Life at TJ's Place

2005-04-10T01:09:00.000-05:00

Sorry I dropped out like I did. I’m still alive. I was just sick of seeing the stupid Minnesota/Olympics post up there. I was sick of blogging, too, so I just decided to cool out for awhile.

Did anybody see Illinois basketball this winter? I did. What a rush!

This is the only thing I’ve ever written that was published (and I received no money for). It’s called “Arnie’s Army.”

When I was a kid, my uncle smoked these slender black cigarettes with silver lettering, and the paper crinkled when he would take a long drag, like leaves burning and crackling. I always imagined the cigarette tasted like licorice, and I became very certain that, as soon as I was legal, maybe even before, I would begin smoking the little black cigarettes and exhale the forbidden smoke, a heady mixture of spicy aroma, like black licorice and exotic candies from Asia and the Middle East that, apparently—see my uncle as evidence—bored holes in your teeth and ravaged your face, like my uncle’s, warped by a lifetime of working in the sun, drinking and screaming. He was tall and red and his skin was striated, like canvas draped over cables. He was Leatherface before Leatherface was Leatherface, without the chainsaw and hippie kids and general bloody mayhem.

I loved my uncle completely, but years of subsequent information revealed him to be no more than a sloppy drunk, the old school kind, pooping his pants, sleeping under grain trucks, yodeling at three o’clock in the morning, the like. He once passed out with a welder in his hands. Uncle Arnold, or Arnie, as everyone knew him. I called him Uncle Arnie, and he called me “Arnie’s Army,” because I was the only one too young not to understand he was a big bleary-eyed drunk and pathetic life failure.

“HEY,” he’d shout, opening our front door, “Hey, there he is!”

Running, jumping with joy was me, “Uncle Arnie!” I’d scream, delighted. Kids really do jump with joy, it’s not a cliché. When experiencing overwhelming joy, jumping is the way normal children get from place to place. “Uncle Arnieeee!” boing-boing-boing down the hall. I’d bump into him and he would scoop me in his arms. Arnie usually smelled like a dead skunk, but Arnie’s Army didn’t care; at five years old, I usually didn’t smell so great myself.

“There’s the boy!” he would declare. “There’s Arnie’s Army!” A big embrace between two stinkers, my parents cringing in the living room.

My father, a good father, a solid provider, had very little tolerance for the likes of Arnie, especially when Arnie was “on the bum” as my father would say, but he never mistreated Arnie in front of me, knowing my uncle was my hero and I was likely to end up getting a Born to Raise Hell tattoo and become a communist, at five, if he prohibited Arnie from the house. Arnie manipulated this, of course, showing up at dinnertime once a week, roughhousing with Arnie’s Army in the living room, then meandering around like the unwanted guest he was. My father didn’t speak to him; he would sit stoically on his recliner and watch the Archie Bunker Show, as he called it, or read the paper, while Arnie moved around from wall to wall, remarking on things he remarked on every time: photographs, the latest paperback novel on my mother’s bookshelf, my father’s only bowling trophy, the awful wallpaper. “The Exorcist!” he exclaimed, picking up my mother’s latest book. “Brrrr!” he shivered, clutching himself as he set the book down. “That Devil…and what he done to that little girl?” Arnie clucked his tongue and moved on towards Dad’s bowling trophy.

Dad grunted. Mother called in from the kitchen: “Arnie…uh, we’re about to have dinner…would you like to join us?”

From the bathroom, an enormous cheer erupted from Arnie’s Army, who had been sent there seconds before to wash his hands and face. Arnie just forced a playoff with a remarkable 4-iron on 18.

“Well, by God, Sally, that’d be right nice,” Arnie said. “I believe I will.” Dad rolled his eyes, then went back to the paper.

“Hey, Skeeter!” Arnie called to me down the hallway. When I was too little to know better, I bit my Uncle Arnie on the leg and he said it felt like a “little ol’ skeeter nippin’ on my leg.” Lucky for me, I wasn’t a real skeeter; had I been, I might have ended up in detox. “Get in here, Skeeter, we’re grubbin’ up.”

Skeeter squealed with delight from the bathroom and jumped with joy down the hallway. I’ve been told that, as a child, I was rather predictable.

I can’t imagine, in hindsight, how unbearably awful those dinners were for my parents. From time to time, Arnie would sober enough to realize he hadn’t eaten in a week, and we’d get the knock at the door just before dinnertime, smiling Arnie on the front porch, just passing through. Arnie ate once a week when he remembered, and he ate the exact way he drank: two-fisted, sloppy, loud and emotional, an industrial shop-vac with forks and spoons and belches loud enough to crack china. Sometimes he sobbed while he ate.

At dinner, while Arnie molested his food, Dad would make little remarks that I didn’t recognize as being cruel: “Slow down, Arnie, unless you’re late for an appointment”; or, “Arnie, if you’d show up more often, we wouldn’t have to pay to have our garbage taken out.”

At dinner, Arnie would entertain (read that word italicized if coming from the mouth of my father) us with stories about the Vietnam War, stories about Vietnamese girls that made my mother’s cheeks turn red, stories about a heart he received from someone important because he stepped on something that removed his right foot, with a bang. My father silently endured, having been spared the draft from a legitimate medical condition that appeared just as a murmur in his heart back in 1968, but eventually killed him in 1991. He smiled at Arnie’s colorful stories, frowned at very colorful ones. One time he set his knife and fork down with some force, cleared his throat, stood and left the table.

When Arnie was finished with his meal, he wiped his mouth and always reached in his shirt pocket for the pack of cigarettes, pushing his chair from the table and draping one long leg over the other. Uncle Arnie would take a long drag and squint through the smoke, pocketing his pack of matches. The aroma was delicious. Little Skeeter, dying a slow death at the edge of the table from Arnie’s second-hand fogger, sat with his hands folded attentively, waiting for a story from his uncle.

“Your dad,” Arnie began, picking a bit of tobacco from the tip of his tongue. “Your dad and I, did you know he once saved my life?”

I knew the story, of course. A hundred times over. I could recite it word for word, but I loved hearing the story from my Uncle Arnie. My eyes went wide and I breathed, “No.” I had retired to my bedroom earlier and was now wearing a light blue T-shirt that read ARNIE’S ARMY across the front in heavy felt letters, my uncle’s gift.

“He did, by God, when we was kids.”

