Cigarettes and Alcohol: Confessions of a Stag Weekend

by Sloan, Phil

  The lads are over the moon that they stitched me up. ‘That will right learn ya, stag boy. You thought because we got you in Amsterdam you were getting away with it this time out. Well you are wrong so you best be on your guard fella,’ crows the gang.

  Food gets put away. Beers drained. We shake hands with the owner and job done, it’s time to make like Tom and Cruise.

  We carry on down the road and soon see a huge neon blue sign that holds us like a tractor beam, slowly drawing us in. There is no escape. It’s as if our minds are now in someone else’s control and our will is no longer our own.

  This place is calling out to us, it is our destiny. The sign is just four letters glowing in the dark saying ‘T I T Z’.

  CIGARETTES SMOKED IN THIS CHAPTER: 8…..121 TO GO

  BOOZE BINGED IN THIS CHAPTER: COBRA x 3, A GLASS OF BLACK TOWER WINE, A DOUBLE BACARDI AND COKE

  Chapter Seventeen: The Trail of a Snail Ruins Jeans Made of the Skin of a Mole

  The eight of us join the short queue of people that are unsurprisingly, all well shifty looking gentlemen. All making a bad hash of looking like they really don’t want to be here, but they very obviously do.

  We reach the front and ask the bouncer standing there in his regulation black bomber jacket and earpiece, what the full S.P. (starting price) is.

  His reply must be the same answer he has been reeling off for months as he does not even pause for breath as he explains:

  ‘Right this is a lap dancing bar. It is £3 each to get in, £2 per drink and then £5 per private dance. The rules are very simple to understand. Number one, you do NOT touch the ladies. Number two, you do NOT proposition the dancers. You best believe that you will not be getting a ‘poke in the whiskers’ in this establishment. Number three, you do NOT touch the merchandise or there will be big trouble coming your way. We only employ the sexiest ladies and I guarantee you no munters on these premises! Gentlemen step this way.’

  To be perfectly straight the fella lost me at the words ‘this is a lap dancing bar’ the rest of his spiel was a load of white noise, blah blah blah, with a threat of mindless violence if Captain Grope pays a visit! We get it. Look but do not touch. There is no ‘try before you buy’ policy in this joint.

  We hand over three sheets each for the entrance fee and enter the club. As soon as we get through the door we notice one very small detail that ‘Mr I love the sound of my own voice’ has rather conveniently forgotten to mention. Unsurprisingly, the fella’s out-number the scantily clad dancers by about twenty to one.

  The place is absolutely ram-packed solid with geezers who are all over the sexy ladies like bluebottles buzzing about turds. The club has certainly seen better days with a 1970’s décor of tack, disco balls, loads of mirrors and a carpet that is as sticky as quick sand. I am hoping this is due to the number of pints of ale spilt on it over the years and not stray bodily fluids.

  One side of the place is a long bar that is about fifty deep, all hollering for lager, at the two over worked and totally pissed off bar staff standing behind it.

  On the other side of the room is a small stage with a steel pole, where one of the girls is slowly peeling her kit off to applause and cheers from the leering punters. The way she is throwing herself around the pole really is impressive. Twisting round and round the silver pole in the centre of the stage and then hanging upside down legs akimbo, with not a stitch on, is certainly a skill worth learning. Maybe they should do a degree course in it. She has an amazing body and if pole dancing was a new Saturday night tea time TV programme, viewing figures would go through the roof.

  It’s no surprise that Deviant has rushed straight down to the stage and elbows his way to the front where he stands with a shit eating grin, beaming from ear to ear. He is in his element. There is no way on Earth we are getting him out of here tonight.

  Other strippers walk around the club in their best underwear asking if you would care to join them for a private dance in one of the rooms out the back. Your five pound note gets you one song, during which your chosen lady will strip completely naked and give you a real eyeful. She will also have a writhe around on your lap, a wriggle up your thighs and if you are especially well behaved, may even give your veiny bang stick (that will definitely be on the semi) a half-hearted squeeze. Then it’s a peck on the cheek and you get fucked off before the next customer. It is a fiver well spent!

