Saturday night I dipped a toe in the sprawling underworld that lurks beneath the barely legal façade of strip clubs. 

The night was slow, which meant that I was in VIP, knocking back shots at the bar with Luis, the club’s resident coke dealer. He’s a pretty cool dude who buys me lots of shots and brings me lots of customers but never buys dances. When I got just drunk enough to ask him why, one thing led to another and before you know it, I was bouncing on his lap in one of the darker sections of VIP. He fell a little bit in love, as they usually do, and asked if I wanted to join him and his mild-mannered white-bread boy Connor at Foxy’s Cabaret.

“I have to pay to leave early,” I told him. 

“No, you don’t,” he said and waved to the VIP Manager. “Yo, Jason! We cutting out of here, aight?”

Jason fist-bumped the air in acknowledgement and that was that. Strip club management kisses coke dealer ass. That was a lesson I’d learn all evening. I left scot-free two hours early.

Foxy’s Cabaret is the behemoth across the highway. It’s an imposing building with two bouncers out front who wear sunglasses at 3 am. The cover to get in is $25, BYOB, all-nude. I expected it to be sleazier than The Landing Strip.

Color me *completely* wrong. I was shocked by the scene that greeted me past the front desk. Where Rick’s had been a snoozefest, Foxy’s was still popping. All of the dancers were gorgeous and well-appointed, striding like glittering queens among burlap peasants and hauling their cash off-stage in laundry baskets. Fucking LAUNDRY BASKETS, ya’ll. 

All of a sudden, I felt incredibly dowdy in my yoga pants and turtleneck. I needed a red hot, skin tight dress with a neckline to my belly-button to fit in at this club. Note to self: Bring that dress to da club next time just in case. Stash it in yo locker and label it “Bust out in case of sexy emergency.”

In the continuing saga of strip club management kissing coke dealer ass, Luis scored us free seats in VIP and bottle service past 2 am. We had to drink it in Styrofoam cups so as not to flaunt it. Luis, Connor and I settled in and drank and drank and drank.

I’m embarrassed to admit what happened next. Luis was talking to me about . . . something, but all of a sudden, the music faded, the noise stilled and I saw HIM: below us, on the main floor, draped coolly and casually across a chair, was a doppelganger of one of my very attractive ex-boyfriends. Same hair, same face, same body type. The similarity was startling. I could feel the Pavlovian response welling up in my body. 

Ya’ll don’t need me to tell ya’ll what that means.

I excused myself from Luis and went to the bathroom to make sure my lipstick was perfect. Then I walked straight up to the guy, whoever he was, crawled into his lap, searched his eyes for permission and kissed him. Soft, slow, deep. Damn, he even kissed like the ex. And then I walked away.

Upon my return upstairs, I prayed Luis hadn’t seen my little stunt, but Luis had, in fact, seen my little stunt. Instead of being mad about it, however, he launched into a very vulnerable story about one of his ex-girlfriends. He was so cute and sweet that I crawled into his lap and made out with him too. 

Full disclosure: If you catch me drunk enough, I will probably make out with you. Good luck catching me drunk enough, though.

I’m not sure if Doppelganger found me creepy, weird or hot. Heck, I’m not even sure if I’d label what I did as creepy, weird or hot. Nevertheless, I would do it again in a heartbeat, except longer next time.

Creepy. Probably creepy.

There’s more to this story, but I’ll pick up later with a Part 2: Jasmine.