The story, I have learned, was not so romantic as Arnie always spun. It involved eight-year-old Arnie, naked, running through a neighbor’s backyard and my father leaping a fence and saving the naked future Purple Heart-winner by pulling a mean dog away from him before yanking them both back over the fence to safety. Arnie left out the part about the innocent bet, my father’s knowledge (and Arnie’s lack of) that the yard contained not only a mean homeowner, but a little white terrier named Sparky, a terrible, angry dog suffering from untreated psychosis, a child killer. Arnie, it seemed, did not want to tarnish my own image of my father, who was also my hero. And it was years later that I realized their mutual grudge, and their mutual love for each other. My father loved my Uncle Arnie because he wasn’t bright, he was healthy, and he went to war for his country and stepped on a land mine and lost his right foot. He loved him because no one else would. Arnie loved my father because he didn’t go to war and he was intelligent and solid, and he married a good woman and raised a good son. And when I was eighteen years old at my graduation, Uncle Arnie showed up, sober and clean for the moment, and called me Arnie’s Army and Skeeter in nearly the same sentence, tussling my hair, and then finally he called me Michael, and shook my hand. I hadn’t seen him in ten years. He died the next year (roofing a house, drunk, a driveway below), and my father put his urn and his ashes on our mantel, replacing the bowling trophy. Arnie’s Purple Heart is there, too, and a picture of all of us (Mom and Dad included), standing in front of a Christmas tree circa 1977. Underneath the photo, my father wrote in black felt-tip marker: Arnie’s Army.

2004-08-29T22:42:00.000-05:00

I'm back, watching the Olympics. Had a great time in Minnesota. I'll have a better post soon, but I just wanted to say hello and thanks for checking in.

See you soon.

2004-08-09T17:35:00.000-05:00

I’m going to Minnesota next week, leaving one week from today. I will probably not be updating the blog during that time. Why Minnesota, you ask? Why not, I reply.

Last year, my friend Greg came to the club with a guy he went to college with, and this guy lives in Bloomington, Minnesota and works in Minneapolis. So we’re going up to spend a week with him. We will drink and eat, fish and golf, and we have tickets to two Twins-Yankees game at the Metrodome, which can’t be avoided, because that’s where the Twins play baseball. I’m only mildly excited about the Dome, but I’m pumped to see the Twins and Yankees, who are both leading their divisions. I can’t wait to go fishing up north of Minneapolis, and we’re playing a course called Edinburgh USA, which is a Robert Trent Jones course (with an island hole, which I’ve never played before). I’m taking driver out of the bag and keeping it in the fairway. It really sucks playing a great course with great fairways and never getting to hit out of them.

That’s all for now, been planning a lot for the last few days. I’ll check back in a couple more times before I leave. Not sure how much, if any, I’ll blog from the road, but it won’t mean I’m dead, or someone else.

I don’t know if I’ve ever said this before, but I’m a St. Louis Cardinals fan. They so totally kick ass this year, I can’t believe it.

2004-08-03T12:28:00.000-05:00

This weekend I saw the woman who used to cut my hair back when I was about 21 years old, and I used to be in love with her so I’m going to tell this story about her because it’s fun, and because that’s why I’m here, yo.

She was 25 years old at the time and had recently divorced, which made her seem, to me, to be more mature. She was pretty, blonde and what I thought to be very shy and quiet. (This last paragraph should have started with “Dear Penthouse.”)

She had her own little salon in the basement of her condo, and the first couple times I went for a haircut we were both kind of shy and just made small talk. It’s easy in a salon with lots of other gabby people around, but it’s another thing trying to break the ice with a woman when you’re alone in her basement, just the two of you, and she’s got her hands on you.

The third time I went, she washed my hair and rinsed it in her sink. I was still reclined back with my neck on the edge of the sink. She had this huge bottle of conditioner on the counter above my head, and when she pumped it twice, most of it ricocheted off the side of her hand and splattered against the side of my face. Now, mind you, this was at a point when there had not even been the slightest hint of flirting between us. She put her hand to her mouth, like oh my God, and we both just kind of froze there for a few seconds. I'm laying there looking like the money shot in a porn film with big splats of some dude’s jizz all over my face. So I started laughing, and then so did she, which meant she at least got the joke. I told her I never dreamed I’d be on the receiving end of one of those and she really laughed and her face got even redder. I accused her of doing it on purpose and she was still laughing when she swore she didn’t. I wanted to sleep with her right there. That one little moment was like having 10 haircuts in terms of moving the hairstylist/client relationship forward. When she wiped the conditioner off my face with a wet wash cloth, I was in love.

Is it normal for a guy to fall in love with every woman who’s ever cut his hair? Am I the only one? Is it the hair salon smells, or all the incidental touching? I’ve had maybe 8 in my day and I’ve been very attracted to every one, except the old lady who briefly cut my hair in college, and the old dude who cut my hair one time when I was in 6th grade and kept trying to rub his cock on my elbows, and I ended up sitting in the chair with my arms crossed and my shoulders scrunched together.

2004-08-02T11:20:00.000-05:00

Saturday afternoon was a typical Saturday afternoon. One bartender, about 8 dancers, me, one waitress who was also training our new waitress, two security. This is a nice time of the day, in the late afternoon before the major Saturday night crowd starts coming in, and the Saturday night dancers start shuffling in.

Walt came over to me at about 4:30 and said, “Hey, heads up. A bus just pulled in.” I hate those words. I know I should get excited for the club and the dancers and everybody, because we’re all going to make money from this, but I hate busses. You look into the parking lot and you never know what’s behind all those tinted windows. I could handle it better if they came in shifts, ten guys every ten minutes, until the bus was empty. I thought about going out and asking the driver this. But to go from just this lazy Saturday afternoon where there’s one dancer on stage and you can carry on a conversation in the booth to absolute bedlam with 60 guys pouring through the doors, already drunk, is very taxing on the old Kevster’s nerves.

It was a typical drunken outing of a bunch of suburban white guys. They golfed in the morning, now the strip club, then a baseball game. Some genius had scheduled three activities where drinking ran a close second in importance to the actual activity.

They entered the club like a drunken human tidal wave. Men in groups are very excited when they enter a gentleman’s club. They filled every room in the club. We had one waitress, a waitress trainee, and one bartender. I played long songs so I could jump behind the bar and help serve. Our little waitress trainee, who was still in the shy stage and was definitely not ready to go wander out into the club with a tray on her own yet, looked like she was going to cry when I said something like, “Here comes your trial by fire.” We opened up three stages and our eight girls basically danced non-stop for the next hour and a half. I would start a song, then run over and tend bar for three minutes, then run back to the booth, start another song, give my “blah-blah-blah,” run back to the bar. Sometimes I’d let two songs go back-to-back. It was a madhouse.

Ninety minutes later it was over. Everybody collapsed. Our new waitress came over to the booth and stood with me for a little bit. Have you ever seen someone laugh and cry kind of at the same time? Like she was crying, but she would crack up laughing sometimes? That’s what she looked like. She called the bus guys a “bunch of fucking jerks,” and I told her she was going to fit in just fine here.

