Les Chippendales

Almost every event here is heralded with a plague of colourful posters which adorn the shop windows and lamp-posts, and tonight's festivities were no different. We had been alerted to the existence of another nightclub, "Arena," which sits on a backstreet just north of the river. Thanks to a poster, we had also learned that tonight there a Chippendale show at said club. Naturally, we went along.

Almost everyone went to see the new Twilight movie beforehand, an event which drew a depressingly large crowd which choked the pavement in front of the cinema. Instead of subjecting ourselves to what would inevitably be utter drivel - dubbed into French - James and I decided to do a little bar crawl, which gave me the opportunity to finally visit "El Loco," a great little party bar in the medieval quarter which thumps out David Guetta's discography on repeat and serves vodka and coke which consists mainly of vodka. New. Favourite. Place. We also stopped off for the best kebab on the planet, mayonnaise-laden ambrosia in a pita bread for ?4.50 at a take-away we discovered the night before.

When the film finally chucked out at about half past midnight, we all met up and proceeded to the club. The picture sums it up pretty well - lasers and "douchebag podia" which scream my kind of place. I get the distinct vibe that I was the most impressed with the venue, but then again I genuinely love any sticky old room which looks and sounds like H.P. Baxxter's basement. There was also a smaller dancefloor playing slightly "friendlier" music like The Spice Girls and YMCA; we spent a fair bit of the night there which wasn't too bad (vodka helped).

At 3am, we returned to the main room for the strippers. There were two of them - Aaron and Garry - and they were pretty run-of-the-mill beefcakes in naval officer get-up. All in all, a bit predictable and crass.

...is what I would have said if I'd been sober. Instead, I was a cheering mess, applauding and whooping as the two men thrust their unmentionables in women's faces, women who had drunkenly volunteered and immediately regretted it. My female friends - enlightened and liberated types - seemed to find it all in rather bad taste, wondering why anyone would subject themselves to such a display of lewd male domination. I, however - having never been a member of a gender which has endured thousands of years of economic and sexual repression at the hands of men - found it all rather harmless. (Again, vodka helped.)

The discussion on the walk home consisted largely of soul-searching questions about what had driven the men to become strippers and what had possessed the women who had volunteered to smear baby oil over a strange man's six-pack and buttocks. I was not nearly so preoccupied, and my primary thoughts during the show itself had been something along the lines of, "Holy shit, pick me next goddamnit!"

Is there something wrong with me?