Flashback: Strip Clubs with Grubby on Easter Sunday

By Pauly
Cusco, Peru

Grubby sent out a semi-cryptic tweet this morning which reminded me of an event that happened on Easter Sunday six years ago in 2005. I was in Vegas for March Madness and had just locked up my first ever WSOP assignment with Poker Prof and Flipchip. To celebrate, Grubby and I headed out to a few strip clubs, not really aware of the fact that Easter Sunday would be one of the worst days of the year to hang out with strippers. We had to assume that a few were more religious than we had anticipated.

Anyway, this portion of Existentialist Conversations with Strippers got cut from the final draft of Lost Vegas, something that I was really bummed about, but I understood why my editor(s) felt that the subject matter was redundant.

So, let's take a ride in the Tao of Poker time machine and head back to 2005...

Existentialist Conversations with Strippers, Part III

"I would believe only in a god who could dance." - Nietzsche

We wandered past the credulous tourists and devoted gamblers onto the casino floor. I was staying in Vegas for another day but Senor had to get back to Rhode Island for work. Grubby agreed to drive Senor to the airport and we had about fifteen minutes to kill. Senor wanted to play Pai Gow Poker at some point during his trip. We never had the chance with all the time we spent at the Mandalay Bay's sports book gambling on college basketball, or playing regular poker, and hanging out at strip clubs. We wasted a few minutes after we got slightly lost and stopped to ogle at all the hot college girls on spring break. We resumed our quest for a Pai Gow table and finally found one. The only problem... it was a $50 minimum table... when we were looking for a $5 or $10 table.

Caesar's did not spread any low limit Pai Gow. There were six tables and half of them were empty. We walked over to one table where a pit boss was talking to the dealer. Grubby asked the suit if he could drop the minimum bet to $25 since we wanted to teach Senor how to play. We told him we were going to leave in five minutes to take him to the airport. The pit boss agreed. Our dealer Lee, a middle aged Korean woman, quickly explained the rules to Senor. We bought in for $100 each and got four green chips. I won the first few hands and pushed the rest. Senor won $75 in three hands and walked away after he tipped Lee $10. He won enough money for dinner and was satisfied with his first Pai Gow experience. Grubby and I played for a few more hands. I went up $100 then decided to walk away. Grubby was a winner too. On our way to the cashier's window Senor mentioned, "You won yourself enough money to cover dinner and a few lap dances."

Grubby drove Senor to the airport but we encountered traffic trying to get out of the labyrinth called Caesar's parking garage. Grubby avoided the crowded Las Vegas Blvd. and drove down side streets en route to McCarran Airport. Grubby was officially a local and had been living in Vegas for three months. It felt cool to have a different perspective of a city that was so heavily populated with dipshit tourists and jaded locals working in the service industry. After we said good-bye to Senor, Grubby sped off in our quest to do a little strip club hopping. We had already hit up Sin a few days prior, which I loved -- especially Jessina. Grubby suggested a handful of places. He and his sister, Grubette, had had a crazy night at Club Paradise a few nights earlier and he wanted to try a different place. We headed to the North part of the Strip and decided to check out Olympic Gardens.

As we drove up to the club, a Las Vegas Metro squad car sat out front with it's doors wide open. An animated guy spoke very loudly to the two cops as they stood with their arms crossed.

"That doesn't look promising," I said.

We parked and walked inside. Grubby pointed out that the doors were wide open and how that was also another bad sign. We took a peek inside and it was empty. We didn't even bother sitting down and walked right out. I could only imagine what might have gone down twenty minutes before we showed up. maybe we missed a good fight? Or an extremely drunk and frisky customer getting rowdy with the dancers?

We found our way to Treasures and the parking lot looked empty. That's when I remembered that it was Easter Sunday night.

"It's not like strippers are religious or anything," Grubby explained on the walk to the entrance of the lavish strip club.

We paid the cover charge and made our way inside. It reminded me of a cross between an art museum and Anne Rice's house in a weird fusion of Goth meets Italian Renaissance. A stage with funky lights and a stripper pole sat up front with winding stairs leading up to a balcony which wrapped around the room. If you removed all the smaller tables and booths along the walls, the strip club could have been a great venue for live music. We found a table and a few minutes passed before a waitress came over. I did not spot any available strippers. In the booth across from us, a bald accountant from Ohio happily sat with two strippers. They were laughing and sipping cocktails and the black girl erotically rubbed his chest and while the blonde girl applied more lipstick as we watched and a small wave of envy flashed over us.

"This is just like a regular bar. I'm being ignored," Grubby said in a dejected tone.

"Easter Sunday," I reassured him that it wasn't us, just the fact that strippers were more religious than we anticipated.

Our waitress eventually arrived with our over-priced beers and I scanned the room for available strippers. One danced on the stage as bad Eastern European techno music blasted over the sound system in the near-empty room. A few dancers were scattered around and busy entertaining other guests. At Sin it seemed that strippers constantly walked around and offered their services for a dance. At Treasures, the most action we got was watching the bald Ohio guy get double teamed by the Silicone Twins.

That's when Julie stumbled over.

Extremely wasted women are a turn off... unless they are completely passed out (Sorry, bad frat boy joke). She was so ripped to the tits drunk that she didn't even bother using her stripper name and blurted out her real name. Julie then sprawled out on my lap and slurred, "Spank me!"

I obliged and she screamed again motioning towards Grubby, "Spank me!"

He spanked her and I followed up with another "whack." I wondered if I could add that to my resume?

Special Skills: Knowledge of Java. I also speak three languages fluently, can make a bong out of any household item, and spank strippers.

How could I not get hired with those mad skills? Julie asked us if we wanted a dance. Grubby gave her a quick thumbs down and I reluctantly agreed. She sat up and waited until the next song. She slumped over me and I could smell the liquor on her breath. That's when I uttered, "You know, Nietzsche died of syphilis."

That comment went right over her head.

