Never visit a gentlemen’s club if you have laryngitis, never.
But before I lay down the “411” on why not, let us first ask the question: why do club proprietors insist that we call their business a gentlemen’s club?
When I think of a gentleman, I think of an older man wearing a black tuxedo, top hat, and monocle (similar to the Planter’s Peanut designation) or maybe a southern man wearing a white suit, sipping extra sweet tea (bourbon on the side), with a voice so deep that it could split hickory logs into kindling.
Those are just a few images that come to my mind when thinking of a gentleman.
So:
A gentlemen’s club should be full of the aforementioned peoples drinking fancy drinks (pinkies extended, of course), speaking with fancy words—in general, just being fancy.
Oh, how cruel cold hard reality can be.
I’ll give anyone fifty bucks if they’ve ever seen Colonel Sanders or Mr. Salty the Peanut King soaking up the ambiance of a gentlemen’s club, no, the closest thing to a monocle you might see is a middle-aged guy named Kurt sporting a pair of knock-off Oakley sunglasses. Kurt’s future after three kids, a minivan, poopy job, and a wife who doesn’t like to slow dance anymore, is looking rather bright indeed.
But enough about Kurt and pretentious naming, let’s get back to our case of laryngitis and a night of debauchery, old friends, and scantily-clad women:
Longest story short, by the time we arrive at the club, my massive sinus infection had manifested into a full-blown case of laryngitis. No doctor told me it was laryngitis, but I looked up the symptoms on my iPhone and they matched. And so it was. Anyway, everyone knows that you don’t actually see a MD or DO at the doctor’s office these days.
Okay:
I knew I was screwed before I paid my ten dollar cover charge that gave me access to all the finest dancers in the Greater Dayton and Cincinnati Area and cheapest beer around (seven dollars a bottle—domestic).
No voice means no words from my mouth like: “no thanks. I don’t want a twenty dollar dance.”
Very bad.
I managed, at first, to avoid spending money on “dances” by sitting on a mildly comfortable Pleather chair, in a corner, with a frown painted on my face—call it the curmudgeon approach. The club’s work force called it the creeper approach, but how was I to know that.
This worked for all of…five minutes, before; I was swarmed by no less than five dancers.
Damnit anyhow.
I switched tactics by pointing to my throat and managing a few squeaks and chirps over a digital remix of Sir Mix A Lot. Seemed like a gentlemanly thing to do, if, in fact dancers at a Gentlemen’s Club revered a defenseless gent with no voice uttering sounds that vaguely resembled a chipmunk in heat.
Alas, chivalry is dead!
Like us, dancers have car payments to make, mortgages to pay, skimpy clothes to buy, and greedy club owners to payoff. I’m pretty sure morality isn’t included in a Dancer’s Guide to Dancing at a Gentlemen’s Club.
Suddenly I was the low lying fruit that needed to be picked or the beginner in a professional game of no limit Texas Hold Em’. I’ve been called ‘easy money’ metaphorically by friends, but I never thought that one day I’d actually be easy money.
Resistance became futile, when, a dancer sat on my lap and confessed: “honey don’t you worry, I know sign language.” She began signing to me. If I’m lying, I’m dying.
I only know one sign and it involves only one finger. Given the location, I decided against using it for obvious reasons. Momma didn’t raise a total moron.
She led me back to a “private room” where twenty, or so, men were enjoying dances.
She called it the Champagne Room, but I didn’t see any bubbly flowing. She said she was pre-med and just working to save up enough money for medical school. I wanted desperately to tell her that a career as a nurse practitioner would be much less time consuming, in that she wouldn’t have to invest twelve years in the medical field to diagnose and prescribe medication.
Do not go to a Gentlemen’s Club with laryngitis.
I could have bought something shiny and new for the cost of that dance.