Travel Reference
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among hardened pros. Trixie does ask at the start of the class if anyone attending
is a stripper or is hoping to become one, but it seems like the women who show
up are doing so out of simple curiosity. Students range in age from 20s to 60s and
come from all walks of life (librarians, nurses, stay-at-home moms, you name it).
Don't worry about wearing work-out clothes; the dancing you'll do is not all that
strenuous, and Trixie is able to modify the moves she teaches for anyone with an
injury.
So what do you learn during the hour-long class? A heck of a lot, actually, from
the stripper's saunter—step, hip, drag—to such stripper tricks as playing with
your hands and running them along the body to keep the focus where you want
it to be, helpful if you're stumbling on your stilettos (“Where your hands go, his
eyes will follow,” announces Trix). To make this all palatable to average Janes,
Trixie encourages participants to imagine their “significant other” being the audi-
ence, and to use the class as practice for the private dancing you might want to do
for him (or her). Whether you're practicing lap dances or floor moves, it's all based
on the “tease” part of the strip tease—a pattern of come-hither and go-away that
should work as well for date nights as it does for stripping.
The highlight? The pole work, of course. Who knew that those poles come in
two varieties: those that swivel (“this is like driving an automatic”) and those that
don't (“like driving a five-speed”). Trixie teaches the class to slide on their backs
down the pole; to twirl around it with legs extended (much harder on the station-
ary one); and in the case of advanced students, to do the darn thing inverted. By
this point, the classmates have become buddies, cheering each other on, high-
fiving, and making suggestions. It's a perfect bachelorette party activity, but pretty
darn fun even if you come alone.
PLATO IN THE CASINO
Beyond the practical learning that goes on in the schools above, there are two
experiences that one can have in Las Vegas that move into the realm of learning
for learning's own sake. Deep thinking just for the fun of it. Intellectual stimula-
tion as its own reward. Wait, don't recheck the cover of this topic, you're still read-
ing about Vegas.
Every Tuesday evening at 7pm, at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino, just out-
side The Reading Room bookstore, with the dinging of slot machines in the back-
ground and scantily clad cocktail waitresses in view, a group of strangers meet to
discuss the meaning of life. No, really; and it's not a cult, I promise. The group
was inspired by a book called
Socrates Café
by Chris Phillips, which encourages
everyday folks to get together and discuss the important issues in life: What is jus-
tice? What is truth? What does it mean to live a good life? This ever-changing
assemblage—anyone is welcome to attend, and you don't have to have any knowl-
edge of philosophy to do so—has been tackling these big questions since the
spring of 2004.
Here's how it works. A moderator opens up the discussion by describing what
we are there to do. On the night I last attended, there were a lot of first-timers—
some students from UNLV, a tourist, a casino worker, and myself—so he laid out
the basics. “We're here to reclaim our right to think and speak for ourselves,” he
said, quietly looking around at the group sitting in a circle of chairs. “This is not
about furthering any political agenda or religious dogma or selling time shares.
