By Jack Corbett

"Why buy the cow if you can buy the milk for free?" Everyone's heard it. Sounds like the words of a wise man. Later on, a club owner friend of mine and several topless club managers I knew would tell me--"You always pay for sex. It never comes free. " Which went along with my own justification for all the whoring I used to do in the first place. At the age of 38 I had bought the cow which was the worse mistake of my life.

The divorce would go far worse than I ever expected in my worse nightmare, ending up costing one hundred and forty thousand dollars and taking two and a half years to get through it. Getting her out of the  house took one and a half months and a visit from the police and a sheriff's county deputy which resulted in her and my step daughter being evicted from the place. As the legal process slowly ground on, I more and more became convinced that the judge had been paid off. After all, I had reasoned----My prenuptial agreement should have made short work of everything and should sharply limit what I would have to pay whereas drawing the whole process out would mean maximum court costs, tremendous windfalls for both attorneys and a little undeserved bonanza for the court reporter as well. Prostitution would have been a far cheaper way of getting reliable and continuous sex.

As I continued to go to the clubs I started to do a little economic analysis as the attorney and accounting fees hit my bank account with each month as if the whole thing would never end. Figuring that I could live $27000 a year cheaper being single than I lived paying my wife's and step children's' bills I came up with $540 a week that I could have been paying prostitutes without putting up with a wife and two step children trying to control me. In my novel, "Death on the Wild Side" I wrote that a man could probably sleep with three whores a week for a hundred dollars a prostitute thus saving himself $240 a week over marriage, while having younger and prettier girls in almost infinite variety. The St Louis Metro East topless clubs would soon put my theory to the test--not that every dancer is a prostitute----it's just that a man often finds what he is looking for and I would after all be looking for a certain kind of dancer.

The next few chapters are about my old whoring days in the Saint Louis Metro East clubs-----which I have not revisited for at least four years-not for the whoring that is. I would soon find myself to be right--that for around a hundred dollars an encounter, I could get laid any night I wanted and have a number of pretty women to choose from. My theory turned out to be spot on. Still........I ended up giving up the whoring and I'm sure my reasons will surprise many. Like my club owner friend and club managers I've talked with I still believe a man always ends up paying for sex one way or the other....whether to a rapacious wife and legal system which are often the greediest prostitutes of them all, to a whore on a pay as you go basis, or in countless other ways including the gut wrenching emotional toll it usually claims in the end. I suppose if I am going to have to pay for it anyway, the girl had damn better be worth it. Let's just say that the reward can be worth the price of admission--not usually and not often. But for now..........it's back to the Metro East clubs in the old days when it could be said that a man could have a better time in these clubs than practically anywhere in the United States. Since then three clubs have been closed down by the authorities while over twenty men and women--club owners and tavern owners , managers, an East side Mayor, and several others have gone to jail in the crackdowns on that swirling, ever changing, exciting Metro East topless club scene I experienced at either its peak or lowest point depending upon one's point of view.