A Monday With, Well, Let's Say "Magical Michael"

Even better than the real thing?

CW: This issue is about going to a “male revue” and all that entails and also features some x-rated gossip about people you don’t know. Sorry, Mom, and anyone else that deserves an apology! [I think my mom will actually get a kick out of this, thank goodness!]

When Holly showed me the ad for Miracle Men Male Revue: A Bad Girl’s Heaven, Because You Can’t Be Good 24/7, I immediately knew I was going to attend and that I was going to write about the experience for Two Bossy Dames. Like so many people, I was utterly charmed by Magic Mike XXL [it came out 8 years ago, by the way. I KNOW!!!!!], and wanted to see if a rag tag male revue inspired by Magic Mike could properly incorporate the lessons learned from that movie into the very real world. [BTW, the first one is just ok, in my opinion, and I’ve only seen it once as opposed to the, I don’t know, dozen times I’ve seen XXL.]

The show took place on a Monday night at the Pulaski Club of Easthampton, MA in the function room where I have seen several Pioneer Valley Pro Wrestling events (this link provides an excellent view of said function hall.) So yes, I had seen scantily clad men working a crowd in this space before, but this was a very different situation. Or was it? I wanted to find out and Holly agreed to join me after I bought the tickets ($25.21 each for standard admission; we missed the early bird special which would have saved me $10) and assured her I’d also take care of drinks. We sat in her pool four days after the revue to chat and process the experience. 

NOTE: There’s very little information available online about the Miracle Men Male Revue; the only thing I could find was the MiracleMenXXL website via Facebook, which redirects to their ticketing page.

They are part of something called Year Round Talent Agency, which also promotes another male revue called Handsome Heroes The Show: The Best Ladies Night Of All Time as well as a wrestling show called Micro Wrestling All*Stars: Little Mania Rips Through The Ring.

Karen: The first thing I noticed when we walked in, shortly after the advertised 8:00 start time, is how very brightly lit the room was. Just stark, unforgiving overhead lighting, which stayed on throughout the show. There was no special lighting at all, which was one of the weirdest things about the experience.

Holly: And the chairs were that specific kind of chair that every community-based organization bought in the…’90s, I think? [You may see the chairs in the Pioneer Valley Pro Wrestling Link above.] You said it felt like a school assembly.

Karen: It felt like a school assembly, but that quickly changed as we settled in. We were seated by one of the…crew? There were several very brusque, clean cut middle aged men in polo shirts and slacks doing the intake, and they were good looking, I suppose, but not hunks. They were also nice but formal; “Hello, ladies.” No smarm, no flirting. The guy who seated us misread the tickets and asked if we were in the V.I.P. section and I lied and said yes. We got seats that were close to the front but off to the side; our importance seemed minimal.

Holly: I believe V.I.P. tickets guaranteed a photo with the cast at the end, but we didn’t stay long enough to get one of those. 

Karen: Right, which is too bad because that would have been a nice accompaniment to this story. I went up to get us some drinks — Tanqueray and tonics. I believe they were six dollars each.

Holly: A bargain, considering how strong they were. They were also in clear Solo cups, to keep it classy.

Karen: I looked around as I waited in line and I noticed it was a really diverse crowd. Women of all ages, all races, and everyone is READY TO PARTY and DRESSED FOR FUN. Titties OUT, lots of leg, lots of ass, high heels, just UP FOR IT! All sorts of women.

Holly: Including some REALLY OLD LADIES!

Karen: Yes, like probably in their eighties! Heroines.

Holly: One of them had a full-ass walker! But there were also women that had to be just over 18, right?

Karen: Yeah, the women behind us were REALLY young. They were drinking, so I guess they were at least 21?

Holly: Tiny, sweet babies. So, yeah, the diversity of the room was very cool and made it both better and weirder.

Karen: So the show eventually starts, and it kicks off with a cowboy-themed group dance that was incredibly wholesome.

Holly: So wholesome!

Karen: Keeping with the school assembly theme, there was a dance to “The Devil Went Down To Georgia,” of all songs, that would have been right at home at a middle school talent show circa 1987, as I assume modern middle schoolers don’t dance to “The Devil Went Down To Georgia.” Like yes, the dancers were built but they were fully clothed and yee-haw line dancing.

Holly: They were lip syncing, too, and the weird devil was the worst part. He was just in a shitty Spirit Halloween-ass black rayon tunic and a sad glittering devil mask, waving a plastic pitchfork. Why wouldn’t he be a sexy devil?!

Karen: I don’t know! I thought there was going to be a sexy reveal! Like I thought he’d tear off the stupid costume and have a sensual dance-off with “Johnny” while clothed in a flame-applique g-string or SOMETHING?! 

Holly: NOTHING! The lead cowboy ripped his shirt off at the end and he was the old one! 

Karen: He had to be in his fifties! I mean, good for him, we ourselves are not far from our fifties.

Holly: No, but I was not expecting that! 

Karen: Not at all. So that ended and we were like “This is G rated! What is even happening here?” The cowboy shit went on for a LONG time. The first set of women went up for their lap dances….oh we need to talk about how they sold the lap dances! 