Out of the hundreds of strippers working that night, I was matched up with the Tara Reid of strippers. The new song began and she took off her top and began her tipsy lap dance. A couple of times she lost her balance and slipped off my lap. I caught her each time and was worried that if I dropped her, one of the bouncers would rush over and kick me in the junk. It was a horrible experience and I pissed away $20 on half-assed grope from a soused stripper. Normally, a half-naked woman grinding away to Rick James' Give It To Me Baby is a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I wasn't aroused by Drunk Julie and couldn't wait for our moment to end. Our four minutes together was like ordering a bowl of soup and having it served cold with a dozen cockroaches floating around in there and glazed with both a urine and semen sample.

We walked out of the strip club and passed the bouncers. I shrugged my shoulders and looked up into the desert sky. I smiled because I found myself on the bitter end of karmic payback for attending a strip club on Easter Sunday.

* * *
Thus end our Tao of Poker flashback. Oh, and Happy Easter to Grubby!

Existentialist Conversations with Strippers: Sunshine, Jesus Freaks, and the Afternoon Shift

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

"This work is an attempt to understand the time I live in." - Albert Camus

Bad Blood flew into Las Vegas for a little post-WSOP hang time. After five summers, he's the only one of my friends who figured out that poker media types have zero to little time to socialize during the WSOP. He strategically picked the days after the completion of WSOP to get sloppy as we embarked on some of the best misadventures that I had in a very long time.

Bad Blood and I go back, way back to the warm and fuzzy Party Poker days shortly after Moneymaker's epic win in 2003. We used to play several times a week together and developed a bond that has lasted over a half of a decade. Bad Blood was the one who introduced me to the Procedure; a three-pronged evening that entails drinking, strip clubs, and poker.

I've been fortunate to have taken part in more than one Bad Blood-captained sojourns to strip clubs in both Las Vegas and his hometown of G-Vegas. In fact, just a month earlier during my time away from the WSOP, both Professional Keno Player Neil Fontenot and I had the pleasure of tagging along with Bad Blood to one of the local South Carolina gentleman's clubs. Talk about the other side of the tracks. The best looking dancer in G-Vegas could possibly hump the day shift at the Rhino if she could somehow kick her meth habit and drag her three kids across country with her.

The afternoon shift at the Rhino features the bottle of the barrel for Rhino girls, however, when compared to the rest of the stripping gene pool, they are still the tip of the sword. Most of the girls who end up on the afternoon shift at the Rhino are usually damaged goods in some form or another. It's a place for newbies to the pole who are desperate for cash, 40+ year old strippers a few years past their heyday, and single moms with multiple children who couldn't find decent day care. Where as some work places in Europe have day care centers on site for their employees, the Rhino doesn't exactly have a swing set out back. There's a Romper Room in the darkest corner, but the activities in that place should not be viewed by anyone under 21. Let's just say, that the Rhino does not actively promote "Take your daughter to work day" unless she happens to be a 18 year old former gymnast that knows how to shake her booty to Flo Rida's latest album.

Bad Blood arranged free passage from the cab driver since they get kick backs to funnel horny walking ATMs to various clubs around Sin City. The Rhino looked different during the day as you approached it. It was 110+ degrees and the mid-afternoon scorching sun gave everything outside a white glow. Even with shades on, your eyes were bombarded with the glare. It took several moments to adjust to the darkness inside the Rhino. Murky figures moved quickly in the shadows, sort of like the Vietcong ready to spring an ambush on a batch of fresh grunts in the jungle.

In the past, I made a beeline to the bar since it was the only lit area in the place. I was able to inspect the goods better that way. That time, however, we sat down at a table near the stage. Bad Blood turned down the first young girl in a plaid skirt who saddled up to him. He did not resist the second wave... a 6 foot tall Nordic beauty with breasts the side of medicine balls... sat down next to him.

Someone snuck up from behind and put her hands over my eyes.

"Guess who?" she said in in twang.

It sounded Southern maybe even East Texas. I didn't know who it was. She was just a random bleach-dyed blonde stripper with collagen injected lips who decided to pounce on me. It was her lucky day. My girlfriend approved of the trip to the Rhino and I had a wad of bills in my pocket after a score in the Dream Team Poker event.

"I'm Sunshine. Can I sit down?" she asked.

I nodded and a waitress wandered over. I had a two drink tickets and offered to buy Sunshine a cocktail.

"Sorry honey, I don't drink," she said as she leaned in to whisper, "I'll have an ice water. Get a double and ask for a water back. That way they won't charge you for the water."

I nodded and repeated her suggestion to the waitress. By that point, Bad Blood's bald head had disappeared into the bosoms of his girl.

"Where are y'all from?" asked Sunshine.

"I'm from South Carolina," said Bad Blood. "And he's from... where you calling home these days?"

"L.A.," I answered. "These days it's L.A."

"How do you know each other?" asked Sunshine.

"We went to school together," said Bad Blood.

"Yeah, we played hockey at Cornell together."

Bad Blood's girl stroked his head and Sunshine hopped on my lap.

"So you're hockey players?"

"Not anymore. That was like 15 years ago in a galaxy far far away."

"What do y'all do now?"

"He designs hot air balloons. He used to be a pilot but now he's a designer. Me? I'm a writer."

"In Hollywood? For who?"

"I'd rather not say."

"That's so cool. I knew there was something special about you. We're very similar. I'm a creative person too. I wrote, directed, and acted in my own film last year."

For the next five minutes, Sunshine revealed the intricate details of her film... a low-rent inter-galactic gangbang flick with sci-fi undertones.

"I even did my own stunts and we have special effects! In the final scene I fuck this alien with two cocks."

"Are you influenced by Philip K. Dick?" I asked wondering if she was also a fan of my favorite sci-fi writer.

"Bill Dick? Is he the black guy with the 14-inch cock who gives all those girls facials in Cumfiesta?"

Philip K. Dick. Bill Dick. Same guy.

An aging porn actress latched herself onto me. Luckily she seemed more interested in discussing the arts instead of trying to hustle me for lapdances in the VIP room.

Some of the entertainers perform under a persona and role play during their shift. You never learn anything about them since they're supposed to be globs of clay and become whatever erotic fantasy that you wish. Others just change their name and have no qualms telling you their daily bad beats and tragic "how I ended up on the pole" stories. Within three minutes Sunshine gave me the run down on the last three decades. She grew up in Texas near the Louisiana border. She got pregnant in high school and had a back alley abortion that got botched. So she could no longer have kids. She lived in New Orleans for a spell and married a Cuban coke dealer who went to jail for killing an undercover narc. She was afraid that the thugs who he worked for were going to come after her, so she fled for El Paso, then worked in Las Vegas for a spell before she ended up in Chatsworth, CA. If you know that little enclave in the Valley, then you know it's the porn capitol of the world.

Sunshine was one of the thousands of workers who fell into the booming sex industry in the 1980s. VCRs made it possible for any pervert to wank off to pornographic material without leaving their own homes. Dingy and sticky porno theatres became a thing of the past. At the time, she was a raging sex addict and cocaine addict. The porn industry catered to both of her needs. One year turned into a decade. Her 20s were a daze. All of a sudden, she woke up one day and it was 1999 and she was strung out, completely broke, and accumulated thousands of dollars in medical bills for a lacerated rectum after a tragic dildo incident.

She spent the last decade in and around Vegas. For a while, she hustled whales at the Mirage as a high end escort but that didn't work out after she got thrown over a couch by her pimp and broke seven ribs. While she healed, she worked in a call center specializing in bondage fantasies. She did everything possible to extract the credit card numbers and other personal info from her sex-deprived callers. One of her bosses used that info for an international identity theft ring. She got arrested but her boss fled town. After a short stint in jail, she was released and ended up on the pole to pay her legal fees.

In the last few years, she used the money at the Rhino to fund her own porn films. She told me her website name and made me say it out loud five times so I would not forget. Since she loved sci-fi stuff she wanted to incorporate those themes into her orgies on film.

"That's a remarkable way to target multiple audiences," I said. "Plus sci-fi geeks usually can't get laid so they'll be the ones buying this porn in bulk."

She offered up a lap dance first before we headed into the VIP room.

"I want you to test drive the car before you buy it," she said as she stood up and pulled me into the corner.

Before she danced, she asked if she could give me a psychic reading. She closed her eyes and put her hand on my chest above my heart. She said that she then asked the universe for a sign. Images pop up in her head and that's her psychic vision.

"I'm envisioning your father. He's not a creative person like you. He wore a gray uniform. I'm seeing a large bus. Was he a bus mechanic? I have this vision of a man in gray fixing a bus."

I told her she was wrong. However, she was almost correct and onto something. My old man was a suit who humped a desk job for an insurance company in midtown Manhattan. He wore a gray suit every day and took the subway to work. Either Sunshine was somewhat psychic, or full of shit and got lucky.

I arranged a very good deal for the VIP room at a discount. I even greased the bouncer to make sure we got a few extra songs. Bad Blood was in one of the dark corners while I sat in the other. Sunshine revealed her average sized breasts under a bluish light. She was in her mid-40s but her body was well maintained and had curves like a 30 year old.

"You used to have implants?" I blurted out.

"How did you know?"

I rubbed the scar underneath one of her breasts.

"I'll probably get them again in ten years when they really start to sag. For now, all of my money for cosmetic surgery goes to my face."

She pointed to her lips, eyes, and forehead.

Over the next few minutes, she gave me a sampling of her raunchy phone sex lines. She also revealed that she hasn't done coke since 9/11. She's been sober from booze for thirty months and that she attended Sexaholics Anonymous meetings twice a week and had not had sex since Christmas 2007. She admitted that she blew a guy on July 4th of last year, but that was because he offered her $5,000 for her a suck and a swallow. She was late on her rent and the AC on her car broke. Everyone has a price. Even those who are recovering addicts trying to live life on the straight and narrow.

She abruptly changed the subject and spoke about her recent relationship with Jesus that had been intensifying. She mentioned how she tries to channel all of her sexual frustration towards the heavens. She has been getting into a couple of Christian rock bands and often masturbates to the Kronicles. At that point, I had to cut her off. I didn't like the path she was leading me down. I was either trying to convert me or about to tell me some freaky shit involving a crucifix that I really did not want to think about. After all, I was on vacation and all I wanted was to have her rub her titties in my face while she told me some great stories about her daily encounters of life as a sex industry worker. Jerking off to Jesus was not one of the topics listed on the Rhino's afternoon symposium.

Before I left the VIP room, she asked to give me another psychic reading. She put her hand on my chest and close her eyes. She quickly opened them and said, "I had this vision that you gave me a $100 tip."

Talk about a sneaky hustle. I shrugged my shoulders and started to walk out when she grabbed my arm.

"I know you got it. I felt that bulge in your pocket."

"I'll tell you what. Why don't we play a game. You close your eyes and count to twenty. That will give me enough time to pull out my ca..."

Before I could finish, she put her hands over her eyes and started counting loudly.

By the time she got to seven, I snuck out of the VIP room.


Original content written and provided by Pauly from Tao of Poker at www.taopoker.com. All rights reserved. RSS feeds are for non-commercial use only.

WSOP Day 28: Horse Day 2, The Procedure Part II, and More Existentialist Conversations with Strippers

By Pauly
Las Vegas, NV

"I'm addicted to pain," slurred the stripper as she slowly turned her arm to expose her left wrist. Through the faint light I could see several marks. She pulled my hand towards her wrist and I felt the roughness of her scars.

"It took me almost ten years, but I finally figured out that I'm addicted to pain. I love misery. I can't be happy unless I'm hurting."

Never swing at the first pitch.

That was one of the few words of advice my father gave me. However, when we walked into the Rhino a little after 2pm, MeanGene, BadBlood and myself were swarmed with strippers as we enacted part two of the Procedure. It was a routine invented and perfected by BadBlood back in G-Vegas.

Booze + Strippers + Poker = The Procedure

I had only done it once before with BadBlood and Grubby last December. The magic worked for us. We all played a tournament at the Venetian. Grubby made the final table and I bubbled off the final table when Grubby busted me.

Lucky for me, my girlfriend is totally cool with me frequenting strip clubs. It was even her birthday and I got a pass. She even gave me $225... which I quickly blew on overpriced watered down cocktails and the cover charge.

