My intern and I shared what was probably the weirdest morning of our lives when I took her to a strip club for brunch. Obviously, we wanted to tell you about it. Below, you'll find my account of the motorboating, roofie-ing and shameless eating that occurred, followed by Alyssa's, because when it comes to perspectives, two are always better than one. Just like stripper tits.

My intern and I shared what was probably the weirdest morning of our lives when I took her to a strip club for brunch. Obviously, we wanted to tell you about it. Below, you'll find my account of the motorboating, roofie-ing and shameless eating that occurred, followed by Alyssa's, because when it comes to perspectives, two are always better than one. Just like stripper tits.

IBBY

It was an uncharacteristically warm April morning when I decided to take my intern to the strip club for breakfast.

The intern, Alyssa, initially protested. Using remarks like “But we have to go to work, it's a Wednesday,” and “I don't want to go to a strip club at 11 a.m., I'm not an alcoholic ex-pawn store employee,” she tried, and adorably failed to dissuade me. “What a spectacular opportunity to test her potential as an intern,” I thought. “Let's take her company loyalty for a test drive.”

See, it was morning and I was hungry. Trudging barely conscious into my kitchen, I had flung open my fridge only to be greeted by a barren expanse of white polyurethane and pickles. And although I'm no breakfast princess, pickles aren't exactly the breakfast of champions.

As I recovered from the drop in blood pressure from the shock of having nothing to eat, I remembered something: Sixgun Stevie's*.

Sixgun Stevie's was a strip club. The kind that makes billboards that say “Sixgun Stevie's: Where a Guy Can Be a Guy.” The kind that has a MILF Strip-Off on Mother's Day. The kind that has a kitchen. The kind where you can meet, and possibly exceed, your daily calorie recommendation while in the presence of various psuedonym-ed runaways and working mothers.

I had heard about their menu before. I don't remember how, or from who. Its legend was just one of those things that was ingrained in my mind, a mythic part of the landscape I called home.

But more importantly, I was out of cash. And since the Burger King people now knew me by name and possibly blood type, I could no longer visit their fine establishment to fulfill my breakfast sandwich needs. I needed something cheap, with the same sort of street-cred brunch at Burger King dealt me.

That's when it clicked: Sixgun Stevie's: “Where a Guy Can Be a Guy” became Sixgun Stevie's: “Where a Girl Can Go to Brunch on a Budget with Her Reluctant Intern.”

So it was settled. The intern and I would be wining and dining at the strip club, at approximately 11:30 a.m., on a Wednesday. I rationalized the excursion with my editor by saying something like, “We can't come in today. Our grandmas are both ill, and they're in the hospital together right now, holding hands, and swapping polio strains.” I'm sure I heard his eyes roll over the phone, but this thing was going down regardless of whose loud eyes were displaying disapproval.

I donned by best Miami Vice-style Hawaiian shirt, hoping to blend in with what I hoped would be a sparse populace of lone men with comb-overs and cocaine nostrils. As I waited for Alyssa to arrive at my castle/ apartment, I remembered to throw on the leather jacket I've had and not washed since I was 15.

We arrived at Sixgun Stevie's expecting to find an empty parking lot inhabited by a sleepy hobo or maybe a seagull, but much to our surprise, we had trouble finding a spot. The strip club was bustling, swarming with the patronage of a crowd that thought boners and brunch was a combination of ying-yang proportions.

We entered the establishment via a showy egress, replete with Partheon-style columns and a heavy wooden door. Whoever Sixgun Stevie was, he had spared no expense on the entrance to his stripper-dome.

After a visit to the ATM to procure the “rain” that we would use to super-soak some hoes, we were told by the doorman to sit anywhere. He gestured to a wide, dark room lit by glowing neon tubes. I

We parked ourselves at a small table half-bathed in neon stripper lighting, and half-obscured by the privacy of darkness. That made it hard to see the menu, which was handed to us by a cocktail waitress who had stuffed herself into a red and black corset. She, unlike us, was unfazed at the menagerie of food and boobs that were being consumed all around us, and took our drink order right away. I ordered the usual; coffee and orange juice, while Alyssa went straight for the booze. “I'll have a screw-driver,” she said, and I admired the way she committed herself to the brunch experience by adding some breakfast-y liquid to her vodka.

As our eyes adjusted to the darkness, a closer inspection of the premises revealed a small ocean of solitary old men, the kind that had perhaps owned a car dealership and wore a brass ring on every finger in their day. The whites of their eyes and rose-gold encrusted geriatric optic-wear shone out at us like wolves watching their prey in the night. I was glad I had dressed like Tony Montana.

