Looking for Some Hot Stuff (cont'd.)

“We’ll make do,” I said, pinching my sides so I wouldn’t start laughing. “Not much is going to show once you do the wedgie move.”

“Get the extra money and you got yourself the real deal.” He winked and gyrated back towards the dance floor.

“We gotta cough up some more money,” I told the girls, pointing out our new stripper who was spinning on his back on the dance floor, his legs rotating in the air like wild propellers.

“You’re kidding aren’t you?” Lisa said and fell off her chair, unable to breathe she was laughing so hard.

Each of us went around the bar, borrowing a buck or two until we had $34 and change. We bought Leslie a Coke with the extra money and woke her up for her glorious moment -- the pinch-hitting stripper who was wobbling on his stork legs, hands clasping his region.

“It’s time,” I screamed in his ear.

“I ain’t doing this unless that homo DJ plays ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’” he squawked. “That’ll be my first number. The warm-up. After that he can play the Gap Band’s ‘You Dropped a Bomb on Me.’ That’n always fires me up.”

“I’m not giving you a dime unless you hike those drawers into a wedgie at the end. It’s not a real strip unless butt cheeks are presented to the young virgin bride. You got that?”

He winked and did a chicken-wing flapping dance and I wondered what we’d gotten ourselves into. The DJ, thankfully, agreed to play both numbers because he was bored out of his skull and wanted to get in on the fun.

We scooted the slightly alert bride-to-be and her chair out in the middle of the dance floor. The disco balls glittered and the first strains of “Sweet Home Alabama” twanged through the speakers. Leslie tried to get up, but we pushed her back down. Suddenly, there was a loud noise and the sound of breaking glass as our stripper bounded from a table onto the dance floor, knocking down the furnishings and then falling to his knees. He popped right back on his feet, stomping the tiles with his black sneakers. It was as if he’d dropped from the sky.

He grinned at Leslie and bore his good eye into her while she tried to get up again, pushing at Lisa who was taking off her belt to strap the poor woman in.

“This is your stripper,” Lisa yelled. “You aren’t leaving till he strips.”

“Oh my God,” Leslie squealed. “I can’t believe this. I’m going to kill all of you. None of y’all are going to be my bridesmaids. You’re all fired.”

As she ranted, the Stinky Stripper got going and the crowd clapped and cheered. Lisa was laughing so hard she choked. The stripper was down to his red window-shade T-shirt and his black jeans when the Gap Band number began.

We were in motion, felt like an ocean

You were the girl for me

You were the first explosion, turned out to be corrosion

You were the first for me

He shook it and shimmied, mostly doing his version of an air fuck. He grabbed Leslie and tipped his pelvis at her like a loaded weapon. She screamed and begged Lisa to undo the belt. The stripper undulated toward the center of the floor and tried to get out of his pants but they were tight and he was drunk. He fell in a heap of clumsiness and pretended it was part of the act and began doing the dead bug move, all while wriggling out of his jeans.

You dropped a bomb on me, baby

You dropped a bomb on me

And then he dropped a bomb on us and tore off the pants, revealing a pair of the grossest briefs ever, with the elastic out of the legs and a huge chunk of unidentifiable man meat showing. He had three holes in those drawers and something resembling fecal splotches and cigarette burns on the defeated fabric. He stood up and headed toward Leslie who was trying to escape from her confines. She turned her head but Stinky Pants turned right with her. At the end of the song, as instructed, he yanked up his drawers and flashed his buttocks, a white and partially hairy moon with several bruises and what appeared to be a skull tattoo.

He kept on dancing through two more songs until the manager of the club tapped his shoulder and said, “Enough is enough,” and that he needed to put his clothes back on.

“I hate every one of you,” Leslie said through her big smile. “I’m going to do something horrible to your bridesmaid dresses. Just you wait and see.”

When my punishment finally came -- the punishment Mama always promised -- it hit hard.

A couple of years after Leslie’s wedding, I had my own ceremony, and while slow dancing to a lovely jazz band in the club of a swanky hotel, my brand new husband dropped a bomb on me.

“Musicians don’t dance,” he said, hand falling toward my fanny, feet suddenly frozen. “At least not the cool ones.”

And that was the last dance I ever had with the one I wed.

In the end, Mama was right. You reap what you sew; what comes around goes around. And I’d sewn an entire quilt.

Danny Gallagher is a freelance writer and newspaper reporter living deep in the heart of Texas -- where things feel clogged and congested thanks to years of no exercise and chicken fried steak eating contests.
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