Thursday, February 19, 2015

By Any Means Necessary


The new “gentlemen’s club” I passed on the street appeared to be perfectly accessible. It looked as if I could roll right in if I wanted to.

Dammit! I guess they don’t make gentlemen’s clubs inaccessible anymore, which is a real damn shame. It would be a lot of fun suing a gentlemen’s club for not being accessible. I would be reasonable in my demands.

There are lots of laws that require business owners to make sure that cripples have equal access to their goods and services. In the case of gentlemen’s clubs, strippers are the goods. Or is that a service? Hmmm. I suppose there are compellingly arguments for both sides. But anyway, in spite of what some will tell you, these laws don’t mean that every little downtrodden sole proprietor has to immediately install elevators and ramps. Like for instance, down the street from where I live is a pizza place with three steps on the entrance. But mounted by the door is a bell with a sign that has that wheelchair-riding stick figure on it and the sign says RING BELL FOR SERVICE. I rang it once just to see what would happen. Nothing happened. But I suppose the theory behind it is the cripple rings the bell and someone comes out and asks how they can help and the cripple says “I want a pizza” and the cripple waits outside until someone brings him/her a pizza.

In other words, if you can’t get the cripple to your goods and services, you can get your goods and services to the cripple by any means necessary. So that’s what I'll demand of the gentlemen’s club. Install one of those bells and someone will come out and ask how they can help and I’ll say “I want a lap dance.” And they’ll bring the strippers out to me and I’ll get my lap dance right there in the parking lot or maybe even in the warmth and comfort of my custom-designed cripple van. Sort of like ordering from a drive thru. In order to be fully accessible, the gentlemen’s club will also have to install dancing poles in the parking lot.

It’s not the strippers that motivate me. It’s the principle. This isn’t a quest for a lap dance. It’s a quest for justice. And also for a laugh.


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