Now one of the main emphasis's that Eric has put on this whole thing has been on personal health. That is getting in shape, eating right, and the little tricks and techniques a person can do in order to look and feel their bests. His question is a very simple one; what would it be like if the human body was given the most optimal input. This means what would be it be like if you really placed your mind, body, and spirit into the most optimized and efficient state of being? This has lead him to spending the last 5 years or so of his life doing a ton of experiments with his diet and his work out to put himself into that peek physical condition, and he is STILL in the process of doing so. Life is a journey after all. And while I have been here, I have been living on the same kind of diet that he is, which I admit has been a DRASTIC change to my normal mode of operating.
Confession; I am a shameless carnivore that never really gained a full taste for vegetables. Fact is, I started doing juicing only as a way to put more of that damn rabbit food into my system because I was getting older and I knew I needed to. I have never been a fan of salads, and up until now, vegan food to me just tasted like complete compost. But a solidly cooked streak dinner and I am happy as a clam. This, of course, is an issue here as Eric is doing a completely raw, live food, vegan diet. I mean, the guy has a rather large garden behind the house I am staying in, packed full of plants that he and his wife grow, harvest, and then use to make a lot of different dishes. I'd say cook, but the truth is that they, by their own admission, do very little cooking any more as everything they eat is designed to retain as much nutritional value as possible. This is beyond just growing your own food, but really optimizing the whole process by which food is cared for and consumed. And Eric is teaching me his little tricks and techniques to do the same with my own life.
Now, a major thing I should point out is that anytime someone starts talking about 'toxins' in such a manner of health and 'detoxing', I am skeptical. I may do the whole fruit and vegetable juice thing, I may even believe to some degree that it is important to clear out your system, kind of get rid of the crap that you have allowed to build up in your fat. However, when the word 'detox' is involved, I am instantly on guard due to the amount of bullshit that exists on the subject. Maybe the most obvious problem I have is the simple question, "what toxins are you exactly talking about here?" So of course, when Eric starts talking about this kind of thing, how the diet is meant to really clean out your system and remove toxins, I of course get my skepticles on. However, I have to remind myself that I am here to grow, hear to learn, and I said that I would follow what ever it was that he recommended. I mean, for being a hard core raw and living food vegan, Eric is still ripped. As a result, I am now eating a veggie sandwich.
I was not able to finish the sandwich, mind you. And it wasn't because it was necessarily bad, in fact I rather liked it.... I think. You see the issue here is that the sandwich was just so very different from anything I am used to eating that I was unaccustomed to the flavors moving around my mouth. Even more truth be told, I would likely be considered a picky eater most of the time. Yet here I am, munching on this all natural concoction that my mouth and mind is having a hard time registering. I think, honestly, that I became full less because I was actually full, and more because my mouth just needed a moment to really come to terms with what was going on. Could I actually come to enjoy this stuff? Honestly, I probably could. It wouldn't be the first time that I have come to enjoy something I thought I would dislike. But it'll likely not happen over night. Hell, even juice took me a while to get used to, and now I still drink that stuff all the damn time.
But the raw food, vegan diet thing was not the only new experience I have encountered so far, and the second cherry popped is actually what inspired me to write this blog post early. A second confession here is that in my 27 years of my male life, I have not once stepped foot in a gentleman's club.... or to put it bluntly, I have never gone to a strip club. I have told this to people before and a lot of the guys will look at me like I am crazy. I mean, my mindset has always been fairly straight forward; why do I want to spend money to get blue balls? I mean, the girls are there to make money off of a guys fantasy of being able to sleep with them. I'm not going to beat around the bush here, no pun intended, but the fact is a strip club is a hyper sexual atmosphere that plays into sexual fantasies, but it is still a place of business.
Of course, I don't have a problem with strip clubs, I support them. Hell, I honestly believe that prostitution should be legalized, and that the world at large needs to get off their high horse about sex in general. If it wasn't for sex, none of us would even be here, so I find that people's aversion to it rather disturbing. However, I just have never felt the need or urge to pay for sex in such a way. I know that there is the argument, and good argument at that, that everyone ends up paying for sex in some fashion or another. Personally, I don't think that is a healthy way of looking at it, but that's not to say I don't see the validity of the point being made. And a strip club is just an outright, and kind of honest, transaction of sexual energy. The issue to me is that, once again, why do I want to pay for blue balls? I'm kind of primal in my sexuality, it turns out. I get turned on, and I want to use such energy, not just sit back looking at some almost naked girl and think "Gee, it sure would be swell if I could get on up in that. So here's a dollar!" Just not my style.
