Aviation Institute of Maintenance softball team represents. (Neal Taflinger for The Star)

From left: Meagan Rausher, 21, Tiffani Kent, 23, and Jen Morris, 23. (Neal Taflinger for The Star)

Student at the Aviation Institute of Maintenance, Rysta Herrold, 24. (Neal Taflinger for The Star)

Destination: Rockville Tavern

8:47 p.m.

"C'mon baby, show me something, take yo shirt off, I need some!"

A woman shouts loudly across the bar to a group of men who look like Chippendales dancers. She won't shut up, so I ask the bartender what her problem is. "Those are the dancers," he says, nodding toward the other side of the room. I don't quite get it. "They'll be dancing here in a bit," he says. I arrived just in time for the 2007 Hunk-a-thon tour. The Rock is about to become a beefcake festival, a cavalcade of man-meat. And not just because Taffy had arrived.

9:03 p.m.

Women are congregating in the middle of the bar, an area cordoned off by low walls topped with brass rails. The DJ gives the volume a serious push halfway through "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC, so I set out to get some interviews before I'm completely surrounded by banana hammocks.

Meagan Rausher, 21, brought two friends with her tonight. When the Rockville Tavern regular found out about the male revue, "I told them they had to come," she said. Tiffani Kent and Jen Morris, both 23, are warily anticipating the night's shenanigans. Kent's previous experience with male strippers "was more funny than enjoyable," she said.

9:19 p.m.

Two guys in black leather jackets start dancing and lip-synching to 1950s pop songs. The woman who was shouting just 30 minutes ago is now howling like a coyote. Please, Lord, take me now -- I'm ready.

9:30 p.m.

I escape to the deck. Turns out Roger Duety and his friends had the same idea. The 24-year-old aviation mechanics student is kicking back with classmates and friends after their softball team got its head beaten in on the diamond. The team is sponsored by the Aviation Institute of Maintenance, where almost everyone on the deck is enrolled.

Duety holds court on the potential ramifications of having male strippers at a Westside bar and argues playfully with his girlfriend, Jessica Daniels, 23, while I take notes. No matter what I am writing, Duety says "at the end of the sentence just put that the (Chicago) Bears suck."

He insists I talk to Laurence Messer. According to Duety, the 31-year-old plays softball terribly but "tonight he played like (future baseball Hall of Famer) Alex Rodriguez." Mostly sober, Messer props his sprained ankle up on a chair and suggests that I drive more often. After all, "these are the guys who are fixing the planes," Messer says.

But they are not all guys. Rysta Herrold, 24, was a jet engine mechanic in the Air Force. In fact, most of the people on the deck are Air Force, Marine, or Navy vets getting certified to work in commercial hangers. I ask Herrold if it's tough working with knuckle-dragging grease monkeys who dig to find sexual innuendo in every sentence.

She smiles and laughs. "I gotta find totally different words for everything," Herrold says.

10:12 p.m.

The party is losing steam outside, but inside several ladies' laps are occupied. Dudes in manties isn't my scene so I bow out, stepping back out in the hot night air. Tonight wasn't what I was bargaining for, but I'm far from disappointed. The Rockville Tavern possesses the potential to shock and amaze, which is reason enough for a return Taffy trip at some point in the future.