2004-07-29T23:28:00.000-05:00

Wow. I’m sorry I haven’t posted in awhile, but I was taking time off, and it became more time off, and more time off, etc. Then I got nervous to check my blog, so I didn’t check it for a long time, and it was a whole anxiety thing. I was split between trying to just post another post, and answering all the stuff that people were commenting about. I’m lazy. So I just stopped for awhile.

When I started the blog, I knew there would be all kinds of negative stuff because of what I did for a living (currently). So I was prepared for that. I made it my blogging policy to never be negative, never to answer flamers or trollers, never delete comments or ban people who comment (believe me, I’ve wanted to ban several—I tried once, but the fuckhead just kept going to a different place, apparently, because it didn’t stop him), and always be friendly. What I didn’t imagine was that people would start accusing me of doing several different blogs, or commenting as other people, or being dead, or in jail, or whatever.

I wrote this whole other post that was angry and mentioned people by name and all that, but I deleted it. I’ve never posted another blog. I’ve never commented as someone else, and I’ve never made an anonymous comment in my life, except once a long time ago, which I regretted (and long before I started TJ’s Place). I’ve never commented on my own blog as anyone other than me. When I commented that I was other bloggers, I hope most people saw that as sarcasm, because it was, in response to a flamer.

When I wrote my last post, I didn’t know I would be taking time off, so I didn’t tell anyone that, hey, I’m taking some time off now so I’ll be back after awhile. It just happened.

I’m not dead. I’m not anyone else. Sometimes I’d like to be. I’m listening to The Who right now. I don’t hate anyone. Funny because “Who Are You” by The Who just came on. Ironic? Please don’t read anything into that.

I took a vacation that I didn’t plan for. Now I’m back. Hello, everyone.

2004-07-20T18:04:00.000-05:00

Saturday afternoon a guy who looked Andy Dick, only more muscular, sat at the stage and was getting drunk. He was by himself. Whenever a dancer came to him, he would spread his legs out and hold his arms out, and give the sneer with his mouth open and his tongue out, like you see a guy do when he thinks the girl he’s dancing with is about to start grinding on him. It’s the ready position for stupid idiots in strip clubs, like they’re preparing to get blown in a porn video. (I could write a whole post on what different guys look like when a dancer first approaches them. I will do that. Soon.) I don’t know if the guy had ever been in a club before. We had already warned him once because he practically mauled the first girl who danced for him at the stage.

He gets up from the stage later and goes to the bathroom. When he comes out, he’s not wearing his shirt. In the bathroom, he took off his shirt and draped it over his shoulder, then walked back out to the stage and sat down. I had never seen that before. He sat down and laid his shirt across his lap, ready for action. I looked over at Big John, who was standing in the corner with a couple of his friends. They were all laughing at the guy. John looked up at me and held his hands out, like what the fuck is that? which made me laugh. I rolled my eyes and nodded towards the guy. This is clubspeak for Go tell that fuckhead to put his shirt back on. John’s 35 years old and the size of a truck, but it’s funny because he calls all the customers, even the dumbest little 21-year-old dipshit, Sir. I could almost read his lips say, “Sir, you need to put your shirt back on right now.” The guy just kind of shrugged him off. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave if you don’t put your shirt back on.” So the guy made a big move of standing up so everybody could see him and put his shirt back on, which took about ten minutes. Later on, he practically passed out sitting at the bar. Then he staggered out the door and was gone. Those are the kind of guys you’ll never see again in the club. I can spot them from a mile away. It’s like their one shot at conquering a strip club and they fail miserably, then they’re outta here.

From the Too Much Info Dept.

I played golf today and drank water, pop and lemonade all day, lots of water, like a big swig at every hole. I just got home an hour ago, and I realized I hadn’t peed since I woke up this morning. From 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, not once. The temperature was in the 90s and the heat index hit about 180 I think. Did my ass sweat today?

I grew up in Illinois, and Todd Hamilton, the guy who won the British Open, is from a town called Oquawka, Illinois, which is on the Mississippi River in the western part of the state. I don’t think I’ve ever been there, but I may have passed it boating on the Mississippi when I was in school. I bet I’ve played some of the same golf courses he has. Anyway, that was cool to watch this weekend. He seems like a good guy.

2004-07-15T13:18:00.000-05:00

I was just in my car a few minutes ago and I went to pass a guy in an SUV and he started flipping me off and sticking his head out the window screaming at me as I went by. He was going like 50 miles per hour and I just passed him. Dude, chill.

I have tomorrow off! My day from freaking hell and I’m taking it off. I’ll miss the money though, but not that much. I’m going to spend the day golfing a cool new course here, and then tomorrow I’m going to post a detailed, shot-by-shot description of my golf game, for all the women who read this and love to hear about my golfing. It’ll look like this.

Hole #1 (Par 4, 395 yards) T-shot (driver), ended in left rough. Approach, 9-iron from 140 yards, left front of green. Two-putt, par. Even par after one.

Like that for 18 holes.

My friend has an idea that there should be all-male golf courses that feature nude women on the course. But the women wouldn’t be like the strippers at outings (topless females pouring beers, taking wagers, tending the flags, flirting), they’d be more like wildlife. You know how cool it is when you see a deer running across the fairway, or standing near the tee box? That’s his idea. You might not see any for a few holes, then all of a sudden you’d hear a rustling in the trees and see two of them running back into the timber. A few holes later, you might see one standing in your fairway, then she’d run off when you got ready to hit your t-shots. I haven’t golfed with him in the last 3 years where he hasn’t brought up the nude golf course thing. We joke about it, but I honestly know he thinks it’s a great idea. We joke that then the women would want their own courses with naked dudes swinging around in the trees. But probably not.

This isn’t a joke, some of our dancers were invited to a company golf outing last summer. They’re topless, of course, and they go around getting the guys drinks and messing with them on the greens (like the pool playing) and flirting around. These are really big-money outings because they have to shut the course completely down on those days, so the wrong person doesn’t get an eyeful. Well somebody was taking pictures and it kind of turned out that there wasn’t supposed to be anything like that for their outing and a bunch of the top guys at the company ended up getting fired for it.

This last part sounds really boring, but it was actually kind of funny at the time. Our dancers made about a million dollars, went home and then the shit hit the fan. I might try to re-write this story when I have more time. I’m off to work.

