Part 30: East St. Louis

I woke up late in the morning. I had to get a package in the mail, so I first went to the post office in Fairview Heights. After that, I went to Walmart to pick up some toiletries. After completing my errands, I returned to Casino Queen for lunch at Sevens. I had the pan-seared tilapia with a side of boiled carrots. After completing my meal, I gambled for an hour and then returned to my hotel to take a nap.

After a shower and dressing up, I headed to Prime Steakhouse for a big dinner. I had the grilled Pacific salmon. The portion size was huge. It seemed like they put half of a salmon on the plate. After filling up, I played slots for about an hour and a half and sucked down some complimentary Cokes. I bought a five dollar chip to give to a coworker that collects casino chips.

Next, I drove to Missouri to go to Rhonda’s Place on Page Avenue, the only strip club in St. Louis proper, arriving at 9:45pm. Rhonda’s Place turned out to be a dive bar with strippers on the end of a strip mall. There were beer bottles discarded all around the parking lot. No one was checking IDs at the door. There were signs on the wall telling patrons should notify management if anyone tries to sell them drugs. The clientele was mostly African-American and Mexican. This was a strange place. Dancers performed on a small stage in the corner, but were not allowed to strip down any further than a bikini. So much for Missouri being nicknamed the Show Me State. The five dancers working were not making much money with contact and lap dances being illegal in St. Louis County. The worst part about Rhonda’s was the secondhand smoke. I left after an hour, struggling to breathe and reeking of cigarette smoke.

Next, I drove to Lumiere Place in downtown St. Louis, parking in the attached parking garage. There must have been some kind of event going on at the casino and hotel resort because there were women decked out in evening dresses everywhere on the property. I bought a five dollar chip for my coworker at the cage and then jumped on the slot machines briefly. I started to win money, but once again my throat was getting irritated. I looked up toward the ceiling and could seek an abundance of smoke hovering between me and the lights. In Missouri, it is still legal to smoke indoors in casinos and bars. I departed, not being at the casino for more than a half hour. I just could not take it anymore.

I drove across the Mississippi River back into Illinois, exiting the Interstate onto South Illinois 3, so I could go to Pop’s. Coming down the ramp into Sauget, cars were backed up. There was something going on up ahead, possibly an accident. Around this time, I started feeling pain in my stomach and was getting nauseous. After sitting and slowly moving forward for thirty minutes, I eventually came to a checkpoint set up by the Illinois State Police. They asked to see my drivers license and proof of auto insurance. Then they peered into my vehicle with their flashlights. Presumably, they were also looking for drunk drivers. It was after midnight on a Saturday night after all. I saw a few cars on the side of the road that had been impounded by the state police and were being prepared to be towed. By the time, I made it past the checkpoint, I felt something slowly rising up my esophagus. I decided to skip Pop’s and call it a night, heading back to the Holiday Inn. With every mile, I was feeling more and more nauseous. Finally, I pulled into the parking lot, shifted to park, and immediately ran ten feet to the grass hedge in front of my vehicle. I fell to the ground and violently vomited the salmon I had eaten earlier in the night. It was at this point that I would learn I had a serious health problem that would require emergency surgery left than two weeks later. In retrospect, I was grateful that I did throw up while going through the state police roadblock; surely they would have thought I was driving drunk, even though I had not consumed alcohol in over three months.

Part 29: East St. Louis

I got off work in Champaign, Illinois mid-afternoon on a Friday. Since I was within three hours of St. Louis, I decided to head down for a weekend getaway. I stopped on the way to get gas and a tuna sandwich at Subway. I arrived at the Holiday Inn in Fairview Heights around 6pm and got washed up.

I started the evening at Casino Queen in East St. Louis. This is probably my favorite casino in the Midwest. I lost around $160 over the course of a couple hours, then headed out to Miss Kitty’s, which I had not been to since December 2012. I asked the bartender for a 7UP or a ginger ale. What I received was a club soda. The strip club was very dead and all but one of the dancers exhibited damage from pregnancy. The one dancer who was not “stretched” would have been the only one I would have banged. I decided to leave after an hour and headed for a door with an exit sign. The only problem was that I had just walked into the VIP room. The bouncer shouted and chased me down. The exit is the same door one enters the building.

