

And I think their very unknowability, and not just to me, is one reason why strippers have always had such a hold on the popular imagination.

I don't understand how people can talk non-stop without pausing for a breath. I sat in front of such a person today on the shuttle bus coming back from my freelance gig in New Jersey. To this symphony of verbiage (morsels of which I cannot share with you since the litany was in a language I do not understand) was added the pungent pleasure of a lady who sat down next to me when the bus stopped in Fort Lee, just before the George Washington Bridge. She wore a fur coat that so reeked of mothballs I thought I was going to levitate to the roof of the bus. Between these two sensory overloads, the trip across the bridge back into Gotham seemed somewhat endless to this cranky reporter.

When I got off the bus I thought, "Yes, these are the petty annoyances I try to forget by going to stripclubs..." And at that very moment, on a poster on the steps leading down to the bus terminal, was this sign advertising a theatrical show:

DANCE. WITNESS THE POTENTIAL OF THE HUMAN BODY.

I could not have agreed more. When I got back to midtown, I dropped off my briefcase, had a half shot of Jameson, and headed out for a beer at the tittie bar. Maybe it wasn't the same dance referred to in the ad, but I certainly witnessed the potential of the human body! And with my coupon for free admission, and by passing on the lapdances, all I spent was sixteen dollars. Overall, a pleasant and diverting hour, and I seem to getting the knack of economy-sized entertainment.

Progress...or a different route to hell??