  Business is brisk, as soon as one of the girls reappears from the booths at the back of the club, another bloke grabs her and she is back taking off all her scrundies that she has only just put back on again. They are coining it in.

  The amount of silicone enhanced breast on display is staggering. As Village remarks to the gang, ‘This place is packed with fake tits and real cock-ends!’

  We manage to get served a round of pints and stand there soaking up the ambience. The place whiffs of cheap perfume, mould, man sweat, stale cigarettes and eggy beer farts. If you could bottle the pong, you could make dough selling it as the brand-new cologne for ‘the right dodgy geezer in your life’ and call it ‘Eau de Seedy.’

  The blokes in here are mainly young fellas out for a few laughs and looking to top up the old ‘wank bank’ by ogling pretty girls they know they could never pull in a million years. There is an atmosphere of desperation about the place but it is the perfect venue for a stag do.

  Let’s face it you are very unlikely to meet the girl of your dreams while you are totally incoherent with a gut full of booze surrounded by all your mates in the same rotten state. Stag boys tend to lose their respect for women along with their power of witty repartee while under the influence and revert to shouting out Neanderthal man comments like ‘Get your tits out for the lads!’

  At TITZ [you can tell it is a classy place as the name uses a Z and not an S] the girls are only too pleased to ‘whop them out’ as long as you pay, so everyone is happy!

  Over a weekend the dancers here will probably earn more than I will for a full week sitting at a poxy desk doing telesales bullshit so you have to ask ‘Which one of us really is the mug?’

  Well me, as usual, to be honest. If I had a gorgeous body I could use to make a living and avoid the ‘nine to five’ rat race, I certainly would. Unfortunately the only modelling work I could get with my beer gut, would be the ‘before’ photograph in an advertisement for the local gym. I am not even going to be able to donate my well knackered body to medical science after I’ve finished with it.

  Back at the bar we spark up some coffin sticks just as Deviant returns. He has already had three private dancers out the back and is now skint so is looking to borrow/beg/ponce another fiver so he can stare at another one of the fantastic girls undressing.

  ‘Do you get your money’s worth out the back in the private booths then?’ asks Kid L.

  ‘You bet!’ Deviant roars. ‘This place is full on rock and roll. The Jacks (Jack the Rippers-Strippers) are top dollar. They get completely naked and climb all over you dangling their bits in your face. They have less hair downstairs than you can find on Kojak’s head. You get a better view of their pubic area than a fully qualified Gynaecologist! Although saying that, one of the girls was a major disappointment. She dropped her panties and she had a pierced clit. It was a right let down, was like finding a five pence piece in your doner kebab! But I swear one of them was completely in love with me and deffo would have let me shag her. She was wetter than an otter’s pocket. I was knuckles deep and she was all over my cock like a rash!’

  ‘Well that is lucky then,’ replies Kid L, ‘as you have a rash all over your cock after that visit to that Dutch knocking shop the other month, but we won’t mention that.’

  ‘Come on Kid L don’t be tight, sub me a tenner so I can road test another couple of these top fillies. Hell, why not come along and we can both nonce them right up? Let’s go and grin at some quim! Let’s go and fumble with some grumble!’ yells Deviant at the top of his voice.

  With that the two lads wander into the crowd sea
rching for their next deposit into their personal Bank of Wank Fantasy Investment Portfolio. You know the rules: a shag’s alright but you can’t beat a bit of the old mind’s eye!

  So now there are six of us left at the bar to get stuck into yet another round and then wobble over to the stage area to join the mob of geezers standing there gawping with their eyes out on stalks.

  Why waste a Lady Godiva (fiver) going out the back for a private when you get a free fully nude show out here for zero pence? There’s more bare skin on display than at ‘The Changing of The Guard’ up in London. Sorry that’s bear skins, so that’s my mistake, that analogy really does not work does it? We will move on.

  While watching the show Kid M is looking really uncomfortable, which is odd as a beautiful girl is slowly taking her bra off to reveal a splendid set of top bollocks, not five feet away. This is not something you see during your daily drudgery at work so he should be getting a right good stare on.

