Bonitas Redemption
So, if you’ve read my previous reviews of this place, you’d know I have a complicated relationship with it…
It is, for all intents and purposes, a shithole. BUT just because it’s a shithole doesn’t mean it can’t be fun, right?
I drove into the pothole infested parking lot, where you get the option to park on the side of the road or in the lot in the dirt for $5… which, if it’s bright, sunny, and dry like a true Texas day, is fine. But if it’s rainy and muddy… good luck! Still better than paying $10 in the proper parking lot, though…
After you park, you still gotta pay the entry fee, which is $15 plus maybe a $1 tip to the door girl who giggled in surprise when I told her to keep the extra cash. There’s also usually a stern security guy out there who once almost turned me back because he thought I was drunk (I was sober as fuck!).
I was dressed like a slob by Dallas standards, sticking to my plain Middle American inclinations which is fine for this place because it doesn’t apparently have a strict dress code.
Just to meet the requirements for this post, I’ll quickly describe the interior: shitty and dark. In all my years, I’ve never been down to the border with our enchanted neighbor to the south, but I imagine the vibe is quite similar.
There are three dance stages with poles, and a “box” in the corner with a slab of wood for “private” dances. Note the quotations.
The girls on the satellite stages never look particularly enthused, as if it’s all charade before the meat and potatoes of the dances.
In days past, I’ve come in and all the girls start clambering for your attention, which is probably instructed by the managers who know their natural inclination is to sit on their phones with their friends.
Especially for us gringos, they can be doubly entrenched if they suspect we don’t know the tongue of their ancestors and recently departed motherland.
Don’t take it personally, boys!!
This time, I came in and there was no reaction. My social anxiety induced me to make a quick sprint to the booth, where I was told I had to move to the smaller tables, which I did.
The servers these days are keen to let you sit there without a drink if you buy a dance. So I refused the $10 beer and proceeded to fish…
I have a bad habit of just going with the first dancer who presents herself to me, but this day I was in a financial surplus and willing to take one girl just to show the others I’m willing to pay and not just gawk.
This 30-something, I’d assume Cuban woman, approaches and asks for a dance. She wasn’t thick; she was pudgy. Maybe like a 6/10, but she’d do for my strategy.
We get in the booth, and she’s off to the races. Not a great dance, but a lot of energy. Before long, she lets go of all pretenses and signals she wants more with her words, grown woman that she was, in unflowery language.
Since she was just a warm-up dance, I declined, but asked if she had friends, and she lit up and said, “Sí!”
We walk out of the booth, and I’m told to pay a fellow sitting in front of the booth $25
She walks me over to two of her “friends” or business partners or whatever, and then tries to get me to pay for a three girl dance.
I looked at her blankly and veered the conversation, with my limited Spanish, toward a dance each with each of her friends, to which they happily agreed.
I take the first friend much younger than my first dancer, and much thicker and well proportioned with a huge ass… might’ve been fake but I couldn’t tell, and it looked so I didn’t care.
Her dance was as energetic as the first dancer’s, but this time I too was more “excited,” due to her being more attractive and triggering an almost ancestral reaction to her curves.
She leaned over me as I whispered sweet nothings in Spanish which, it was quite obvious, she enjoyed.
Like her friend, she too wanted more, but I politely declined… and we proceeded to exit as I paid the booth guy $60 and grabbed the final friend.
She was darker; I thought she might’ve been Black but she told me confidently she was “Indio.” Not as curvy as the second dancer, but still pretty.
We go to the booth, and her dances were more stylized. She leaned all the way back, forcing me to catch her. We looked into each other’s eyes smiling, and I was feeling mass simp. I told her ten dollar tip for a kiss, to which she agreed and gave me a deep kiss.
She didn’t ask me for more like the first two, and feeling sensationally satisfied simply by the electric dances alone, I walked out with her, paid my final $60, and left the building pretty happy with myself.
Best trip to bonitas I’ve had in a while….”more” not even needed