Category Archives: alcohol

“Casual Friday” in Douchebagotropolis

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12


Picasso had his blue period, Hefner had his blonde period, and I am having my I can’t get shit on paper period, period.  I feel like every ounce of creativity has been sucked right out of me, this must be the way Britney Spears has felt her entire life. The usual 800 insane things bouncing off the interior walls of my cranium have been replaced with other things.  These thoughts are not entertaining, not even to me. I’ve been this way for the past few months.  This is strange and I’d like it to stop.  Incidentally, I’m so distracted I just walked into my own bathroom, turned on the lights, startled a little green lizard on the tile floor, said “Oh, sorry.  I didn’t know anyone was in here,” and closed the door.  I was halfway across the house to use the other bathroom when I realized what I had done.

Yeah, we have lizards here in South Florida.  Little ones, they’re always scurrying around and sneaking into the house.  We have big ones too. They don’t scurry and you’d notice right away if one of those sonsabitches walked into your living room…your first clue would be that your dog is missing.   I’m not sure if you have them anywhere else, I mean, I know that lizards exist elsewhere.  But, I’m pretty sure those places are not Iowa.  Iowans have potatoes, they’re slow moving and there’s a lot of really delicious things that can be done with the potato…lizards…not so much.

You can always tell a tourist here, because they’re leery of the lizards.  It’s ok folks, they don’t bite, well actually they do…just not very hard.  You have to have great hand/eye coordination to find that out.  Mostly our tourists are of the drunk variety, ergo, very little coordination at all.  I met some tourists of the Iowan persuasion this past week, they were neither intoxicated nor lizard-phobic.  Their names were Rusty and Big Hoss, well those probably aren’t their names at all…but it is what we called them.  Rusty might have actually been introduced as Rusty, or that may have been what was written on his t-shirt- it’s hard to say. Big Hoss was tall and did not bear any resemblance to the guy on Bonanza.  I’m pretty sure his name was Bob.  Anyway, he and Rusty were visiting one of the boyfriend’s friends.  They might have been two of the most polite people I’ve ever met.  Behind closed doors they could be card carrying members of The Third Reich…but on the surface they were gentlemen.  I’m still a little worried that they didn’t know what to make of the boyfriend, he is kind of a force of nature in the personality department…and he tends to give everyone a nickname.

We met up with them at an outdoor purveyor of dollar draft beers one night.  They did a lot of standing around and observing, at some point Rusty apologized to me for interrupting me in conversation.  This is either before or after I wandered away from the group and got up on stage to sing with the band (the guitar player insisted).  For the record, I don’t recall him interrupting me at all and even if he did, I probably wasn’t saying anything profound anyway.

A few days later we met up with them at the beach…this was weird day.  Initially, it was just me and 10 dudes on the sand.  There was enough testosterone surrounding me that I was afraid I was going to start sprouting chest hair through osmosis.  They all sat around ogling bikini fillers and I tried not to feel invisible.  It started to rain, and the lifeguards evicted us from the shore….something about lightning and danger…wussies.

The boys went back to the car and I took the opportunity to meet my friend Leah at the “World Famous Elbo Room.”   If you ever see Leah and I in a picture, looking like we’re having a fantastic time, we totally are. She is fun in flip-flops.  The Elbo is two-story building on a corner of A1A and a street you’ll never remember the name of even if I told you.  There’s an upstairs bar, a downstairs bar, and an outside bar. It’s a shithole, a very busy shithole.  If you get down this way I recommend you stop in for a drink, just remember they only accept cash and no one gives a rat’s ass where you’re from or how much money you make.  It only looks like it’s tourist friendly, it’s not. Also, if you ever come visit sunny Fort Lauderdale, please refrain from telling every sun-kissed blonde you meet that you’re “still wasted from the night before and your feet hurt from dancing.”  It’s probable that she lives here, has enough beer in her system to send you staggering to the nearest trash can to puke, and isn’t going to dance with you…no matter how much money you claim to make.

