2003-12-03
11:20 p.m.

Stripper Clay!

Some male popstars can be described as "allergic to shirts."

Sadly, this appears to be the one allergy the Epinephrine Kid does not have.

In fact, expert analysis has shown that he is wearing an average of 3.2 shirts at any given time.

It's like he's dressed for a strip poker game. Which is exactly what he's playing with us. And dang, the guy is a card shark. At the end of the year, he's snuggled up in a fluffy turtleneck and yummy gloves,

and we're down to our electric bras and the last of our dry panties.

Over the past year, Clay has been conducting the world's longest, slowest, most deliciously tantalizing strip tease.

Emphasis on the word "tease."

During AI, the only exposed skin we saw was his face and hands.

And unfortunately, thanks to the over-exuberant make-up staff at Fox, these did not always match.

It was months before we got our first glimpse of forearm.

Forearm! We squealed! We drooled! We devoted several pages of guestbook to talking about butterscotch fur. The Timberlake fandom must have thought we were insane.

And when the single appeared, lo and behold, they made Clayton leave the undershirts at home. Here there was a teeny weeny bit of chest.

With exactly 19 cinnamon chest hairs visible. We know. We counted.

Then, o blessed day, there appeared that holy grail of ClaySkin: Rolling Stone.

The tummy! Suddenly, we had the happy trail, the delicious golden copper threads, that slight shadow of hipbone, a possible belly button sighting. We made ourselves cross-eyed trying to use x-ray vision and some fundamentals of trigonometry to detect nipple placement. It was almost more than we could bear. Broads across the country melted at that triangle of skin.

And Clay realized that he was moving too fast for us. It was too dangerous. So he slowed back down to a pace that our poor hearts (and other parts) could handle.

In July, we saw him in shorts. Downy legs!

It was as if no man had ever appeared in public before in baggy khaki shorts and a poloshirt.

We got to see bare feet in the Lost Video shoot.

Feet. That seemed safe. Till we realized what those 13 1/2's were symbolic of. And then we felt like we were looking at a bare something else. A few of our weaker broads swooned at the thought.

In Anaheim, he did another little strip tease to It's Getting Hot in Herre. So hot that Clay showed us his...

...undershirt. The crowd went wild.

At the AI Christmas taping, there were reports that Stripper!Clay! continued with his act, lifting his pant leg and flashing a bit of fuzzy calf for the audience. Unfortunately, no cameras were permitted at that event, so we only have the descriptions of our PRoC cousins in attendance.

As with everything else, Clay has redefined the art of the strip tease.

In the Land o' Clay, this is "flashing."

Look close in case you miss it.

Of course, no Clay fans missed it.

And in our world, this is "showing skin."

That microscopic sliver of skin (below the white undershirt which is below the black undershirt which is below the black shirt) shows on exactly one frame of the film, passing so quickly that you'd miss it if you blinked (luckily, Clay screen cappers never blink). I calculate it to be approximately 0.57 square inches. Never mind that Clay was wearing three shirts at the time. (Two undershirts, Clay? Why? Why?) We were happy. We were turned on. We blew that pic up real big and did things while we looked at it that probably aren't appropriate to discuss on the main page.

And just last week, we were treated to a true strip tease, Aiken style. At the Raleigh parade, as reported by our own Cotton, there was tremendous excitement when Clay, that shameless exhibitionist--

are you ready for this?--

took

off

his

...

overcoat.

OMG.

The crowd screamed. They chanted, "Take it off!" They completely disrupted the parade.

Let me point out that the man was still wearing a turtleneck. A turtleneck. With at least one undershirt underneath.

(Focus! Don't get distracted looking at that little flash of undies!)

Yes, he was still covered right up to those delicious ears of his. But was there ever anything so sexy as those broad shoulders clothed in broadly purple? No. We responded as if he'd paraded down Main Street wearing only a couple of Robin's purple tassels.

(I'll give you a moment to ponder that image.)

We are truly unique fans.

And Clay is truly a unique popstar.

He knows that women like it nice and slow. That less is more. That a little mystery is sexy. That the imagination is an erogenous zone.

And we love him for it.

But I don't think it would kill the guy to show us a little ginger button, do you?

--Katynka, wearing her purple tassels.

--Thanks to Cindy for loaning me her electric bra, Cotton for sticking her $20 bill in Clay's turtleneck, Honorary Broad Susie for the shirtlessness, Melissa for late night photo searches, Kelly for even later at night emergency screen caps, and Jenny-O for coming up with the delicious "ginger buttons."

I do wish she'd snapped a photo of the actual moment when Cotton used her teeth to slip those bills in. It would be useful training material for the next Broad who gets to see Stripper!Clay! in action. (Clay, please bring the tassels to Atlanta! Please!)