2004-07-12T20:36:00.000-05:00

One night we were in the process of kicking out two rednecks who didn’t pay for their drinks. I mentioned this event one time in my comments section, but I don’t think I elaborated. So everybody’s standing out on the front porch, and these two guys didn’t want to go. They had been physically removed from the club by three of our bouncers. I feel a lot better when guys are outside of the club. Inside of the club, there are lots of things that can still be broken. I walked outside and there it was, three on two, our guys standing in a line and those two drunk idiots on the other side, facing off. Fuckhead this, fuck you that, piece of fucking shit, come on fuckhead. As the guy in charge, I’m supposed to step in and say things like, “Come on, guys, just go home, everything’s cool, you don’t want to end up in jail tonight, do you?” Then they say things like, “FUCK YOU! FUCKIN’ PUSSY!” It’s a whole back-and-forth kind of thing. Very challenging.

One of the two guys had his hand cut on the way out the door, probably thrashing like a landed fish when our security guys tried to get him out of the club. He was holding his hand up near his face and I could see that the back of his hand was bleeding down his forearm. I walked up to both of them because it looked like they were ready to throw in the towel.

I said, “Look, just go home, guys. You’ll sleep in your own bed tonight. Otherwise you’re going to spend the night in jail.” This is all standard bullshit, which carries about a 30% success rate.

The bleeding guy looked at me, for the first time, I think, because he'd been staring at our bouncers the whole time and hadn't heard a fucking thing diplomatic Kev had been saying, and he said, “Yeah? What about this?” and fucking wiped his bloody forearm right across my chest.

I looked down at my chest and said something like, “Dude...”

If I’d had a gun, I would have shot him right in the face.

So everybody goes ape-shit, of course. Pushing and shoving, headlocks, more flailing. My guys moved in like the fucking cavalry. It’s a sight to see, guys wearing tuxedo shirts and bowties, cleaning things up. I love all of them. Even the ones who steal the cover-charge money. I really do love them.

There are four steps from our parking lot up to our wooden front porch. We were all just trying to move these guys off the deck and down to the parking lot, but the one guy was still doing his flailing asshole imitation and he went down the steps backwards.

Something, I’m not sure what, on his body, went crack on the pavement. I still don’t know what it was. Probably his head. We all just stood there on top of the deck looking down, all of us going, Oh! with our hands out. It had to be his head. Crack! Like a piece of wood.

I thought he was dead. His buddy bent down and started saying shit like, “DJ? Man, get up, man! DJ?” It was like a war movie.

And all of a sudden DJ just kind of shook his head and staggered to his feet. That was that. We could hear him mumbling all the way through the parking lot as his buddy took him to the car. “Fucks! Man, no! Fuck them! Fuck ‘em, dude.” God, that guy was a fighter. Of course, he now had brain damage.
__________________________

That story is kind of funny, but I’ll tell you, we sat around for a couple weeks worrying about that one. My guess is that the guy had about 10 arrest warrants out for him and couldn’t be caught dead in a bar.

2004-07-10T21:40:00.000-05:00

Randomness

At some point every weekend, the “flower girl” comes into the club and sells roses to men, to give to the dancers or waitresses. Just one more opportunity for the guys to go home flat-broke and busted, with nothing to show for it. Our flower girl runs her own part-time business and does this on the weekends, going to all the clubs and hotspots around town. She’s nice and everybody likes her. One of our bouncers gave her a grotesque “lap dance” one time when she was in the club and had, mistakenly, told someone it was her birthday. She squealed like a little girl and her face got incredibly red.

I’ve only been to three other strip clubs as a customer in my life. You’re asking for trouble if, as the manager of a club, you try to go into another club near yours because you’ll be blamed for trying to recruit dancers and asked to leave. There was almost a fight at our club one night (I wasn’t working) when a bunch of guys from another club here in town all showed up and Mike wouldn’t let them in. It was a turf thing. Anyway, it ended peacefully with some stupid agreement that the guys could come in, but they couldn’t get private dances or sit at the stage, some total wuss-out. I really don’t think they were there to recruit dancers, I think they just wanted to check out our club. Mike has a tendency to make a really big deal out of shit like that.

If you play pool with one of the dancers, she’ll distract you by hovering her ass over every pocket you’re shooting at. You have to have an iron-clad sense of focus not to let it get to you. Last night we were watching two guys play partners pool with two of the dancers. One of the guys was an older guy with a beard, kind of fat and he was really funny. Misty was playing on the team opposite him and the first time he went to take a shot, she lifted up her skirt and started wiggling her butt over his pocket. He was a good pool player. He started lining up his shot and all of a sudden he started laughing. He turned to all of us and said, “Goddamn, that thing just winked at me!” I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a louder laugh from the barroom before.

2004-07-06T18:00:00.000-05:00

I’m glad the shelf-life of your average stripper isn’t more than 25 or 30 years of age, because their kids would inevitably all start reaching the school age where they fundraise. Fundraising, it seems, is Mom’s job. Dad will rarely bring the kid’s sign-up sheet into the office and ask his co-workers to buy an 8-oz jar of cashews for $49.95, or three 12-inch raw pizzas for $34.50, or a candle that smells like a cinnamon stick dipped in shit for $19.95. No, it’s mom’s job. We have lots of mommies in the club; luckily, though, most of them are too young (speaking of the blessed children) to begin the school fundraisers. But we do have several waitresses now who have kids old enough, and I’ve bought a lot of crap out of a four-page little glossy color catalog in the last two years. “Kev, Jessie’s going to band camp this year...you don’t have to, but if you want to, you can buy something from this catalog that will help pay for her trip.” Or, “Kev, Mikey’s going to Hong Kong with his lacrosse team this summer, it’d really help if you bought this $400 block of cheese.”

I just cough up money left and right for this shit. We had a waitress who started here one time and worked for about three weeks when she brought the kid’s fund raising stuff in. I hardly knew her, so I bought the cheapest thing I could find (I don’t even remember what it was, some kitchen utensil or something). And of course we had to pay for it up front. So the waitress just doesn’t show up for a shift one day and that’s the last we heard from her. My $11.50 gone forever! (I sometimes wonder if a person could do that for a scam? Go around the country doing that, taking jobs and making co-workers buy the phantom child’s fundraising stuff, then disappearing? I’m working the numbers on it...let’s see...carry the two...divide by 12... No. I think it would be quite impossible.)

The waitresses work a deal with guys like the Stooges. It goes: “You buy something in this book and help send Dakota to Siberia for cheerleading camp and you won’t have to tip me tonight.” Most of our regulars look like retired porn stars or ex-cons or narcs, but they have cash just falling out of their pockets. The waitresses make out like bandits, because if you’re a bar regular and you’re a good tipper, you’re always a good tipper. It doesn’t matter if I burn your house down, you’ll still tip me. You might put the dollar on the bar and tell me to stick it up my ass, but you’ll still tip. Just one of those funny things.

Kev’s latest fundraising purchase: a barrel of cheesy popcorn for 12-14 year-old girls’ softball trip to team national…thing, $13.00! It works out to two cents a kernel. I counted.

