In high school, you’re trying to get into the cool social clubs. In your 20’s and 30’s, you’re trying to get into the cool nightclubs. In your 40’s and beyond, you’re trying to get into a nice health club, or the fancy country club before you realize you’re still the same loser you were during high school and all through your 20’s and 30’s.
So what’s the right club for you then? The only club that will have you, my friend: the strip club. And when it comes to picking and choosing an establishment, you have two options: splurging at the high-end gentlemen’s club for the high-priced femme fatales, or slumming it down at the low-end titty bars with the cheap, chain-smoking phlegm fatales. Those are the A and B options of the strip club Venn diagram. The two boobs, if you will. One is firm and fake like the implants you find at the swanky club, and the other droops like the saggy hooters of the skanky club. But somewhere in the middle, right in the cleavage of that consumer experience that swings between the bipolar climates of a hot fantasy and a cold reality, is a striptease hang that brings the dichotomies of the flesh game into the comforts of your own home: the at-home bachelor party.
Sometimes Latinos like to have weddings in their backyards to save money and the residential stag party is a similar cost-effective celebration. You usually get what you pay for on both occasions, but with a bachelor pad bachelor party, you might even end up with a hot steamin’ pile of what the fuck just happened? If you’re lucky, you’ll get something that is all-at-once erotic, comedic, tragic, and affordable; something like the bachelor party I attended in Sun Valley a few years back.
There were about ten of us bachelors in attendance, but the main bachelor was my buddy Manny. His best friend Adrian was the best man, and probably the worst organizer in bachelor party history. The stripper he booked was a chunky woman named Socorro and her chaperone was an even chunkier guy named Pablo, who showed up drunk. With no build up, or even an introduction, Pablo abruptly started playing rock nacional on his phone and Socorro began shuffling hither and yon in a pathetic display of strippery. A guy named Jaime walked over to Adrian with a look of disgust.
“I thought you said she was hot,” said Jaime.
“Her profile pictures were en fuego,” defended Adrian
“More like en preggo,” said Jaime, making a belly gesture. “I think she’s with child.”
The chaperone tried to light a cigarette and Adrian told him to take it outside. Pablo made a beeline for the glass sliding doors that were closed to the patio and WHAM! he slammed so hard into the glass that the rest of the windows in Adrian’s apartment rattled on impact. Someone yelled, “Windex test pilot number one!” and Pablo’s plastered face slid down the surface of the glass with a long squeeeeeeeeeeak. When we helped him back up, the cigarette was still dangling from his mouth all smashed and mangled.
To avoid further collisions, Adrian kept the sliding door open, but he shut the screen door to keep the bugs out, then took some blue masking tape and secured a strip across the doorway as an extra precaution, but that was not enough to slow down The Pablo Express. He grabbed a fresh cigarette later on, and on his second attempt to go outside, he swooped under the blue tape limbo-style and plowed right through the screen door like The Hulk and then wrestled it to the ground like he was caught in a giant spider web. When we helped him back up, the cigarette was still dangling from his mouth all smashed and mangled.
By this time, Socorro was huffing and puffing through her routine and Jaime came up to Adrian again.
“This woman needs medical attention.”
“Chill out, Jaime,” said Adrian.
“Look at the puddle she left on your carpet after that last booty-drop. I think she broke her water.”
Adrian glanced at the stain. “Somebody spilled beer.”
Another stag came over to voice his opinion. “Yo, I’m tired of dry heaving. We gotta shut this down.”
“Shut up, Leo,” said Adrian.
“I’m serious. You gotta put her out of her misery.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” agreed Jaime.
“Guys, she’s right in the middle of her routine.”
“That’s not a routine,” said Leo. “That’s a cry for help.”
“She’s paid for!”
“Get a refund!” they answered in unison.
“Hey, if you guys wanna pull the plug, be my guest.”
“Say no more,” said Leo, jumping into the center and covering Socorro with a blanket. “Wow, what a performance, huh?! How about a hand for Socorro, everybody!” A smattering of applause followed.
“Something wrong?” hiccuped Pablo.
“We’re tapping out, brother.”
“Is it ‘cause I fell down?” asked Pablo meekly.
“Are you kidding? That was the best part.”
“Is it ‘cause I farted?” offered Socorro.
“That was you?”
“It slipped out.”
The other guys groaned with revulsion and Leo asked her, “Did you have dairy by any chance today?”
“Big time.”
“Soco, sweetie, I think you might be lactose intolerant.” More groans from the fellas.
“So ya’ll don’t want no lap dances?” asked Pablo before the guys crossed their legs and responded with a collective grumble. “We’re good,” concluded Leo.
Socorro was still half-naked when they escorted her and Pablo out of the apartment, which is how bachelors with one-track minds view the world: the stripper is always half-naked, never half-dressed. Even when Leo called the agency to complain and the guy on the other line said, “I hooked ya’ll up with our two-for-one special!” we were still optimistic. And the good vibes paid off! Leo threatened to sue his ass off and the guy quickly sent over another stripper, this time by herself.
Her name was Fina. She was a sexy blonde that kept her arm tucked in her jacket like Napoleon the whole time she was dressed. Some of us thought maybe she was packing heat to protect herself, and that she might rob us at gunpoint but ultimately, the only thing she robbed us of was a good night’s sleep. In fact, I get little flashbacks from time to time of her traumatizing performance that still send shivers down my spine.
