So, to set the stage for this story, I have to explain a few things about me:
-I’m a teetotaler
-I almost never go to clubs or bars
-I’m very very nonviolent
-In general, I always behave and never get in trouble
-I don’t really like strip clubs, despite my general approval of hot naked women (and in fact had only once ever been to one before last weekend)
Thus, it strikes me as nearly surreal that, this past weekend, I was…
…thrown out of a strip club, by a bouncer
Here’s what happened: I was in Vegas for a friend’s bachelor party. Mainly we played poker (and my frustrations at the poker table could easily be the topic of another thread), but Saturday night the plan was to all (5 of us) go to a strip club. So we cashed in our chips, and took a limo to the Spearmint Rhino. My attitude was fairly positive. I don’t really find the idea of lap dances and so forth appealing, but I certainly enjoy hot naked women, so I figured we’d all sit down, chat, buy some overpriced appetizers, and watch naked dancing female flesh. I was pretty sure that the other guys would attempt to buy me a lap dance, and I would refuse it, because it really just seems unappealing.
However, when we got there, paid our $20 each, and entered, there were a few flaws in our plan:
(1) The music was preposterously overpoweringly loud, meaning that conversation was all but impossible
(2) It was way way overcrowded, so we had nowhere to sit down
(3) It was smoke-filled. I’m used to California, where there is no smoke anywhere
(4) It was so poorly lit that I couldn’t really see the strippers very well anyhow
So all of this put me in quite a pissy mood. We wandered around for 20 minutes waiting for somewhere to sit, and finally we got a collection of nearby seats, some of us on a sofa, and me on a relatively comfortable chair. At this point, however, any desire I had to engage in actual strip-club-oriented activities had entirely vanished. But I didn’t want to whine or interfere with anyone else’s fun. Plus it was 2 a.m. and I was tired. So I basically, for want of a better word, dozed off. Now, this was a REALLY weird experience. The music, as I said, was incredibly loud. So I certainly couldn’t possibly actually fall asleep. But I closed my eyes, and kind of went into a trance-like music-listening state where the super-loud music drowned out everything else and I basically spaced out in a weird quasi-trance-like fashion.
What I was thinking, at the time, was that I would have to write an SDMB thread about how I was the worst guy ever. I mean, what red-blooded American male goes to a strip club, has dozens of attractive topless women nearby, and dozes off?
However, the story does not end there. After a few minutes of this, a waitress approached me and said something like “you can’t sleep here, we need the chair”. Now, this really pissed me off for two reasons: (1) I was definitely NOT asleep, and (2) I paid my $20 and didn’t see a sign anywhere saying “patrons may not sit still in chairs with their eyes closed”. I have a bit of a pet peeve about places with unwritten rules of that sort, so I was kind of irritated, and said something like “I paid my $20, I have the right to do whatever the f*** I want in this chair”. I should point out that I rarely swear, but I was already in a bad mood from my general dissatisfaction with the strip club experience, and I get REALLY irritated when I feel that people are trying to take advantage of me when I’ve paid for something. (Note that there was no requirement posted at the door that patrons must spend $x on drinks or lap dances. If there had been, I would have been happy to honor it.)
She departed, and some time passed, during which I “dozed off” again, and idly wondered if I would get in trouble.
And, sure enough, a while later, some VERY VERY large men arrived and escorted me out of the club. Once there, the head guy explained to me that I had told a waitress to “fuck off” (untrue), and that he himself had heard it (almost certainly untrue, given how loud the music was, and the lenghty delay between the incident and the response). Although, when I expressed my belief that I had been treated unfairly, he was quick to reassure me that he wasn’t kicking me out forever, just for that night. Oh, phew, what a relief.
Anyhow, that’s what happened. I’m not claiming that I acted flawlessly, as there was really no need for me to use profanity, but I have two basic beefs with how I was treated:
(1) The waitress could easily have said something like “excuse me sir… are you asleep? We don’t allow sleeping in here because of (whatever)…”, as opposed to simply telling me to move
(2) If the bouncer wanted to take her word as to what happened (and, honestly, I can’t blame him for doing so), he shouldn’t have lied to me.
So, there you go, next time you’re wondering who the bouncers in strip clubs are protecting the strippers from, it’s not just drunk guys who want to grope them, it’s also already-dissatisfied nerds trying to get some really oddly timed shut-eye.
My fiancé and the rest of the guys I was with seem to think that a girl getting booted from a titty bar is the hottest thing ever!