1:20 a.m. - 2006-12-16
An Uncle Miltie-like evening
Berle-esque. In the unfunny, barely watchable, what am I missing here sense.
"What am I doing here?" A question I repeated like a mantra for the hour and a half I stood penned in like a veal with a bunch of creepy guys in a cheesy strip club while we waited for our "reservation". "They have a great free buffet!", my buddy had said. And I wanted to believe him. Almost as much as I want to believe that girls all understand that it happens to every guy sometime. Really? While technically true, I wouldn't call cold chicken and rigatoni great cuisine. Finally after I ordered my $6 cherry coke (3/4 ice) my fellow wallflowers agreed that 2 hours of standing and waiting was enough.
"Let's hit Jon-Jon's on Mound, they'll be a lot better there. It doesn't even pick up until 11:00 or so. We'll get a great table, trust me!" So I acquiesced. Or relented. No, what I really did was surrender. That's the problem with taking one car and being 15 miles away from home. I resigned myself to a crappy evening. I couldn't have been more wrong. The first girl on stage looked to be on the wrong side of 40, but still pretty when dressed. I'm not a doctor, and I don't even play one on TV, but in my clinical opinion: Tammy was at least 3 months pregnant. She carried it well and seemed to be drinking only white wine (which barely counts as alcohol, right?) I found myself sitting there with another $6 soft drink which I had every intention of nursing for the rest of the night. Which is when my friend, the instigator of all this, took a moment to put in his earplugs. So, I guess conversation is right out? Brilliant! I didn't want a lap dance and neither did the other guy who got roped into this debacle. Not to mention the pestering of the shot girl every ten minutes, the blaring heavy metal coming from a speaker about 18" above our heads, the earplugger insisting on smoking the most heinous smelling cigar and not drinking after his $10 amaretto and you've got the blueprint for a really sad and lonely Friday night.
"What am I still doing here?" I didn't have to ask because the other guys had decided it was time to go. Finally! While we're walking out there's the most pathetically amazing tableaux at a booth across the floor. An old man with a dowager's hump and wearing a Bill Cosby sweater was just sitting down to dinner with his "date" for the evening. I don't know how much it costs to pay a 19 year old Filipino stripper to eat dinner with you and rub her tits in your face, but one day I hope to have that kind of cash. The sweater probably cost a pretty penny back in 1987.
"What the FUCK am I doing here?" The only answer I have is that I have some "acquaintances" but not a lot of good friends. If I had good friends and they wanted to go to a strip club, hopefully it wouldn't turn into 4 hours of staring blankly at single soon-to-be moms parade around in what they think men find sexy. I seriously doubt that many women would be onstage in clear heeled shoes and thongs if it didn't pay so well. Maybe just the real artists!
Mostly though I felt sad. Sad that I thought it would be any other way. I have been spending way too much time inside lately, I'll admit. Now I see that I'm just not one of those strip club guys (or bar guys for that mattter). There has got to be a girl out there who loves television and laughing and talking about music endlessly.
Cynical girls apply within. Unique neuroses will be given extra consideration.
