Topless! Topless! Sandwiches!

I love food. Don’t get me wrong – that doesn’t mean I don’t love boobs. That’s way off the mark. I also love boobs. I love both. Food and boobs. Boobs and food.

Rarely does one stumble upon the chance to satiate these twin hungers in the same commercial establishment. While I was driving down 1-95 through Dunn, North Carolina, I started to see bright yellow billboards on the side of the road: “TOPLESS! TOPLESS! TOPLESS!” they said.

“Topless you say?” I thought. “Ho hum. Don’t you have club sandwiches?”

Then I noticed the name of the place they were advertising: “Café Risque.” They also advertised a 24-hour breakfast. As the billboard density started increasing and the distances at the bottom dropped below the mile mark, I noticed a tiny restaurant a stone’s throw from the highway. It was lunchtime. I pulled off.

The interior was confusing – just a little corridor. Someone was saying “Can I help you?” behind me. Probably talking to someone else. There was a little door that I could see tables through, so I pushed it open.

“Can I help you?’

“Oh…hi.” I said to a man with a baseball hat and glasses in a little booth.

He took a deep breath.

“This is Café Risque, we are a full sit-down restaurant, we do have topless ladies dancing and there is a fifteen dollar cover charge.”

“Okay.” I opened up a tab with my card.

It would be inappropriate to describe the interior as anything but a cross between a diner and a strip club. Dim, semi-neon lights, a few tables, a topless woman dancing on a stage in front of an old trucker with a moustache sipping a coffee. There’s a rack of porn and a few toys on the opposite side of the bathroom. I took a seat on a stool in front of the stage and a waitress in a sheer teddy brought me a menu. Coffee is 2.50 with a $7 club sandwich. You pay for the atmosphere in these places.

There were five dancers waiting around, chatting with the guy in the booth and occasionally going up to the stage for a show. The waitress brought me my food and poured me a coffee. The sandwich wasn’t especially bad, just some semi-soggy bread, a meager amount of turkey, mealy tomatoes and chewy bacon. The same sandwich you could get in 1000 identical greasy spoons across the country. The coffee seemed to be caffeinated.

“Are you from out of town?” I heard.

I looked up to see a girl with blonde hair  and a neon yellow g-string mechanically gyrating to a reggaetone song above me. I nodded.

“I figured, with the coffee.”

“Right,” I smiled.

She put her foot on the stage and I tucked a single in her garter belt.

“Thanks!” she smiled. I nodded again.

She offered a lap dance in Club Paradiso and I politely declined. Another girl got on the stage, took off her dress and started purring in my ear. I was out of singles at this point, but I thought it would have been rude to say that.

There weren’t many other guys in the topless diner at lunchtime, just two guys at separate tables in the back and the one trucker with the moustache, both of his big forearms resting on the stage. He held tension through his back, but an occasional flirt or a motorboat elicited a little smile and other than that he sipped his coffee. The guys in the back ate their sandwiches, eyes on the girls. Every once in a while one of them would come over and flirt.

It was quiet inside Café Rique. Under the steady beat of the generic hip-hop people talked low enough so that they could only be heard by the person they were talking to. They didn’t even serve alcohol. There was a sign on the door that read: “If you have been drinking or doing drugs, we don’t want your business. ”Café Risque also offers free showers to truckers coming through – travelers could clean off, fuel up and snuggle up to the bare breasts of a nineteen year old for a fifteen-dollar cover. It was bizarrely wholesome – they were serving comfort food with a bit of comfort as well.

I never really made it through my sandwich: the entertainment didn’t turn out to be particularly appetizing. I got the check and left. The guy at the bar that was there when I came in was still there when I left. The guy at the table and the dancer with the blonde hair and the plaid shirt both said bye to me as I was going, the dancer hoped that I had a good rest of my trip. It was bright and hot outside and I had to put my sunglasses back on. Rare after a visit to a highway rest stop, I felt rested.