The Pole

The stripper pole was only part of the equation.

My friend N and her husband, S, took a little vacation to Mexico for a romantic getaway. One night they decided to visit a local watering hole that catered mostly to American tourists. The majority of patrons that evening was men and N noticed most of them were whooping and hollering in a corner of the bar.

“What’s going on over there?” she asked one of the waiters.

“Oh, that,” he said, smiling politely. “If you get up and dance on the pole you get a free shot of tequila.”

N and her husband smiled back at him. N thought the whole concept was stupid but predictable for a tourist bar. Until, that is, she realized who had decided to earn that shot of Cuervo Gold.

There, standing next to the stripper pole, was a woman, about 35 years old or so, smiling proudly. Dancing around the pole, however, was the woman’s 3-year-old daughter, who would stomp and shake her bootie while the men cheered and egged her on. “Woo!” they said. “Yay!” The girl stayed up there for a while until the mom decided it was time to go. When she instructed the child to get down, the girl pouted and threw a fit.

My friend N’s mouth dropped open as she witnessed the future headliner of Club Chubby’s take a few more laps around the pole.

“Do you find this disturbing at all?” she asked her husband.

“At first I thought it was funny, but now I think it’s really wrong,” he said.

This story is perhaps why my fellow countrymen are sometimes given the nickname “Ugly Americans.”

Got a story to tell? E-mail me at tellmetales@yahoo.com.

The Journey

We were 22 years old so, in theory, we should have known better.

I, along with two of my friends from high school, decided to visit our other high school buddy Jimmy who was living in Telluride, Colorado. Melinda, Evan and I lived in Los Angeles at the time and somehow didn’t consider that December might not be the best time for an interstate road trip. But Mel and Ev are skiers and knew Christmas break was a great time to enjoy some fresh powder; I, however, preferred to hang out in the lodge, sip cocoa and check out the hot guys. It was a win-win situation as far as any of us were concerned.

I don’t know who first suggested the idea but after just three hours on the road, we turned on each other.

The weather when we left Los Angeles was perfect: bright blue skies, crisp air and a light breeze. We happily drove across the state to Arizona, munching on bad food and listening to mixed tapes and new CDs we brought along to keep us awake. The drive should have taken us 12 hours – not a lot of time in the grand scheme of road trips. Our last stop in California was a dump of a town called Needles, which had nothing much to offer save a small diner, a gas stations and tumbleweeds. We made fun of the little hamlet as we drove away. But as soon as the tires of Melinda’s rabbit convertible hit the pavement on the Arizona border, we were faced with an unimaginable scene: ice. Not just on the road, but everywhere. Huge flakes of snow began to pummel Mel’s little car from all directions (and seriously – a VW convertible? What the hell were we thinking taking that car up a mountain?). No one said a word for several minutes, until we realized we had practically zero visibility.

Then, Evan spoke. “I miss Needles,” he said.

Needles, indeed. It was only at that moment we could remember that town fondly, because even though Needles didn’t have much it had one thing we wished we had at that moment: safety. We swerved a few times and finally, after braving the storm (or, rather, stupidly going through it – is there a word like ‘braving’ that really means ‘stupiding’?), we hit Gallup, New Mexico. By the time we arrived, the blizzard had blanketed the town with several inches of snow. Even the snowplows hadn’t had time to clear the paths.

“We need to get chains,” Mel said. “My car won’t make it without them.”

I didn’t think any town could be worse than Needles, but Gallup came a close second. There we were, holed up in a smokey mechanic’s office. It was after an hour of examining our car that he gave us the first piece of bad news: “We don’t have the right chains for your tires.”

Melinda, who will never take ‘no’ for an answer, said, “What? Come on. You have to have chains.”

The mechanic shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “Not for your car.”

“Then put on the chains you think will come close enough,” she told him. “We can’t go on without them.”

He shrugged and did as he was told. After another hour (or two – it seemed like an eternity), we piled back into the car and drove. Immediately we heard a painful, scraping sound.

“What is that?” Mel demanded. The car screeched along. “What is it?”

“I think it’s the chains,” Evan said.

“What are they doing?” she screamed.

She didn’t have to ask. We knew. The chains were just as the mechanic described: they were too big for the tires. The clatter was horrific. Every time the tire rotated it sounded like the chains were slicing through her car.

“Get them off, Ev!” Mel said as she pulled the car into a parking lot. “Get out and get them off!”

“Why me?” Evan asked. I looked at him. In his light jacket and jeans he was hardly dressed to go out in the snow, let alone get down on the ground and do some hard labor.

“Because you’re the only one who can do it,” she said. “So do it!”

“How is he going to do it?” I asked.

“He just has to, okay?” Melinda said. “Come on, Evan. Do it!”

He looked at me and I shrugged. “Fuck,” he said.

He got out and began to pry at the chains. “I can’t do it,” he called out from under the car. “I can’t do it.”

