Olga and the Chippendales

I've been trying to take a picture of Olga beneath the big Ceanothus, or California lilac, that grows on the housing estate where we often walk. This was the first attempt, which is pretty good.

But then we walked by later and the bush seemed to be blooming even more:

Unfortunately Olga herself looks a little wide-bodied in this shot. (And she really isn't.) I just can't win!

Dave and I just finished a four-part documentary on Amazon about the Chippendales, the legendary troupe of male "exotic dancers" from the '80s. I remember them from their heyday but I forgot that the whole enterprise flamed out in the early '90s amid charges of murder and arson. (I think I was overseas at the time and didn't keep up with all that news.) The documentary tells the whole dramatic story as well as the personal journeys of some of the dancers and managerial staff, and it was pretty darn entertaining.

What the documentary didn't do was even utter the word "gay," which I found interesting. The Chippendales only danced for women; men were expressly barred from the clubs until the performances were over. But I'm sure they had a huge gay following, especially for their merchandise like calendars and posters, and it would have been reasonable to acknowledge that.

Maybe I feel this way because of my own Chippendales story, which I blogged way back in 2008. Here's what I wrote then, so you don't have to follow the link:

When I was a high school senior, my girlfriend went to Spencer Gifts at University Square Mall and bought a deck of cards showing the Chippendales in various states of undress. I remember thinking they weren’t that attractive, all oiled and kind of greasy-looking, but I still wanted a deck of those cards myself. (I’m not sure what was going on in my tangled-up psyche at the time -- girlfriend, Chippendales cards -- but whatever.)

I went in to Spencer’s, picked up the cards and bravely approached the cashier, a woman. “I think these are the cards my girlfriend wants,” I said, uncertainly.

The cashier gave me a knowing look (her brain was saying, “Gay!”) and rang them up.

I kept those cards for a year or two, but like I said, I didn’t really think any of the guys were all that great. Oily men in bow ties and thongs just don’t do it for me. Call me crazy.

I got to wondering whether I could find that deck of cards online. I hadn't seen it in almost 40 years, and I was curious whether I'd recognize any of the images. It turns out there were several different decks of Chippendales cards over the years, but I discovered the one I owned was the 1982 deck. The minute I saw this picture from an old eBay listing, I knew it was the one:

And yes, I do clearly remember all those images, even though -- as I wrote above -- the guys weren't quite my ideal. (I was into nerdier types, being a nerdier type myself.) I seem to remember liking Mr. Ace of Clubs and Three of Clubs at top left, as well as Mr. Shirt-and-Tie, who made a career on the Chippendales stage as "The Perfect Man."

It strikes me now that all those cards depict white men. There were a few black Chippendales dancers but overall it was a very caucasian enterprise, despite the fact that the owner was an Indian immigrant named Banerjee. In fact there were lawsuits not only for gender discrimination but also racial discrimination by men who weren't allowed into the clubs.

Obviously I never saw the Chippendales live. There was a similar male dance troupe in Florida called the Hollandales, though, and they did perform at the gay clubs in Tampa. I saw them a couple of times and even had a harmless infatuation with one of their dancers, who I never so much as spoke to but once tipped $5, which seemed wildly extravagant at the time.

Anyway, yes, there's the entirety of my sordid history involving male burlesque. Aren't you glad you asked?