Papa's Basement » Al Bundy

Strip Clubs: The Economy’s Silent Victim

admin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:33:56 +0000

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be at the Jiggly Room.

Strip clubs have a special place in the psyche of the Papageorgiou boys. My brother and I grew up listening to Al Bundy’s tales of the Jiggly Room and countless hours of Howard Stern talking about the Scores Club. While your 21st birthday consisted of you happy and drunk, surrounded by innumerable college friends, I spent mine alone at the Crystal City Restaurant, blowing out a candle on a cupcake served to me by a dancer named “Illusion” and getting hit up for $1 bills. In the years since, I’ve come to have a love-hate relationship with strip clubs (mostly hate), but when the idea made the rounds to spend my brother’s 27th birthday at a strip joint, it was met with zero resistance on my part.

Before I go on with my tale, let me elaborate upon my problem with strip clubs: They never get me turned on. (Stop screaming “You fairy!” at your monitor. I can’t hear it.) Sure, sometimes you’ll see a really attractive broad hit the stage and it’s a thrill, but most of the time you’re sneaking furtive glances at an average looking chick’s tits and avoiding eye contact at all costs lest she zero in on you in the crowd and come bug you for a lap dance after her time on stage. And for those that have never had a lap dance, let me summarize the experience for you: A dead-eyed 20 year old grinds her vag against your crotch and then bends over to show you her asshole with the discretion of a dog taking a dump in the park as “Mississippi Queen” blares in the background. Actually, after typing that, I’m trying to remember what it is I have against lap dances. Right, the price tag: $30. I know my hierarchy of vices, and $30 is there to buy 150 Wendy’s chicken nuggets, not get a case of chaffed wang.

Pussy ahoy!

My brother and I spent a few hours before the trip to pervert Mecca doing the usual birthday things: Unwrapping gifts, family dinner (I devoured a burrito from the Cheesecake Factory the size of a stillborn calf. Probably not the best idea when you’re going to have the weight of a stripper and her daddy issues in your lap later that night), as I waited for the A-Team of perverts I had assembled to arrive at the door. Once together, we hopped in my ride (tragically, not a black GMC van with a red stripe) and set sail for the crown jewel of West Virginia: Vixens Club.

I’ve been to about seven strip clubs in my day (seven is a nice, middle-of-the-road number. Not too pervy, but you can also tell I know my subject matter), and Vixens does a better job than most.

They look like this, though far more low budget.

The audience is titanic and consists of a vibrant pastiche of horny life, ranging from college kids to migrant workers to married men (big audiences are great because it means you won’t be hit up for dances as often), and the dancers typically have a nice Suicide Girls look going for them. (Don’t click that link at work. Yes, it’s Wikipedia, but it’s still got some topless chicks. Good for Wikipedia!) If ever there was a shining diamond in the rough that is unincorporated Bunker Hill, West Virginia, home to countless gas stations selling chaw and Confederate flag merchandise, truly Vixens is it. Which made the scene that greeted my upon our arrival all the more tragic.

I’ve seen some depressing shit in my day, but I can say with certainty that my night would have been cheerier had I instead set foot inside a Bosnian orphanage. The formerly vast crowds were reduced to 20 people, at best. The strippers, once young, lithe and full of silicon were now the dregs of the dancing world: The mommy who came back to work too soon, her enlarged areolas and soft tummy driving you to fling dollar bills at her just to get her off stage and back home to feed her out-of-wedlock child. The foreign hottie with jacked teeth, who looks great until she opens her mouth to talk (she was a Ukranian, and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to scream, “In Soviet Russia, lap dance pays for you!” at her). And the ugly girl reduced to disturbing tricks involving her private parts to make a buck. Tonight it was a girl who would roll herself into a yoga-like position on her back with her vag facing the sun, fold a dollar on top of it and then queef it into the air. And this wasn’t a small queef, either: I’m talking height. Like, Mount St. Helen’s volcanic eruption height. I’ve never before wanted to giggle and pour bleach in my eyes at the same time.

Any excuse I can get to post the Swayze.

Eventually, a stripper made her way to our table and started telling her sob story: Since the economy tanked, business had been awful, with tons of the dancers leaving and the crowds being a shell of what they once were. I zoned out immediately, because: 1. I hate giving people I don’t know money 2. I really had to fart because of that gargantuan burrito earlier and she was squatting dead-even with my crotch, meaning if I let rip, we could have been kicked out and 3. Her story sounded like the plot of Roadhouse except it was the bad economy trying to shut her club down, not Ben Gazzara. My brother eventually buckled and took a lap dance, but I’d like to think it was more born of altruism than arousal.