One moment we sauntered through the front door of the Rhino and the next moment we had a girl each on our arm. I headed to the bar to get a better look. The bar at the Rhino has the best lighting in the joint. If there's one place to inspect the goods, that's it.

She was drunk when she grabbed me and led me to the bar. I bought a round while she hung on my hip. I could smell the booze on her breath. Great, how the hell did I attract the drunk stripper? Karma? Lack of karma? Or simply bad luck?

I originally had a choice. Stripper A or Stripper B. Since I politely turned down the first stripper, I went with Stripper B. Looking back, I should have swung at the first pitch.

"I've only been taking Proazac for three days," she screamed over an AC/DC song.

On the third day of Prozac? That pretty much summed up my visit to the afternoon shift. The stripper was drunk, sedated on happy pills, sloppy, and slurring her speech like Albert Finney at happy hour.

Her name was Dylan.

"Like the singer?" I asked.

"No, like the 90210 character," she said.

"Seriously?"

"Yes. Oh my God, I'm on the South Beach diet," she blurted out.

She could never stay on the same topic for more than ninety seconds before the conversation had more multiple plot twists than a M. Night Shyamalan flick, except she didn't see dead people.

Dylan was also OCD, ADD, and definitely suicidal. She had model looks with the mental stability of Courtney Love.

"People think I'm really fucked up," she said.

"Why? Did you kill your husband, fake the suicide note, and then squeeze his band members out of millions of dollars in royalties?"

"Huh?"

"Nevermind. So where you from?"

"Oklahoma. Oh my God, the last time I went home, I had not been there in seven or eight years, I saw some old friends from high school and you know what they were doing?"

"Cooking up a fresh batch of crank?"

"Almost. They were huffing propane. Driving around in a car, smoking cigarettes, and huffing propane."

"Did you join them?"

"Hell no."

The first fifteen minutes of our encounter were interesting and fascinating. Some strippers reveal very little and ask lots of questions and let you talk. Others will tell you all of their problems. Dylan unloaded on me. As I said, the first few minutes were great as I soaked up her life story and hung on every word. Part of the fun of hanging out with strippers is trying to dig deep and figure out what made them tick. What tragic event in their life led them down the path towards the pole? With Dylan, I didn't get to play the game. She was so drunk that she spilled the beans and then some.

Former gymnast. Majored in English at some college in Denton, TX. Got knocked up at 20 and dropped out of school. Had a botched back-alley abortion and can't have kids. Her step-father murdered her mother and knocked up her half-sister. She was a real life Jerry Springer episode gyrating on my lap and spilling Grey Goose all over my Ecco shoes.

She kept telling me that she was a gymnast. It was like when a former high-school athlete can not stop living in the glory days and they tell you the same old stories about how they hit the winning shot to win the league championship. The drunk stripper had her mind frozen on the happiest time of her life... senior year in high school.

"Since I was such an awesome gymnast, I could do all these cool tricks on the pole," she bragged. "But I like to drink, so I don't do them. Om my God, the last time I tried to get super fancy and show off to my friend Becky, I was so fuckin' wasted that I slipped and fell flat on my face. I chipped a tooth and I got seven stitches in my chin."

She lifted up her chin and let me feel those scars.

"Did you get off on the pain?"

"Yeah. I love the sight of my own blood."

"Do you have a livejournal page?"

"What's that? I'm on Myspace. Oh my God, did you Saturday Night Live this week? I love that show."

I looked over and BadBlood had a tall exotic Nordic woman sat on his lap. To my right was a happy MeanGene. On his lap sat a dominatrix-looking chick who could have been an extra from the freaky S&M inspired party scene at Zion from the last Matrix flick. All she was missing were a few firearms.

"Oh, but she definitely had some guns," mentioned MeanGene.

At the time, he had the top four buttons of his shirt undone. She slipped one hand inside and did some sort of scratching motion. That's when I noticed Stripper A had joined us. She said she was from Italy and looked like Kate Hudson. I did my best to bring her into my conversation. At some point I plotted the switcheroo. I desperately wanted to ditch the drunk and go for the quiet European one. Every time I tried to shift the conversation, the drunk girl interrupted. I kept making eye contact with Stripper A but she didn't get it and left. I had a second chance at her and blew it again. The result? More depressing and soused ramblings from Stripper B... the happy-pill popping, drunk, former gymnast who had a sister with a daughter/sister. Wait a sec, wasn't that the plot from Chinatown?

I asked to go into the VIP room because I thought it would shut her up. Nope. Didn't work. She still kept yammering and would stop in the middle of a dance to yap about something totally annoying. That was a sick bad beat.

"I used to love Xanax," she said. "When I first took it, I would be sleepy and pass out. Then after a while I took so much that all I felt was..."

"You felt normal?"

"Yeah, how did you know? You sound like you have a lot experience with pills. What do you do again?"

"I'm a psychiatrist."

Forty minutes in, she had not asked me my name nor what I did. I was a little bummed out. We already made up cover stories before we went to the Rhino. BadBlood stuck with his usual cover... hot air balloon pilot. My cover? A psychiatrist from San Diego named Geno Papageorgio.

MeanGene was a last minute addition to the team. He had never done the Procedure before. He didn't even know he was going to a strip club. He made an impulsive decision at the last moment. He didn't even have a cover story planned and scrambled to come up with one during the taxi ride to the club. He decided to make it simple and told the truth... that he was a freelance writer who traveled the world. That made all chicks wet.

The VIP room with the drunk stripper was such a letdown. Nothing is more disappointing in life than getting a horrible lap dance. I couldn't wait to leave because she wouldn't stop talking. She kept bombarding me with her life's bad beat stories. It was totally depressing and I almost wanted to put on the new Coldplay album then kill myself.

As we left the VIP room, Dylan had the balls to ask for a tip.

"Why would I tip? You did a shitty job. You are lucky I didn't ask for my money back. I should have ditched you the moment we met, but I felt sorry for you."

For the first time since she latched herself onto me, she was dead silent. Freedom at last.

