For Tales from Da Club #45 | Part 1: The Doppelganger, click here.

This continued tale of my evening out with the coke dealer, Luis, and his mild-mannered white boy Connor could be entitled, “In Which the Stripper is on the Other Side of the Lap Dance.”

Due to all the whiskey disappearing down my throat that evening, my recollections are a bit a fuzzy. Nevertheless, at some point in the evening, I vividly remember Jasmine hitting up our table. Jasmine was everything that should not work at a strip club: petite features, short hair and huge nerd glasses. She was also bubbly and cute, and I was smitten after her first dance.

Thanks to a great deal of research – by which I mean a very long and raunchy online discussion with my friends group – I now know that the female equivalent of blue balls is blue beans. I don’t know why. Just roll with it.

Needless to say, Jasmine left me with a very hard case of blue beans.

Apparently, she had a similar effect on Connor as well. In the car, waiting for Luis to arrive, Connor informed me that he had gotten a hotel for the evening and Jasmine had promised to join him. “You’re welcome to join us if you’d like,” he offered.

I eagerly accepted the offer. The entire way back to his house, Luis’ pleas for me to join him for the remainder of the night fell on deaf ears, a hard heart and the blue beans Jasmine held in a tight grip.

Full Disclosure: No matter how drunk I get, I will not sleep with you if I don’t want to.

At the La Quinta, Connor and I received a text from Jasmine. “You should’ve gotten a nicer hotel,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’m gonna make it out.”

I couldn’t do anything but grin at Connor. “Isn’t that just like a stripper?” I said. “We make all sorts of promises we have no intentions of keeping.”

Instead, I stayed and chatted while Connor snorted lines from the night stand. Turns out that mild-mannered white-bread Connor is an IT Director by day and an illegal poker game runner by night. 19 Gs. That’s how much he and his partner paid for a 700 name list of attendees. Earlier in the evening, Luis had informed me that Connor made seven grand a week. Now I knew why.

I left the hotel a great deal wiser. I better understand now what I put my clients through, how they feel about me, why they do and say the things they do, why they come back over and over and over again and blow their budgets on me.

It’s dangerous knowledge. For them. Time to turn up the heat.