The drive up to Park City was rather uneventful considering the initial shock of seeing a harlot walk out and enter my friend’s car. We talked a little about ourselves and started joking around more as we got closer to our destination. Fortunately for the scantily clad women with us we found a parking spot right in front of the club. The girls spent another ten minutes or so getting ready and debating over trivial tasks such as bringing in a coat (for the 15 foot walk to the front door), leaving a purse in the car (also, our car was 15 feet from the door), applying chap stick, and applying perfume. The combined time it would have taken a normal person to complete these tasks and make these decisions was 42 seconds give or take, our entourage complicated these simple tasks by deliberating for a full ten minutes of personal agony for me. As we finally approached the front door to the club, greetings were given to the bouncers and we were ushered inside. I was subjected to only a visual frisking at this point and made my way into the club.
As I entered the club bar area my mind reverted to the many episodes of Jersey Shore that I had watched in anticipation of this moment. I expected the following things from my club experience that seemed standard in every Jersey Shore club excursion.
1) At one point there would be multiple women dancing on tables or bars (Coyote Ugly also contributed to this delusion)
2) There would be at least two people beyond any point of coherence due to inebriation that would fall down at some point during the night.
3) Every bouncer that I came into contact with would give me mad props and I’d say something cool to them that they would immediately courtesy laugh at
4) A girl and guy making out with no regard for any other living (or dead) person
5) The wild card was that I would see a guy kissing two girls at the same time
Now these are all things that I legitimately expected to see at some point because of my avid watching of Jersey Shore. None of these is something that I necessarily hoped to see (who I am kidding, I wanted to experience all of these things), but I did fully expect to see something of this sort during the night. I will say now that I did not see any of these things happening during the course of the night and was a little bit upset by my misfortune. However, there were other things that I did see, but first I will go back to our entourage.
As was expected the girls that we arrived with quickly ditched us after we had been there for 15 seconds. They seemed to know everyone and started taking an insane amount of pictures. I fully believe that nearly 50 pictures were taken over the course of the next two hours. To put this in perspective, I recently spent a full 9 days in Europe and managed to take 28 pictures the entire week. This is most likely because it was freezing and I hated taking out my camera, but still 28 pictures in Europe. We were in a dark club with nothing cool to see at all. I couldn’t understand why the girls wanted to take so many pictures of themselves dressed in such revealing outfits. I can understand one or two pictures, but there were enough pictures for multiple albums. It was like they were documenting the fact that they had no self-respect for their future dead beat husbands and families. Congratulations to them.
One of the girls that we came with was expecting a boy that she had a crush on to be at the club that night. However, she often varied from her original desire to see him. Her reasoning went like this
1) hope that he comes
2) hope that he doesn’t come
3) hope that he comes so that she could ignore him
4) hope that another boy she liked would show up so the first boy would be jealous
5) hope that she could go home with the first boy
6) hope that she could go home with the second boy
7) hope that the first boy wouldn't show up
8) hope that she could dance on a table and kiss two guys at once
Ok, I made that last one up. But claiming that this girl was fickle, was a gross understatement. She was almost as bad as Brad on the Bachelor. Every time that Brad goes on a one on one date with a girl, he almost always gives them a rose and says that he is way into them and that he is excited with how things are going. This man can not pull his emotions away from rationale thinking at all. I guess now that I think about it, he is just like every guy, so I suppose that I cannot fault him too much.
About halfway through her deliberations the first boy did show up and proceeded to grab her friend’s butt, hit on various other girls, ignore her, and then eventually talk her into staying the night with him. This last part was especially excruciating. We had planned to leave at 12:00 because of some early morning church obligations for myself. The girls pleaded for 1:00 and my friend and I relented. At 1:00 the girls showed up and said they had to say goodbye to their friends. 1:20 came and one girl came by and said she had to find the other girls (we could clearly see them dancing on stage by the DJ as she claimed she couldn’t find them). At 1:45 we finally corralled them into the car and were about ready to go, but the one who had so many deliberations about the boy said that she had to go back into the club for a second. She didn’t answer our phone calls or come back out for 20 more minutes. This was the point when I started cursing her out to her friend, with my friend more than equaling my creative swears. Finally the girl showed up outside. She came to the car, said she was staying, and walked back inside. I was furious. Her plan had obviously been to stay much later at the club, but she had the gall to drag us along for such a long period of time with no intent of intimating what her true desires were. By the time we got home (a snow storm had just come in and slowed our drive home) it was 3:30 in the morning. Only Pauly D can change my idea of clubs now. I still think he is one of the coolest guys that ever graced the club scene and I pledge to continue my club affiliation vicariously through him.
There were a few things that I did enjoy during the night and here they are in no particular order:
1) A man that looked exactly like Billy Zane and for all I know it was his cousin or maybe even son, spitting image
2) A large woman in a bright red dress that we simply referred to as The Big Red Machine, I was mildly entertained when we talked one of the girls into getting her picture taken with The Big Red Machine
3) Drinking half of a red bull and feeling like my heart was going to explode, I would be an awful drinker
4) A kid getting tackled at my feet by three bouncers and one of them cuffing the kid and another taking a shot to his gut as they dragged him out of the club, no one knew what the kid had done, but it was funny
5) An older gentleman wearing crappy skate shoes from the late nineties and bobbing his head to the beat of the music for most of the night, I’m pretty sure he was so liquored up that he had no idea where he was
6) A cool kid walking by my friend and simply saying, “you’ve got a grabber”, we later learned that this was when a girl leaves and then comes and finds you multiple times throughout the night and often drags you along wherever she goes. Thanks cool kid!
7) An indian kid who looked like a gypsy shaman indian who was actually wearing a headband with a feather and indian looking vest
8) An Asian kid doing a sweet break dance before it was broken up by the bouncers
Let me now explain how this was my personal liberty jail. As Joseph received some of the greatest revelation ever known to man he was in a dark, awful jail with people who hated him. I wasn't in quite such a circumstance, but I did have clear thoughts as I sat in the back of that club. I knew that I was grateful for the knowledge that I had been given of the restored gospel and that I should do nothing that would disqualify from the wonderful blessings of a Christ centered life. I walked out of that place feeling empowered to choose the right and make the most out of my life in whatsoever situation I would find myself. I believe that sometimes the sweetest thoughts can come in places you would never think. This different perspective really helped me to see how great my life is and how great it is to have the gospel in it.