2004-07-03T18:32:00.000-05:00

Two of the bartenders are riding their motorcycles from here to California and back in September. I had dinner with one of them last night in the office and he told me all about it. He’s 21 and the other guy is 23 and they both make me feel old. I’m 27 and I shouldn’t feel old. I was so jealous I wanted to cry. We got on the computer and he showed me the route they were taking—I-80 through Salt Lake City and Reno to San Francisco, then down to Los Angeles, then back home through Vegas and Denver. I have a bad habit when people tell me about their vacation plans, I try to tell them where they should go and what things they should see. If they said, “We’re going out on Interstate so-and-so,” I say, “No, that Interstate sucks, you should go out on Interstate yada-yada.” Chances are I know nothing about either Interstate, just from what I’ve read, but I get excited about vacations so I have to say something. Of course, when he said he was coming back through Colorado, I acted like I practically used to live there, even though I’ve only been out there a few times. Just the Colorado leg of the vacation I suggested would have taken these guys about three weeks to do.

In the Viagra commercial, the guy comes running out of his house and dances on his front porch while We are the Champions is playing. What exactly has he just done? Taken his first Viagra? Popped his first boner in three years? Had sex? In the course of taking your Viagra prescription, what moment is the End Zone Celebration moment exactly? If he just got his first erection, I’d think he’d have something better to be doing than running out on his porch and dancing. If he just had sex, he’d walk out to his front porch and do like all guys do, lay down and fall asleep.

That was me doing my imitation of the frustrated stand-up comedy writer.

I’m off to celebrate our nation’s independence!

2004-06-30T21:33:00.001-05:00

I wrote this whole post about the brother of one of our waitresses who died this week from diabetes, or complications from diabetes, I guess, but I dumped it. It was about how everybody here just kind of said, Oh well, sorry, and then got back to the party. I think in other businesses, people would be passing a card around and buying flowers and planning on going to the funeral or visitation, but not here. Oh, everybody sure acted depressed for a few minutes, but that was that. His funeral is Saturday and I decided, after what I saw today, that I’m going. If my brother died and nobody from here even bothered to come to the visitation...wow. I don’t know how I’d handle that.

2004-06-30T21:33:00.000-05:00

I broke up the last two posts for obvious reasons. The car salesman slash regular who got arrested last weekend told us his story today at work. First of all, he’s like the nicest guy in the world, the butt of many good-natured jokes because he never gets mad. I schmooze him sometimes because in the back of my mind I’m hoping someday he’ll throw me a great deal on a car.

First of all, he said he was drunk. I said, Get the fuck out! He said, no, it’s true, drunker than a fucking monkey. He was with two friends, and one of them was a Cincinnati Reds fan. He’s a Chicago Cubs fan. So they’re standing near the bar and he sees a guy next to him with a Cubs hat on. Remember that he’s drunk? This will come into play shortly. So he grabs the guy by the shoulder and says something like, “Hey man, I’ve gotta do this,” and takes the guy’s hat off. He then puts it on his own head and faces his Reds-fan buddy and starts to say something drunk. The hat owner reaches over and tries to get his hat back, but he ends up knocking it on the floor. They both reach down to pick it up, but everybody else (our guy’s friends and the hat owner’s friends) think it’s a scuffle. Somebody attacks our guy from behind. He actually said it that way, attacked from behind, and the story got held up for about 5 minutes while all the guys at the bar threw in their two-cents (like, that wasn’t the last time he got attacked from behind that night, ha ha, and he was just getting you ready for your cellmate, and maybe he was a Marlins fan and he thought you were Steve Bartman and he was just trying to thank you, etc). If you don’t know who Steve Bartman is, Google him. So our guy’s friends jump in to defend him and it’s a fight. He said he never even threw a punch, he just kept trying to get the hat off the floor. Apparently it got pretty vicious and four of them ended up getting arrested. His friend that didn’t get arrested was too drunk to go bail him out, so he had to call another friend who wisely stayed home. That’s the story.

2004-06-28T12:59:00.000-05:00

A little while back I wrote a post about Walt, our head security guy, and his 14-year-old daughter being pursued by an 18-year-old kid who had just graduated high school. I had forgotten to update that story. It has a boringly happy ending, I guess. Walt’s ex-wife contacted the boy’s parents (next to castrating the kid, this was the most popular advice given on the comment board, by the way—kudos to all of you). Walt’s ex-wife went over to the kid’s house and had a little pow-wow with the kid and his parents (can you imagine that scene? I can, and it ain’t pretty). Walt said they talked to him very calmly and explained how what he was doing was wrong, like you’d tell a child that playing with matches was wrong (while standing in the street, watching your house burn down). This would have been the worst possible tactic, from the kid’s point of view. Screaming and hollering would have been much better. I’m getting goose bumps just thinking about it.

One of our regular customers (not previously mentioned), who sells cars right across the street from the club, got arrested Friday night at a bar, for starting a fight by stealing someone’s hat (??). It sounds like he thought he knew the guy and grabbed his baseball cap from his head. Well, he didn’t know the guy. This is one of those things you want to be sure of before you do it, like 100% sure, like making sure the vicious dog is actually tied up before you get out of your car. I can’t wait to talk to him next time he’s in the club. One of the Stooges will inevitably come to the bar wearing a baseball cap and taunt him with it. This will play out over the next few weeks.

I got to tend bar on Saturday afternoon because we had a last-second call-in and nobody else was home, except Kev, who’s always home figuratively speaking because Mike makes me carry a pager, which makes me feel like a drug dealer. But I like tending bar, so it wasn’t a big deal. The Stooges were talking about cars, and one of them said his “Check Engine” light had been coming on every once in awhile and he better get it into the shop. Larry said he once ignored his “Check Engine” light so long that eventually a new light came on underneath it that said, “Dude, seriously.” Man, did we laugh.

2004-06-23T19:00:00.000-05:00

Here’s one. Yesterday, we had just opened and one of the dancers came out of the dressing room crying. Moe and Curly were there at the bar, and the bartender, and a couple other goofballs. She had a toothache. It must have been severe because the particular dancer is not a crier at all. She walked out to the bar and everyone came to her rescue. What do we do? Aspirin, no she’s already tried that. Loads of it. Her nose is going to start bleeding if she takes anymore. Someone suggested candle wax. You melt some candle wax, pack it while it’s still warm and then shape it around the tooth. Takes all the pain away. Brilliant. So Brad got a lighter out and went to work melting one of our huge, dirty candles that sit behind the bar. What else? Chewing tobacco! Chewing tobacco? Yes, somebody’s toothless, gum-cancered grandfather swears by it. You have a toothache, get some Red Man, put it back over the sore tooth and pain gone. Someone suggested sucking on some ice first, then the candle wax, then the chew. Attack it on several fronts. A roomful of men with limited intelligence trying to solve a problem, in a bar. It reminded me of a scene from Drew Carey.

