|
A f**kin' rooster woke me up.
Monday morning. My head viciously throbbed with a category-three hangover and my body was riddled with dehydration. I managed to avoid puking, chugged some bottled water, and quickly popped two Motrin followed up by one generic Vicodin.
I sat down at the table near the window overlooking Duval Street. I looked through my digital camera in a scene out of Memento where I slowly pieced my life back together using a couple of random images, mostly taken at the Irish bar. The strip clubs we’d ventured to had a strict no-photography policy. Sadly, there were no shots of that debauchery.
I grabbed the wad of cash out of my pocket. It looked healthy until I unfurled it and began counting. Wait, where did all the hundreds go? All those twenties were replaced by singles. What the f**k? I did some quick math and fi gured out that between the Irish bar and a trip to two strip clubs, I had blown about $420.
Key West. It had the vibe of a Caribbean island without the color. The streets were fl ooded with sunburned white people clutching souvenir bags and digital cameras. The AlCantHang Compound (ACHC) was off the beaten path, down a secret alley off a side street defi nitely away from tourist central. That’s where my friend AlCantHang and several of his closest friends rented a house for a week to celebrate his 40th birthday.
One of our friends described AlCantHang as a walking party. And when the party plops down at an Irish bar, you’re knee deep in the depths of a serious mind-altering drinking binge. The best you can hope for is that your liver manages to escape with minimal damage and that the hangover the next day won’t be so devastating that you’re clutching the porcelain god at sunrise with the worst case of the dry-heaves you’ve had since the earliest days of the Clinton administration.
Whenever you party with AlCantHang, you’re immediately assuming full responsibility for your actions. You always know what you are getting yourself into. There’s no false pretense. You will drink and drink and drink and drink as life unfolds around you. You surrender to the flow of the liquor.
The Classy Joint is a strip club located at the top of a slippery wooden staircase. Previously, thousands of horny men and other wayward and desperate souls have made the same climb. The space is fairly large with a stage in the middle of the room and two stripper poles on either side. Twenty or so chairs are around the stage and a long bar is nestled against the back wall. There was a hallway off to the side that led to the Champagne Lounge. Next to that is a room with group of red velvet couches where the adult entertainers perform their infamous exotic lap dances under the sultry hues of red, purple, and pink neon.
Big Mike scouted out a spot and we set up camp near the stage. One or two of us would take turns sitting at the stage and tipping the girls $1 bills. Except the AlCantHang crew were tipping a minimum of $5 and up to $20. That was their game plan. It was their fi rst night in town and they made it known that they were in Key West for a week. While it at fi rst seemed like we recklessly splashed money around, it was all done on purpose to establish the fact that we were not cheap tourists looking to see some ass for next to nothing. As Big Mike explained, we were conditioning the natives. That way the next time we ventured inside, we got quick and attentive service. (And that would happen when we returned less than 19 hours later.)
Overtipping became the norm and within minutes our crew captured all of the attention of the talent in The Classy Joint, even though it was crowded for a Sunday night. Everyone became secondary to the AlCantHang Experience. Big Mike took care of our waitress with a sizable pre-tip. The attractive Cuban woman was dressed in a tight red top and she didn’t look as skanky as the pieces of naked meat on stage. That made her the most sophisticated lady in the club.
“How come you don’t dance?” asked Big Mike.
“I’m a mommy. Mommies don’t dance. Would you like to see your mommy dance?” she said.
“Are you kidding me? That f**kin’ whore? I’d love to see her actually get off her lazy ass to make a dime," Big Mike said.
The majority of the strippers were average looking. They would be working a second-tier club in Las Vegas or working the pole during the day at one of the bigger clubs if they got lucky. However, in Key West, the strippers in front of us were the cream of the crop. They were some of the better looking adult entertainers in town, and still had the wild reputation of Key West strippers. The word “dirty” comes to mind.
Most strip clubs in Las Vegas implement a strict hands-off-thedancer policy. The majority of the girls at the Spearmint Rhino or Crazy Horse Too don’t shower you with special attention unless you shower them with $100 bills. It’s all business for the Las Vegas girls and if you want any sort of unsportsmanlike conduct, you have to fork over big bucks for an adventure in the VIP room. Of course, that’s the biggest scam in Las Vegas next to the 99 cent shrimp cocktail.
At the Key West establishments, you pay $20 for a naughty lap dance that includes (and is not limited to) crotch grabbing and getting your face used as a punching bag as the ladies slap their poorly designed fake breasts into your face.
Sure, we all had fun. But our primary goal was to make sure AlCantHang had fun celebrating his 40th birthday. And he did. Of course, we lost random members of our group from time to time as they disappeared into the back and fell into the strip club black hole. And when they fi nally reappeared, they would stumble out with messy hair and wry smirks on their faces.
I befriended a stripper from the Czech Republic, who stood about five-foot ten with dark hair and natural breasts. She reminded me of Phoebe Cates and had a tattoo of a scorpion on her ankle. What looked like four cigarette burns peppered the inside of her thighs. By the second lap dance, we had been discussing lesser known Milan Kundera books as she stood upside down on her hands and rubbed her shaved crotch on my chest.
“Your country was invaded by the Soviets,” I rambled on during the fourth lap dance. “They set up a puppet government that eventually crumbled after the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. Your formerly behind the Iron Curtain nation-state was broken up into two republics and instead of staying behind in your new land of freedom, you fl ed to Key West where you strip for a bunch of old farts who are in town for a few hours while their cruise ship is docked. Or you’re grinding away for horny servicemen on leave, taking every cent of their slave wages that our government pays them?”
