I have a birthday coming up next month. “Is it an important one?” I was asked by a guest at a birthday party I was covering on Saturday night. I did not know that the important birthdays have a zero in there: 10, 20, 30, 40, etc.
Birthdays are weird to me, all Walt Whitman celebrating the self. So, I traditionally celebrate Bob Dylan’s birthday on May 24 (something important happened that day) rather than my own birthday a few days later (the jury is still out). So, neither Dylan (who turns 67) nor myself (41) have an important birthday this year. And, neither do the two local publicists Alissa Kelly and Sara Gorgon, who both were turning 31 at the party I was covering. In addition to the proximity of their birthdays, both women regret how they handled last year when they had an important birthday, the big 3-0.
For her important birthday, Kelly turned 30 so uneventfully that: “I honestly don’t remember what I did.” And Gorgon remembers, though the memory isn’t packed with excitement: “I went to dinner with my mom.”
So, this year the two decided to do something different. They wanted a big birthday party, and one their friends, family and a lot of people they work with all year would remember.
You’ve heard of a stripper jumping out of a cake? Well how about a birthday party in a strip club—thrown by two straight women? Well, the plan certainly guaranteed attendance: 74 people plus guests. RSVPs for the event included comments like: “Birthdays, Booze and Boobies ... oh my! Can’t wait”; “I am coming, but I am not bringing pants”; and one, probably ironic: “I am embarrassed to be seen in a adult club ...”
Sadly, the party was not in the actual club proper but off in a side room with a bar. Really the only obvious hint of the room’s usual status was a stage with a pole sticking out dead center. A few guests made tentative twists at the pole. I sat next to a public-relations co-worker of the birthday duo who was with a female friend who had never been to a strip club before. “She’s totally traumatized by the walk inside through the club to get here,” the public-relations worker laughed. Her friend nodded. Her friend was even more mortified as dancers occasionally made passes through the room. But mostly the only real strip-club moments came from those few dancers wandering into the party held in what is usually a VIP room, quickly figuring out this was not the $500-and-a-bottle-of-champagne-for-an-hour-of-your-time crowd and leaving.
Though I did have time to invent one fun party game examining the circulating guests: Guess who’s the stripper? I was even wrong once. She was just a party guest. Good thing I didn’t figure that one out by asking for a dance.
Actually, the choice behind the location of topless bar was not so odd, just very Las Vegas. This was a party built out of juice. The topless bar is a client at the public relations firm the two women work at, as was the band that played the party and the company that made the cupcakes, and even an afterparty was scheduled at a nightclub client for later.
The guests too were also mostly from their work life. But both Kelly and Gorgon insist they were in party mode, and the guest list reflected how they divide their time and was not about making this a work event. The next day after the party and the afterparty, for example, Sunday, both women had work events to attend for work.
So, adding up the guest list, Kelly said, “I would say two-thirds of the people here are clients. But in our business you spend so much time with your clients that they feel like family.” Maybe, but that also made this party as much about networking and cross-promotion as about personal celebration. The band that played probably would not mind getting the attention of the on-air talent for a local news station who was present, for example. And, after checking out the goods, the topless bar was probably hoping for return visits from many of the male guests, perhaps sans wives and girlfriends.
Even sitting down to do interviews with me for this story was work.
But imagine the press for their clients as I ticked each account off in this column? So as to not to give the two publicists that inadvertent birthday present, I am not naming any of their clients in this story. But otherwise, happy birthday, Alissa Kelly and Sara Gorgon; you created a very Vegas night.