We drove home that night mostly silent, still haunted by the things we had seen. I know firsthand that the job market is awful, that money just isn’t flowing, that times are the worst I’ve ever seen. But it didn’t truly hit home until my trip to Vixens. Do I want to live in a world where fathers don’t have the spare cash to let their college-aged sons receive the lap dances they wish their wives could still deliver? Where Latino laborers don’t have money for both Corona and the white strippers that prey upon their various inferiority complexes? A world where married men can’t afford to be bled for a $1,000 a week by a dancer who hasn’t even given them a squeeze job yet? Sometimes, I look at it all and have to think: What would Al do?

Love and Marriage

admin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:02:40 +0000

Well, it’s happened. Someone in my immediate circle has found the Peggy Bundy to his Al. My good friends Gerry Perez and Karly Davis are tying the knot. So why am I the one made nervous by it?

Gotta love a menu that asks a question with an exclamation point.

One of my friends finally getting hitched has forced me to take stock of my beliefs regarding love and marriage. Thankfully, most of my buddies live with me in a massive estate I’ve dubbed “Beta Male Manor” (it’s in a Let’s Just Be Friendsville, VA, zip code), and there won’t be many other nuptials to drag us away from the carousel of value menu lunches and “House, M.D.” marathons on the USA Network that our lives consist of. But even one of us managing to act like a normally developing adult male by living with a woman and, now, walking down the aisle, has dealt a severe blow to the cocoon of developmental retardation I’ve been so merrily playing Grand Theft Auto games from lo these many years.

I’ve got a confession to make: In theory, I really dig the idea of marriage. Who wouldn’t want to come home to some beautiful person who loves them, makes them laugh and has, according to the law of man and God, said, “Hey, over all others, I’ve chosen you, ya schmuck”? Just imagining that scenario made me smile. I’ve been in love before, and it felt like I was full of amphetamines but without the death breath and limp Señor Peñor. You’re saying I could have that feeling the rest of my life and the woman involved has to admit to the world she’s legally obligated to sleep with me? Outstanding.

Just here because I referenced pancreatic cancer. Nobody puts Papa in a corner.

On top of that startling revelation, I’ll also throw this your way: I can’t wait to have kids. Sure, there’s the whole Lifetime channel angle of love and caring and that crap involved, but to me, kids are also science projects which will allow me to breed out my own shortcomings. Of course I’ll marry for love (or a really rich father-in-law with advanced pancreatic cancer), but you can bet your ass the future Mrs. Papageorgiou will be 5’8,” brunette, lean and motivated. Hopefully, it’ll counter the large helping of stubby, neurotic tubbiness my own genes will be bringing to the table. Oh, and please, God, can I just have boys? Not that I have anything against daughters. It’s just that, every time I try to picture them, I can’t get past an image of me with a wig on. She even has my voice and sense of humor. “Dad, I’m going behind the bleachers to gang bang the basketball team. Or am I? Yeah, just shoot me now.

The problem with marriage is people enter into it without a clue about just how much effort it takes in the long run to keep it going, or even a single thought as to whether they’ll even want to keep it going once the passion of young love has cooled. Over 90% of the marriages I’ve seen have devolved into loveless standoffs, with the man staking his claim to the basement. The rest of the home is overrun by the wife and children that he would gleefully abandon if it weren’t for the legal costs involved precluding him from getting new trim once he got free. It conjures up images of Hitler cowering in his bunker, the Russian army conquering Berlin above him. What does it say about a scenario where you sympathize with Hitler? I hate sympathizing with Hitler. Where I come from, any time you speak the words “Poor, poor Hitler” something is terribly amiss.

Ironically, I was making the same face during this scene.

Usually, the lusts that brought a couple together to begin with don’t even get a chance to die a dignified death. One day, you’re worrying you might have knocked her up because she insisted on banging you four times in a crowded theater during Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs because it was her favorite book as a kid (don’t judge me. I keep some cool company). Next thing you know, it’s “Honey, can you take a look at this? I think it’s a hemorrhoid, but I’m not sure. And be sure to put on gloves because it hurt too much to wipe.”

Given the way I’ve conducted my life thus far, this entire article has been moot. I’m so paralyzed by a childhood of hearing my parents fight over money that I wouldn’t want to get married without a six-figure income to my name (that sounds extreme until you hear Greeks fight. It gives you that same feeling as waking up to cats fighting in the middle of the night. Cats that use the Greek f-word). Not to mention that radio, the only job I have a chubby in my pants for, dooms you to a nomad life of jumping market to market, sleeping with the same overweight callers that the last guy who worked your shift did. Odds are, this is the last shred of Papageorgiou DNA that’ll ever pollute this side of the Atlantic. That sounds depressing, so I’ll leave you with a marriage-themed joke:Why do husbands always die before their wives? Because they want to. Bada bing.

To Gerry and Karly: May you two always live this high on the hog.

Any married folks or folks about to get married want to post comments about what life is like for them, I’m all ears.