Monday night at the One Saloon – spring 1994

Mondays and Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays featured strippers at the One Saloon. I worked Sunday through Thursday, bar-backing on Monday and Tuesday. Because the Copa was not open on those days, Monday and Tuesday were also our busiest nights. If you have never bar-backed, I must tell you it’s very physical work. Hauling kegs to and fro, on the run, always emptying or filling, lugging this or that to this or that, helping the bouncer…lots of busy work. It’s hard to be a good bar-back because you should always be thinking about your next move while continuing to bust serious ass. And I was a good bar-back.

When bar-backing, I’d get to work a little before 9 p.m. and would always leave around 5 a.m. Work could be such a blur, clearing the ashtrays on the rail, progressive stocking for the bartenders, getting change, keeping drinks off the pool table, reprimanding stupid drunks…Juggling these little balls of responsibility as responsibly as possible. The customers were of no help, obstacles to my working rhythm. Then there were the strippers.

The profession of choice of the sadly beautiful and traumatized, stripping offers an allure, a glamorous mythology very different than the reality in which strippers actually live. As a result, some were difficult to work with. But some were not. We had some regular and semi-regular dancers, some too regular and some one-time only(s), for whatever reason. There were also strippers whose reason for never performing there again was more obvious.

This Monday night was packed. The strippers danced mostly on the main bar, as it was bigger and the center of the club, and the dancers could attract the most attention there. The problem with the main room was maneuverability, as the pool table dominated a lot of floor space. As a bar-back, people, then the pool table, were my biggest impasses. Their loud drunken conversation, cigarettes swinging wildly, their utter non-attempt to move out of the path of an oncoming keg, almost every motion, behavior, direction or action taken made my job just that much harder. And the pool table was too big for the room and very popular. So I had to be alert, assessing situations, as they develop in order to be as effective and inconspicuous, weaving through the crowds with as little interference as possible.

It was already shaping up to be a crazy shift. Monday was our night. When the Copa was closed, their employees came here. One of the owners spun on Monday and Tuesday, and was one of the best DJ’s I’d ever heard. He always had the best, newest, sweatiest, pumpin’ music on the island, and was completely in touch with and control of his dancers on the floor. I’d watch him during spare moments, dancing around, reacting and provoking, loving every beat as much as those dancing. And, of course, we had hottie strippers, alternating sets, writhing and grinding in twenty-minute increments. So we all worked, at a running pace, all night long, every Monday night.

We filled up early. It was a late winter’s night, but still very warm. Since there was a snow storm on the East Coast from D.C. to New York, those snowed-in down here did what their neighbor back home did, under the circumstances: got crazy drunk, and had lots of sex. Everyone made the most of the situation, and they were all up-up-up! Tonight.

I don’t really remember that second stripper. He could have been that Brazilian guy or even the 24 or 25 year old, nicely toned and goateed guy…I don’t know. The French guy, who never stripped there again (that I knew of), made quite an impression as the opening stripper.

Henri, Hercule, whatever his name was, spoke almost no English, having evidently just arrived from France. But if anyone could survive, nay, flourish on one’s looks only, it would be him. He was firmly planted in that upper stratosphere of physical beauty, in the company of super models and the really "beautiful ones" found in the more select resorts and playgrounds around the world. And, he liked to dance naked, as we were about to find out. Now this would not be a problem in Miami, where dancing nude is legal, but here in Key West, it was not. Henri, or Hercule, had not been briefed as to the differing legalities of the two cities hosting his performances and the ramifications thereof. Or maybe he understood, but just didn’t care.

I was in the bar closest to the dance floor, stocking for and talking to the bartender, when a chorus of shrieks, yells, screams and laughter, total pandemonium, erupted from the center of the bar. The bartender and I looked toward the main room as the intercom phone began to ring. On the bar, Frenchy was totally nude, swaying back and forth, twirling his incredibly huge cock in a circular motion, as if it were a pocket watch. The uproar was deafening. The bartender was laughing hysterically along with the crowd, stunned at this unexpected turn of events. The phone was still ringing, so I answered it. The manager was behind the main bar. I watched him scream into the phone at me, demanding I get jumbo-cock down immediately, as he was too busy serving drinks to do it himself.

That scene, hopefully, will never fully dissipate from memory. That so, so perfect-looking French guy, twirling his disturbingly gigantic appendage counter-clockwise, in a groove, with shrieks, gasps, laughter, and admiration from the crowd his feedback. His presence was inciting chaos, of which I have now been charged to stop. So I crawl through the hole, weave through the crowd, grab his thong from the manager, motion and talk French-Fry down to ground level, and put a stop to his penis; pronto!

"Oh, no no…You’ve got to come down now…" I’m waving him down from the bar, and he’s smiling, as if he has no clue he’s done anything wrong, his big, big cock still swinging. He bends down towards me and I take his hand, motioning him to come down with my right hand, pulling down with my left. The crowd in front catches on to what’s happening, and starts to boo. I look over at the manager, who’s still serving drinks, motioning me to continue getting him down off the bar.

French is devastatingly beautiful up close. Perfect teeth and smile, clear, aquamarine eyes, symmetrical features, and naked! I clear a path through the crowd, my left hand holding his hand, in my right hand, his thong, until we can get to the stripper’s dressing area behind the front bar. "Keep this on please." I say, shaking the thong at him.

He’s smiling. I think he understands, but I’m not sure. He is so beautiful… He puts on the thong.

I saw him a few minutes later, during the other stripper’s set, off in the corner, thong around his thighs, giving a patron a chance to examine that big ol’ salami up close and personal. Well, I tried. There was still a lot of work to do. The crowd wasn’t leaving, the music still pumped, and we stayed busy up until 4 a.m.