Looking for Some Hot Stuff (cont'd.)

This stripper was to meet our party of wild women and the bride-to-be at one of those cheesy hotel lounges where drunks and desperadoes hang out for free hors d’oeurves and house-brand hope.

Maybe they’d get lucky. They must have. They kept coming back, these same types, clinging to the bars and the slim chance they’d see eight sizzlin’ babes tumble from a black limo and enter that lizard’s den.

There we were: Leslie, the bride-to-be, oblivious to the stripper on his way to this hotel, and the rest of us pretending as if nothing was going on but good old girl fun.

We all danced and waited eagerly for the Best Western lounge doors to swing open and Mr. Chippendale with the devil dick to sashay in. We danced and waited some more.

“He’s an hour late,” Lisa said, using the pay phone near the restrooms to call Fantasies Alive and getting only a recording. “What’re we gonna do?”

“Give him another half hour,” I said. “Maybe he’s running late from another gig.”

“But Leslie’s already sloshed and is wanting to go home.”

That was the problem with Leslie. She would drink her white Russians too fast and then want to konk out early.

I surveyed the dance floor, seeing three bald men in golf shirts shaking their flat butts with three ladies who appeared to be divorcees searching for husbands or overnight company. There was Leslie, tottering about with Terri, both bombed and laughing at nothing. There was Diane and some greaser bedecked in gold chains and then there was…Oh, Lord have mercy, there he was…our answer. There was our substitute stripper.

He was tall, pasty and so wasted he was out there hoofing it alone, trying to be a combination Michael Jackson and that Lord of the Dance man, but looking very much like he knew the moves to my Howdy Doody routine. I inched in closer as the lights flashed from overhead and Earth Wind and Fire pounded from the speakers.

“Let this move, get you to groove, well all right,” they sang and the lone dancing man went wild. I especially loved it when he jumped up and fired off an air split before crashing to the floor, scrambling on all fours during the part of the song where the group goes, “We can boogie on down, down, We boogie on down, down. Boogie on down.” His red tattered T-shirt rolled up over his enormous gut like a window shade yanked too hard and his paunch poured from his faded black jeans. Hairs sprung in sporadic mangy clumps from around his navel, which by the way, protruded like a big toe. He wore the expression of one about to give birth and grabbed a set of abs that could have housed four to six fetuses.

He wailed and wallowed on the floor and I reached down and pulled his besottedness to his feet. His eyes, each seemingly independent of the other, wobbled like something on springs, one rolling in his head and getting lost and finally reappearing and focusing on my face. “I need you to do us a favor,” I screamed over the music, taking him aside. That is when I noticed he perfumed the air with an odor that could kill locusts, a scent like a cross between a urinal and unwashed skin folds.

“Whachu need?” he slurred, falling against an empty table and grabbing the railing. “I’m here to please.”

I wondered just who he thought he could please. “You ever stripped?” I asked him.

“Stripping’s my middle name. I’s a professional at one point.”

I’m sure, I thought. “Listen here. Our stripper we hired didn’t show up, and see that girl over there?” I pointed to Leslie who was almost asleep in her chair. “She’s getting married next weekend and we need for her to have a stripper or it’ll be bad luck. Her husband’s getting one and we gotta balance the deal out. How much to strip? All we have is about $20 left.”

I could see his eyes counting the drinks $20 would buy. “I need $30 and to run home and get my good underwear,” he said. “I ain’t stripping in these.” He tried to pull up the band of his briefs, but I stopped him. “I got me some good lookin’ Calvin’s at home.”

“We need you now. I don’t care what you’re wearing. Just dance around to a couple of songs and then take off a layer. We’ll give you a shirt to put over that one, and then you can throw off your pants. You know, sort of twirl them around. Do this in front of her face and when the second song’s ending, turn around and show her your glutes.”

His head toppled back as if his neck support had failed. I handed him my Michelob and he sprang to life. “I ain’t about to strip in these drawers,” he said.

“She won’t care. When it gets to the grand finale or whatever strippers call their last move, just shove your rump in her face and give yourself a wedgie so it will look sorta like a g-string real strippers wear. You gotta hurry. She’s falling asleep.”

“I ain’t about to give myself a wedgie in these drawers. Look here you crazy woman. I been on the road, my band and all’s touring, and I ain’t had time to change in six days. I gotta run home and get my black Calvins, you understand what I’m saying? I ain’t gonna feel sexy unless I got on the right underwear to showcase my package.”

I wanted to die laughing, thinking of his festering package. “We don’t have time for you to run home and change clothes. I don’t give a damn if you’ve got moose tracks up to Maine in those skivvies. Keep them on and I’ll get you your $30. Otherwise, I’ll ask that man over there to do it.” I pointed to a golfer type with fat red cheeks who looked one cigarette and erection away from a heart attack.

“Him?” the stinky potential stripper said and swilled the beer I’d given him.

“Oh, yeah. Him. He used to do it full-time in Myrtle Beach.”

“That’s bullshit. He ain’t done nothing in Myrtle but eat fried seafood platters. Look at his gut.”

“He agreed to do it for $20 but we all thought you were much cuter,” I lied.

Stinky Drawers grinned while his one eye had its own party somewhere in its socket. “OK,” he said. “But I’m warning you about my underwear. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. They ain’t my best or cleanest pair.”