View From the Stage

Bad times here in The Swamp, what with the job losing and the vote-not-counting and the fuel injection buildup and all, but I’ve been handling it as a responsible adult should, by which I mean “with a great deal of alcohol.”

It is never a good idea to attempt to drink yourself from the brink of a potentially enormous depression. What you need to do is drink while wearing enormous amounts of hair spray and surrounded by very unattractive members of the opposite sex. Then you’re depressed and flammable.

Flipper and I, because we are old and tired, attempted to change our weekend standard of hoisting our breasts and two pina coladas while scoping a CityWalk bar for dance partners who potentially might be able to define, or even spell, words like “exponential.” It never works—sometimes it not-works to the point of asking law enforcement professionals to intervene—and we agreed that it was time for a drastic change in tactics. So (you only live once, and you gotta take chances, you, know?) we decided to hoist and drink and scope at an entirely different bar.

This plan might have worked had we actually found another bar in which to execute it. We committed a major error in attempting to find a club in downtown Orlando that 1) contained more than two people, bartenders included, and 2) did not appear to transmit syphilis via air molecules.

I can’t remember the name of this place—we chose it, after much careful deliberation, the instant we were informed, via sidewalk hollering, that ladies were admitted without a cover charge—but at this point that’s just as well, since it will make the post traumatic stress syndrome therapy that much easier to pull through.

I really don’t know what went wrong here. It seemed like a reputable enough place, judging by the largely naked woman perched in a swing behind a street-facing window. The fact that she weighed 250 pounds was nothing but encouraging: “We don’t judge by appearances, here in the Worst Bar Ever!” The walls were oozing a yellowish liquid, yes, but that was just part of the sit-down-and-immediately-contract-crabs ambiance.

We left, reluctantly, after two entire seconds. When the bouncer starts swinging canisters of nitrous oxide onto the bar next to the enormous bag of pretzels and the mini-keg, it’s time to move on.

I tore off the ID wristband I'd been given and scrubbed my entire arm raw on the concrete. It was the only way to feel clean.

It’s official, now: Orlando has the Worst. Downtown. Ever. Bear in mind that I say this as a native of Cincinnati, where the nightlife pretty much consists of two raccoons fighting over a half-eaten potato chip in front of the courthouse. We walked around for an hour, and there was more going on at the main branch of the public library, where the street people were having a better time yelling at the potted palms.

So we defaulted to Plan B, which actually was an early draft of Plan A, which, as always, involved the Council of Eight (four breasts, four pina coladas total) at CityWalk. We drove to Margaritaville, which involved finding I-4 from downtown, which, thanks to extremely assical signage, occupied an entire half hour and a great deal of swearing. It’s a good thing we don’t have a lot of tourists trying to get around, here in Orlando.

Things improved immediately, as it was Two-For-One AARP Night at Margaritaville. We were the youngest people there by, at minimum, four decades. The Margaritaville dance floor has these enormous screens near the ceilings, huge sail-like things that intermittently relay vintage footage of Jimmy Buffett singing and boating and in general gazing down upon this, the themed restaurant fashioned in his holy name. And Jimmy—you could just see it, even Jimmy was all, “Oh my God, these people are lame.”

Younger people did filter in later on in the evening, which made things infinitely worse. We were besieged, at one point, by a group of fellows clearly choppered in from 1992. Parachute pants, enormous gold necklaces, the whole entire football field: Yo yo yo yo, homey, let’s bust down to the Kid ‘n’ Play concert!!

The saving grace was the house band, Blue Stone Circle. They’re a fantastic group, equally capable of smacking around ‘90s pop as well as Southern rock. Their repertoire called for, at one point, a fiddle, and once the fiddle comes out, you know you’re done, as far as having a crap evening is concerned. The lead singer hauled some chick onto the stage, asked her to stand with legs akimbo, and as Flipper and Jimmy and all God’s children watched the fiddle player ripped off this incredible solo while holding the fiddle between her legs. It left me awestruck, and also sad, and jealous, as that was more action than I’ve gotten in the past six months. I need to find out if they have any openings for groupies, and apply.

They had skank immunity, too, these guys. At one point two all-but-unclothed women—their shifts in the swing must have just ended at the Worst Bar Ever—climbed up onto the stage, whereupon the lead singer immediately jumped overboard, along with the bass player. The keyboardist kind of squished over as much as instrumentally possible, but the poor drummer had nowhere to go, trapped as he was behind a Plexiglass acoustical break, which for his sake I hope also functioned as some sort of shield from the HELLO, I AM A VERY SEXUALLY ACTIVE PERSON smell rays emanating from these girls’ overly flabby, regrettably exposed abdomens.

And yet I had ninety minutes of happiness, there in Margaritaville, jumping up and down in the shadow of the fishing reels hanging on the walls. I was twenty-seven, with glittery hair, and dancing.

I wonder what it’s like, to be in a band with an unobstructed view of the human debris parade passing below. I think I would cast myself into one of the amps after a week, knowing that I walked the Earth with people who think it perfectly OK to wear sweatpants and a polo shirt at the same time.

If Blue Stone Circle was watching Flipper and me, they got an eyeful of two women followed around the floor by a medical technician and a person wearing a sunvisor…inside…at night.

See, the problem with dancing these days, even while young and throwing off glitter sparks, is that people can partner up with you without your consent or even your knowledge. We politely attempted to dance ourselves to another part of the floor, and yet…there they were. I once executed a spin during a particularly moving verse of “Play That Funky Music,” only to find myself face to face with The Sunvisor, soul patch and all, arms over his head, grinning at me.

“WHOOOOOOOOO!” said he.

Dance cards and chaperones, I think, were not entirely bad things.

So Flipper and I took a break outside to catch a bit of TV news and breathe air unfouled by the castoffs of Yo! MTV Raps, and discovered possible origin of The Women That Drove 45% Of the Band Offstage: Paris Hilton was in town. Not just in town, but downtown. There was a reporter standing about eight feet from one of the bars we had just left. Paris had arrived in the pod that bore her, and skanks were now running all over the city, not unlike baby spiders spilling out of Charlotte’s barn sac. The TV sound was off, but we could read Paris’ lips: “Is it my turn in the swing yet?”