$700 Dollar Strippers

Back in the spring of 2012, I was still living in San Francisco. A buddy of mine from back home had decided to come visit me for a week. We hadn’t seen each other in about a year. Let’s call him T. At the time of the visit I was at peak stress levels. I was finishing work as a producer on an animated short and had hit my bullshit threshold. The director and I were at each other’s throats on a near constant basis, and I was also worrying about trying to find full time work for the summer. I knew I needed a break. The previous fall I had hit similar stress levels that literally brought my body into partial paralysis on my right side. Fuck. That. Shit. I didn’t have time for this again. A week with a friend from home was exactly what I needed.

I knew I had to make this trip special for T. We had been talking for a few weeks about this trip and were getting ourselves amped for the day he was going to arrive. About a week before he gets to my place, he calls me up, and he sounds fucking down. T is not the kind of guy that is usually one to sulk. He invented the Art of Not Giving a Fuck. To see him down like this was kind of strange, so I had to figure out what was going on.

It turns out that over the past few months he had been hooking up with some girl from home. She was cute. Things were going good. She apparently had broken up with her boyfriend for being an asshole and then started seeing my friend. Apparently things started to get more serious between the two of them. What started as simple texting and banging turned into the potential for a relationship (or so T was telling me). Anyways things culminated when they rented a hotel and apparently boned for the whole evening. Good on him. I love T, he can be a bit of a manwhore, and I have the utmost respect for it. I knew he liked this girl though and so I was happy to see that it was going in a more serious direction for him.

Well, a week before he is supposed to come out, she starts getting really distant. She starts playing games with him, not responding to texts, not really being open with him. I tell him not to worry about it and just focus on the trip. I figure everything will sort itself out before or after he comes to SF.

It turns out the phone call was the beginning of a spiral. It all started after the bone-in at the hotel. Two days after the night at the hotel my buddy developed a rash on his face.  Started off as nothing but some redness and itchiness. He’s thinking it’s some sort of allergic reaction. But it starts getting worse. It starts to get redder, puffier, and painful. Turns out it’s a staph infection. The fuckers at the hotel apparently weren’t changing the sheets or some shit. After getting that prognosis, I get the call when I hear T is down. Everything was just crashing for this kid. I felt genuinely bad. We had been pumping each other for this trip, and know he was so low.

I told him not to worry about anything. Just get to San Francisco. We are gonna make bad decisions. And we did.

So the day arrives. T finally gets to SF. He was still a bit down but I said fuck it. First thing I do is get us a BMW. Top down. Straight to the beach. If there is one thing that will pick someone up it’s a view of the California coastline. We ran every red light from Alamo Square to Ocean beach. How we didn’t get pulled over, let alone arrested is still beyond me. But, that’s part of the Art of Not Giving a Fuck. When your friends are feeling down, you do what you got to do to lift their spirits up.

The rest of the day was nothing special. He started to loosen up a bit and enjoy himself. I showed him the greatest kept secrets in terms of food that city has to offer.

The next day turned into a bit of a shit-storm. T gets a text from the girl he had been seeing. She doesn’t want to see him anymore. She still likes her boyfriend. Fuck.

Okay, I get it; you still have feelings for someone. That’s totally understandable. But don’t fuck with a kid’s head and lead him on. That’s just low. He was fucking pissed, understandably. I knew I had to get his mind off the girl. I was going to make sure he had a crazy memorable night.

We started off by going to The Waterbar, a high end restaurant down by the bay bridge. Immediately we start drinking. I had about four Gin cocktails and then we started sucking back oysters. The bartender was cool so he started giving us oysters on the house. After dinner, we headed down to Polk St do start the evening right. We hit a bar that’s dead but there a few cute girls at the bar so we have a drink their. Then we headed to some bar that was just filled with people in fucking pirate costumes. We had no idea what was going on, but everyone was chill so we partied with these people for a while. Finally at about 12:30 we hit one more bar that turned out to be a sausage fest filled with the worst types of hipsters imaginable.

We weren’t done yet though. It was only about 12:45 and the night was young. We both said fuck it. San Francisco, known for being a heaven for heathens and degenerates of the best kind has quite a few strip clubs. We decided to go over to Broadway where a whole bunch of them were and check out what was going on. We wind up at Centerfolds. This is where we learned how to absolutely waste money. The cover charge alone was about 40 bucks. We pay and we walk in. I head up to the bar and figure we’ll just start with beer. We had been drinking a fair amount by that time, so I didn’t want to be too sloppy. Such a gentleman huh?

We go to the bar to order a beer. Sorry. No alcohol. Just Red Bull or water. Excuse me what? I don’t speak Spanish. Did you just say no alcohol?

Apparently full nude strip clubs have this rule that no alcohol can be served in a fully nude club. Fuck that. So we just got charged 40 dollars to go into a titty bar, and I can’t even get a beer? Whoever came up with that rule should immediately have his balls removed.

We both say fuck it and order a Red Bull. T is starting to loosen up again. Some stripper comes up to us and starts chatting. We play along and start flirting and making small talk for a bit. She takes a liking to T. Perfect. This is just what he needs. She tells me her friend wants to meet me. I’m like Ok, whatever. Show; don’t tell. She goes and grabs another stripper. Cute little Asian girl. She just grabs me by the hand and takes me to the back. I get two full contact lap dances. OK, this is starting to be worth it. Any other strip club I had been to was all about look don’t touch. This girl was yelling at me to pinch her nips. I’m a gentleman I’m not going to simply ignore a woman like that.

After the two songs I headed back to see what T was up to. He was still chatting this girl up. I was sort of confused. It turns out the girl that I left with wasn’t the girl who T’s stripper wanted to introduce me to. So they waited for me. What darlings. The other stripper comes over and introduces herself. She says that I look like I am fun and wants to hang out with me. I’m like OK, fuck it. What are we gonna do? She says it’s 500 bucks for a private room with her. I immediately said screw that. You’re a stripper. I can think of a million ways to spend that money than for a private room with a stripper.

The funny thing about being a guy though, is that sometimes you think with your dick instead of your brain. Mine haggled her and her friend down to 350 each. T and I looked at each other and figured what the hell. We both pull out our credit cards and buy 45 minutes of time with each of the girls. My stripper takes me to the basement where there are private rooms and showers. We go into one of the “bed” rooms. Just a giant mattress and red string lights with velvet curtains. She throws me on the ground rips my belt off and tears my shirt open. She then proceeds to mount me. The whole time I’m laughing. Just practicing the Art of Not Giving a Fuck. The harder she tries to be seductive, the harder I am laughing.  So for the first ten minutes she is just grinding up against me, and I’m like OK this is nice, but what else do you have? I mean I didn’t pay all this money just for you to grind against me. Earn your 350.

So she turns around and starts rubbing her ass against my chest, and yells at me to slap her. Again, being the gentleman I am I oblige. I slap her ass cheek.

Harder. She instists.

I slap harder.

HARDER! Show me what you have!

At this point I practically donkey punched her. Apparently this is what she was looking for because she let out a long moan. Than again it could of just been that weird noise you make when you fall on your tail bone.

So after about 20 minutes of playing grab ass, grinding, and feeling her up, she decides she wants to “get to know me.” Right. She starts cuddling me.  We start flirting or whatever, but I know she’s just poaching me for more money. Whatever. I’m playing along. Then comes the kicker

“Do you do coke? I bet you’re so much fun on coke. I have some if you want.”

Lady, no amount of attention is going to change the fact that you have serious daddy issues, and the last thing I want to do with you is blow lines of cocaine, so you can explain how your father never gave you the attention you deserved. I’m a fucking degenerate in a strip club paying you to play with your cooch. I’m not your fucking therapist. If you want me to hear your problems, pay me. Not the other way around.

At this point I am just straight up laughing. I have mastered the Art of Not Giving a Fuck for the evening. So the dance session ends, and she asks me if I had fun. I tell it was OK, and get her number.

I’m sober at this point now so I need a drink or to go to bed. I am waiting for T to get finished with his girl so we can peace outta there. At this point, I’m just ignoring all the strippers propositioning me. Unless we are going to bang, I’m bored at this point.

T finishes up with his stripper and comes back upstairs. Turns out my evening went even better than his. Turns out she just wanted to talk. The Whole Time. He still got her number.

At this point it’s about 2. T and I wind up going back to my place to sleep off the stripper stank.

The next morning, I wake up with the biggest rash on my chest. It was itchy as fuck and red. To add to that, I wound up maxing out my card with my strip club purchase. It turns out that the rash was nothing. And on the plus side, at least I got T out of his funk. The strippers texted him that afternoon asking if we wanted to meet up. I wasn’t going to risk getting more stripper rash, so we said fuck it and went and hang out over the bridge.

I still got her number though…