Club Vinte dois

Have you ever wanted to Glad wrap your whole head?
...actually scratch that.
Have you ever seen one of those machines in a warehouse that is used to wrap a pallet in plastic?
Have you ever considered using it to tightly wrap your whole body in a protective water tight cocoon?
Well until two days ago the thought never crossed my mind…but that was two days ago!

Drinking in the pub directly across the street I was drinking a few quiet beers with my friend Nick and his house mate. His house mate was Brazilian and spoke very little English. Despite this fact there was very little doubt as to what he wanted to do that night. Although I may have lived across from this small drinking hole for some 6 weeks I was unaware that directly above it was Club 22…. a strip club. Nick house mate, who I will call Renzo as I have forgotten his real name was very very keen to move the quiet drinking session upstairs but unfortunately met some mild resistance from the two of us. Fortunately for him, he had not yet played his trump card. “It costs R$10 to enter, you get 3 free beers and can play pool all night”. Cha-ching! Knowing that pool costs R$15 and hour, I, and you will be surprised to hear this, decided that it was probably worth it due to the fiscal benefits. I was of course very wrong.

In Nick and my mind the club would be a huge place with shows at one end and pool tables at the other. There was no doubt we would be harassed at some stage but we though the interruption every twenty minutes was probably worth it given the savings….we were of course wrong. Luckily for us, Nick convinced the door lady to allow us to look before paying entry, and a good thing too. The whole establishment was about as big as the average lounge room and the two pool tables were about the length of my forearm and I guessed they were probably not up to international pool competition standards. Size of the table, of course, was not going to be the biggest issue when playing pool. To walk around the table once you would have to ask the seven ladies sitting around it to move.

…and speaking of the ladies, what a treat! I was transfixed by one girl who wore a bikini with straps on the bottom which crisscrossed her somewhat chubby body 7 or 8 times. The effect of such a garment was to make her look somewhat like a Christmas ham and was a sight that almost caused me to start giggling…but this was no giggling matter. The hunters having fixed on their prey, two rich gringos and there almost certainly rich friend, were now in sight and, more importantly were the only people, other than the workers, in the establishment. Standing up in the “sexiest of ways” the girls moved forward and we were forced to perform the standard Brazilian greeting of kissing them each on both cheeks. I considered buying some tequila to swab each of their cheeks but decided it was probably a touch rude. It was at this stage my mind crossed to the image of the pallet wrapping machine and the relative safety it could have offered me. If in two weeks I break out in a mass of buboes I’m blaming Renzo!