Holly: There were…cards? Like…playing cards.

Karen: This was awkward as hell. Right before the show all of the performers walked around with giant laminated playing cards…ace, king, queen, I think?

Holly: And on the other side was their photo and info, including a QR code! Which, convenient, but also hilarious!

Karen: Right, so it was $20 to take one of these cards, either cash or via the QR code, I guess…did they take checks?! Some of the very old ladies there might have brought checks. A bunch of women bought cards for this cowboy guy, I guess, because he was there for a long time. He brought all of “his” women up to the performing area, which by the way was on the same level as everything else. There was no stage. They all sat in a row in chairs. It was pretty tame at first, just sort of straddling the women and dancing close to them.

Holly: But then out came the lasso!

Karen: And that’s when things got FERAL! 

Holly: And the first woman to get lassoed eventually signaled to someone in the audience to bring up more dollar bills to keep this guy going! 

Karen: Right! He lassoed her and started humping her in her seat, but eventually he brought out a woman and got her onto all fours and started riding her like a horse! And this is where things got weird for me, because from what I could tell, there was no clearance ahead of time for any of these activities.

Holly: Right, the purchase of the card seemed to mean you get what you get for your “lap dance.” Like, come on, man, you’ve seen Magic Mike!

Karen: Yeah, and so for some people a man is going to straddle you and roll his abs in your face while other people are led to the floor, put on all fours, straddled, and ridden like a horse! I have to say, though, no one looked upset. Everyone seemed thrilled with what they got and many people threw additional money to the performer in addition to the $20 they’d already spent.

Holly: I really do think everyone was like “This is what this night is for. I’m going to pay $20 for the ride of my fucking life!” And I love that! What a bargain!

Karen: It is a bargain. And the thing that I really enjoyed about the lap dancing part is that not only were women throwing dollars at the dancers, they were also giving dollars to the women who had become part of the performance! 

Holly: Yes! Stuffing them in their bras and being really cute about it, like “Good for you, friend!”

Karen: And that’s feminism. (Laughing.) Another thing we noticed is that the dancers had very small butts. Eventually the dancers would get down to g-strings and oh, the tiny, hard butts! 

Holly: The hardest little walnut shells! But not wrinkly.

Karen: No, very smooth. Maybe one bubble butt…

Holly: Oh yeah, the DJ who eventually also stripped had a really nice ass. His name was Shadow, I think?

Karen: YES! What else, what were the other performances? There was a Top Gun tribute set to “Take My Breath Away,” also weirdly wholesome, save for the part where they spent a long time pointing at their crotches with those neon safety wands. All of the dance numbers were super wholesome, but once they ended and the lap dancing started, there was SO MUCH simulated sex. And with every fake humping and fake oral sex, the audience just ERUPTED into wild screaming.

Holly: Yeah, and not in a “woo!” way, like roaring, bellowing, losing our collective fucking minds! FERAL estrogen-fest screaming! 

Karen: Absolutely feral. I have never experienced anything like that before. I went to a male strip club probably twenty years ago for an acquaintance’s bachelorette party and it was similar, but much more organized. There was an actual stage and lighting and then they came around and you bought lap dances. The bride-to-be surprised our group with “body shots” and it was horrible; we had to lick salt off these oily bohunks and then take limes out of their mouths with our mouths?! I did not love it. 

Oh, but here’s a thing I remember! That strip club had a joke performance, which was a super skinny, bespectacled stereotypical nerd in a firefighter costume with a “hose” that was out of control and flying all over the place and he stripped down to tighty-whities and tube socks and all of that and I remember being like “Oh, he’s cute! Finally someone for me, and it’s supposed to be the joke performance but he’s my favorite guy by far!” Like the “dud” in Mystery Date come to life…that’s the guy for me!

But in this show, there was a FAKE nerd, who they named Larry and there was a whole long skit with Larry that we couldn’t hear because the sound was so bad, but he ended up doing “the Carlton” dance and then stripping.

Holly: He ended up being one of the hottest guys, body-wise. 

Karen: Same with the guy who impersonally humped us.

Holly: Oh my god. That was a highlight. He was ok looking but had a great body and was the youngest one, according to his introduction.

Karen: Yeesh. He was walking through the audience and dancing up on people and I was like “Ok, he’s coming around, we should give him a dollar,” so I handed him a dollar, which was maybe a mistake because most women were either stuffing dollars directly into the dancers’ g-strings or putting the dollars in their mouths or cleavage and the dancers would launch their faces into their cleavage, which I wasn’t prepared for, naively. 

Holly: AND some of them, particularly the cowboy, were doing a schtick in which they’d redirect the woman’s hand into her cleavage, leave the money there, and then go up her shirt and take the money with his mouth, which once again made the crowd WILD!

Karen: And once again, to me, that is different. There is a difference between me putting a dollar down someone’s pants and them putting a dollar into my bra, going up my shirt, and removing it with their mouth! But again, no one seemed to mind AT ALL! Anyway, I handed the guy a dollar and he sort of pulled you and I together.

