Monday, July 20, 2009

I Have Two Eyes in a Blind Kingdom and I'm Still Not King (Part 2)

GOOD ADVICE FOR STUPID PEOPLE (Part 2)

Politics:

Politicians lie. Get over it. They lie and we expect them to lie. We want them to lie, because we can't handle and don't want to face the truth. We do not want to hear any politician tell us that we're fat, lazy, irresponsible, bad parents, bad investors, uneducated and horribly misinformed about: A. the way democracy works, B. the way the world works, C. the way societies work, D. the way finances work, etc. We vote for those who will continue to pull the wool over our eyes, and if they manage to get a sheep to sit on our face, we vote even harder and with less lube.

Democracy:

You have the right to vote, but more importantly, you have the right to NOT vote. If you choose NOT to vote, you STILL retain the right to bitch, whine and complain. It's called "Freedom of Speech". You have the right to NOT vote if you do not support any of the candidates. You have the right to NOT vote even if you're just lazy and can't be bothered. We have the right to try and make you feel guilty for not participating in our little democratic exercise / experiment, but you have the right to not feel guilty, if you can manage it. It doesn't matter how many dictatorships exist in the world; it doesn't matter how many celebrities appear in white tee shirts and jeans on your television trying to make you feel like shit for not voting; it doesn't matter how many people fought, died and struggled for the right to vote, you still retain your rights.

Drinking:

If you are of legal age, please feel free to drink yourself to death, but do it at home or call a cab. You can piss off your family, friends and that little tart of a waitress that pushes her boobs in your face to up the bill and her tip, but run a stop sign and it's my ass, and I don't care how sorry you are after the fact. I only care that me, my loved ones and that little tart of a waitress that I'd finally managed to get to come over after work and bang me is now dead and/or wounded. If you're a drunk, go ahead and skip the middle step and become a homeless reject. They don't drive, and therefore don't drive drunk, which by attrition garners my total respect. If you're not of legal age, drink away, piss your pants by accident, jump off the roof, do whatever you like, because you only live once, but do it at home or call a cab. Collect the keys at the door and lock them away. If you don't, I have the right as a fat, balding, middle-aged asshole to kick your ass, call the cops and/or your parents, and generally make you feel like shit.

Celebrities:

Celebrities are, much to your dismay, just people. Actors are just actors; musicians, just musicians. This does not make them experts on ANYTHING but they're chosen profession, any more than a banker is an expert on mental health, anymore than you should take investment advice from your proctologist.

Anyone, anywhere can spew any advice they want, but being successful and/or beautiful doesn't make you smarter or better; it just means you have a better PR firm, a better image and better makeup artists. If you choose to use your fame and fortune to spotlight the charity or cause of your choice, then that is your right, but it doesn't mean anyone anywhere has to listen or feel guilty for not doing more.

As for the "paparazzi": stop going where you know they will be, you whiny Mother Fuckers (i.e. Rodeo Drive, because, like, that's where all the really cool shops like totally are!). You can whine, bitch and complain all you like, but you, your fame and the PR firm that represents you are partially responsible for your current state of affairs. This is what you signed up for when you wanted, worked, struggled, obsessed and begged to become famous. If you didn't go into it with open eyes, it's your own damn fault. It's funny that I never see stories on the following celebrities: Tom Hanks, Morgan Freeman, Robert Redford, etc., ad nauseum, fucking, etc.! If you go into the fucking club, knowing there's paparazzi outside, then you damn well know they're going to be there when you stumble your drunken ass out. We have the right to retain our portion of the First Amendment without you limiting it because you can't keep your sorry PR ass under control and want to drive up the price of your next starring role.

Computers:

Learn how they work; learn what they do. You don't have to be a fucking expert, and I understand it can get complicated, but everything you touch and do involves a computer with the following exceptions: going to the toilet; and in a minority of cases, sex. Being old is no excuse.

