My old friend, Gene, was raised a good catholic boy. I respect that. He was the kind of kid who went mentally ill at age eleven when he learned from the other street kids about blow jobs. Gene told me it took him years to recover from the mental image of the act and it was also the first time he faced the horrible, cold unknown of our universe. Later he would get a heavier dose of the latter when we were both in the military, but I never actually understood which trauma was worse for him. Frankly, I don’t think he ever really recovered from his childhood revelation. Pictures of screwing, in the pre- internet days, were always easy to find from “nature” documentaries. Children saw what the daddy lion did to the mommy lion and got the idea right away. But, learning the actual truth about bj’s was a matter belonging to an entirely higher dimension. Blow jobs blew Gene’s mind.
A few years ago, when I was still living in Las Vegas, Gene, now a full grown man, called and said he was coming out for a visit. When he arrived he was primed for casino gambling, just as any other gulled tourist. He had read up on poker and blackjack strategy for weeks. He had his money management scheme all worked out in his head. And, he had researched the best casinos for table games. Meeting him at the airport, and hearing his plans in detail for the first time, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I didn't give two shits for gambling. My life, at the time, centered on the lap dancing clubs. In fact, just a month before Gene’s arrival, I had broken up with a dancer from the Olympic Gardens. She had been surprisingly faithful and she caught me with another woman who also worked there. When it came to dating dancers outside the clubs, I had no will power at all.
I let Gene twist in the wind for a few days losing money steadily while he occasionally wondered what had become of his Las Vegas gambling fantasy. That’s the delusion that all visitors have about Sin City and it’s the hardest hallucination to let go. Yes, gambling visitors to Las Vegas are certifiably insane! Deep down, I mean, at the bottom of their life’s core, they really do believe all the commercials that show those deliriously happy people winning big at black jack or craps. Gambling success is the moment of triumph that Americans covet most. Forget Lance Armstrong and his seven Tour de France victories. Big shit! Screw that sweat! Successes in biking, golf or tennis, are a mere bagatelle compared to lucking out at a table game with the impeccably gorgeous waitresses from the TV commercials at your side (actually they are all chain smoking old ladies who push the money carts through the crowds on the casino floor while farting). Gene, like all the other losers gambling in Vegas, truly believed those vivid advertisements about a paradise on earth where money could be had without actually working for a living.
Near the end of his stay, I popped the question. “Hey, Gene,” I said in my most nonchalant way, “How about skipping gambling for this evening and coming with me, instead, to a nudie bar?” For all I could tell, I might just as well have mentioned a trip to Antarctica; the idea really was that foreign to him. “Nudie bar?????” he replied, with one of those severe grimaces of disgust on his face. “Yeah,” I countered, “you’ll have some fun for a change.” Gene still didn’t get it. He was locked in to his gambling mode and willing to spend the last nickel he had on a chance at winning some real wealth. What could he possibly do at a lapdancing club, he must have wondered. So, I had to spell it out for him. “Look,” I said, “here’s the scoop. At the titty bars there are these incredibly hot women and you can pay them to take their tops off while they sit on your lap and rub against you in time to the music.” Gene’s reaction to my description was very much like the one to the wise eleven year old who clued Gene in when he was a kid about bj’s. Of course, Gene, knew about lapdancing. Give me a break! I don’t have stupid friends. He had seen the TV shows and movies. He had heard other guys talk about it. He even knew that Vegas was crawling with sex industry workers. All of these things, Gene knew and understood. However, Gene, as the good Catholic boy, now lapsed because he no longer believed in a god at all, but that is another story, was not capable of imagining “lapdancing.” His brain short circuited at the very thought of a woman, any woman, made in the image of Mary, mother of Jesus, willing to expose her breasts while riding on top of a strange man, despite the fact that the guy was fully clothed. This lapdancing arrangement was simply something that Gene refused to acknowledge; just as the idea of a blowjob was also too much for his brain to handle.
Desperately seeking to alter his behavior for the better, I told him that I would pay for him and that, if he didn’t like it, I would drop him off at the casino of his choice. That did it, and we were off.
