Laughter

This year has been a tough one for everyone, and so it's no surprise that this Christmas will have to be a lean one. That's why I've decided to give all my friends and family the most precious gift of all: the gift of a child's laughter. Unfortunately, when I run up to a child in the streets and shake my fists wildly while screaming "laugh," I seem to get more crying than anything else. But I'm not giving up hope. Because at the end of the day, the people I care about are worth it.

-TC

Cab Driver

It's rare that I find myself in a cab, but this weekend I accompanied some friends from Manhattan to Brooklyn in one of the city's many fine taxis. While we were dodging traffic at what might have seemed like excessive speed in less sophisticated parts of the world, one of said friends decided to strike up a conversation with the driver, and it wasn't long before he opened right up and started chatting away like there was no tomorrow. As soon as I mentioned that I was from Vermont, he started to describe in unexpectedly graphic detail how he used to have sex with this girl in Bennington, which segued nicely into a thorough account of every woman he had ever slept with and, occasionally, married. In the course of his life story, it dawned on me that my cab driver has impregnated more women than I have seen naked. I can't begin to count the number of levels on which I was unhappy about this.

-TC

Awkward

My roommate had a birthday party last night, and invited me to come along. While I quite like my roommate, I tend to be a bit introverted, so we don't hang out or bond too terribly much. As such, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to go out, meet some new people, and spend some quality time with the person I spend so much time silently cohabiting with. Unfortunately, the party was going to be held in a strip club, which, as a general rule, is exactly the sort of place tend to avoid. But luckily the stripping party was going out for food and drinks beforehand, so I decided to at least go along and show support by playing my part in ensuring that the birthday girl found herself more or less completely trashed by the end of the evening.

However, after some delightful conversations with new people, not to mention more than a few drinks, the possibility of going to a strip club didn't seem like anywhere near as bad an idea as usual. My spirit of adventurousness quickly took over, and upon my roommate producing passes for free entry, it was quickly joined by my spirit of cheapness. As a general life policy, I like to think that I'll try almost anything once. If you get me drunk first and tell me it's free, the "almost" tends to become roughly as flexible as my good judgment. And so it was that I found myself venturing out to a strip club last night.

The experience was very similar to the one I expected, save the fact that I thought the dancers would be a bit more energetic and the chairs would be a bit more comfortable. As for the dancers, I was surprised how "stripping" seemed less an act of burlesque and more one of awkwardly swaying at a high school dance. At one point, one of my new friends of the evening turned to me and asked, "So, what do you think she's going for with that dance?" I paused thoughtfully for a second and replied, "I think she's going for 'I'm stoned and I'm looking for my car keys.'" And as for the furnishings, all I can say is that I would have imagined a place that is based solely on making people feel like they're important could have made at least some effort to make them feel comfortable at the same time. After all, what self respecting guy with wads of cash and an abundance of sexual magnetism would blow his money on awkwardly shaped velvet chairs with stains and no lumbar support?

Now, when I walk into a room where there aren't any ladies taking their clothes off for money, typically there will be more than enough awkward to go around. So you can just imagine what walking into a room and finding a naked woman perched precariously on a pair of oversized high heels that she clearly borrowed from an Amazon at the last second did for the situation. At first it was actually a bit of a relief. After all, it's been so long since I've seen a naked woman that it was nice to know that all the important bits are more or less where I remembered them to be. And really, being surrounded by scantily clad strangers, while not an experience I'm anxious to repeat, was not as uncomfortable an experience as I might have thought.

The real awkward came when I, as the guy in the group sitting closest to the nearest walkway, kept getting offered lap dances every few minutes. In an of itself, this wasn't especially objectionable, as you can pretty much apply the basic rules of telling a waitress that you don't want a refill on your Pepsi to informing a woman in a corset that you'd rather she didn't waggle her bottom at you. But what I hadn't accounted for was how physical strippers are in their flirtatious advances. After we'd been sitting for maybe twenty minutes, I was in mid conversation with the man next to me when all of a sudden a strange hand started running up my inner thigh. I abruptly whipped my head around to give her my best deer in the headlights look (which, with eyes like mine, is pretty good), and she offered me a dance. Now, as this was the most physical contact I've had with a woman in about two years, I found myself a bit flustered and surprisingly unable to verbally articulate complex thoughts like "No, thank you," so I had to make due with hand gestures that I felt conveyed my sentiments. Unfortunately, it would seem that in Russian these gestures translate as "Please stare at me blankly as you continue to stroke my inner thigh." No wonder the Soviet Union collapsed.

As I said, I'll try almost anything once. But as is often the case, going to a strip club is an experience where once is enough.

-TC