A woman friend stayed with me while she was in Honolulu to have surgery on her face. When she came back from the hospital, her face was black and blue and she had a splint on her nose. She looked liked she had been beat up.
On the second day, she decided that she wanted to go out and see my neighborhood. I took her into Anna Bannana's just so she could see what the bar looks like. As we walked in the door, my friend Frannie, who was manager at that time, gave me this look as if to say, ``What have you done to that girl?''
My friend didn't want to hang out at Anna's though. She wanted to see a strip club. So I took her to Club By Me.
She got away with just ordering a glass of water. I got a beer, of course. In any case, I tipped the waitress $3.
After a while, a guy slid into the booth on the other side of us and started talking to my friend. Later, she described him to me as ``smarmy.''
``You look just like I did a few weeks ago,'' this guy said, ``after I'd been in a fight.''
I knew enough about my friend to instantly pick up on this and say, ``You think she looks bad, you should have seen the other girl!''
My friend instantly started backing up my story, saying, ``It wasn't my fault at all. I was just standing at the bar minding my own business, and this woman came up and accused me of coming on to her boy friend.''
The smarmy guy may have had his doubts later, but for the moment we had him totally convinced.
Later on, after he left, a couple of the dancers sat down to talk with us, and my friend told them the true story.
The dancers said that the owner wanted to know if my friend would be interested in dancing at the club.
She might have been interested, except that she had to go back to California.
April, 1996