A fistful of Pez

On Saturday night I find myself standing with Ashesh by the bar of the Sapphire Lounge. Fantastic music - R & B, reggaeton - was pumping over the system, but we had no women to lure onto the dance floor. There were a couple of bachelorette parties going on, as evinced by the preponderance of white girls of a certain age, and an excess of woo-ing, which you can usually escape at Sapphire (as well as girls dancing with their arms over their heads).

Ashesh and I were talking and suddenly two girls were standing before us. They were looking at us expectantly and I felt a moment of pride. The tall blonde who looked like the muscles in her face weren't entirely under her control was covering Ashesh, and I had the slightly mousier brunette (maybe she would be smart-cute in the light?). Well, well, I thought. But of course. And how are you ladies tonight? They were both emissaries of the bachelorette parties, and they were both wearing candy necklaces. "Bite off a candy . . . a dollar?" was all I could hear over the music. We sort of dumbly agreed and I soon found myself gingerly trying to bite off a single candy from the strand, while fastidiously avoiding touching the girl's skin and trying not to snap the twine. She didn't smell particularly good. I finally succeeded and was unclear about what kind of transaction was taking place until Ashesh took out his wallet and gave his girl a dollar. I did the same and they wandered away. "That was weird," I said. "That was not worth a dollar." "I got her hair stuck in my teeth," Ashesh said.

As the night continued more and more girls came up asking us for a dollar to bite a piece of candy from their necklaces. What was this money for? And wasn't a dollar kind of steep for such a wretched prize? The girls were sadder and sadder as the night progressed. The more prudish ones wouldn't wear the necklace, so one came up with the whole thing wadded into a damp napkin. One twirled it around her finger, and another dropped hers onto the floor and then picked it up and offered it to us: "Do you want a piece of candy for a dollar sorry it fell on the floor?" They completely divorced the "sexy" aspect of the process, and thus bled it dry of the last shred of appeal. Would I pay a dollar to take a Pez from somebody's sweaty fist? No, madam, I would not.

These were not sexy girls but they were trying to be. Near the end of the night the eventual bride came up and asked if we would sit down and hold her drink between our legs. It was the saddest thing in the world. We both said no, of course, but then we soon saw her consuming her drink from between the legs of a random seated guy, a veritable piece de resistance for the evening. Woo!