How A Halloween Costume Party Changed My Life

The Pole Dancing Bloggers Group on Facebook has decided to do a blog hop each month. This month’s topic is Halloween. So here is my Halloween entry for the hop.

Four years ago a Halloween costume party changed my life in a very strange way. It was my introduction to pole dance. Yes, the truth is always stranger than fiction. My wife came home from work around the first of October and told me that her boss was throwing a huge Halloween costume party. Her boss had rented out the entire second floor of a strip bar in north Denver.

I hate Halloween parties. I love the drinking to excess, food etc. but I’m a nerd and the costume thing was always a little much for me. My wife’s boss loves to throw parties and I always have to be the dutiful husband. So my idea for the upcoming party was to do something so goofy and deranged that I would never be invited to another party ever. I decided to go in drag and be the ugliest hooker that had ever been seen leaning up against a car door.

After a few trips to a local Denver exotic dancer/transgendered supply store, manscaping, and the massive task of finding size 12 CFM pumps I was ready to make my debut as Ashley the Crack Whore. My wife was going to dress up like a guy and were going to be a cross-dressing couple. But somewhere out there while we were looking for fake boobs she found a pirate costume complete with the leather boots.

When party day arrived we showed up at the club, got our wrist bands and directions to the stairway that led to the second floor. Getting to the staircase required crossing the length of the first floor in full view of every stage. There were four stages and every one of them had a nearly naked woman wrapped around a dance pole . My intrepid wife took one look at all that exposed skin and bolted for the staircase. She moved pretty damn fast in those flat soled boots. Damn fast really does not capture it. She just disappeared.

I ended up stranded in pole dance land with the short stride that high heels give you. I was dressed in black leather pumps, long blond hair, stockings and a really short purple mini-skirt. Nasty right? As soon as I started out across the main floor every dancer in the club stopped dancing and started clapping and cat calling me. Hard to be stealthy when you are a 5’ 11” tall “woman” on 4” spikes. The club was at a standstill watching me teeter-totter my way past the dancers and the mostly male crowd. Just when I thought the embarrassment couldn’t get any worse the Master of Ceremonies came running across the floor and intercepted me.

He looked me up and down said, “I will give you $25.00 bucks to get up on one of those poles and dance." Wow! I love a challenge. I so wanted to take that guys money. But I had never seen anyone pole dance and I sure as hell wasn’t going to sit on a stage and show off what was under my skirt. I shook my head no and proceeded hobble up the stairs and drink massive amounts of Scotch while people stuffed dollar bills under my garters. My wife's boss enjoyed lifting up my dress and putting jello shots in the tops of my stockings.

When my wife and I left the club there was another club stopping moment when the dancers gave me the woo-hoo and blew kisses at me. But the experience planted a seed. I was totally bummed that I couldn’t rock that dudes world and take his money. I told myself that someday I would learn a few pole tricks. Then I promptly forgot about it. A few months later I fell down the rabbit hole.

The interesting thing about the manscaping is that I found out that I liked not looking like a fugitive from the gorilla exhibit at the local zoo and it became part of my monthly routine. The woman who did my waxing and I become good friends. In early February of the following year between ripping cloth strips I told her the story of my strip club experience. She laughed and told me that she had just started beginning pole dance classes. She added that her teacher was teaching a men’s class at her studio.

For my next act of bad craziness I found the studio web page. After pondering it for a day I called the studio. I got a recorded message, panicked and hung up the phone. Then I decided to send an email to the studio. If it got ignored I figured that the clear message was that men don’t pole dance. End of story.

A week passed and I never heard back. Then on a Saturday morning the owner and lead instructor returned my call. She was awesome and after a few minutes of conversation she said that she would be happy to work with me and we scheduled a private lesson. After I put the phone in the cradle my wife looked and me and all she said was, “You are going to do it aren’t you?”

A few weeks later I could invert and I had a shiny new Platinum Stages brass dance pole set up in the living room of my house. This past March marked three years as a pole dancer. My wife and her boss moved to a new company and a new Halloween Party has been planned for this month. There was a conspiracy and they thought I would make a great bunhead. Hair in a bun, leotard, tutu and pointe shoes. Rather than learn how to tie the ribbons on point shoes and bourrée en pointe, I just bought a new skirt and blouse. I’m hoping that smart ass with the $25.00 is there. Happy Halloween!