For more-than-obvious purposes, I have kept this story under wraps for over a decade. Of course, it deals with someone who is—well...was, but we will get to that—able to sue my ass for more than I’ve ever been worth. Further, the club in which this saga occurred is closed down now and the building is clearly not going to be re-opened as a club. So, let us return to The Bada Bing* for a holiday story that will go down as either the most depressing tale of the season or the best karmic justice ever served—depending on your take.
To provide some background, Bada Bing was a small cub, with one stage and a handful of regulars that kept the place open. Located between a working-class area and a more upscale part of town, the club was in no way "upscale" on its own, but it also wasn’t a slum—think the bar from Cheers with strippers. Most of the dancers had more to offer in the way of personality and charm than they did pole skill or "wow" factor. Again, none of the girls were untalented or ugly, but they worked more as pretend girlfriends than they did as showgirls. This club was basically one step above a dive bar, but it was home for a lot of folks.
Enter John Doe*, a regular who I first met while he was dropping twenties on a girl, like they were nothing. I asked the bartender if he was a high roller and she told me that he was, in fact, a lawyer. So, being scummy myself, I asked him if I could play some song selections or do any favors...you know, out of the goodness of my own heart. He asked me to play some of his favorite jams, reached for a tip and realized he was out of cash. "Shit," John said, "I gotta get back to my place and hope the wife isn’t there. When I return, I’ll buy you a beer." I paid the comment no mind and went on with my shift. A few hours later, John was back and he made good on his promise.
We developed a customer-DJ friendship, but as we did, it became clear that John was not quite the high roller he claimed to be. For instance, he’d always start with a top-shelf shot and make a big deal out of it. But, as the night went on, he’d slowly switch to well vodka with no ice. Lap dances turned into promises to buy lap dances, which were rarely made good on. As far as music selection, John always went out of his way to request the absolute newest jams, irrespective of genre. New Snoop Dogg song? He was on it. Brand new Nickelback? Play that, DJ. But, again pointing out the shadiness of this guy, every time I’d play yacht rock on break, John would lose his shit with happiness. It’s almost as if he was hiding something. He did this, to constantly keep dancers on the brink of a financial windfall, which never came. You know that scene in Idiocracy, where the prostitute keeps telling her customer to wait, so he continues to pay her and says, "Oh baby, I can wait so hard," without ever getting laid? It was the opposite of that—when it was all said and done, I think John owed every stripper in the club about a grand. A lot of, "Oh, I didn’t know this counted as a dance" and "I’m just standing at the rack, but I can move if a tipping customer comes in." What a guy.
Something else was up with John, outside of the club. I guessed this may have been the case, the first time John arrived at our door on foot (and not in his then-current-year BMW). "Oh, man, I had to walk here today, because my partner has the car." Spoiler alert: John was using the term "partner" to describe his wife, years before Portland made it trendy to do so, but at the time, I assumed he meant one of his lawyer partners from Smith, Smith, Goldstein & Doe. I pondered about why a law firm would be sharing cars, like it was a pizza delivery joint. Again with the spoilers, his wife had taken it. But, he barely brought her up, so I had no idea in what context he meant "taken."
John continued to come to the club earlier and earlier in the day, while staying until close. This shifted from weekends to weekdays and, eventually, nearly full time. One morning, after realizing that I had left my laptop charger at the club, I arrived when the club opened, to see that John was sleeping in a car—not the same car he used to have, but a beat-up, used model. I assumed he was drunk from the night before and paid it no mind. But, later that night, he informed me that his wife had kicked him out of the house. "Yeah, my kids are pretty pissed off at me," John said.
"You have kids?" I asked. He had never mentioned them.
"Yeah, one’s your age." John was only about fifteen years my senior, so there’s that.
I decided to switch up the conversation, because reminding a lawyer on a downward, alcoholic spiral of his soon-to-be-gone family during the holidays isn’t exactly selling a fantasy. Eventually, our chatting led to the topic of music. At the time, I was licensing a bunch of DJ mixes to various artists and needed some legal representation. John offered to help me out at no charge—all I had to do was buy him a beer or two and maybe loan him some money for tipping the girls. Fair enough, I thought and handed over some important legal stuff to John. Why not, right? It couldn’t hurt, could it?
Eventually, John’s world become visibly chaotic and we were all roped into his sob story. Every dancer, bartender and regular customer was hearing about how his family had disowned him, how his kids hated him, yadda yadda. Well, as it turns out, Jane Doe*, John’s "partner" a.k.a. wife, had no idea that her husband was spending every night at the strip club, with her money and their kid’s money. Yup. The show-off attorney, who had made our club his regular drinking hole, had been literally embezzling from his own family, during the holidays, to buy lap dances. Aside from the obvious piece-of-shittery that John was engaging in ("Sorry, kids, no presents for you—daddy gave your money to Destiny..."), John was coming to our club and not, ya know, at least traveling a mile or more from his front door, to a place where the lap dances are actually worth it. The balls on this guy were huge—I mean, if you’re going to steal from your family, so you can give money to half-rate dancers and spend the rest on warm shots, at least do it a few blocks away from your kids’ bus stop.
One day, John disappeared. Then, about a year later, my DJ mixes and beats ended up on several, random Chinese websites that were charging a pretty penny. Soon after I discovered this, I received a bill in the mail for, oh, $50,000. This bill was attached to a law firm, so I called them and asked about the charges.
"Were you one of John’s clients?" a lady asked.
"Yes, I was," I told her.
"Okay, we’ll send you an email. Print it out and sign it, then you should be good."
"Can I ask what happened here?"
"Well, sir," the lady on the other end continued," John was involved in some things and I’m not at liberty to..."
I interrupted her. "Just give me his first and last name, please."
And, she did. Cocaine distribution. Embezzlement. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Identity theft. The whole nine— this guy had a history that would make even the worst people look good in comparison. Suddenly, I no longer felt bad for the guy, and in a sick sort of way, was glad to find out (through mutual friends) that he had been locked up for some white-collar-type crimes, which also got him kicked out of his law firm.
Now, readers might be wondering, how the fuck is this a good story? Where is the moral? How does this fit into a holiday theme??? Well, my friends, we live in divisive times. Political polarization, gender warfare, economic and climate crises...hell, even Ducks and Beavers fans can’t agree on anything. But, when’s the last time you’ve heard a good "lawyer gets destroyed" story? Perhaps I’m jaded, but it makes me extremely happy to know that every so often, we hear the type of riches-to-rags story that we can all take pleasure in knowing happened to, well, a lawyer. This guy scammed his family, our dancers, and to an extent, my fleeting DJ career. To know that he’s sleeping in a prison cell while the rest of us drink cocoa and look past our differences, well, that’s the Christmas spirit.
Happy holidays.