When we could finally see the menu, we were floored. Laid out before us was a selection of cuisine so refined, diverse, and cleverly described, that for a moment the strip club faded away around us and we thought we might be in a borderline-nice Chili's. Wood-fired flat bread pizzas, steaks, burgers, salads and “munchies” all called to us from the menu's smartly laminated pages.

But soon, excitement gave way to more vehement excitement as we realized that the menu items had special sex-themed names. One pizza was called “Ride the Salami,” while another was dubbed “The Reverse Cowgirl.” A sandwich called the “Italian Hottie Pressed” competed with the “Hot Bitches in Bacon Skirts” for the most skillfully-named item. Staying true to his name, Sixgun Stevie had opted to employ an old-western style font for the menu titles, which I found oddly appetizing.

We got down to ordering. Figuring that ordering a steak at a strip club would be too easy, we decided on the second fanciest thing on the menu, the Green Chili Lobster Mac & Cheese. A “Full Monte” pizza with mushrooms, prosciutto and a balsamic drizzle would be joining the party, and the waitress suckered us into ordering the day's special, a Mexican chicken torta.

Just then, an old man walked into the room, flanked strippers he paid to be adoring, and gave us a wink before disappearing behind the DJ booth. Alyssa made a deposit to the alcohol bank in her gut.

Our drinks arrived. Upon my first sip of the orange juice, I noticed it was not orange juice, but orange powder in a sea of Sprite. I wasn't surprised … we were, after all at a strip club, and I was certain that the strippers were too busy squeezing their tits into bedazzled bras to squeeze fresh orange juice into my cup. But my buoyant idealism faded away when I tried my coffee, which was not coffee, but another colored powder that had been mixed with fluid. What were these chemistry-set beverages? I wondered, staring deep into their murky depths with the sordid realization that things weren't going to get much better than this.

Somewhere in the background, a butt jiggled.

As we waited for our food, a tender scene unfolded at the table next door. A man and a woman sat across from each other at the table, staring deep into each other's eyes. At that moment, Aerosmith's “Angel” oozed out of the sound system, providing the sonic accompaniment to the saccharine romance that was unfolding. The gentleman, without breaking his gaze, reached into the red basket to his right, and pulled out a fat, juicy chicken finger. Slowly and sensually, he dunked into a mysterious sauce, then began to move it slowly toward his companion's waiting mouth. Her lips parted as he slid the chicken finger past her teeth, and she bit down with the kind of seductiveness that so often graces good bukkake porn. “I love you,” said the man. “Mmffrrgh,” said the woman.

At this point, we decided it was high time to get some strippers to clap their butt-cheeks for cash. We sauntered over to the stripper-dome, just as fallen angel named Chiffon was taking the stage. Alyssa and I nervously avoided eye contact with each other as to remain cool while the exotic dancer extraordinaire teetered in mile-high stilettos over to the pole. With the sort of apathy of a human Daria cartoon, she slid her back up and down the pole and made dat ass clap.

I was impressed she could move in the podiatric antimatter she had on her feet, so I casually tossed some ones at her. This made me the momentary stripper-queen.

Now on all fours, she locked eyes with me and crawled over to us. Her melons sagged and swayed with her movement, exhausted after years of nursing a child that, like its daddy, we would never see.

“Howdy, ladies,” she said, arching her butt in the air.

“…Sup?” was what came out of my mouth. Sup: the universal sign for “I, uh, uh, like, hey?” A pair of men sat down across from us, and tried to look at us more than they looked at each other.

I wanted to know what she was doing here, stripping at brunch. What was the brunch crowd like? Were there regulars? On a scale from one to 10, what kind of hepatitis would I get from the food?

She smiled and, with a bounce of the bottom, told us that she liked working brunch. It was quieter. She said there was a regular brunch crowd, a few of whom came explicitly to see her. She liked the pizza.

It was only after the first motorboat that Alyssa mentioned this was her first time at a strip club.

To recover from the shock of hearing that, we asked Chiffon what she was going to eat after her shift. “I'm thinking nachos,” she giggled, referring to the Big Time Nachos, which I was immediately intimidated by despite my cocaine outfit. “I get hungry, bitch.”

Chiffon left us for someone with cash. That was fine, because our food had arrived and was sitting on our table.

Spread out before us like a field of mediocrity lay a strip club feast fit for an ex-president or a current king of Papua New Guinea. Piles and piles of food mercifully blurred by the dim lighting were ready to be dissected.

