by Wade, Calvin
A tall, leggy lady with bright blue eyes and a black ‘bob’ came towards us wearing little more than a beaded thong and a bra, barely large enough to cover her nipples. She looked like she had escaped from a James Bond movie, probably wanting to escape the shackles of its ‘PG’ rating. She spoke English with a mid-atlantic drawl.
“Hello Gentlemen! May I welcome you to ‘Nipples and Tipples’! My name is Marianne and I host the parties here. As you can see, we are very busy this evening, our beautiful ladies are being admired by many men. We currently only have tables available in our VIP area, ‘The Lounge’. Would you gentlemen be interested in taking a table in ‘The Lounge’?”
Jim was excited by this prospect.
“VIP! Absolutely! It’s my brother’s stag do, I’m going to be his best man, so I need to make sure he has a great night!”
Jim was talking to Marianne’s breasts which seemed to be having the same effect on him as a hypnotists watch. Marianne was probably totally disinterested in the fact that it was my stag do and Jim was going to be best man, but she politely played the game.
“Well, you have come to the right place for a great night!”
She turned to me, “I am assuming you are the brother, right?”
“That would be me!” I replied.
Those breasts were drawing me in too. I tried to keep my eyes off them so as not to render myself as a stereotypical male.
“What is your name?” Marianne asked smiling.
“Richie.”
“And your brother is…?”
“Jim.”
“Well Richie, I really hope you and Jim enjoy spending time with our beautiful ladies here tonight, but please remember, no touching the ladies! Please save your touching for your wedding night!”
“I think Jim is going to be enjoying this experience more than me!” I said pointing at my brother who was staring around in every direction like a meerkat on sentry duty, as scantily clad women moved through in all directions. It was like a Heathrow terminal purely for drunken businessmen and strippers!
“Gentlemen, follow me!” said Marianne, leading the way through the throng and the thongs. There was a feast of gyrating hips attached to pretty young women of all hair colours and ethnicities. We passed through two sets of curtains, until we reached an area that was minimalistic but looked like the budget had been stretched a little for this section. Chandeliers replaced disco lights, tables were glass rather than wooden and cigarette stained. It looked like the same club but classier. The same could be said for the women. The ladies appeared more sophisticated, a bit more sassy and chic and on the whole, the men looked older, balder and no doubt richer. Jim and I bucked the trend. Marianne saw us to our seats.
“Can I get drinks for you two gentlemen?” Marianne asked.
“Can you get us a bottle of champagne, please!” Jim piped up.
“Any preference? Would you like me to run through what we have or maybe get you a price list?”
“No!” Jim insisted, “just bring us a top quality champagne and two glasses!”
“Jim!” I whispered, “should we not get a price list? It could cost you a fortune!”
“Hush brother! I am proud to be buying a fine champagne for my big brother! Sod the expense!”
Marianne went off to find the bottle of champagne with the biggest mark up and as she departed, our table was soon welcoming an African-American stunner that is difficult for me to describe. Difficult for me to describe, not because she was incredibly glamorous, but because my intense drunken state triggered night time narcolepsy and cataplexy, if such a thing existed. We were sat on a semi circular sofa that arched around a glass table, faced with a woman that could have walked straight off the runways of Milan or Paris, but all I needed to do was sleep. I remember her coming over and I remember her asking if anyone would like a dance but I slumped into a foetal position on that sofa and from there on in, the night was, how I imagine one long LSD trip to be, I was totally aware of my bizarre surroundings, but I was totally incapable of reacting to them. I could hear Jim asking for drink after drink, joking with the lapdancers, having them sit on his knee, which given the no touching rule, I imagine came at a price, but I was too out of it to pick myself up. After a long period of impersonating a giant foetus, but probably making myself look like a giant faeces, Jim propped me back up.
“Mate, do you remember when you first met Kelly?”
I nodded. The ability to speak had now temporarily been withdrawn.
