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.
