Fat Cat's (320 SW Second St., Fort Lauderdale) is trying to close down at 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, when people standing in the dense crowd on the sidewalk out front start moving in unexpected directions, like ants pouring from a flooded anthill. First, the cops drag off a young, blond man who was starting shit with a seated gentleman. Then, not five minutes later, the club's stocky bouncer rushes a well-dressed fellow in his mid-30s out the door. The ejected one demands to know on what grounds he was thrown out.
Christopher Smith
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"Just go," the bouncer replies.
Not that it matters. The night is over. But instead of tucking his tail and going home, he stands across the street, talking on his cell phone. Then he calls out to the thick-biceped bouncer, "You're dead."
The bouncer runs after him, catches him, and starts pounding him in the street.
Confusion reigns on the asphalt. The X chromosome has gone berserk. We, the soft-bodied femmes, are left to wonder: What is the seething fury that compels some men to avenge an ego injured on such small grounds? How paltry a thing is man?
One thing is clear to me: This isn't what women want when they go out. What do they desire, though? The question has long intrigued me, just as it fascinates many men. Why are exposed slivers of thigh beneath breasts bubbling over tube tops so often accompanied by the ice-queen routine?
So I recently headed out to get the skinny from the red-lipped source.
Round 1
About 11 p.m. on a recent Sunday, a group of three women lingered at the outside bar of Café Iguana (17 S. Fort Lauderdale Beach Blvd., Fort Lauderdale) at BeachPlace. The club was nearly empty inside. The ladies were boozing and cruising for a party, but to what purpose?
I approached them and asked, "What are women looking for when they go out?"
"We're not looking for anything. We're just out to have fun," a girl with red, curly hair replied.
Her short, brunet friend added, "To get fucked up."
Just as the conversation was getting somewhere, Red got all defensive. It seemed my questions threatened her character. "We all have boyfriends," she said, as if it were an assertion of moral rectitude.
A little too much protest, so I put to her, "You have no interest whatever in talking to men?"
"No, not at all," Red huffed, and her face dropped into a deeper scowl. Her friends caught the bitter bug and frowned themselves, and the conversation was over.
All right. All right.
Lesson 1: Red's assertion that women are "just out to have fun" was the most common answer I garnered from the 25 women I spoke to last week. It's an ambiguous statement that makes it difficult to penetrate the essence of female desire. Worse, it is generally accompanied by a cold stare that suggests that it is unpleasant to discuss men in a club setting.
Round 2
Hoping to delve a little deeper, I headed down the stairs of BeachPlace to Fat Tuesdays. The open-air club was thumping like a madhouse with hip-hop and Latin music. Couples were slapping tongues in the corners and dancing next to their high-top tables. I grabbed a couple of the bar's spiked slurpees and mingled with the peeps.
After spinning across the floor with a graceless French Canadian tourist in generic Birkenstocks, I spotted two attractive brunet women standing at the lean-to bar in the center of the club. They're wearing jeans and skinny tanks, looking just picture pickup perfect. I asked them, "What are women looking for when they go out?"
Heather and Monica smiled and looked each other in the eyes to consult, and Heather gave the stock reply: "We're just out to have fun."
"Are you looking to meet men?"
"No," she said, "we're not."
"But if they were sexy enough, then you would, right? I mean, what do you like, big built guys?"
"Yeah," they said, and looked around the bar, seemingly disappointed by the scene.
A man swimming in an XXXL T-shirt with a shaved head and pencil-thin eyebrows approached and gestured that he'd like to dance with one of them, or the other, or me. We all backed away and shook our heads.
I headed to the bar to settle my tab and saw another guy approach the girls.
I sneaked up behind him to check his progress. Monica's brown eyes looked unimpressed.
"What did he say?" I asked.
She looked me squarely in the eyes, paused, and laid her hand on my arm, "Let me just tell you that you are the most beautiful girl in this whole place."
"Wow. Thank you," I replied, taken aback.
"No," she said, "that's what he said to me."
"So," I asked, "how'd that work for him?"
"It didn't, but it was a nice thing to say," she said.
Lesson 2:Flattery is just more words in the ear to women who already know they're attractive. If you're going to pick up hot chicks in booty clubs, have a hot body, and try to appear better-looking than you are.
