by Tucker Max
But it was El Bingeroso who stole the show. He grew up in a very small town in Nebraska, with about 700 people, one Dairy Queen and one gas station. He remembered his father making his brother and him run timed 100-meter races against each other. At age six. When he got to elementary school he was fat and would constantly eat paste, so the teachers just assumed he was retarded and put him in the Special Ed class. He was in the Special Education program until age eight when they finally gave him an IQ test, realized he was a genius, and moved him to the gifted class. He was actually upset about leaving the sped class, because he liked the coloring and frequent snack times. He also told us about the time he and his brother, then aged 9 and 11, watched from the locked car while their dad beat up a mugger, nearly killing him by repeatedly smashing his head into the hood and fender, spraying blood all over the car [I have subsequently met El Bingeroso’s father, and believe me—he is not a man to cross. I have a robust fear of him].
But what really distinguished him from the rest of us was that he was truly in love and actually had a stable life. Even though he was a partier like the rest of us, he loved his fiancée, was totally committed to her, and was very excited that he had finally convinced her to wear a French maid outfit to the upcoming Duke Law Halloween party.
Day One: Baby Dolls
We arrived in Dallas on Friday afternoon. After a quick nap, we went to an early dinner at some Mexican place in Deep Ellum, then across the street to a roadhouse-type bar designed for yuppies. Both Pabst and Guinness on tap. Metrosexuals dressed in brown Lycra as far as the eye could see. I immediately hated everyone.
We get two pitchers and decide to play table shuffleboard. Barely into our first pitcher, I notice two girls checking us out. A hot blonde [Blonde] and a decent redhead [Redhead]. They stare at us for about ten minutes. I want to have sex with the Blonde, so I start things off:
“You gonna come talk to us or just stand there and stare?”
They accept my invitation. I stare at the tits on the Blonde. They are nearly flawless, and quite seductively exposed. The girl knows what she’s doing. Despite my nearly forensic examination (she doesn’t notice—I am a pro at this), I keep the conversation moving along nicely until dumbass El Bingeroso decides to fuck everything up:
Blonde “So, what brings you guys to Dallas?”
El Bingeroso “We came to go to a strip club.” El Bingeroso is an engaged cock-blocking jerk. Thanks asshole, I didn’t want to fuck her or anything.
Redhead [kinda pulling me aside as El Bingeroso keeps talking to Blonde] “Did you really come to Dallas to go to a strip club?”
Tucker “No, no. We had a week off from law school, so we came to visit some friends, hang out, that sort of thing. El Bingeroso just wants to go to a strip club he heard about.”
Redhead “Do you like strip clubs? Those places are gross.”
Tucker “Yeah, they are kinda gross. But my friends really want to go, so what can I do? I don’t know anyone in Dallas. Besides, I like naked breasts.”
Redhead “You can stay here…hang out with me.”
Tucker “Yeah, maybe.” And maybe I’ll watch reruns of Alf on Telemundo.
El Bingeroso tugs on me, “Dude, you might want to get in on this.” [he turns back to the Blonde] “So, you think you want to come to Baby Dolls with us?”
Blonde “I’ll come to the strip club with you guys; I want to see some big titties.”
Tucker “Have you ever been to Baby Dolls before?”
Blonde “Yeah, I auditioned there once.”
DING DING DING DING!!! JACKPOT!!! Call the pit boss, we have a big winner!
El Bing “Do you like girls?”
Blonde “Of course.”
Excellent. All we need is 70’s music to start playing and we’ve got a porno in the making.
I glance at the other end of the table. It’s our turn, but El Bingeroso and I haven’t thrown the pucks for ten minutes. SlingBlade is glaring at me with his standard half-bored, half-disdainful, “Another whore?” expression that he always gives me when I start talking to random girls. I motion for him to come down to our end of the table…and then I see PWJ.
