I'm thinking of submitting this one to "This American Life"...


“Dude, she’s a stripper.”

“She’s not a stripper.”

“I’m telling you, she’s a stripper. She even smells like a stripper.”

That part was true… She DID smell like a stripper.

We had stopped at Boston Market for a late lunch. We weren’t too familiar with the area we were in, so a chain restaurant sounded just fine.

Now, there were several strip clubs in the area… so maybe I was just a little over-sensitized to the issue. But the girl in line in front of us definitely looked the part. She was tall and curvy (but not too curvy) and somehow managed to make a pair of sweat pants look slutty.

And the smell... I don’t know if it’s a perfume, hand cream or a whole line of beauty products just for strippers. But they all smell like that. The only way I can describe it is a “girlie bubblegum” smell.

Now, making the “stripper / not a stripper” game even tougher was the fact that she was there with another guy (we assumed it was her boyfriend), thus making unobtrusive small talk nearly impossible. We continued our debate in hushed tones.

“She’s totally a stripper.”

“She’s not a stripper.”

I really didn’t have much to base my argument on… especially these days, when almost every girl looks like a stripper. But my gut was telling me I was right. I was afraid we would never be able to settle this disagreement one-way or the other. And then the girl and her companion reached the front of the line.

And she paid for both of them...

With a big stack of ones.

I looked back my friend to make sure he was seeing what I was seeing.

“She’s a stripper,” I said. Trying not to sound too smug.

“Yeah,” my buddy finally agreed with me.

“Or a ridiculously hot waitress...”