Royal Caribbean Cruise - Day Zero - Orlando

November 13, 2004

You packed drunk in the middle of the night, you got no sleep, you spent twelve hours in the car today, you gladly accepted a $500 charity check from your mom, and you tied down six large pieces of luggage in the biting-cold wind just inside the Arkansas border.

But somehow none of that matters at midnight, when you find yourself in a seedy strip club where the seven-dollar draft beers come in 10-ounce flutes, the hostesses who lead you to your table are three times hotter than the actual strippers and the "private dance" involves being led to a highly visible corner of the club for an unceremonious handjob.

You're in New Orleans with three friends and two friends of friends, and you're thoroughly intoxicated. The sardine-packed streets ooze with mayhem and debauchery, strands of beads rain down from the upstairs balconies, and a place called the Absinthe House just served you guys seven glasses of synthetic chartreuse wormwood.

Over the course of the next few early-morning hours, you get shitface-drunk and wander the streets and completely lose track of all your friends in the Harrah's Casino - the most enormous gambling facility you've ever seen - and eventually have hotel security called to your room when your drunkest friend wants the two friends of friends to get the fuck out.

In ten months, New Orleans will be rubbed off the map by a Category 5 hurricane, but tonight it's your home. Your dirty, dirty home.

"Control your baggage at all times."
-Southwest Airlines mandate, which doubles as emotional advice

November 26, 2005
6:55 a.m.

I'm in the East Terminal of Lambert St. Louis Airport. More accurately, I'm on a barstool of the Chili's in the East Terminal of Lambert St. Louis Airport. Even more accurately, I'm on my second double Cuervo and OJ of the day on a barstool of the Chili's in the East Terminal of Lambert St. Louis Airport, and the sun just came up an hour ago.

I've already lapped my friends Jason and Emma, who occupy the next two stools to my right. Both are drinking El Nino Margaritas. "Look what the wind blew in!" scream the omnipresent, in-very-poor-taste table tents advertising the ENM drinks.

Somewhere in front of Gate 22, Justin's girlfriend Melinda is guarding four pieces of carryon luggage and trying to jockey all of us for position in the B boarding group on our first-come/first-seat Southwest Airlines flight. Melinda is also waiting for one of us to deliver her a Burger King breakfast sandwich. We're going to get right on that, we swear.

Meantime, Jason is off his stool, showing off the wedding ring he's planning to slip on Melinda's finger sometime this week. Two fiftysomething women, each one nursing a salted-rim Bloody Mary, are oohing and aahing over the ring ("That's gorgeous!" "That IS gorgeous!").

They're discussing carats and diamond cuts and other shit that is meaningless to me as one of the women's husbands sees his wife trying on Melinda's future ring and mock-yells, "Hey! I leave you alone for five minutes and some other dude's puttin' a ring on your finger?!" All eight early-morning bar patrons cackle in unison, as the wife flings a cardboard Red Stripe coaster at her husband.

The bartender doesn't flinch. She's used to this dawntime mayhem. She's the one who suggested we all make our drinks doubles for two dollars more. And her drink well is stocked with fourteen backup bottles of Bloody Mary mix, immediately within reach. A whole other case is waiting in the back, if needed. She says her rush hits hard around 9 a.m., and that the Bloody Mary is the favored drink of her airline pilot regulars. Who couldn't use a few double cocktails before steering a red-eye Parisian flight across the Atlantic?

"I know how you should do it, Jason!" Emma shouts from the corner of the bar. "When we're all on the beach, you put the ring in an oyster when she's not looking and act like, 'Oh, look what I found, Melinda!'"

We all kind of shake our heads. The mock-yelling husband tosses the same Red Stripe coaster in Emma's direction.

"Or here's one!" Emma seems to not even notice the whirring projectile flying past her head. "You bury it in the sand. 'Look, darling, what's that in the sand?'"

"I've got it covered, Emma, thanks. I've had it planned out for months," says Jason.

