I am a self-confessed sing -along junkie. I am so addicted to it, that I have my very own magic-mike karaoke system at home, that allows me to sing along to literally hundreds of songs at a push of a button. My karaoke system is also special, in that it has a built in scoring system that rates your performance from 0 to 100 and, therefore , lets you know whether you did the song justice, or should keep your day job and forget making a career out of singing.
For all you other karaoke aficionados out there, I'm sure you're no doubt familiar with the fun and joy of singing the night away together with friends in drunken get togethers , competing in impromptu singing contests , where the winner is determined by the highest score. However, little did the inventors of the magic-mike karaoke foresee, that their scoring system could be used for other, much less wholesome purposes. . . Strip Karaoke. As my poor hapless GF found out to her extreme embarrassment one night.
About six months ago I hosted a small party at my house. Aside from H who was my hostess , there were five other guests, two guys and three girls. They were my very close friends whom I knew and hung out with since college, even before I started going out with H. In fact, one of the girls Karen was even my ex GF in College and a member of the sister sorority of my fraternity. Fortunately, we were able to part amicably and have remained the best of friends thru the years. I sometimes feel though that she somehow would like us to get back together again .
As for my other guests, the two guys were Mon and Jim. They were my batch mates when I entered the fraternity and we have remained inseparable since then. The two other girls were named Suzy and Jen. Like Karen, they were our sorority sisters and are currently seeing Mon and Jim respectively. So you see, my guests were really more of my friends than H's, whom I met only later after graduating and is a bit younger than us.
Like me, my friends were addicted to karaoke. Since we met at school, we have spent countless times singing the night away in drunken abandon. It was a wonder we were able to finish our schooling at all , considering we spent most of our time partying and having fun than hitting the books.
Anyway, going back to the party, after everyone had had their fill of free food and drink at my expense ; we gravitated towards the den were my karaoke system was set up for the customary party entertainment. Now, although H honestly did have a lovely voice, she really was not into karaoke singing , but merely tolerated this seemingly rabid obsession of mine. Being rather demure in nature and quite shy , she hardly ever sang during parties and mostly preferred to sit appreciatively listening at the back, since in her own words she really would not like to make "a fool of myself" in front of others. (Little would she know that exactly was what was in store for her later in the evening.)
After taking our seats around the coffee table, I passed around the accompanying song book to my system to enable my guests to chose the songs they would want to sing. As the others were rifling through its pages and jotting down the access codes of their songs, I think it was one of the guys who jokingly suggested that we play a stripping game instead of the usual community singing. Now, my friends and I had played a few games of strip poker in school so the idea was not really new nor outrageous to us. Although H's face did sport an initial shocked look when the proposal was made.
While the rest of us were still contemplating what to do, Suzy commented that it may indeed be fun if we would be able to make a stripping game of Karaoke , to liven up tonight's entertainment more. Her comment was heartily well taken by the rest of the group who enthusiastically agreed to join in , with the initial exception of H, who at first did not want to play but , in the end reluctantly agreed to do so as well, as a favor to me and in order to fit in more with my friends. Of course, we must never forget to thank all the margaritas she had drunk for allowing her to come to this decision, as they undoubtedly did more to shape her thinking process than anything else.
Following a brief and very animated discussion, we agreed to adopt the follow rules :
1.Each player gets to pick three songs from the song book. One to be sung bythemselves. The second, which either sex must be able to sing, to be mixed together with the others in a pot and drawn , to see who would have to sing it. And, the third, again to be sung by another player, this time drawn before hand by lot.
2.The players would then, alternately, sing one song till everyone has had his/her turn at the mike.
3.After each round the scores of the players would be compared and the one with the lowest score would have to strip an item of clothing. In addition, the one with the highest score gets to choose a player to strip an item of clothing, who may or may not be the player with the lowest score.
4. Finally, after everyone has sung, each player's scores would be added up and the one with the lowest cumulative score would have to remove two items of clothing and the one with the highest score, choose someone to strip two items of clothing. Again, this may or may not be the person with the lowest cumulative score. .
Before we began, I think it was Karen who raised the question of what would happen if the one who had to strip was already naked and had no more clothes to lose. It was then that Suzy suggested that that person must do a forfeit for every article of clothing that should have been removed, to be determined by the winner of the game. Everybody agreed.
It was also pointed out that since there were seven of us, there would be a problem pairing up for the third round. This was easily resolved when it was universally agreed that since I had generously forked the bill for tonight's festivities, then I should gain a bye in the third round and automatically be awarded "95" points. It should have been a perfect "100" points in my book but my two buddies hemmed and hawed a bit.
Other last minute rule changes adopted were: