Paradox on a Hillside, or, "Free Drinks"
Paradox on a Hillside, or, "Free Drinks"
My brother and I spent a few months in India, taking in the sights. We saw the Taj Mahal, rode camels for days on end through the desert, got extorted for pocket change by local cops, leapt onto moving trains, saw the sunrise at 15,000 feet in the Himalayas, and made lots and lots of pooja. One weekend in the tropical rave epicenter of the subcontinent, Goa, we were approached by a fellow on the beach with a flyer for free entry and drinks for "bikini night" at a posh nightclub in the hills.
The promoter fellow made it clear that copious booze would flow, gratis, for anyone who showed up to the club in a bikini. Gender unspecified. Having acculturated to the backpacker budget, we quickly priced out matching string bikinis and auxiliary black undies. For six bucks apiece, we'd gain free entry and drink the entire night. And, we'd automatically be entered into the bikini contest and possibly win a few hundred bucks. My bikini was neon green, and my brother's was neon orange. Or maybe it was the other way around?
We tucked everything into the black undies that wouldn't be contained by the bikini fabric, donned normal clothes, and rolled up to the club on our motorcycle feeling confident. At the door, we informed the bouncer guy that we would require free entry. He held out a box for our clothing and said that we had to enter in bikinis only. For the tropics it wasn't overly warm out, but we wanted our free night of mayhem. So we stripped down to our neons, walked into a loud outdoor nightclub filled with normally dressed peers, and bee-lined for the bar to take the edge off with some vodka red bulls. As fortune would have it - and in India, fortune always had it - two nice blonde Swedish girls invited us to sit down for a chat on a white, queen-sized daybed next to the pool. My brother took off his neon top at some point, but I felt it was more important to stay, uh, in character? Anyhoo, we were quite relaxed when a bikini contest officiant approached our daybed thing and asked my brother and I what our favorite animals were. Like a buffoon, I seriously considered the question for a few moments, and decided on the spot that tigers were a pretty cool animal. My brother replied that his was "the worm." I'd like to say that at that point I realized what was coming, but I'm pretty sure I was too caught up in our small victories to think ahead.
The evening's MC, Indian guy, strolled out in front of the pool with a microphone and began to address the nightclub crowds (Side note: this place was probably converted from original use as a mansion - there were many rooms, balconies, etc. Even the mass urinal in the men's room was a mirrored waterfall - deluxe!). He called up all the bikini contestants to stand in a line. There were maybe eight of us; four bad Russian babez (with a Z, like that), my brother and I, the promoter fellow from earlier that morning on the beach, and one other tourist dude. The MC walked down the line and painted numbers on our stomachs with a tube of red lipstick. After struggling to apply the number 8 through my stomach hair, he sought to impugn my good character by blurting into the mic "Dude! You should shave that crap! Girls don't wanna see that," to the amusement of the audience. That's fine my man. Swedish chicks dig it. But the first round of the competition, as it turned out, was to impersonate our favorite animals. I knew then that having chosen the noble tiger, in my neon string bikini, there would be some ensuing difficulty in presenting myself in accordance with the guidelines for gender-normative behavior.
So the Russian girls do some sexy whatever. The other tourist guy, having picked "monkey," delighted the fucking crowd by climbing to the top of a stripper pole. As all this was happening, I did my best to down every drink within reach of our daybed, and by the time my turn had arrived, I was resolute - if I was going to be a gay tiger in a bikini, it would have to be extra tiger-y, and extra gay. There was and is no way to half-ass things in that particular scenario, it is a philosophical paradox. Think of it, to meekly walk in front of a crowd and do a bored rendition of a tiger in a bikini, like I was really a cool guy beneath the tiger impression? So, knowing there was no credit to preserve, I got down on all fours in my neon string bikini, and growled and clawed the air in front of several hundred people in a sleek nightclub. The MC guy had a few zingers lined up after that, "You need to check your sexuality!," and so on. At that point I had nothing left to defame, which was actually quite liberating. When my turn came for the pole dance, I went for broke with - now, try to visualize what I'm saying here - a 180-straight-knee inverted kiss blown through my legs to the judges' table. Can you see it?
My brother's experience was a bit different. Since the "walk the plank over the pool" competition came before the pole dancing competition, he was still wet (and drunk), and performed his signature stripper pole upside-down freeze to faceplant effortlessly. I should also mention that his favorite animal being the worm segued nicely into just break-dancing, which was probably the ideal opposite thing to do compared to my tiger and did look pretty cool as a result.
At that point I had nothing left to defame, which was actually quite liberating.
