There are over 100 nuclear power plants in the United States and every sixteen to eighteen months these reactors need to be shut down, the containment buildings cracked, drain and decon the reactor pool, and replace the spent fuel rods. This process (along with repairing everything that atrophied during the sixteen to eighteen months) takes anywhere between six week to three months.
When you’re in the nuke business, you live the life of a gypsy. You work three months at one facility, find a new job at a different plant, work a couple more months, and move on to the next. This lifestyle affords you to meet a lot different people from a lot of different places.
You aren’t allowed to take your security clearance or hard hat home at the end of the day, you had to check them into security, so it was customary to write your name or draw a design on your hard hat so it was easy to spot when you showed up to work amongst racks of everybody else’s head protection.
When I was working at the Millstone plant in Connecticut in the late 80’s, I met a cat named $panky. On his hard hat, in the shittiest writing I had ever seen, was “$panky”. Yes, spelled with a dollar sign no less. He was in his fifties I’d guess, and anybody that has a dollar sign in their nick name must be a real class act. His real name was Ed, but in a very short period of time I found out why he got the nickname “$panky”. He and I became friends much like an impressionable young kid would follow around a circus side show act out of pure fascination.
His stories of his exotic sexual exploits were of the stuff of myth that I never knew existed, and if I had known, for the life of me, I can’t imagine why anyone would try them. It was morbid curiosity on my part I guess. This guy was so deviant he had participated in games called “Silk Knots”, “Copper Kettle Witch”, and the most repugnant and gruesome “Fly Races”. I’m not going to go into detail as to what these bizarre acts refer to, but let’s just say Dirty Sanchez couldn’t touch $panky.
$panky and I became friends with a guy named Brian. He was pretty screwed up too, so between the two of them I was thoroughly entertained.
The three of us ended up renting a house together, and it wasn’t too long before $panky found a whore house close by called “The Hidden Valley Family Spa”. He and Brian went a few times and came back with stories of their store bought conquests. I didn’t go because I was 19 and the whole business intimidated me.
They didn’t spend a lot either. Brian got what he was looking for $35 and $panky got his version of “Around the World” for a mere $20. I finally buckled and said “Next time you guys go, you gotta take me. I need to see what this is all about.” As you’d have guessed it, we went that night.
Here’s how “The Hidden Valley Family Spa” operated. You enter this small house and walk down a hallway. At the end of this short hallway there is a glass window ticket booth style. There was a slot between the counter top and the bottom edge of the plate glass to slide money back and forth and a 3 inch hole at face level for the patron and the ticket lady could converse through. There was a “room menu” posted: $35 for 30 minutes with a room with a hot tub, $60 for and hour in a room with a sauna, etc. (I went for 30 minutes in a hot tub room for $35 – eeww – I was naive) Once you paid for the room you picked, the ticket lady would give you a coupon representing what you rented. You were then led to what can be best described as a living room where several ladies are sitting around making small chit chat and trying to include you to break the ice I guess.
Once you’ve decided on your “date”, you hand her the coupon and she leads you to the room you rented. She asked you to leave the tip on the bedside table, disrobe, and take a quick shower (all the rooms had showers).
Brian and $panky picked their “dates” rather quickly and were lead away with the lady of their choice to the room they rented.
“Oh, shit! Now it’s just me sitting in a room full of working girls!” How intimidating.
I did pick out the one that was most attractive to me, but didn’t have the nerve to hand her my coupon.
30 minutes went by and Brain and $panky emerged. $panky asks, “So Kappl, how was it?”
He then looked at Brian and said “I told you he wouldn’t take the whole thirty minutes! Bwahahahaha!”
I was so embarrassed to admit I didn’t have the guts to go through with it. Brian and $panky were laughing so hard they both had tears in their eyes, and I think a couple of the ladies were snickering. Comments like “Is this your first time honey?” and “Aw, how cute.”
I was mortified to say the least. As I was walking out the door past the ticket booth lady, she says, “Don’t worry baby, hang on to that coupon. Use it as a rain check, just come back when you’re ready. It’ll still be good at the “Hidden Valley Family Spa”.
$panky says, “Great, lets come back next week! Heh!”
I most definitely didn’t want to come back for another dose of raggedy sweet humiliation. I would have rather just walked away leaving my $35 and call it good, but I would have looked like a bigger pussy than I already was. I knew I was going to be pushed into this again – soon.
The next day when I showed up at the plant, there were photocopied flyers taped to walls, light poles, inside the honey buckets, inside the lunch trailer, and in the control room that read “Kappl is raffling off a rain check to a whore house for $1 dollar each. Please see $panky to purchase tickets.”
I tore down as many as I could find, but apparently it wasn’t good enough – people were laughing their asses off everywhere I went scurrying around looking for more flyers. As it turns out, nobody bought a ticket – I fell victim to a “$panky Pranky”.
The inevitable happened. Within the week, $panky drug me back to the “Spa”. I was nervous as hell, and didn’t want to go, but for some reason I felt I had too. I kind of felt like Billy Bibbit in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.
Once there, I bit the bullet and handed the rain check to the prettiest girl there. She stood up, smiled, and said, “Follow me.”
We walked down a hallway to a dimly lit room that had a twin bed, a shower, and a hot tub.
“Leave the tip on the table, take a shower and wait for me in the hot tub.” she said.
She walked out of the room and I placed two twenty dollar bills on the table. If Brian and $panky can be pleased for $35 and $20 respectively, $40 is a generous tip I surmised.
When I got out of the shower the cash was gone.
I soaked in the hot tub for about five minutes when she emerged from behind a white curtain wearing a cheap ass negligee which was probably ordered from a Fingerhut catalog.
She said, “Come get into bed with me.”
I didn’t want to do it, too nervous, completely flaccid. I thought I’d look even more like a wuss if I didn’t. I didn’t want to go through the “First time honey?” or “How cute.” again.
I manned up (as much as I could), got out of the hot tub in all my “not so” manly glory and dried off. I don’t think the November Pacific Ocean could have shrunk my junk any smaller on that day.
I climbed under the covers with her. She was warm and soft. I tried to kiss her.
“Kissing isn’t part of the program. It’s too personal.” she snapped.
“This is the first time I’ve been in a place like this, I don’t know the rules, sorry.”
“Well, your friends know the rules. You should have got some tips from them.”
This romantic exchange really got me in the mood. She starts her handy work and it’s not working for me – too stilted, mechanical, and staged. I wanted to evaporate.
When she got tired, she said, “OK, your turn.”
“Huh?” I thought. I paid $75 to do myself!
When I finally got myself to the point where something might be possible, she sheathed me and put on rubber gloves and finished my off. It was humiliating, miserable, and as awkward as could have been.
Off come the gloves, the condom, she wiped me down, told me to get dressed, and showed me the door.
Everybody cheered as I walked through the living room of the whore house. If they only knew what really happened.
In retrospect, I should have hung on to the rain check as reminder of boyish hyjinks.
Several weeks later, $panky disappeared. Five days went by before he showed up.
“Where in the hell have you been?” I asked.
“I was on a date.”
“Sounds pretty expensive.”
“Nope, I picked up a hooker with a 6-pack of Colt 45 and we hung out in my van.”
Apparently, this was a personal achievement for $panky. He had never snagged a whore for so long for that cheap. He bragged about it.
The next morning in the bathroom I found the Nix crab remover kit with the fine toothed comb. I moved out that day.
That was 23 years ago and it still leaves a deep scare to this day.
*Shudder*
