This is not a first date story. I told it anyway.
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Last week I found myself sitting opposite a good-looking man in a nice wine bar in Darlinghurst. He’d chosen the kind of place you’d only know about through a recommendation — it was hidden in an alleyway and down a narrow flight of stairs.
The conversation was easy and pleasant, he spoke comfortably about his work, his family. Eventually we moved on to the topic of travelling. I heard about his trip to Vegas with friends and how they had visited a couple of enormous clubs. They were unlike anything we have in Australia, he said.
I could have nodded and moved the conversation onto something else. But I had a story about an American club that I wanted to share.
And it was a doozy.
Right now, I can hear my friends saying: “oh no, Stephanie. You didn’t. Not THAT story.”
Oh yes. THAT story.
To provide a content warning is to give away what happens. So I’m not going to do that. Suffice to say, if you think you’re not going to like what’s written here, you’re absolutely correct. Go do something else with your day. And be grateful. This is more warning than my date had.
So it’s 2016 and I’m in New York, completely overstaying my welcome on a good friend’s couch. This friend — Lucie — happens to be an insanely hot former Vegas showgirl. She was taking odd gigs here and there but had a fair amount of free time. We ended up hanging out a lot: Lucie striding through New York turning heads, me trotting alongside her like a grateful pug.
One day Lucie tells me that she’s got an audition to be a cast member for a cabaret-style club called ‘The Box’. The management had told her to pop in one night before auditioning to get a feel for the show. Lucie invited me along as her plus one.
At the time, all I knew was that the place was expensive, exclusive, and had a need for dancers.
How exclusive? Well, you have to be prepared to fork out at least $5000 AUD to book a table, with bottle service on top of that. It’s quite a big financial outlay, but once you’re inside (assuming you get inside) you’d be bumping shoulders with the rich and famous.
Orlando Bloom, I was told, was a regular. Just last year Taylor Swift spent her birthday there.
On the inside, the Box looked like a set from Moulin Rouge. It was a long, rectangular room adorned with red velvet chairs, chandeliers, and a proscenium stage. There were tables and booths dotted around the venue but, unless you had a booking, you were stuck standing.
Arriving before the show’s start time, Lucie and I mingled around the bar. Eventually we started up a conversation with another group of people.
“Have you been here before?” I was asked by a man wearing an unbuttoned collared shirt. His sleeves were pushed up around his elbows.
“First time,” I replied.
“Cool, cool,” He nodded. “Just don’t sit in the front row.”
“Why? What’s wrong with the first row?”
He took a nonchalant sip from his drink before answering.
“You might get pissed on.”
“I’m might get what, sorry?” I replied leaning forward.
“Pissed on! You might get PISSED on in the first row.”
I had follow up questions, of course. But before I had the chance to ask them, the man caught sight of friends and excused himself from the conversation. Surely he was joking, I thought. This is an expensive club. I felt the first fizzes of anxiety.
Lucie and I didn’t end up sitting in the front row. This wasn’t because we heeded anyone’s warning — we just didn’t have seat reservations. Thankfully, a coked-up business man took a liking to me and offered us both a place at his table.
“The hottest thing about you is definitely your accent,” he slurred to me at one point.
I pretended to be charmed and poured myself a very large glass of his wine.
When eventually the show started, I was grateful to discover the entertainment was quite tame. There was a group of house dancers who writhed, shimmied and at one point took their tops off, but it was no more racy than any burlesque show. They shared the stage with several guest performers — singers, acrobats, and I recall one ballerina who stood on the top of champagne bottles while wearing pointe shoes.
‘Phew’, I thought. ‘No piss here’.
This went on for two acts. Then, after the intermission, the curtains opened for a final time. A toilet sat ominously in the centre of the stage.
The MC announced that they had a very special guest. The spotlight illuminated a tall figure standing in the back of the room. At the time I would have described this person as a muscularly-built man dressed as Vogue editor Anna Wintour. After a bit of research, I now know that she is transgender performer, Rose Wood.
