Goin 2 Tha Strip Club

Hello Hello,

Just chillin at the moment. Played a good 2 1/2 hours of tennis this morning of which I was victorious. Now I've got the NFL draft on the tely and I've got a couple of hours before one of my groomsmen comes over to play a little Madden football on the Xbox360. We'll play til around 5:30 when we'll leave to meet some other people and then we head off to the bachelor party.

Over the years, when I talk to people about the strip club, it seems like I'm doing a lot of explaining and the person I'm talking to is doing a lot of learning. Having my official bachelor party has caused me to reflect on my past experiences and I figured since I have all this stuff on my mind that I would share some of it with you, my internet friends.

Now, generally, the rules of the strip club dictate that what happens at the strip club stays at the strip club. That said, I think I can get a lot of this information out without naming names and hopefully, without embarassing myself too much. We'll just have to see if that's the case.

First, let me start off by saying that my local club of choice in Ruby's II in Bridgeport, CT. What's great about Ruby's is that you can get some pretty hot chicks there and you get to see them completely naked. Man...there is just so much to tell. I guess I am a wealth of knowledge. Alright. let's go to the completely naked thing first because that's one of my favorite things to explain.

Different states have different laws regarding strip clubs as far as what kind of things go on inside the club and what kind of access a patron can have to a dancer. As far as alcohol goes in Connecticut, somewhere in our states history, someone decided that if a strip club sells alcohol, then the dancers can only get topless, exposing their breasts. Apparently, Connecticut legislators believe that a man consuming alcohol cannot handle seeing a woman naked from the waste down. It's TOO MUCH. Above the waste? That's fine. Below the waste? A drunk man will just flip out.

Now here's the thing about Ruby's. Ruby's used to sell alchohol. I remember going there for my 21st birthday. We drank beer and we saw topless women. Years later, Ruby's changed ownership. When that happened, the new Ruby's had to apply for their liqour license and the state turned them down. As I understand it, the state was not fond of giving liquor licenses to strip clubs at that time and Ruby's was denied a license. As a result, the new Ruby's opened as a "juice bar" strip club. A juice bar sells any kind of beverage that does not contain alcohol and if you're a strip club with a juice bar, your dancers can get completely naked. But wait...There's More...

Connecticut has a weird loophole law regarding juice bars. Apparently, it is legal in CT to bring your own booze to a club that doesn't sell alcohol. You give the bartender your bottle(s) and then the bartender sells your alcohol back to you. So let's say I bring a bottle of rum to Ruby's. I give them the bottle. They put my name on it. Then I order a rum and coke. I give the lady $2 for my drink and then I get to watch completely naked women as I legally consume alcohol inside a juice bar. Ya know what my favorite thing is though? If I had no alcohol and I just ordered a coke at Ruby's...it would cost me $2.50. That cracks me up every time.

Now tonight, I'm being joined by somewhere around 25 guys for my bachelor party. I must give super props to my groomsman Tim Beeber for getting this whole thing together. He's aweseome. Ya know what I love about Tim? He can be a dick on a level I could never imagine when it comes to getting money. He's very adamant about getting money people owe. He's been collecting money upfront for the bachelor party and I just assumed that if people saw Tim, they gave him the money. I played tennis with my friend Eric this morning and he told me he had to mail Tim the 40 bucks to get into the party.

You see in Beeberland, I would've done it all wrong. I would've said let me have the money when you come to the party and if they didn't show up, I would've just thought that the guy was a dick. Tim on the other hand says"Just give me the freakin money."

My favorite Beeber story about money comes from when a group of us from my ski club used to meet on Wednesday to play pool. A girl we knew showed up for the first time and she didn't bring any money. When she went to leave early, Tim let her know how much she owed for the time she was there and she let Tim know that she didn't bring any cash. Tim let her know that there was an ATM outside the pool place but however he presented this information to her...the girl ended up just using her credit card to pay for everybody up to the point when she left. The girl by the way still hates Tim after all these years but loves the hell out of me. But I digress...the strip club.

Now I know a lot goes on at guy's bachlor parties and it is reffered to as our "last night of freedom," but my fiance can rest assured that nothing innapropriate will come from this evening's extravaganza. Unlike some others, I have no misconceptions about the strip club. I'm not trying to pick up, date or have sex with these women. I am fully aware that if you take the financial aspect out of the equation, the relationship is pretty much over. The girls want my money and I'm more than happy to see them naked. End of transaction.

