My Wife Suggested I Try Out a New Sexual Experience. Where It Needs to Happen, Though, Is a Whole New World to Me.

How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Stoya and Rich here. It’s anonymous!

Dear How to Do It,

My wife and I are in our 70s and have been married for over 50 years. She has always been ashamed of her body, so we have almost always had sex in the dark. Due to our ages, we have mostly given up on sex.

But I still would prefer to see a little nudity. She suggested a strip club. I’m considering it as there are several near where I live, but I don’t drink and have never even been to a bar. I would not know how to behave or what was expected of me. Any advice?

Strip clubs usually post some basic rules where you can see them on your way in. Most of the time, those rules ban customers from touching the workers, and ban everyone from starting a bar fight. They also may have a policy on firearms. There’s an incredibly complex and diverse set of interactions between various local laws, mainly regarding decency and liquor, which mean that exactly what is legally allowed in a club changes from county to county (for anyone curious, burlesque dancer, headmistress of the New York School of Burlesque, and former feature dancer Jo Weldon presents that information and how it informed her costuming in her one woman show WHat I wORE To Work, which is discussed on this podcast). The individual policies of club owners will also dictate what you’ll see at each one.

You can likely expect a bar serving alcohol, and therefore probably some associated aromas—no matter how clean an establishment is, there’s usually at least a faint whiff of beer and liquor. Clubs are usually motivated to prevent outright drunkenness, and you can attend for the first time on a slow afternoon. As long as you’re polite and tip well, most staff and dancers will be happy to guide you. Bring cash, make sure you’re clear on the exact charges involved with any extras, such as lap dances or buying someone a drink, before agreeing to them, and err on the side of confirming consent. For instance, when you’re offering a dancer a tip, find out how they’d like you to hand it to them. You can usually handle this communication nonverbally by proffering the bill with a pleasant smile and waiting for them to see you and direct you with their own body language. Some dancers will have a panty strap or an elastic around their thigh, which they’ll point to; others will take it from your hand with their own hand, their teeth, or their cleavage.

You don’t have to purchase lap dances, but you do need to tip. Quite often, people assume that strippers are paid by the club, and that any entry fee they pay to the club at the door justifies looking without tipping. They assume this because it is logical, and the door person doesn’t inform them of the reality, which is that most clubs use a system where dancers are charged a fee to work, similarly to a salon renting chairs to hairdressers, in addition to charging customers for access to the club. Essentially that means the dancers have paid money to the club to be allowed to dance on stage and walk the floor, in the hopes that lapdances sold and tips given by the people watching them will add up to enough to cover their house fee for that day, transportation costs, any other daily fees required (which can include tipping out the DJ, paying a house makeup and hair stylist, and tipping out a backstage manager), and the additional costs of specialized costumes and shoes, while still earning them a living wage. The cost of tiny pieces of Dayglo Spandex is often astronomical. And the stripper shoes are just as crucial to performing the expected movements safely as a ballet dancer’s pointe shoes. On the subject of tipping, the trope of giving a dancer a dollar was formed decades ago. The spending power of a dollar in 1970 is equivalent to that of 12 cents today, so you’ll want to aim for at least $5 to $10 per song.

Do remember that you can leave at any time and try different clubs until you find one that works for you. If it turns out that strip clubs aren’t your thing, you have other options to see some nudity in the digital realm.

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