We didn’t notice it for the first thirty seconds of Fina’s routine because we were all too busy focusing on her other assets, but when she eventually loosened up and smacked her booty with her Napoleon hand it became apparent that her limb had been cursed with ectrodactyly… otherwise known as LOBSTER HAND!
Somebody yelled, “Is that a foot?!” but she didn’t hear it because of the loud music. She couldn’t hear our screams either. She was so involved with her routine that she was almost defiantly putting her lobster hand in the air (and waving it like she just didn’t care). But we definitely cared, all of us except Manny. He was so drunk he didn’t realize that every time she stepped away from him to engage the rest of us, we would duck and dive in terror like she had in fact been concealing a firearm and was now brandishing her weapon.
By the time the horror show was winding down, it was just Manny in the living room with Fina the the ectrodactyly ecdysiast. The rest of us were outside standing in the cold, waiting for the nightmare to end. Manny told us later that he thought we had chipped in for extra services, and that we had all cleared out so he could have sex with her, but when he tried to put the moves on her, she bitch-slapped him with her crustacean paw and bolted out of there.
Manny blacked out shortly after and because our continued absence of a balanced mental state meant the collective presence of a one-track mind, the rest of us stumbled over to the nearest strip club for a nightcap. It was a rundown peeler bar, but with a couple of pool tables, presumably so patrons could mix pocket billiards and pocket pool for a double dose of virility.
We did as the Romans do and pounded a couple of pitchers of beer, shot some stick, and watched a few single mothers get naked but the talent was painfully subpar. The only time I heard the words “nice rack” was in reference to a pool match. Eventually, we closed our tabs and laid our bent pool cues on the puke-stained felt before heading for the exit, but just as we were about to walk out, we were stopped dead in our tracks by the pounding sounds of an anthemic intro. It was “Born in the USA” by Bruce Springsteen, and when we turned around to see what all the fanfare was about, we saw a striking U.S. Army-themed dancer straight out of booty camp taking center stage in her skimpy fatigues. I don’t know what the hell happened at that precise moment, but as soon as that soldier girl started performing her military duties, the whole place turned into a big ol’ barrel of fist-pumping monkey fucks.
Somehow this female weapon of mass stimulation had managed to work the whole lot of us into such a jingoistic frenzy that by the time she had peeled off everything but her stars & stripes thong and a pair of combat boots, the entire joint was ready to enlist in the United States Army. She finished up on the main stage and our chants of “USA! USA!” followed as she rotated back to Stage B to complete her tour of duty. Stage B was a secondary stage; a smaller, knee-high platform where cochinos could belly up for a closer look at the merchandise, and me and the other fellas were front and center.
Our patriotism soared as she continued to spread the wings of her bald eagle in the name of freedom. I looked around and it was clear that every red-blooded, blue-balled American in attendance had been similarly infused with a newfound sense of national pride… all except one guy; one distinct loser sitting alone with his back to the action; talking on his cell phone with the back of his seat resting against the brass rails of Stage B. How could he be this close to the action and just sit there unaffected? How could he be so, un-American?
I seemed to be the only one that was aware of him at the time. G.I. Jane certainly didn’t notice him. She was too busy performing a helicopter spin move she had executed earlier on the main stage. It was a maneuver that required her to pivot on one knee while her other leg spun around so that she resembled some sort of single-bladed stripper chopper. Her rotations were exact, and she completed about five revolutions in a row before the impassive loser on the phone leaned back in his chair and got knocked the fuck out.
I can still see it in slow motion to this day: fragments of his shattered phone flying across the room; his limp body dropping to the floor like a wet sack of dog shit; and security guards rushing to his aid. Once our collective groans subsided, genuine concern gave way to fits of unrestrained laughter. By the time it was determined that the guy had suffered a concussion and that an ambulance was en route, the episode had played back enough times in our heads that we could no longer resist gut-busting hilarity. We were howling when the paramedics arrived to carry him out, and one guy in the audience punctuated the loser’s departure by yelling out a statement that echoed a sentiment I touched upon earlier: “Never turn your back on your country, asshole!” Another explosion of group hysterics followed before security told us to get the hell out of there.
A month later, Manny married his fiancée Carla in the backyard. They served hot dogs on paper plates. It was a lovely affair. I went to see him recently after not visiting for about a year and marriage had really grown on him, to the tune of about 70 extra pounds. He’s all gordo now and racked with chichis and flojera and when I told him he reminded me of Pablo the chaperone from his bachelor party he said, “There was a chaperone?” His one-track mind was always sharp, but you could tell by his big pansa that his single line of thought had shifted into a whole new direction. I asked him if he had been to a strip club since he got married and he rubbed his belly during his response. “When I hear the word ‘strip’ now, I don’t think of a hot stripper doing a striptease at a strip mall strip club on the Sunset Strip with her landing strip all hanging out like I used to. I think of a strip steak, or bacon strips. And when someone says the word ‘club,’ right away I’m thinking ‘club sandwich with an extra strip of bacon.’”
“Dang, Manny. I’m all hungry now.”
“Join the club.”