After driving around the wrong side of town for 20 minutes, the car finally pulled into the tiny little parking lot of Club Bacchus. The first sign of play (some may say foul play) came in the form of a rather stocky man who stared us down from the cab of his truck until we were far enough away for him to resume whatever he was doing with his special lady friend in the front seat. The first step through those tinted windows was like a time warp. The black lights reflecting off of the stainless steel poles was reminiscent of a knock-off Studio 54. The cloud of cigarette smoke brought us back to the days
before the smoking ban. The focus of the room was a slick, wooden stage surrounded by VIP chairs for the customers who wanted the pay-per-view experience. After we gave our ID's and got our wristbands from the shaky doorman we were greeted by stares and a silence that made me feel like I had interupted a religious ceremony of neither our time nor place. The men's bathroom consisted of both a urinal and a toilet behind a swinging door with no locks, but just enough space for a mid-show quickie. Strip clubs, I soon realized, took a particular brand of courage which I felt I would have been incapable of mustering had it been a show-girl kind of night.
After we were done bartering with the guy next to us for a King Cobra (he wanted to recapture his childhood), the movie started. The Grindhouse Massacre, which could have easily been another tit fest, turned out to be a surprisingly feminist commentary on the sexual exploitation of women within B-horror. A busty blonde named Mistress Midnight has just been told that her movies aren't selling. No one, from her producer (and agent) who threatens to drop her, to the director who claims he can't push her movies, believes that B-horror film can be a success without at least a little skin. After commiserating with a quartet of goth rockers, Midnight takes it upon herself to torture and kill her director and every actress in town who contributes to the cheapening of the genre she loves so much, making a home movie of the acts. There were a few especially gory scenes, but none beat the first murder. Midnight makes a deal with her director: She promises to sleep with him, if he promises to push every last one of her previous movies. When he comes over to her house later that evening, she makes him use some of her pre-made, acid-laced lube. The director starts complaining that the lube burns and goes into the bathroom. We still can’t figure out the director’s official cause of death, but we got to see his penis disintegrate in his hands. The ‘Oooooooos!!’ from the men in the audience were deafening.As great as the film was, the crowd was a lot better. Thirty minutes and 40 ounces later, everybody was friends. Laura was engrossed in a conversation with three guys about their explosive diarrhea, Meredith was in the bathroom having a heart to heart with a redhead named Tabitha about her relationship, and Paul was trying to catch the eye of the Lowry cafeteria worker sitting at the bar. In the afterglow of surviving the infamous Club Bacchus we had a dance party in one of our dorms. Being back in the comfort of my room, surrounded by friends, it dawned on me how uneasy I had felt at the club. Seeing these women, these strippers, sitting at tables with their friends nursing a beer, reminded me that had I done some things differently, I could be in a place very similar to theirs. I once heard a story about a stripper who was paying her way through mortician school. Everyone's got a story to tell, but some you may not enjoy hearing.
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