“It was at The Birch’s party, wasn’t it?” I nodded once more.
“And you said that if you hadn’t been out with Kelly, your opinion of Jemma would never have changed. Right?”
I nodded less vigorously third time, as it was beginning to make me feel sick. “Well, do you remember you managed to get to the Birch’s party that night?”
“Taxi.” I mumbled, surprising myself that I had some sort of deep, confused voice.
“That’s right, Richie and who paid for that taxi? It was me, wasn’t it?”
“Uh-huh!” I groaned. ‘Just let me sleep’, I thought, ‘please let me sleep!’
“Well, I need the favour repaying. These girls need to be paid for the fine work they have done already and the work that they are yet to do.”
I turned my head to look at them. There were a lot of them. Five, six, maybe more, I am not sure what was real and what was a double triggered by my weary brain.
“OK.” I responded. “My credit cards are in my wallet, I’ll pay.”
“Good boy!”
Jim allowed me to slump back down but five minutes later some random female voice asked if I could sign a form. I heard giggles and mock flirtation and music and champagne corks, but all I wanted to do was sleep, which was not altogether easy, as every time I managed to start to doze, I was prompted for another signature. Eventually, Jim realised he was in no fit state to continue and hoisted me up and told me that it was time to hit the road. For his own amusement, once we were outside, Jim put me back on a bike, but after dropping off it to my left once and to my right once, he decided enough was enough, put a big, chubby, brotherly arm around me and steered me back to our hotel.
The following lunchtime, myself, Jim and the eight others were in a mini bus, all looking paler than Casper, heading towards Copenhagen airport when my mobile phone rang. It was one of those sturdy mobiles that were just coming into regular use back then and was big enough to double up as a bed for a Chihuahua.
“Hello,” I croaked in a voice that needed its next dose of water and paracetamol.
“Hello, is that Mr.Billingham? Mr. Richard Billingham?” a male voice asked.
“Yeeeerrrsss”, I groaned as if it was painful to even say three letters.
“Its Middleland Bank Visa here, Mr. Billingham. We just wanted to check that you are currently in Copenhagen?”
“I am,” I replied, “but how did you know?”
“There was some unusual activity on your credit card last night, sir. We just wanted to ensure it was not a fraudulent transaction?”
“I haven’t used my credit card whilst I’ve been here!” I protested. “There must be some mistake!”
“It was at 4.30 am this morning, at a place called ‘Nipples & Tipples’?”
“Oh, yeah!” I said feeling my pale skin turn crimson, “that was me!”
“That’s fine sir,” said the voice, “enjoy the rest of the trip.”
As soon as I put the phone down, it started to ring again. I started to panic and without answering it, I began feeling for receipts in my pocket. I dug out the full contents of every pocket.
I prodded Jim who was snoring next to me. He didn’t move. I flicked his nose as hard as I could. Jim and his ruffled hair sat up. He looked jaundiced.
“What?” he asked, not sounding as exuberant as he had in the club.
“How much in pounds is four thousand krone?” I asked.
Jim paused for a few seconds to think.
�
��Just under five hundred quid.”
“Shit!” I said. “SHIT!”
“What’s up, Richie?” someone asked.
“Last night, lapdancing.” They were the only words I could manage to get out.
“Richie, forget about it.” Jim said, “We had a great night. If you had stayed awake, you would have loved it, it was a Leonard Cohen themed lapdancing club. The manager was a big Leonard Cohen fan, so every girl had a name based on a song of his. Marianne, Suzanne, Chelsea. Iodine, Janis, what an amazing place! If you had to pay five hundred quid, just for a brief glimpse of it, then it was worth it. Don’t stress! It’s a stag do, these things happen. Put it down to experience!”
“Jim, if it was just five hundred quid, I could just about it handle it!
But its not just one receipt for four thousand krone, its…..” I said counting the receipts out onto my lap, “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight! That’s almost four grand! I didn’t even see a fucking tit!”
