If I were a betting man, I'd live in another town. I'd walk with purpose through each day, bouncing off electric pinball obstacles, gaining super points and sweat beads, eventually flipping the damn thing with all of the personal direction that my hair implies. But I'm three-day-pants lazy; a pile of marrow-free bones resting daily on a rerun couch. Nothing happens here. I don't want anything to happen here. My head hurts.
But, especially in the vacuous stretches of Orlando, if you do indeed require stimulation other than that offered by a finger or a calloused palm, then you've got to change your pants to match the day and make something happen. All of which sounds very taxing, even worse without a good fingering.
"Are you coming tonight!?" loose-lips Peacock chanteuse/bartendress Tammy. "I'm showing my springer!"
Before I can even smack the retractable-clitoris image from my weary head, I look down to notice Tammy's Ricki Lake T-shirt. She has a retractable clitoris, right? Anyway, turns out Tammy – a budding twig of Fringe-style local drama – has been on both Ricki and Jerry Springer, faking her way through the white-trash flare-ups that actually live in my own life. I look down at my feet. I'm wearing flip-flops. Of course I'm coming!
The Peacock's Cocktail Hour (second Monday, monthly) is a parody of those midday musings about cheating lovers and trailer parks, hosting a panel of people on a couch basically free-forming it through a touch of harmless interviewing. All of which would be fine if I wasn't already wasted and sprawled out on a bar floor, and if I didn't intimately know all of the parties involved.
"Your challenge tonight is to stay focused," scorns one of the panelists, one who I'm squinting to recognize.
Wait a minute. That's one of my managing editor's daughters. And she's in a bar. Dear Prudence, wontcha come out and play? All of a sudden my conscience is growing into its oversized shoes, something that will inspire me later to an ill-advised belch of ABBA's "Does Your Mother Know?"
"Oh, she knows everything."
For the sake of my job, I should hope so. Anyway, also present is former mayoral (but not really) hopeful Pat Greene, otherwise known as the bearded bar ubiquity most likely to confuse you. I spend most of the blurry (in my head) presentation reaching up to the stage and trying to steal Pat Greene's right shoe. It's the new heckling, I promise. Don't ask me why.
"Billy Manes is in the HOUSE!" splashes out from the stage.
No, not really. Spurts of hilarity ensue: drink boy stripping ("He's always had a crush on you, Billy!" warns Tammy as his package passes just to the north of my hair), Pat Greene mugging, editor's daughter smoking, me flip-flopping. All in a good night's fun, if you count not remembering as fun. And I do.
Tammy's Springer (ech) is a hoot, with her and her two male friends (Zoa's Fenwick, Nirvanov's Gerard) exposing their faux gay tryst to the primal whoops of people who still drink beer.
"He was going to be the one!" (tears, tears, tears). "And then I found out about YOU!"
Wow, this shit never happens. Just don't ask me.
I leave the bar with an iota of entrepreneurial inspiration, although it might have just been gas. So the next morning, I decide to do something about it – which, again, is completely out of character. Skipping the fourth-day pants, and underwearing it over to the computer, I come across something that had erroneously slipped from my ever-aware, lazy radar; something so inspirational, so super-double-amazing, that I'm forced to pour myself a drink. This, my dear friends, is to be the most amazing day ever, even if I have to change clothes.
What is it?
OK, here's where I have to make a confession. Despite my haughty urbanity, my Manolo majesty, my fervent superiority of the drunkest kind, I am but a tragic pawn dripping like candle-burned earwax down the sides of my computer's speakers. I follow the Duran Duran message boards like your grandma watching her stories. Somebody's pregnant? {{{{{{hugs}}}}}} Somebody's totally had a run-in with Roger Taylor's nose hair? LMAO. It's that bad.
Worse still, today, Aug. 10, is National Duran Duran Appreciation Day, and I'm not even kidding. I'm totally LOL. This, after last week's superfluous branding of a Duran Duran emblem on my shoulder, and I felt the need to include it in my torture column. I haven't even started itching yet, and I'm already throwing up the double D's again. I'm sooo getting fired.
So with very little coaxing, I decide to commandeer the Parliament House's Rock & Roll Happy Hour, taping smuggy Scavullo shots of my heroes on the mirrored walls and basically recreating the insanity bedroom of my childhood (now with pubic hair!). Videos are played, indigenous aging eyes are rolling, and myself and my bestest friend, Taylor, are totally growing fedoras on our heads and mascara on our eyes. No matter whether we're ultimately just making fun of ourselves, because irony is dead. But, as you undoubtedly well know, Wild Boys never lose it.
But I have.
By the time that Taylor and I are slow-dancing on a box to the tortured, off-key strains of "Save a Prayer," things have descended into something altogether unfathomable from any latitude of reason. Somebody without a shirt walks by and pantses me. That's right, I get pantsed, full bait and tackle – a fate far worse than that potentially inflicted on Pat Greene's feet in last night's inexplicable reverie. My drunk cock just lies there, swaying to the music, and a minor second seems to stretch into a whole lifetime, my little wee-wee retracting into its testicular home, where it too reclines on a rerun couch.
I'm not a betting man. But I'll bet I'm never going out again.