“Do it!” Mel screamed back at him.

“Jesus, Mel,” I said. “Give the guy a break. He doesn’t even have any gloves on.”

We looked at each other and started laughing. We laughed so hard we couldn’t stop. We doubled over, our bellies aching and our faces hurting from smiling so much.

“What’s so funny?” Evan asked. He gave up and crawled back into the car to get warm. His fingers were stiff and frozen.

“Who takes a convertible to Colorado?” I asked, wiping the tears.

“Who goes on a road trip in December?” Mel asked.

We all started howling.

“We miss Needles,” we said, laughing even more.

Eyore

There was a drug store in my town that closed a few months ago. I hated going there because every time I went I was treated like a second-class citizen. On one occasion a clerk behind the counter ignored me completely and asked the man behind me if she could help him. “Um, I’m standing here, too,” I said to her.

Silence. I felt like I was in one of those movies where I’m dead and don’t know it – she never acknowledged me, even after I spoke.

Another time I needed to pick up some photos. The same clerk was there and I asked if my order was ready. She asked my last name and I told her.

She flipped through the envelopes and said, “Nope. It’s not here.”

I glanced over her shoulder and said, “Really? Because I see my name right there.”

She shrugged and handed the envelope to me.

These are just two of the incidents that had me loathing that place. On the third occasion, I was searching the aisles for a particular item and couldn’t find what I needed. I saw one of the sales people and said, “Excuse me?”

Again, I felt invisible. The woman completely ignored me. I sighed and began to follow her. “Excuse me?” I said. Again, nothing. “Excuse me?” I said louder and louder. At one point she glanced over her shoulder and then continued to walk quickly ahead.

Are you effing kidding me? I thought to myself. “Miss!” I said. “Miss! I know you hear me!” I must have looked like a lunatic following this woman through the store. But considering my history with this place, I had finally found my breaking point.

I trailed the woman into the office where she went. The room was clearly off-limits to customers but I didn’t care. She stood in the room next to another woman. “Excuse me!” I said. “Is there any reason you are ignoring me?” The young blond woman who was with the salesclerk came up to me and said softly, “Can I help you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You can start by telling me why she ignored me when I was calling her.”

The woman pulled me aside and quietly said, “She’s deaf. Is there something I can help you with?”

Imagine if you will, one of those cartoons where the main character turns into a huge jackass. That was me at that very moment.

“Oh, my God,” I said. “I am so embarrassed and so very sorry.”

I explained my history with the employees at the store and the woman kindly responded, “Oh, I see. Let me get the manager for you.”

As if I wasn’t humiliated enough.

The manager came over and I explained my horrific behavior to him. I apologized profusely at first but then said, “You can imagine why I thought was being ignored. It has happened here a few times before.”

The he began to apologize and I felt even worse. I caught the eye of the woman I chased and said, “I’m so sorry.” She gave me a puzzled look. I realized she had no idea I was so angry about being ignored. “It’s okay,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

Ee-aw!

Oh.

A friend of mine named Don told me this story about a time in the 1970s when he was 18 years old.

Don and his friends went to a Grateful Dead concert and, as was customary at Dead shows, they all swallowed a few LSD tabs before the band began to play. When The Dead finished their set, Don and his friends piled into the car to go home. They realized they were still very high and decided to take a less-traveled route home. Don was driving and he was petrified he would crash the car. As they motored down a remote highway they saw the inevitable: flashing lights from a patrol car behind them.

"Shit," Don said to his friends. "Be cool."

Don pulled the car over and waited. The officer got out of his car and came to the driver's side window.

"Son," the officer said in a thick Southern drawl, "do you have any idea how fast you were going?"

Don, totally unsure how to answer, offered a guess. "Sixty?" he asked.

"Sixty?!" the officer replied.

"Seventy?" Don said with a shrug.

"Seventy?!" the officer asked.

Don stared at him blankly. He knew he was going fast but had no idea how fast. He remained silent.

The officer shook his head. "Son, you were going fourteen miles an hour."

Don said the cop took mercy on the group of drug-laden kids (this was the 70s after all) and followed them to the nearest motel. "Stay here and don't get back on the road until you've slept off whatever made you that way," the cop told them.

They did just that.

Story of the Day

Okay, this isn't what I said it was. I know that. But just think about it: this is where you can finally share that hilarious or heartwarming anecdote you wish you could tell at parties. You can publish either anonymously or with your name attached. I don't care either way, I just want to know - what makes your life so special? Did you and your friends have a Hangover sort of evening? Did you travel to a remote land and fall in love? Did you meet your idol only to have him or her treat you badly? Did you commit a crime and get away with it?

Tell me, dammit! (Sorry. I just really love hearing about other people's lives.)

Keep your descriptions to an R rating (or lower). If you want to tell porn, you're at the wrong site.

Please send all submissions to tellmetales@yahoo.com. If you have a photo, be sure to send it as an attachment.