You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery Read Free Page B

through the speakers—basically, I was expecting a live Rihanna video. Instead, we walked into a room where one dude was getting a subpar lap dance as eight other strippers counted down the minutes until they could go home. It was clear to me why they had named this place Sapphire, because it was making me blue.
    We took our seats in this den of sadness, and you could almost hear the collective groan from the strippers in the back. I couldn’t blame them. I myself have never worked as an exotic dancer, but I have worked in many restaurants; and when you are just about to close and a party of ten rolls in, it fuckin’ sucks. That leftover pizza in your fridge and DVR’d
Say Yes to the Dress
are gonna have to wait, because you’re stuck for another two hours. I think I even mouthed, “I’m sorry,” to the really tired-looking ones as we walked to find a table. It wasn’t so much finding a table as deciding which one to take in this completely empty strip club.
    I went to the bathroom to give myself a wasted-face pep talk. This usually involved a lot of slurring, “You got dis, bitch,” into the mirror and a lot of emphatic hand gestures. (Note to self: Always check to make sure someone isn’t trying to take a dump in one of the stalls as you are screaming, “Shut up, you’re beautiful!” to yourself.)
    I had gotten to the point in my pep talk where I almost aggressively fist-bumped my reflection (before remembering it was a mirror and that would severely hurt me) when one of the exhaustedstrippers walked in. I curtsied and went back to the table. When I got there, I found the only other girl in the group sitting by herself.
    “Where is everybody?”
    “They ditched us girls to go get private dances. Sean left us his credit card to get drinks, though.”
    The music must’ve been super loud, because all I heard was, “Sean said to do a bunch of Patrón shots and pop a bottle of Moët and Chandon,” which is exactly what we did. Just two women who had never met, sitting in a flypaper of a strip club at closing time on a Monday, taking shots and putting money in thongs as we talked to the strippers. And not to knock these ladies, but they really weren’t working it. This wasn’t the type of place where someone could argue, “She holds up her own body weight upside down, then does eight spins. This isn’t just stripping; it’s athleticism!” Or a place like the one in
Flashdance
, where your artistic expression is just as valued as your ta-tas. The closest these women came to artistic expression was the “in memory of” tattoos on their shoulder blades. * Their dance moves made them look like C-3PO in drag.
    The few times I’ve been to strip clubs, I’ve sat there and tried to enjoy myself even though I really would rather have asked the strippers about their young sons’ reading levels or told them why they should go back to cosmetology school. But I couldn’t just sit back and watch this sad display at Sapphire. I was the white female P. Diddy, after all! I wasn’t going to have my ticket punched on the lame train. It was time to board the Hot Mess Express. So, I took matters into my own hands.
    Before you could say “terrible decision,” I climbed up onstage and was knocking on the window of the DJ booth. I slurred to the DJ to play “Poison,” by Bell Biv DeVoe, one of the all-time greatest songs in history.
    The beat dropped and so did all of my inhibitions. I started
owning
that stage. I’m talking medium-level kicks, almost-splits—all of my signature moves. At this point the strippers had sat down and were watching
me
. The poor girl I was there with appeared to be awkwardly clapping, though she might’ve just been trying to swat gnats away from our Moët. I waited for the chorus to kick in as I slowly sauntered to the pole.
    At the sound of “That girl is poisooooon,” I started spinning on the pole. And as soon as I did
,
my right contact lens went flying out of my eye. Mind you, I