When the operative question for political candidates apparently isn’t, “Have you ever given money to a stripper?” but instead, “Will you be taking contributions from strippers?”, you know you live in Portland, where it’s long been asserted that we have “one strip club for every 11,826 residents” due to full nudity having been declared an activity protected by the First Amendment. In my life, I’ve been taken to precisely two strip clubs—both, yes, here in Portland—and while they both were remarkably uncomfortable experiences, at least the club where the dancers were in charge didn’t include performers with vacant, glassy, trapped-animal, drug-addled stares.

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Addenda

1. This post made me curious about the experiences of the autistic strippers who must be out there (since my experiences of being a patron undoubtedly were formed in part by my being autistic, although I didn’t know that at the time). Sure enough, the secret life of an autistic stripper appeared on Narratively last year.