Just like this, but with no girls or clothes.

In a similar to vein to our Day In the Life series Bwog brings you “A Night in the Life,” where we feature the typical nightlives of Columbia students. The following account is from an anonymous tipster whose power animal may or may not be Marky-Mark. Send in your stories to tips@bwog.com, or use our anonymous tip form. 

Before coming to Columbia I had never gone to a party, gotten drunk, or done anything remotely interesting. So it was a little surprising that on a Tuesday night during my freshman year I found myself stripping on stage, next to my friend, for a hot body contest.

I like to think of myself as a rational, sane person, but sometimes I like to make decisions that some would call “mistakes” or “fuck-ups.” This was one of those YOLO-moments. On a whim, my friend and I decided to go downtown to a gay bar after seeing the Morningsiders perform at Pianos, because nothing says “lets go clubbing” quite like indie folk music. Having had very little to drink and too much time to think, I was starting to get nervous. This was our first venture into New York City’s gay scene, and I was afraid of what we would find (a relative, cousin, etc).

Walking into the club, we immediately noticed that everyone was… old. Like could have been our parents’ age old. So of course we went straight to the bar and ordered drinks with prices that put even the Abbey to shame. It was a little bit later that we ran into the owner of the club, who for the rest of the night proceeded to order us drinks. Looking back, this was probably a terrible and super creepy idea, but we were poor, it was a cash-only bar, and what-the-fuck who cares. After sufficient social lubrication the club was looking a lot better and the urge to dance was kicking in.

 It was around this time that the owner asked if we would be willing to compete in a hot body contest later that night. The winner would receive two tickets to a Ke$ha concert. Now I don’t really like Ke$ha: I don’t like her at all. But I wanted those tickets, and I was willing to shame my body for them.

Fast forward a few hours and it was time for the contest. My friend and I mount the stage (phrasing) in front of the audience with two other guys in possibly their late twenties/early thirties. And then we proceeded to strip. I had been under the impression that this would include just taking off our shirts, and maybe our pants, yah know dancing in our underwear like in movies. I was channeling Risky Business, so it was a good thing I was wearing my trusty Hanes. But no, it all came off, until the only thing between my naked body and a packed club was  a strategically placed hat. Whose hat was it, you ask? I don’t know.

It was around this time that the alcohol started wearing off and the “what-the-hell-am-I-doing” set in. Luckily the contest was over with quickly, because yours truly wowed the fuck out of the crowd and won the contest. I was able to put my clothes on without finding my underwear, (which still disgusts me to this day). After, my friend and I were ushered into a back room where the owner tried to print off our tickets, but to no avail. The printer was broken, and he offered to email them to us, but for some reason we were terrified of him having our email addresses. While sitting in his office we proceeded to deactivate our Facebook accounts from our phones, and delete any and all identifying information. Full on hysteria was setting in since we had noticed that people had videotaped us.

After promising to come back the next day to pick up the tickets we got the fuck out of there. On the subway ride back to campus we debated the pros and cons of stuffing our faces with Xanax while still drunk because of the terrifying realization that our short stripping stint could be on the Internet. We promised we would run away to New Hampshire and live our lives in a log cabin where no one could find us.

Once on campus we passed on the pills and went to bed instead, shaking with the excitement and shame of having gone off campus and done something that we will never tell our kids about. We did not go back to the bar the next day, and we never got the Ke$ha tickets (the bar has since closed). But at least I did have a good excuse for why I didn’t do the LitHum reading for my 9am class.

The moves via Shutterstock