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Seattle road trip: getting pounded at the Lava Lounge

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(Originally published under the title “The Pounder” at Click by Lavalife.com Feb. 25 2008.)

We were at the Lava Lounge when we caught the Pounder’s eye. Actually, I spotted her latest victim first, a punch-drunk-looking dude swaying near the bar. “What happened to you?” I asked.

“She gave me a massage,” he said, nodding at a young redhaired woman at his side. The girl smiled, then placed her order. “Two Rum Donkeys,” she told the bald, bespectacled bartender, who looked like a featherless bird. Then she eyed M. and I. “Make it four.”

It was Friday night, and we were in Seattle. The five-hour (counting border delays and stops at Walgreen’s) road trip was a more or less spontaneous decision made that afternoon when my L.A. trip was postponed. M. and I love our Seattle trips – the open road, the cheap and plentiful alcohol, the hours spent picking apart other people’s lifestyles. One glimpse of a happy-looking hipster couple with a baby stroller could fuel a three-hour rant.

Seattle road trip 2008

This trip was a little bit different in that neither of us was undergoing an emotional crisis. Not like, say, New Year’s Eve last year, when we found ourselves at an abysmal “’80s party” in Capitol Hill with some socially inept Microsoft types, and tried to make conversation while waiting for our respective hopeless causes to call. Or the time before that, a drunken debauch at the height of summer when we were, yep, waiting for our respective hopeless causes to call.

The Lava Lounge in Belltown, Seattle. Courtesy do206.com.

No, this was a care-free trip, more or less, so we didn’t object when the crane-like bartender poured a mixture of Malibu and Captain Morgan’s rum with pineapple and orange juice into four glasses. M. and I toasted our new American friends – who, immediately after downing their Rum Donkeys, got into an argument about how much the guy should tip the bartender ($15, claimed the girl, who had paid for the drinks). The guy left and the girl stayed to talk to us. Her name was Elizabeth, she was from New Orleans by way of Tennessee, and she worked in Seattle as server. While she talked she pushed her pillowy bosom into M., then positioned herself behind my friend and travelling companion to deliver a shoulder-and-back massage that made M.’s eyes pop out. 

“Oh yeah,” said M., taking a sip of her Jameson (the Rum Donkey long gone by then). I was next. Elizabeth the Pounder violently pushed my head down on the bar and began pounding my back and shoulders with her meaty ham sandwiches. Now I was finding out why the guy had looked so shell-shocked – she was using my back like a punching bag. “You’re so tense,” she said.

“Well, I had a girlfriend for two-and-a-half weeks,” I said, only half-joking.

“Doesn’t he ever relax?” she asked M. Then she leaned into me to ask, “This might be a weird question. But do you love yourself?

Okay, enough was enough – a good pounding was one thing, but I didn’t come to the Lava Lounge for psychoanalysis. We finished our drinks and headed back to the hotel, the always welcoming and budget-priced Moore.

When in Seattle

We spent the next day, a warm, cloudless Saturday, engaging in Seattle-ish activities – shopping at Nordstrom, lunch at McCormick’s, browsing at Elliott Bay Book Company, oohing and aw-ing an R. Crumb exhibit at the Frye Art Museum, filling up on the happy hour bar menu at Brasa. In the evening, we headed east towards Capitol Hill to Neumo’s. Indie-rock act the Mountain Goats was halfway through its set when we squeezed into the packed bar, its unventilated air hot and heavy with the scent of hipsters in Value Village wear.

And who should we run into on our way back to the hotel but the Pounder herself, just off work from the restaurant next door, sitting at the bar of the Six Arms brewpub. We sat with her and she told us all about her Mexican boyfriend before catching a ride home with us in our cab. After we dropped her off M. and I both agreed – the Pounder was a nice enough girl, but she was way more fun when she was drunk, horny, and pounding our backs.

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