U.S. Male provides entertainment packages

After what seemed like forever, the pre-show music finally stopped. The emcee introduced a racially diverse group of clean-shaven, muscular men. The hotties emerged from a cloud of dry ice, wearing towels. Within a few minutes, they were baring their bottoms to the hooting, hollering women in the Virginian Ballroom at the Cal-Neva Virginian hotel-casino last Friday.

Why was I at this performance of “Reno’s only professional male revue,” U.S. Male? Well, I was asked to check it out by an employee at the Blue Max, where the revue is usually held. I figured: Why not? After all, I’ve written about strip bars and swingers, so why not male strippers?

Thus, I set off to see the show on March 30. I went alone; I couldn’t convince any of my wussy female friends to join me, and I wasn’t sure if my gay male friends would be allowed in. Luckily, two friendly gals waiting in line with me, Cheri and Rose, invited me to join them.

“Is this your first time?” asked Cheri. Well, kind of, I answered. The only time that I came close to random naked maleness was at a friend’s bachelorette party. The hostess arranged for the husbands of some of the women in attendance to put on a PG-13 strip tease. It was cute, but it didn’t get wild. I mean, the guys’ wives were there.

But things were different last Friday. An hour after the door opened, the place was filled with a couple hundred horny women, predominately in their 20s and 30s. There was one bachelorette party there, but it appeared most of the women were there just to get an eyeful of male booty. And they got plenty.

After the show started, Darren, Rico, Chocolate Wonder, K.C., JR, Disco Jake and Dirty South (what in the hell does that name mean?) individually strutted their stuff on stage, whipping the women up into a hormonal frenzy.

Each guy took on a persona, for example, a cowboy (with Kid Rock and Bon Jovi tunes playing along) or a zoot-suited “pimp” (with “Mambo No. 5” playing overhead). As the guys stripped down to their G-stringed skivvies, the women got more bold, waving money, desperate for their favorite dancer to come to their table.

And I must admit, I was prodded along by Cheri to slip a dollar bill into a dancer’s G-string.

I nervously put the dollar on his hip strap. Audience members could touch some parts of the body, but the regions, um, “down under” were off limits, although it looked like some women were close to breaking that rule.

I’d say this was the first time I’d ever seen a man get overwhelmed by a group of groping women. Chocolate Wonder seemed to be the favorite dancer that night, and no matter which table he danced at, women swarmed around him to the point where it looked like he couldn’t move. But he was often rewarded with a bunch of dollar bills, collected around his waist.

Being a first-time visitor to a male revue, I can’t say for sure how this compared to Chippendales or Thunder from Down Under. But judging from the reaction of the audience, I’d say that U.S. Male left the audience feeling satisfied enough for a post-show cigarette.