While this inept cluster fuck is going on at the bar, Curly told her, “Get dressed. I’ll take you to the dentist.” Crying, sucking on an ice cube, she went back to the dressing room. Five minutes later, she was gone, with responsible Curly, a dancer’s best friend. She came back two hours later and even danced. Curly is now in the dancers’ good graces, in our doghouse for making us look (and feel) like a bunch of dumb assholes, which we are. Sometimes I think I’m so down-to-earth with all this common sense, then something like that happens. The rest of the night, every time I walked past Moe, he looked at me and said, “Candle wax? Nice one, dipshit,” even though the chewing tobacco had been his idea. He has a way of doing that.

I’m going golfing tomorrow with a buddy at the golf course I grew up playing. This is a company outing or golf day. My friend works in the concrete business, so a lot of the companies that sell him equipment or supplies have golf days (preferred ball golfing, free drinks, food, door prizes). It’s a way for a company to say Thanks for buying our shit. There are only two golfers in my friend’s company, so I always get invited to go on these. I have to try and fake it, though, when anybody at the golf outings (especially a guy who works for the host company) comes up and says, “So, how long have you been with ABC Concrete?” because they get kind of pissed if they’re shelling out a bunch of money for guys who don’t even work at the companies they’re trying to schmooze. I’ve been in some pretty hairy conversations that were way over my head.

I went to a huge concrete trade show with them a couple years ago, because really the only reason they went was to golf. So we had to spend one day at the trade show, which was actually really cool. All the companies have a booth showing their stuff. They also have a drawing where they give things away. You enter the drawing by putting your business card in the drawing box. If you don’t have a business card, you fill out a little slip with your name and address, company name, your job title, etc. That way they can solicit you down the road. I filled out everything correctly, but I had to ask my friend what my job title was. He said put Estimator. He tells me I still get mail and sales calls all the time. He had to tell his secretary to tell them I no longer work there.

2004-06-21T20:08:00.000-05:00

Some of the most fascinating conversations in the club, by far, come from the waitresses. This is because we have waitresses ranging from 20 years old to about 40. Two of my favorite waitresses are Erin and Becky, who are college students and play softball. They’re best friends and work every shift together because Erin can’t drive and Becky has to bring her. Becky dates a guy who’s 29 and looks like the Swiss tennis guy, Roger Federer (with little pony tail). I think he knows he looks like Roger Federer and tries to dress like him, for whatever reason. He’s a nice guy.

Erin dates lots of guys. I’m beginning to think she’s the easiest chick at her college. She has a spiky blonde, super short hairstyle but is still very cute and has a really funny personality. Some of the most outrageous things I’ve ever heard a person say came from Erin’s mouth. I’ve even seen dancers blush at some of the things Erin says. She’s a flirt, but I also know Erin does more than just flirt. I’ve heard of women who get booty calls at 3:00 am from drunk college guys, but I’ve never met one until I met Erin, who enthusiastically admits to getting, and answering, booty calls. The theory behind the booty call is that, as a guy, you can go to the bars, strike out completely, and then stagger home and make the “booty call” to Erin, which she’ll answer and invite you over. There is also the “booty rock throw against window” like in Animal House (and countless others—seriously, has any guy ever stood outside of a girl’s window and thrown rocks up at it? Probably yes.) The only booty call I ever made was when I was in college, and I called an old girlfriend 200 miles away after a night out drinking. I woke her up and she talked to me for a little while, then, when I started suggesting I hop in my car and come visit her, she told me I was drunk and to go to bed. I bet women just love those phone calls.

The other night I walked by the waitress station and Erin called me over. There were four waitresses there. They were discussing anal sex. Apparently, a lot of Erin’s booty callers were trying to sneak in the back door recently. “Kev, you’re a guy. Why do all the boys want to buttfuck anymore?” Erin calls guys boys, all the time, which is funny. I know we call dancers girls, but for some reason I get a kick picturing one of Erin’s “boys” drunkenly trying to screw her in the ass. She asks me stuff like this all the time, like I should know. What do you say to a question like that? I said it’s a drunk thing, and that they’ve been watching too much porn. I told her if they’re drunk enough, they’ll try to stick it in your ear. One of the older waitresses, who was just standing there listening, raised her hand and said, “Uh, been there.”

2004-06-18T14:45:00.000-05:00

I didn’t die, but it was a close one. That’s a joke. I don’t post for a couple days deliberately, to give people the impression that I have a life outside of the club and this blogging. Then I’ll come back in a post and say, “Wow, what a weekend!” when really all I did was work and hit golf balls and check my blog. I haven’t been getting out much lately.

One of my neighbors is a pretty decent friend. He told me something funny the other day. He has a little Welsh corgi dog named Buster that he walks all the time around the neighborhood. People around here get very upset when you let your dog shit in their yard. My friend has been jumped a few times about it. So now he carries a little plastic grocery sack with him in his pocket, and when his dog shits in someone’s yard and that someone is standing in a window with their hands on their hips, frowning, my friend reaches down with the plastic sack, scoops up the poop and folds it up. He then holds it up to show them he scooped it up, and they smile and wave and maybe go Thank you with their mouth. He waves back. Little Buster wags his tail, and maybe offers a friendly bark. Love flows through the neighborhood again.

Only he doesn’t really pick the poop up! He’s used the same sack for several months now. He just makes it look like he’s picking it up, but he doesn’t. It’s still there. I said what happens if they come out and check to make sure you picked it up? He said no, people would not believe a person could be so shallow and devious. I said yes, you’re probably right.

Things are majorly blah at the club. This is the weekend of a huge festival in town and the parties and bands go until late late. It will be slow, which is good, but also this seems like the time that the weirdos always show up. Fantasy carwashing is in full swing, more popular and raunchier than ever (there’s probably a correlation there, but maybe not). The DOM didn’t die over the winter, as we were hoping. He’s back, and it’s just the same thing all over again. He’s been in the club three or four times already, looking like a little kid who really, really has to pee. If this doesn’t mean anything to you, you can read more about him back in the archives. It’s one of the first 5 or 10 posts, I think.