Great Holy Jesus—it looks like he fell into Kentucky Fried Movie. He is talking to a woman with a leopard cowboy hat on over platinum bouffant hair. Her makeup looks like it was applied with a shotgun. She has on tight orange hotpants, which she obviously brought from her last job at Hooters. Around her waist is a belt, and there appears to be a toy gun holstered to it. She was probably very attractive in, say, 1986. Now, she’s in the death throes of a losing battle against time and fashion irrelevance.
Tucker “Dude, what is PWJ talking to?”
SlingBlade “I don’t know…some whore. She squirted him with her water gun, and off he went. She has big tits… Cupid has spoken.”
Fifteen more minutes of bullshitting, and the Blonde is sealed up. Unfortunately, she wants Redhead to come with us, who is not at all enthused at the prospect of going to “one of those places.” I am presented with a logistical nightmare: I want to fuck Blonde, who is throwing her cooch at El Bingeroso. The only way she is going to Baby Dolls is if Redhead comes. Redhead is in love with me, but does not want to come to Baby Dolls. El Bingeroso is drunk and no help. So what do I do?
Here is where taking econ classes at the University of Chicago helps out with real-life game. This is a classic example of the Prisoner’s Dilemma; if I keep paying attention to the Blonde and try to capture my small chance to fuck her, I will probably fail and then I get no pussy, and the group gets no lesbian action at the strip club, because neither will come with us. Everyone loses. But, if I take one for the team, ignore the Blonde and instead seal up the Redhead, I can get both to come with us to Baby Dolls. This means that I probably won’t fuck the Blonde, which decreases my chance at personal happiness, but I will give the group the best chance to maximize the situation, by getting two girls to come to a strip club with us. See—even Tucker Max can be altruistic. If it benefits him.
Tucker “Redhead, come on, let’s all go to the strip club. It’ll be a good time.”
Redhead “Don’t go to a strip club. You know those girls don’t care about you.”
SlingBlade “That’s not true. They sit on my lap and tell me they love me.” SlingBlade usually chooses the funny joke over the smart play. And this, folks, is why he gets no pussy. Well…that, and he has no confidence, and is scared of emotional commitment to a woman because he thinks they are all cheating sluts.
Tucker “Thanks asshole. Why don’t you go watch Deep Space Nine and leave this to me. Dick.”
[I pull Redhead away from Captain No Pussy] “Come on sweetie. It’ll be fun. Your friend wants to go.”
Redhead “I don’t want to go to that place. It’s gross.”
Tucker “Yeah, I know. But I’ll be there, we can hang out together. We’ll let them,” waving dismissively at my friends, “look at naked women, and you and I can just hang out. Together.” I actually reach out and put her hands in mine.
Redhead “Why don’t you just stay here. With me?”
Tucker “Yes, let’s stay together…at the club.”
Redhead “But I don’t want to go to a strip club.”
Tucker “But I want to go. With you…us…together.”
Redhead “I don’t like it there.”
Tucker “Have you ever been?”
Redhead “No…”
Tucker “I tell you what: If you and Blonde come with us, I promise that you and I can sit in a corner somewhere and stare into each other’s eyes, completely ignoring everything around us. It’ll be romantic. We’ll be so busy staring into each other’s eyes, we won’t even see what’s going on.”
Hearing these words, I nearly threw up in my mouth. She paused and contemplated.
Redhead “No… I don’t want to go to a strip club. I… I just can’t.”
This is just fucking great. Even I have my limit, and that “staring into each other’s eyes�
�� bullshit was it. SlingBlade and El Bingeroso tire of this, go fetch PWJ away from his water-pistol-packing cow-whore, and start to leave. Redhead is trying to convince me to stay at the bar with her. She is almost pleading with me. Before I know it, my friends are already walking out the door.
I make my way to the door, Redhead still attached to my arm like a lamprey. I try to make a cost-benefit analysis: probable hook-up and possible sexual activity with Redhead, or definite nakedness but little chance of a hook-up at Baby Dolls. I need to pin Redhead down on our late-night activities.
Tucker “Are you going to hang out with me later tonight? I mean, are we going to hang out after we leave here, like at your place?” My tone of voice is not subtle.
