"one wild night"

My roommate Rich won a radio contest and gave me the (sur)prize: two free tickets to the U.S. Men of Steel Male Dance Revue!! Sweet! One Night Only! Awesome! At Marlintini's! Oh.

If you've read Steen's post about the kind of girls who frequent the Viking, imagine their delinquent mothers and you'll have Marlintini's demographic. I may foolishly hold my ground against knife-wielding dudes but those women with bad root jobs, eyes heavy with black eyeliner, and a history of substance abuse scare the living crap out of me. Still, I wasn't about to pass up a free show. My only other experience attending a male revue was Thunder from Down Under for my cousin's bachelorette party in Vegas. All the females in my family were in attendance, yes including my grandmother, and the men were handsome, buff, and only a couple were obviously gay. I had been pulled on stage by the cutest one where he simulated a 69 dance routine over my prostrate and highly embarrassed body. Despite it all, the show still seemed professional and.. "classy".. in the sense that the guys appeared to actually just enjoy dancing instead of auctioning off their dignity for a wrinkled buck.

So when Caroline and I pulled up to the bar, those were my expectations, and they were immediately disappointed when we coincidentally arrived with the U.S. Men of Steel group. They looked just like that group of sad middle-aged guys who stalk hip nightclubs pretending to be younger and cooler than they really are so they can score a hot blonde coed but who invariably end up going home with the 40-year-old train wreck mumbling to her 5th stiff bourbon. You know the bunch.

Half an hour after the show was supposed to begin, the MC finally commanded the stage and attempted to enthuse the crowd, and we happened to be sitting next to the most eager woman I've ever seen in my life. The MC would shout, "Who's hot and horny??!!" And she'd jump and raise her arms and topple her seat over in excitement as if the MC was psychic and reading her particular mind only. I'M hot and horny! How did he know that!? Woo! Spring Break '99! And in case her exultations failed to prove to everyone just how hot and horny she was feeling, she even lifted her top, and I thanked my lucky stars I was sitting behind her.

The actual performance was the raunchiest meat market I've ever witnessed. I don't get flustered easily, and I'm the first to make inappropriate jokes that could easily be a sexual harassment suit waiting to indict me, but this shit was ludicrous. The strippers didn't just approximate wild sex positions; they literally dug their faces and fingers right in. I guess it's one thing for me to joke about doing and it's another to be demonstrating it to some ugly woman bent over a chair so you can make a dollar that she should be spending on food for her 5 neglected children.

Equally absurd was when the MC said, "We've been touring for awhile now, and we've been up and down California and around Alaska, and JUNEAU IS THE PARTY CAPITAL!!!" I about choked on my beer. We do have a lot of bars, but it's sorta more like a crisis than a party.

So after half a minute of choreographed dancing, the stripper would disappear backstage while the MC begged women to give $10 for a 10 second lapdance. Anyone who wanted it were to sit on chairs arranged in a line on stage. The most popular guy, Fernando, garnered a decent take, and I thought, I bet he looks up there and all he sees is $80 and 8 ugly bitches. But of course, an outrageous grin was plastered on his face, and he still wiggled his face right in some woman's crotch cuz a boy's gotta eat I guess.

Needless to say, we left very early but not without stuffing my purse full of flavored freebie condoms first. At a going-away party we went to afterward, they were unwrapped, put over empty beer bottles, and passed around for condom tasting if you will. We volunteers do our raunchy things for free.