Growin' Up

Well, we all have stories...

“As a child, there was your birthday, Christmas, Summer vacation

But the rest of life was a lifeless, sucking black hole

Of homework, church, school

Homework, church, school,

Green beans, green beans, fucking green beans.”

--Bruce Springsteen on Broadway, July 2018

I recently hung out with a bunch of my wife’s college classmates, who we unfortunately don’t see as often as we’d like. Out of about a dozen people, half of them met, hung out, got drunk with and fell in love with their future spouses in college. When I googled it, Generative AI suggested that about “28% of married college graduates attended the same college as their spouse.” It also said that environment can also be a factor, because Brigham Young University, which apparently has strong community and social structures, boasts that 60% of their graduates marry each other.

If this is working for you, I fully support you, and there might be a part of me that wants to give you a high-five because you avoided so many of the pitfalls that I fell into while being a very average, white, single man living in a major city in my late 20’s through mid-30’s. However, I did not go to BYU, or a school that had a strong community and social structures, or if it did, I knew nothing about them because, not only did I not marry someone I graduated with, I don’t regularly talk to anyone I graduated with. While I’m sure this is a failure on my part, and there is something to be said for meeting your soulmate as a college kid and growing up together, I don’t actually regret the pitfalls. I know it’s a little cliche to say, but it was through those experiences that I was able to figure a lot of things out and I was able to grow up on my own.

****

About a month after my 27th birthday, I dumped my long-time girlfriend, moved out of our apartment and into a small studio for $800 a month. For the first time as an adult, I was completely on my own; no girlfriend, no roommate, no parents, and everything I owned was basically in this one room. My only constraints were financial, and I barely let those stop me, hence the exorbitant credit card debt that I carried for years after (and ok, still do.) I eventually did upgrade to a real apartment and found a roommate, but I still did pretty much whatever I wanted within the law. And I had some good friends who would do it with me. I mostly went out drinking with my co-workers, and the only restriction we had was that we had to drag ourselves out of bed and get to work the next day, or face the ridicule of the folks that did. I have a particularly fun story of one of those nights, but I’ll change the names to protect the innocent. However, these were close friends at the time, so if they ever read this, well, know that I still love you all.

One early September night, my closest counterpart at the job, let’s call him Hercules, and his girlfriend, Athena, were going out for drinks and asked me and another co-worker of ours, whom I’ll call Elektra, if we wanted to join them. Elektra and I were friends at the time, but we had a bit of history, which at times became a bit of present, but that’s a story for another post. Anyway, Elektra and I met them at a bar downtown and the alcohol and conversation flowed.

At the time, I thought Hercules and Athena had a pretty steady relationship. They had been together for many years, and appeared to be right in that meaty part of the curve:.not arguing in public, not showing off and making out like high schoolers. For the first few months when we would go out drinking after work, Hercules would come alone and we would often joke that he made Athena up. When we finally met her, we thought she was so cool that we all wondered how he was able to lock her down.

All good natured ribbing. We obviously considered both good friends, and they could handle their liquor, which was all you needed to gain access to this club. We did find it odd that Hercules would sometimes “shush” her if he thought she was getting a little too loud after a few drinks, but I figured that was just something that they did.

During the course of this particular evening, we asked Hercules what he had done on his (rare for him) recent days off. He told us that he spent a lot of time walking around the city, and then decided to wander into a local strip club. This definitely did not seem like it was in character for Herc, so Elektra and I inquired more. He said it wasn’t what we thought, that this strip club was on the classier side of the spectrum; they didn’t serve eggs, the liquor was top shelf, and the strippers had all their teeth. Ok, these are my words, not his, but you get the gist. He apparently struck up a conversation with one of the girls because he was wearing a Yankees hat, and she was also a fan. Perhaps. He even thought their bond was such that he went back the next day to see her again. Let me repeat that this was not in character for him, but I was not judging him, and on a night when everybody is tossing ‘em back, this bit of conversation definitely added more color.

As the evening progressed and we bar-hopped, Athena got a little more excitable, and the amount of shushing was raised summarily. At some point when I turned my back, Athena had enough and stormed out. Elektra went to follow her, and when I asked what was going on, she said, “Stay with him. I’ll make sure she gets home safe.” Ah, the Drinker’s Code.