I’m told The Elbo Room is famous for being in a 1950’s surfer movie no one has ever seen.  It is not famous for its cleanliness.  It always smell like a whale’s unmentionables in there.  Charming, I know.  As we stood trying to decipher what the pleasant aroma was, a man struck up a conversation with us.  He looked normal enough, until he whipped out his iPhone and showed us a close-up photo of his crotch.  In the picture, he was fully clothed in khakis and a button down shirt, so it must have been “Casual Friday” in Douchebagotropolis.  Conversations like this send a normal person running in the opposite direction, I think you’ve figured out by now….this girl….not normal.  As Leah dragged me away from the creeper, I was in the midst of inquiring exactly why he had a crotch self-portrait in his phone while contemplating challenging him to a dance-off to see just how wasted he was, and she…was laughing.

The moral of this story is fourfold. The little reptiles are harmless.  Steve Jobs didn’t intend for you to use his phone that way, you filthy prick.  Rusty and Big Hoss are always welcome.  Thank you Leah.

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Thanks for everything Bob Villa

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13


You fuckers with the last name of “Smith” have it easy.  You never walk into a professional situation, say “Hi, My name is Steve Smith,” and have people assume that you make Steve’s for a living.  My last name is Carpenter,  because people are stupid, I am constantly being accused of being a wood-worker.  I spent the better part of Saturday at a trade show, working for my new office, with my first and last name hanging from my collar on a name tag.  It was my job to greet people and make them feel welcome.  I don’t know why, but I was more than a little thrown off when old men in woven panama hats kept asking me “how I got my butts to look like that?”.  They weren’t creepy old men, so I know they weren’t referring to my posterior, but were trying to get free carpentry advice.   Even though everyone else was walking around with name tags that said “George Baker” or whatever, no one implied that they were Keebler Elves or inquired about their knowledge of yeast or flour.  The only butt I am familiar with is my own, it’s not a topic I will address without the help of a bloodstream pulsing with alcohol.

I don’t correct people when this happens,  it’s simply not worth it to me…and I find it to be hilarious.  People can’t seem to wrap their brains around the fact that I am not an actual carpenter.  When I do correct them, they are either embarrassed or they tend to walk away from me acting like they’ve been mislead.  I realize this isn’t my fault…but I don’t like to disappoint.  I’ve seen enough episodes of “This Old House” to push my way through a conversation about joinery and wood glue.  Thank God for PBS and Bob Villa.  Mostly people want to tell me everything they know about wood and move on…you’d be surprised how much people know about wood.

Saturday, I found myself engaged in conversation with a man that either had an unusually unhealthy attraction to tree products or was desperately trying to think of things to say whilst hitting on me.  I am in no position to speculate, but I had to be excruciatingly polite during this whole strange interaction.  This is something that I can do, but it takes a whole lot of effort on my part.   Here I was, standing on the deck of a very large, expensive sail boat watching a man crawl around on his hands and knees, rubbing the teak.  “You’re a carpenter! You must be able to feel the soul of this wood,” he moaned as he peered up at me.  I am not the Lorax.  I don’t speak for the trees, living or deceased, but I could definitely hear that the soul of this wood was saying; “get off of me dude, or I’m pressing charges”.

I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t.  He seemed genuinely connected to the wood and I wasn’t about to lose my job over a disagreement involving talking bark.  For all I know, he could have been the tree whisperer.  I looked around to see if I was on camera, I wasn’t.  Luckily, a group of small children walked on to the boat and curiously came over to see why the man was crawling.  He explained to them that he was feeling the grain and got up on his feet as soon as their parents came over to escort them away from the crazy man fondling the boat.   I used this opportunity to introduce the man to one of my superiors and sneak away.  Immediately upon doing so, I came face to face with a couple who read my name tag and did not assume that I carried a hammer in my back pocket. The couple, who were holding cans of beer and much to my jealousy…looking a bit shit-faced, asked if I was any relation to Karen Carpenter.  They then started to sing…a very slurred version of “Close to you”.  About the time they got to the “one the day that you were born” part, I had to interrupt.  I didn’t want to have to explain to my boss that I’d let his display turn into a very sad, lonely karaoke bar.   It is not in my nature to halt such behavior, I normally encourage this kind of insanity…it keeps life interesting.  I wanted to join in with the singing, but knew that it probably wouldn’t go over well and didn’t want to start the week off looking for a job.