I left the VIP room and noticed that MeanGene and BadBlood were still inside. Day 2 of the 50K HORSE event was about to start and I needed to get MeanGene back to the Rio. BadBlood eventually finished up and joined me outside. I had to tip the bouncer to boot MeanGene out of the VIP room. The massive looking guy who could have been a linebacker for the Oakland Raiders trudged over to the corner and told MeanGene that it was time to leave.

MeanGene and his girl were holding hands as they left the room.

"Heya Doc, can I'm a little short. Can I borrow a few bucks?"

"Sure thing," I said and turned to his stripper. "How much does he owe you? $40? $60?"

"$300," she said.

What the fuck? Geno, you sex-pot. I turned to him and mouthed, "300?"

MeanGene smirked and shrugged his shoulders as I peeled off three Benjamins and handed it to the latex-ladened stripper.

"Oh and don't forget a tip," she said.

I handed her a $20 bill and she gave MeanGene a kiss on the cheek. She turned around and disappeared into the darkness of the Rhino.

We were nearly blinded by the blazing sun when we left the Rhino. As soon as my vision cleared up, I noticed that MeanGene's hair was messy. He had random scratch marks all over his neck and several lipstick smudges all over his cheek.

"At least I got her number," he said as a devious grin illuminated his face.


Original content written and provided by Pauly from Tao of Poker at www.taopoker.com. All rights reserved. RSS feeds are for non-commercial use only.

More Existentialist Conversations with Strippers: The Afternoon Shift

By Pauly
Key West, FL

"Never underestimate the afternoon shift," Lewey shouted those five words at the top of his lungs.

The weather was the culprit. The gang originally wanted breakfast at a French crepe place, however, the owners were away on holiday and the place was closed. They walked down Duval Street in search of alternative options and ended up at Sloppy Joes, where Hemingway used to get bombed back in his Key West days. After sampling every specialty drink on the menu, Lewey lost his volume control. I couldn't blame him. The drinks were delicious. The Key West Lemonade is by far the best, since you can barely taste the vodka thanks to the sour mix, which is why Lewey and company could drink eight in a two hour span.

It always rains at random times in Key West during the wet season. Sometimes it pours for five minutes then stops. In that instance, the rain kept coming. And coming. Most of Duval Street flooded within minutes. The boys were stuck at Sloppy Joes and continued to weather out the storm by drinking heavily. AlCantHang and I were stuck at the ACHC and eventually decided to make a run for it during a brief break in the rain.

The skies opened up as soon as we hit Duval Street. We were quickly drenched and stood under an awning to a jewelry shop for protection from the rain. We eventually said, "Fuck it!" and ran the last two blocks through the rain. We rushed inside Sloppy Joes and my entire shirt was soaked.

Lewey had lost all forms of volume control. He was drunk and fired up. We got odd glances from other tables from some of the drunken babble spewing from Lewey, who was in rare Lewey form. I ordered a couple of drinks to catch up.

"You're way behind," said our waitress.

The only thing that could calm Lewey down was The Classy Joint. It was not even 4pm on a Monday. Most of the people I knew were still at work. And there we were, running through the raindrops and up the slippery flight of wooden stairs to shower the strippers on the afternoon shift with small bills.

"Never underestimate the afternoon shift," Lewey repeatedly told me.

I was venturing into new territory. The afternoon shift. Sort of the Bermuda Triangle for strippers. It had been several years since I visited a strip club during the day. There were random exceptions like going to a strip club at 6am or 7am after an all night bender in Las Vegas or playing poker on the Strip all night with Grubby. But for the most part, it was the Wall Street days when I last I ventured inside a club during normal working hours. Sometimes the stress was so immense, you needed to escape from reality with a lap dance.

When I lived in Atlanta as a college student, my friends and I were frequent patrons of the crappy Sunday morning breakfast buffet at the Pink Pony strip joint located behind a Denny's. I was stuck behind enemy lines in the middle of the bible belt and instead of attending church services like a pious Christian, I smoked dope with Jewish frat boys and ogled strippers.

There's a definite difference from the girls who work on weeknights vs. weekends and girls who work the afternoon shift vs. the evening shift. I was fascinated and intrigued by the reasons that drove a woman to dance the Monday afternoon shift at a Key West strip club during the off season. A foul odor of desperation lingers around strip clubs during the day. And since there's a more natural light that appears every time the front door opens, the place never looks as sultry as the middle of the night.

It's also a frame of mind. If I was as shitfaced as I was the night before (think Dudley Moore drunk) when I stumbled in, I might not have picked up on the subtle differences. Like the geriatric patrons. There were only a dozen or so guys checking out the afternoon shift and we made up 60% of the total number. The rest of the clientele seemed much older. They were in their 60s and 70s. Retired guys. Waiting to die. Might as well have a rum cocktail and a lapdance while you're on heaven's waiting list.

Even though we were inside The Classy Joint, it definitely lost a tinge of class during the afternoon hours. The club was just the type of seedy place where you might find William Kennedy Smith or any other soused heirs to the Kennedy name, knocking back cheap scotch at 3pm in the afternoon while fondling the sketchy girls with visible c-section scars and multiple bruises all over their cracked-out body.

We didn't have much to choose from. There were three mediocre dancers at the time... the angry Latina, the voluptuous Jennifer Hudson look-a-like, and the pale foreign girl from an Eastern-Bloc country who would come over and ask, "Do you vant a dansh?"

The foreign girl had long brown hair and crooked teeth. She barely looked 18 and was fresh off the boat. Her moves were less than graceful. Her lack of sun tan hinted that she just arrived in town and was working her way up the stripper food chain. She was cute enough to dance at The Classy Joint, but lacked the experience on proper pole dancing and more importantly, the act of stage seduction. She needed practice. Hence, the afternoon shift.

A giant green tattoo on her stomach read "Milano." She didn't look Italian and I wondered what that meant. Lewey saw the same thing and we quickly discussed the origins of her tattoo while she danced on stage. She heard everything we said. I tried to talk in hushed tones, but Lewey continued to scream at the top of his lungs.

"What's that tattoo all about?" he shouted.

"I guess that's her favorite city," I said. "Or her favorite brand of Pepperidge farm cookies."

