Monday 24 December 2012

As the Superhero said to the Stripper

I must stop using the phrase Super-Hero, as we established a few weeks ago, my made-up superpower - The ability to stop time - can only be used for evil, at least, as far as I can think of things to do with it.

Technically, I'm a Super-Villain, and as my Daughter reminded me, Villains get the best clothes.

So the time is here, pull up a bat-winged chair, that one over there upholstered in the suspiciously beige leather with the faint tattoos on it should still be warm, top up your skull shaped goblet with 'Claret' and I'll tell you the story of the origin of The Chimping Dandy.

Our story begins in the small West-Midlands hamlet of Birmingham, in a bar - as all the best stories do, I mean, I've yet to be enthralled by a story that begins 'The best thing about where we were was that there was free beetroot'. There were a number of us, and we were approaching that stage of drunken-ness just before the 'Hold my beer and watch this' casualty-fest.

It was a stag night, so it wasn't going to end well, we had no illusions about that - In fact, one of the guests was the bride to be's ex-husband - And was, after a number of drinks 'Loaded for bear'. The sensible thing to have done at this point would have been to go somewhere and get a meal, so that we could sit down for a while, get our breath back, sober up slightly, and line our stomachs with unfeasibly spicey food. What we actually did was to find another bar, and have another drink. We repeated this downwards spiral a number of times up (and then back down) Broad Street.

Then someone uttered the magic question 'is it Naked Lady Time?' In fairness, this had always been a planned part of the evening, to the point where the groom to be, had been stitched up like a kipper by his fiancee in that she had pre-arranged for him to be man-handled (well, woman-handled) by a selection of young(ish) ladies on the stage, on a throne, with shaving cream.

After a final beer, we adjourned to either The Rocket Club, or Legs Eleven - I forget which, and for the purposes of this story, it matters not - Both of them are establishments where semi-
pulchritudinous ladies will remove 95% of their clothes for a small monetary consideration. For those who have never been to one of these establishments (or those that have told their partners this at least) I will describe the scene. The main area was a large, darkened room, decorated in early 'Poundshop Transvestite Christmas'. There was a central stage area, populated by a single chair, complete with handcuffs. This in turn was surrounded by a selection of booths with banquette seating for ten or so people each.

There were three types of people in the room:

Punters - Men (almost exclusively) who had come to prove their superiority over women by remaining clothed whilst the women got naked.

Strippers - Girls who had come to prove their superiority over men, by charging them £10 to watch them get slowly undressed over a three minute period.

Security - Huge (and I can't state that enough) gentlemen, usually of afro-carribean descent, who's aim in life was simply to enforce the rule that the punters and the strippers never got closer than 2" away from each other.

Like so many of my stories, some description of the clothing worn by the group may assist in your suspension of disbelief. The brief had been 'Smart to smart-casual' mainly to enable us to enter any of the myriad drinking establishments with a minimum of fuss. I had bought a new suit for the occasion, and it was silver - Now, I don't mean that it was shiney silk, at the time I was neither that rich, nor mental enough to believe a silk suit would survive the evening, no - it was made of finest rayon/polyester mix, jaquard printed to look like the sort of pattern you see under a leaky car on a rainy day. Yes, it was about 300% more vulgar than you're currently thinking that it was.

Anyway, the evening progressed much as you would expect, every few minutes a young lady would wander into our booth and say 'Dance?' Now, nine times out of ten, one of the other guys would say 'Yes' and gyrating would ensue. I am not saying that I didn't say yes myself because I was some kind of saint, or that I felt guilty to be looking at another naked lady whilst I had a wife waiting for me at home, it was purely because watching the guy next to me get a dance was free.

Now, this seemingly hadn't gone un-noticed by some members of staff and I was approached by what I can only assume, was one of the 'senior' girls - I'd seen a couple of the other girls talking to her and pointing at our group and she had seemed to have been offering advice to them.

"Hello," she said and sat down next to me.

"Hey!" I replied, in what I hoped was an off-hand, but inoffensive way.

"Don't we have anyone you like the look of?"

"Ah!, no, I see, Maybe later, I'm still making notes."

"Notes?"

I looked around furtively, hushed my voice and said, "Look, don't tell anyone, but we're doing research for a new show on Bravo" (For those unaware, Bravo was a channel that produced 'lads' programming - it's now mutated into Dave, which just shows Top Gear repeats)

"A new show? What's it about?"

"Well, we're going to visit various strip clubs around the country, but we're going to be filming an anchor segment from one place, like a base, every week, we're still trying to decide where to use"

"Oh, I did wonder." She replied, looking me up and down.

"What did you wonder?"

"Well, we don't get many people in here dressed like that - We figured that you were 'somebody', but none of the girls recognised you. Would you be filming the girls too?"

"Well, that would be up to the management, obviously, but I was wanting to include a couple in the title sequence, we'd have to see how it went. We'd have to audition obviously"

The young lady then stood up, and without monetary assistance, proceeded to audition, for two songs. She then sat down, waved at one of the security staff and mouthed the words 'On my break' to him. He nodded with the slow surety of a Norwegian glacier and continued scanning the room for distance infractions - A drink appeared on the table in front of her, and seeing my rasied eyebrows she said;

"Don't worry, it's already paid for. You must have seen some stuff"

"Sorry?"

"Doing programs like that, is it all the same kind of 'adult' shows?"

"Yeah, mainly... Swinging, Dogging, Chimping, that kind of thing."

"Chimping? I've never heard of that. Do I want to know?"

I leaned in close, keeping the regulation 2" distance of course, and explained it to her. The look of revulsion on her face started a change in me at the subatomic level, I could feel my time-bending abilities throbbing into life, I felt empowered, and I knew that things would never be the same again.

By proving to a jaded stripper, that there were still things in this world that could disgust even her, I had become...

The Chimping Dandy!

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