Rose was escorted on stage by an attractive young man who then obsequiously shuffled back behind the curtain. Alone in the spotlight, Rose flicked through a Vogue magazine while Madonna played over the speakers.
What are you looking at?
Strike a pose.
Strike a pose.
Loosely in time to the music, Rose tore pages from the magazine, scrunched them into balls, and wiped her arse with them. She then threw the wadded up paper on the floor.
The toilet still loomed.
Had I not been mentally calculating whether or not I was in the ‘splash zone’ should Rose start flinging her piss at me, I might have found this performance to be intriguing. To be safe (and under the pretence of being cold) I draped the coked-up gentleman’s jacket across me like an apron.
Eventually Rose dropped the magazine and strode towards the toilet.
Things then escalated very quickly.
You never really know how you’re going to react to a terrifying situation until you’re in it. This is a blessing, really. Most of us aren’t heroes. If you live in Australia, you’ll probably go to the grave without having to confront your own cowardice.
I don’t have the luxury of ignorance anymore. I know exactly how I would react in the face of terror.
I froze.
Rose slammed down the lid and stood on the toilet with her back facing the audience. Then, in one swift movement, she hiked up her skirt, hooked both thumbs into her stockings, and dragged them down to her to her ankles. I watched, horrified and transfixed, as she squatted in front of us and proceeded to do a tremendously large, tremendously sloppy shit.
Now, for a moment, I want to take you back to the Darlinghurst bar where I am telling this story to a nice young man on a first date. It is this precise point in the anecdote where I realise I’ve made a grave error. This isn’t a cute, funny story. This is an eldritch horror. He was leaning back in the chair, mouth open in shock.
My date’s Las Vegas club anecdote was about how many people they could fit into a room. I am now talking about ‘enormous sloppy shits’.
“It gets worse,” I tell him a little regretfully.
“Does it?” he asks.
It does.
Having watched someone take a shit on stage, I was very much ready to leave The Box. But I was worried about drawing attention to myself and becoming a target. If people got pissed on, I thought, it is not outside the realms of possibility they might have shit flung at them too.
Like a fawn abandoned in a grassy field, I sat totally immobilised. I risked a panicked look at Lucie.
“What the FUCK,” I mouthed at her.
Lucie, thinking someone from management might be watching her reaction, kept a glassy smile on her face. At one point she grabbed my wrist in an iron grip. Her bland expression never wavered.
After what seemed like an eternity, Rose finished her business and pulled her soiled stockings back up. This did not contain the mess. There was now shit smeared all over the floor, all over the toilet, and all over her.
In all the chaos of the performance thus far, I had failed to notice that there was a plunger sitting next to the toilet.
Rose picked up what was left of the the Vogue magazine, pulled down her stockings and held it between her cheeks.
Then, using the stick side of the plunger, she jackhammered the magazine into her arsehole while making aggressive eye contact with the audience. It was an act of supreme dominance. She owned that stage, the lights, the chairs, the room, and everyone inside it.
You might want to know how other people were reacting at this point. Frankly, I do not recall. My field of vision had narrowed to what was happening on that stage. If a bomb is exploding in front of you, I suppose, there isn’t much point in admiring the scenery.
With just mangled scraps of that poor Vogue magazine still visible, the performance drew to a close. Rose pulled her stockings up one last time and was met by the same handsome young man from earlier. He took her shit-stained hand and they both disappeared off the side of the stage.
“So yeah, that’s my story about expensive clubs in America,” I said to my shell-shocked date.
“Wow.”
He drank the last of his wine in one gulp, reached for the bottle and poured the dregs into his glass and finished that as well.
“Want to get another drink?” I asked.
He did not.
Then, a few days later, I had the nerve to complain to several friends about being single.
But rather than learning from my mistake, I chose to double down and share this story with yet another unwilling audience. You.
And now, like E. Coli on an expensive New York club floor, you can spread it too.
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