I decided to jump over to Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club a quarter to 1am. I had always avoided this strip club because Deja Vu/Hustler Club chain is the McDonald’s of adult entertainment, but I decided to give this strip club a go being that it is one of the only ones I have yet to step foot in the St. Louis metro area. I was impressed how the club was decorated so exquisitely for Christmas. I sat in the back next to a Christmas tree and enjoyed a few Cokes. I took in the sights for most of the night, scoring the line-up and occasionally walking up to the stage to throw a few dollar bills. I ended up getting four couch dances from a pale brunette from Kentucky named Skylar. I would’ve loved to put a carrot in this filly’s mouth, but the Hustler Club is one of the few “clean” clubs in Washington Park. Around 3am, I was feeling burnt out and headed back to the Holiday Inn for the night.

Part 28: Indianapolis

I woke up around noon Saturday and checked my phone. There were no text messages from Bareback. Maybe he was still asleep. Maybe the stripper killed him in his sleep. I got showered and did some work on the computer. An hour later, Bareback texted me that he was outside in the parking lot smoking a cigarette. I went downstairs to meet him and asked him if he banged the stripper he took back to the hotel. It turns out he did not score. He claimed he made out with her and felt her up, but she would not go for sex. He felt she played him for a free night’s hotel stay. She lived in the Chicago suburbs and was working at Dancers Show Club for the afternoon.

We got in my rig, and I drove to the Chick-fil-A in Avon, which was packed on a Saturday afternoon. I had Chick-fil-A cards for free grilled nuggets, so I treated my friend to lunch. We hit an ATM on the way back to the Crowne Plaza. Bareback Jack wanted to go relax in the hot tub for an hour and take a nap. I did some work on my websites and took a shower.

Around 17:00, we reconvened and went over to Fountain Square to barhop. We had a beer at Imbibe, and then went to B’s Po Boy for dinner and more beer.

After dinner, Bareback wanted to see more of the Circle City’s flesh factories, so we made a stroll over to Classy Chassy. I had not been there since November 2012 when I had a very disappointing visit. Between 2012 and 2016, not much had changed. The dancer line-up on Saturday’s night shift did not impress us. I got a couple lackluster dances from an inked redhead named Charlie. The slow and sensual lap dance style is just not my cup of tea. Bareback Jack bumped into a trucker while smoking outside who was staying at the Quality Inn across the road by the truck stop. He explained to Bareback that he was trying to get stripper to come to his hotel room, but was not having any luck. Bored, we took off and headed over to Silk.

I had not been to Silk since September 2012. The club was slightly better than I had remembered, only because there were two 9’s working. Bareback was able to flag down one of them for lap dances. She was tame and told my friend that she could get him drugs if he wanted any, because her boyfriend was a drug dealer. Being horny, Bareback took a significantly less beautiful dancer back for dances. She gave him all the contact that he wanted and offered even more in the VIP room. He declined because she was not good-lucking enough to drop several hundred on.

Around midnight, we agreed that Dancers Show Club was the best option to close out our weekend in Indianapolis. It was midnight, and we needed to get more airplane bottles en route to Dancers. We were worried all the liquor stores were already closed. We were finally able to find a liquor store in the Mars Hill neighborhood that was still open. It also happened to have over one hundred varieties of airplane bottles. From there, we trucked over to Dancers.

We started out by ordering a hydrant that had one hundred ounces of Budweiser. That only lasted about ninety minutes. We kept taking turns going to the washroom to down miniature bottles of alcohol. We only brought in enough nips to avoid suspicion. As the night wore on, each of us would have to make trips out to my vehicle to reload our pockets. The Czech dancer Bareback had slept in the same bed with last night was working. Bareback Jack learned that the Czech was not 26 like she told had him, but she was actually 36 years old. Not only that, but Bareback felt scammed by her coming to his hotel room and not letting him penetrate her holes. Bareback Jack made a point to pretend like she did not exist.

