Erotic City

Get Inside This Summer!

Polerotica is finally wrapped up, but we can’t announce the winner on these pages, thanks to bullshit concepts like "time" and "production deadlines." Thanks, Obama! Anyways, even though the world’s best pole dancing competition has finished (peep Facebook.com/XoticMag or Xmag.com for details on the winner), the best competition for inked-up talent begins next month. After a seven-year hiatus, Ink ‘n’ Pink, featuring the best in tattooed talent, begins on Saturday, July 7th at Rose City Strip, continues Friday the 13th at Club SinRock, followed by Thursday, July 19th at Kit Kat Club, with finals on Saturday, July 28th at Dante’s. I highly recommend you check this out, along with DJ Dick Hennessy’s Vagina Beauty Pageant, which also happens throughout the month of July.

New clubs keep popping up all over town, which means that you have no excuse to stay outdoors this summer. Desire, which will be located at 535 N.E. Columbia Blvd., opens up soon, while Grind, at 15826 S.E. Division St., is already in full swing. Dancers seeking to audition should check out the ads for each club in this issue. Customers, well, you know what to do. I haven’t been to either location yet, but the ad girl for Grind, Carson, has a Star Wars tattoo and that’s good enough reason for me to give the club props, at least in terms of the dancers they hire.

Stormy At Large

Last month, Stormy Daniels visited all three Stars Cabaret locations, as part of a mini-tour in which she performed striptease sets, met with fans and sold signed merchandise. As opposed to many sets hosted at local clubs, this particular pornstar is currently in the headlines, thanks to Trump’s past affiliation with her and reported hush-money payments. I sent homies to all three gigs to check ‘em out, and although the reports were generally positive (especially regarding the venues—Stars always keeps a well-staffed house and high-quality dancers on shift), there was apparently an incident in Bend, in which a drunk man threw his entire wallet at Stormy Daniels. I mean, in his defense, the news stations have reported that our President did the exact same thing, but that was probably meant as a figure of speech. Sadly, however, this brief incident encapsulated the entirety of what was reported on by local news outlets, Facebook posts and Tweets.

Thankfully, Lisa M. Hayes at Confluence took a much deeper and more open-minded approach to the Salem appearance. Here is a snippet of her angle, used with permission:

"We got a chance to ask one question: ‘How do you want your daughter and other children to remember this whole thing?’ Stormy Daniels answered it, ‘I would not be bullied.’

This is a special kind of personal for Stormy Daniels. Her life is on full display in the headlines—every single day. The history books won’t tell her story. The tabloids will. She’s paying a price for all of us that most will never understand. I will die with a smile on my face, if it’s a pornstar that takes this President down. As it’s playing out now it’s not hard to imagine that could happen. Karma can be a bitch.

Stormy Daniels is an unlikely hero. She’s an even more unlikely patriot. Like so many people who’ve found themselves being forced into places they never expected, to save what’s left of our democracy, Stormy isn’t comfortable in that particular spotlight. She recently said, she’s never been afraid to take the stage before, but she is now because she’s at her most vulnerable."

Politics aside (sort of), I couldn’t agree more with the above sentiment. Often times (and, I’m clearly not talking about clubs that we feature in Exotic), a touring-pornstar act is often the sign of a B-level celebrity, attempting to cash in on whatever fame they obtained when they fucked Jenna Jameson or made a sex tape with that kid from Saved By The Bell. Stormy, however, is as current as one can get, in terms of being in the public eye. Sure, stripping down while "American Woman" plays in the background might not be an exact recreation of the Women’s March On Washington, but what her tour lacks in cookie-cutter feminism, the mere act of taking a potential media shitstorm into her own hands, with her own voice and on her own terms, is what makes me respect Stormy Daniels. Big ups to Stars Cabaret for hosting what is undoubtedly the biggest thing to happen to Salem, Bend or Tualatin in years.

Shock Opera!

Over the years, I’ve slung a lot of shit at the local theater community. I don’t know if it’s the sub-par production of Diary Of Anne Frank that did it to me, or that weird, six-month period a few years ago, when everything was a tribute to a tribute of an adaptation, with zombies. Thankfully, there exists Alice Cooper rock opera. Aside from being a staple among strip-club-appropriate rock musicians, Alice Cooper embraces everything about rock ‘n’ roll—having shocked the masses during his rise to fame, and later, his fans, with his golf swing.

