Eye of The Beholder
Dave Overholt

	Average looking man sits with his back to the audience. 
He is staring intently at something that appears to be standing 
on the table above him.  Before speaking, and periodically 
throughout the monologue he mimes handing dollar bills up to 
someone.  He appears to be moderately drunk.

"Man, I love strip clubs.  I can't think of any better way 
to spend an evening than watching beautiful women dance in front 
of me.  Yeah, I know what guy wouldn't right?  Now, I can hear 
you all out there bitchin' and moanin' calling me a chauvinist 
pig and all that.  But see, that's where you're wrong.  See you 
all think that everyone that goes to a strip club is part of some 
drunk group of frat boys hootin' and hollerin' at the stage 
saying "Oh baby, take it off!".  Those kind of guys are still 
children.  I was coming to titty bars when they were still having 
their mama wipe their nose (stops to take a drink).  They got no 
class.  No respect for the beauty that they are privileged enough 
to watch.  Or maybe you think that I'm some kind of pervert who 
comes here to beat off and dream about the girls on stage 
spanking me.  Those sick bastards should be locked up and have 
the key thrown away (pauses to hand a dollar up on stage).
	

"No, that's not me.  See I'm an old timer to these fine 
establishments.  I've been in and out of every go-go bar, topless 
joint, and strip club in this fine city of ours and they know me 
by name in most of them.  This is my home away from home.  Hell, 
why should I stay at home and listen to the old lady bitch at me 
about "this needs fixed" or "that needs done".  She's always 
bitching at me to get off my ass and do something.  I keep 
telling her that if she had been working on it the entire time 
she was yelling at me she'd have the damn thing done herself by 
now.  She don't understand me.  She don't understand why I do 
this.  You see, in here I'm a king.  The women all say "hi" and 
grab my hand as they walk by and the bartender brings me a Jack 
and Coke every fifteen minutes exactly.  You can set your watch 
by it. And then there's the show itself (pauses for a drink).  

"I love to watch the women dance.  See it's not some crazed sexual 
libido for me.  To me this is art.  The female body is truly a 
work of art.  Probably the most beautiful thing God ever created. 
Their long legs, the curve at the small of the back, their firm 
little bellies and the way it all sparkles in the colored lights. 
The Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo are for granola eaters and 
whale savers.  This is a working man's art.  Now granted you have 
those gals in here that can't dance to save their souls.  But 
when you have one that can move what God gave them and the music 
is playing and the whiskey is flowing…(Sighs) it's like heaven on 
earth.  

"Now of course you've got these broads in here that come 
up to you and try to get you to have a private dance.  They put 
their hand on your crotch and blow in your ear and say "I can 
show you more in the back room".  Why bother?  She's already 
showin' me she's a dime store floozy with no self-respect.  What 
the hell else is there to know?  I don't ever get dances from 
those bimbos (pauses for drink).

"But, I'll tell you who I do go for.  Cause there's one in 
every bar.  At some point the course of a night there is always 
one girls who gets onstage that is different.  She's always 
pretty and almost always well built.  She puts on a decent show 
but there's something in her eyes that says that she doesn't 
belong there.  She rarely makes eyes contact, but when she does 
you can almost see her eyes saying "help me".  That's the one I 
go for.  She's never actively looking for private dances so most 
of the time I have to go find her.  We go in the back and I 
always get two dances.  

"Sometimes I have her dance the first one, sometimes not.  
But the second one I always just have her sit and 
talk.  It's everything I can do to keep from laughing at the look 
of surprise on her face when I just hand her forty bucks to talk 
to me.  We do normal chit chat, how's your night, you dance 
great, yadda, yadda.  I always gotta ask her name cause you know 
her name ain't really Mercedes.  Sometimes they tell me, 
sometimes they don't.  Who can blame them?  How does she know I'm 
not some stalker.  So I never make a big deal of it if she 
doesn't tell me.  

"At some point in the evening I always turn to her and 
ask the same question.  Why do you do this?  You're a 
beautiful person and you could do anything in the world that you 
want.  Why do you disgrace yourself like this?  And you know, 
deep down, I'm always afraid she going to ask me the exact same 
question (pauses for a moment, then empties his glass).  Hey 
bartender!  I'm empty over here!"