While Emily went off to secure some funds, the lovely blonde stripper remained. I can’t recall her name so, for the purposes of identifying her, I’ll call her Lisa. I know another blonde stripper named Lisa who was once involved in an orgy with myself and a few friends, so let’s suffice to say that I enjoy strippers named Lisa. Now, this Lisa was sitting on the lap of my friend Bill. Bill was the only one of us even capable of laying out any cash, and perhaps she knew this. Or perhaps she found Bill to be the most attractive. Or perhaps he was the first lap she spied when she entered our little group. The fact remains that she was on Bill’s lap, directly across from me. Unlike Emily who seemed to have a bit of breeding, or at least a passable vocabulary and some class, Lisa was pure trailer park. Now, don’t get me wrong, most guys, whether they’ll admit it or not, have a little fetish for that TPP (Trailer Park Pussy). Think Jamie Presley in ‘My Name is Earl’ and tell me you don’t wanna bang that dirty double-wide debutante. Anyway, this girl was the real deal. She was pounding drinks as hard or harder than we were and suddenly busts out with, “Who wants to do a shot?” In my drinking days, I was not known to decline the opportunity to do a shot. I wasn’t known to decline a drink either…or a beer…or sex with a hot girl…or if I hadn’t declined enough drinks, beers or shots, sex with a not-so-hot girl, so decline I did not. I’m waiting for her to suggest some goofy fruit-based shot, or something with innuendo (Sex-on-the-beach, Orgasm, Buttery Nipple), but no, she flags the waitress and demands two shots of Jim Beam. JIM BEAM? Who the fuck drinks Jim Beam? It might as well be Wild Turkey or Old Grandad. Excuse me Lisa, can you open up so we can determine if you have all of your teeth? Let me check your purse. I need to see if there’s any Skoal in that muthafucka. Of course, what I ACTUALLY did was smile and act like I was a Jim Beam drinking good ol’ boy. Over the course of the next hour, Lisa bought me untold numbers of shots of Beam. All the while, I was chugging beers, perhaps in an effort to water down the Beam. This had the obvious effect. Instead of appearing to have had some shots of Beam, it appeared that I’d been hammered in the head with a steel beam. Repeatedly. Thus, the remainder of this story is pieced together from what I was told by my companions the next day.

SIDEBAR:
At one point, before Emily returned, I almost considered curtailing the Beam-binge. But Lisa leaned over and whispered in my ear, I’d rather be sitting on YOUR lap, but I don’t want to offend your buddy. Because of this, my alcohol-addled mind started seeing menage-a-strippers and me entangled in a naked, sweaty Twister match in my hotel room. Declining her offer to keep buying me drinks didn’t seem like a prudent way to make this happen. See, a man must demonstrate his manliness by showing how much he can drink. Nothing screams, “hot, amazing sex God” like a guy binge-drinking himself unconcious.
END SIDEBAR.

Witnesses say that, at some point, Emily stopped back by and said something along the lines of, “Uh oh, my boy is getting a little drunk. Maybe he should slow down.” I replied, “Yeah riiiiiiight. I can fullnlkhpupnhga ppharhe lforah.” So she laughed and went back to work. Lisa, however, did not give up quite so easily. She started giving me a lapdance which turned into a number of lap dances, during which time I passed out. So I’m slumped over in the chair while this hot blonde stripper dances for the dead. Now, here’s one moment I actually DO recall. I awoke to see her titties up close and personal. As I struggled to focus I looked up at her and said, “Unless you have a desire to get puked on, I suggest you get the fuck away from me.”

Lap dance over.

Moments later I’m walk-stumble-crawling to the men’s room, ostensibly to return some of the Beam to where it belongs, in a toilet. At this point my blackout returns and the events have again been recounted to me by others. I’m in the bathroom for so long that my friend Jerry comes in looking for me. Nowhere to be found, he realizes that I’m in one of the locked stalls. Because it’s a fancy club, the stall doors are floor to ceiling, actual doors. Jerry asks me to open it. I’m in such an advanced state of inebriation that I can’t even unlock the door. It’s too complicated. There’s like, a knob and something that needs to be turned. I realized that the architect who designed this place wasn’t thinking clearly. I.M. Pei would have understood the need for some sort of lever on the inside of the stall that would open the door when one fell onto it. That’s forward thinking design. Functional, yet good for binge-drinking, black out alcoholics. But no, the shoddy planning didn’t allow for that. So Jerry is forced to retrieve a manager to come and unlock the stall from the outside. The manager is prepared to have me go directly from the stall to the front door but Jerry talks him out of it. Claims he’ll hydrate me and be a chaperone if I need another potty break. Reluctantly, our host agrees. So Jerry drags me back out and plops me in a chair where I promptly lose conciousness again. Every few minutes a bouncer pops over and says that we’ll have to leave if I can’t stay awake. The guys wake me up, I throw out some incoherent, obnoxious remark, then pass out. This game goes on for a while. Then, after a lengthy nap, I regain the ability to keep my eyes open, although not my ability to understand or speak any human language.

This is when Emily returns.

