Rednecks, Frenchmen, & Skanks

My Saturday night was...it was...OK, I don't know how to describe it. It was definitely different.

Saturday I went to a wedding with PB. She was friends of the bride. I was friends of the groom. My restaurant was also hired to do the cakes and sweet part of the catering. Normally I would handle that during the wedding, but as I was going to the wedding I had to get to reception venue really early and assemble the cake. The only incident there was with the caterer handling the rest of the food trying to give me tips. Guy's rolls were commercially produced. If prepackaged rolls are better than yours, don't tell the pastry chef how to do anything. Besides, you might need him later when the mother of the bride bitches about your presentation.

That was not the unusual part of the evening. The interesting part began after we got back to town and PB decided we'd go by her workplace where she's the bartender, and see what was up. That and I think a lot of her friends couldn't imagine me in a suit other than the David Byrne suit I wore on Halloween, complete with knock-off white Keds.

Our friend Captain was just getting off work and had met two French guys who were working at some local industry. We'll call them L & S. Cap couldn't get hold of her friend Madame to act as interpreter or chaperone so she asked us to hang around while she got to know the Frenchies. Somehow something happened where we wound up going to a local bar/club and somehow PB begged out of it so I got to play chaperone. You can bet I was texting Madame every five minutes asking her to relieve me from chaperone duties.

I can't quietly slip into an establishment unnoticed. I'm over six and a half feet tall, rail thin, and was wearing a suit, although I left the coat in the car. So there I am surrounded by rednecks who still blame me for the High School basketball team not progressing in National Finals one year. It wasn't that I didn't block a shot I should have or missed a three-pointer. No. I just couldn't go because it was out of state. It was almost ten years ago, people, get over it.

One thing I never told L & S was that I can understand some French and they were easy to understand. I wasn't about to try to speak it to them since I have a hard enough time getting the right words to come out of my mouth in English. I think Cap was having a fun time talking to L anyway. A word about Cap; she speaks really really fast and doesn't enunciate. When she talks slowly she has this really strong accent. I was mostly interpreting what she said into understandable English for L & S. At some point L started telling her things to say in French to S. I told Cap she could say it if she wanted to, but ask me tomorrow and I'd tell her what she'd been saying.

The horror of the night was that the only place to sit was right by the dance floor. The chairs are impossibly low and I couldn't scoot mine far enough back to not be playing footsie with L, so I wound up standing against a column except when they were dancing.

Good god the dancing. It was all rednecks, skanks, and gangster wannabes booty dancing. S was completely shocked. He said they don't dance like that in France or even Ibiza. If men went up to a woman and started dancing like that they'd get slapped down and probably arrested. If girls danced like that, well, they'd be naked and getting money stuffed into their, okay, I won't say where.

There was this couple, I have no idea how old they were, but the woman was Queen Skank Ho of the bar. She was darkly tanned and pretty evenly tanned too without tan lines. If you have your clothes on and people can tell you don't have tan lines, you are not wearing enough clothes. We couldn't decide if she was in her 40s or just so weathered she looked like it. Her dancing was way beyond what anyone else was doing. She gave dirty dancing a whole new meaning. I first noticed her when she was right by our table and I was sitting down. She was hip thrusting at her dance partner. Her skirt was short enough, barely covered her ass, that S and I thought maybe they were actually having sex. Nope, just some skanky dancing. Later I was leaning against the column again and saw that S's eyes were about to pop out of his head. so I look around and see Queen Skank Ho is on her knees, her face in the guy's crotch bobbing back and forth, and he had his hands on back of her head and his own head tilted back. She was doing something with her mouth that was entirely unnecessary since we could all tell what she was simulating.

Why? Why was this happening? I felt dirty just being in the same building with them and there I was only three feet away. Too bad I wasn't drinking. Maybe I could have erased the memory.

Finally Madame arrived. Picture an auburn haired Lauren Bacall in her prime walking into a redneck bar and you might have some idea of what it was like when she came in. She refused to pay the cover charge and the doormen didn't argue. You do not argue with her. You will lose. She walked through this crowded bar with people just parting to get out of her way. One guy didn't see her coming, she tapped him on the shoulder, and I swear he practically bowed to her as he got out of her way, even though from where I was standing he looked pissed off when he got tapped on the shoulder. One of those "I move for no one" sort of guys. Madame does not like to be touched. I think she radiates a force field.

S looked her over and said something to L in French about Madame being pretty attractive, but why couldn't Cap have called a younger friend, bad enough he had to hang out with the tall freak while L put the moves on the blonde slut. Madame was so sweet. She gave S this chilly smile and said to Cap that S was not entirely unattractive in a pudgy sort of way, but she hoped to god she wasn't expected to acknowledge his presence in any way other than what basic politeness called for and to direct the waitress to him any time drinks needed to be paid for. Madame is fluent in French, Spanish, and Snobbish as she calls it.

Things got really amusing after that. She told Queen Skank Ho to take it to the backseat of a car, that she had firmly established the fact that she and bald guy were going to have sex, and it was enough to give all the children nightmares. She took S over to the bunch of girls who were dancing the sluttiest and said "He's from France, enjoy" to prove her theory that he only had to speak with that accent and the girls would put out. That honestly, if you're French and can't get laid just on that basis in a rinky dink town, you are truly pathetic. Then she told Cap and L to exchange numbers, that it was time to say goodnight because she was leaving and so was Captain.

If only I had known it was that easy to get out of there. But I don't think I hold that kind of sway over Captain. I did tell her once that maybe we should leave soon because any time I ventured away from them there was somebody wanting to talk basketball and how we would have won if I had gone. Sorry. They should have petitioned my probation officer to allow me to travel out of state with the team. I blame them. hah!

And that was my night full of rednecks, Frenchmen, and skanks. I was so happy to go home.