The Best Intentions ...

I managed to cut out of work a bit early on Friday, which is a gift and a curse. Yes, it gets me out into the Tampa sunshine sooner, but if I head home to my spot in the north burbs at rush hour, I'm going to spend at least 60 minutes enjoying that sunshine in traffic.

So instead, I rolled down the street to my regular spot. It looks like a neighborhood bar - in fact, I thought it was one when I first walked in there a few months ago - but it does indeed feature topless women, a stage with a pole and screened-off couches. To quote my illustrious blogmate, don't judge me.

I stopped in at about 4:30 to say hi to the owner, a beautiful woman who's sort of adopted me as part of the club family. I was gonna have a drink and wait out rush hour a bit, then head home and lay low for the weekend to prepare for my trip to Chicago on Monday.

Ha. Ha. Ha. As usual, whenever I intend to do something brief and normal in a club, all hell breaks loose.

The club was way fuller than it should have been at that time; I had trouble finding a parking spot. All the stools at the bar are full. The owner, Rusty, is bartending and this cat Jody's DJing. I know some of the girls on sight, but none are friends of mine.

I walk over to say what's up to Jody, cuz I haven't seen him in a while, and a regular, a cat named Virgil, also walks over. (Quick sidenote about Virgil: I've heard he punches somebody in the face once a week just for the hell of it. He's one of those guys who's always having fun right up until he's trying to stab someone for God knows what reason.)

Virgil's obviously upset. I ask what's going on, and find out a longtime regular with deep pockets died the day before. Heart attack, out of the blue. I didn't know the guy, but apparently everyone else did. So this was kind of his Irish wake. The strip club twist is that they did a barwide toast for him and then two girls twisted up on each other like a DNA helix onstage to Johnny Cash.

Rusty's obviously too emotionally torn up to function. So we stash her in the back office. Virgil volunteers to bartend, but he's plastered, God bless him. So Jody takes over. Which leaves an empty DJ booth and ... me.

As that great philosopher MC Eiht says, ain't nothin' to it but to do it.

Jody gives me a quick rundown - this chick likes classic rock, this chick likes R&B, etc. - and leaves me to it. They've got a digital booth, and I've played songs back there before, plus I DJ'd house parties and bars back in college, so I'm not intimidated by the music. However, the microphone looked like a freaking shotgun pointed at my head.

Emboldened by a couple of CAPTAIN and cokes, if you feel me, I dive in. And two hours later, I'm still doing it.

Methinks "strip club DJ" is not going on my resume anytime soon, but I did a passable job, to the point to where one of the girls even offered to tip me out. (Strippers generally tip the DJ at the end of their shifts for exhorting the clientele to spend money on them.)

Meanwhile, Rusty has ordered Jody to give me whatever I want from behind the bar. Jody apparently interpreted this as "send TJ a Jager bomb or Patron shot every time a song ends." I text Defi at some point and said "I'm DJing a strip club," and to his credit, he reacted much the same way as he would have if I'd said, "The sky is blue." The man is jaded.

After a couple hours, Rusty has pulled herself back together and is back behind the bar. Jody once again mans his battle station, but asks me to see if there's anything I can help Rusty with. Naturally, there is - one person working a bar on a Friday night is never enough. So now I'm fetching ice, restocking coolers, etc., all the while drinking everything that's put in front of my face. After a while, I just stopped asking what it was.

About 8 pm, Rusty departs and instructs the night bartender, a friend of mine, that I am to be taken care of to my heart's content. Christmas came early, baby. However, something a bit more interesting popped up (read as: blond, cute, slippery morals) and in my intoxicated state led me astray. Damn my libido.

So what did I learn from all this? Probably nothing, because it'll more than likely happen again, if the last decade of my adult life is any indication. But I can now say that I've told a room full of men to "get the fuck up and get out your wallets" and they did it. I'm sure that's something I'll tell my grandkids.