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Sunday, May 30, 2010

Once Upon a Time...

I am writing this at 5am because I know that if I sleep on it I will forget crucial details.

It is 8:30PM and I am eating a veggie dog on a stick at the Lloyd Center. I am by myself. My movie doesn't start for another 40 minutes so I call Beth Williams to update her on my life. She asks me what I'm doing-which is absolutely nothing-and at that point we decide that I should go to Salem.
I arrive in Salem at 11PM, drop my dog at the parents' house and Beth Williams and I hit the town. We go to 'The Brick' first which is a pretty low key restaurant-during-the-day-bar-at-night type of joint. We have one drink there and go to meet Beth's work friends at a place called "South Lib." Beth warns me that this place is ridiculous and I brush off her warnings. There's neon she says. There are naked robots on the walls she says. Psch. Sounds tame.
We enter and I remember that I am in Salem- so this ridiculous bar isn't filled with hipster kids it's filled with Salem people- people with tribal tattoos and white baseball hats. There's an unfortunate looking pregnant server whom I discover is carrying the child of a formerly good looking guy from my high school. There is glass thrown, girls fighting in the corner. On the wall above my head they are selling T-shirts with the bar's name against tribal markings and wings. I'm pretty out of my element. I am NOT blending. We stand with Beth's friends for a bit and they mention going to a strip club. Well, naturally. It's 1am.
Beth and I enter the strip club and because of our charm and good looks (or vaginas/breasts) we don't pay a cover. We sit down at a table and I discover that Beth and I are by far the most experienced strip bar patrons in the group. Her friends don't seem to know what to do with themselves. Just as Raven is taking the stage, (we'd been waiting for her. She had wild hair and wing tattoos on her back.) a man sits down at our table and introduces himself to Beth as Jean Luc. He is a BRO. He is quickly joined by his two friends- Rogan and Finnigan. Yes. Those are actually their names. Jean Luc, however, was not a real name. His name is Caleb. We never found out why he introduced himself as Jean Luc. These boys are from Corvallis- apparently they were sitting around playing MarioKart and one of them said 'we never do anything good' at which point they decided to drive to Salem and go to the strip club. Serendipitous.
Beth and Finnigan hit it off and we play the 'let's guess the middle name' game. There are four men by this point and Beth's friends are leaving us. The boys comment that Beth and I have a good strategy- going out together. "Two blonde haired blue eyed girls with beautiful smiles-that's not even fair." Think that's laying it on thick-oh no. Stay tuned. We close the strip club and Riley, the fourth musketeer, disappears into the back for a lap dance. Finnigan and Caleb decide they'd like to join Beth and I at Denny's so we give them directions and head over while they wait for their friend to finish with his lap dance.
We are at Denny's for ten minutes before Beth texts Finnigan for an ETA. It is another ten minutes without a response before we decide to bail and just hit the Shari's by Beth's apartment. We are literally walking out of the door and there they are- all four of them lumbering towards us shouting "WHOA WHOA WHOA ladies where are you going!? We just got here." We inform them that they took too long and after some debate we decide to head to Shari's as a group. After all, Shari's offers a full menu at night whereas Denny's has some bullshit late night menu and also the Denny's has been remodeled since I moved away and I hate it.
So we're heading to Shari's and Beth looks into the rear view mirror. Jesus Christ. They just turned into a bar. I turn around in disbelief and sure enough- they've turned off.
Beth gets ahold of Finnigan as we're pulling into the Shari's- we're eating dammit. He informs us that Riley left his phone at the strip club and they have to go back for it. Beth tells him that we'll be eating at the Shari's and 'If you show up you show up. If not, then okay.' Beth and I get a large booth and inform our waitress, Karen, that we may be joined by four more people but we need to order soon.
A note about Karen- on a scale from one to oompa loompa Karen was at least a lollypop kid. Chelsea Handler would have loved the shit out of her.
Beth and I order breakfast deliciousness and wait. We're halfway through our waters when Caleb and Riley walk in the door-stripper in tow. They went back to get a cell phone and gained a stripper. Are you fucking kidding me? The stripper's name is Megan. She is basically body-language-begging Riley to stick it in her.
We inquire as to the location of the other boys. We are told that they are peeing in the parking lot. Erroneous. They are drinking in the parking lot. They are drinking Busch Light(in a camo can) in the parking lot.
They roll in and join us at the booth. Finnigan says to Beth "Oh my god you're beautiful. In the light, now I can see that you really are beautiful." I laugh at him of course(not because Beth isn't beautiful, she is. But-who the FUCK says that?). But I think he was serious.
