Last night was strippers and DVDs, and both were fine, helping Sir Cranky savor for a bit the pleasure of life. Which was good, because the week was mighty stressful and joy was needed, much more than the fleeting pleasure of Thursday night's dinner with the pretty but married colleague and her hubby.

I went to one of my favorite clubs, getting there just at the change from day to night shift. Looking at the girls lined up onstage, I thought, "Gee, I don't know a single one of those dancers." None of my usual stripper acquaintances were on the job last evening.

But you never know what can develop. Although I might have been a little too brusque with the dancer who literally stuck her face in mine one moment after she walked off stage from the opening lineup of dancers (I told her I just wanted to hang out for awhile, because I wanted to see who these new girls were on the stage), she moved on and another girl came over after a short while, someone who turned out to be very much on my wavelength. Let's call her Lily. I invited Lily to sit down for a few minutes when she came over and introduced herself, and we shared some pleasant casual conversation before heading over to the banquette for a dance. And oh, she could dance. I was very turned on, it was so nice. She had to go onstage abruptly, though, but I sat nearby as she danced there, tipped her after each song, and she basically danced on the stage just for me. She worked up a bit of a sweat, which I find sexy, and as she danced I had the pleasure of looking at her and seeing just how attractive she is from top to toe. When she came offstage, she didn't hustle me for a dance right away, but lead me back to my table. I bought her a drink and we talked some more before she began dancing again. It was very exciting. Not only her movements, but our little erotic conversation, made me very happy. She understood from just a few words how I get turned on from a little dominant-submissive verbal play, with the female in charge. Basically, when she pinned my fingers to the back of the banquette with her small slender hands, she had a truly captive audience. Ah yes...

I said a few posts ago that I thought I was looking for a dancer who could affect me like Angela, and perhaps I have found one in Lily. I told her I would come back to see her again next week sometime. Later at home, I thought about her with, ummm, a richness of fondness...

My only regret is that I could have sat with her a little longer after she'd finished dancing for me--she went back onstage for awhile, then came back--but I suddenly felt like I needed to go off by myself for awhile, and told her I had to get some dinner (it was well past nine o'clock and I hadn't eaten). I also wanted to get up and leave before she had to get up and leave me, to seek other customers. I felt both grateful for the way we erotically clicked during the dance, but also a little embarrassed by how quickly I'd revealed my fantasies to a stranger in this situation. But something about her made me feel trust; maybe that she didn't seem to shy away from the fact of my obvious arousal in my clothes, and that in her movements she seemed to embrace my pleasure almost tenderly, and not just as a means to make more money. On the other hand, I was feeling quite needy and impressionable...in any case, I soon left, because when an encounter is so nice, I want to be alone again to observe it, and preserve it, in my memory.

I was indeed hungry when I left, but then no sooner than wanting to be alone, I had the opposite feeling of NOT wanting to be alone--especially to eat alone--and there was no one to have dinner with. So instead I went home and ate a large bag of popcorn while I watched Doris Day in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), which I had bought earlier in the day. What a beautiful sexy woman Doris was in those old movies. The scene where she says to Jimmy Stewart that she's been thinking about having another baby is a verbal and visual haiku of erotica...or maybe that's just me, with my hyperactive imagination. Even her bare arms in a sleeveless dress are a turn-on in this movie. And I actually thought for a moment that as Doris talked to Jimmy Stewart in that quick scene where they're strolling in the market in Marrakech, she was channeling, in a playful, conscious, and maybe even affectionately satiric way, the walk and breathiness of her cinema contemporary, Marilyn Monroe. The guy who's writing the upcoming bio of Miss Day should ask her if this was so.

The movie is not one of Hitchcock's greatest but it's definitely worth seeing. Spoiler alert: I'm going to discuss a couple of plot points, so if you have not seen the movie, skip this paragraph. Besides Doris, what is most memorable to me are two of the minor characters: the nervous taxidermist questioned by Jimmy Stewart in his quest to find his kidnapped son, and the fortyish kidnapper played by Brenda De Banzie. The taxidermist seems nervous about something totally unrelated to Stewart's problem, and although we never find out what it is (the taxidermist turns out to be a red herring in the story), his character suggests an entire other story in the viewer's mind. Why is this poor taxidermist such a nervous man? Is he in trouble with the law? At the mercy of a blackmailer? Many fictional possibilities come to mind. Likewise, Miss De Banzie is excellent as a woman who gets involved in kidnapping and political assassination, probably because she is under the sway of her sarcastic, despotic husband; and she retains a touching, pathetic core of decency despite her crimes. Hitchcock, always noted as the Master of Suspense, could also be the Master of Compassion, and he does not neglect to show Miss De Banzie at the end, standing on the staircase looking down at the ruins of her life in the form of her evil husband, accidentally killed by his own gun.

Yes, last night was a good balance. A nice dancer, a good film, and a not-bad bag of storebought popcorn. And now, out into the sunshine for a little walk.