I went back to Hercules and asked what had happened, and he blew it off, saying that Athena had just gotten a little drunk. He was then mostly quiet while we finished our drinks. Because I hate awkward silence, I think I tried to talk about baseball, but he clearly wasn’t interested.

We left the bar and he hailed a cab. He told me that I should take the first one and he would grab the next one. Being a good guy/dude/bro/friend/drinking buddy, I said, “Well, I don’t have to go yet.” I really did think he would want to unload a bit about what was going on with his relationship. It wasn’t a coincidence that the strip club conversation happened not long before she stormed out, was it? Honestly, I'm not even sure I made that connection at that point in the evening, but he seemed like he was hurting so I wanted to be a good pal.

“Come on,” was his response.

And so I followed him. Turns out we were walking distance to his new favorite establishment.

I honestly don’t remember a lot about being in the strip club that night (In fact, I was drunk enough to leave my ID at the door when they checked it. I had to go back the next day to get it, which was slightly embarrassing.), but I did note that he was not wrong: it was rather fancy. Hercules even paid my $20 cover, and bought me a drink, which was probably also $20. Remember, this was over two decades ago, so that was considered a pretty expensive drink. I didn’t carry a lot of cash back then, nor did I have a lot of cash to carry, but Hercules took care of that, too. In fact, he seemed to enjoy handing me bills to throw on the stage. Maybe it made him feel charitable, or he just didn’t want me to look like an idiot. We didn’t do anything crazy like get lap dances or go into the VIP room or anything (that time), but I can’t say it wasn’t fun. At least we didn’t have to talk about his relationship troubles. They even offered a service to drive drunk people home at closing time, so I availed myself of that. Sadly, I had to ask the driver to stop at an ATM so I could tip him. Crazy times.

Herc’s friend was not working that night, but he would go back to see her regularly over the next several weeks. One night, Athena asked if I wanted to hang out, just the two of us. I asked Hercules if that was ok, and he said it was. But when she and I were out just having dinner and a couple drinks, she mentioned that he was actually out to dinner with his stripper friend. I started to feel a little awkward at that point. Had I become a pawn in their chess game, or did she really just want to get out of the house? At one point, she even suggested that we go and find them, because she knew what restaurant they were at, but I quickly shot that plan down. Thinking back on it now, I remember the night ending rather abruptly, so either I had quickly ceased being interesting, or she did exactly that. I want to believe that Hercules was just taking a walk on the wild side and nothing physical ever happened between him and his stripper friend, but whatever your definition of cheating is, I doubt they were just getting together to shoot the shit about the Yankees.

I want to say right here that strippers are regular people, too. In the halcyon days before Onlyfans and things like that, these women made good money on the sexual cravings of men, and I’m sure they used the money that guys threw at them to buy milk and pay their rent, and in their daily lives they wore clothes like the rest of us. I have always assumed that most of them got very little sexual satisfaction from writhing above men’s crotches (In our state, strip clubs have a strict “No touching” rule.). So if a guy like Hercules wants to take them out for a good meal, they’re probably going to say yes. Hell, I let him buy me a drink. The real issue isn’t about him hanging out with a stripper. It was really about what his intentions were when he did it. .

I would go to the strip club a few more times with Hercules over the next few months. A couple times another co-worker, Apollo, would join us, and even Elektra wanted to come to see what the hubbub was about. One night, Apollo and I did venture into the VIP room (which put a real dent in my credit score.) While there, the girl that I was speaking with mentioned that her friend had been hanging out with my friend, and I opened my big mouth and mentioned that I wasn't sure how his girlfriend felt about that.Well, I guess news travels fast in the stripper world, because it got back to them and they wouldn't speak to me for months after that. Maybe that was the catalyst for their reconciliation because they seemed back to normal when we finally did start speaking again. They eventually got married. To my knowledge, they are still together, but I don’t know if he still shushes her.

I don’t really talk to any of them any more. We all got different jobs and moved on, but our drinking and strip club days ended long before that. You could say we all grew up. But I don’t regret any of that. And of course you can find your soulmate in college and still go through experiences like this and still end up in a good place. And maybe you end up dating a stripper and that is what helps you figure things out. I don’t have all the answers, but to me, when I was that young, it was still just homework, church, school, homework, church, school. But when I grew up I realized the good times, the bad times, the broke times, they all got me where I needed to be. And I’m really enjoying it here.

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Adios, amigos.