Milwaukee No. II

Made what is turning into an yearly mid-February trip to Milwaukee this weekend. All in all, it was a great time spent catching up with some old college buddies that — as we grow older and start start our adult lives scattered in towns across the country — I rarely see anymore.

The weekend consisted of mostly dude shit: Drinking, listening to music, recanting stories of the the stupid shit we did in school.

of course, by late Saturday night as we were all tanked, we ended up at a strip club. It wasn't necessarily one of those pre-meditated "fuck yeah, dudes we're TOTALLY going to the tittie bar tonight!" sort of deals. It was more like a buddy and I stumbled out of a bar and realized we were cut off from the rest of the group. He said he thought it'd be hilarious if we ditched them and hid out in a strip club for a while.

"Well, we're about ten feet from the entrance," I told him.

Next thing you know I'm hitting up the house cash box (that has an egregious $5 ATM fee) to get money to turn into singles to give to the sandy blonde on stage so she'll shove her tits in my face.

At one point shortly thereafter I drunkenly send a text to all my out of town friends that I smell like a Johnson & Johnson factory, which at the time made complete sense in my mind (strippers smell like baby powder), but fell flat to everybody else. Obscurity usually doesn't go over well after midnight.

Now lets not get confused here: I'm not a big strip club guy. They're fun maybe two or three times a year, usually when you're really drunk and around a bunch of friends who are either married or close to it. I think going to strip joints is ultimately an exercise in sexual futility (nobody ever hooks up at a strip club) and you wind up spending about three times what you would at a place where the staff is fully-clothed. (I'd say they're demeaning to females as well, but that's a pretentious slap in the face to these working girls who obviously don't feel that way.)

My hour there was pretty standard. Got a lap dance. Put about $20 worth of singles in the underwear of women I've never met before.

It wasn't until I left, and another wave of my friends came in, that things got crazy.

Throughout the evening, one of my buddies kept insisting to the girls that they give them a "sneak attack." I've personally never heard this term used before (apparently none of the strippers had, either), but I was told it was code word for when a stripper very briefly removes the article of clothing covering up the one private part of her body most state laws say you can't show in an establishment that serves alcohol.

"I can't do that! That's illegal!" one of the girls pleaded.

"Oh, come on, nobody will see it but us," my buddy replied.

"No way! My boss will see me and I'll get fired!"

So my buddy tosses out three more singles on the stage. The stripper looks down at them.

"OK, I guess I can do it really quick," she says. Then BAM, in one swift lift of the panties she exposed her holiest of holies to a bunch of drunk strangers. All told, this exhibit set my friends back a mere four bucks.

Ah ... shitty strip clubs: Where the dollar's still going strong.

As I heard this story later in the evening I thought to myself how crazy the world would be if it were that easy to get a girl to do something sexually.

You're making out with a girl on a first date and she's not letting you get past first base:

"No," she keeps saying. "You're moving too fast. Slow down."

Then you reach into your pocket, pull out a couple bucks and stuff them in her bra.

"What about now?"

"OK!" She says, then lets you play with her boobs.

You're having sex with your wife of ten years:

"Honey, lets mix things up tonight. Whaddya say you let me put it in your butt?"

"No fucking way!" She screams and slaps you from behind.

You pull your wallet out of your pants and make it rain on her back with a couple singles.

"Now whaddya say?

"Oh, sure! The lube's in the top drawer," she says excitedly.

This world is full of fucking weirdos

About two months ago, a guy walks into the Starbucks at Paulina and Division a couple blocks from my place. He's was a decent-looking fellow: clean, well dressed, looked like he was of distant Eastern European decent. He steps in, looks around, walks straight up to me and goes into some spiel about how he works at the Drake Hotel downtown, but he's out of money or something and he needs money from me and he'll leave his wallet with me while he goes and does whatever it is he needs to do with the money I give him, then pay me when he gets back.

After listening to about 30 seconds of his bullshit I just tell him I'm busy with work and that I can't help him. And he leaves.

About two weeks ago, he walks into the same Starbucks, scans the place, then walks straight up to me and goes in with the exact same routine.

"No, man, I'm sorry," just as he goes into the routine.

He gets a frustrated look on his face, stammers for a moment, then leaves.

I look over with amazement to my buddy who I'm sitting working with.

"That guy just tried pulling that same stunt with me about a month ago. Can you believe that? What a fucking weirdo."

Less than a week later from that, as I'm sitting by the front window of the same Starbucks, I see him pull up and get out of a shiny new black Pontiac. It looked like about a $25,000 automobile. He walks right into the Starbucks and again, approaches me.

"Dude, you just pulled the same shit with less than a week ago!" I say incredulously.

This time, before he's able to get a frustrated look on his face and stammers for a moment, the store manager came out from behind the bar hollering at him.

"I told you before, damn it, I see you in here again I'm kicking you out. Get out!"

The scurveball shakes his head, goes back out to his shiny black sedan and leaves.

"That's the third time in less than two months that guy's pulled that routine with me," I tell the manager and another employee as they watch him leave.

"He's in here all the time..." one of them replied.

As I sat there watching him pull off I got the feeling it's some sort of weird compulsive thing. Where, like, the dude just can't resist trying to scam people. If he's out in public he can't help it. He doesn't even need the money. He could lead an otherwise normal life, just, whenever he leaves the house, he can't help himself from trying to get money from passersby.

It's pretty fucked up, and I bet he pulls the same shit again in the next couple weeks.