  ‘What’s wrong with you mate? Not classy enough in here for you? Not enjoying the reek of desperation?’ I ask.

  ‘No it’s not that Euro, I errr, I really need to go and take a big shit - that curry has gone straight through me. My guts are rotten.’ He blurts out.

  ‘Well go and have one then, they have got bogs in here.’

  ‘But the bouncers will think I’ve gone in there to jerk myself off. I’d feel right embarrassed cos I don’t want them to think I’m a pervert.’

  I can’t believe I’m having this conversation, this is surreal. This guy has got some real issues with public defecation that need sorting.

  ‘I promise you they have not got cameras in the toilets to stop people having a quick Jodrell. Besides you won’t even get in one of the traps as there will be a load of ching monsters in there hoovering the white stuff up their conks. Just go to the lav, wait for a stall and have a dump.’

  ‘I just can’t stand to do it in here I know it’s going to be a three flush jobbie at least. I’m going back to the hotel.’

  ‘That is the lamest excuse to skip the beer I have heard in my entire life. We only let the pretend stag avoid appearing on tonight’s show because he’s lost two of his pearly whites and he is up the local A&E. You’re baling out to go home and have a poo. Get a grip on yourself top man, stop being such a massive flange piece.’

  ‘No I’ve got to go, I’m touching cloth already. I can feel the turtle neck poking out. I’ll see you back here in half an hour I promise.’

  With that Kid M is in the wind and we are now down to seven in total. That’s half of the herd lost and it is not even ten o’clock at night. This is a piss poor performance. There was a famous saying during World War II that went: Loose Lips, Sink Ships.

  The modern version of this in the lighter than lightweight Kid M’s case would be: Loose Bowels, Lose Pals! The rest of the posse are not surprised that he has performed an early retreat from the booze battle. ‘He’s normally full of shit anyway,’ someone remarks.

  I stand at the bar staring at the woman gyrating sexily on the stage and go off into my own little world. I look like a tit in a trance or rather I’m in a trance staring at tits.

  At that moment I get a tap on the shoulder and turn around to see one of the scrumptious strippers in her full kit standing there yawning away. She looks very well-travelled and I don’t mean that she goes on holiday a lot.

  Through her open gaping mouth she manages to ask me, ‘Would you like a private dance out the back?’ She yawns in my face again and I get a whiff of her halitosis. Thanks love!

  ‘I do very sexy dance for you. You can touch my pussy and my tits,’ she says and yawns sleepily for a third time.

  ‘Darling you need to work on your sales technique. You should be rubbing your Jack & Danny up and down my leg or tickling my todger, instead of looking bored shitless when chatting to me. I really don’t think that your heart is in this stripping lark. You ain’t getting a fiver out of me, so do one!’ I tell the disinterested tart. She spins on her heel and slouches off giving me the finger. I don’t think she is overly keen on her chosen career path.

  Just then, like a bad penny, Deviant pops back up again. ‘What have you done with Kid L you twisted spleen eater?’ Village asks.

  ‘Slight problem there guys, he’s just been thrown out. He went out for a private and kept groping the poor girl up, he was all over her Bristol’s. She was having none of it and called the bouncer over who gave him a right good clip round the ear and threw him out.’

  Unbelievably we are now down to just a half dozen made up of: Me (AKA Euro) Deviant, Amnesty, Village, Hit and Run. What a total let down. We are on a stag do of disaster and losing bodies at a horrific rate.

  But just as the night was looking bleak, Amnesty spots something that will elevate this evening to legendary status. An evening that will be discussed long into the future with the whole gang pretending they were there to witness it. Exactly like everyone of a certain age knowing where they were when JFK got shot.

  Amnesty points at the front of Deviant’s trousers and asks ‘what the fuck is all that?’

  Over the weekend Deviant has been banging on and on about his brand new pair of black moleskin jeans that cost him a fortune from Covent Garden. He has been rabbiting on about denim being dead and that moleskin is the future of trouser wear.

  Needless to say that moleskin is not actually made from the skin of a mole - that would be gross! It is a heavyweight cotton fabric brushed on both sides to produce a soft, smooth pile surface that has a velvety kind of feel to it.