“I like the warm weather,” she cooed. “And I’m trying to earn enough money to bring my mother here.”
Of course, she was trying to sell the old routine, “I’m only letting potential serial killers and politicians pull my hair and fondle my breasts for $20 a pop so I can bring my mother to America.”
She was a hustler, and a decent one at that. The vixen almost had me convinced. But I’ve been around the block a few times and have been to enough strip clubs that I could write a book about it. The American bimbos use law school or business school as their faux cover. The foreign ones like to bring up their mothers and highlight the hardships in their motherland. This one was down here to hook a big whale, perhaps a lonely and retired businessman with a yacht and multiple million-dollar homes.
“Everyone loves their mothers,” I said. “Don’t you love money?”
“Of course,” she said as she continued to dance to a random hip hop song with fellatio lyrics.
“But do you love money more than you love your mother?”
She paused and said, “I love them both equally.”
“But your mother is still washing dirty underwear for tourists in Prague, right? Because if you really loved her, she’d be in paradise with you, washing dirty underwear for tourists in Key West.”
She didn’t blink and tried to get me off the topic. She twisted my nipples until I begged her to stop.
* * * * *
For four straight days, all I did was drink, play poker, and go to strip clubs. Once the rest of my friends arrived in Key West on Thursday, the prop betting began. It peaked out on Friday night when the gang showed up at Turtle Kraals, a bar on the pier that featured turtle races. We proceeded to drink ourselves silly for two hours and then wagered on the turtles. The bartenders passed out tickets numbered one through five. It was only a five-turtle race, but we got in on the action. Since we all got similar numbers, we had to break off and play a sit-n-go turtle race format $20 per person and the winner scoops $100. My friends StB and Gracie were in my pool, along with brother and girlfriend.
We gathered outside in front of the bar as the organizers brought out the turtles. They raced on a platform that was no longer than thirty feet. We screamed, cajoled, cheered, jeered, and acted like total idiots as the turtles slowly crossed the fi nish line. Nicky’s turtle won and she couldn’t have been happier. It got her unstuck from the poker game we had played earlier in the day. My turtle came in next to last place. Bastard. If he doesn’t improve his performance, I’m told that he’ll become turtle soup for tourists.
After the turtle races, the action shifted locales. Just below The Classy Joint was a sports bar with pool tables, videos games, and a “boxer” machine. Some of my friends bet on who could hit it the hardest. I stood on the sidelines and observed as the boys went nuts and threw money around betting on the hardest punch.
Anyway, my buddy F Train and I wanted to get in on the action without dislocating our shoulders. The boxer game measured a punch by a point system. We decided not to exert any physical energy and simply bet on the outcome of the last digit while the rest of the gang punched. F Train picked all even numbers. I had the odds. It was basically a coin flip, and we loved betting coin flips especially at $20 a pop.
The boys went back and forth for almost an hour and took turns with their fiercest punches. I started out down $60 right away. I eventually broke even, before I went on a rush. All of a sudden, F Train was stuck $100 and that’s when he asked to stop the prop betting. And guess what? The next four punches all ended in even numbers. He would have eventually gotten unstuck if he played another ten minutes.
Eventually, my old Las Vegas roommate Grubby showed up. He’s a complete degenerate and an even worse action junkie than I am. We’re always betting on something. In the past, we have bet on weekend grosses of Hollyweird fi lms (I won his car once betting on Shrek 2’s opening grosses), the astrological signs of our waitresses, and even bet on the gender of the next person to walk through a doorway. Our degenerate prop betting continued in Key West when I told him about the odds and evens boxer game.
“Ooooooh! Twenty bucks on odds and evens? I’m in,” he said. “Let’s bump it up to $40? It’s just enough action to keep it interesting.”
I agreed and offered him to pick any side. I also told him about F Train’s issues with evens, but Grubby didn’t care and went with evens anyway. We quit and an hour later I was several hundred dollars richer.
We migrated over to a video hunting game where you shoot different things like deer, moose, and antelopes with shotguns to accumulate points. Two can play simultaneously, and Grubby and I bet on who could kill the most animals. Grubby has lived in major cities most of his life, much like I have. We were sophisticated urbanites and not a bunch of rednecks shooting things in the woods with hunting rifles, so I felt the game would be evenly matched. A large crowd gathered around us, and I won after Grubby kept shooting innocent animals as he continuously screamed, “Die Bambi! Die!”
The last big bet on the weekend involved a heated political race. If you walked around Key West in late September, you couldn’t help but spot the signs for mayoral candidates. They were everywhere. On picket fences. Inside the windows of stores. On random utility poles. I went with former mayor Jimmy Weekly because I liked his signs better, and Grubby picked incumbent Morgan McPherson. We knew absolutely nothing about Key West politics, but that didn’t stop us. We wagered $100 on the outcome of the election. I secretly donated $99 to Weekly and pimped him on my poker blog so I could push him over the top… just to net a $1 win against Grubby. Too bad it didn’t work. McPherson won by a mere 56 votes and not only did I owe Grubby for the bet, I also pissed away $99 on Weekly’s losing campaign. Politics is so f**kin’ rigged.
Next stop… Australia.
|
