Sexistential Crisis

So yeah, pole dancing FAIL.  Let me give you a breakdown of the situation.  A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine had organized a bunch of us ladies to go to take some pole dancing classes at the S Factor in the Marina.

Sure, pole dancing sounds like fun, and why not add more sexy dances to my repetoire, but there were a couple red flags:

1.  What in the name of christ is an S Factor?  I honestly don’t know.  All I know is this screams marketing lame-o talk and I can spot it a mile away.

2.  The class was held in the Marina.  Say no more.

Ok, so despite my skepticism about the location and the way they’ve branded this place, I brave the throngs of douchbags on the 22 to get there (they were in overabundance today as it’s also the SF douchebag fair Union Street Fair).  But seriously, this should be fun, right?  Me and a bunch of friends… how could this go wrong?

Well let me tell you.

So we get all set up and sign a 6 page release form (I may have handed over an unborn child.  Honestly it was ridiculous) and enter into a dimly lit room with a couple lights at either end, draped in red sheer fabric, two stripper poles in the center and a bunch of yoga mats lying about.

Our instructor, an extremely exhuberant woman enters the room with literally 200+ pounds of sass to throw about and begins to tell us that this is a place of love and acceptance.  We are all beautiful woman (blah blah blah) and there are no judgements here.  There are no mirrors, as well.  So far, I’m ok with this woman.  I like that she’s not a skinny bitch, I like that she’s got some personality and while I’m not big on the whole woman empowerment “you are a blossoming beam of light in the world” thing (which generally rings phoney to me), whatever.  I can deal.

So before we get stripper poling, or whatever it is we’re supposed to do, she asks if anyone has injuries.  Of course on the tome of paperwork I’d signed prior I did mention that I have achilles tendonitis due to a past life as a somewhat overzealous tennis player:

So I mention this, and my friend Hadessa mentions some rather serious issues she has with her knee caps just randomly popping out of place.

And with that out of the way we begin.  The lights are dimmed even further to the point where I can barely see anything and we are instructed to close our eyes (because we don’t want to judge the other woman as they warm up or work out — seriously??) and for the next 45 minutes are, literally, blindly instructed on a variety of stretching and pilates moves.

Red Flag #1: There are a lot of wrong ways to stretch and do pilates.  Not looking at the instructor is the absolute HEIGHT OF STUPIDITY.  To suggest that I have to close my eyes to do these exercises because I might judge or be judged by the other women there further emphasizes how shallow this whole “women empowerment b.s” really is.  I don’t need to close my eyes to be supportive or feel supported by other women.  Honestly, this is dangerous and very poor form.

So after our 45 minutes of blindly and presumably improperly stretching to phrases such as:

Clear your mind, open your arms and let them flow around your body the same way a fisherman casts his net into the deep blue lake of your soul.

WHAT?  What kind of stretch is that?  What does it mean?

And, my personal favorite:

Feel your vagina with your hands as you lie down and let your hands slowly caress your body as you move from the birthplace of the goddess to fondle your breasts.

Honestly it felt like a group masturbation circle.  Especially when in this process we were instructed to lie on our sides, rub our asses and on the count of three spank ourselves. Honestly, I can’t make this shit up (and no, in case some of you are wondering, the class isn’t open to men).

So finally after all this stretching we’re ready for some sexy moves.  We start learning some move to make us pounce like a cat.  The instructor mentions that we should use this to distract our boyfriends when they’re watching football (which, incidentally, if I ever do date someone that watches football and isn’t naturally distracted by my sexual prowess, please shoot me).  So we practice this move for a bit and then go onto sexy walking, which is kindof like coordinated drunk walking, slinking one foot in front of the other while thrusting our hips to and fro.

But there’s a problem, Hadessa’s knees are in pain from the 45 minutes of improper stretching and then overexerting herself while doing the cat move “entice your p.o.s. football watching boyfriend” thing.  So she moves to the side of the room and takes a break.  At which point, 200 pounds of sass comes walking up to ask her why she’s not doing the sexy drunk walk.  Hadessa explains that she’s in pain and need a break to which ‘sassy’ responds:

There are no breaks in this class.  If you’re not going to participate you have to leave the room.

So Hadessa gets kicked out.

Shortly thereafter, we are taught how to swing around the poll.  This move is dependent on placing all your weight on one ankle as you slither down the pole.  Immediately another red flag goes off.  I spent a month in physical therapy trying to un-fuck my achilles tendonitis two years ago and have no desire for a flare up.  But I give it a shot and sure enough the pain returns.  I tell the teacher I can’t do that again and she shrugs it off and says I should just try on the other ankle.

But I can’t.  See achilles tendonitis is recurring and can be debilitating.  So I leave, unprompted by the teacher, though feeling dejected and certain she’ll kick me out when she realizes that I won’t risk injuring the one ankle that isn’t in pain.

I walk outside and see Hadessa, who looks like she’s just been punched in the face and she immediately starts crying.  We leave, but not before I read the manager the riot act and get us a refund.

I wish there was a happy ending to this story; I did find the moves, the new age hypocrisy and the personal molestation rather amusing.  I just wish we could’ve ended the class actually feeling accepted for who we are and not on such a low note.

At the very least I’ve learned how to slink around the floor like a sex kitten and I’m sure one of these days that’ll come in rather handy.

{This story has been sitting in my queue, nearly finished, for four months.  I’m FINALLY pushing it out there!}

From February 2009:

Would you believe that the gays left me in charge of their cats AGAIN on their most recent trip out of town? I thought after the last incident they would have banned me from entering hearth and home in their absence.

I overestimated them.