The pair of fiftysomething feminine romantics wants a play-by-play, and Jason launches into his staid proposal routine. Seconds in, Emma's eyes go wide.

"Here she comes! Here she comes!" she hisses. "Hide the ring."

And some piss-poor bumbling physical comedy ensues while the ring gets stashed away, we pretend to talk about something else, and Melinda saunters up wondering where the fuck her sausage and egg biscuit is.

--

9:20 a.m.

Melinda tells me not to. Emma tells me not to. But I can't resist pushing the little button over my head with the drawing of a stick figure holding a tray with a seemingly huge beverage on it. We're about a third of the way to Orlando, and my Gin and Tonic - served in an eight ounce plastic cup that resembles a Slurpee lid - is long gone.

And Jason wants another screwdriver. Who can blame him? I just knocked the first one down his leg and into his shoes. We're sitting in the aisle right over the wing - Jason gets extra leg room because the seat in front of him is missing, but that means he has to mooch my tray table. And that means I just knocked my Mila Kunis-on-the-cover issue of Stuff magazine into his drink.

So I push the button, which dings very audibly. Within seconds our flight attendant - a prim homosexual gentleman in his late thirties who resembles Jim J. Bullock - saunters up and asks what we want in a voice-tone bordering on impolite. I tell him another round of drinks and a shitload of towels. He's unamused, but his service is prompt. Two hundred travelers, and we appear to be the only AM alcoholics.

The early morning drinking was Emma's idea. She hasn't flown in five years, and the last flight she was on was nonstop turbulent across two time zones. She spent hours staring out the window, praying to God and crying and, at one point, she asked the businessman two seats down to please turn off his laptop because it was interfering with cockpit controls. ("He looked at me like I was retarded, and he just kept on typing.")

So she wanted a little liquid confidence to bring on the flight with her. But Emma - aside from a thirty-second near-panic attack during takeoff when she decided she wanted off the plane and we should all ride bicycles to Florida instead - has pulled through like a champ. And she's not drinking anymore. Jason and I are continuing in her stead, sucking down cocktails and cracking each other up with impersonations of demented airline announcements, all delivered in that suave, calm pilot voice with plenty of "uhh...." pauses between words.

--

10:10 a.m.

In seat 11D, directly to my left - receiving none of her allotted armrest space - is a pock-faced blonde waif I've mistakenly assumed was Eastern European and completely not fluent in English. Nope, she's American, and she's passing notes across the aisle to a furrowed-browed middle-aged gentleman I've mistakenly assumed was her father.

Since taking an over-the-shoulder peek at the passed notes, I'm desperately hoping the man is not related at all to this jailbait temptress. I figured the extent of the idly passed notes was, "Hey daddy, this flight sure is boring! Can we go to Sea World tomorrow?" / "Of course, darling. First thing in the morning. But save some energy for the Magic Kingdom!"

No way - Daddy's more interested in describing the waif's poetic facial features and his undying love for her. Daddy also feels like he's been "played" and that the waif apparently has no regard for his deep feelings. Daddy accompanied this accusation, believe it or not, with an intently drawn frowny-face.

"You knew I was together with Joshua when we met, and I told you I wasn't going to leave him," she scrawls on the back of a computer-printout boarding confirmation. I read the words while pretending to look in a catalogue stuck into the seat-back pouch in front of me. "And you and Nathan both need to realize you have to share my free time."

"This ninth grader's a fucking pimp," I whisper to Jason. The waif can't hear me anyway - she's got the earbuds of her mini MP3 player cranked to eleven. I think she's listening to The Veronicas right now. "She's like a junior She's Gotta Have It."

I'm about one drink away from tapping the waif on her upper right arm and asking, "Mile-high club?" with a knowing eyebrow wink. Across the aisle, Daddy is filling their back-and-forth notepage with angry prose. The waif undoes her seatbelt and heads about eight rows back. Leans in and starts talking to another middle-aged man on the aisle. I wonder if that's Nathan.