I have two scripted responses to the any relation to Karen Carpenter question, because this also happens to me a lot.  I either go with “No. But, rainy days and Mondays always get me down,” or “No. Why? Do I smell like vomit?” Because I was I work, I went with the cheesy “rainy days” response. Due to their level of intoxication they found this to be hysterical.  They high-fived me and repeated what I had said about five times.  Wobbling away from me, they finished their rendition of the Carpenter’s classic and turned around to shout “Sara, you’re good, you!” as they polished off their drinks.  Some people genuinely appreciate a bad joke.  I smiled and waved, fighting back the urge to yell back “No. You! You’re good”  which everyone knows is the proper response to that statement.

I still have a job.  No one said anything to me about the wood groper…or the songbirds.  Like I said, you Smith’s are lucky.  Count your blessings.    

Um, wait…what happened?

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The weekend is kind of a blur, most weekends when “Trucker Joe” comes to visit are. Trucker Joe is…you guessed it…a Truck Driver with the first name of Joe.  I’m not sure what his middle name is…it’s probably Michael or something…but it should be Debauchery.  I think his blood type is Busch Light…it’s the only liquid I’ve ever seen him consume.  No water, no juice…just Busch, straight out of the can.  I have no idea how old Trucker Joe is, he may be in his mid-forties…but he’s extremely amusing, usually unintentionally.  He’s the kind of guy you can’t help but like, well, if you met Joe and didn’t like him…that would make you a giant retard.  I woke up to the sound of him cracking open a can of beer Saturday morning. Surely, my admission that I can be woken from a deep sleep by the sweet symphony of an adult beverage being released from its aluminum home, says more about me than the man consuming it…I never said I was a classy broad.  I am of the opinion that the only thing more comforting than the sound of a beer being opened…is looking at the instrument panel of my car and discovering that I have a full tank of gas.

I only have a half a tank of gas… so beer trumps petroleum, right now.  At some point during Saturday morning I joined Joe in his before breakfast beverages, I can’t let a friend drink alone.  There were several empty boxes next to the garbage, emblazoned with the words 18 pack, so I was not the only person helping Joe keep the Busch Beer people in business.  Joe spends a lot of time on the road, between here and Troy,  New York…which is where awesome people are created in bulk.  Troy is the birth place of Uncle Sam, the shirt collar and some of the craziest bastards I’ve ever met in my life.  I’ve come across some demented people in my day, so that’s quite the compliment.  If you’re ever up that way I recommend you check out their public library, it’s got glass floors…how effing cool is that?

Troy is a recurring topic of conversation in my life.  My boyfriend and 90% of the people he socializes with are from there.  Some of them have decided to make Fort Lauderdale their home, which means Fort Lauderdale has more insane people per capita.  This is alright by me, it’s a good kind of crazy.  As far as I can tell there’s a tremendous amount of pride that comes with being from Troy. The city and its inhabitants have a reputation of being kinda rough around the edges. I spent a little time there last spring, I didn’t see any of that.  What I saw was a place that blossomed during the Industrial Revolution, had a bit of an economic downturn and is now bracing for a comeback.  The architecture is beautiful and the people are genuine.  They say what’s on their minds, I appreciate that quality.  I have a t-shirt from there.  On the back, the sentence “Troy…what!” is written.  I’m wearing it right now as a matter of fact.  It was something I heard a lot when I was up there, I found it to be funny.  It’s a phrase that, when said without the appropriate posturing, means nothing.  But when you say it standing, in the aggressive, universal, “Hey asshole, what are you gonna do about it?” position, takes on a whole new meaning.  You all know the gesture that I’m talking about.  If I walked up to a group of my friends, pounded on my chest, declaring “Fort Lauderdale…what!” they’d probably disown me.  If you do that to a group of people from Troy, they might laugh and hug you. These guys are different, there’s a sense of community, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

When Joe visits my boyfriend, he parks his ginormous truck in the parking lot next to the condominium complex.  Often times, we’ll go out and lose track of him throughout the evening.  He always wanders back to his truck and sleeps off the insanity.  This weekend was no different. We lost him before the sun went down, I’m not sure where he went, but my boyfriend went to check on him sometime in the wee hours of Sunday morning while I was sleeping.   After he located him and made sure he still had a pulse, he and that merry band of Troy-born pranksters that are always around, decided it would be a good idea to give Joe’s truck a bathroom.  They “borrowed” a port-o-potty from a Super Bowl celebration that was being set up in a parking lot nearby and lifted it on to the bed of Joe’s rig.

