A Bet with a Stripper Named 'Roxy'

I can see myself fifty years from now, sitting on a porch—whittling and telling stories to the neighborhood children. Maybe I’ll already be a little bit senile at 78. I will at least pretend that I am a little senile—not so much that I’ll be committed or sent away, though.

I want to be that kind of senile that makes people say, “Oh! What a cute old man!” The emphasis there is on the word “cute” because what they really mean to say is “Wow, shit! That old dude is making me uncomfortable, and he definitely shouldn’t be telling my children these stories while he’s whittling! Where did he even get that knife?!?” But all they can say is “cute.”

This is one of those stories. In fact, I should probably save it altogether until I’m that darling age at which I am afforded certain free passes for shenanigans from my youth.

This story is about the time I made a football-related bet with a stripper named Roxy.

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Now, certain people from my past will remember how difficult it was to get me to go to…gentlemen’s clubs, even if they were literally across the street from my house (I’m looking at you Peaches in Valdosta).

Others will tell you of the phase I went through when I became a bit of a connoisseur of the whole scene. Interestingly enough, though, I never paid for private dances for myself. I wasn’t really interested in that part of the experience. I was much more interested in talking to the dancers. Don’t worry—I would tip them or buy them drinks just for talking to me.I get the premise of the club. You have to pay to play, even if "playing" means "talking about the NBA playoffs."

Maybe you’re worried about me now. If you had known me then, you really would have been worried about me. It may not always be true that the men in those seedy places are looking for some sort of fulfillment that they are lacking in other arenas of life, but for me it kind of was. Since my rough break with Jane (a pseudonym), I had reclaimed my apartment and moved off of Darwin’s sofa. Externally, I guess it looked like I was moving forward. But if anyone could take a microscope to me they would have seen—I was a broken man.

Here is a tangent: The first time I kissed a girl after that break-up was a monumental achievement in my brain. I had allowed myself to be convinced I was weak and childish—incapable of being a sufficient lover for any other woman. It’s dumb, but I was flailing a bit for a while.

Back to Roxy.

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I’m not even sure how I found the club. It may be close to the shithole honky-tonk, but I’m not sure. I just remember the obnoxious neon sign of a horse smiling like a jackass. Also, if you don’t think the last sentence is just a little funny, you’re free to go. A HORSE smiling like a JACKASS? That’s damn clever.

Once inside, I posted up at the bar and ordered a Jack and Diet. I was watching some basketball game, feeling like I was in a regular ole sports bar when this tiny little blond came up. She struck up a conversation, told me her name was Roxy (I didn’t ask to see the birth certificate), and we split a basket of fries.

She was wearing some kind of matching bra and panty set. Maybe they were yellow. If I ever mentioned liking a song that was on, she was quick to suggest a dance, but I didn’t really want one. And she wasn’t pushy about it. Maybe she sensed that what I needed most at that moment was for a girl to sit next to me and talk about nothing. And that’s what we did. We just talked about nothing. We talked about sports and music. She told me about her old life in California and what brought her to Atlanta.

My favorite element of clubs like this one is the part where clients have conversations with the girls. I mean, how does anyone have any kind of normal conversation with someone who is so obviously almost nude, and would actually be very nude for just $10?

By the time the bet came up, Roxy and I were beyond the whole “you’re a stripper, I’m a client” thing. She knew I was there for conversation and drinks, and she had no problem with being that person. The club was slow, so why not?

The TV was showing highlights from some football game. The bet concerned the Giants and the Cowboys. If you follow football, you’ll remember a few years back when the Giants got on a roll at the end of the season, beat the Cowboys at the end of the season to go into the playoffs as division winners, and ultimately they beat the Pats for the second time.

Roxy wanted to bet some VIP time on the final standings of the NFC West. We drew up the official terms on this napkin and we signed it. We both probably knew we would never see each other again, and we didn’t, even though I won. I didn’t want Roxy in the VIP room, though. I just wanted a girl to sit next to me, and laugh at my jokes again. She did that.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a place like that, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever go back. I think those are places where desperate men go, and the heavens know I’ve been desperate in my life—desperate for attention, for conversation, for compassion, for just a little healing. But all desperation wanes in time. All wounds will heal.

