CA

While visiting Puerto Rico, my friend, Brian, in the Navy (not like Village People style, but the real Navy) wanted to go to a strip club – he loves them and finds them everywhere. That horndog son of a bitch could find a strip club in the public library.

With his nude-girl-GPS turned up to 10, we wander through some piss-trough of an alley off a side street in a section of Old San Juan I think they call “The Diaper.” If they don’t, they should. We find the place and it looks like one of those interrogation rooms they use in war movies. Rudimentary flat-topped, square building, clangy metal door, little chimney – dilapidated and about as enticing as planter’s warts.

Imposing fellow – wearing a derby hat, 6 feet wide and 5 1/2 feet tall, opens the door with an icy, emotionless swoosh. No cover he says. Okay, we can afford free. In we go. Typical film noir scene… five or six tables, a service bar, dimly lit, smoky, a few stoic GIs, and an impossibly small, doormat of a stage. With pole. We sit. Two beers plunked on the table – we didn’t order them. But beer is generally always good, even if it may have been left over from the last Eugenio Maria de Hostos day party. I took a sip, Brian took a sip, and we both looked at each other with that “did I just drink antifreeze” kind of facial squinting that seasoned drinkers understand telepathically.

We were in between dancers so that tine of this evening’s pitchfork was yet to be jammed in my ass cheek. Then it was. Dancer comes to the stage. She was short. Her hair was unkempt. She was wearing only a sash. It didn’t have any writing on it but it just as well could have said “Chorizo – 99 cents a lb.”

She takes of her sale-banner of clothing revealing a number of stretch marks and scars (I thought the scarring present in strippers that made them strippers was all of the inside, emotional variety). Also present, on on of the rolls was either a big cigar burn or a bullet wound. It seemed recent as it looked as though it had a little pus ooze. The dancing occurs – not exactly Jennifer Beals, Flashdance style. Mostly wriggling, like a worm after thunderstorm. Gross all around. In fact, there hasn’t been a greater abuse of a pole since the Warsaw Ghetto.

Brian and I, speaking telepathically still (again, not Village People, but just because we both know that this isn’t even “so bad it’s good,” it’s just so bad, like a compound fracture) get up to leave. We knew the beer wasn’t free, but fuck it – it was Drano and we didn’t ask for it. We threw like 4 dollars on the table so as not to piss off the Puerto Rican version of Oddjob working the door. It didn’t work. We tried to leave and he said “No, ten dollars.” We tried to explain and he repeated “No, ten dollars.” We knew the score and trying to argue was like pulling attitude with Judge Judy or trying to permanently change the rules of chess. We paid the $10 – EACH – we shortly came to find out and left. Not much more of a story to tell. However, it did illuminate a great bar concept. Never a cover, but a charge to leave. $10 in fact. May have to go back down to the P.R. and see if Oddjob wants the door gig.