It was Friday following a long workweek, and after a casual dinner in the neighborhood, Natasha and I decided to get one quick drink before calling it a night. We stopped at a local bar we used to go to, because with its diverse crowd and good dance music, it was always good fun.
As we walked in and our eyes adjusted to the soft lighting, it became apparent that the once diverse crowd had shifted to an almost exclusively gay male one. What also became apparent was that the dance floor had been converted to a stage. And on that stage were scantily-clad male dancers.
“Uh, Nat?”
“Yeah. I know. ”
“No, but are you aware that-”
“Kind of hard to miss, Jen.”
“Holy crap!”
It’s difficult for me to write these next words, so I will try to be delicate. You see, although I won’t be coy and pretend that I have never seen a male exotic dancer before, I just had never… Here’s the thing. It was very apparent to me, and everyone in the bar, that the dancers were enjoying their work. I mean, that their work was making them happy. What I’m trying to say is that these men enjoyed dancing very much, and it showed. And we shall never speak of this again.
“Nat! You can’t leave me here!”
“Jenny – seriously, I have to pee. It’s a one-person bathroom – what do you expect me to do?”
“Fine. Go. But make it quick!”
Trying to appear as though I had a purpose other than leering at the twenty-something man on stage dancing to the pounding techno beats, I ordered a scotch that I neither wanted nor needed.
Natasha joined me at the bar a few minutes later, and wisely brushed off the bartender when he asked her what she wanted.
“Okay, let’s get out of here now.”
“But, I just ordered a scotch.”
“So drink it and let’s get out of here.”
“What the hell are we doing here?”
“Look, Jenny, we didn’t know. We couldn’t know. How could we know?”
“We couldn’t.”
“Exactly.”
I took a sip of my drink, turned back toward the stage and said, “He really is incredibly attractive, though.”
“Yeah, but is he even old enough to be in here?”
“God, I feel like a letch.”
“You are.”
“Shut up – you’re a letch, too, then.”
“I just needed the bathroom. You’re all bellying up to the bar watching strippers.”
“I don’t see you leaving.”
As the dancer gathered up his tips and stepped off stage, he flashed us a smile. Sensing what was about to happen next, I grabbed Nat’s arm and told her to look like we were deep in a serious conversation. It didn’t work.
“Hello, lyadies. How are you doink tonight?”
My expert linguistic skills told me that the handsome young entertainer was Russian. He was still in his tiny Speedo when he sidled up to Natasha and me, and put his arms around us.
I burned Nat a wide-eyed stare and said, “Uh, fine. We’re fine. And you?”
“Vyery good. I see you girls comink here before? What’s your names? I’m Nikolai.”
In stressful situations like this, it is at exactly this moment when Natasha’s survival instincts typically kick in. Sometimes she just slyly walks away, but often, she creates a distraction with a prop of some sort. Once, after accidentally spilling wine all over the table of people next to us in a restaurant, she grabbed our friend Dee-Dee’s glasses and put them on before turning around to ask our wine-soaked neighbors, “Oh, sorry! Did I get ya?”
What the hell did you do that for?
I needed a disguise.
This time, it was my scotch. Just as Nikolai’s hand settled on my shoulder, I felt my drink being ripped from my grasp. Natasha grabbed my scotch and stretched across the bar to get another straw. Then, like an alcoholic possum, she remained motionless at the bar, a white-knuckled grip on the glass.
“Hi, I’m Jenny and that’s Natasha. Yeah, um, we’ve been here before but not with… not with the dancing. Is this new?”
“Uh, I think maybe ees new. I’m dancing here Friday night for last few weeks.”
“Okay, well, uh… that’s cool. It was nice to meet you, Nikolai.”
And with that, he walked off to chat with a rowdy table of men toward the back of the bar just as another dancer was getting ready to go on stage. The next dancer strutted in wearing white fur chaps, a white fur vest, and a cowboy hat. He carried a toy horse with him.
“Dear god, we’re in trouble. And yet, part of me so wishes I had a camera right now.”
Nat’s eyes lit up, “I have a camera!”
“You’re kidding! Ohmigod – you totally need to take a picture! No wait – you can’t take a picture! Do not take a picture. No. Wait. You have to take a picture. But don’t make a scene – turn off the flash.”
As the dancer galloped around the stage on his toy horse, I watched carefully, waiting for just the right pose. “You have to be discreet about it. Okay, do it now. Go!”
Natasha is a woman of innumerable talents, but discretion is not one of them. She held the camera at arms length in front of her and about six inches above her head, looked away, and then snapped a shot.
I was horrified as I saw a red beam shine directly on the cowboy’s face, at which point he stopped dancing, turned to Natasha and smiled.
“Oh shit. Shit. He looked right at me.”
“He did? Oh crap. Oh. Okay. Grab your coat – we gotta go. We gotta go now!”
Natasha fumbled to put her camera away, and just as I was about to grab my coat, I stopped. “Wait, Nat. You can’t just take his picture and leave. He posed for you. You need to give him a tip.”
“No way!”
“Seriously, Nat. Give him a dollar!”
“No.”
“You have to.”
“No.”
“Nat, you took a picture of a stripper and he smiled for you. Give him a dollar!”
“I said no!”
“Okay, look. I’ll give you the dollar. Just take this dollar and go give it to him.”
“Jenny, no.”
“Natasha Louise! You are going to take this dollar, and you’re going to get up there, and you’re going to put it in that man’s underwear right now!”
“No! And that’s not even my middle name.”
“It isn’t? Well, it should be. What’s your problem, anyway?”
“I don’t… I don’t know how.”
“What do you mean you don’t know how? You just go up there and stick the dollar in his pants.”
“Have you even been paying attention? That is not at all what’s happening up there, Jenny. People are pulling the dancers’ underwear out like a cash drawer and stuffing the money inside. We’re talking full frontal view. I mean, what the hell kind of elastic do they even have on their underwear here?”
“They’re special stripper underwear, I guess. Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll give you five dollars, plus the one dollar if you just put this dollar in his pants. Just hand it to him.”
“No.”
“Ten?”
“No.”
“Twenty.”
“I’m not doing it!”
Suddenly, Natasha grabbed the wad of bills from my hand and held it over her head, much like she had held the camera that had caused this whole problem in the first place.
“Christ, would you stop waving that money around? Give it back! What’s wrong with you?”
As if on cue, Nikolai bee-lined over to Natasha and her fistful of dollars.
“Oh shit, Nat. Put the money away. Put it away! He’s coming over here!”
At that point, Natasha shoved the money down the front of my shirt, grabbed my drink again, and stared at the bar with roadkill eyes. After quickly retrieving the bills from my bra, I exchanged a few more pleasantries with Nikolai, but he left abruptly once he could see what cheap bastards we were. As soon as he left, I whacked Nat on the shoulder and grabbed my coat.
“Nice frickin’ move, Nat. Here’s an idea – why don’t you take some more pictures of strippers, not tip them, and then wave a wad of cash around like you’re Dean Martin? Let’s go.”
“We can never come back here.”
“No kidding. Except maybe sometime on a Friday.”
“Exactly.”

Filed under: General on April 11th, 2006