Sweet the sting

Did you all miss me? It's OK, I know you did. I should start by apologizing for the length of this post. Grab yourself a cup of coffee and bear with me.

I'm sure that those of you I texted while I was pool-side were really missing me. Ft. Lauderdale was an absolute BLAST. The weather could not have been any more perfect. When I got down there, I stepped outside the airport and was slapped in the face with the warm air. It was between 80 - 85 degrees every day, sunny and not a cloud in the sky.

Rodolfo and Matt picked me up from the airport. Why wasn't Jamie with them? Well, at the last minute Jamie had an anxiety attack and decided to drive down. Yes, drive all 18 hours to Ft. Lauderdale. He left Thursday night and got down there Friday afternoon.

The tone of the weekend was set immediately when we went straight from the airport to the liquor store. Rodolfo dropped about $160 on top shelf liquor for our hotel room. I tried to offer him money for the booze, but he refused. This is after he has already paid for my plane ticket and hotel room. Hot. I could definitely get used to being a kept man! Over the entire weekend, I think I spent less than $200.

I suppose I should pause for a minute to tell you about the hotel. We stayed at the Windamar ("What happens at the Windamar, stays at the Windamar"), a gay resort hotel. It was very cute, clean and close to the beach. Did I mention that it was clothing optional??? Yeah, the video promo shows all these young hot guys lying by the pool in little speedos. When we get in there, it is all daddies and granddaddies. Typical.

They were all very nice, but trust me, there were not many people who you wanted to see in a bathing suit, let alone naked. Eh whatever. It just made me all that more comfortable to sun-bath in the buff. Yes, you read that correctly. The boy who LOATHES to take off his shirt at the GL (unless I am completely shit-faced) was sun-bathing nude this weekend. When in Rome . . . It was very liberating and I think there were even a few moments that I experienced complete acceptance of my appearance. Of course those all disappeared as soon as I stepped outside the hotel back to reality.

Friday night, after pregaming for hours, we finally hit the bars around 1 AM. We checked out the Hot Spots guide, provided by the hotel, and decided to try out Boom. After driving around lost for half an hour, we finally found the bar. In a strip mall. But not just any strip mall. Apparently this was a gay strip mall. There were two or three bars, a couple gay clothing stores, and the Social Security Administration. Not sure of the connection there.

God, there is nothing like a good gay bar in strip mall. I'm sure you can imagine the clientele. Boom seemed to me to be the Apex equivalent down there. Lots of young twinks, video bar on one side and dance club on the other. When we were walking in this guy yelled out, look at that whore in the green shirt. Of course he was talking about me, in my green "Rednecks do it better" shirt. I shot back, "Bitch it pays to advertise" and walked into the club. Jamie was dying. It is moments like that when he realizes just how much I have grown from the scared little "straight" farm boy he met nine years ago.

We stayed until the club closed and did a little dancing, and a bunch of shots. Matt met this cute latino who spoke no English. Matt tried to get his number and that took at least ten minutes. Between the guy not speaking English and Matt being wasted, it was a sight. We may or may not have left there for an after hours party. These things do 'appen.

Saturday we finally woke up around noon and Rodolfo started mixing drinks immediately. That day I got in touch with one of my besties from high school, Jaime (straight girl). I decided to meet up with her that afternoon for some drinks. God, it was so awesome to see her. We haven't seen each other in probably four years. But, all through high school we were really close and then just slowly drifted apart through college. We went to some of the straight tourist bars right on the beach (Fat Tuesdays, etc) and started getting hammered.

I know that we had dinner with her roommate and her roommate's very cute boyfriend. I know that we called my parents and my older sister for Jaime to say hi. I know that we got thrown out of at least one, if not two straight bars. That is all I know for sure. Oh, and that at one point she and I were dancing and there is a picture of me bending her over on the dance floor on my MySpace page.

Everything after that is lost to the black-put. Gay Jamie said that I got home around 10:30 that night, stumbled into the room and slurred something about how I couldn't believe they kicked me out of the bar for being drunk. Then he said I went into the room and passed out with my hand down my pants. Ever the classy lady.

My next memory is of me waking up around 1:30 AM to find everyone else gone. Gay Jamie sent me a text to say that they tried to wake me up to hit the clubs, but it was not happening. I missed a night at Coliseum with Victor Calderon. For that, Poo-Dell smacked me across the face when I saw her on Monday.

Since I got a full night of sleep, I woke up bright and early Sunday morning. I knew that no one else would be up for a while, so I decided to walk down the beach. I walked all the way from our hotel down to the ports and back. Again, I couldn't get over how beautiful the weather was. Even the ocean water was a moderate temperature. I walked in the surf the whole time.

I got back to the hotel and the girls woke up about an hour later. The rest of the morning and part of the afternoon, I spent lying by and in the pool. Around 2, I went inside and showered. That was when I realized just how much sun I got. For any of you that have seen me in JR's the last two nights, you can attest that I am just a touch red. Thankfully, we had decided to see "Gay Sex in the 70's" that afternoon, so I could escape the sun for a bit.

I had no clue what to expect with the movie. I knew it wasn't porn, but not much else. It was a really good movie. Most of it was humorous and interesting to see how gay life was thirty years ago. The movie does get sad at the end when they talk about the AIDS epidemic of the early 80s. I recommend that you go see it, if you haven't already.

That night we went back to the gay strip mall and saw celebrity impersonator "Bethany Owens" at Alibi. I expected a drag queen, but this was an actual woman. She was very good and had me laughing. What I did not enjoy were all the old queens who are her groupies or something. They must have interrupted her show at least a dozen times. Bitch, sit your country ass down. I did not come here to see you jump on stage to take a picture with this woman.

We left there after her show and headed back to Boom. By the time we got there, the club was pretty much dead. Here is where I will get a touch sappy. The DJ was playing some decent music, then went into a mix of Madonna's new single "Sorry". Of course Jamie and I got out on the dance floor. The DJ then played two more songs off the new album. Jamie and I decided that this was our little moment of fate. Here it was, just the two of us tearing up the dance floor to Madonna, nine years to almost the day from when we first met. I'm so thankfully that we have remained friends all these years.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program. We closed down Boom again and then went home to pass out. The next morning we all got up early and packed up and were out of the hotel by noon. I had a 1 PM flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Detroit. With a three hour wait until I could fly into National. Ugh. I was so miserable at that point. My skin was tingling and red, and all I wanted was to be back home.

I finally made it home at 9:30 Monday night. What is the first thing I did? Dropped my bags and headed right over to JR's to see Poo-Dell, Blondie and Christian. I only stayed out for a few drinks. Of course, I was right back there last night to see this lady and hear all about her trip to Tokyo.

Thank God I have 8 more days for my skin to heal up before I hit the beaches of Aruba!!!