Hanging With Heather: The Afterparty

Heather rejoined us with a pile of crisp bills, and she handed me about a quarter of the stack to dole out, as I saw fit. I thought this was generous of her. She immediately threw a short stack (say, $4) at the sloth with tatters onstage. It didn’t register a response to which Heather snorted, “If I were on stage, I’d be hanging upside down and doing a caterpillar walk up to the ceiling by now!” I can barely visualize what this entails, but the very notion impressed me. Speaking of Heather’s past, I asked her if there were any songs she liked to take her clothes off to in her pole-swinging days, and she told me that slow-burners like the Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” and George Michael’s “Father Figure” were among her favs. The very notion of Heather Chadwell performing a sultry striptease to “Father Figure” is about all the awesome I can take.

The bump on a stripper pole finally retired, though she did thank Heather – the only person who gave her money during her three-song stint. “That was smart,” said my companion, consummate business woman that she is. The next girl to hit the stage, Jade, was cuter and more wiry, a pert, barely legal thing with natural breasts that should stay that way for as long as possible. She worked harder for her money and Heather rewarded her by periodically sliding her short stacks of ones. “You’re hot!” said skinny little Jade, responding to the dough. She did her thing for a few (with nary a pole acrobatic, sadly – nothing close to a caterpillar walk) and at the end of her pseudo-routine, Heather slipped her a $10. “She was cute,” Heather shrugged. Before leaving the stage, Jade said, “You were my favorite,” most likely referring to Heather’s time on Rock of Love, which had gone unacknowledged up to that point. Heather was impressed by Jade’s ability to play it cool.

After getting off the stage, Jade came by to whisper something in Heather’s ear that prompted Heather to get up and walk to the other end of the stage, where there sat a balding dude with circles under his eyes that were deep enough to suggest that he’d been hanging out court side at the Hustler stage (strip side?) for five years straight. They chatted for a while, before Heather came back and said, “Oh my god. This guy is sending over a $900 bottle of champagne.” Every detail of that sentence sounded suspicious, but in seconds, a waitress was popping a cork while another plopped down a bowl full of whipped cream and strawberries, which I devoured due to a lack of interest from the present company. I, for one, was as hungry as a stripper in Vegas. Oh, and the champagne, Perrier-Jouet Champagne Rose Fleur, easily goes for hundreds online, so the Hustler Club mark-up would not be unreasonable.

Not that we could enjoy it. Before we could even finish our first glasses, they turned the halogens on, blared Frank Sinatra (”My Way,” I think?) and, as if we needed further indication of what was going on, screamed at us to get out. Heather started frantically filling up every glass on our table with the costly bubbly – even the glasses with melting ice and half-finished gin and tonics. Because once it leaves the bottle, it’s no longer wasted. My gramma taught me that! We stumbled out and down the street and Heather reminisced about how nice that guy was to send the champagne. “Uh, we just passed him. You could thank him again,” I pointed out. “Nah. I don’t want the drama,” said Heather. I think she was talking about girl things.

We stopped at Aiden’s other bar, which was only a block away, as if this night could possibly be capped. Soon enough, we were headed cross-town, back to Heather’s hotel in the back of Aiden’s car. At some point, Heather said, “No way in hellballs!” in response to something I said. It was at this point that I realized that I should be taking down all the amazing Heatherspeak that was just evaporating, going to absolute waste. Some of my favorite things she uttered in our short ride:

“He’s a pussbag,” in reference to someone she shared the small screen with.

“You should be filming this menagerie.”

“You’re a goddamn slithering snake.”

“What an awesome c*ckbite you are.”

…and then, self-referentially:

“You should probably c*ckbite…I mean blog it.”

Totally amazing. She also called me a “whore” a few hundred times, but I think she meant it as a term of endearment.

Once we arrived at her hotel, it was clear to me that Heather would need some assistance getting back to her room, so I walked her up. We noticed the smell of weed pervading the floor. Heather, who clearly needed another substance to add to this 5 a.m. menagerie, knocked on the first door we encountered. “Uh, Heather. I think that the smell is coming from down there, where those two people are standing in front of their roo–” Too late. The door to the room she knocked on opened, and we were invited in by a jovial Indian guy and two of his friends. They weren’t smoking weed, but they were just hanging out, listening to the one play music. That guy turned out to be Atif Aslam, a pop singer from Pakistan whose biggest hit (per what his YouTube views tell me) is “Pehli Nazar Mein.”

That’s Atif in the middle. Being a resident of Pakistan, he had no idea who Heather was (though his friend did, repeatedly exclaiming, “Oh my god! I cannot believe it is you!”). Likewise, Heather being a resident of the U.S., had no idea who he was. But it didn’t stop him from playing to us and it certainly didn’t stop us from enjoying it (most notable was a mournful cover of “Billie Jean”). I, of course, recorded a lot of this on just my camera, but midway through the second song, his friend leaned over and said, “Don’t put this on YouTube, man. He really is famous.” If he hadn’t said that, I’d seriously be sharing it right now. Your loss is my private collection’s gain! We hung out for about a half hour, during the course of which time I pulled up Heather’s fight with Daisy during the Rock of Love 2 reunion. “This is why Heather’s famous!” I said, as she cheered herself on. Heh. Soon after, it was time to go and I bid this party goodbye, saying, “It’s been…surreal.” Everyone agreed.

And indeed, it was. The whole night, really. I tucked Heather in, thinking about how her talents extend beyond her capacity for making good TV. Heather Chadwell, you see, makes really good reality, too.

And here’s a gallery of some liquor-pouring exploits at the Town Tavern, without which, we might have never ended up where we did.

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