As terrible the statement I'm about to make is, I must go on the record with it: Eric Nies was a godsend during my adolescent years. Not the man himself, exactly; as a dude, he seemed cool enough, but always carried this air of douchebag-ery that was immovable. Like your boy Dan Cortese, who never struck me as the most knowledgeable pseudo-jock yet was deemed by MTV as their say-all, end-all sports man. Nies, though, did have one thing going for him back in the mid-1990s---he came off as a guy who could genuinely bag any female of his choosing. An awesome ability to possess, obviously, and one that came into play conveniently while he was his MTV-serviced "office," a T&A haven better known as "poolside" or "faux-nightclub stage" where he'd act as host. The general housing of either workplace locale being known as MTV's The Grind.
Without The Grind, my early teen years would've been quite dreary. If memory serves me justly, The Grind aired every day at 4:30pm, a perfect window for me to be able to get home from the nervous social anxiety that was school and park my ass on the couch to watch some unbelievably-sexy ladies shake their stuff to the latest beats. Too young to enter a nightclub and too antisocial to care at that point, my daily ritual of watching The Grind met the "must watch women shake that ass" quota nicely, not to mention introducing me to the wonders of "lust" and "longing." Full of dancing beauties and Guido-ish guys (but we'll forget about the male distractions here), it was like forbidden fruit cooked into edible eye candy. Teeny-weeny bikinis, sun-drenched flesh, sweaty hourglass curves. That douche Eric Nies running the whole show, later being replaced by a pillar of sexiness during these years for me, Idalis De Leon. The Grind was 30 minutes of sin, minus having to perform any debauchery myself.
I look back on the scope of females I've found attractive over the years, and dated, or wish I'd dated, and nine times out of then they resemble the type of woman who would've been seen on The Grind. Meaning, I'll say without any shred of doubt that The Grind is hugely responsible for shaping the "type" of girl I go for, attraction-wise. The evolution of the "rap video chick" can be similarly held accountable in this case, but The Grind came first, therefore it's mostly responsible. Funny to think that some disposable piece of hormonal programming fluff could have such a profound impact on one of the more crucial aspects of a guy's life.
A prototypical female-of-interest....made so by The Grind
I remember there being three, maybe even four, specific Grind girls that I'd tune in specifically for, and boy were they forces of sexual nature. One was named Natasha, and she was a lightskinned piece of visual perfection blessed with curly hair and thickness for months. I have no clue what the other three dancers' names were, but, really, it doesn't matter, or mean two shits anyway. That was part of the show's hook---feeling like you're kicking it with some beautiful minx, yet not having to know anything about her other than the facts that she can dance her tight-ass off and that she's yours for 30 minutes a day, five days a week (and sometimes for extended playtime on the weekends, if reruns would allow such additional indulgence).
No strings attached. No questions asked. There was The Grind's one downside, though: tuning in was just foreplay, sadly going nowhere past the point of "the tease." Even worse than a strip club, truthfully, and I'm probably one of the only heterosexual men alive who'll flat out say that strip clubs do nothing for me, other than offer nice things to look at and subsequent "Never Gonna Get It" spins in my head, and not even that fine En Vogue video along with it. Just wasted money, inflated dreams that'll quickly fizzle, and even furter reminders of the caliber of female-sex-machines that are out of your league. Fuck all that.
This past Saturday night, some friends and I were at some club in the Manhattan, called The Imperial. Not a bad spot. Played a good-enough mix of songs, though tragically lacked The Dream's monstrous "Rockin' That Thang Like..." The girls in attendance were looking fetching, and I was intoxicated to a sufficient level. Guard was down, inhibitions mostly scrapped.
As I watched the ladies do their collective thing on the dancefloor, I couldn't help but think back to the days of sitting on that comfy couch, clicking on MTV, and passing 30 minutes by in the company of Natasha and her lady-friends. Only now, I was inches away from the dancers, able to reach and touch some if my nerves felt up to the task. Of course, that'd be grounds for a chick slapping the shit out of me, so I employed my usual approach: wait for eye contact and that "come hither" smile, and slowly move my way toward her before acting out the lyrics to Next's "Too Close."
As per usual, my luck materialized at least once. Ended up behind a curly-black-haired cutie at the urging of her friends. Proceeded to move our bodies simultaneously to the music. Grabbed each other's hands, kinda-passionately guiding the locked digits up and down the front of her body. Bringing things full circle, as if The Grind's Natasha had taken the form of the equally-gorgeous gal I was intertwined with.
She didn't look like this exactly, but I sure wish she did.
The only problem being, this wasn't poolside in Eric Nies' company, or even on the indoor soundstage close to my boo Idalis De Leon. No, this was The Imperial, smack dab in my reality, and the girl I was dancing ever-so-closely with turned out to be merely 18 years old, and was promptly removed from my vicinity by her older sister once they found that I'm nine years the girl's senior. How the fuck did her 18-year-old ass get into the club, anyway? Buzz...killed.
A cot-damn shame. But a necessary wake-up call. It wasn't The Grind; it was real life. Two totally different realms, one vastly superior to the other in its total land-of-make-believe nature.
Where was Eric Nies when I needed him?
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