Cheers!

-Shane  

Go Big or Go Home

In the summer of 2011 I was hanging out with a guy named Darwin (a pseudonym). I won’t say much more about his personal life other than it was less than ideal. He had known great loss and heartache—the kind I haven’t had to know yet—but he was incessantly upbeat.

He was a skinny kid. He wore loose denim shorts, button-down short-sleeved shirts that were two sizes too big with loud-ass designs, and a black fedora over gelled-up hair. He also wore glasses. In terms of his fashion, he was the perfect fusion of thug and geek, but that was Darwin. We met at karaoke and bonded over Kanye West’s “Heartless.”

He didn’t have a car. He didn’t have a job. He didn’t have a high school diploma or a GED. In so many ways, he was the personification of so much of Albany, Georgia, but he was trying.

The night that Darwin drew this napkin, we were at Mellow Mushroom. The NBA playoffs were on, and Darwin pulled hard for the Miami Heat. He also pulled hard for the New England Patriots during

football season (a major source of strife between us). He seemed to pull only for the winners, which is fine. Watching sports gives us a chance to escape, and sometimes we need a little victory with our escape.

Darwin was one of the best friends I made in Albany. He never passed judgment, and he always listened, especially when I couldn’t talk to the rest of the world about what was happening. I knew that whatever I told him and whatever he saw would never be repeated.

One night, I was asked to leave my apartment so my ex could pack her things. It was much uglier than that, really. But I left. I stayed at a hotel that night. The next morning I took Darwin to Mellow Mushroom so he could apply for a job (we spent a lot of time there that summer…mainly because she didn’t).

While I sat with Darwin and worked with him on his application, in another place, my ex was working hard to hurt my career and livelihood, but this isn’t so much about what she was doing. She was reacting to a break-up. She was reacting in a truly terrible way, but she was still reacting.

But when Darwin reacted, it was in a truly noble way. He opened his home, which he was possibly on the verge of losing (he didn’t). He offered his couch and his television. He offered jokes and laughter and a crudely-drawn cartoon of a basketball player I don’t recognize. He was there to offer catharsis, because unlike that cartoon basketball player he drew who had just lost out of the playoffs, I was not going home—not for a while.

And he taught me, as did the other people who helped me when I needed it most, that kindness is often wrapped in the most unrecognizable package. He was the kind of person who couldn’t be robbed of his kindness. Even when life was unbelievably cruel, he could be found laughing uncontrollably over a slice of pizza, singing the words to his sentences and bobbing his head to the beat of the music.

The caption on this napkin means a great deal. “Go Big or Go Home.” Sure, it’s a sports cliché. Sure, we’ve all heard it a million times. But it was that summer that I adopted the Nomad Shane moniker. I didn’t identify any place as “home” necessarily. I floated for a while, looking for somewhere to put roots down. I would finally find that place, but not for a while.

That summer, Darwin helped me understand that I could survive, for little while, without a home. And I did.

Water or a Woman (or a Coping Mechanism)

In 2008, I was a much bigger man. I don't mean that I was bigger like your mom means when you were bullied in grade school and you wanted to punch the other kid's face in, and she told you to "be the bigger man/woman/whatever (insert appropriate pronoun)." No, it was definitely not my morality that was big, though my largeness probably contributed to a faux-morality in some ways (like the ways that involved the ladies).

In 2008, I was also in college. It was the first summer of grad school, and it was probably right around the time I started writing on napkins to begin with. And if I'm honest, this particular night, I was writing on the backs of receipts: one from a haircut (I had a little more hair then) and one from an ATM machine (I had a lot less money).

I rambled on these receipts for a while about the on-stage talent at Charley O'Corley's that night--a guy by the name of Scar Dirty:

I'm so drunk I don't know if I'll remember writing this. It's a strange sensation to make letters faster than your mind can. There is a guy on stage rapping. He used the music from "Jack and Diane" for his first song. It was fun. I want to talk to him about art. I wonder what art is to a man who recycles something created by someone else.

I was still pretty happy about the whole situation. I remember that my friends had stepped outside, and I was having a bourbon and coke.

