Late Night at the Rhino
It was an easy Day 2 covering Event #9 yesterday. 71 aggro-donks played down to the final 6 in about eight and a half hours, continually stacking off for 40 big blinds preflop with winning hands like ace-nine. I packed up my laptop at 10:50pm and headed over to the MGM to hang out with the bloggerati for a second night in a row.
That's when it struck me. Oil prices have risen to over $138 a barrel. Companies that make finished products derived from oil are watching their costs skyrocket. Food prices have shot up at the fastest rate in almost two decades, driven by rising fuel costs, the diversion of corn to ethanol production and the related rise in commodities prices worldwide. Despite all of this, the cost of a lap dance remains fixed and unchanging at $20. Add in the fact that the dollar is the weakest it's been in decades, and realize that tits and ass are comparatively cheaper now than they've been at any time in the last ten years. So what's a guy to do when a bunch of his poker blogging brethren are in town?
Go to the Rhino with his girlfriend and three of his friends.
It had been several years since I set foot inside a strip club. There was some talk of going to the Rhino during the December Blogger Invasion, but the trip never came together. Too many people were distracted by things like pai gow, hold'em, slots or drinking to put together a proper trip. This time around, Falstaff was a man on a mission. He would not be denied.
Last night, the thing we learned about the hedonistic zoos that are strip clubs is that if your party of five contains two chicks, and the strippers can't figure out who's the odd man out, they will ignore you. We must have been seated for almost an hour before any of the girls even thought about striking up a conversation with us. It was a strange change from the usual experience of being aggressively accosted every three minutes. Only after CK and I switched seats, so that Falstaff was clearly the fifth wheel of our party, did we start to receive any attention.
CK and I decided to play a little game, where we would each choose the stripper from whom the other would get a dance. The basic contours are pretty easy for both of us: sporty black girl for her, long-haired Asian girl for me (natch). The details are trickier, as we are both notoriously picky. (Obviously - look who we're dating!)
I did manage to spot her girl pretty quickly -- a tall Jamaican girl with a pretty face and athletic build who was dressed in an orange bikini top. An older gentleman was monopolizing her time for quite a while, but she did eventually get up and I quickly flagged her down.
"Give a lap dance to a girl?" I asked her.
She beamed a smile back at me. "Sure!"
I settled in while CK got acquainted with her entertainer. "Why do I think I'm going to enjoy this more than you will?" I asked her.
Finding a girl for me proved more difficult. You think finding a hot Asian girl in a strip club would be as simple as finding sand at the beach, but I was being very picky. "No ass." "Too 'put together'." "Hair is too light." "Butter face." Then CK would see a stripper who would fit my bill to a T, but the stripper would be leading a dude by the hand into the back for some private attention. Lemon.
While CK was looking for a fine bottle of wine for me, Falstaff was treating the whole experience like he was at a buffet. He got dances from at least five different girls and especially enjoyed the spectacle of CK and The Wife getting their own dances. I didn't catch any of his girls' names, although we heard some of the most retarded stripper names during the course of the night. Petals. Butterfly. Emily. At least Falstaff returned the favor by repeatedly assigning each of us equally as retarded names and occupations. I think I was: Fire Marshall Fred; Bob, the nuclear physicist; "good at geography"; in town "from Arkansas" for a high school reunion; and a military weapons specialist at different points during the course of the night.
An Asian girl finally passed us who looked like she would do. Unfortunately, she was one of the strippers who wanted nothing to do with a party that included two chicks. As she raced past our seats, I stood up and reached out to try to grab her wrist. It was a total whiff on my part. I came up with nothing but air.
Everyone laughed. "Epic fail," said Falstaff.
By that point, CK, Falstaff, Chako and the Wife had each had multiple lap dances. I felt like some what of a failure for not being able to find a single girl in the whole club who would be sufficient. One of Falstaff's lovely ladies asked me what I liked in a stripper.
"Small Asian girl with long, dark hair," I explained. She said she had a friend she would send over. "Petals" came to find me about ten minutes later.
Petals had all the right curves but was a bit lacking in her facial features. She would not have been my first choice. I surveyed our group: CK was ready to fall asleep; Falstaff was ready to empty his wallet; and Chako and The Wife were ready to bust a nut all over each other. Petals would have to do. It was time to get my dance and leave.
She did a good enough job with me to convince us to part with another $20 so that, in the words of Petals, she could "molest" CK too. I was cool with that, Falstaff was cool with that, Chako and The Wife were cool with that, and most important of all, CK was cool with that. Okay then. Molest away.
Not a bad way to spend an early night off from work.