'Would someone please explain?
The reason for this strange behaviour.
In exploitation's name
We must be working for the Skin Trade.'

-Duran Duran

Welcome to ‘the skin trade’: a new series of articles that will jiggle, wobble, bounce and waggle their way across the interweb during the coming months and years.

For most of my twenties, I have been, quite honestly, terrified to go into a lap-dancing club. Last year, during a beer-garden pint with ten or twelve old acquaintances in Dublin, it transpired that I was the only one there who hadn't been to a 'titty bar'. This included the three women in the group, who, upon hearing of my lack of experience with these places, fixed me with a look that clearly let me know I was an out-dated relic of a former Ireland.

And perhaps I am. Ten years ago, citizens of the Republic of Ireland were granted divorce. For the first time. It seems incredible now that it took so long, but it did. And now, ten years later, I couldn't help but notice that there seems to have been a massive shift in the outward expression of sexuality within Ireland. The most obvious signifier of this was the advertisement that I saw a few weeks ago, which adorned the window of a Dublin bar, on Eden quay. It said ‘Topless Barmaid Wanted'. Ten years. That's all. In ten years we've somehow gone from 'no divorce' to 'topless barmaids'.

The credit card

So, why, if everyone else was doing it, had I not gone to a lap-dancing club? Well, this is complex. I don't have moral problems with this. I don't have an ethical issue. It ain't the last remaining shreds of my Christianity. It isn't because I think them sleazy. It isn't because I thought that my girlfriend would burst me. It wasn't because I was afraid of being seen.

Nope. It was none of these things. Quite simply, I had never gone to a lap-dancing club, because, deep-down, I always feared that I would get blind drunk, uncontrollably horny and end up maxing my coke-covered credit card whilst I dribbled over the curves of a Latvian teenager. I was terrified of losing the plot. Of discovering, I suppose that I was in fact, a dirty wanker.

Geordie chorus

So, with all of this in mind, I stepped in the door of Stringfellow's in Dublin and received quite the shock. My mate (Angrychef) works there and organised to get six of us in for free. I was home in Dublin for the weekend and, with only a few hours gone since I got off the plane, I found myself waking in the door, having a tepid pint of Stella shoved in my hand and then stopping and staring in horror as an impossibly tanned, muscled and bleached man in a white thong spun around a greasy pole to thundering 70's disco tunes.

A group of women (from Newcastle I think) were baying like a pack of hounds, shouting every manner of exhortation, encouragement and filthy suggestion at the chap that could be imagined. He seemed to be taking it all rather well. I quickly scarpered, trying to keep my eyes down. It wasn't easy.

Bunny in the headlights

Everywhere I looked there was a great cavalcade of heaving female flesh: tits and arses wobbling, jiggling, gyrating and bouncing in all directions. There were guys sitting down, some getting 'dances', and some getting drunk. Some sat closer to the main stage where a young lady was spinning around another pole, all thrusts and wobbles. Directly in front of her sat a few couples - guys and girls. I couldn't help it but I found myself looking at one of the couples more than the stage show. The girl of the pair seemed to be having the time of her life, buying her guy dance after dance after dance, shelling out note after note for drink after drink. The guy looked like a bunny in the headlights and seemed to be attempting to glance in about six directions at once.

Close to them sat a couple of young guys. Russians with more money than sense. Whooping, sniggering, leering and laughing themselves sick. I momentarily caught the eye of one of the girls passing by: a mistake. She was over like a shot, barging people out of the way.
'Wanna dance?' she purred in what I think was a Polish accent.
'Uhm... ehm... I ehm...'
'A private dance?'
I think I squeaked. 'Uhm, no, no thanks, uhgm, I ehm... uh, no thanks. Thanks you know, maybe later, but uhm...'
She smile demurely and walked off. I got another beer and necked it in about ten seconds.

Angrychef and the Penguin

Myself, Angrychef and the Penguin had some more beers. And then some more. And after about maybe the fourth beer, it hit me: I was bored. We were bored. We were talking about football. We were talking about house prices. We were talking about cars. About beer, holidays and motorbikes. We were talking, in short, about everything in the world except the fact that we were surrounded from all sides by a mobile buffet of naked, oiled-up women who were dancing in what were supposed to be erotic ways.

But that was just it: it wasn't erotic. Not at all. In fact, the longer I stayed sitting there, the more anodyne, sterile and utterly boring the whole thing became. It was dull. It was clinical. It was deeply un-sexy. I had been expecting to be driven to a furious frenzy of lust which would see me locked in a room, wanking like a monkey for the next two weeks. The only thing I wanted at that particular instance was a taxi home. Which we got not long after.

'Would someone please explain...'

The Skin Trade is booming in Ireland. As it has been for many years in Britain. Lap-dancing, stripping, prostitution, pornography and human trafficking now account for a staggering outlay of cash in Ireland. Estimates of the figures involved are, of course, very woolly - the very nature of the industry makes it almost impossible to accurately gauge the amount of cash changing hands.

Over the course of the next few months, Globaleyes will be plumbing the murky depths of the 'world wide wank': the new uber-wealthy sex industry: employer of millions, provider of sexual relief and escape for hundreds of millions and the gluttonous accumulator of billions of euros. It is also the destroyer of countless lives - a subject we shall return to again.

More:

Skin Trade lyrics reproduced by kind permission of by Duran Duran

Artwork:

All photography by Dr. Joanne.