We started with the Green Chili Lobster Mac & Cheese. Let me preface this by saying that I once had a nightmare that my mother was trying to murder my dog, and I woke up crying. This dish was like the culinary materialization of that dream. Giant shells of macaroni gurgled in pink movie-theater nacho cheese sauce, which the lobster sprung out from at random intervals like some sort of seafood Freddy Kreuger.

I think there was green chili in there, but I also like to imagine there wasn’t. I gave up on that dish before I could find it.

Next on the tour-de-death was the pizza. As advertised, it came with mushrooms, pesto, mozzarella, prosciutto and a balsamic drizzle, all of which looked great on paper in Old West font. But one bite of the real stuff revealed prosciutto that had been cooked to a cardboard crisp, canned mushrooms, and some sort of ominous sludge underneath that was tangy, but in a threatening way. I'm not sure which came quicker; my instantaneous reaction to shudder violently, or the food poisoning which I would later befriend.

So far, two-thirds of our brunch had been inedible. Not a good track record considering the lore I'd heard about the place. Which leads us to the grand finale: the Mexican chicken torta.

There, sitting between two slices of Costco faux-baguette, was all the mayonnaise that has ever existed. I picked up the sandwich, unsure of where to bite into; fearing that the wrong move would leave me with a mouthful of creamy white and nothing else, which is, coincidentally, my worst fear. But the ambivalent boob-shaking of the stripper to my right on the stage gave me guts, and I went for it, mayonnaise-mouth or not.

What I encountered in there, I will never know. Chunks of what I like to pray was chicken called out a recognizable song to my taste-buds, which I soon forgot after grappling with the fact that I was also eating whole black beans in a sandwich.Some lettuce made itself known … but then, a mystery taste washed over me. Springy, meaty, and oily, it sure as shit wasn't' chicken.

I pried the contraption open to see what I was eating, and there it was, just laying there like a child who knows it did something bad: a flayed hot dog. Someone had snuck a fucking hot dog into my torta. I had gotten food-roofied by Oscar Meyer at the strip club at 12:30 p.m., and I couldn't even take a sip of OJ to cleanse my palate because Alyssa put vodka in it and drank it.

Just before I blacked out, I noticed that the Mexican sandwich had been served with a side of Italian meatball soup, and some French Fries. I was glad I lost my passport last year; every country I wanted to visit was on conveniently on this plate, competing for my attention as I tried meditate out the hot dog incident.

“Yeah, we're gonna need a box for this,” we said to the waitress, pointing to the heap 99% uneaten sustenance. She frowned.

“You didn't like it?” she asked. I could tell by the way her blue eyeliner curved downward with her eyes that she was not happy.

“We already ate,” we said, as if that was an excuse for ordering three entrees and eating zero of them. She rolled her eyes and stripper-heel-limped to the kitchen.

The time was approximately 12:33 p.m. We were starving, exhausted after 52 minutes of food failure. We had been defeated by the Sixgun Stevie's menu, and my brunch dreams had been crushed. But while our stomachs were empty, our wallets were full … of $11. We were gonna go out of this thing with a bang.

After downing what was her infinity-ith screw-driver, Alyssa and I returned to our throne at the seat of the stripper stage, this time to be greeted by a woman whose skin was the color of a Honda Element interior. I have to admit I've never seen one, but I imagine to be like a burnt orange.

Her jet black razor-layered hair cascaded down her back as her nude lip gloss reflected the glare of the disco ball in the corner. We tossed some ones at her feet, and she looked happy that we were two women instead of two, or one, or six men.

“How was the food?” she asked. She scooted towards us, positioning her body in front of ours for a motorboat reward.

“It was something,” said we, as we felt the gentle, familiar smack of boobs on face. Now a motorboat veteran, Alyssa took the tits with the kind of suspicious acceptance that a 13 year-old gymnast who just won Olympic bronze would after realizing they had nothing to look forward than to other than the regional Cirque-du-Soliel circuit. When it was over, the stripper asked us what we were doing there, and we told her we had come for brunch, to review the menu.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she said. “The food here sucks.”

When we left, we saw a man in his car, stripping his casual clothes off and reapplying his business ensemble to conceal the fact that he'd just been face-first in ass and Big Time Stripper Nachos from his coworkers. And, looking down at the box of leftover food-slop we carried into the daylight like a reluctant souvenir, we, for a sliver of a second, understood his struggle.

ALYSSA

The call came at 10 AM; I was at the Rooster headquarters, feeding fish, fetching coffee and doing general good intern stuff. “I’m hungry, we’re going to the strip club, pick me up in an hour,” was all she said. I tried, I really did, to tell her “No,” we have to work, it’s fucking Wednesday, please don’t make me do this. But, she just hung up.

