This article originally appeared on the L. Review of Books. An early scene portrays the uptight sister of a new stripper coming to the club to check up on her brother. Normally self-contained to the point of coldness, Brooke is particularly tense at the club, convinced her younger brother has gotten involved in a seedy underworld.
As Brooke watches Mike dance, her jaw relaxes, her lips part, her eyes grow wide and soft. He flips off the end of the stage and lands in front of a lace-clad middle-aged woman.
He lifts the woman, still seated in her chair, above his head. She emits a brief yelp. Mike lays the audience member on the stage and parts her thighs with his head. Then he stands over her, unceremoniously removes his shoes and pants, and thrusts the bulge beneath his g-string in her face.
The frankness of the gesture returns Brooke to herself, and she looks away, flushed and disoriented. Being deprived of the capacity to make decisions about sexual acts and needs can be highly erotic as a concept or a pose.
But in real life, for most people, such suspension of the will can be unsatisfying at best. Brooke β and the audience β get to enjoy the erotic thrill of being overpowered without any of the real complications. The strip club or movie theater precludes physical danger and emotional entrapment, just as it precludes real fulfillment: no one is going to get off. Such a calmly authentic and compelling engagement with female arousal is a refreshing alternative to the recent spate of memoirs and autobiographical novels that treat the female desire for sexual submission as a kind of titillating depravity.