We're all talking and we start going over Finnigan's life story-including the fact that he is named after an Irish war hero. I wikipedia'd to verify and-it's true.
Seated to my left is Rogan-he's pretty quiet and somehow his age is questioned. Shifty eyes ALL around the table. This kid may or may not actually be 21. We can't get a straight answer out of these guys and that pretty much becomes the trend. These men have wing-man down to a science. They were making all kinds of eyes at each other the whole evening. I never again want to be told that women are sneaky. These men were shifty as fuck.
Prime example- Beth is trying to help Finnigan with his phone and opens up his address book. A couple minutes later she looks up and says "Please do NOT tell me that I am in your phone as 'Strip Club Girl'" They all immediately switch into cover up mode. It was actually impressive to watch them build and modify their story so seamlessly. I think their end story was that Caleb couldn't remember her name and so HE as the one that put her number in. The actual story, however, is that Finnigan could not remember either of our names-even though we had spent at least 10 minutes at the strip club JUST on names. Eventually Beth forgives him but not before we both harassed him pretty mercilessly.
Riley and Megan the Stripper order steak. Because, as Riley put it, "You must be hungry after all of that dancing." They eat about four bites and then sneak out to the parking lot. Riley tells he'll be back.
There is not, however, mention of the return of the stripper. This leads the boys to descend on her plate of food. Many good moments were garnered from this. "I'm eating stripper toast and my lips feel fine" "I'm eating stripper beef." "If I take the straw out I can drink the stripper soda right?" It was pretty phenomenal. Caleb then tells us- "We just obliterated your notion of normal" and he was right. What kind of fucking night is this?
The conversation gets better. A couple fun facts-Finnigan used to work at the restaurant, Midevil Times. He was once asked by a man to have sex with his wife for money. He also worked at a gay club called "The Diesel." Rogan worked on the Cornelius Marie-the crab fishing boat from Deadliest Catch. Yep. Not even a lie. We thought it was. It's not. He leaves in two weeks for another excursion into the Bering Sea. At the ripe young age of (??). Ladies, get him before he's taken by the cold depths.
Riley stumbles back into Shari's nearly 45 minutes after he and Megan the stripper had left. Of course, we are all curious. We start asking him if he's in love with her. Will it bother him when other men touch her? Is she still allowed to give lap dances?
Riley tries to be a gentleman and withhold the information but we tell him that we are truly curious. He informs us that he did NOT sleep with said stripper. You don't lead a stripper out of Shari's and return 45 minutes later without a story worth telling.
"If you guys really want to know, I'll tell you. We were about to fuck. Dick in hand. Then I'm like no, no, no. Not without a condom. Not this time"
Okay hold up- Beth and I are then informed that Riley dated this girl in high school and she is the reason they had picked that particular strip club. She has, apparently, pulled a billy jean in the past and he was wary tap it without wrapping it. By this time we had all assumed that the story ended with lack of condom.
"So we go to the circle K and get condoms" At this point Riley throws a full pack of condoms onto the table. 2 seconds of silence and 5 minutes of laughter. One of the most hilarious things I've ever seen.
"So I 'get ready' and I'm going to put it on and... bzzz bzzz. Her phone goes off and she tells me she has to go. She said she had no excuse not to be home yet because the club closed two hours ago." SOOO, Megan the Stripper has a boyfriend. That she lives with. But she was just buying condoms with Riley at the Circle K so that she could fuck him in the Shari's parking lot. I mean, she was dick in hand. I'm generally a defender of strippers. Megan, you are not helping me to defend stripper honor. You're kindof a skank and you smelled like neon and broken dreams.
Riley expresses his relief at not sleeping with her. Because then he'd have to get tested and she'd probably accuse him of impregnating her with tiny little stripper babies and that all just sounds like a huge headache to me.
We sit around a bit longer and the boys argue over who first made the move to come talk to us instead of staring at sub-par vagina (the term beef curtains may have been used). Somewhere in the middle of this argument Finnigan looks at Beth and says "I had tunnel vision for you. In a strip club. I mean, that's saying something." Wow.
At this point we all pay Karen for our food and her patience. Riley hugs us and gets stripper all over our clothes and hair. Finnigan invites Beth to come snuggle up with him. "I'm never coming to Salem again but if you're in Corvallis..."

I won't lie, I want to be friends with these guys. One of the most ridiculous nights of my life-and completely sober. It's light outside. Almost 6AM. Goodnight Salem.

1 comments:

Carolyn said...

I keep meaning to mention - and this story, as it will be for so many other things, was the thing that finally pushed me to just do it - that I am absolutely thrilled that you've been blogging so frequently.