The real challenge I faced was deciding which club to take the virgin. Frankly, I didn’t want him to screw up my chances at scoring, if, by the very slim odds that existed, I managed to get lucky that night. I could, for example, play it safe and take him to one of the really tame clubs on the Strip, like the Olympic Gardens. But, then I realized that my ex would be working there. Although I didn’t want to, at first, I decided to take him to Cheetahs, since it was a fast track club and it was also a place I went where I wasn’t serious about the women, i.e., where I couldn’t take the women seriously. They were too young with nothing really to say and too drug addled. In contrast, I certainly wouldn’t take him to my favorite club, Crazy Horse II, because it would be an embarrassment. Of course, there were other options, but Cheetahs was a good bet for the evening. The heavy chested, young babes, despite all the coke sniffing, would definitely blow the Pontiff’s brain. That was a sight I wanted to witness.
Cheetahs is one large rectangular room. It has a stage running almost the entire length of one wall with three poles that could accommodate that many dancers, if necessary. Against the other wall was the bar which was about as long as the stage. Directly in front of the bar, just after the chairs and a slim aisle, they had placed two thin stages with poles. The VIP room was against the short- sided wall. It was narrow at both ends and long. On the opposite side, at the entrance to the club, there were pool tables and some chairs for dancers to hang out with “special” customers.
Any male wanting to make the most out of a night’s lapdancing experience should understand the role of space or location in a club. Good times depend on it. Most men, in their more typical “dick for brain” mode, simply walk into a nudie bar and sit down at the first available seat. This idiotic move fits the other one of going off with the first available dancer. Yet, psyching out the club’s space ranks with psyching out the women themselves. And, every club is different because their geometry and crowd behavior is different. Whenever I went to Cheetahs, I always sat at the bar. That was because the women were voracious. Just as a school of Piranhas tackle food, they could devour huge quantities of male money every hour. They sifted through the crowd systematically and hit hard. Once they entered this club, like Dante’s fellow travelers, male customers never had much of a chance.
Thinking strategically, which meant in Gene’s case keeping him as far away from the dancers as possible so that he wouldn’t skittishly bolt, I chose two chairs at the far end of the wall almost at the corner with a side view of the stage. When the waitress came over I ordered Gene his favorite beer. I had a shot of tequila with a beer chaser just to take the edge off of the evening. It wasn’t long before my buddy had a big shit eating grin on his face. In fact, he stopped talking to me all together and became mesmerized by the action on the stage. At that point, I figured I had done my good deed for the day and settled in to observe the club scene. I did repeat my offer about paying for a lap dance if Gene wanted one, but he could no longer hear me.
Several dancers stopped by even though we were clearly on the periphery for a reason. I let Gene do the talking and, once he got an opening, like the woman asking him where he was from, he rapidly blurted out his life story. All the years that had past when he couldn’t get a decent woman to listen to his personal experiences and feelings, spilled over in a flood of non- stop self- indulgence. Watching the spectacle I thought that what Gene was doing was also probably typical of many men who visited the clubs. They just wanted a non-threatening woman to talk to. Gene certainly did! The first recipient of his one way therapy session grew a very pained expression on her face. I laughed to myself when I saw it and watched carefully because I knew she would run at the very first opportunity. Sure enough, when Gene paused, just at the juncture in his life between discharge from the Marines and adjusting to civilian life, this dancer literally vanished, as if beamed up by Scotty himself.
A few more dancers came by with almost the same results. It seemed that Gene didn’t much care about not capturing a woman who would stick with him from the beginning to the end of his story, i.e., from birth through adolescence to that very evening. He was happy just to talk to a beautiful babe without possessing a clue that he was actually supposed to ask her to go for a dance. Finally, I had to remind him. I made my offer again. He leaned towards me and whispered that he simply couldn’t do it. “Maybe, if I came back here again and prepared myself, I might be able to go lapdancing, but I can’t do it now.” Then he added out of desperation, “Please don’t put me on the spot. I can’t do it!” Being totally sympathetic, I asked him if he wanted to leave. With immense energy he quickly responded, “Oh, no!!!! I really like it here.” Then, he added, “Let’s just sit for a while. I promise you that the next time we come here, I will have lots of lapdances.” Then he ordered a new round of drinks for us. Significantly, he took the money he had set aside for gambling and was eagerly displaying it now. “Maybe he will go for dances, yet” I thought.