2004-06-15T20:49:00.000-05:00

Walt told me last night that a kid who graduated from high school this spring has been chasing his daughter, who just graduated 8th grade. Because it’s summer, I had trouble for a second with the ages, high school grad and incoming freshman. I did the math, calculated the ages, took the square root of whatever and subtracted blah, and the answer equaled wrong. Walt is our senior security guy and he can kill you with his pinky finger. He said the guy’s been coming over to the house during the day. Over the weekend, Walt’s ex-wife called him and told him to drive by the house to see if his car was there. I don’t care how old Walt’s daughter is, I wouldn’t want to be sitting in the backyard with her when Walt walked around the corner. She could be five years older than me, and I’d still shit my pants. Lucky for the kid, he was gone by the time Walt drove by, although I would have loved to have heard that story (or maybe not...okay, yes, I would have loved it, unless he killed the kid, then no, but...)

I have to wonder what’s going on in that kid’s mind. It’s actually been with me all day. I don’t like the looks of his future. It’s funny because Walt is just mystified and I really got to see him for the first time as a parent. He’s not talking about killing the kid, which I have to give him credit for. All the bouncers were giving him creative ways he could cut the guy’s dick off (a Sawzall and a hatchet seemed to be the two favorites), but Walt was in lala-land. He’s more worried than anything else. He was just out of it all night last night. He’s one of the good guys. I try to remember how hard parenting is when I bitch about my job.

I’ll keep you posted.

2004-06-14T13:04:00.000-05:00

Brianna is a dancer at our club who started as a waitress first, back when I was a bartender. She was a good waitress, but everyone knew that she had started waitressing just to get her feet wet because she eventually wanted to dance. All of the male employees of the club said things like There IS a God! when they found out Brianna wanted to try dancing, because Brianna’s a fox. That’s a really interesting thing, working with somebody for a month or so, fully clothed, then getting to see them naked. It was about the most excited I’ve ever been to see someone dance.

So, of course, she was great and everybody loved her. Her first song, all the bouncers and bartenders were doing the I’m-not-worthy bow at the edge of the stage and she got all embarrassed.

A couple weeks later, she opened up her set wearing her waitress outfit and carrying a tray. She was wearing glasses and had her hair up. Our waitresses wear black leather skirts, dark hose and their tops are called wing collared halters, which are like sleeveless and almost backless tuxedo-collared tops. They’re sexy in a tasteful way. They wear the collars open and bowties around their necks. So Brianna comes out wearing her waitress uniform and does her set. It was great, the whole strip-tease experience, taking off her glasses and letting her hair down, then the shirt came off (we have one dancer who dresses like a businesswoman, in a business suit with reading glasses and her hair up like that…the guys love it).

One of the waitresses, Kim, came up into the booth and stood there for a minute. She then looked at me and said, “Just so she knows, that’s the last fucking time she’s wearing that outfit on stage,” and walked away. I hadn’t even thought about that. The waitresses all took offense, and I don’t blame them. The rest of the night, the guys were all like, “Hey, when’s your turn up there on the stage?” to our waitresses. They were asking them for table dances, if they did anything special for an extra tip, the whole mess. Things like that happen all the time. We have one dancer who dresses like a little girl with pig tails and comes out on stage to the song “Lollipop” (you know, lollipop, lollipop, oh, lolly…blahblahlah) and nobody says a word (it’s amazing how fast she grows up over the course of three songs), but dress like a waitress and man, the shit hits the fan.

So, with a heavy heart, I had to confiscate Brianna’s waitress outfit. Mostly because the waitresses would have ripped her hair out if she ever wore it again, but also partly because the outfit belongs to the club, anyway.

2004-06-12T14:18:00.000-05:00

Last night was such a great night at work. I haven’t had that much fun in a long time. It was one of those nights where it feels like everybody wants to be there, everybody was in a good mood. The place was packed, all the guys were cool, we had four stages of dancers going. No fights, no ejections. Not even any real warnings to guys for getting too frisky. And the girls were great. There are nights when a lot of them just go through the motions, make their money and leave. There are other nights when they really dance. Some of our girls are really amazing dancers, but you so rarely get to see it, and especially see all of them doing it on one night. For awhile, it was like every dancer’s set was like a challenge to the next girl to top it. All the songs rocked. It was great.

And I got to see Darby dance to “Little Bit More.” That’s one of the coolest things about my job, getting to enjoy music like that. It’s like you get to hear the song for the first time twice. You hear it, you love it and listen to it fifty times. Then you get to see one of your favorite dancers just absolutely blow the roof off the place dancing to it. Darby is a little goth chick with short dark hair. She has a couple tattoos and some piercings and wears dark lipstick and eye makeup. She’s a lot more sexy than scary looking, but the funny thing is that she’s a total sweetheart. She has an incredible body and man, can she dance. It was so great. I didn’t let her listen to the song before, but I told her I had a new one and she’d have to wing it. She wung it. It’s amazing watching a good dancer like that, just improvise when she’s never even heard the song before, anticipating all the big shifts in the music and everything. When she got off stage the first time, she ran over to the booth and said, “Oh, my God, that song is so fucking awesome!”

A good night. I loved it.

2004-06-10T14:12:00.000-05:00

This rain will never stop. I wanted to golf about a thousand holes today, but no go. So I’m going to chip and putt golf balls while I think about this post, and I'll stop every once in a while stop and write. That’s what I’m doing right now.

This is the only part of my game that doesn’t take a shit over the winter, because I chip and putt all year around. My dog used to chase the golf balls. It was impossible to hole a shot that way. It’s also impossible to get in a groove when every shot you take only gets halfway to its target before a dog darts out from the bathroom and grabs it. I play a game with him sometimes with my little foam golf balls. He stands at the end of the hall and I try to chip the balls past him and hit the wall like he’s a hockey goalie. He’s unbeatable, unless I chip the ball over his head. Then he looks pissed. Satch appreciates heated competition, but he demands a level playing field. If I just keep lobbing shots over his head, he loses interest. That’s the only time I can get one past him. I bore him to death with flop shots that he can’t reach, then I sneak one past him. Also, unlike a real hockey goalie, Satch has no 5-hole because he sits on his hind legs. You have to beat him to the stick side.

Television at this time of the day is awful. My two big TV viewing times are usually from about noon until 2:00 pm, and 3:00 am until 5:00 am. There ain’t much happening on those two time slots.

I just heard a song by Tony C. & the Truth called “Little Bit More” and it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. The name of the album is Demonophonic Blues. I hope the rest of the album is half that cool. I’m going to buy it right now. As soon as I heard the song, I thought of one of the dancers, Darby. When she shows up for work tomorrow night, I’ll wave her over to the booth and let her listen to “Little Bit More” in cue on my headphones. She’ll freak, because it’s the kind of stuff she loves. Funky stuff that totally rocks. She’ll demand that I play the song for her first set. I’ll be her hero. This is what I do.