As I was kicking off, we went into a tunnel,
“Look out the window, Richie!” I heard Andy “Dogger” Woodward shout.
“Why?” I asked, “I can’t see anything, its dark, I can only see myself.”
“Well, at least you’ve seen a fucking tit now!”
The mini bus erupted into laughter and I was left to contemplate whether I could hide the fact that I had lost four thousand pounds in my sleep, from Jemma, for the rest of my life!
Brad
I’m a big bloke now. I’m forty and Tyrene says if I keep supping the tinnies at this rate it won’t be long before I’m forty stone! I’m nineteen stone right now and if I had a dollar for every time Tyrene called me a “big, fat, lazy bastard”, I could charter a yacht and sail to the Whitsundays and we live in Perth! These days, when I have a shower, I lose half the water in those ripples of fat on my belly and I’ve got bigger tits than a Pommie cricket ground on a sunny day.
I’ve not always been big though. When I was a young bloke, I was a bit of a catch for the young pretty girls and I must say, Tyrene was a looker in her day too, before the fags and the drink took effect. I met her when I was twenty seven and she was twenty four, over in a bar in Melville. I’d had a string of girlfriends before Tyrene. Only loved one of them though and she was a Pom! Her name was Kelly, I remember meeting her, back in ’94, like it was yesterday. Horizontal bungee would not normally have been my idea of nightclub entertainment. I was in Cairns at a nightclub called “End of The World”, schooner in hand, watching a load of young blokes with bike helmets and knee pads on, sprinting towards a beer on a table at the far end of the dance floor, with a bungee rope tied round their butts. Joel, Brett and I were letting our hair down, having reached our final destination after seven weeks backpacking around Australia. We had taken in Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane and loads of fantastic places along the way. We toured the MCG in Melbourne, crossed the Harbour Bridge and checked out the Opera House in Sydney. In Brisbane, we went water skiing, scuba diving at Airlie Beach, visited a strip joint in Surfers Paradise and in Cairns, I wanted to finish with a bungee jump. A proper one.
I was standing on my own watching these bungee guys. Both Brett and Joel had already disappeared with young women, in their attempt to add another used prophylactic to Cairns sewerage system. These bungee guys were sprinting along, like demented athletes, to within a metre of the beer, before the rope became taut, then it would catapult them back to their starting point, usually along the ground. OK, it was pretty funny, but there was no way I was having a go!
I was about to finish off my schooner and head back to Caravella, the backpacker Hostel where we were staying. I didn’t fancy heading to bed though. We were in a dorm and I had already scared the girl in the bunk next to me that morning, as I had woken up to find my ‘snake in the grass’ had found its way through the gap in my PJ’s. She looked aghast and impressed in equal measure! I thought maybe if I headed back there I could watch the World Cup soccer on the big screen out the back, if a game was on. I had watched the Italy-Ireland there with a load of Poms and Irish and the atmosphere was great, especially when the Irish scored.
Just as the last drops of the amber nectar disappeared down my laughing gear and I was about to set back off to the Esplanade and Caravellas, I was stopped in my tracks by the next bungee contestant. They had obviously run out of daft blokes willing to give it a go, so a young woman had stepped up to the plate. A woman who, up to that point, must have been the finest looking woman I had ever seen. It’s hard to explain what it is that makes a woman attractive, but whatever magic it is, Kelly had it. I suppose you’d call it a magnetic beauty. A sexual aura. There is just no way, fifteen years on, I can describe her in a way that will do her justice, but as a starting point, the fact that she still looked incredible wearing a bicycle helmet says bloody loads! Kelly, who would have been about twenty three at the time, was wearing a white t-shirt with a silver heart on it and her breasts were pushing firmly against it with her nipples prodding against it like a pair of concealed pistols. As a bloke, I can’t say this was something I noticed often in women, but with Kelly, I was immediately aware that her skin was perfect. It looked as though someone in heaven, had been smoothing and polishing it, like a prize bowling ball, before sending her to earth. The DJ announced her arrival,
“And now we have our first female contestant of the evening. What’s your name and where are you from?”