"Or her favorite actress," said Lewey as he shoved three singles in between her breasts.

She looked over at us and asked, "Do you vant a dansh?"

The Latina with the c-section scar took the stage next. She was about twice the age as the foreign girl and appeared pissed off at something. Despite her angry demeanor, she had the best pole moves out of the bunch. She performed a weird trick where she'd shake her ass and it would vibrate faster than a hummingbird could flap its wings. Lewey almost had his nose dislocated when he got too close.

The last entertainer on the afternoon shift was a black woman in her 40s who called her self Kat. She purred and seductively moved along the stage like a cat. Unlike the rest of the strippers I encountered, she didn't shave her snatch. She had a bad boob job and you could see the multiple scars underneath her armpits. That's what happens when you go to the equivalent of Dr. Nick from The Simpsons to get your breasts enhanced in the back of some dude's mini-van.

I was not drunk and thereby not turned on by any of the women working the afternoon shift. An inebriated Lewey had a blast with a stack of singles sitting in front of him next to his cocktail. His head would disappear for about fifteen seconds whenever Kat would come over and swallow up his head in between her humongous breasts.

"The girls on the afternoon shift pay more attention to you. Yes, they're not as good looking, but they work harder for the money. You're getting more bang for the buck," explained Lewey.

His drunken ramblings almost made sense.

As Landow put it best, "Save the afternoon shift. Save the world."


This post was originally written and provided by Pauly from Tao of Pauly at www.taopauly.com. All rights reserved. RSS feeds are for non-commercial use only.

Existentialist Conversations with Strippers, Vol. III: Identity

By Pauly
Key West, FL

Editor's Note: This originally appeared on Tao of Pauly under the title AlCantHang and I Walk into a Bar...

Key West. It had the vibe of a Caribbean island without the color. The streets were flooded with sunburnt white people clutching souvenir bags and digital cameras. The AlCantHang Compound (ACHC) was off the beaten path, down a secret alley off a side street, definitely away from tourist central.

A few hours after the Sunday arrival, the guys hung out in the pool while I sat in the shade with AlCantHang and Big Mike. We drank and swapped Amsterdam tales. Most of the crew eventually wanted dinner. AlCantHang's primary objective was booze. They went for food while we walked over to Irish Kevin's, a bar on Duval Street which was an AlCantHang favorite.

From the view outside on the street, Irish Kevin's was located in the first floor of a two story structure, but from the inside, only one humongous space existed. We wandered inside the narrow bar, maybe three tables or four tables wide, with high ceilings. It was one of the longest bars I had ever seen running almost the entire length of the property which was at least thirty or forty yards.

A guy in a blue t-shirt and cargo shorts stood on stage with am acoustic guitar. He played popular cover songs like Jack and Diane and Sweet Home Alabama in a wacky manner. He interacted with the audience and encouraged them to sing-a-long and participate in his random goofiness like busting on people from New Jersey, changing the words to the songs, and guilt-tripping pedestrians to come inside and get shitfaced with everyone else.

It was exactly 8:08pm when I entered an Irish Bar in Key West with AlCantHang. Whenever you walk into a bar with AlCantHang, you're immediately assuming full responsibility for your actions. You always know what you are getting yourself into. There's no false pretense. You will drink and drink and drink and drink as life unfolds around you. You surrender to the flow of the liquor.

One of our friends described AlCantHang as a walking party. And when the party plops down at an Irish bar, you're knee deep in the depths of a serious mind-altering drinking binge. The best you can hope for is that your liver manages to escape with minimal damage and that the hangover the next day won't be devastating where you're clutching the porcelain god at sunrise with the worst case of the dry-heaves that you've had since the earliest days of the Clinton administration.

I knew the three basic tenants of the AlCantHang party-like-a-rock-star rules.

1. Pace yourself.
2. Drink lots of water.
3. And eat as much as possible.

I followed two but not the third. I drank on an almost empty stomach and by the sixth or seven beer, I got hit with a sledgehammer. We were seated at the end of the bar next to a kid, who barely looked old enough to drink. He was with his pretty girlfriend and they sipped some sort of rum and coke drink.

The musician onstage asked who was in the military. The kid raised his hand and said he was in the Army. AlCantHang quickly bought him a shot. That's when he discovered that the kid and his girlfriend lived in the town next to AlCantHang's. Small world.

Enter the Germans. Originally we thought they were Irish since they knew all the words to Irish Rover. As soon as the song ended, they screamed out,"Johnny Cash!"

The Krauts were fans of the man in black and over the next hour, that's all they screamed. In due time, AlCantHang bought them shots. The one German kid almost hurled when he downed a shot of Jim Beam black label. He told us that he'd been in America for two weeks and saw a bunch of cities, but none more fun than Key West.

AlCantHang pulled a $20 out of his wad and rushed up to the stage. He tipped the musician $20 to play Johnny Cash. Ten minutes later, he busted into Folsom Prison Blues.

"Since I got tipped $20 to play Johnny Cash from AlCantHang," the guy on stage said. "I'm going to play two songs."

The Germans went nuts. The entire bar sang along. Inside of a couple of hours, AlCantHang became the King of the Bar. Even the owner was buying him shots. If you've done any drinking under the AlCantHang Experience, you fully comprehend his magical powers.

The rest of the crew eventually joined us for a round or three in the back of the bar while a second musician took the stage. He was a black guy from New York City. He has some sick chops and was twenty-times the musician as the goofy guy, but he lacked the charisma of the first guy.

That's when AlCantHang said, "Time for some tits. And ass!"

Like Moses parting the Red Sea, AlCantHang darted through the crowd as the drunks in Irish Kevin's made a path for him to the front door. We walked fifteen meters and we reached the establishment that I will call, "The Classy Joint."

Editor's Note: I have been informed by my legal counsel to omit the actual name of the gentleman's clubs and change the names of the strippers in order to protect the innocent. Like they are giving me their real names anyway? I also refer to the first strip club as "The Classy Joint" because there will be a second establishment mentioned in this post that is made the first place look like the Rhino in Las Vegas.

