Friday night was my good friend’s birthday. He wanted to hang out in Denver.
First on the agenda: A trip to Hooters. Second, an evening at one of the local strip clubs.
I hate both of these activities, but he’s my friend so I met up with him and headed to Hooters. Hooters was like Hooters always is: Women in very small, tight outfits who touch your shoulder when they talk to you and call you “sweetie” serve you fairly filthy food. You watch the girls walking around when they’re not dealing with a table with vacant, bored looks on their faces that are immediately replaced by glowing smiles as soon as they’re working a table. As uncomfortable as that makes me, it was a relatively pleasant time. The server that we had was fairly interesting (as Hooter’s waitresses go) and seemed less irritated with the whole job than most. The food was all right, and my friend had a good time.
At this point, my friend had too much to drink, and I was the new designated driver, so we headed to the strip club. We were there for three or four hours, and it gave me some time to think: why do I hate going to strip clubs so much? It’s just a place with topless girls. I like girls, and am fond of seeing them without their tops, so why is it that going to a location who’s biggest source of income is girls with no tops on such an unbelievably uncomfortable experience for me?
I had a LOT of time to think about that last night, and I think that I’ve come to a conclusion.
I remember in Jr. High when some of the girls started realizing that they could get boys to do things for them if they flirted a little bit. If they batted their eyes at someone and made some sort of physical contact, they could get someone else to do their homework for them. The boys didn’t stand a chance; they didn’t have any experience dealing with interaction like that, and the girls were holding all the cards. When I walk into a strip club now, I feel like it’s like that again, only you’re paying 30 dollars and they’re not wearing a shirt.
And it weirds me out a little bit to talk to someone who I know is interacting with me for money. I’m also apparently very poor at it. Some girls came up to the table that my friend and I were sitting at and started making casual physical contact and asking us questions. One asked me what I did. I told her that I was a substitute teacher. “Oh, so you get to put up with all the bullshit,” she joked. I chuckled and asked her what she did. She looked at me like I was retarded for a moment and then told me that she worked at the club we were at. “Oh, so you get to put up with all the bullshit,” I told her.
She glared at me for a second and then got up and walked away. I didn’t think that it was an especially hostile exchange, but apparently I was wrong.
Later, another girl came up, put her hand on my shoulder and said…something to me. I don’t remember what. What I do remember is that she was completely fucked up. She was trying to look at me, but she couldn’t quite focus her eyes, and so she was actually looking about 30 feet past me. She asked me to buy her a shot, so I got one for her and my friend. Then, after a few more moments of me uncomfortably ignoring her, she told the wall behind me that she would be back, but that she was going to go walk around for a few minutes. I think she told me that she would be right back so I wouldn’t be jealous, even though I think she was misreading me a little bit if she thought I would be jealous if she tried to find a friendlier customer with deeper pockets.
I think that there’s just too much bullshit for me to handle. My friend says that he enjoys the simplicity of it all; each side knows what the other wants, and they give it to each other without the bullshit of a relationship. I can respect that, but I don’t feel that way at all. I feel like I’m up to my eyeballs in bullshit when I go into a strip club. The girls can’t even really tell you their real names, for christ’s sake.
Or maybe it’s just complete overstimulation for me. I’m a little bit uncomfortable in large, noisy groups of people, and maybe throwing naked girls into the mix just overloads me a little bit. I don’t know.
Like I said, I don’t see anything wrong with the whole strip club experience, and it works for a lot of people. It’s just not my thing.
Oh, and according to my friend, when Kobe Bryant comes to town, they line up all of the girls in the V.I.P. room for him and he picks one to take back to the hotel room with him. It’s good to be a professional athlete, I guess.
Anyway, after spending several hours doing my best to spend money and act like I was having a good time, my friend was willing to take off. I drove him home and then headed to bed.
For about an hour and a half, before I started puking.
I’m not sure if I had food poisoning from Hooter’s “delightfully tacky, yet unrefined” food or the flu, but I spent the next ten hours regularly depositing the contents of my stomach into a bucket. I think I slept for about 20 hours yesterday, in between throwing up. Even better, I threw out my back while throwing up yesterday, so I’m sick and crippled.
What I’m trying to say is that this has been the best weekend ever, and if the Broncos lose to the Chiefs today, which they probably will, I am going to murder someone.
I will leave you with the video for “Lapdance” by N.E.R.D., because it kicks ass, is loaded with strippers and Pharrel looks hilarious with that goofy mustache.