Before I explain the prank itself,  I need to take a bit a detour in the story to round things out.  You see, the gays have this completely bizarre homemade poster in their bedroom called, “The Race to the Cock”.  It is comprised of various magazine cutouts of naked, fully erect men, on some sort of shoots and ladders type path… to the cock.  Perhaps the most disturbing element of this poster is that in the middle there are the faces of Sally Struthers and Rue McLanahan.  Honestly I don’t know how to explain it.  It’s just WEIRD and kindof looks like this:

(that diagram, btw, was so traumatic for me to actually sketch out,  that I think my computer may be trying to file a battered spouse suit with the SFPD)

//backstory complete

So there I found myself, taking care of the cats, Dotty and Rhubarb, and planning my next prank.  I knew they’d be expecting to come home and find something altered in the house, so I had to up the ante.

I enlisted my roommate extraordinaire, Arwen, who enthusiastically agreed to take some rather humorous photos of us in their bed and create a more feminine poster for them,  because CLEARLY we had to bring some balance into the penix-overload.

Now I do imagine you could speculate about what kinds of photos we took, but I can assure they were all (kindof) tasteful and left EVERYTHING to the imagination… because you know, gay men are positively terrified of a naked woman.  (Well there is one involving our heads cut out and replaced with monkey stickers with “monkey” Arwen pointing to her nipple.  But that’s the only bad one.  Really.)

And so with the help of Arwen’s gay, Mike, we got to work taking those pictures and left the apartment exactly as it appeared when we entered.  No sign of the prank to be found.

A couple days later, Derek and Lucius came back into town and called to take me out to dinner for all my troubles.  So off I went to meet them later that evening at their apartment.  From there we headed out to dinner a couple blocks away at Borobudur.

Once we got seated, Derek asked my for the keys.  I responded:

Crap!  Would you believe I’d forgotten the keys to the apartment at my house?  Fortunately I remembered to call Arwen on my way over and she’ll bring them along and meet us for dinner.

Of course little did he know that Arwen had actually come with me to their hood, and was crouched outside their apartment between two cars holding the giant posterboard of our nudie photos while she waited for the three of us to go to dinner.

Arwen met us for dinner and things proceeded exactly according to schedule.  We invited ourselves over for a nightcap and the reveal finally took place.

The reveal brought much hilarity and shock from both Derek and Lucius who then mentioned how disappointed they were when they’d arrived home from vacation and realized I did NOTHING unusual to their place (they’ve taken to tearing the house apart now that they know I like to play pranks on them when they’re away).  Little did they know that the poster was not the only thing we’d left behind for them…

Revisiting this story (May 2009):

It’s been nearly four months since we executed this prank and there have been a number of developments.

1. Back in March Derek was on a flight back from D.C. and opened up his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, to see a nudie photo of us come flying out from between the pages and into the lap of the elderly man sitting next to him.  Yeah, we made wallet sized photos and littered them through their books.

2.  About a month ago I received a call that they were “dusting” the inside cases of their DVD porn collection and happened to uncover another photo of us inside the celebrated film, “28 Gays Later”.

3. The poster we’d created has been moved from their bedroom into the closet, where Derek is forcing his gay brother to sleep for the 7 weeks that he’s visiting SF.  You heard me.  The gay brother is being forced back into the closet, with pictures of naked women, for 7 weeks.

It’s the gift that just on keeps giving.

It’s not always easy figuring out what to write on Sexistential Crisis.  Sometimes I have a story lined up, ready to blog about

…and other times the stories just form themselves out of a series of unrelated events which collide together in one sheer moment of sexistantial hilarity.  This would be one of those times.

A few days ago my friend and mentor, John, suggested I pick up a favorite book of his.  I’m always looking for recommends, so I filed the suggestion to the back of my mind, to be retrieved at a future date when I was at the bookshop.

On an entirely unrelated note, I happen to be taking a photography class and decided today was the perfect day to takes some pictures in preparation for my homework assignment.  I took a leisurely stroll through Hayes Valley, snapping photos as a I went, making my way towards the beloved Blue Bottle.

Whilst meandering, I happened to see Bibliohead Bookstore — what an opportune moment to finally get that book John recommend!!  How perfect!  Of course I can no longer remember the name of the book, having been lost in the dark recess of my memory, but I’m sure the bookseller will be able to help me figure this one out.

I enter and happen to run into my co-worker Peter who is also meandering and we chat for a bit before I can locate the bookseller and find my next book.

Finally I meet the bookshop owner, Melissa, and she begins trying to help me figure out the name of the book (considering there are 190,000 new titles published in the US every year, this is no small feat).  Anyhow I’m at a total loss, and can recall nothing other than the author being male and that it’s not Victor Hugo.  You can imagine how helpful this information is.

I was about to give up and go home, but then it hits me!  I had actually put the book in my Amazon shopping cart.  So I ask to use their computer and Melissa and I stand anxiously over the monitor as I see there are two items in my shopping cart.  Yay!  Mystery solved!

I click on the shopping cart and this is what appears:

First off let me just say that is the best price for the Bend Over Beginner Kit in town.  Good Vibes is selling it for $99

Secondly, where is the book John recommended?  I am still trying to figure out this conundrum.

But more importantly, the bookseller looks like she’s just been ass raped and I don’t tend to help the situation when blurting out, “I don’t think you sell anal plugs, do you?” … never mind my coworker who is lurking on the other side of the counter witnessing this exchange.  Total disaster from so many dimensions and all for one book (which btw, I still do not know the name of).

Fortunately, I think I managed to smooth things over before heading out to finish taking pictures, but it just goes to show you that you’ll never know what happens when you walk out your front door.  You might think you’re on a photo assignment and before you know it you’re talking about pegging with a bookseller.  Just one of those days.