The Queens Strip
When I last stepped into a New York strip club, I thought I had seen it all. Tall leggy women in lingerie, strutting around, whispering into your ear for a promise of esctasy in exchange for nominal fee of 20 bucks, because apparently that's what professionalism is all about.
Naturally, I was wrong about that, along with many other things like algebra equations, lottery numbers and what women want.
When Hoyes suggested that he take me out for drinks at the strip clubs, I never thought much to greet it with any enthusiasm that would so much as to warrant an erection. From what I've seen, strip clubs are as exciting to me as having my nails painted with kerosene.
Hoyes : "I'm gonna take you to another strip club out in Queens. It's gonna to be wicked."
I already had it all played out in my head. Instead of walking in to some plush room behind the grand line of velvet ropes, decorated with leather seats and Victorian paintings, I'd probably be walking in to a bar with the equivalent whiff of decadence and whiskey, just without the upmarket fixtures and chic table lamps.
As soon as we turned in to the parking lot, I realised that I was 5 miles from Manhattan, not wearing a kevlar vest and walking into what looked like a massive club. By simple multiplication skills that I picked up from my years in school, I derived the obvious equation from a simple theory.
If,
Space = Capacity and Capacity is a direct correlation to strippers
Then,
Larger space = larger capacity, which also means there are more strippers and hence more boobs.
I am a genius. Everyday I wake up wondering why I never joined NASA because if I did, we would have found aliens by now.
Hoyes : "This is nothing like you've seen in Manhattan. If you like asses, this is the bomb!"
Even if he never told me, I would have figured that out because there wasn't a strip joint in Manhattan that I've been to that was to this scale. However, in my deep mental soliloquy of mass equations, I failed to notice two very important points.
1. Not only was I the only Asian. I was also probably the only other non-African American.
2. The fact that Hoyes talked incessantly about 'asses'
Naturally I assumed that a country blessed with staging the Victoria Secrets annual shows that they, like every other men I knew would benchmark the perfect ass to anyone who struts down that catwalk. I obviously knew very little about American culture because when I got into the club, I thought I was at a Super Size Me 2 casting call.
Not only did ALL the women have huge asses, but they were booty shaking so hard, I think there was enough ripples on their asses collectively to start a tsunami. And my god, their ass was so dimpled with celluloid, that if the bums were any larger, or if I was smaller, I could walk on them and proclaim it to be the moon.
I stood there, almost petrified because Hoyes insisted that he buy me a lap dance and I couldn't find a single girl in there that could sit on me without causing a possible femur fracture. This place had none of the pleasantries of the other velvet rope lounges that Manhattan gave. Tipping a girl for her dance here meant tossing $1 bills over her as she dances.
The club was littered with bills all over the floor and girls were dry humping everything. Some looked like they were convulsing but generally everyone there could have given Beyonce a run for her money for hip shaking. I don't know the exact term for that, but it's that dance where they shake their asses so vigorously, it looks like they stuck a giant vibrator in them.
It would have been tearfully described as a precarious quandry, had there not been a huge bottle of Grey Goose and Red Bull that made it to the table just as he was about to pick a girl for me.
Me: "Dude, can I do 5 shots of vodka instead?"
Him: "Not your kind of girl here?"
Me: "I'm only picking them if this is a team buffet challenge."
A huge burly guy comes by almost immediately and wrapped his arm around Hoyes. This was the second time in the club that I nearly shat my pants. If Hoyes was going to be strangled, I don't know how I was going to make my way back to Manhattan.
Guy: "Come, let me buy you a dance."
He drags Hoyes to the couch and instantaneously, a girl hops onto his lap. Half the time her ass was inches from his face and half the time he had his face all cringed like he had it soaked in salt water for a year.
This girl shocked me with an apptitude of dexerity I thought I would only see in a gymnast, because she was moving her legs over his head and doing random splits at a phenomenal frequency. If gymnastics weren't such a superficial sport made for lithe figures and buldging biceps, she might have made the national team.
Me: "I guess not your kind of women too huh?"
Hoyes: "No dude, I love phat ass. She just had this weird smell coming off her and I don't know if it was from her ass or pussy but I'm not going to be taking chances."
Me: "Good to know."
Hoyes: "Let's get out of here. I'll take you to another joint where the girls are slim."
So we left the place and headed for the next bar which was a good 10 minute drive. Along the way he assured me that the second place was going to be nothing like the first. I didn't think anything couldn't go below the last joint anyway, because unless we are walking into a farm, any place was better.
The second joint did turn out to be a lot better, but it was almost empty because the place was closing and the girls were going into their final rounds on the podium. When we got there, there was an Asian looking girl on stage that was in the midst of her routine.
We got a drink by the bar and she came by after her dance. Hoyes tipped her a dollar and she turned to smile at me. And smiled. And she stood there for a good minute just smiling at me. I figured she was trying to hint at giving me a lap dance, so I did the only polite thing and declined, because I've learned that nothing really good comes out of a women smiling this much to you at a club.
Me: "No thanks."
She storms off.
Me: "That was friendly."
Hoyes: "Erm, you're actually suppose to tip her a dollar for her dance."
Fuck. I am a disgrace to Chinese across the world. I could well be the cause of Chinese being barred from strip clubs.