--

1:40 p.m.

We're checked into our suite at a Holiday Inn Select - me, Jason, Melinda and Jenna - a fifth traveling companion who took a different flight out of St. Louis. We expected to be in Orlando, in our designated rental car, an hour and a half or so ago. But the rental car people had no record of our booking, and after much frustrated maneuvering at the counter in Orlando International Airport, our equipped full-size SUV has turned into a 15-seater church van with tinted windows. It's approximately the size of half a city block, and finding volunteers to drive the thing was difficult. Melinda ended up taking Leg One of the half-hour trip from the airport to the family tourism capital of the world.

We're spending a night here, and tomorrow we board Mariner of the Seas for a weeklong Royal Caribbean cruise. Right now, though, all I can think about is taking a nap. I got maybe 40 minutes of sleep last night - put off packing until midnight or so and spent several early-morning hours playing "Tetris" and "Super Mario Bros." on a vintage Nintendo box Melinda unearthed and brought over.

Jenna and Melinda are keyed up - the former has been popping open all the cabinet doors in the kitchenette of our hotel suite to see what goodies are inside. "Four porcelain bowls!" she announces after opening Door #3. "Who wants to eat cereal with me?" No one wants cereal, but Melinda agrees to head downstairs with Jenna to the T.G.I. Friday's for some beers and lunch. Jason and I bid them farewell and each take a queen-sized bed. Jason sets his cell phone alarm for one hour from now.

--

5:35 p.m.

I get out of bed. I'm not entirely sure if the cell phone alarm ever went off, but it didn't stand a fucking chance either way. I begin the grooming process after begging the front desk clerk to have someone bring up a single-serve shaving cream. Turns out this is their fourth trip up to our room already - they've already delivered extra towels and pillows and investigated a mystery clogging of the toilet.

I'm ready for the evening before the rest of our group, which has swelled to six - Emma's oldest sister Marie arrived in Orlando on a later flight from Detroit. Jenna crawls into the queen-sized bed I just vacated, mumbling something about menstruation being physically draining and does anyone have any aspirin? She's gently snoring several minutes later.

Everyone else rotates their way in and out of the shower, while I wander the halls of the Holiday Inn Select with a video camera, recording vulgar attempts at humor. Highlights include:

* I pan the camera across a bank of unused house phones as I note, "These phones may seem obsolete and unnecessary in the era of cellular takeover - until you use the second phone to the right to dial 1-900-BUTT-SEX for a log-jammin' good time."

* I get a closeup of a hallway sign reading "Safe Refuge Place" as I note, "Wow, Jesus has been promising this for millennia, and finally Holiday Inn Select steps up to the plate."

* A picturesque view of palm trees and children frolicking in the pool as I note, "Every year before we leave for our cruise, we traditionally spend the night before partying in a major tourist town, and ten months later God wipes it off the face of the earth. So I'm recording this for future generations - the palm trees, the outlandish number of swimming pools per square mile and capita - this is what Orlando looked like, because next September it's all over."

* A P.O.V. shot of a hand pushing open a tiny poolside unisex restroom door as I note, "This is the hottest new attraction here in Orlando for boys and girls under 54 inches in height. It's Uncle Andrew's Wild Ride. Don't worry - I have a team of high-powered attornies."

And with the homosexual, blasphemous, casualty-heavy and pedophilic humor out of the way, I return the camera to the room and tell everyone I'll be down at the Friday's bar, drinking dollar-sixty draft beers.

--

11:25 p.m.

We're sitting in the church van outside a Walgreen's, me and Emma and Marie. Jason and Melinda are inside purchasing replacements for the toiletries they forgot - apparently they're not cheap fucks like me who call the front desk for toiletry duplicates.

"I don't feel like we're in Florida," Emma says. "Where's the Epcot ball?"
"The palm trees are enough for me," Marie replies.
"Nope, I need the Epcot ball," Emma says. "Need the Epcot ball."