The Classy Joint is located at the top of a slippery wooden staircase. Thousands of horny men and other wayward and desperate souls made the same climb. The cover charge was $5 but I got in for free since Lewey flashed his VIP card, which gave him and a guest free admission. I realized that the entire crew had a VIP card with the exception of me.

Big Mike scouted out a spot. The space was fairly large with a stage in the middle of the room with two stripper poles on opposite sides. Twenty or so chairs were around the stage while a long bar nestled against the back wall. There was a hallway off to the side which led to the Champagne Lounge. Next to that was a room with group of red velvet couches where the adult entertainers performed their infamous exotic lap dances under the sultry hues of red, purple, and pink neon.

We set up camp near the stage. One or two of us would take turns sitting at the stage and tipping the girls $1 bills. Except the AlCantHang crew were serious ballers. They were tipping a minimum of $5 or $6 and up to $20.

That's their game plan. It was the first night in town and they made it known that they were in Key West for a week. What at first seemed like they (well I guess it's the collective 'we') we recklessly splashed money around, it was all done on purpose to establish the fact that we were not cheap tourists looking to see some ass for next to nothing. As Big Mike explained, we were conditioning the natives. That way the next time we ventured inside, we got quick and attentive service. (And that would happen when we returned less than 19 hours later and you'll read about that in another post.)

Overtipping became the norm and within minutes our crew got all of the attention in The Classy Joint, even though it was crowded for a Sunday night. Everyone became secondary to the AlCantHang Experience. Big Mike took care of our waitress with a nice pre-tip. She was an attractive Cuban woman and didn't look as skanky as the girls on stage. That made her the most sophisticated lady in the club.

"How come you don't dance," asked Big Mike.

"I'm a mommy. Mommies don't dance. Would you like to see your mommy dance?" she said.

"Are you kidding me? The fuckin' whore? I'd love to see her actually get off her ass to make a dime," Big Mike honestly said.

The majority of the girls were average looking strippers. They would be working a second-tier club in Las Vegas or stripping during the day at one of the bigger clubs. But in Key West, they were the cream of the crop. And even though they were some of the better looking pieces of ass in town, they still had the wild reputation that Key West strippers have. The word "dirty" comes to mind.

Most strip clubs in Las Vegas implement a strict hands-off the dancer policy. The majority of the girls at the Rhino or Crazy Horse Too don't shower you with special attention unless you shower them with $100 bills. It's all business for the Las Vegas girls and if you want any sort of extra attention or groping, you have to fork over big bucks for an adventure in the VIP room. Of course, that's the biggest scam in Las Vegas next to the 99 cent shrimp cocktail.

At the Key West establishments, all you have to do is pay $20 for a naughty session which includes (and not limited too) crotch grabbing and getting your face used as a punching bag as the ladies slap their poorly designed fake-breasts into your face.

Sure, we all had fun. But our primary goal was to make sure AlCantHang had fun. And he did. Of course, we lost Lewey for sometime. He went into the back and didn't come out for a while. And when he finally reappeared he had a wry smirk on his face.

I befriended a stripper from the Czech Republic. She stood about five-foot ten with dark hair and natural breasts. She reminded me of Phoebe Cates and had a tattoo of a scorpion on her ankle. What looked like four cigarette burns peppered the inside of her thighs.

By the second lap dance, we had been discussing lesser known Milan Kundera books like Identity as she stood upside down on her hands and rubbed her shaved crotch on my chest.

"Your country was invaded my the Soviets," I rambled on during the fourth lap dance. "They set up a puppet government that eventually crumbled after the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. Your formerly behind the Iron Curtain nation-state was broken up into two republics and instead of staying behind in your new land of freedom, you fled to Key West where you strip for a bunch of old farts who are in town for a few hours when their cruise ship docked. Or you're grinding away for horny servicemen on leave taking every cent of their slave wages that our government pays them?"

"I like the warm weather," she cooed. "And I'm trying to earn enough money to bring my mother here."

Of course, she was trying to sell the old routine, "I'm only let potential serial killers and politicians pull my hair and fondle my breasts for $20 a pop so I can bring my mother to America."

She was a hustler, a decent one at that. The vixen almost had me convinced. But I've been around the block a few times and been to enough strip clubs that I could write a book about it. The American bimbos use law school or business school as their faux cover. The foreign ones like to bring up their mothers and highlight the hardships in their motherland. This one was down here to hook a big whale. Perhaps a lonely and well off retired businessman with a yacht and a multiple million dollar homes.

"Everyone loves their mothers," I said. "Don't you love money?"

"Of course," she said as she continued to dance to a random hip hop sing with fellatio lyrics.

"But do you love money more than your mother?"

She paused and said, "I love them equally both."

"But your mother is still washing dirty underwear for tourists in Prague, right? Because if you really loved her, she'd be in paradise with you, washing dirty underwear for tourists in Key West."

She didn't blink and tried to get me off the topic. She grabbed my junk for four long seconds and twisted my nipples until I begged her to stop.

I don't recall how long we spent at The Classy Joint. I was shitfaced drunk when I left the Irish bar and drank steadily at the strip club. We finally left and walked down the street. We made a turn down a dark alley next to a couple of abandoned buildings. A faint pink light could be seen and that was the strip club on the other side of the tracks.

The Dive was a step down on the stripper food chain. A couple of rungs. It reminded me of those horrible and sad clubs in shitbag towns and third-rate cities where career strippers end up when they hit 40 or on their last breaths before they croak from a speedball OD in the tiny bathroom of a no-tell motel freaking out the chubby married business man from the Midwest who hired the strung out vixen to suck his toes for $20 a toe.

"This is the place where Key West strippers come to die," said Landow in a straight face as we walked inside.

There was no cover charge. For obvious reasons. The place looked the basement of my fraternity house, except with a stripper pole. There was one dilapidated stage off to the left and a tiny bar to the right. Several old guys sat at the bar. Two of them had girls sitting on their laps. One was atrocious looking as her double-D sized books spilled out of her top. The better looking one seemed out of place until she smiled and I realized that she was missing three teeth. I didn't want to touch anything because I was afraid of contracting an STD.

