First Posted: 9/9/2013
From my experience, the wildest moments in life often take place when one least expects it. That certainly was the case a few weekends ago at the bar.
It was an early Friday evening, roughly 7:30 p.m., when I was sitting in a bar occupied by just me, my two buddies, and the bartender. We were looking forward to a chill night with good conversation, heavy pours, and rock ballads to slur along to from the over-priced jukebox (One freaking dollar for a song these days?!).
Suddenly, a woman entered the bar.
“I ran out of gas in the parking lot, and I’m broke!” laughed a heavyset woman with missing teeth and, even worse, a New Jersey accent.
“Aw man, that sucks!” replied the bartender. “Do you have anyone coming to help you?”
“Nope,” she answered, before the bartender walked away with his head down, hoping she gave a different response.
She just stood at the bar, solitarily.
A moment later, after being dismissed by my buddies and I, she belted an elongated, powerful sigh, before adding: “Even one dollar in gas would be enough for me to get home if I shifted my car in neutral, and just rolled down the hill to the nearest gas station, I guess.”
I started to feel bad for the woman.
“I’ll give you gas money,” I shouted.
“Really?” she asked.
“Really!” I confirmed. “However, you will have to earn it.”
I told her that if she wanted gas money she had to dance for it, and I had to pick the song. When the woman told me that she couldn’t dance, but she’d try, I added that the entire dance had to be filmed. To some, it might sound like I was taking advantage of this poor woman, but I preferred to look at it as my chance to go viral on YouTube.
By the time the second chorus of “F—k the Pain Away” by Peaches kicked in, it appeared she was getting way too into her performance, as she started unbuttoning her shirt, revealed her leopard-printed bra, and smothered me in the sweatiest motorboat I have ever been a part of – that was captured on camera.
When her performance was interrupted by a homeless man that came inside selling iPhone 4s in a plastic bag, I escaped to the bathroom, where I rinsed my face with cool water to calm down from everything that was going on.
When I left the bathroom, I found the lady that danced her dignity away go from Miley Cyrus at the VMAs to Madonna of the Streets from the Bible, now wiping blood from the face of a man that just came in from getting into a fight down the street.
“She made a friend,” explained the bartender.
The woman wound up going home with him 20 minutes later. I sat at the bar, realizing that just when it seems your night will be trite, if you take time to help a stranger, it can go from running on empty to dancing on empty!