Holly: He grabbed me by the back of my head and pulled it toward you and immediately lost interest.

Karen: Yeah, he was looking over our heads and he rolled his abs at us maybe twice. I do have to say…he smelled SO good!

Holly: And that was the funny part! You TOLD him, “You smell so good,” just as was getting up to walk away from us.

Karen: Oh my god, he broke up with me. I mean, I guess smelling a hot, maybe 22-year-old guy rolling his abs at me is worth a dollar…well, fifty cents, since you were rolled at, too. Another weird trend we noticed was dancers coming out in…hoods?!

Holly: Balaclavas! Like “Mortal Combat,” heads and faces fully covered! 

Karen: There were at least three balaclavas and two of the dancers removed their scarves to reveal wildly flickering tongues. Like, “my tongue just does this, please, get in here and put me to use.” And as we touched on before, there was so much simulated oral sex. 

Holly: SO MUCH! 

Karen: Another thing I appreciated, and again, this is not something I would want done to me, but we’ve established that I was in the minority in this crowd, was that there was a lot of picking up women and swinging them around, and not just the tiny women! Women of all sizes were getting picked up, which is cribbed directly from Magic Mike.

Holly: I loved that. And yes, you’re right, that’s Magic Mike, right there.

Jeffrey, Holly’s husband, passing by: What’s the use of being strong if you can’t pick up a woman that’s bigger than you are?

Karen: Right, but then one very small woman was lifted above the fake nerd’s head and placed up against a wall.

Holly: Yes, and her legs were the same height as his face. And he was tall! If I’m 5’9” he was at least 6’2”. And he was holding her up in a full extension and simulating going down on her.

Karen: A true feat of strength. Then he dropped her, caught her, turned her upside down, and simulated MORE oral sex! 

Holly: And she was so happy! 

Karen: SO happy; I remember you turning to me at the end when they were embracing and he was checking in with her and having a little chat and you said “She is GLOWING!” So anyway, what else? We ended up getting tired and going downstairs to the bar, which was sort of the best part of the evening. We ended up missing the two obvious stars of the show, one of whom was the young Puerto Rican guy, who made half the room scream in joy when it was announced that he was Puerto Rican, and the other was the young white guy who was supposed to be Channing Tatum in his backwards baseball cap and jeans who kept pulling up his t-shirt to roll his abs. 

Holly: He looked like a teenager.

Karen: He looked nine. But I assume they did a great job. So you ran into some old co-workers…

Holly: Yes, and one of them said to me “Oh my god, Holly, of course you’re here. Of course you’re here at this weird-ass thing in Easthampton. Holly, it is a Monday! At the Pulaski Club! Of course we’re both here.” 

Karen: Amazing. So we went down to the bar, and the only other patron was a man who had brought his girlfriend to the show and was waiting for her. He and the bartender, Lynn, were chatting and at one point he left to check on things upstairs and came back and announced “I’m not gonna lie, those guys are talented! I didn’t mind what I saw AT ALL!”

Holly: So beautiful.

Karen: Then Lynn told us they don’t normally have hot dogs for sale on Mondays, it’s more of a weekend thing, but she had decided to sell them that night as a sort of cheeky cross-promotion and it had been wildly successful. Sure enough, one of the men from the Miracle Men crew came down almost on cue and asked “Hey, ya got any more hot dogs?!” 

Holly: Then my co-workers came down and they were all SCHMAMMERED because they live within walking distance. The one who had been sort of dragged there by the other two went off about how she’d exchanged Instagram handles with one of the dancers and claimed they’d “really had a minute” and that she liked him.

Karen: That was adorable, and then another started talking about her recent divorce, which was amazing; like that’s the stereotype, right, you get a divorce and you go see some strippers. AND THEN! 

Holly: Oh my god.

Karen: This made the evening. A real Normal Gossip moment. Two other women came down.

Holly: And they were also hammered and getting MORE drinks. We had switched to waters and we’re winding down and chatting with Lynn about Netflix. Let’s be sure to change the names here. 

So the two women came down and they knew Lynn and Lynn referred to one of them by name — Amy. I realized we met Amy at this very bar when we came here for karaoke months ago because I ran into her partner, Spike, who I worked with like 25 years ago, and he introduced us. Amy and Spike are also neighbors with our friend and because of that we found out that someone that I now know professionally, Andrew, also knows them. [Small town life, folks!] So, I, a normal person, am trying to provide context and I say, “Oh, we’ve met, I worked with Spike and we also both know Andrew.” 

And she…this was the second conversation I’ve ever had with this person in my life…replied “Oh, Andrew? I can’t even tell you how many threesomes I’ve had with that guy!” And we said, “Wow.”

Karen: And she continued! Apparently Andrew will “suck your toes for half an hour, give you a back rub for 45 minutes, go down on you for an hour, and then make you breakfast.” 

Holly: All I remember of that is the toe sucking and breakfast; I must have blacked out in shock. I did want to say, “Ok, but how’s the breakfast?” Keep in mind this is the most unassuming guy ever, or so I thought.

Karen: Well, we all learned a lot, particularly for a Monday night.