The Wild Things are at the Strip Club

Warning # 1: This post is NSFW. Unless you're unemployed, self employed, or feel like being unemployed in the near future. Or if your profession happens to involve vaginas.

Warning #2: I haven't slept in over 48 hours. It's a wonder I am alive and typing, but I can't guarantee the typing will make sense. So, Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. (I bust out the math jokes when I'm sleep deprived....PEMDAS, bitches.)

Liquid lunches are always a good idea. By which I mean that liquid lunches are never a good idea.

Yesterday, before I had consumed the proper amount of caffeine (two Sugar-free Red Bulls, a Coke Zero, sixteen cans of Diet Coke--it's not like I'm an addict or anything), I had already finished up at the office and Lady Hem was on her way to meet McLovin' and I for lunch.

It started at the bar near our office, with gin and tonics. Then a shot of whiskey in the office. Champagne on the subway, hidden in styrofoam coffee cups. Fine, good, swell.

Then McSorley's, for dark and light beer, followed by more dark and light beer. Followed by mixing the two to make black and tans. It was 5 o'clock somewhere, so the placed was packed.

By the time we left, I couldn't even remember where the Europeans I was flirting with hailed from. A clear indicator of midday drunkeness. (Whenever I am even vaguely intoxicated, I'm bound to flirt with European tourists, who I never refer to by their actual names, just "those Germans" or "my Germans" or "German #7.")

The next best indicator? This conversation, at the oyster bar that followed McSorley's:

McLovin': Where to next?

Me: STRIPPERS!

Lady Hem: Does that mean you want to go to a strip club?

Me: STRIPPERS!

McLovin': I think so.

Me: STRIPPERS!

As Audrey Hephburn once said, strippers are always a good idea.



So is "Ego" by Beyonce.

Now, if you haven't caught on to the number of times I have referenced this song, I am more than a little obsessed with it. I'll get back to the boobies in a second, but this is important. "Ego" is a description of my ideal counterpart. If I ever find a man worth singing that song about, all bets are off. You might as well start building that white picket fence I always said  I'd never have. And build it around our apartment, because we won't be leaving the bedroom anytime soon.

So, yes, my criteria for marriage is based on a Beyonce song. A Beyonce song that was playing while I got a lap dance from a gorgeous European with gloriously fake boobies.

Baby, you're a sight to see. Kinda somethin' like me.

I am proud of the fact that I fought my impulse to remove the stripper and dance on Lady Hem's lap when the song came on. Because, as we learned the last time we went to Lace, "patrons are not allowed to give lap dances."

However, despite my restraint, there were many indicators that I was, in fact, a hot mess. Here's the evidence.

Flashback #1: "So, do you like being a stripper?"

I should be banned from life for that question.

Flashback #2: "I'm sure I walked in with it."

McLovin' lost his bag and we were all looking for it. I recruited a stripper who reeked of Chanel to our search party.

We eventually found it. With, um, the coat check girl.

Flashback #3: "Are your breasts augmented (check yes or no)?"

This is a question on the stripper application.

As in, the paper application you fill out to become a stripper.

As in, I know this because something momentarily possessed Lady Hem and I to fill out stripper applications last night.

For approximately five minutes, Lady Hem and I were determined to become high class strippers.

As we filled out the application (in the "measurements" section I wrote "36-24-36...Only if she's 5'3."), it seemed like less and less of a brilliant idea.

"Uh, Lady Hem..." I said, "Do we actually have to write our social security numbers?"

At this point McLovin' entered the hallway to find his current employee (me) and former employee (Lady Hem) filling out stripper applications, and our stripper dreams died instantaneously.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love me some strippers. I have nothing against the profession. But I can write a book of reasons why I'll NEVER be a stripper. Here's a small sampling:

1. I have two patented dance moves. One is the awkward penguin. The other, I've been told, is reminiscent of this:

2. Money is dirty. Literally.

I'm way too germophobic for the whole money-in-the-g-string ordeal. If you trace that dollar back a few days, someone was snorting coke through it. A fews weeks: it was in someone else's g-string.

3. I'm too cocky about my mind to make money off my body.

I would do PR for a strip club, but that's about as far as my professional life would ever intersect with that world.

I talk like this cause' I can back it up.

Which doesn't mean I'm judging you, strippers of the world. If I tried to walk like this, in your stripper shoes, I'd fall flat on my ass.

4. Believe it or not, I have some moral standards. A few. One of them is that I do not get naked in front of a married man. Unless, of course, his wife is present. And also, preferably, naked.

Reaching my Helmut Newton photo quota for the week ending in 10.18.2009.

Miraculously, Lady Hem and I arrived safely at the 10 o'clock showing of Where The Wild Things Are, in time to meet her Columbia friends and buy pretzels to soak up the poison flowing through our bodies.

Like everyone else (apparently), The Wild Things was one of my most cherished childhood books. And, granted, I was drunker than a goose (any maybe still am..."drunker than a goose?"), but I thought David Eggers didn't do the story justice. It's hard to make a feature film out of a short children's book. It felt stretched out and, honestly, kinda boring. After the strippers, at least. Lady Hem was fast asleep for half the movie.

Also, despite excellent acting by Max Records (who has the coolest child actor name ever), the character of Max was less a victim and more of a brat than he was in the book.

Spike Jonze as a director, on the other hand: still awesome.

The Arcade Fire: also still awesome.

Yup, that's about the extent of my drunken movie review. After the movie, I couldn't sleep, so I  read The Sun Also Rises cover to cover. Hemingway drunk is a feat I highly recommend.

I'm off to see An Education tonight, to kick off a relatively more sober week. Tomorrow I am taking my parent's out for French food and my stomach is already growling.

Some things you can look forward to in the not-so-distant future of this blog:

-A very condescending guest post.

-Cookie monster's dating adventures.

-Open MacBook, Part tres.