Like my decision to start stripping in the first place, my decision to do the bachelor party thing wasn’t exactly deliberate. It wasn’t as though I woke up one day and consciously decided that the time had come to take my career to a new level. It was much more passive than that; it was as simple as a flyer with pull tabs in the dressing room of my club, with a handwritten note mentioning that a fellow dancer worked for them. I sent her a text and she texted back that they were cool and that was good enough for me.
I called them, emailed a few photos and then forgot about the whole thing until I received a phone call a few days later from a random number. It was Strippers 101 and they wanted to know if I was available on Saturday night.
(Here goes nothing…) “Yeah, I’m available, what is it?”
The woman on the phone sounded sheepish and irritated. “Well it’s a bachelor party and these guys want a dancer to dance in their limo,” she sighed.
“Really? Is there room for that? Is that like… pretty common?”
“I tried to explain to them that it would probably be more fun if they aren’t having it inside a car, but they wouldn’t listen and they’re really set on this limo thing. I guess they’re really excited about their Hummer stretch limo.”
“Huh, okay, I mean, yeah I guess I can handle that…” I said.
We worked out the rest of the logistics and she wished me luck with my unorthodox first assignment. Even though I had never done a bachelor party before, I still knew enough to know that it was the stupidest thing I had ever heard in my life.
I could see their reasoning. Stretch Hummers are cool, and strippers are cool, so let’s just have the stripper in the stretch Hummer and it will be awesome. I was pretty sure what kind of crowd I was dealing with here and decided to dub the CD I made for this party, “The Quintessential Douchebag Mix.” Since I was scared about doing my first bachelor party, and in a moving vehicle no less, I tried to at least be as prepared as possible.
After four years of stripping, I was an expert on the kind of songs that really get the d-bag demographic all pumped up at the club. They always act the way that people who don’t know how to download songs act when their favorite top 40 hit comes on the radio, like it’s a miracle. The mix consisted of such douche-friendly hits as, “Ridin’ Dirty” by Chamillionaire, “Hypnotize” by Notorious B.I.G., the 50 Cent/NIN “Closer” remix, “Baby I got your money” by ODB and “Check Yo Self” by Ice Cube. I threw in a few rock songs like “Big Balls” and “TNT” by AC/DC for variety. It’s not to say that these are strictly douche songs, but they are at least good common turf for me and the douches because I don’t do Tool.
I wore as many layers as possible, since it’s not like there would be anywhere to change in the limo. The dressing in layers that go from acceptable street clothes to stripper challenge is actually pretty fun, especially the passive-aggressive unnecessary extra layers to waste time part. I called Malice for advice and moral support and she mentioned that tall boots are good for stashing money. She was so right about this. The more you make money disappear as soon as you get it, the less they will stop tipping and act like you’ve already gotten enough money because your garter is full.
The bachelor party was every bit as awkward as you would expect for taking place in a space where one can’t even stand upright. Why didn’t they just throw it in the bachelor’s crawl space or the bathroom of a hotel room? I ended up just sort of crawling around on everyone and balancing using the mirrored ceiling and it was fine. The sort of men who are simple enough to think that just aimlessly driving around in a limo is a blast are also easily thrilled by me. The d-bag mix was a hit, and there was cheering at the beginning of every song, and props to my impeccable music taste.
When they dropped me off one hour later in front of Bar XV downtown (there was no way I was getting picked up or dropped off at my apartment), I went to the bathroom, unzipped my boots, sat on the floor and counted $300 in sweaty crumpled bills. In the words of the stripper who watched my first ever stage set, “Not bad for an all-time first.”