This concludes the documentation of the grand opening of my brother’s bar and the girl’s night out with Lucinda and Fantasia.  I bet you just peed in your pants a little, didn’t you?  Just nod your head yes so we can still be friends.

Lucinda and Fantasia made it to town with zero ass rapes, which is always a good way to start your girl’s weekend unless you live in Kentucky.

The girls met me at the bar because I was finishing up the revamping of the backstage dressing room.  I basically manhandled my brother (hereafter known as “Duke”) into letting me do something, anything to it.  There was low pile beige carpeting on the walls.  I don’t know what these drag queens do backstage during their transformations but walking on the carpeted walls is apparently one activity because the carpet was in awful shape.

Duke didn’t want to do anything that would wreck the queen’s dresses (like paint) on Saturday night and after some wailing and gnashing of teeth, I told him to just let me do something to it as a birthday and grand opening present for him.  He never did really say “no” so off to Hobby Lobby I went.

39 yards of black tulle, several hours over the rest of the week, and much sweat later, it looked much better.  The dressing room will still have to be dealt with but at least I took that off of Duke’s plate for a while, anyway.  Here’s the before and after:

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We planned on taking a cab back to the hotel when the bar closed so we needed a ride to get there.  My mom was going to the bar for just a bit and leaving early so she came to the hotel and picked us up.  It is a strange feeling to be driven to a bar by your mom.  Fantasia said she felt like she was a teenager and one of our moms was dropping us off at the skating rink.  You know, if the skating rink served alcohol and had dudes dressed up like ladies.

We arrived and the club was packed.  Luckily, Duke had set us up a reserved table right on the dance floor and to the side of the stage, excellent seats.  Duke also assigned us a very cute waiter whose uniform consisted of tight pants and a leather vest.

We were seated at our table with our first round of drinks when a super hot badass from the table next to us approached.  “Yvette” asked which one of us was Duke’s sister (we got that a LOT that night).  She introduced herself and informed us that she had been charged with keeping our Fuckery Level in check for the night.  Apparently, our reputations preceeded us.

I suggested that our Fuckery Level be somewhere around 7, on a scale of 1 to 10.  Yvette said we couldn’t handle Fuckery Level 7.  I told Yvette that the lovely ladies on the other side of us had agreed to let us dance on the tables as long as we only danced on their table, which I thought was completely fair.  Yvette said that would be way off her Fuckery Charts and discouraged us from doing that.  After some speedy and convincing negotiation, I got Yvette to agree to Fuckery Level 5, adjusting as needed throughout the night.  Compromise.  It’s all about compromise, people.

Yvette would make eye contact with us throughout the night and if our Fuckery Level was on track, she’d give us a thumbs up.  Needless to say, that didn’t happen often and most of them time her hands were motioning to take the Fuckery Level down.  We did not take the Fuckery Level down.  By the end of the night, I had pushed our table together with hers and we were dancing with her and her friends.  We had a blast and Yvette rocks in my book.

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I had met a couple of the ladies sitting on the other side of us earlier in the week.  They spent many hours helping my brother renovate the bar and were there the day of the show, helping set up lights and tables, etc.  They have been nothing but good friends to Duke.  They are some of the best people on earth, from what I witnessed that week.  “Sandy” came over and handed me a shot of something and I refused to do it without her.  A shot was quickly poured for her, we toasted and shot.

Around that time, the show started and what a show it was.  The ladies gave it their all, busted some moves I would never have been able to recover from and one in particular had much better and more realistic breasts than Lucinda, Fantasia or I have combined.  The queens were gorgeous.  Fantasia was gracious enough to share her one hundred dollar bills with me and Lucinda.  I think we put it to very good use.

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All in all, I think we straight girls handled our drunken asses pretty well because at 1:00 a.m., Sandy asked us to join her and her friends at IHOP.  We had to decline because we were in it for the long haul.  We were going to shut the bar down and we did so to the tune of Semisonic’s “Closing Time”.

Duke called us a cab and we were lucky enough to get Barbara, a very sweet older lady.  It was somehow decided on the way back to the hotel that we were hungry and needed to eat.  We told Barbara to drop us off at the hotel and we’d walk across the street to Jack In The Box.  We paid the cab fare (actually, I don’t even remember who paid for it) and lumbered out of the cab.  Barbara saw us standing there, me holding my shoes, and said “Get back in”.  She took us through the very busy drive through and didn’t even run the meter.  Barbara was cool.

We made it back to the hotel room with one burger and six tacos, Fantasia insisting this was agreed upon by all of us.  I remember nothing of the food negotiations or who paid for said food but by that time, I was not well and the room was spinning.

I was in bed, curled into the fetal position.  Lucinda got me set up with a trash can (I have never puked while drunk or hungover but this was the closest I’ve ever gotten).  I pulled off my false eyelashes and whined about forgetting to take my nerve pills, which I actually have a hard time sleeping without even with alcohol.  Lucinda found my nerve pills in my massive purse, retrieved the amount I told her to and placed them on my waiting tongue.  Fantasia did not think this was a good idea considering the amount of alcohol I had in my system.  While Fantasia and Lucinda debated my best interests, I waited for an agreement to be made with my tongue stuck out, nerve pills clinging to it undissolved.  Fantasia said she just didn’t want her fingerprints on the bottle if I pulled a Belushi so Lucinda scraped two off my tongue and put them back in the prescription bottle.

Note to all the rock stars out there:  Do not count on Fantasia when the morning after shit hits the fan.

My lips became parched with all the waiting around with my tongue sticking out so Lucinda rifled through my purse again, found some MAC lip gloss and applied it to my puckered lips.  She’s a good friend.  In a probable attempt to escape my drunken, needy ass, Lucinda announced she was going to take a shower and left me and Fantasia alone.

You don’t really know a person until you’re left alone in a very dark room with them while you’re drunk, a very dark room which was spinning from my perspective.  Fantasia offered me a taco.  I groaned and managed to shoot her the middle finger.  This did not deter her.  After every offer of a taco, I heard a very clear, distinct crunch sound.  It sounded like Sadistic Pac Man, eating tacos on the bed next to me, except I never heard her chew in between bites.  All I heard was “Want a taco?  It’ll make you feel better.”  CRUNCH.  “These are so good.  So greasy.”  CRUNCH.  “Eat a taco, the grease going down your throat and into your stomach will help.”  CRUNCH.  I’m pretty sure I passed out with my middle finger in the air.

I got my revenge on Fantasia a couple hours later.  I had to go to the bathroom and when I stood up, I lost my balance and bumped into Fantasia’s bed, scaring the shit out of her.  I wish I had videotaped it.  I attempted to make eye contact with her in the extremely dark room and said “It’s just me!  It’s just me”!  before going in search of the bathroom.  And might I say hotel rooms have way too many damned doors.  They do that shit just to fuck with drunk people.

It was a night to remember (and I do remember most of it) and such a hit that the girls want to make it a yearly tradition.  I may be ready to do this again by next summer.  Maybe.