Confessions of the Cocktail Queen

I’ve waited a lot of tables in my time. There are a lot of different tables you can wait on, and the people who sit at them are as different as the tables themselves. High top bistro tables. Banquet tables. Booths. Alcove tables. Bar rails. I’ve waited on them all, and all the different breeds of patrons who have sat at them. They all have stories, from the hilarious to the depressing. But the best stories I have, in my career as a waitress, come from the round tables with the cushy lounge chairs on wheels.

I was a strip club cocktail waitress.

It’s not the noblest profession, I’ll admit – I wasn’t curing cancer or formulating a functional plan for world peace. And it’s not really something my guidance counselor had pointed me toward (instead, I was pointed toward journalism; because I’m convinced he hated me). But it was a functional employment for the time – I was a senior in college, broke off my ass prior to working there, and it paid the bills while still allowing me to go to school during the day. The job served its purpose, which was to pay my bills and allow me to eat.

So with that introduction in mind (I’m really bad about long-winded intros, sorry), I’m entering into a whole new domain of stories here at How2, ones that get filed under the “Stories My Children Will Never Know” tag.

One thing you don’t see often in strip clubs is patrons in wheelchairs. However, it happens, because contrary to popular belief, cripples are people too. I don’t know how paraplegics’ penises work, I’m pretty much convinced they’re like robot penises that go all BEEP BEEP BOOP and have “engage” and “disengage” buttons, but I can assume that just because your legs have been rendered useless by whatever arbitrary tragic life circumstances doesn’t mean you don’t like seeing leggy blondes with big fake boobs and series of poor life decisions rub their crotches in your face.

So anyway. Wheelchair patrons, while rare, aren’t completely unheard of. So while we all briefly noted the bachelor party when it came in, complete with a blushing groom in a wheelchair (like I said, they’re people too!), it really wasn’t a huge spectacle. The party took up camp in the VIP room, and as their waitress, I was a soon providing full bottle service with Jose Cuervo and shots of Patron. They were, for the most part, polite, and just having a good time celebrating their friend’s wedding the next day (because let’s be honest, who ever thought he’d actually find love?).

It was one thing for the dancers to give this guy a lap dance in his chair. No big deal. But after a good deal of tequila, the party thought it would be hilarious to sprawl their homeboy out on the VIP couch for a more intense session. So they picked him up out of his chair, which he went along with because, well, he was very drunk. And so, we had Wheelchair Guy being carried and posed in the VIP Room like it was Weekend at Bernie’s.

After paying for a private dance, the bachelor party decided to go walk (walk) up to the bar and get more drinks to give their comrade some alone time with Destiny, Crystal and Treasure. In that time, I’m sure he had the time of his legless life, nobody may ever really know – especially him. He was black out drunk. (Which may have been my fault.)

After an unknown amount of time, the bachelor party realized that The Groom’s private time was over, seeing the dancers wandering the club back on their usual routes, and went back to the VIP room.

This is when things get even more bizarre than they already were.

One of the partygoers comes up to me after they had disappeared back to the VIP Room.

“Hey, have you seen my friend?”

“Um, which one?” I ask, since there were probably a dozen of them. I scan over the floor to see if any of the guys were at the stage, or getting another drink at the bar. No luck.

“Uhhh, the guy whose party it is. He was getting a private dance and now he’s gone. His wheelchair is still in the room.”

Oh. You mean the GUY WHO CAN’T WALK? Is that what you’re telling me right this second? Did you LOSE THE GUY IN A WHEELCHAIR? Is that what you are asking me? Have I seen your friend, what, army crawling on the floor?

So this then begged the question: how do you look for a guy who can’t walk, and isn’t in a wheelchair? This is why I think they need to be tagged like cattle. Because you have no idea when your cripple is going to just roll away.

We put a notice out among the dancers and waitresses. The girls who’d been with him during his private dance said he was there when they left the room, albeit very close to passing out. So contrary to what his friends were suggesting, they did not carry him off. We then began scanning the floors, looking like someone had lost a contact more than lost their bachelor party honoree.

We wound up having to turn on the lights to look for him. His friends – all drunk out of their minds at this point – were convinced someone had carried him off. I’m pretty sure paraplegics have a pretty high mark-up value on the black market. It’s like the elephant man’s bones. Someone out there, probably some creepy Japanese businessman or Dubai prince, probably has like a whole collection of them. The entire club is at a standstill as we are looking for, and I repeat again, a lost paraplegic. No legs. He cannot walk. And he is lost, without his wheelchair.

Finally, I hear his friends yelling from the VIP Room, “We found him!” We all breathed a sigh of relief. The apparent story was that after the private dance, our bachelor drunkenly rolled off the couch. And being too drunk to understand which direction to crawl in to pull himself back up on the couch, he proceeded to roll/crawl under, waaayyy under, the VIP Room couch. (Which I’m not even going to begin considering what was under there…uggghhh.) Out of sight, out of mind, our Bachelor then passed out.

The entire club – patrons, servers, dancers, bouncers – applauded as he left. And I maintain that they really need tracking chips.