O.P.P. in V.I.P.

Last night found me back in the South Side for the first time since just after Christmas. Pittsburgh’s South Side consists primarily of one long road, Carson Street, which is flanked by hundreds of bars and clubs along a two mile stretch. I did a lot of my post-college drinking in this area, but lately my friends and I haven’t frequented it quite as much. So when my friend Tony C.—or “Toe,” as we affectionately call him—said his birthday celebration was going to be at Diesel, I was more than willing to partake in the debauchery.

Toe told us that he’d be there at 9, but when I showed up at 8:58 the doors were locked and he was nowhere in sight. I decided to kill some time down the street at Jimmy D’s, which is probably my favorite bar in the city. For quite some time, my friends and I considered this to be our “St. Elmo’s Bar.” T.C. and I even worked there as bouncers on a few occasions. I hadn’t been there in nearly two years, and it was odd to look around and feel so much nostalgia. What does it say about me that I can turn wistful over a bar?

We all eventually convened at Diesel. I got to talk to Nick (Toe is his little brother) for the first time since my birthday adventure, and I made sure to buy him a shot as a small “thanks” for his help. He also filled me in on a part of the story that I hadn’t heard before: My…stomach eruption…started while I was sitting at the bar. I had thought I reached the bathroom sink first, but apparently not. I made quite a mess on the bar and floor in front of it. It’s going to be a very long time before I go back to Buckhead.

Some of Toe’s buddies decided to get a table and a couple of bottles upstairs in the V.I.P. area of the club. I joined them, but we quickly realized that we had the makings of a sausage party—four guys, zero chicks. We needed to diversify our crowd. The guys seemed a bit shy, but I was just tipsy enough to step up to the plate. After all, it doesn’t take a lot of smooth words to get girls to come hang out in a V.I.P. section, especially for free. I just walked the length of the velvet rope, inviting the best looking girls to come chill with us. Boom—we suddenly had a nice mix of hotties around our table. MVP of the V.I.P., baby.

The first two girls that I invited actually had a guy in their party, who I didn’t notice until after offering them asylum on our side of the velvet rope. And not just any guy; one of the two was his wife, and the other was his cousin. Great. He was a cool cat, though. We were talking for a few minutes when I looked over and realized that his wife and cousin were aggressively making out on one of the couches. I pointed this out to him, and he just shrugged his shoulders, saying, “Yeah; they do that all the time.”

Women like that make marriage worth the hassle.

They continued the lovefest throughout the rest of the night; at one point, the cousin laid back on the couch, while the wife straddled her (I got a great action shot of it with my camera). While they were taking a break, the wife came over to me and said, “Thank you so much for inviting us over.” “No—thank YOU.” She laughed, and said, “Yeah, I just love mauling his cousin.”

Best. Wife. Ever.