But, Eric has been working at, managing, promoting, and now consulting for strip clubs for almost his entire adult life. So, of course, it was expected that I would go with him as he hit up his clubs. True, I had the option of saying no, staying home and working on my computer or something, but that's not why I am here. And with that, I bit the bullet and stepped into my first ever strip club at the tender age of 27. And not just any strip club, but a full nude club to boot. Of course it just so happens that they were playing one of my favorite songs, a song I admit I got a bitch too attached too after a painful break up, Schism by Tool, as soon as I walk in the door.
I fond out a very curious thing about myself that night. I was supper on guard with the girls all night, like I was on the defensive. I was so stuck in this mindset that they were just there for money, just there to be on the job, that I was nothing more then a walking wallet to them. The joke, of course, was on them, because a result of my being scammed recently meant that I walked into the club with a completely empty wallet. I had really nothing to offer them but my company, and for a girl on the clock, that was not really worth anything at all. Of course, the big issue here was my approach to the whole thing, but at the time I was so out of my element that I just was unable to fully process what was going on. And it wasn't even the presence of female nudity that was throwing me off. To lay the truth completely bare, pun intended, I wasn't the slightest bit turned on the whole time. The girls were attractive, don't get me wrong, but the fact that I felt like an armadillo curled up in a ball just drained me.
To Eric, and I know to many people who teach being better with women, the strip club is a place that is a fantastic training ground for talking with women. I mean, they come up to you, and so long as you don't bore them to death, they will stick around for a bit to chat until someone comes up and asks them for a dance, or it is their time to go on stage. In many ways, a strip club is the reverse of most game situations, where the girls will approach and chat up the men. Of course, I could only focus on the fact that each of them had an ulterior motive; the fact that they had a jobs to do, and that job was getting me to pay for a lap dance. Of course, it would dawn on me later that this thinking was somewhat hypocritical, even if correct. Because while it may be true that their ultimate goal is to get me to pay money, the devil in these details was the simple fact that I, along with every other guy in that building, also had an ulterior motive. We wanted to take them home with us. The fantasy, as it turns out, was a powerful one, and every guy in there in some part of them held onto some hope that they had a chance.
I remember reading an article about strip club etiquette, or maybe some sort of 'behind the scenes' post, talking about how it was around 1 in 7 strippers ended up dating a client at some point. Now to me, that sounds about right, as my experience as a bartender has shown me such things were in fact true from clients who stripped. But when I said this to some friends, they were surprised that the number was so high, and I can't blame them. The idea that a stripper is unobtainable is a well ingrained myth, and there is even a lot of stuff in the pick up world aimed directly at such lofty goals and 'targets' (hate that word in that context). Yet they are still people, and in the case at hand, still women, and here I was completely intimidated by them because all I could think about was how much they wanted my non-existent money. And we even went to two different clubs that night. I think I spent more time talking with one of the bouncers at the second club about martial arts then all of my interactions with the girls combined. Looking back, it all seems kind of weird.
Bottom line is fairly straightforward to me it seems, I need to learn to try more food again, and I need to learn how to relax and just talk to strippers. Sounds like weird goals, but hey, I like my challenges to be a little bit odd from time to time. I'm dumping so much wasted energy into being uncomfortable and defensive in situations that I am supposed to have fun in. So time for me to man up, and just get over myself. Learn to talk to them without buying into their fantasy, without spending money, and have some god damn fun doing it. And the vegan thing? I will likely not go full vegan at this point in my life, bacon and steak just taste way for freaking good to me. But, I am definitely going to incorporate a lot of the stuff that I have learned already. I do feel so much better then I did before, and my mind is a lot more clear and focused them it was even a week ago. And the people I am interacting with have commented on how much better I look, how I am almost glowing, even in less then a week. Who knows, maybe there is something to all of this crap after all. I still have a few more days here, but so far, I guess I can say that it has been one hell of a learning experience, for better or for worse.
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