About a half hour later there was a slight commotion to my left, towards the entrance to the club. I didn’t pay it much attention. A few minutes later, one of the beefy, shaved head bouncers came by and told us that we would have to leave that section of the floor. I asked him why. He said that Rod Stewart was in town and he was coming over with his “entourage.” They needed to make room for Rod. Now, revealing the truth, I have a short temper. Almost all the time I keep it well under control and my years of kung fu training help. After leaving the Marines, I also had some therapy for the problem so that I could hold on to a job. Anyway, I instantly got pissed off at this bouncer and the thought of having to disrupt the happy Gene for some asshole has- been singer. Keeping control of my emotions, I devised a strategic rap. I told the bouncer that I was with my buddy who had just been discharged with war wounds from the VA hospital and that we weren’t going to stay very long. I then suggested that we move our chairs even closer in to the corner so that Mr. Stewart and his “entourage” would not be physically constrained by our presence. The bouncer agreed and we moved our chairs.
Even though we were now pushed into the corner, barely able to see the edge of the stage, we were not out of sight of the lovely ladies working that night. Slowly, slowly they dripped by only to be frightened away by the look in Gene’s eyes or, more likely, by his eagerness to chat. As for me, I had to stay close to Gene in case he freaked out, so I didn’t even think about getting dances. Just as well. Cheetahs was not my favorite place for dances. The women bounced on your lap, rubbed their implants on your chest and then held their hands out for cash before they moved on and without trying to chitty- chat. I had hung out at Cheetahs for days and days, when I lived in Vegas, but I always found it to be a cold place.
At about 10:30 there was another, much bigger commotion to my left. Rod Stewart and his entourage had arrived. Rod, himself, took up residence at the opposite end of the row from where we sat. The bouncers had pushed tables together at that end and the waitress had already brought out the first bottles of Crystal even before most of the people had sat down. I saw some skinny guys with Rod who I assumed were in his band. Dressed in suits and lurking slightly back from this bunch were a couple of WWF meat heads, who I took to be the Rod’s body guards. There were also women that had come along for the ride and they sat in between the skinny guys. They were skinny, too, but pretty; more model types than dancers. Finally there was an assortment of rather ordinary looking guys who were with the entourage. I guessed that they might have been roadies, techies, or just “friends of Rob.” In all there were over twenty people stretching from just beyond my left arm to near the entrance of the club with a big sheltered space in the middle where Rob and the champagne sat.
When I turned back to Gene, I couldn’t stop laughing. If people really could pop their eyes out from surprise, then he would have. With a dropped jaw, drool at the edge, bulging, unblinking eyes, and a statue stiff stare, Gene was clearly in another life zone entirely. He was handling the scene well simply because he was obviously catatonic. If I smashed a bottle over his head, I knew then that he would feel absolutely no pain.
The best part of the evening, the legendary part, was yet to come. It commenced about ten minutes after the entourage had settled down. They were swarmed over by lapdancers like flies on shit. The single guys closest to us were the first to leave with the women. They just disappeared. Not very long after that two of the dancers came over to Gene and I. One gorgeous young blond with a well toned butt asked me if I was with Rod. Before Gene could say “no,” and launch into his life story again, I shot back a resounding “yes.” Then I asked the woman for a dance. At that very moment, I sincerely admit that I simply abandoned Gene. The situation was just too good to goof up. I would certainly die for my buddy, but this little bit was something entirely different. It was now every one for themselves. As I followed the nice ass into the VIP room, I told her that she could take as long as she wanted because the entire tab was on Rod. “Of course,” she said. “Who else!” Then she added, “But, can you introduce me afterwards.” “Noooooo problem,” I assured her already completely alive to the evenings prospects.
Back at our chairs, Gene was entertaining two ladies. They sat rapt while he told them his life story. They didn't flee because he was a "friend of Rod's" now. Suddenly Gene realized that Jesus loved him.
