wheel! of! hoarders!

tonight i danced for this guy who's a spell-checker for wheel of fortune. they've been "on location" here in portland for the last two weeks. tonight was the last night of their shoot so he was celebrating with some fancy beer and lapdances. after we had some dances, i sat at the bar with him and had a cocktail. he told me his job title is "game show researcher," but he doesn't actually come up with the clues, he just makes sure everything is spelled correctly. zzzzzzz. i asked why they needed an entire person for that job--no offense. he took no offense and said he wondered that, too, but that he tried not to think about it because then he'd get paranoid about getting laid off. makes sense.

after that i danced for a bunch of other random guys, and then for a girl who was visiting from dallas. her pants were all damp in the crotch, and a close-range sniff test revealed that the call was coming from inside the house. so i kept my distance, which was a bummer because she was hot.

the real treasure of the night came pretty late, when a middle-aged guy with fluffy gray hair came to sit at my rack. he was wearing a light-up wheel of fortune lapel pin. he saw that i was dazzled by it. he told me he was down from eugene to attend the taping of wheel of fortune. he's always wanted to be in the audience of wheel of fortune, he said, so tonight was nothing short of a dream come true.

he looked sort of familiar. he didn't look like he was going to spend any money on dances, but the club had pretty much emptied out and i was tipsy and bored. "you look really familiar," i said.

he said, "i was on hoarders."

DING DING DING!

i got super excited, but tried to appear calm. "wow, really?" i said. he looked a little kooky, but otherwise normal. i mean, he looked like any other raggedy middle aged guy looks in oregon. he was wearing a tattered oatmeal LL bean sweater, which up here is basically a standard-issue garment and gives absolutely no clues about its wearer--he could be a hoarder, or an aging hippie, or a banker, or a literature professor. who knows.

"were you on as, like, a neighbor," i asked. "or was it your own house?"

"well," he said. "it was my house."

"oh. okay, well what was the deal, were you a collector? like way too many antiques or something?"

"no. i just collect, er, COLLECTED, a lot of items. my house was pretty filled up. and then some vandals set fire to it, and the fire department came and put it out, and then everything was just...wet."

"wow that sounds like a nightmare! it was probably a lot to deal with, all those wet items."

"you bet."

he went on to tell me that he kept meaning to deal with all those wet items, but just kept not doing it. and years went by. mold colonies developed. new dry items were crowded over the old wet items. it just got worse and worse and people complained and hoarders came out. they were unable to help him get his house under control, but it was a good start, he says.

then he told me how though wheel of fortune was a dream come true, he was a little sad tonight, too, because he found out that he was not going to be able to adopt the cat he'd been admiring.

"i saw her in the window of the pet store, and she looked just like a cat i used to have for ten years, who is now deceased. and there was an instant connection. she had beautiful eyes and a perfect little tuxedo--you know, when they have the little white chest. i really wanted that cat, but the woman at the pet store said i was on a LIST: "do not adopt to these people" list. MY NAME. so there were some bad things that came from having been on hoarders. i'm grateful for the help they gave me, but it was not without its price."

poor guy. he was really nice, though, and super interesting to talk to. after the cat story, though, i decided to quit while we were ahead so i bid him farewell. he took off his wheel of fortune pin and gave it to me! such a sweet gift, especially from a hoarder, because you know when he got home he was probably kicking himself for not having it to add to his refrigerator full of lapel pins. :(