The following is an account of my experiences in and around the mensrooms
of the clubs near Detroit Metro Airport where TA, R Mutt, Peakay and I
convened this week Wednesday evening and Thursday. I have little to report
on in this post about R Mutt or Peakay, since, although I have every
reason to believe that they had their own experiences in the mensrooms in
question, I only encountered them outside those confines, in the sections
of the clubs where naked girls are allowed, and we were more inclined to
compare notes on that aspect of STUDCON(tm).


LEGGS MENSROOM

This is where you meet TA from Cleveland. Just as you're drying your
hands, you see this large, shifty figure out of the corner of your eye. He
goes over to a urinal for about five seconds then darts straight back to
the door, obviously either looking to pick up guys or else a rabid
homophobe who can't pee with another man present. As he starts out the
door you turn, recognize him, and yell out his name, whereupon TA says hi,
rushes to the sink and waves his hands over it, saying how forgetful of
him. Just play along. For all his strange mensroom behavior, you want to
maintain a contact like TA, whose out-of-control spending generates
invaluable VIP room dossiers on dancers such as the fabulous Miranda.

As you might gather, Leggs does not station an attendant in the mensroom.
You won't find any chicks in there, either, nor are you allowed to take
them in for a mensroom dance, probably because of the problems it would
present for the VIP room dance critic, a.k.a. the bouncer or "redneck
floater".


KOZY'S KORNER CAFE MENSROOM

They don't have one. They do, however, keep your coffee refilled as fast
as you can gulp it down. I guess the locals either get a key from Elvis,
the Greek cook/owner, or go across the street to the Assembly of God
church or the lodge. Incidentally, Elvis--as his name would lead you to
expect--whips together a great, artery blocker breakfast, and the
chocolate pecan pie sure LOOKS good. Lisa says the last the time they
offered it "it was gone like that" and you don't doubt her and you wish
you could stay for a slice but you have a noon appointment, maybe another
time. Now, Kozy's is just a diner, so of course you won't find any dancers
in here, unless they're stopping in for a bite before their shift up the
main street of Romulus at the Landing Strip, although I didn't see any,
and I was shocked at how little the dancers I talked to there and at the
Playhouse knew about the town they work in.


LANDING STRIP MENSROOM

Watch out for Don. He's one of those people who, when you ask him how he
is, tells you. He tells you his life story. Don's life is fairly
interesting--well, his story is, but I don't see how a mensroom
attendant's actual life could be anything but dull dull dull. For that
matter, Don's story isn't THAT interesting when you realize, as I did,
that a whole bunch of half naked girls are just a few feet outside the
door, waiting in line to share a booth with you. Jeez, Don, what do you
take me for? Wrap it up, please!

Don also has all kinds of goods he will sell you. The area around the
sinks looks like the bathroom in a home without enough cupboard space. In
addition to all the things you would expect, you see a lot of stuff that
looks out of place or just plain weird. I mean, who want to buy a Slim Jim
in a strip club, let alone in the mensroom? I guess I would if it made Don
finish his story.

Now, although this report is only about my experiences in and around the
mensrooms of these clubs, out of roughly 18 hours I spent in the clubs I
was actually in a mensroom for only about 20 minutes total, almost all of
which I spent listening to Don, which was kind of hard to explain to my
boothmates. Chrissie (a darling boothmate with a lovely face framed by
Jennifer Aniston fuck me hair and with a body to go with it) asked if I
had been kidnapped and I said yes and she asked which room I was taken to,
the balcony or the dungeon, and I said, "Chrissie, did you know that there
is a guy named Don in the mensroom?"

That got Chrissie really excited, not in a kinky kind of way, but because
she had been astonished to hear it for the first time just the day before.
"What does he do in there all day?" she wondered.

"Well, for a buck, he runs the faucet and he squirts soap in your hand and
gives you paper towels and then he tells you his life story. Wanna come
hear it?"

Chrissie wasn't that keen on hearing how Don's life brought him to this
state of affairs, but she did want me to take her back for a peek and a
wave and maybe a sniff of Old Spice, but I thought it might be bad form to
show up Don in that way, and besides, he might insist on repeating his
story all over again. Maybe another time, boothmate. For now, let's
continue where we left off, with Chrissie's hand here and mine.......er,
forgive me, oh gentle reader, for I have strayed off topic.


PLAYHOUSE MENSROOM

As you enter, you hear a burly young fellow in an unstructured suit
telling Spiro, "What dey oughtta do, dey oughtta cut out his eyeballs an'
his tongue, cut off da fuckin' worm's balls, cut off his hands an' his
feet an' keep da piece a' shit alive so's he can SUFFER!"