I saw an athletic brunette on stage at one point, so I went up to tip her. Some short dork was already sitting at the stage with a Jackson in hand, but she seemed to ignore him, giving me attention for almost her entire stage set. When she gets off stage, she immediately asks me if I want to do lap dances with her. “Absolutely,” I said. The lap dances were great and this dancer, whom I will leave unnamed to protect the innocent, started French kissing me. I was in heaven. In my euphoric state, I gave her a mini bottle of peach schnapps from my jacket, which she brazenly chugged in view of all the cameras in the lap dance area. She said she would not get in trouble for it. On the fourth song, another dancer, Olivia, walked into our booth and started whispering something in my private dancer’s ear. From what I can overhear, the dancer’s regular was upset she ignored him at the stage, and he sent Olivia to tell my dancer to come to his booth immediately. I am getting pissed because I have never had another dancer interrupt a lap dance before. After the fourth song, my dancer tells me she needs to go to her regular customer. I told her it was okay and that she needed to keep her regular customers. She said she does not like the short guy and would prefer to keep giving me more private dances. She took a whole song to get back dressed and we French kissed some more. She gave me her real name and told me to add her as a friend on Facebook. She did not seem like a cutthroat stripper and had not been doing it very long.

I return to my table and sit with Bareback Jack, watching the dancer in the booth of the dorky regular. He appeared to be whining about being slighted, then stormed out of the club with his Polo shirt-wearing entourage, making a scene like the stripper made a fool out of him in front of his friends. The dancer disappeared to the dressing room, and likely went home after that as it was 3am and I did not see her on the floor for the rest of the night. In retrospect, I should have followed the regular out of the club and beat him and his frat boy crew all over the icy parking lot.

Part 27: Indianapolis

I left work early Friday afternoon and headed down to Indianapolis. The previous weekend, Bareback Jack was not able to drive in from Cincinnati, so we agreed to meet in Indy the following weekend. I bought two hotel rooms for two nights at my go to hotel in Indianapolis, the Crowne Plaza, for $235 total. I arrived around 5pm, but Bareback was still en route. He finally arrived about 7:30pm.

Bareback said he had never eaten at a Tilted Kilt before, so we agreed to go downtown for dinner. The waitresses were smoking hot, and the food was decent enough too. We had a few beers, then decided to do some barhopping downtown. I suggested we head to the Slippery Noodle a few blocks down Meridian. The Noodle is the oldest continuously operating bar in the state of Indiana. It has been operating for 166 years! When we got there, they were charging a $10 cover because there was a blues show going on. We didn’t want to pay a cover for just a beer or two, so we turned around and headed back up Meridian to Tiki Bob’s. It looked to be a good spot because there were some sexy bartenders inside. The bouncers at the door told me that I could not wear my ball cap inside and that I would have to put it in my car. I was not going to bow down to their dress code, so we kept walking. Eventually, we wound up at Yard House, a bar with over one hundred beers on tap. Nothing overly exciting was going on at the Yard House other than beer snobs glorifying craft beer, so we decided to retreat to Dancers Show Club out by the airport to enjoy some peelers.

Recalling my experience the prior weekend where I was quoted an exorbitant price for a Jager Bomb, I pulled into the Valero just down the street from the strip club and suggested to Bareback that we grab some airplane bottles before going to the female flesh emporium. I purchased miniature bottles of Jagermeister, Kraken, Malibu, and Southern Comfort. Bareback purchased cigarettes, mini bottles, and a 375 mL flask of Fireball.

We snuck the party favors into the club in our jackets. Since the club was rigged with cameras everywhere, the only place we could drink them was in the one place that was not being recorded: the washroom. Bareback and I would take turns making trips to the washroom to slam the miniature bottles while the other would hold down the table. We’d discard the nips in the urinals. By the end of the night, the urinals were filled with miniature liquor bottles.

We both got a few lap dances and tipped the stage. Bareback Jack hit it off with a Czech dancer. He was trying to get her to meet him for OTC. She agreed and said she would meet him after closing time at the Steak ‘n Shake. We closed the club at 4am and headed to the Steak ‘n Shake. The stripper showed up and joined us at a booth. She had told Bareback that she was 26, but I had known that was a lie in the dark club and an even bigger lie in the well-lit restaurant. I would not have even tipped this chick a buck on stage, but Bareback had his beer goggles on. We ordered food. Bareback and the Czech stripper talked about all kind of stupid stuff for the next hour. I actually fell asleep in my side of the booth and was woken up when the two of them were finally ready to head to the hotel. Bareback rode with me, and the stripper followed us in her Honda Fit back to the Crowne Plaza. I gave Bareback Jack a wink on the elevator. He went with the stripper up to his third floor room, while I headed to my fourth floor room to get a much needed night of sleep.