I saw video of this. Joe was not exactly pleased and requested that they remove it immediately.  They did and returned it to its original location. Joe also said he was going to stop drinking…he didn’t. This all occurred while Joe was wearing my underwear.  I’m not exactly sure how this fits in.  If my memory serves me correct the series of events went a little something like this:  after Joe and I enjoyed our beers on Saturday… he concluded that the only thing that could improve his morning was wearing my undies.  Most people would find this odd, I can’t say that it surprised me.  I’d just watched him sing Snoop Dog’s “Gin and Juice,” and do his own little choreographed dance when he got to the “laid back, with my mind on my money and my money on my mind” part.  He looked more like an auxiliary member of the Village People than he did a gangster rapper when he leaned back in his chair and raised his arms to make a c-like shape.  There was no music and no one else was singing.  Joe is white, bald, lanky, has several deer tattoos, and is rarely seen wearing a t-shirt that doesn’t have a fish on it.  He’s not exactly who you’d expect to hear singing about Compton.  He’s also not the kind of guy you expect to see sporting Victoria and all of her secrets.

Under the guidance of cheap beer, I felt it was my civic duty to make his dreams a reality.  I handed him a fresh pair of purple panties with little green stars on them.  He excused himself and put them on, I could hear him laughing through the bedroom door.  When he exited the room,  the waist of his cargo shorts revealed the tiny velvet bow that adorned the front.   Wait, it gets better…shortly thereafter we decide that we’re going to go out and get some food.  I probably would have forgotten that Joe was wearing my unmentionables…except he insisted on telling everyone we came in contact with that he was “wearing my drawers”.

I got more sideways glances than he did.  Several people asked me why I was letting a grown man wear my underwear…I answered with the obvious “why not?”  It’s not like I was going to ask for them back, so…technically, he was wearing his underwear.  Fast forward a several hours, after the foolishness,  I awake to find  my boyfriend, his roommate and his roommate’s girlfriend sitting in a circle, cleaning greasy footprints off of my boyfriend’s very white carpet.  I knew there was an interesting story behind it, but I didn’t ask.  I’d eventually hear all about it so…I went back to bed.  Evidently, the Karma Fairy repaid them for their port-o-potty stunt and the roommate stepped in a grease puddle while standing on the back of Joe’s truck.  After they stood around giggling and recording their mischief, they came home and he unknowingly tracked the grease all through the condo.  No worries, they got it all cleaned up.  Until the next day, when his roommate put on the very same greasy sneakers and then paced around during an intense phone conversation.  It looked like a live version of the Family Circus comics, when the kids run all over the house and the artist tracks their movement with the black dotted lines. Since I don’t live there and it isn’t my carpet, I found this to be epically hilarious.

Later that morning, while buying supplies for the Super Bowl celebration, someone rented a carpet cleaner.  They took turns shampooing the rug while Joe and I sat poolside, drinking beer and watching the game.  Aside from me looking at him and laughing, we didn’t verbally reference  the underwear incident…that was yesterday’s lunacy.  After Joe left, my boyfriend asked if the weekend was going to be a blog entry.   I considered not writing about it, because I wasn’t sure if I wanted the world to know that I willingly associate with a group men still acting like frat boys.  I decided I would take the Troy approach…yeah this happened, what are you gonna do about it?

Cowboy Caviar, Jim Henson and other things.

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“That Cowboy Salsa Katie made shot out of my ass like peanut-butter blasting out of a machine gun, this morning,” this is a direct quote from my boyfriend.  He’s very poetic.   I overheard him talking to his friend Ryan about his bowel movements as we were floating in a boat somewhere in the Intracoastal Waterway.  This is not the most unusual thing I’ve ever heard him say.  He has a way with words.  Often times he makes up his own words because they convey his message better.  My favorite made-up word is “Persevail” it’s a combination of “persevere” and “prevail”…and it’s hilarious.  Near as I can figure, men start talking about poop at four and it’s a common conversation topic until they die.  My son is always talking about poop.  I’m not sure if this is normal, but I’m not sure if anything that occurs in my life is normal.  I don’t ever really ask anyone.  Chances are I’d only get confirmation that my life and all the people in it are certifiably nuts.  It keeps things interesting.