Portland-area writer and actor, Dylan Hillerman, began Shock Opera: The Authorized Alice Cooper Story way back when it was Shock Opera: The Unauthorized Alice Cooper Story—meaning that the A.C. himself has co-signed the project. As rock opera and dark comedy, the project sounds like a blast, but one reason Shock Opera gets a mention in this column, is thanks to the fact it stars many familiar faces from Portland-area strip clubs—both behind the scenes and on screen. Rocket, Una Solitaire, Jeanette Trexler, Jed, Angus...the whole damn happy hour is here. I really don’t like plugging things in this column, because it only ends up in piles of mixtapes and requests for interviews from white rappers, but when you’re employing strippers to star in an Alice Cooper-based rock opera, you can bet your ass I’ll toss you some free publicity. The show starts Friday, September 7th and Saturday, September 8th, 2018, at The Paris Theater in Portland, OR.

Pride, Prejudice, Choices And Co-Opting

Here we go. A cis male scum" is gonna weigh in on Pride, LGBTQ issues and identity politics, inside the pages of a nudie magazine. Get your popcorn out and your emails ready. Bloggers, you may have to stay late tonight.

I’m from the ‘80s. 1980, to be exact. This means, by the age at which my nuts dropped, the dialogue regarding "homosexuals" (we didn’t have less-derogatory terms or acronyms, yet), particularly that surrounding "gay marriage" (again, the term "same-sex" had yet to gain steam), was taking over the media. Being from a socially liberal— but working-class (read: fiscally conservative)— background, my parents were already ahead of the curve. To quote my dad, "Sometimes, two men can love each other the same way they love women, but now people are just mad because gays want to suffer the same hell that your mother and I did, before our divorce. I don’t see the problem—I’m just wondering if any gender can make a marriage work." To be fair, in 1992 or so, this was the most woke thing an old white dude had ever said.

The argument, however, really boiled down to one thing: choice versus biology. The radical, far-right conservative Christians argued that being gay was a decision, while the liberals-of-yesteryear argued that sexual preference was biologically determined. The latter argument has not only been backed up by science, but it also extends to transgender (then referred to as "transsexual") people. In short, regardless of who your god is, I firmly believe they made you in their image—even athiests, your pagan dirt god or whatever is all-knowing, as well.

Flash to 2018, and instead of the far right, it’s the far left who is denying that gender and sexual orientation are fixed. The acronym "LGBTQ" used to be enough, as it covered all logical outcomes of non-straight identity (girls who like girls, guys who like guys, folks who swing either way, girls with guy parts, guys with girl parts and everyone else who doesn’t fall at one point on the binary spectrum, hence, "queer"). Sadly, this has now been bastardized (the "Q" has been replaced with "QQIP2SAA"), by the regressive fringe, to include literally anyone who doesn’t fit into the white, vanilla suburban lifestyle. Poly, Androgynous, Two-Spirit... these are all valid, real and legitimate identities, but I’m wondering what the fuck happened to letting the gay community have its own identity, its own struggle and, god forbid, be recognized as not being the same as, say, claiming that your gender varies as a result of mood swings (Tumblr calls this "Affectugender"). "I’m considered a queer-friendly, straight, top, whose mood changes depending on how many tacos he’s had— this does not make me Harvey Milk and I don’t deserve a spot in the history books, for being the first person to sexually identify as Mollyamorous (I only fuck when high on MDMA).