What started as a manifesto on sampling in hip hop and the merits of that practice as an art form, soon began to unravel into a much more interesting moment:

This is a larger receipt. Maybe I can write more on here. I couldn't finish my bourbon and coke. I started feeling sick. I need a water or a woman to talk to. I don't know if I'll find a girl worth talking to in here. This guy has a pretty good flow. These white people are crunk. I wish I had the balls to talk to one of these girls. 

 Now herein lies the problem with college-aged Shane. Herein lies the problem with any man (or really...any person) not in a relationship. In the second chunk here, 22-year-old Shane says three distinct things about women, and they all tell almost-28-year-old Shane a whole lot about his younger incarnation.

1. "I need a water or a woman to talk to." In other words, despite how (painfully) few women I talked to in those days, I still had the desire to talk to them. I still wanted to approach them. I wanted to spit smooth game and kiss them and buy them drinks and probably do really dirty things to their bodies. 
2. "I don't know if I'll find a girl worth talking to in here."  This is just bullshit. The law of averages dictates that someone in that bar was worth it. They may not have been relationship/ brunch/ one-night-stand material. But that brings us to another important point. Goal-oriented action in these settings is the worst. Give people a chance. Walk up and say "hi." Someone is going to surprise you.
3. "I wish I had the balls to talk to one of these girls." Here is the realness. I was scared. I was afraid like a lot of people are afraid. When I was finally able to cast that fear off, I was able to meet a lot of interesting people (who were all, in their own ways, "worth it"). No one is going to come to you. 

I never did talk to any women that night. It took me a while to grown that particular part of my backbone. But I did manage to talk to Scar-Dirty about art. He gave me a really profound definition: "whatever can come from your mind." He also said some bullshit about paving the bride that John Cougar Mellencamp built. We were all pretty trashed by then, though.

I'm pretty sure that's the night Bobby's blood sugar plummeted. That's not a tease. I just think it happened.

Until next time!
-Shane

Did You Get Your Jolly's Tonight?

This is going to be a stretch for the brain, I think. The year would have been, let's see...I still weighed a great deal more than I do now. I had graduated, though. I was working in Albany. Okay--so it was right about Thanksgiving of 2009.

Also, I think I owe you this bit of Mark Twain-esque disclaimer action: This is just what I remember from this one night. There will be very little wisdom or philosophy, but if you stick around until the end, you might just be surprised by the takeaway.

For a while, I was a part of this thing called the Blackwater Writing Project (no relation to the scary mercenaries). The writing project does really great teacher training (shout-out to teacher training). So, the National Writing Project was holding its annual meeting in Philadelphia. I had never been to Philly, and I was pumped about the Rocky stairs (walking them), Philly cheesesteaks (eating them), and just soaking in the city.

My tradition on this type of trip is to find a dueling piano bar in each new city I visit. Philly's contribution is called Jolly's.  I went to Jolly's on a Thursday night. The Dolphins were playing the Panthers; I remember this because my office mate back home was a Panthers fan, and the Dolphins (somehow) won that night. 2009 was a bad year for the Dolphins.

The bar wasn't particularly slammed that night, but most of the tables were taken. I sat at the only open table, if I remember correctly: a small, four-seater just in front of the stage with a woman from the college. She was older, but really ready to be at the bar. She was this totally dirty lady, too, and British (maybe).

The napkin from that night has a series of non-sequiturs scribbled on it. We did a lot of people watching that night, and the two major takeaways are here:

1. Wet pavement will likely bring down the sturdiest of men.
2. Only a real man with a dirty shadow beard can wear a sparkly shirt.

I suppose at this point in my life I take both of these things for granted. And watching our male high school drum major wear way too many sparkles on his uniform should have taught me the lessons of that night many years earlier. He in no way had a shadow beard or the biological capacity to grow one.

A few nights later I would revisit Jolly's with a couple of other people. It really was a great place. At that point it was a little spot in the wall, tucked away on a street that was quiet at that time of night. There was plenty of wet pavement on that first night, and many drunk people were tripped up by it.

We all have weaknesses, I suppose.

 I would learn more about one of my weaknesses on the second visit to Jolly's. It wasn't necessarily physical, either. But that's all on another napkin.

Cheers!