  Up and down the thighs of Deviant’s jeans are white trails of crusty gank that looks like a load of snails have been competing in the 50cm world sliming championships.

  Deviant knows exactly where this mess has come from and boosts proudly, ‘I told you all, that dirty lap dancing bird wanted a piece of me. She was really frothing at the gash as she was writhing about on my lap and thighs, covering me in her lush clam jam. Knew I was making her all gushy by putting on the old Deviant charm, works every time. No one believed me when I said she was right into me and I could have been conkers deep into her. Well there’s the proof, sticky fanny batter all over my moleskins!’

  He is so proud of the snail trail stains that I’m sure he is going to get the trousers framed when he gets home. It would be like having a signed Charlton Athletic Football Club (go on you reds!) shirt hanging up in your front room. The frame would become a family heirloom that you keep to pass on to future generations.

  But I reckon those trousers are beyond saving and even after a boil wash are only destined for the nearest rubbish bin. Even the local second hand shop won’t take them in.

  We all stand about laughing and joking but Deviant is having none of the piss taking. In fact he is jubilant about the cruddy muck on his moleskins.

  A random stranger walks by and clocks the state of them saying, ‘bad move fella, black moleskins and lap dancing don’t mix. Get yourself some stone washed denim jeans, they hide all the evidence!’

  And there’s another bit of free, great advice to live your life by.

  CIGARETTES SMOKED IN THIS CHAPTER 9…..91 TO GO

  BOOZE BINGED IN THIS CHAPTER: 2 PINTS, A BOTTLE & A SHIRLEY TEMPLE COCKTAIL WITH A PINK UMBRELLA

  Chapter Eighteen: The well moody old juicer of Edinburgh Town

  We’ve left the smeggy cock whiff of TITZ far behind us and rocked up in some right dodgy battle cruiser near the city centre. As soon as we walk in we are greeted by the traditional friendly Scottish welcome of:

  WHO ARE YA? WHO ARE YA? WHO ARE YA?

  WHO ARE YA? WHO ARE YA? WHO ARE YA?

  This is being chanted at us full volume by a group of feral, ferrety looking fuckers at the back of the bar. They are getting right into it, pointing at us and snarling, really making us feel wanted.

  This joyful song is then followed by a few choruses of; ‘Who the fucking hell are you?’ to really get across the fact that we have strayed off the beaten track and are
now about to get a beating.

  These lads are obviously not old enough to drink legally but have covered their chins in bum fluff to look older and wiser than their years.

  Their uniform of shell suits, sports clothing, tracky bottoms and scuffed up trainers (from climbing up walls and through open windows while out robbing people’s houses, no doubt) all spells out one thing: TROUBLE!

  They look like nasty bastard tea leaves (thieves) who are quick with their fists and would gladly support their local dentist by smashing all your teeth out.

  Up here in Scotland they are known as NEDS (Non Educated Delinquents) over in the good old US of A they would be called TPT (Trailer Park Trash) but I call them Plague Kids, as in ‘Avoid like the….’

  There’s a group of ten Plagues all hanging around two knackered looking pool tables at the rear of the pub. They don’t seem to be playing though, just using the tables to roll up the thick joints we can seeing them smoking and you can smell the Mary Jane from the doorway.

  There is an air of violence and menace hanging over the whole place but the impending threat of danger is just not sinking in to our pissed up brains.

  At this end of the bar nearest the entrance is an older crowd of mainly men all suited and booted in their best clobber. They all look in their sixties but are probably only in their mid-forties, with faces that suggest they have lived very hard lives being very hard men.

  What with the bad diet of prison food, filter-less cigarettes, home brewed alcohol and a heroin habit, what chance did they have? Male models this lot most certainly are not.

  These ‘oldies’ all seem to have bits missing, like teeth, brain cells and parts of ears/noses which can’t be good. They may even be the parents/grandparents/great grandparents of the no marks younger crew, who are still sizing us up from the pool tables.

  There are women in this joint but even they look tougher than tough. If one of them asked you to accompany her out to the car park you would not be able to tell if she wanted to pull you or punch your lights out.