...In which our heroine does the classy thing.

I had a kickass 19th birthday. My friends here provided a better day than (most) of my high school chaps, I have to say. Samson bought me a dozen goregous roses, Ben bought my dinner, and the roomies got me an Amazon gift card.

The whole weekend was pretty awesome. On Thursday my mom mailed up "A Birthday in a Box" complete with party hats, cake, and balloons from most of my previous 18 birthdays, and a couple gift cards for Chipoltle and Subway. Friday night my meal of choice was White Palace, where we all wore Little Mermaid and Snow White party hats and had a fantastically greasy dinner. Then we headed back here, did cake, and played Apples to Apples.

Of course the real treat of the weekend was Cassie getting to come up. I was up all night Friday since she got in at 5:30 Saturday morning. Even the security guard remarked as to our joy when I got her from the lobby.

My latest fascination besides Seth Rogen has been anteaters. Weird, I know, but I think they are the cutest things and want one for a pet, which you can do. So Cassie, being the best on picking up on these things, adopted a giant anteater for me from the WWF. I now am the proud savior on an anteater in the wild, and this one. His name is Boris.

Cassie and I spent a lovely day in Belmont after lunch at Tamarind, the amazing Asian place around the corner. I miss spending time with her--we have such a unique bond and can totally anticipate each other's ideas. It was a good birthday--no one got alcohol poisoning in my living room, and I didn't declare my love for anyone, which were the high(low)lights of last year.

The real event of the weekend was Saturday night when I did something totally sophisticated, along with Cassie, Emily, Samson, Ben, and Lane.

We went to a strip club. The Admiral Theatre to be exact.

Ever since I turned 18, I've wanted to go to a strip club, simply because I am a curious person. I wanted to see the entire atmosphere, from the girls to the patrons to what kind of music they played. So we ventured way out into the north part of the city, on an insane train and bus ride that felt like it took two hours.

Our Heroine's Observations on a Strip Club:

-The dancers were far more normal looking than I thought. They had real boobs for the most part, and a couple were actually pretty.

-The Admiral was far too classy to be totally fun. None of the strippers touched the patrons, even in the nude lap dances that occured two feet away from us on the floor of the place.

-No poles = no bueno. I wanted to see some really cool acrobatics on the poles. However, stripper heels are intense, and the wearers are to be comended for walking around on seven inches of lucite.

-No one goes to a strip club to see girls dance to Tom Petty's "Running Down a Dream." NIN and Tool were nice to hear, but not a single stripper made an effort to dance in any fashion to the music. They just kind of gyrated on their own.

-Call them trashy, call them sluts or whatever, and while many of them are, strippers have more cajones then I ever will. Putting your no-no parts on a stranger is something that must take time to get used to.

I'm glad I went for the experience. I wasn't weirded out by it at all, although I wished for more enthusiasm on the part of the dancers. It was interesting, and I found myself looking at their faces more often then not.

Between the club and something my mom said to me, I had a real mind check about getting older. Some of the strippers looked younger than any of us girls and had to be barely 18. I really wonder what happened in their lives to lead them to the Admiral. I wanted to talk to them, find out what drives them, how they wake up and look at themselves in the mirror.

My mom was talking to me on Friday and offhandedly said, "When I was 19, I was already with dad." That is crazy. My parents got married when my mom was 20 and my dad was 21, which is next year. I guess its the generation gap, but getting married in a year seems like the most bizarre idea in the world. I don't even know what I'm like on my own yet...and to be married, wow. That was a shock to even comprehend.