We just got done playing mini-golf at a course directly next door to Wet-N-Wild, my favorite water park ever. Looking up at all the quiet waterslides lit in soft colors was all the confirmation I needed that I was in fact in the ultimate childhood playground. And act like kids we did - getting all competitive and stupid over mini-golf and air hockey and a free-throw basketball contest in the game room. We even bought "alligator food" (i.e. a chopped-up hot dog in a pot baggie for $3.95) and tried to force-feed Ballpark Franks to apathetic, sleepy gators.

Now we're headed to Citywalk, the restaurant and bar complex at the entrance to Universal Studios. As soon as Jason and Melinda get back with their toothbrushes and we can swing back to the hotel to let Jenna back into the room. She's locked out, and the front desk people won't give her a new keycard because her name's not listed on the room.

The church van is crookedly parked, its ass jutting way out into traffic. We're seven inches away from the car on the right, praying Jason and Melinda get back before the rightful owner shows up. The R.O. actually beats our friends back to the car, though, and he turns out to be a frightened-looking Eastern European. Rather than ask us to move the church van, he sucks in his breath, shoulder-shuffles sideways and somehow squeezes into his vehicle. It's an impressive display of agility and cowardice.

--

12:50 a.m.

Our Holiday Inn is directly across the street from Citywalk, and I've been looking forward to going back to The Groove and the Bob Marley reggae club for months. Suddenly, after taking a poop break and drinking a pair of $1.60 T.G.I. Friday's draft beers and realizing our Citywalk time is scarce and the prices damned expensive, we all make the mutual decision to anchor down a six-top table at Friday's and just get drunk there.

Banter with strangers is dicey - the bar attendees are divided among business travelers and parents of children who are currently asleep somewhere upstairs. The closest I get to amusing stranger conversation is in the men's room with a proud Floridian. He gets somewhat offended when he overhears Jason and me making fun of the state's handicap bathroom stalls. Which are actually legally mandated to be separate rooms with their own sinks and mirrors and emergency phones and baby-changing tables. I say I'd like to see a guy in a wheelchair change a diaper, and the Floridian asks where we come from that we think we're so cool. We tell him Nairobi, in the heart of Africa.

The bar closes, the girls all go to sleep, and Jason and I sneak a bottle of Cream Sherry down to the hotel courtyard. The pool area is locked up, but I use my height and armspan to my advantage and reach over the tan metal fence to grab us a pair of deck chairs. We each light up a smoke - Jason some cigar in the eight-dollar range and me a back-to-back pair of Black N' Mild Milds. And, for a tranquil hour or so, we drink and smoke and talk about serious shit and stupid shit. We enjoy the breeze of warm fall weather and stare at the Citywalk spotlights in the sky and inaugurate our vacation in style.

2002 - Four days in Orlando

DATE: Tuesday-Friday, September 17-20, 2002
PLACE: Orlando, Florida
POISONS OF CHOICE: Johnny Walker Black, Absente, Michelob Light draft, Ten Bucks champagne
CAST OF CHARACTERS: You, Jason, Karaoke Katie, Karaoke Brittany, 28-Year-Old Stephanie, 50-Year-Old Jean


9.17.02 - EARLY EVENING

You used to figure that, when you went on a genuine, out-of-the-central-time-zone vacation without your mom and brother with you, you'd know you reached adulthood. But adults have too many responsibilities to pack up and converge on some cliché tourist destination like Orlando on a moment’s notice. Much less with an SUV packed full of liquor they didn't pay for.

You’re 24 years old, and so is your friend Jason. The vacation was his idea - you didn’t feel the need to escape to anywhere, but Jason did. And he promised to pay for the hotel accommodations, the dozen or so tanks of gas for his ozone-slaughtering Ford Explorer and the most expensive nights out. If you'd just come with him. Not a difficult proposition to agree to.

