A brief boring note about my computer’s desktop and using a laptop in public with a fairly amusing conclusion:

Last night I was using my computer in Kiss Cafe. My have my desktop set to rotate the photographs that I upload onto this site. My very adorable, young Eastern European waitress came up from behind to deliver my entree. When she placed my plate in front of me, she seemed startled and uncomfortable. Why? Because this was the photo blown up full size, covering my entire computer screen:

click to enlarge

It’s the picture from my July 4th post. At first I felt slightly mortified, but it only took me a few seconds to become amused about the whole situation. I considered pretending to come on to her and asking for her phone number for laughs, but decided the poor girl had alread suffered enough. I suspect that the next time I go into Kiss Cafe, I’m going to have a bunch of teenage waitress’ glaring at me cock eyed.

The other night, when I arrived at work, I found half of my coworkers dancing and celebrating and the other half grief stricken and forlorn. After a little investigation, I found out why my workplace looked like a classical Greek theatre company. Half the boys were sad because The Atlantis, Baltimore’s premier gay strip club was closing it’s doors. The other half was deliriously happy because it is being replaced with Baltimore’s very own Scores Club.

The Atlantis was the inspiration and filming location for the Fudge Palace, the male strip bar where Martha Plimpton worked as a bartender in John Waters’ Pecker. Say what you want about The Atlantis, but if it wasn’t for that club, “tea bagging” would never have been introduced to the lexicon of American English, and for that we all owe it a debt of gratitude.

And as a side note, I SWEAR that I never ever worked as a dancer there in the summer of 1990. That was somebody that just looked like me. I swear.

Sheesh.

One of my coworkers was so sad he said he was going to walk around the city wearing a black veil for a week. This particular coworker, whom we refer to as “The Scout Master”, if you overlook his insatiable taste for chicken trade, is actually a really honorable kind of a guy. Over the years he has helped countless people get over their drug and alcohol addictions. He has also tried to get countless numbers of Atlantis strippers a busing job at my restaurant. From time to time, when I arrive early to work, I’ve seen my manager having to go through the motions of interviewing hustler trade to humor The Scout Master.

One of the more interesting facts about The Atlantis’ location is that it happens to be in the parking lot for central booking. When patrons enter and leave the building, prisoners scream cat calls at the men and occasional women visit the bar. I know a woman, who when leaving The Atlantis in a drunken stooper (cough! cough! ESF cough! cough!), lifted her dress over her head to expose her thonged arse and braless chest to the delight of the incarcerated gentleman. I thought that was very kind of her.

But enough about The Atlantis. That bar is old news. Sorry fellas. We’re getting our very own Scores Club! (rumor has it, I have not yet found published verification of this) Baltimore, my friends, has finally arrived. Not that I’ll actually ever visit, I swore off strip clubs a couple of years ago. It’s not that I have a moral issue against strip bars, they just sort of depress me. But I’ll always have fond memories of the time I went into The Ritz Cabaret and saw my very hot next door neighbor climb onto the stage. I’ll no longer visit them, and I won’t work in them. I swear that wasn’t me in the summer of 1990. Sheesh.

Anyway, I’ve never actually been to The Scores Club in Manhattan, but I do have an acquaintance, who a few years ago, was dating a stripper there. He would drive up from Baltimore on the weekends to visit her. I remember one time, after he had just returned from visiting, he came home and was very depressed. A group of us were sitting around his filthy apartment, and he told us the story of his horrible weekend.

Apparently, he would drive to Manhattan and hang out in a friend’s apartment. At four or five in the morning, when she would get off of work, she would give him a call and they go to her apartment. Then the next day, she would buy him clothes with all the one dollar bills and lap dance cash, which I always thought was a fantastic arrangement. But on this one occasion, while he was sitting in his friend’s apartment, she didn’t call. He waited up for hours but finally gave up and went to sleep.

Ten o’clock the next morning she finally called him:

Him: (angrily) “Hello.”
Stripper: (bubbly) “Hey tool boyfriend. You’ll never guess who came into the club last night.”
Him: (still angrily) “Who?”
Stripper: (still bubbly) “Jarad Leto!”
Him: (still angrily) “You fucked him, didn’t you?”
Stripper: (still bubbly) “Well... yeah. What did you expect me to do? It was a once in a lifetime opportunity!”

Being the sensitive friends’ that we all were, we all just rolled on the floor with laughter and spent the rest of the evening making Jarad Leto jokes.

Really people, if you can’t trust a stripper girlfriend who lives in another state and more than likely snorts most of her dollar bills up her nose, who can you trust?