“My name is Kelly and I’m from England.”
There was a mix of boos and cheers. I cheered, not because she was a Pom but because she was bloody gorgeous.
“Nice to meet you, Kelly. Good to have you here. Whereabouts in England are you from?”
“A small town called Ormskirk.”
“Hornchurch,” the DJ incorrectly repeated, “I’ve heard of Hornchurch.”
“No! Orms - kirk!” Kelly stated.
“Can’t say I’ve heard of that place! Anyone famous from Ormskirk?”
“The Beatles!” Kelly answered with a mischievous smile.
“Strewth, really?” said the DJ genuinely surprised, “I thought they were from Liverpool?”
“It’s near Liverpool. Less than twenty miles away.”
“Right! And were all ‘The Beatles’ from there?”
“No,” Kelly replied, “just Paul and John. Ringo and George weren’t. Penny Lane is in Ormskirk and Strawberry Fields. They were originally called ‘The Quarrymen’ and then ‘The Ormskirk Beatles’ before shortening it, to just ‘The Beatles’!”
“Wow! Seriously?”
Kelly started laughing.
“No, I’m just joking! No-one famous is from Ormskirk. Not as far as I know!”
“Well, maybe Kelly, you might put it on the map. Your name is Kelly, right?”
“Yes. That bit was true!”
“So, having just made me look a fool, do you think this horizontal bungee will make a fool out of you or do you think you can reach that elusive beer over there which none of the blokes have managed to get to?”
“I’ll certainly give it my best shot!”
“Attagirl! Let’s get a bit of a chant going for Kelly! KEL-LY! KEL-LY! KEL-LY!”
The whole crowd in ‘End Of The World’ started clapping and chanting or at least the male contigent did, the females probably looked at Kelly like she was a dingo in a sheep pen. Kelly looked better than she ran! The DJ, no doubt raging after Kelly’s bogus story about ‘The Ormskirk Beatles’ must have taken great pleasure in her cord tightening about ten feet from the beer, she lost her balance and bounced back to her starting point like a speedboat on a choppy sea! The male clappers gave Kelly another round of applause, purely based on effort rather than attainment. If she weighed then, as much as I weigh now, I guess the applause may have been muted. She kept smiling despite the bumps and bruises.
For the next half an hour, I became a bit of a stalker, as I just could not help following Kelly’s every move. As I have said, I was a bi
t of a looker then, tanned, muscular, fit, so I was used to being chased by women rather than chasing them, but Kelly was something a little bit special. She appeared to be with a couple of other girls and the three of them were laughing and smiling and looking as a happy as a croc chewing Captain Hooks arm. Three schooners and alcohol-induced Dutch courage later, I made my move. I found out later that Kelly was on her way to the John, but all I knew at the time was that she was finally on her own, so when she walked past me, I gently took hold of her hand.
“Fancy doing a real one?” I asked.
“A real one?”
“Bungee. I’ve just travelled all the way across Australia and my intention when I finally arrived in Cairns, was to do a bungee. It would be heaps better and heaps more memorable if I did it tied to you!”
“Is that how Aussies chat women up? Suggest they get tied up and throw themselves off a cliff?”
“It’s not off a cliff! It’s at ‘The Cairns Bungee Tower’, I’m going to register tomorrow. Fancy coming with me?”
Kelly’s face reddened and her smile re-emerged. She had a fantastic smile and Christ did she have fantastic lips! I imagined, when I saw her lips, that Kelly had been in the Hunter Valley, standing barefooted in a barrel, crushing grapes to make wine, with a load of other backpackers and then she had dropped something and had to swim to the bottom of the barrel, but no-one else noticed so they trod on her lips! Crazy I know, but that’s what I imagined!