As soon as we walked in, the best looking dancer in the club wandered up. She looked gorgrous at first glance, but underneath the lights, the wrinkles gave her away. Twenty years ago she was the hottest stripper in town. The Dive is like her retirement home.

"Aren't you AlCantHang?" she asked.

AlCantHang told her that he was and she mentioned that one of the girls they knew was due to dance on stage next. Years ago, the crew befriended a stripper. I guess we'll call her N. When N saw AlCantHang and his crew, she bubbled over with excitement.

For the next hour or so, they all caught up over a couple of beers as I watched the various dancers take turns running to the bathroom to rip a few lines before it was their turn to dance.

The Dive was sketchy because they cut off all songs at the 2 minute and 10 second mark. I counted. So if you got a lap dance, you got cheated. The standard lap dance at traditional clubs is about three minutes or so. I refused to go into the back room with those ladies. At some point you have to draw the line somewhere. For me, it was The Dive.

I don't recall leaving the second strip club. I vaguely recall trying to find a slice of pizza. Then I blacked out. I woke up in my bed at the hotel. A fuckin' rooster woke me up. There are all these free range chickens and roosters wandering around Key West. One in particular caused me to awake from a dead sleep.

My head was ringing. I had a category three hangover on the verge of dehydration. I managed to avoid puking and chugged the rest of the water I had as I quickly popped two Motrin and one generic Vicodin. I looked at my digital camera. It was a scene out of Momento where I had to piece my life back together using a couple of random images, mostly from the Irish bar. The strip clubs had a no photography policy, so there were no shots of that debauchery.

I grabbed the wad of cash out of my pocket. It looked healthy until I unfurled it and began counting. Wait, were did all the hundreds go? And all those twenties were replaced by singles. I did some quick math and figured out between the Irish bar and the two strip clubs, I had blown about $420.

I sat down at the table near the window overlooking Duval Street. Despite the hangover, I fired up the pipe and the laptop and began writing about the previous 48 hours. That's when the tour trolley stopped in front of the hotel. I looked out of the window and a guy on a microphone pointed to the hotel. He muttered something about this being, "a historical landmark almost as old as Key West itself."

One woman snapped a quick photo. I wonder if the tour guide stopped his trolley at The Classy Joint or The Dive and said the same thing?


Original content written and provided by Pauly from Tao of Poker at www.taopoker.com. All rights reserved. RSS feeds are for non-commercial use only.

Strippers and Blow

Blonde Stripper: "Where are you from?"
Senor: "Rhode Island."
Blonde Stripper: "Awesome! I love New York."

Yes, it was one of those nights in Las Vegas, where everything you experience is blogworthy. To start, Senor flew in at 11am and Change100 and I picked him up at the airport. We checked into the Mirage and then Joe Speaker arrived soon after. We hung out at the bar near the sports book and watched the March Madness games. The place was super packed and full of gambling excitement. I had a blast with LSU. Not only did they cover, they beat Duke outright, which means that my team Strippers and Blow, has a shot at winning my pool!

Of course, I fucked up and took UCLA -4. Yeah, I don't wanna talk about it. Joe Speaker actually took them with the moneyline. The guy at the counter laughed at him when he cashed his ticket.

We ate dinner at Joe's Seafood and Steakhouse in Caesar's Palace forum shops with Flipchip, Grubby, and the Poker Prof. The filet mignon was excellent as well as the Jenny Potatoes.

After the meal, we headed to a strip club. I mean, that's what Grubby, Senor, and I do when we're in Vegas. Grubby drove and we took Change100 and Joe Speaker along. One of Grubby's friends is a dancer at Scores and we went to check it out. I've only been to the one in NYC. Strippers love Grubby and Senor loves Asian strippers.

"Holy shit, I'm going to a strip club with Dr. Pauly," Joe Speaker mentioned on our way to the Scores.

I have enough material for a new installment of Existentialist Conversations with Strippers. This one was named Nicki, and she was Vietnamese, Chinese, and Irish, What a combination! And she was from NYC. She dances at Scores there and she also flew into Vegas on Jetblue.

Nicki was smoking hot. Amazing ass. And I loved her hair.

"She has a crush on you," said Senor.

"I'm just a mark," I answered.

"Not this one. She's fallen for you."

Indeed, she did. She kept coming back. By the end of the night I must have paid for her flight from NYC to Las Vegas. The lapdances were average, but she was feisty and kept grabbing my nipples. I know that too much information to reveal, even on a blog, but I admit... I like have my nipples squeezed by hot strippers in Las Vegas at 1am. And she just didn't squeeze them, she molested them. I loved every second of it.

She gave Change 100 three lapdances. At one point, she was grabbing her breasts and pinching her nipples. They were all over each other. I admit, I got a chubby. Nothing beats girl on girl action. I love to watch.

"I can tell, you're a naughty one," Nicki said.

"Don't you know it," admitted Change100.

After it was over, I asked Change 100, "Were you making out with the stripper?"

She said no, but the look in her eyes said, "Yes."

Nicki was so good that I had to share her with the entire group, except for Grubby who was entertaining a dancer on his lap. They were talking about fashion. I paid for lap dances for Change100, Senor, and Joe Speaker. All of them had Nicki. I like to share.

She walked up to Joe Speaker and said, "I'm going to hurt you."

Joe Speaker turned to me and gave me a look like, "Holy fuck, what did you just get me into."

Afterwards, Joe Speaker jotted down some notes. I can't wait to read his post. After Nicki danced for Speaker, she headed over to Senor. She grabbed his belt and tied it around his neck, she used the end of it and was smacking him in the head.

"She was a rough one. We should invite her back to our room."

On our way out to the car, Joe Speaker said, "My God. I have not gotten a lapdance since 1986 at my first bachelor party! Twenty fuckin' years! And she had an amazing ass."

I realized that if I didn't gamble as much and didn't go to strip clubs, I would have paid off my school loan by now. Sure I'd be debt free, but I'd have nothing to write about.

Yes, there was no poker content in this post. I have yet to play a hand since I arrived in Vegas.

Editor's Note: This was crossposted to the Tao of Pauly.