Thanks to a bad economy and continued disinterest in tourism in general, and due - you're sure in no small part - to the fact that no one ever goes on vacation in September, you get a room at the Lake Buena Vista Doubletree for sixty bucks a night. It's right in the middle of everything, and when you ask the desk clerk about the nightlife, he points you to a locally franchised bar and grill across the street.

When Jason asks about the abundance and availability of hot women in Orlando, the clerk tells both of you you'll probably have to drive thirty miles away to the city’s downtown area. He also says you guys just missed a convention of sorority girls, one weekend back, and for a silent, energy-charged second, all three of you imagine a gang of tri-Delts on the prowl. Drunk, horny, ready to "go wild" at the first offer of a free T-shirt or all-you-can-slam hotel room booze.

For now, it's a Tuesday night, the hotel is a ghost town, and your liquor supply - extensive and ridiculously overwrought for a two-man vacation - rivals that of the bar. Jason, for all his boasting of connections and being made of money, knows the right person at work. For the trip to Florida, this right person gave you and Jason eight cases of Budweiser, two eighteen packs of Mick Light, three fifths of Jack, two bottles of Cabo Wabo tequila, pairs of bottles of Frangelico and Midori and a bottle apiece of Bicardi Ciclon, Tropico, Tequila Rose, Cherry Jubilee and, God, about six or eight others you can’t think of.

All the guy wanted in return was a T-shirt he saw you wearing one time. A psychedelic-looking olive green XXL affair with a distorted horror-movie monster on the front and a hairy-ass gorilla man on the back. You bought it at Wal-Mart for less than eight bucks, and you traded it for like 400 bucks worth of booze. It was an unnaturally enormous tip of the cosmic seesaw that made you feel happier than the honkey entrepreneur who bought New York from the Indians with a cubic zirconium necklace.

You're already feeling the glass of scotch on the rocks, and you're hungry as fuck. It's like eleven already, and suddenly you wonder if this place across the street is about to stop serving food. Jason calls the front desk, and the Apu-sounding voice on the other end tells him the kitchen closes at one. "You're sure? On a Tuesday night in the off-season?" Jason asks. In a clipped, business-like tone, and sounding twice as funny filtered through a foreign accent, the desk clerk responds, "This eez Orlando."

So you head off to some place called the Ale House to spend more money and get more fucked up. To let the juvenile you and the adult you bounce your lifestyle on that cosmic seesaw you were thinking about earlier.


09.18.02 - MID-AFTERNOON

You're killing time before 3:00 rolls around and Wet 'n' Wild, the water park you wished you could move into when you were ten, starts offering half-price tickets for the day. Your belly is full of stagnating Chinese buffet food, most of which was breaded and fried before being popped into your greedy mouth. You realize that eating seven to eight pounds of Chinese might not have been the best preparation for a visit to Orlando’s biggest aquatic playground, but your plans will not change. The vacation motto, coined by Jason, is simple: "Why not?" It's the attitude that got you both down here in the first place.

You're killing time in the aptly named Spy Shop. This place is half-kitsch, half-creep out affair. It’s like a supply shop for stalkers and surveillance nuts, basically, and a few of the cameras are so miniaturized and stylized that you expect Q from the James Bond movies to pop up and explain how they work. ("Now, Agent Double-Oh-Andrew, this ordinary-looking piece of gum is actually a homing device designed to propel itself through the sewer system of the residence in question and jam its way up Dr. No's ass.") Bow-tie cameras and shit, those long-distance radio wave microphone recorders right out of The Conversation, spray paint that purportedly makes your license plates invisible to mounted speed-trap cameras, even blowdarts.

"This is one-stop kidnapper shopping here," you tell Jason. "Let me see if I've got enough in my wallet for a pocketful of poison darts for the Wet-N-Wild waterslides."

"Blowdarts are for kids," the female clerk says with a pleasant but dismissive scoff.