The Cowboy Salsa that my boyfriend was referring to is actually called “Cowboy Caviar”.  It’s a delicious concoction of Garbanzo Beans, Corn, Tomatoes, and other shit that I don’t care to identify, but they make my mouth happy.  Incidentally, Garbanzo Beans always make me think of Gonzo from the Muppets.  As I type, I have visions of him sexually harassing a chicken dancing through my head. This is probably evidence that I’m crazy too.  I think of the Muppets a lot.  Not the new, homogenized Muppets that suck.  The old, anti-PETA chicken launching, “Pigs in Space” acid trip, Muppets that shaped my childhood.  Jim Henson and his felt friends created the first music videos I ever laid eyes on.  They never get credit for this.  When you watch the VMA Awards on MTV and some transgender looking idiot gets up to accept their Moonman; they thank God, their mothers, agents and fans…but they never thank Jim.  Jim shoved 18 pigs on a pirate ship and had them sing “In the Navy”…before most of these music video directors could even hold a camera.  They are hailed as being visionaries…but they really aren’t.  Jim was the visionary, they’re just ungratefully riding on his coattails.

Anyway, back to the caviar…it’s made by Katie, she’s the fabulous girlfriend of my boyfriend’s roommate.  I don’t ever use the word fabulous lightly.  When I say fabulous, I mean it.  Katie makes large portions of this salsa-like dip on a regular basis.  When she does, I have learned that she requires herself to wear cowboy boots.  I wouldn’t believe it either, but I’ve seen it with my own two eyes.  I feel that I should inform you that no one was intoxicated when this occurred.  This is one of the reasons that Katie is awesome,  she plays dress-up all the time.  She’s like a real-life Barbie, only she’s prettier and actually has facial expressions.  I have never once wanted to cut off all of her hair and shove her in the trunk of a pink Corvette, like I did to my Barbie’s when I was a girl.

When I first met her, I wasn’t real sure what to think.  My boyfriend and I went to a wedding out of town and when we returned Katie and her friend had taken up residence in my boyfriend’s room.  They were visiting from somewhere up north for the week.  My boyfriend made fun of me for the bag and a half of things I took with me for our weekend getaway.  He quickly apologized when he saw the amount of clothing and shoes I could be lugging around with me.  They brought a loooot of stuff with them.  There was girl-swag EVERYWHERE.  My boyfriend is a bit of neat-nick,  I thought he was going to blow a gasket, which he probably did internally.  On the outside he was cool as a cucumber.  His apartment is a revolving carousel of interesting people, it never much worried me that there were two women I didn’t know staying there.  I actually thought it was nice to have some girls around, that way we could talk about something besides poop or other male topics.  The other girl eventually left, but Katie stuck around.

It took me a little while to formulate an opinion on Katie.  I wasn’t real sure what was behind the wardrobe choices, the Britney Spears obsession, and the Spice Girls music that always seemed to be playing when she was getting ready for a night out.  I’ve mentioned before, that I am not the most feminine woman on the planet.  It takes me an hour to get ready for an evening on the town, tops.  I normally do this with a beer in my hand.  Katie’s preparation happens over a few hours with the help of vodka shots.  It’s done in phases.  I’m pretty sure Phase One is a shower and Phases Two and Three involve hair and make-up.  But I could be wrong.  The end result is full-blown glamazon.  It doesn’t matter how many vodka shots she does, she never seems drunk.

I look forward to seeing which Katie-persona is going to walk out of the bedroom.  Sometimes she looks like a 1940’s Sailor Pin-up girl, sometimes she’s dressed like one of Santa’s helpers complete with red velvet, fur trimmed mini-skirt.  She’s very entertaining and unapologetically herself.  Everyday is a reason to celebrate and dress-up, it’s refreshing.  I sometimes wish I could be more like her, but then I remember that I’m a dude in a chick’s body and vodka makes me sleepy or angry.  Katie is the only one who can be Katie.  I’ll just stick to being Sara, it’s what I do best.