2004-06-09T12:45:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I called Mitch, whose real name isn’t Mitch, Mitch. He said, “Who the fuck’s Mitch?” and I said, “That’s what I’m asking you.” He looked confused. He was busy at the bar, so that was the end of it. The names I use for dancers are all names I’ve heard of for dancers, and many of the names I use I actually know a dancer by that name, only it’s not the same dancer. The dancer I call Logan has almost taken on an identity of her own. I know her very well, I see her about every other day, but the blog Logan is becoming different in my mind from the real Logan. And I have to admit that this all is going on more in my head than in the blog here, because I write probably 400% more than I actually end up posting, so a lot of the time I have to say, Did I actually post that, or did I write it and dump it? My blog life is taking over my real life. Soon it will suffocate it and kill it and all will be blog.

I like to post interesting little tidbits every once in awhile. Most of the time when I write something like, Here’s a really cool thing I learned today, people comment and say, “Kev, you fuckin dipshit, you didn’t know that?” And I go, Nope, wouldn’t have said I learned it today if I had. Then I remember I only had 1.3333333 years of college, and those weren’t the most productive in US collegiate history.

So here’s my little fun fact of the day. If you don’t know this, you can say, “Kev, you rock, that’s the most fascinating thing I’ve ever heard!” If you do know this, bite my ass. Just kidding.

Also, it’s not my intention for this to be the sleaze-bag blog or anything, but this is gross, so, you know, fair warning. There was a radio story I heard today and I’m not sure where this happened (it wasn’t a local story), but a guy in a fast-food place was arrested for masturbating in people’s food. One of the people he did it to was a cop. Here’s the fascinating part: They charged him with aggravated battery. Isn’t that bizarre? That must be like the maximum penalty or something, but I would have never guessed they could charge a guy for battery when he never even touched someone. Then I thought about, what happens if you spit on somebody? I suppose technically that would be battery too.

Reading back on this, it’s not nearly as fascinating as I thought it would be. Oh well.

2004-06-08T14:20:00.000-05:00

My best friend Kyle works for an insurance company. He travels all over two states visiting insurance agencies. He’s the guy who tells the insurance agent, “Can I get you anything?” And the insurance agent says, “Yes, we need some more promotional water bottles and a dozen company sticky-pads,” and Kyle takes care of that for them. I tell Kyle he has the perfect job for listening to books-on-tape because he’s in his car all day. He could “read” 100 novels a year. Or I can listen to the first ten pages of one novel, he says, and fall asleep at the wheel and drive off a bridge. I tell him he better stick to sports talk radio.

Whenever he’s in the area he times it out and stops in the club, which he did yesterday. I was best man at Kyle’s wedding. I had just started working at the club and his wife wasn’t too happy, to have me, nudie club bartender, giving the toast at her wedding. I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t want a stripper being my wife’s maid of honor, to be completely honest. I’m trying to think if that’s being hyprocritical…hmmm…Yes. I’ve decided it is.

Nothing much happened yesterday because Kyle has been in the club a hundred times and we just hang out. The very first time he came in after I had become manager, we were sitting in the office together and a couple of the dancers, who had just gotten off stage, came in, still with no tops on. They said hello to Kyle, he said hello, one of them had a question for me about something, we made a joke, everybody laughed. The other one walked around the side of the desk to check her schedule. I introduced Kyle to them, they said Hey and stood around for awhile and talked. Okay, thanks, Kev. They left and closed the door. Kyle looked at me totally deadpan and said, “Dude, that was maybe the greatest five minutes of my life.”

The guy who owns the club, Charlie, didn’t make it to the meeting yesterday for the second week in a row. That has never happened before. He has some disease that’s not supposed to be life-threatening, but I can’t remember which one. I’ll find out today at work. If Charlie dies, I wonder if Ravishing Ron would get the club? If Charlie hasn’t already died, I’ll ask him the next time I see him. I’ll say, “Hey, Charlie, when you drop dead does your scumbag son get the club?” Then Charlie and I will have a good laugh. Then he’ll fire me.

2004-06-06T21:34:00.000-05:00

When I worked Friday night, I talked to a dancer named Jenna. Jenna had some shingles blown off her roof in the storms we’ve been having. She lives in a house with her 3-year-old son and whatever loser she’s currently dating. Jenna’s boyfriends move in with her usually after the second or third date. I asked Jenna, “How does a guy move in with you after you’ve been seeing each other for two weeks? Where was he living before?” They usually live with their parents or a friend. From the looks of them, many may actually be homeless. She likes the dangerous guys, but around here, the dangerous ones are usually just fucking idiots. I know two pretty nice guys who come into the club occasionally who are in love with Jenna and she won’t give them a second thought.

Her roof is leaking into her bathroom, she told me, and she doesn’t know what to do. I told her to call a roofer. She did, she said, and he told her she needed a new roof. She called her insurance man and the adjuster came out. Jenna has a $1,000 deductible because her credit is poor and the house is in bad shape. The adjuster told her the damage wouldn’t meet the deductible. She doesn’t know what to do. She was almost crying. I asked her how many shingles were off and she held out her arms to show that it was probably just a couple. She knows I used to work construction, and she’s seen me in action doing amazing feats of maintenance around the club. One time I was outside before the club opened, mentally preparing myself for my shift, making pretty shapes out of the clouds, when one of the dancers came out and screamed for me to get inside. A pipe had burst in the dressing and was spraying all over the place. They had managed to throw a towel over it, but it was still soaking the floor. I shut off the water valve and now all the dancers think I’m Bob Villa. After about 10 minutes of listening to her beating around the bush, I said, “Jenna, how about I come over tomorrow and patch your roof?” She squealed.

First I went to her house to see what color shingles she had. Then to Lowe’s to buy a bundle of shingles. Then back. Then she didn’t have a ladder. We borrowed one from her neighbor. I got on the roof. There were three shingles missing. The shingles I bought were the same color as her shingles when her shingles were new, about 30 years ago. I got busy.

Jenna came out a little while later and asked me if I wanted a cookie. She was baking cookies for something her son was involved in. I said yes to be nice, but I didn’t want to come down the ladder just to get a cookie. I told her to come up. No, she’s afraid of heights. Just throw it. The first throw I could have caught if I had taken three steps and dove from the roof and landed on the driveway. The second one hit the gutter. I told her to just forget it, she’s wasting her cookies. No, one more. She heaved this one and it went over my head, but it landed on the roof. I got it before the 5-second rule and dusted it off. She stood there until she saw me eat it, then she went back inside.

So I fixed her roof. I had to use three times the number of shingles that were missing because her roof was so old, I kept breaking shingles trying to tie them in. I’m praying the next time it rains she doesn’t come in and say the roof is still leaking.

Also, I got my heart broken on Saturday. By a guy. Named Smarty Jones. Oh, Smarty.