"Kids of all ages," you reply, deadpan, and pick up a highest voltage taser. Your eyes scan the series of all-caps warnings about the dangers of electricity, blah blah blah.

Jason asks her - she's kind of cute, really - if she's ever been stalked by one of the whacko customers who come in. You remark that an effective saleslady would no doubt invite the notion that the products she sells might be best tested out on her by said customers. She says she guesses she's gotten lucky so far.

"But it's only a matter of time before some suave guy comes in here, charms the pants off of you and gets your number, then turns around, buys the most expensive phone tapping equipment on the market and tells you he looks forward to hearing your voice again soon," you say, though not actually out loud.

"We get all types in here, though," she says, and leans back on her waist-high stool. "One lady, a real nice elderly woman with a lot of cats, came in here talking about someone was sneaking up into her attic every night. She lived alone, except for the cats, and she said the only way in was by the front door. So first I sold her a motion detector alarm, and it kept going off like six times a night, I guess on account of all the cats. The next week she came back, twice as freaked out as the first time, and I sold her sixteen surveillance cameras."

"Damn, she got the deluxe package."

"The crazier the person, the bigger the commission, right?"

And in walks a businessman, headed straight for the surveillance cameras. The female clerk puts your receipt and your "Florida Terrorist Hunting License" sticker in a small plastic bag and excuses herself to make a sale.


09.18.02 - NIGHT

Wednesday night you're cruising the super-stocked aisles of the ABC Wine and Spirits store - about four blocks up the street from your hotel. Jason has decided the lack of Blue Curacao in your booze box could be detrimental to the vacation as a whole. He wants to make Waboritas; you want to pick up some Grenadine so you can make some top-shelf Tequila Sunrises.

You end up stumbling upon a row of Absente liqueur - phony absinthe - complete with gift-box and spoon. You've read about how most states have banned the relaunched tribute to emerald alcoholic psychedelia, even though it's made from a completely different set of ingredients. And you’re too fucking curious to resist - the best book you’ve read this year is The Basic Eight, after all. So you pony up the $34.99 and buck twenty-five for sugar cubes at a nearby supermarket.

You're navigating an odd amalgam of chemical buzzes when you hit CityWalk, the uber-commercialized Universal complex of restaurants, bars, clubs and shops. There's the weed you smoked in the hotel bathroom - the toke-and-dump combo will provide countless fundamental solitary episodes of relaxation during this trip - the first absinthe cocktail and a strong-ass Waborita Jason forced on you.

You toss a couple frozen Midori margaritas on top of that at Margaritaville, the Jimmy Buffet chain whose menu is New Orleans meets Applebee's. He swears the waitress is winking at him every time she comes by, and you concentrate instead on your crabcake sandwich, which sounded way cooler when described in the alternate universe of the menu.

Jason - himself a musician and singer - asks your server if the band, which has just finished up a rollicking performance of "Cheeseburger in Paradise" (available at your local Margaritaville with a side of Extreme Fries), allows tourists to sit in and sing with them. She says, sure, all the time, and Jason tips her 17 percent. And you both go inside so Jason can talk to the band when they take their next break - which, in his infinite knowledge of musicology, Jason predicts will happen in the near future. It does, too, and your friend is shot down by someone who is far less talented than he. You both settle in at the bar, the band members feet away from you on the left, and Jason launches his plot to subvert management for committing this senseless and regrettable transgression. You drink a Sam Adams and roll your eyes.

From this point on, Jason is on a mission to sing with the entertainment at one of these bars, even though attendance is scant and no one seems particularly in the mood to party. And he sniffs out the one piano bar in the complex, Pat O'Brien's, home of the giant nine-dollar Hurricane. Jason orders you each one, and you sip it while staring up at the dueling pianos on the stage. Two black baby grands face each other, and you're close enough to the pianist on the right to smell the whiskey on her breath. She looks like she could be Joan Osborne's older sister, but her body language is pure Janis Joplin. The guy across from her, big and charcoal-skinned, looks like Van McCoy, perpetrator of "The Hustle" back in '74.