Part 26: Indianapolis

I woke up around noon, hungover and hungry. I had a stack of Chick-fil-A cards in my rig offering free grilled nuggets, so I decided to save some cash and drive down Washington Street to the Chick-fil-A in Avon. I had never been to a Chick-fil-A before and don’t even really like chicken, but the nuggets I had were very good. The quality of the food definitely separates Chick-fil-A from other fast food chains like McDonald’s and Subway.

On my way back east down Washington, I stopped back into Dancers Show Club to sample the day shift. There were seven dancers working and maybe only one or two other customers at 2pm in the afternoon. Most of the dancers had visible signs of childbirth, which is a big turnoff for me. I was still a little hungry after my free lunch, so I ordered a Philly cheese steak and drank a beer. I got a couple good lap dances from the one dancer that was not wrecked by having a kid, and then decided to go back to the Crowne Plaza.

After checking my emails and showering, I drove over to Fountain Square to meet Don. We had arranged to meet at a restaurant I frequent in Indianapolis called B’s Po Boy. They serve New Orleans-style sandwiches and food. Don and I discussed plans for our overseas trip in three weeks. I showed him some items he would need to buy before the trip, and we completed some hotel and transportation reservations. When we were through, Don invited me to go to a minor league hockey game in Indianapolis. I did not even know Indy had a hockey team. I declined because I thought watching a hockey game would have been boring.

I decided to hit the Pendleton Pike to check out Harem House. There was only one dancer working, Ariel. She was in her thirties and looked rough. She told me she just had a baby a month ago and used to drive a truck before becoming a stripper. There also appeared to be a black stripper in street clothes, but she was drunk and mumbling at the bar. I decided to leave the dead club and head over to its sister club down the street to Babes.

I decided to stop at Thornton’s on the way to use their ATM. There were aggressive panhandlers harassing every customer who exited the mini mart. I waited until another customer left, a distraction for the beggars, and ran like hell back to my vehicle. After I got in, they started rushing toward me, hoping I’d give them something as I was backing out of my parking space.

Babes Showgirls was more lively than its sister club, and there were a couple diamonds in the rough worth pursuing. I got ten private dances from a 23 year old dancer named Ana. She is a petite brunette with glasses. The grinding was good, and at one point she kicked it into high gear, rapidly banging her clit into my dick for five or six minutes straight. She shook for awhile and claimed to have had an orgasm. If it was an act, she had me fooled. Around midnight she went outside for a smoke and upon returning went over to an old guy who must be her regular. For the next forty minutes, she sat at the bar talking to the geriatric. Whatever. I slipped out and headed back to the Crowne Plaza.

I thought about washing up and heading back to Dancers Show Club for an encore, but I ended up turning on the television and passing out on the bed.

Lucas Oil Stadium, just south of downtown Indianapolis.

Part 25: Indianapolis

I left work late on a Friday evening and drove southeast to Indianapolis. I was planning to meet a friend from Ohio, Don, who would be joining me on a trip to South America in February. There were some things that needed to be discussed in person before we met up in Buenos Aires in a few weeks. We would meet up for dinner on Saturday. I finally made it to the Crowne Plaza around 20:00. I checked in and then showered.

I decided to head over to Dancers Show Club around 1am. The club was packed, and I had to sit at the bar to start. Eventually, I moved up to the stage to tip Stella. Eventually two buzzed guys that could not have been older than 21 or 22 sat next to me at the stage. They were at the club with two beautiful young ladies about the same age, presumably their girlfriends. The guys started acting goofy and saying funny things to the dancers. They were rambling nonsensical things to me. There were obviously drunk. One of the girls they were with was an insanely beautiful Hoosier girl. She came over to me and started apologizing for her boyfriend’s drunken behavior in her southern Indiana accent. She was more beautiful than any of the dancers, and her lady friend was pretty good looking too. She would have been quite a treat to take back to the hotel, but I respected the fact that she was in a relationship.

The rest of the night at Dancers was pretty ho-hum, a below average night at DSC. Few of the dancers impressed me, and a lot of their attention went to their regular customers. I closed the club down at 4am and went back to the Crowne Plaza very tired.

Soldiers and Sailors Monument, downtown Indianapolis.