Some guys just don't get it though. And to be honest, in the past, I have been somewhat naive. The thing is that the less than experienced stip club patron can get confused. There's alcohol involved. The women are naked, dancing and calling you "baby". Now I know I don't speak for everyone, but this is the typical guy's perfect environment. We just want women to be naked. The shit that we go thru just to get you naked. The conversations. The dinners. Ya know what I did the other day? I sorted fucking laundry. Ya know why? Because I want to keep seeing my woman naked and I hear this will help keep that going.

But when your in a strip club, there's a lot of naked women and they're all vying for your attention. You actually get to evaluate, be judgemental and pick the already naked woman who will spend time with you. It's awesome. And if you don't have a foundation based in reality, you can be really stupid. I still remember one of my top 2 stupid strip club moments like it was yesterday.

I was engaged once before and when that relationship ended, I spent more than the average man's time in the strip club. I'm not saying I was there everyday, but I often didn't take my bottle home when I left because I knew I'd be back soon to have some more. There was this one dancer Dakota...gosh, she was cool. I had a few dances with her and we talked some and one day...ughh...I hate this memory. After one of our private dances, I actually asked her if she wanted to do dinner sometime. (Oh the memory of such stupidity hurts so much.) The moment Dakota started to answer my question, I knew I had just entered the land of rediculousness. Now is was summertime and Dakota informed me that because summer was a busy time careerwise, she saved her dinners until the fall and winter time. Man, there is nothing like crossing that line into dumb.

The funny thing is that I ran into Dakota within the last year at Ruby's. She had lost some weight and changed her hair and stage name and I didn't recognize her at first. She remembered me but not me asking her out and she too got a big laugh when I told her what her answer had been about the seasonal dinners. By the way, time is running short and I'm not going to have enough time to get into it but just so you know, the #1 stupidest thing I ever did at a strip club was almost start a racial bar brawl. You can rest assured, I will never make that mistake again.

Now the Dakota story was embarassing, but it did give me some insight and has allowed me to laugh at others. I get a kick out of every time a friend comes up to me at a strip club and lets me know that he's made the acquintance of a dancer. "Dave. I was talking to her at the bar for 15 minutes. I think she really likes me." "Dave. I only paid her for 3 dances and we were back there talking for 45 minutes. Dude? How can you say she doesn't like me?"

For the uneducated, dancers don't really like you. By comparison, they may think you're better than some of the other guys they've had to work with but when you leave the strip club, the friendship is over. DONE! I've seen the guys strippers go for. Typically, they're losers. Not like regular guy kind of losers either. There more like that grungy but good looking with an attitude don't have a job kind of loser. Kind of like Tommy Lee without a job.

Alright. I think I've covered the basics; The drinking. The nudity. Strippers don't like you. I guess I didn't cover the various tiers of strip clubs. There are you higher end clubs. These are topless only. The private dances are done in the open with bouncers watching you. You're not allowed any physical contact with the dancers. You'll get your hottest chicks at these places. The lowest of the low tend to be in the more urban, poorer type neighborhoods where the dancing element is more of a front for prostitution. The women in these environments tend to be older, unnattractive, and at best, English is their second language. In case you're wondering, while I have been dragged into one of two of the latter kind of places, I am not fond of them. And I have certainly NEVER had sex with these women. An unnattractive woman who just spent the last five minutes having sex with one of my more questionable buddies does not appeal to me on a sexual level.

So how will my evening go? I have no idea. I'm looking forward to spending the time with my friends, but I will say that I'm a little bummed that I don't have any family representation to accompany me on the night's endeavor. Due to weekend work schedules and previous engagments, the men from my Godmother's family and the men from Kristine's family won't be able to join me on tonights journey. It's too bad because while I'm very much about the naked women at the strip club, I've found that these events have really cool "guy" moments and I have some of my coolest times hanging out with guys at the strip club.

So that's about it for the strip club. Maybe some other time, I'll tell you some stories about the strip club without naming names but for now, you get the gist of what the strip club is about for me. Hope you all have a good night. I sure will.

Dave

Skype Saves The Day

I left my phone in Kristine's car last night and she and her Mother took the car to New Jersey for a bridal shower today. When much of your day revolves around making phone calls regarding your wedding and bachelor party, not having a cell phone makes things difficult. I should also mention that we don't have a "land line" phone in our home either. Periodically, I've thought about getting one for the apartment but that all changed last month when I had to help set my Father up with his home phone.

