A bond forged in silicone
Memoirs of a recovering ex-roommate part 4
“Hey, do you want to go see some strippers?” asked my roommate, Walton.
I looked up from my computer, where I was putting the final touches on a strongly-worded inter-roommate note. A note that was addressed to Walton.
Suffice to say, things had been a bit stormy between us lately. Walt had been eating my food and not replacing it. He was smoking in the apartment, even though he had assured me it was a non-smoking household. He had refused to take responsibility for the irreplaceable data he had deleted from my computer while using it without my permission. Finally, his dog—an aptly-named shih-tzu—was habitually crapping on our carpets, and he was doing an appalling job of cleaning up after it.
Maybe a bit of male bonding at the strip club would be a good idea. If I hung out with him more often, I reasoned, perhaps Walton would cease to be such a self-centered, abominable asshole of a roommate. So off we went in search of naked female flesh.
We arrived at the Cecil, Vancouver’s premiere strip joint, late in the afternoon. Much to Walton’s chagrin, the front rows were already crowded with aspiring young gynaecologists. We sat at a table in the back, and the male bonding commenced.
The first girl came out on the stage. She was tall and blonde and dressed in a hideous red, white and blue cowgirl ensemble, an ensemble she promptly began to disassemble, all the while gyrating to the celestial strains of “Sweet Home Alabama.”
I soon realized why Walt was so unhappy about sitting in the back: he had forgotten his glasses at home. “Is she good looking?” he asked, squinting at the stage. He clutched the edges of our table and gritted his teeth in frustration, unable to determine whether he ought to be enjoying himself.
Then her bra came off. No glasses were needed now. “Oh, those are so fake!” he chortled in delight. And fake they were. They protruded from her chest, two huge, near-perfect spheres, filling the stage with their inertness. The audience hooted its appreciation.
“So would you do her?” Walton asked as the dancer finished her disassembly and exited to great applause.
“If I wanted to fuck taxidermy, I’d stay at home,” I dissembled. Silicone notwithstanding, she had an attractive face and a taut, athletic body. To be honest, I wouldn’t have kicked her out of my bed for eating crackers.
However—and I want to make this perfectly clear—I would have kicked her out of my bed if she’d openly crumbled crackers into my sheets just to spite me. Breast implants. Hrmph.
The mellifluous strains of “She’s Got Legs” took over, and a new dancer took the stage. She was tall and blonde, and shrouded in numerous small, black, shiny, plastic things. The disassembling began anew. Soon the small, black, shiny, plastic bra came off.
“They’re real!” my roommate chortled in delight. Whether the tits were real or not didn’t matter, you see—the pleasure was in the identification.
“Yeah, they’re real all right,” I answered. Walton flashed me a grin of profound satisfaction. The bonding was coming along nicely.
Then a Jamaican woman came out. She was tall and black, but she sported a few blond streaks in her hair to reassure the crowd that she was a real stripper. She took off her clothes and did the usual calisthenics. I was beginning to lose interest.
Then she did something which got my attention, although not in a positive way.
“Ahhhhhyes, wouldja like summa my ganja?” she shouted in an exaggerated Jamaican accent, and launched into an appalling routine where she pretended to smoke a huge fake reefer with her vagina, then waved her crotch in front of delighted men who pretended to inhale marijuana smoke which they imagined was exhaling from, I am forced to assume, her uterus.
I wasn’t impressed by this spectacle, although I got the feeling that I was in the minority.
Walton, meanwhile, ignored the ganja routine. He was squinting at her with a deep frown of concentration on his face, locked in mortal combat with that burning question: “Are they real?”
I couldn’t tell. They were either real and a bit firmer than the norm, or only slightly fake. He couldn’t tell either, and I could see that this annoyed him on many levels.
It was on this decidedly sour note that we left the club, for Walton had to go to work. We went our separate ways, secure in the knowledge that a new era had dawned in our relationship as roommates.
We had sat in a smoke-filled room and assessed the realness of tits together, and in so doing, we’d forged a holy bond between men—a bond of friendship that would be as firm and unyielding as the silicone implants that inspired it. Things would be different from now on. Walton would be inspired to be a better roommate, because now he was living with a friend.
And that’s why, when I returned home that evening, I didn’t deliver that strongly-worded note. After all we’d been through, it just wouldn’t do to ruin the magic with a crass ultimatum from a bygone age.
Of course, I was completely wrong about that dawn of a new era. Walton remained a shitty roommate. The thieving bastard still ate my food, smoked in the apartment, used my computer without permission, and refused to properly clean up after his dog. A few weeks later, the dishonest, selfish little prick asked me to leave.
Alas, our new bond of friendship had poisonously ruptured, just like the silicone implants that inspired it. •
Originally published in The Peak, January 25 1999.
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