Robert is a big man, not particularly tall, but with a substantial gut. It's more than a gut. It looks large enough to sustain life without Robert's internal utilities - blood supply and the like - but for now, it's still Robert's gut.
Midnight on Saturday night and Robert is at his usual place, directing traffic in the car park at Mons Venus. The small area in front and the smaller area to the side of the club are full, so newcomers park at the pizza place next door. I sense some secret arrangement for this, the kind of secret arrangement that surrounds strip clubs everywhere. Beneath the surface there's way more going on than you can see.
I turn up with my group of ten revelers in a stretch limousine. They're drunk: we have just come from the Seminole Hard Rock Casino and Hotel (to give it it's full title.) More accurately, the men are drunk. The women are variously between sobriety and sleep.
As my charges head off to ogle womanflesh, Robert approaches and introduces himself. Yes, we have met before, but I'm not sufficiently regular to merit a piece of his memory. He eyes me up and down, and politely requests a quick removal of my car-park-blocking hunk of metal. It's midnight, you see, peak time at a Tampa strip club, and it's no time for damn limousines to block things up.
Keeping out of the way is part of the driver's art. Robert quickly assesses that I am on his side, and helps make sure I don't scrape the beast while I am backing and filling. I end up in front of the pizza place, close enough to keep my people happy, far enough away to keep Robert happy.
One of my couples comes back to the limo. They don't want to pay the twenty dollar cover. Last time they were here, they say, women entered free. A sign of the times, I think. But he was in a mood, and wanted to play. I didn't tickle his funny bone, so he started with Robert. The man was a happy drunk, and wanted to make body contact. Rubbing elbows, elaborate ghetto handshakes, bear hugs. Everything was fair game. But then he started in a little too rough. I could see Robert's brain working, fighting the instinct to knock this dope to the pavement, overcoming that thought with the logic that he's just another idiot customer wanting to bond with his fellow man.
By wrestling the car-park guy at Mons Venus.
The couple decided they would pay the forty dollars to watch the girls inside, so left Robert and me behind. I watched Robert in the gaps between pages of my book. He had the look of a man who has seen much.
