Pole Positions

It started out as an innocent evening, with plans to meet a
girlfriend for a local book-signing. But when it was over, there
were feathers on my chest, lube in my hair, and a new place in my
heart for stripper poles.

My friend and I had gone to meet Miyoko
Fujimori, author of The Housewife’s Guide to the Practical
Striptease, who was hawking her how-to at the local lingerie
shop. Purrmission is a sweet little boutique that peddles elegant
under-things at the front of the store, and blush-inducing boudoir
toys in the back.

Owner Melanie Doctors, who goes by the name Miss Kitty, was
trussed up for the evening in a leather bustier and black feather
miniskirt. “I don’t usually dress like Big Bird,” she said, but
tonight was special. Miyoko, an exotic dancer-cum-mother-of-two,
was not only going to autograph her purse-sized disrobing manual,
she was going to teach us some man-pleasing moves on a portable
stripper pole ($156, sold near the “Have a Naughty Day” hot pants).
Raunchy debauchery or constructive instruction?

“It’s every woman’s right to explore her sexuality,” insisted
Miss Kitty, and unless you live on ABC’s Wisteria Lane, housewives
are especially desperate for a way to bust up the monotony of
monogamy. “I tell people it’s like chicken piccata. It may be your
favorite dish, but if you have it every day of your whole life, it
gets to be like, ‘Capers, again?’”

If marriage saps our sexual energy, motherhood darn near drains
it dry. Maybe it’s all the other physical demands—breastfeeding,
extricating a flailing toddler from a grocery cart, eternally
plucking toys and socks and straw wrappers from the living room
floor. Or maybe it’s the clock-watching robots we become in an
effort to keep homework and vaccination and recital schedules
straight. That stuff just sucks the swing from your step, you know
what I mean?

That’s where Miyoko and her stripping primer slink in. A former
Miss Teen Seattle and host of several Playboy television shows,
Miyoko, 32, knows it’s hard to “turn it on” after an evening of
sorting laundry and reading bedtime stories. But the Agoura Hills
resident swears stripping can put us back in touch with our sensual
selves, and help us shed the psychological confines that our daily
uniforms impose.

“Once our clothes hit the floor, we are free to be anyone we
want to be,” which, for Miyoko, could be a shy schoolgirl, a
friendly cowgirl, or—come on, no judgment here—a firefighter.
“Step, bend, and turn out,” she said while guiding 20 or so women
slowly, individually around the silver pole. Several were moms from
a local elementary school. With Prince on the stereo, and feather
boas around our necks, we learned a sultry head roll (I was awful)
and a seductive hip lift (I think I was quite good, actually). One
woman in her fifties, a natural with cat-like grace and style,
credited time spent in a tutu: “It was all those years of ballet,
when I squatted!”

There were casualties, of course. One particularly enthusiastic
woman dislodged the pole from the ceiling. A carelessly flung arm
sent a bottle of erotic massage oil flying off the shelf and onto
my lap. I hit my head on a pair of fuzzy purple handcuffs that were
dangling, with whips and paddles, from a display rack overhead.

But it was exhilaratingly fun, too. Just ask the celebrities
who’ve been touting cardio-striptease workouts for years. No
surprise that Pam Anderson and Paris Hilton have permanent poles in
their homes, or that a shnockered Lindsay Lohan and Kate Moss got
friendly with a pole at a New York strip club earlier this year.
But the trend has gone mainstream: Kate Hudson had one installed at
her house. Desperate Housewife Teri Hatcher demonstrated her
stripper moves on Leno. And just this month, proper Brit Emma
Thompson busted out some impromptu pole love on Ellen.
Check it out on YouTube (youtube.com) for a chuckle.

Miyoko’s book offers practical tips on what to wear, how to
move, and where to, um, shave before a domestic performance. She
also advises readers not to dwell on our bodies’ imperfections, but
to direct our dude’s attention to exactly what we want him to see:
“The slope of your neck, the bounce in your breasts, the sparkle in
your eyes.”

I like that. I also like the two reasons Miyoko says a
matrimonial striptease is better than one in a nudie bar: A wife
knows exactly what her husband likes—she’s not guessing.

And his odds of scoring are 100 percent better.

For more, visit www.StarshineRoshell.com.