Call me ignorant, but I’m well-versed in all of the identities—to me, alphabet soup just feels the same as saying "non-white," as if Asians are profiled in the same way black people are, or saying "VGOL" in reference to vegan, granola, organic liberals. Yes, these identities tend to be affected by similar things, from a societal perspective. Yes, bigots in trucks and red hats are probably going to hurl the same slurs at a lesbian couple, that they would a dude in a pink hat, who identifies as Polysexual. But, if you know what any of these terms mean, you know that the gay man who works in an office and hits the gym on a regular basis shares no more in common with a teenager who wants to fuck inanimate objects (Pansexual) than anyone else does. "Lesbian, Gay, Trans, Queer and Coprophiliacs" has the same ring—just because it deals with a bedroom, doesn’t mean it’s all the same, easy-to- clump-together-for-discussion group of people. Again, I know this is not my struggle (and, thus, not my lane), but from over here, I’m seeing a lot of pissed off gay, bi, trans and queer people who are wondering why their identity is being turned into a fun game of Mad Libs for bored college students who, up until last year, had a perfectly firm grip on their gender and sexual orientation. Ya know, like how that annoying white rapper suddenly met his "black friends" the day he got a SoundCloud account.

To me, this attitude of reckless, postmodern nonsense also says "sexual identity and/or gender are a choice." Trans people didn’t just get sick of being the gender that matches their junk, and one day, just up and decide that purses and lipstick are easier than backpacks and beard cream. Gay people spent years—probably centuries, if you think about it—trying to be seen as real. The same thing that causes my lower half to do things (and people) that my upper half would never consider, operates the same way in all humans—LGBTQ or otherwise. I will always respect a trans person’s pronouns and it is not up to me to determine who is or isn’t "legit" on the LGBTQ spectrum. But, I’m not going to call some pink-haired girl with a victim complex "Zir," because he, she or they want to feel a few notches more oppressed than boring- ass, regular trans people who only shop at the mall and listen to mainstream music (...losers). Does this make me transphobic? No, it means I fucking hate kids and the adults who act like them. My trans friends and family mean so much to me, that I don’t want to watch their gender identity and/or sexual orientation turn into a fucking joke. My friend Sarah has a penis. She’s a woman (well, more of a girl...always posting pastel memes and shit), but I call her "her" and treat her as she presents: as a woman. My old co-worker, whose name has changed three times this year—let’s call her "Dolezal," informed everyone that they should check in with her, each week, for her current pronoun. She’s in her thirties, has dated nothing but men, always presented as a woman and lived completely fine as such, up until a few years ago. Sorry, but something tells me that Dolezal has never (and never will) experience(d) the internal and external struggles that Sarah has. To me, it seems that Dolezal is, in fact, co-opting oppression, as she...ahem, Dolezal, can go right back to being "Dolezal from the block" in a few years, while Sarah will live her whole life as a woman who was born with the wrong genitals.

The term "LGBTQ" is restrictive enough, but members of said community all experience hatred, discrimination, closeted identities and a disproportionate amount of struggle—especially considering that it has to do with who they love. Because of (and, not in spite of) this fact, the trend of postmodern extremism, in which having "a gender that changes to fit the people around you" (again, Tumblr has this...it’s called "Mirrorgender") is seen as the same struggle as telling religious parents that you fell in love with someone who has the same genitals as you, or going under a goddamn knife just to feel at home in your own skin, is far beyond the level of ignorance possessed by traditionally conservative or closed-minded people. Gender and sexual orientation are not a choice. They do not vary, day-to-day, depending on who is reading your blog. And, so help me god, I’m not going to look back at my flannel-wearing, Nirvana-supporting, heroin-shooting generation of dropouts and fuck-ups as being more "woke" or progressive, when it comes to this issue. Pride means being proud of who you are and not letting the world convince you that you can change. Postmodernism is saying, "Hey, Macklemore won a Grammy off of these people—what can I take from their struggle?" Yes, gender roles are on a spectrum, but if you’re trying to convince me that being shunned by guys for having hairy pits is even close to on-par with the death threats a lesbian couple receives upon moving into an Idaho suburb, you might as well just come out as a narcissist. Put down the need for attention and let the inner child go. This struggle does not belong to me, nor does it belong to you, the Tumblr-gendered, trend-riding, capitalize- on-the-struggle blogger.

With all that off my chest, I want to give a shout out to those who live, have lived and always will live, as gay, lesbian, trans, queer or non-binary. Gender identity is hard enough to unchain yourself from and we don’t need the leftists of today to be adopting tactics from the bigots and right-wingers of yesteryear. Be proud of who you are, okay with who you aren’t and embrace the fact that categories are secondary to individuality—unless you’re co-opting a struggle that’s not yours, just to obtain said identity.