Redhead “I don’t know if I can; I have to be up at 7am.”
Tucker “7am? For what?”
Redhead “A Young Life meeting.”
Tucker “I have to go catch up with my friends.”
I streak out of the bar before she can even change her facial expression.
[Aside: Young Life is a fundamentalist Christian youth group that preaches abstinence and all sorts of other ridiculous pablum. I got blue balls so many times in middle and high school dealing with those girls—NEVER AGAIN.]
In the car on the way to Baby Dolls, PWJ explains his little adventure:
Tucker “Dude, who the fuck was that woman you were talking to, and where did she get her uniform, at a Whores-R-Us closeout sale?”
PWJ “I don’t know. She works there. She had a toy water pistol in her belt…is it wrong that that turned me on?”
Tucker “She WORKS there? I guess no one cares if she spends thirty minutes talking to you. Apparently her job is to degrade herself and chat up pasty thimble-headed geeks.”
PWJ “You don’t understand…that’s not the best part. I learned her philosophy of dating: ‘Don’t fish off the company pier, and don’t fuck your friends. I’ve tried both plenty of times and neither works’… OH YEAH… I nearly spat out my drink when she told me that she has cats rather than kids because, and I quote, ‘You don’t go to jail when you get your cats high.’”
We decide that we are starting to like Texas. Baby Dolls does nothing to derail our crazy train.
Baby Dolls should be the model from which all strip clubs are cast. The neon glow from its trim-molding and signage can be seen from miles away. A huge pink one-story stand-alone building rising out of a sea of asphalt with pictures of nearly naked girls on the four-story billboard looming over it from the parking lot. The entrance is two huge wooden doors adorned with brass fixtures and two NFL linebacker-sized bouncers. It is covered by a pink awning that extends up the walk about ten feet. The huge oval main stage is flanked by an enfilade of four smaller side stages, each with a brass pole reaching from floor to ceiling. Mirrors cover every wall and extend to every ceiling. Two full bars, and two beer bars are staffed by a phalanx of female bartenders and cocktail waitresses. And MOST importantly: it’s all nude. No pasties. No g-strings. No crotch tape. Nothing between you and the naked, nubile flesh of attractive women…except dollar bills. The girls were hot beyond hot. Dozens of incredibly beautiful and sexy women, each giving smiles that convey the sincerity of a single mother with rent due.
At age 24, this was my Elysium.
Two dancers come over almost immediately after we sit down. The hot one is at least 5'10", blonde bobbed hair, smooth, almost creamy skin, and gorgeous fake breasts. Perfectly round and sitting high on her chest. She sits on PWJ’s lap.
Stripper “So what do you do?”
PWJ “I’m a law student.”
Stripper “Wow…so do you go to SMU?”
PWJ “Not exactly… I go to Duke.”
She gives him a blank stare. A few seconds later, one can almost see the flicker of candlelight in the thought bubble above her head.
Stripper “You mean Duke Duke?”
PWJ [pauses and chuckles] “Yeah, Duke Duke.”
Stripper [she gives him a doubtful face] “Oh, like I’ve never heard this one before. Let me guess, you went to Harvard for college.”
PWJ “Well, no, not exactly…”
PWJ went to Princeton for undergrad. I stop paying attention because as much as I love beauty, I hate stupidity, and seeing the two combined pisses me off. Plus, I need to start drinking and her nipples aren’t spouting vodka.