Coffee:

It's ground up beans and hot water and that's all it is. I feel your pain. I really do. I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on espressos, cappuccinos, lattes, girly caffeinated beverages with syrups and whipped cream, but at the end of the day . . . it's just fucking coffee. It's not a religious experience, it's not the elixir vitae, it's not even necessary for you to survive (no matter how shaky and headachey you get when you miss your morning cup). Starbucks didn't invent it, nor do they have the best, but if you like their convenience, their business model, the barista with the pert nose, pert breasts and the twinkle in her pert blue eyes, then feel free to take a second mortgage out on the house to buy it. We all have our little sins/luxuries, but at the end of the day, someone (usually South Americans) picks beans, someone roasts them, someone grinds them, someone pours or presses hot water at 15 bars of pressure or above over them and you drink it. It's not a miracle; it's a drug that is socially acceptable.

Earth:

We are now, and always have been, a global economy. It's not a conspiracy; it's not a plot by the Rockefellers or the Bilderbergers. We started on one continent (Africa), as one people, and despite minor differences in our appearance and customs, we still are one people. We have always sought each other out, our long lost brothers and sisters. We have always fought, killed, loved, fucked (there's a difference) and traded with each other, and even if we colonize a planet in some dim near-future, we will continue to do so.

Religion:

You have the right to believe any dumb ass thing you choose to believe, i.e. Catholicism, Buddhism, Scientology, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc. It doesn't matter what book you read, what country you live in, what your parents drummed into your adolescent head, it's still your choice. If you want to join a cult, by all means go ahead. It is your responsibility to identify what makes us fallible, flawed and vulnerable as humans, but should you chose to ignore this responsibility, then you're an idiot, but that's your choice. We have the right ridicule you for whatever fool thing you believe in without fearing that you'll shoot us in the face. You have the right to get pissed off. God says so. Well, not really, but wouldn't it have been cool if He (or She (or It)) had? Being religious doesn't make you better, stronger, smarter, prettier or more successful; it just makes you more religious. You are, at the end of the day, always responsible for your own actions, even if, especially if, God told you to do it. If God really did tell you to do it, then God expects you to take the consequences like an adult.

to be continued

Aaron Diaz Hoal

Sunday, July 12, 2009

The Little Stripper That Could

If you've ever been to a strip club, excuse me . . . "Gentleman's" club. . . .

Fuck it! We can be honest, can't we? You and I? We may be gentleman before we enter the club, but we're ravenous wolves once we're in. We don't whoop and holler like you girls do in your silly little male strip clubs. We sit and we drink and sharpen our canine teeth, flick our tails, eat red meat and stare at the flesh writhing and wriggling on stage, the jiggly bits appeal to us the most, but the hair is nice, too.

Anyway, if you've ever dared to enter one, you know that at the end of the night it smells like the makeshift locker room of a platoon of Marines behind enemy lines. It smells like men. Sweat, spit and booze (with a hint of urine, vomit and gas). But there is a special kind of stink on amateur night.

Every thing is special on amateur night: the drinks, the crowd, the music, the women . . . especially the women.

A little note about our beloved strippers, whom we adore from afar: I've heard a lot of women complain about what strippers have that they don't. I've also heard a lot of men hem and haw and try to explain. Is it the moves? The pole? The music? The setting?

No, of course not.

We can't have them. That is what they give us that you can't. We can have you, the wife, the girlfriend, the friend with benefits. We have had you. They are there to be lusted after, not to be had. They are a fantasy and nothing more, and they stroke us from the inside out.

Anyway. . . .

Friday night, crowded together, shoulder to shoulder, double drinks in double fists, us men wait for our brothers' wives and girlfriends and friends to take the stage, to make us want them. It's not hard, but it's easy to fuck up. Surprisingly easy.

I can't blame the husband or the boyfriend who "lets" his girl get on stage. There is something powerfully appealing about knowing a whole club of men want your girl, and can't have her. But you can, and will, the moment you close the door behind you and one of you trips the other on to a bed, couch, carpet, dining room table or back seat. Value is about wanting, after all, and the more that want the prize, the more valuable it becomes.

Another note about strippers: The pros get tired, they become routine after awhile. They dance every night, every day, and it's only natural that they start to get the stripper "look". Powerful thighs, tight waist, heavy makeup, long hair, slightly artificial breasts, eyes that are not always the brightest, but are sometimes dimmed to a soulless luster. Oh, we'll still watch and drool and lust after them, but there's a reason clubs are always looking for "fresh" girls.