Much like modern dentistry, the land line telephone industry has refused to evolve in spite of all the technological advances in every other field. It's probably been ages since you set up telephone service but if you were to do it today, it eats up at least a half hour of your time if not an hour. The telephone people make you jump thru a lot of hoops for a phone you can't take with you when you leave your house.

The biggest irony of setting up telephone service is that odds are when you're doing it, you're doing so while talking to the person on your cell phone. And while you do it you'll be answering questions for things you forget regular phone service still charges for. Did you know land lines still charge extra for long distance? And before you can say, "Are you freakin kidding me?", they confuse you with the fact that you need to choose a long distance plan as well as a long distance provider. I don't know if phone companies are losing money but if they are, it's because of stupid crap like that.

That's why I say thank god for Skype. Skype is like a VOIP service like Vontage but it's cheaper. It's basically a telephone service that runs through your computer with internet access. For a little over 30 bucks a year, Skype gives me a phone number and voice mail. If I have Skype and you have Skype, we can talk on Skype for free. If I want to call someone who is not using Skype, whether it's a home phone, or a cell phone, no matter where they are in the country, it's 2 cents a minute. Setting up Skype took less than 10 minutes. Needless to say, I'm a big fan of Skype.

Gotta get back to wedding stuff. Talk 2 u l8r.
Dave

Had A Few Minutes To Kill

Hello Everyone,

I have a little time before Kristine gets home from work so I thought I'd take a little time to catch everyone up on my life.

The wedding will be upon us soon and both Kristine and I are very excited. There are still some things to work out but most everything concerning the wedding has been set in motion and we expect May 6th to be the best day ever.

If ever there was a day that would be a close second, my bachelor party is just around the corner. To be honest, I am just a little nervous at just how insane I'm going to get on that night. I didn't think I still had it in me but this past Saturday, Kristine and I went up to Tolland Connecticut for my Godsister Laura's bridal shower. Kristine stayed for the shower while I accompanied 4 men to a bar in Manchester...I think. Ya know, it's a sad day when I need to be the voice of reason, but I was very surprised at the flack I caught for turning down the fouth group shot when I was the guy who had to drive us all back to the shower.

When we did get back the shower's host's home, I ended up doing 3 shots of Jagger with my Godfather in very quick succession. Kristine drove us home and I spend the better part of the next day trying to remember what happened the day before. I gotta tell ya though. I was a GREAT friggin time. We totally have to do that again.

I'm kind of at a loss for music at the moment. While I'm the first one to brag that I'm an Apple user who doesn't have any crasher, nor do my hard drives ever seem to have problems...I never allowed for the possibility of dropping a hard drive about 3 feet, landing on the hard drive that holds/held my iTunes library. As I am now experienced in the matter, I can tell you that hard drives don't like to be banged around like that regardless of whether you use a PC or a Mac. In the next few days, I should know if I've lost everything or if there's a chance for recovery.

Kristine should be home soon so I'm going to sign off. I hope all of you are well and look forward to talking to you soon.

Dave

Engagement Party

Greetings Friends,

You'll have to forgive me for not blogging in a bit. I just haven't been feeling the blogging vibe. Also the wedding preparations have been keeping me a little busy.

First off let me quickly acknowledge my friend Karen Lynch who is doing less than well right now. I could write a year long blog entry about Karen but for the moment, let me just say that she has some big challenges ahead of her healthwise so I would ask that you take a moment and send all of your positive thoughts her way. Karen has her own website and you can check out everything that is going on with Karen here.


Having visited with my beautiful fiance Kristine's family over Easter got me thinking about the engagement party we had last June at her sister's home. At the time of the party, I had just purchased a new HDV hi def video camera, so I brought it to the party and did a little shooting. Outside of Kristine and myself, noone has ever seen this footage before and the footage has not been edited. Maybe one day I'll get around to doing that. Until then, I decided to put the footage on the internet for your viewing pleasure.

The video is 37 minutes long and the party doesn't start until 17 minutes in. Prior to that, you get to see me give a tour of the Breden household and watch my future niece and nephews swimming in the pool. You'll also get to watch me play with Rosie. That said, here is a little piece of my pre-marriage home video history. Enjoy.