Turns out they are talking about current events--some rapist in the
news--but the ease with which his recommendations had tripped off the
young mug's tongue and the dispassionate mien with which Spiro had
considered it all is a bit chilling. You read the business cards behind
glass above the urinals--Spiro's Limousine Service, Spiro's Tuxedo Rental,
Spiro's Carpet Cleaning and so on--and you get the distinct impression
that Spiro can arrange other services for which you'll never see his card.

If you've followed any of the posts about Detroit on ASSC, you know about
Spiro, and, now that Catherine the Great's plaid Catholic School skirt
adorns the rafters of the Landing Strip, Spiro of the Playhouse is, in
terms of active ASSC legends, our answer to Molli of the Chez Paree in San
Francisco, but, whereas Molli (who I've met) is a warm, lovely young
dancer, Spiro is a squatty, scowling guy with thinning gray hair and a
mean looking fu manchu mustache and not terribly active, and yet, somehow,
he has managed to parlay sitting on his stool, dispensing soap into guys'
hands for a buck a squirt into a diversified empire of various, shall we
say, service businesses, providing employment for many in his family,
including nephew Nathan who, the last I knew, could usually be found
scowling and squirting his way through the evening shift in the mensroom
of the Playhouse but without quite the concentrated elan that Spiro brings
to his scowling.

You see a post-it note amid the business cards:
  FOR SALE:
  50 VENDING MACHINES FOR CONDOMS AND TYLENOL
  $4000
  TALK TO SPIRO

Choosing curiosity over caution, you ask Spiro as he pumps soft-soap for
you, where'd he get all the vending machines?

"Some guy owed me four thousand dollars," he grumbles.

"Let's see...that would be eighty bucks a machine...can't you get a lot
more than eighty for those, Spiro?"

"I just want my four thousand dollars, man," Spiro answers as he deals you
two paper towels, never taking his eyes off the portable television set
mounted high behind your back.

OK.

You leave a buck in his basket and decide not to ask the obvious followup
to Spiro's answer, figuring that it's either somebody with an extreme
handwashing fetish or an area of Spiro's concerns about which you'd be
better off not to seem unduly curious.

Or both.

Returning to your seat, you can see how a guy with no control over his
spending could easily go through $4,000 at the Playhouse in no time, and
you've heard stories about TA trying to use his watch and even articles of
clothing to get dances, and you've never heard exactly what kind of
business TA is in except that he has to call on a lot of people and he
carries a lot of cash, so vending machines could well be a part of it, and
afterall, he and R Mutt were at the Playhouse just the day before, and
then TA was unable to make it this noon like he had hoped and...and you
sure hope the big guy's alright.

And you suddenly begin to see why Don over at the Landing Strip was so
effusive about his great good fortune in landing the opportunity to spend
his whole day watching a parade of horny guys urinate.


THE FINAL SHAKE

So, how do we rate these Detroit mensrooms? To properly answer that
question, you've got to ask yourself a few questions. For example, how
important is it that you meet TA from Cleveland? You've got to go to the
mensroom at Leggs for that. And are you interested in lining up a wedding
photographer while you urinate? If so, Spiro over at the Playhouse is your
man. And if pampering is what you need--yes, that's p-a-m-p,
pampering--you'll find that to be just the beginning of The Don
Experience. On that score, I should point out that Spiro has begun to cut
back on his mensroom basics. He no longer runs the faucet, doing just a
soap-and-towel gig and leaving it to you to discover the right mix of hot
and cold water. And when I asked Spiro where I could get a kleenex, he
motioned towards the toilet paper roll in an open stall, something you
would never see Don suggest. Spiro has never attempted to stock the
sundries Don gets into, preferring to liquidate inventory and stick to a
quick cashflow approach whenever possible.

Finally, I had better point out that readers should not necessarily expect
their experience in the mensrooms of Detroit to match mine down to every
last detail. Seems obvious enough, but not to all the dense fucks out
there who take every word posted here literally. I am reporting, not
guaranteeing; I am a patron, not a pimp. And, just as you should not
expect to get the same treatment I get from dancers, like free dances and
cigarettes and invitations to do cool stuff, you cannot be sure that Don
will spare you the time of day or, if he does, that Chrissie will wait for
you or that Elvis will offer the same pie or that TA will even show up.

Oh, and I almost forgot--if you see R MUTT in a urinal, don't piss in it.
You're aren't in Detroit; you're at the MoMA in New York, and if you
aren't careful, you'll soon be meeting their bouncer.

CMG