But tonight's story is about one special would-be stripper who took on a drunken crowd of men that had had already climaxed and fallen flat on its face by the time she showed her eager, slightly oily face in the too-bright halogen swirling lights of this particular sweaty men's club.

We'd stood, brothers in arms . . . or dicks, if your prefer, and showed our appreciation for women, tall and short, curvy and skinny with primped hair and flat hair with trained dance experience and with none, with costumes and with bikinis . . . . We clapped. We threw money. We drank.

Then Jeanie took the stage.

She was not the stripper type. She wore no makeup, or very little. She was too short, with a pubescent figure, flat chested or close to it, freckled, thin and pale. She wore a black unitard with a leather skirt, black pumps, fishnets and strangely . . . cat ears with a bunny tail. Her themes were a bit mixed, but the music pounded irregardless, some techno no one but a German would recognize. Her hair was too kinky with curls, and too washed out, a faded brunette. Her lips were thin and unappealing, and she had the gawky, gangly look of a fawn on its first uncertain venture into the forest.

And we fell in love with her. Or maybe we fell in love with her eyes . . . her eyes were strong and full of glitter. She looked happy. She looked childlike. She looked like she wanted to be there, and like she wanted us. Each and every one of us. She was all wrong for the stripper profession, for the stripper stage, for the club. She belonged in a bus station somewhere with a "runaway" poster in the background.

She did not strut. She did a funny little skip step, her leather skirt somehow tickling our eyebrows. It was hiked too far up her waist, though her strategy was clear, as it did reveal the back of her unitard, which turned out to have been neatly trimmed into a thong. I had a sudden image of her feverishly cutting away material backstage, cat glasses posed low on her nose, freckles bright red on her cheeks, tongue parked at the corner of her thin lips.

She did not perform olympic-style acrobatics on the pole. Her thighs couldn't have held her. She hardly touched the pole. Instead, she played on the edge of the stage. She played us, the crowd, and we wanted her. She did not hang on the edge of the platform and perform scissor kicks, yoga style; she flipped her skirt at us, did a strange, sexy little snake dance, did that strange, slightly stupid dance from the Fifties where you hold your nose and pretend to be sinking down into the ocean, and it was absolutely, drop-dead sexy.

At one point, she made a show of removing one of her heels, sitting with her thin legs exposed, unbuckling a strap, rolling her eyes at us, making us laugh, then poking her leg out into the audience for help. We envied the man who got to remove her shoe. Then she did it again with the other shoe. She wasn't dancing; she was having fun.

She dropped her unitard and slowly rolled it down until her ribcage was exposed, then looked at us and blushed. How silly of her . . . she hadn't given us her skirt yet. She was more saucy now, motioning for help with her skirt, then chastising the young man who beached himself on side of the stage like a trained seal. The skirt came off. It went with the man as he was escorted off the stage by a trained gorilla. But she ran after him, whipped him around, flowed into his arms, gave him a quick kiss on the tip of his nose and was away before he could get in a single grope, flashing her bunny tail as she ran.

We were in love. Every single one of us. She wasn't a stripper. She wasn't a Supermodel. She was miles from perfection. She was imperfection incarnate and we loved every freckle, every dimple, every curl because of those imperfections, instead of in spite of them.

She danced for a little while. We didn't want it to end. We didn't want the rest of her clothes to come off, because that meant the show was over.

I wondered if the girls back stage were rooting for or against her. I hoped for the former, but I'm an optimist that way.

When she did finally reveal herself to us in all her naked splendor, it was just that, a revelation. She threw her arms up in the air, threw her head back with closed eyes and let us take her all in, her hip bones, her mound, her freckled thighs, her pubes.

We cheered. Us men. We never cheer for strippers. We yell, we shout, we drool, we moan and growl, but we never cheer.

And now, this is the part of the story where I must reveal the great fallibility of the sport of stripping.

Jeanie did not win. She didn't get second prize. She didn't even get honorable mention.

It was fixed. The crowd voted, but the announcer / club owner did not listen. I found out why the next week when I saw the winner on stage and divined the sordid truth.

She may have not won the money, but she should have. She won us over and without half the natural attributes of the others. She won us over on personality alone.

