My Money's Worth

Disappointment is an inevitable part of life. This is a lesson that I have learned repeatedly over the years. However, it was never more clearly illustrated then one night during the first semester of my sophomore year when some of my fraternity brothers decided to hire a stripper to celebrate the birthday of another fraternity brother.

The evening began like most evenings did back then, hanging out in the dorms watching stolen cable on TV and playing Goldeneye on Nintendo 64. But soon word spread of the impending festivities in honor of (in order to respect people’s privacy I will not be using real names) Schwag’s birthday, and after some deliberation it was decided that going out over to South St. (where Schwag and a couple other fraternity members lived) to drink some beer and hang out was probably a slightly better option than continuing on the present course. So cars were retrieved and a bunch of us headed over to take part in the fun.

Upon arrival we were informed that one of Schwag’s friends had made arrangements to procure the services of not one but two absolutely gorgeous strippers to perform. This sounded good to all of us, so we headed inside, grabbed some beer, and began to wait.

Now, admittedly, ordering out for strippers is not something that has any standard amount of wait time (as opposed to say pizza or Chinese food) that allows you to determine whether or not your strippers are officially running late. However, suffice to say, after what must have been deemed a significant enough amount of time to arouse concern, a call was put in to the place of business from which the strippers were ordered to inquire about the delay. After a brief conversation, the guy (one of Schwag’s friends who was not in the fraternity) in charge of organizing the events assured us that everything was copacetic, and that the strippers were en route. More beers were passed out and the drinking and waiting resumed.

Soon, however, some began to become impatient, as the minutes continued to pass and the strippers had still not arrived. I don’t remember the exact amount of time, but I’ll guess that around 2 hours went by (after the initial call of inquiry) before people began to suspect something was definitely not right (a necessary piece of background information is that the town of Waltham, Massachusetts, where my alma mater is located, has liquor laws that prevent the selling of alcohol after 11pm). Due to the fairly large amount of people who had gathered and also due to these people’s ability to consume a large amount of alcohol in a short amount of time, we soon found ourselves sitting around the house with a quickly diminishing amount of beer and still no strippers, and being that it was now past 11pm there was seemingly very little that could be done about either.

Eventually a bunch of people decided to cut their losses and headed home. This was, I’d say, after waiting for around 3 hours with no end in sight. I, on the other hand, decided to stay. Not because I was that desperate to see the strippers (in fact, generally speaking, I really am not that big of a fan of in house strippers or for that matter strip clubs either…something about hanging out with my friends in the presence of naked women doesn’t really do too much for me…the same way I don’t really like to watch porn in large groups…unless the porn is of bloopers and outtakes which can be watched purely for entertainment purposes without any concern of awkwardness), but mostly because I figured I’d waited this long already and at that point it really had become more a matter of principle than anything else.

So, our numbers significantly reduced, we sat around and continued to wait…

Finally, a little after midnight (which coincidentally meant that it was no longer Schwag’s birthday) there was a knock at the front door. The door was opened and into the room walked two of the most hideous, disgusting, people you’ve ever seen (one of them was Black and one of them was Hispanic, which doesn't in and of itself make them hideous and disgusting, but clearly, it was not what a bunch of mostly Jewish boys were expecting), and it was clear that they were both very fucked up (in a high on crack, I’ve seen homeless people act like this sort of way). Oh, and the Hispanic one was missing teeth. Most people’s reactions were similar to the scene in American Psycho when Patrick Bateman says to the escort, “you’re not quite blond,” but times 1000 (or like the scene in Risky Business when the first escort, not Rebecca DeMornay, shows up). To top it off they were accompanied by a rather large, extremely intimidating bodyguard, whose gun holster was clearly visible beneath his jacket.

Once again, the guy Schwag knew said he’d take care of it, and so he, the bodyguard, and the strippers went outside to try and straighten everything out.

After a few minutes he returned with the following explanation. Apparently the strippers who were supposed to have been sent to us had been switched up with these strippers and had winded up at a different party (which looking back makes me really wonder how things went on their end). The proprietor of the business said that he would send the stripper’s back, but that it would take some time. After hearing this we all agreed that there was no way we were waiting any longer and that we were just going to leave and go home. There was one problem in all of this…the strippers at South St. were still expecting, nay demanding to get paid.

Things quickly dissolved into a very awkward situation, as two cracked out strippers, a gigantic gun-toting bodyguard, and a group comprised of mostly Jewish fraternity kids tried to find an agreeable solution to things. Well, as you might have guessed, the only agreeable solution to this situation was their solution, which was to pay them for “their time.” And so (in the only known instance ever of this occurring) a collection hat was passed around and money was collected so that the strippers would leave without ever removing one article of clothing.

At the time I probably was pissed off (especially given my already stated stance on strippers) that I had to spend money (which ended up being more than what I had been told to bring – seeing as how most of the people had already gone, the cost per person had significantly risen) to pay strippers to go away.

But, looking back…it might have been the greatest $30 I ever spent.