fuschia prom queen

so it's the countdown to my niece nichole's wedding...she gets married at my sister denise's house on saturday. this weekend was the bachelorette party, as I think I may have mentioned. we had a rough start, since my other niece melissa, who lives in daytona, had a hard time getting to PA. her flight was either delayed or she missed it (I think she missed it) and the airline lost her luggage. she was in tears by the time my cousin jackie picked her up from the airport and got her up to denise's in quakertown. she had 4 minutes to get ready, as our limo had already been sitting outside for over an hour. by the time we got on the road, it was after 9 - our original start time was 7:30.

we got to copabanana on south street and jackie, who is the maid of honor, realized that it was really not the place we wanted to hang out, so we walked a block down to jon's, which I'd never actually been to before. we ate on the upper deck, near people who were all pissed off that they had to be in the presence of a bachelorette party. nichole was wearing a veil and a sash...she was a good sport about it. personally, I would have ripped that shit off the second it was put on me. but we were pretty sedate, so we didn't make any of the pissed off people more pissed off by living up to the stereotype.

but then, we lived up to the stereotype. it was nearly 11 by the time we were done dinner, and I figured that if we tried to go to more than one bar at this point, we'd be pretty much stuck there. the plan was to go to a number of places before eventually settling in at the cave, which is a male strip club on delaware ave (pronounced "delaware av" and not "avenue"). delaware ave, for those of you not from philadelphia, doesn't technically exist anymore as it was renamed "columbus boulevard" but the delaware ave moniker remains and is synonymous with "cheesy mile of cheesy clubs". the cheesiest of those clubs, especially for bachelorette parties, is the cave. I'd actually never been there before this weekend, even though 3 people I know had bachelorette parties there. I'd escaped it every time before this weekend.

we walked in and saw nothing but women. scantily clad, very drunk women. and one man on stage, fully dressed, with a microphone. I guess he was the emcee. there was a throng of women by the stage, where the current featured performer was grabbing dollar bills out of women's tits and mouths. I could only see the top of his head. a few minutes later, he was back up on stage collecting crumpled up dollar bills, stuffing them into his banana hammock (which is why those things look so big) and walking offstage. all the men wear black briefs with a ruched seam in the ass and extra big pouch in front. all the performances feature one small fluffing session while the pants are still on so that they can better fill out the pouch. and I needed only wait 10 minutes or so to figure out why the backdrop to the stage was a big black scuffed piece of plywood - that's so that they can do handstands on the floor and rest their feet on the wall and dryhump the air.

they also had some dudes walking around just groping women looking for dollar bills. it is so unlike a female strip club, because there is alot more touching involved. a guy came over to our little group and I grabbed him by the arm and directed him to nichole, into whose bra I had put a dollar bill. he first grazed my neck before turning to her and taking the dollar out of her bra, hands on her hips, just really in her face. women were grabbing these men by the ass, sticking their money way into the briefs, and in turn, the men were grabbing tits, asses, giving kisses on the neck and sometimes on the thighs...it was insane. if you tried to pull that shit in a regular strip club, you'd be thrown out in a heartbeat. by a very big man who wouldn't worry about hurting you.

at the end of the night, after all the men have done their performances (which consist of coming out on stage with 2 other men, all clothed, doing about a minute of a dance routine, then a strip tease that involves the aforementioned fluffing, then various humping motions, followed by a walk along the front of the stage collecting money) they have these "hot seats" - I've never been to a strip club for a bachelor party so I've never seen this before. it may be old hat to you people. you pay $25 (which I thought sounded like a bargain) for the priviledge to sit on a chair on stage, choose the man you'd like to pretend to be interested in you, and he then dances all over you. eventually, your chair gets pushed to the wall so he can do that handstand thing and pretend to 69 you. yes, I paid for nichole to have one such "hot seat" experience. yes, I took pictures.

it was great people watching. some of these women really took it quite seriously. and some of these women were quite lecherous. I'd say 90% of the women there were there for bachelorette parties. some women were obviously wasted, but alot of them seemed with it. many were wearing headbands with little penises on them. again, you'd have to hold me at gunpoint to wear that shit. but hey, if this is how they want to commemorate the fact that they're already in a monogamous relationship that they plan to make legal therefore making the bachelorette party just a frivolous excuse to act crazy, more power to them.

we closed the cave and drove the hour plus back to quakertown in the limo. by the time we got home, it was 3:30 am. I had to be at trent's soccer game, after having picked up bella at kkkathy's, at 9am. the field is an hour away. so basically, I had to get up at 7. I arrived home at 4:30. surprisingly, I wasn't as tired as I was the day before, when I had to stop on the way back from the tournament to take a 10 minute nap on the side of the turnpike with both kids in the car. the sleep, it has been lacking the last few weeks.

so that was the weekend. this week, I have to get trent's outfit together, pick up my dress from the tailor, go tanning (I know, I know), get shoes for trent, go help make rice bags for favors, and then rehearsal dinner friday night and wedding saturday. wish me luck.