I find a cocktail waitress and begin drinking. Combatively. I’ve driven 16 hours for the specific purpose of going to this strip club, and I’ll be damned if I get here and nothing happens. To help achieve this end—getting drunk and making something happen—I make friends with our cocktail waitress, Liz. Gentle readers, let me explain something to you:
It is an almost universal rule of gentlemen’s clubs that the cocktail waitresses are more fun to talk to, and more apt to fuck customers, than the strippers. They are not as pressed for time, so they will banter more. The limp-dicks that overtip the strippers usually don’t tip the cocktail waitresses at all, so attention to a cocktail waitress will get you much further than attention to a stripper. Plus, they tend not to be high or drunk on duty, whereas strippers are almost always in some altered state, so conversation with them can actually accomplish something. The funniest thing is that they always think they are better than the strippers; in their mind there is a bright line separating them from the women who actually take their clothes off, thus it is usually much easier to get a cocktail waitress to go home with you. Strippers are jaded, abused, used-up; they hate men, and usually for good reason. The cocktail waitresses are far less defensive. They are so used to being ignored or looked through, that when you do pay attention to them, they respond to it. Some innocuous flirting and a good first tip to Liz gets my friends and me a constant, uninterrupted stream of drinks and a flirtatious hottie hanging around us. Read and learn fellas. Back to the action:
SlingBlade gets one of the hottest girls in the club to give him a dance. Before she takes his money, she tries to talk to him, and actually seems genuinely interested, not just stripper interested. This probably has something to do with the happy confluence of his sarcastic, stand-offish sense of humor and the inability of her stepfather to show her any affection growing up. So what does SlingBlade do? Does he flirt with her? Does he at least try to exploit this situation? Of course not. He places his finger on her lips, patiently explains that he, “would rather mainline Drano” than listen to her for another second, and commands, “Less talkie, more boobie.” The kid has problems.
Apparently, something about PWJ just says “sucker,” because another stripper comes up and puts her hands over PWJ’s eyes, coyly whispering something erotic in his ear. She is UGLY. Her face looks like it lost a frantic battle with a Rototiller. The woman is literally missing some teeth. I can’t tell for sure, but I think she has a tattoo tear on her left eye. I motion to him by making a cutting gesture across my throat and yelling,
“Dude—she is unattractive. Bottom of the barrel. Needs to put her clothes on and learn how to type. Don’t do it! YOU’RE A YOUNG MAN!”
He doesn’t get my warnings in time. She sits on his lap. PWJ tells her he doesn’t want a dance, but she says it’s okay, and remains on his lap talking to him. I wonder, out loud for everyone to hear, if the zoo knows they are missing their three-toed sloth. She is not pleased. Fuck her, it’s not my fault she looks like Adrian Brody with saggy tits.
PWJ ignores me and continues engaging her in conversation. When I hear her say, “Yeah, I had two hearts tattooed on my hips, but then I got pregnant and carried my son on my left side. Now this one looks like a tomato,” I get up. I’d rather rip my penis out by the root than listen to another minute of her stripper-ramble.
I saunter around flirting with waitresses and bartenders and strippers, double-fisting vodka and sodas…and then it happens: I see El Bingeroso’s future wife. It’s not actually her; THAT would be a story, but she looks exactly like El Bingeroso’s fiancée. It’s spooky. I immediately walk over to where sh
e is and stand there, waiting for her to finish the dance she’s giving to some random guy. He’s less than pleased. Whatever buddy, you’re wearing a Detroit Red Wings jersey to a strip club, you obviously suck.
I give her enough to pay for two dances for El Bingeroso, and then an additional ten dollars. I tell her that she has to tell him her name is “Kristy” [his fiancée’s name], and to answer to nothing else. I point him out, and she walks over, and introduces herself.
“Hi, I’m Kristy. Dinner is on the stove, baby.”
After what seems like only ten minutes, I glance over, and she’s just sitting there talking to him. Fine, maybe she’s just warming him up. A few more minutes, same scene. I’ll be damned if El Bingeroso doesn’t get my money’s worth. He’s the type that would pay her more not to dance, thinking it would violate his relationship or some such bullshit. I walk over and interrupt El Bingeroso in the middle of a story I had heard the day before:
El Bingeroso “Yeah, I was fat when I was a kid. You know how kids jeans at Kmart came in three different sizes: Small, Medium, and Husky? I had to buy Husky.”
Tucker “El Bingeroso, what the fuck? Is stripper-fiancée going to dance for you?”
El Bingeroso [looks confused] “What are you talking about? Dude, she already did both dances, she’s just hanging out now.”