Next time someone tries to set me up with a girl with a great "personality", I'll think a moment before I make an ugly face. Maybe I'll take the risk. Maybe, just maybe, I'll marry someone like Jeanie, whose beauty really makes the overly used, after school special cliche true . . . it comes from the inside, the light, the sexy, happy heart that fills the eyes, the heart and the palate.

Jeanie . . . you were the winner, no matter what they said.

Friday, July 3, 2009

What I Learned From Dating Fat Chicks

First of all, fat chicks don't always have low self esteem.

Portly or no, every girl is grateful for a good roll in the hay (and sometimes even a bad one), but not every girl appreciates a good roll in the hay like a fat chick does. I won't bother defining what makes a fat chick fat. Our definitions would differ, from me to you, from you to your friend, from your friend to your friend's favorite supermodel, and so on. But I will offer that in my experience fat chicks don't hate themselves nearly as much as skinny chicks.

Fat girls are fat. They already know what's wrong with them. They either eat too much, don't exercise enough or both. They don't go looking for other flaws. Why bother when you can't escape the biggest flaw of all? Skinny girls, on the other hand, can be trying. They are the conquistadors of low self esteem, always seeking out the next flaw, in perpetual journeys across the mirrors of the world for the next wrinkle, next cellulite, next mole, freckle or sagging body part.

Skinny girls spend more time in front of the mirror, and they don't eat or if they do eat they spend a suspiciously large amount of time in the bathroom directly afterward. Fat girls aren't anorexic, and usually not bulimic, or if they're bulimic they have the added curse of not being very good at it. After all, the point is to be thin, right?

When you take a skinny girl to a pizza joint, they either order salad or they get halfway through one slice and pat their tummies with a simpering smile. Which means I eat the rest of the pizza, which means I get fat. Fat girls carry their fair share of the eating, which means they stay fat and I stay however I am.

Skinny girls have more energy during sex, but who wants that? I don't want a girl that will make me walk like I had a colonoscopy with a fumble-fingered doctor the next day. I want a girl that exhausts quickly. I can do foreplay, but fiveplay and sixplay gets a little tiring.

I want a girl that drinks beer. 'nuff said.

Skinny girls are like skeletons in a latex dress. Fat girls got curves (sometimes hidden under other curves).

And frankly they're more fun to be around. They worry less about food, booze and laying on the couch for the entire weekend. And if you want to go somewhere, all you have to do is suggest that it will be good exercise. Dangle dreams of being thin and they're in the car with a towel and a water bottle in nothing flat. Fat girls do worry about skinny girls stealing their men, of course, (I doubt skinny girls worry about their man straying to plumpville), but they want to believe. When you explain to them that the thin, bony toothpick girls disgust you, they believe you. Skinny girls always worry someone skinnier will steal you away.

Fat chicks appreciate attention more. Skinny girls, pretty or not, get attention. They get a lot of it. If they're skinny except for their breasts, then they get even more attention. Watch the eyes of every man in a bar when a fat chick and a skinny chick walk in together, and you will begin to think that fat chicks have the gift of invisibility, though not always by choice.

Slather attention on a skinny chick and she'll be sizing you up. Are you the only game in town? Is there anyone else in the place that looks a little better, a little more successful? Smile at a fat chick and she's halfway yours. Ignore the skinny chick she's with and her thighs will part like a biblical sea.

Granted, depending on your definition of fat, the mechanics of sex may alter or even suffer slightly, but how many of us guys have laid our physiques over the girl of the evening and worried about crushing her? You don't worry about that so much with fat chicks. You do occasionally worry about the reverse, but again, that depends on your taste.

Last, but not least, I proclaim that dating fat chicks is not my fetish. It's just that more and more people are fat in the U.S., and I'm no slender puppy myself. And, of course, there is a difference between being curvy and obese, the number of curves for one thing. The heavier you get, the less curves you have. They are replaced by rolls. But when you kiss the pizza sauce stained lips of a curvy chick and tell them they're the most beautiful thing you've seen come around since flat screen plasmas, you'll see how easy the light turns on in their eyes. It's fun to switch that light on, and it makes you feel good.

And in the dark, all boobs have nipples, all voices moan and all beds squeak the same, though some admittedly more than others.

Aaron Diaz Hoal
(Originally published 4/7/08)