She comes back and reclaims her spot on my lap. I’m not even clear on who she is at this juncture, having imbibed every recent memory away. But, as many strippers have, she’s been down this road before and, for whatever reason, is not deterred. In my drunken mind, I decide, for whatever reason, to deter her. Perhaps it’s for her own good. I’m quite magnanimous, always taking the higher road. It’s my duty to look out for those less able to determine what constitutes good judgement. I tell Emily she’s a bullshitter. “What makes you say that?” she asks. I tell her that she’s a stripper, and full of shit, and that she doesn’t really like me or have interest in me. She wonders aloud why she’s returned to my lap throughout the night instead of concentrating on making money. She questions her lack of interest in why she never asked me to purchase a dance, or a drink. She offers me the opportunity to reveal, for all the world, her true motivation.

“Whatever.”

Yeah, argue with that logic lady. I know the real deal. I know what you’re all about. Trying to scam me for my um, lap. Putting your hot self all on me so other, less attractive girls can’t come up and solicit me for dances that I don’t want. I’m on to your scam. Do you KNOW who you’re not messing with?

Emily, says my friends the following day, was amused to no end. Understanding that I was drunk, decides to stop her fruitless efforts and go make some money. But she has not given up hope that her initial attraction was correct and will pay off. She tries to tell me that she’d like to keep in touch and would very much like to speak to me, when I’m more uh, conversational. With this, I pass out again. The bouncer approaches and is, to say the least, fed up. This time we have to go. Emily sweet talks him into at least giving us a few minutes to pay our check, gather ourselves and make arrangements to leave. Together, with my friends, she attempts to not allow me to cockblock myself. Asking Doug to pull out his phone, she uses it to call my phone, which is in my pocket, and leave me a voicemail. In the message, she reminds me of our meeting, that she would love to see me sometime when I was in a better state, and to call her.

Remember, my friends are telling me this story the next morning at breakfast. I recall NOTHING. Honestly, I didn’t even remember what Emily looked like. But they swear she was hot. The story is embarrassing but seems to have a silver lining. She still wa
nted to see me. We were in Vegas for one more night too, so I could soberly redeem myself and see what I could make happen with this girl. But, as my hopes start to rise, they are as quickly dashed by my friends. “Don’t bother checking your voicemail,” says Doug, “In the limo you listened to the message, slurred ‘fuck her’ and deleted it before any of us could grab your phone.” WHAT? Nooooooooooooooooooooo! For a brief moment, my hungover mind gave me an inkling of hope that her number was in my caller ID. Then it occurred to me that she’d called from Doug’s phone.

SONOFABITCHMOTHERFUCKINGWHOREGODDAMNIT!

I start laughing. What else could I do? It wasn’t the first time I’d fucked something up by getting hammered. I’d been doing that very thing since I was twelve. So I laughed and attempted to say fuck it. But my friends weren’t having it. THEY were so enamored of her that they refused to let me pass on this one. They were on a mission. Jerry, in particular, was obsessed with making this happen. And that’s a testament to what it’s like to really have your “boys” have your back. Even when you screw yourself royally, they find a way to help you fix it. So a plan was made to return to the club that night, not drink, and have me reconnect with Emily. That’s exactly what we did…sort of. We returned to the club around 9pm to find it empty. After hanging out drinking sodas for about 20 minutes, we finally asked one of the girls if Emily was working that night. She said no, that she was off. My hopes, which hadn’t been that high in the first place, were dashed. My disappointment wasn’t that bad, as I couldn’t remember anything about the girl anyway. But Jerry and Doug weren’t having it. They’d taken a taxi to the club, paid a $10 cover and purchased a $6 cola. Under no circumstances would my drunken idiocy turn this into a “what could have been” story. Jerry approaches the bouncer and explains the story like this…

“Look, my friend there was wasted last night and this dancer, Emily, that’s her real name, was really into him. Gave him her number and such. But he deleted it from his phone and is pretty bummed out about it. We came back tonight just to see her. I know this sounds like every bullshit story from every guy that gets caught up in some stripper-scam, but it’s not. Is there anything you can do?”

The bouncer says sure, for us to give him the number and he’d pass it along to her. That she was actually a good friend of his. Jerry, knowing this may or may not be true, slips the guy one of my cards, and a twenty. We leave.

“I’ve done everything I can. If she doesn’t call, I will be very disappointed,” sighs Jerry.

I return to LA, my friends head back to the East Coast. Weeks go by and I never hear from Emily. A few times Jerry and Doug call me, hoping for good news, but nothing. My phone never rings. Then one day, I get up, pour my morning coffee and sit down at my computer. As I sift through spams, work emails, personal nonsense, there is one that catches my eye. I don’t recognize the email address so I open it.

“Hey Frank! You’re not gonna believe this but my friend just gave me your card. He said you came back on Sunday night and I wasn’t at work. The card was in his jacket pocket for weeks and he just came across it. I was wondering why you’d never called. Give me a buzz and let’s chat. My number is….”

Two weeks later I was picking her up at LAX for the first of a few visits. She turned out not only to be gorgeous, but one of the nicest people I’d met in a long time. Ultimately, it didn’t work out because she got upset at something I said to someone one night when I was drunk. Something she found so offensive, so distasteful, that even after her first experience with me, this was unforgivable. I told someone that I was dating this really cool chick. That she was from Vegas. That she was smart, funny, gorgeous. That I really like her. And then, I committed the blasphemous transgression that caused her to never speak to me again…

I referred to her as a stripper.