It’s not like I could say no, this was my future after all. Saying no to this would mean failing my internship, and consequently drag down my GPA so far that I’d never graduate. I could see it all in front of me: after several deadbeat jobs I’d eventually end up at the door of Sixgun’s begging for a locker, a corset and a pair of plastic heels. I could almost feel my father roll over in his grave. So, I got in my car.

When I’d arrived at Dear Ibby’s place, I was in a cold sweat. I’d never been to a strip club before. I didn’t know what to expect. My mind was racing, “What will the strippers think of me? Did I wear enough makeup? Will they make me get on stage? I’ve got no rhythm. Fuck my life.” Ibby sauntered up to my car in a Hawaiian shirt and ancient leather jacket, “Ready?” she asked. It didn’t matter if I was or not. We climbed into her car, and I held on as we roared down Broadway.

“It’s Wednesday morning,” I kept telling myself, “It won’t be that bad.” But, the parking lot was full. Shit. She could see the terror on my face and laughed. “Well here we are, let’s get weird.

I followed her into the strip club with my tail between my legs. I could see some naked women slowing walking around a pole in sync with some bad 80’s music. She lead us to a table far enough away from the stage that I could sit back and relax a bit before we got to the business of tossing ones at dancing ladies, and ordering food. I silently thanked her for that, as I flagged down the waitress and squeaked, “Screwdriver please, and keep them coming.”

The menu was hard to read, the black lights and glitter were blurring my vision, or maybe it was the screwdrivers. At any rate, I was hungry and the array of typical bar food was making my stomach grumble. I read it word for word because it gave me something other than areolas to feast my eyes on. I was getting increasingly uncomfortable. The strippers kept looking at me as they swung around and shook their asses; did they want to be my friends, did they just want my ones? I was too scared to ask, so I just nodded as Ibby ordered everything on the menu.

We wandered to the stage to wait for our order. As the vodka soaked into my veins, Ibby chatted with the dancers. Asking them every question under the sun. I shifted in my seat, eyes like saucers on the bouncing rump in front of me. “Is it OK that I’m looking at her butt? Is she OK with me looking at her butt? Does this make me a lesbian? How am I going to break this to my cat?” I tipped back another screwdriver. The dancer noticed my gaze, and before I could say anything her bedazzled fingers wound into my ponytail and pulled me in for a full-on motorboat.

OH MY GOD. She laughed at the shocked look on my face, and I felt I had to say something, “Umm.. Y-your skin is very soft. Thank you.”  What the fuck was that? Who says that? I’m going to get kicked out of here; I’m a fucking creep. “Vodka neat this time please.”

In just the knick of time, our waitress started piling food on the table, and thank god, I needed to get as far away from that stage as possible. We had to bring together two tables to hold our “feast.” But, once the smell of greasy pub fare took over the alcohol and coconut body spray aroma, I started to get queasy. The neon lights were turning everything weird colors. Our green chili lobster mac’n’cheese looked pink. The pizza was green, and the torta, well I’ve never seen that color before.

“I can’t believe I’m not even getting paid for this,” I thought, and at exactly the same time Ibby, with a curious look on her face, reached into the torta and pulled out a mayo-drenched hot dog. “Bartender, I’ll have another.”

After a few bites of each, we boxed up the food, “Someone at the office will eat it,” she assured me. “Mmmuuhhfh” I responded, which I guess meant lets go get rid of the rest of these ones, because before I knew it we were center stage again. Sticking dollar bills into the motorboater’s panties as she, once again, slapped me in the face with her titties.  It wasn’t unpleasant this time. I figured this was just the first in many boob slappings I’ll receive. I’m now a seasoned strip club brunch-er, lesbian whose intestines are taking on the battle of the century. Life couldn’t get much better. And on another bright side, as sloppy as I’ve been this entire time, she’ll never make me do anything like this again. I can go back to feeding fish and filing. Ahh the good life.

Out of cash, and feeling fucking fancy, except the churning stomach, we headed out the door. The afternoon sun burned my eyes in an apparent attempt to sober me up. Nice try sun, I almost forgot it was only noon. We walked past a few middle-aged men who were spritzing themselves with cologne and adjusting their belts. Ibby looked sad as we clamor into her car. I’m snuggled in to get ready for a nap when she turned to me and said,  “I’m still hungry, how ‘bout steaks at the Diamond Cabaret for dinner?”