Jason finally gets the drunk piano player's attention while Van is doing a solo shot on some old Elton John. The Osborne sister tells Jason he has to talk to the manager because they have policies set up to keep the show from turning into a sloshed-ass free for all. Even though loud drunken reveling is basically what the scant audience, save a quiet couple here and there, is engaging in. Most of them are from the United Kingdom and its neighbors, and they're into some real sing-along Irish pub shit. Jason could bring them to life, at least for a minute.

But they won't let him on, even though he talks to two managers at once. Jason is told he’ll have to go through an audition process with Universal theme park officials to be let onstage. Much grumbling ensues, though Jason isn't motivated to leave. You guys stick around through the shift change, when Van and the Osborne sister surrender their benches to a Harry Anderson look-alike and a fish-faced sixtyish lady who Jason claims is a dead ringer for Ursula the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid. ("She's at the wrong damn Orlando theme park then," you declare.) Two songs into the set, Jason drops a request in to Ursula to perform "I Touch Myself." Minutes later, she grabs the slip from the basket, reads it off and tosses it across to Harry. Who launches right into it.


09.19.02 - NIGHT

It doesn't take you guys long to find a karaoke bar in Orlando. Back in St. Louis, that's your fucking thing - drinking, jacking the mike and entertaining the crowd in four-minute increments. More addictive than Krispy Kreme donuts, you say. And right across the street from Wet-N-Wild, in one of the windows of the Black Angus Steakhouse, is a sign advertising karaoke. What nights and what hours are unspecified, so you call the restaurant the next afternoon.

"Karaoke?" a Middle Eastern voice asks on the other end. “Oh yes, we have it tonight, tomorrow night, Saturday night," droning it's the most overexposed, torturous concept in the world. His phone voice, you suspect, was perkier about a thousand off-key renditions of "Paradise By the Dashboard Light" ago.

You stroll into the Black Angus at like 10:15, in the prime of its bar rush. A white guy who looks like Dick Sergeant, the second Darrin on "Bewitched," is performing "Funky Cold Medina," and the only open booth is directly in front of the left speaker. You guys sit down there, order a pitcher and a pair of appetizers, and rifle through the karaoke book. The lady's stack of slips is huge - probably 25 or 30 singers, which is like a two-hour rotation. But most of these people will be gone within the hour, despite the karaoke lady's less-than-subtle tactics to try to get the audience into the show. Playing inflatable air guitars and shit. But she's cool, and you aren't half bad either while belting out Florida cheeseball versions of "I Want Your Sex" and "Hand in My Pocket."

Once you both get our barbecue rib residue cleaned up, you and Jason look around and realize you're finally in full mack regalia. It's one of those undeniable rules of drunken socialization - when everyone sees a person sing and is actually entertained, they unconsciously feel like they already sort of know the person. You're not just some strange, pathetic pickup artist, you're the strange, pathetic pickup artist who cracked their ass up on some karaoke. A decent enough performance is an icebreaker in every direction.

Case in point: right after Jason gets done singing, karaoke lady Katie calls up a hot-ass Latina valley girl named Brittany who does a song from Jeckyl and Hyde. Very well, you might add. So Jason stops Brittany on the way back and asks if she wants to do some kind of showtuney duet. She already knows Jason can sing, so it's not like a strange come-on. ("Yeah, baby, we'll do a duet and record it on 64 tracks in the Studio of Nude Lovin'.")

She slides into the booth and talks to you guys for a few minutes, Jason up-playing his musical credibility for all it's worth. Brittany is no spring chicken herself, as it turns out - she works for the Disney people, singing in hourly theme park shows as Belle, the Little Mermaid and Princess Jasmine. All heavy hitters, you point out, as you gesture back to the 450-pound belt-buckle cowboy whose in the midst of a passionate rendition of some Mary Chapin Carpenter song. "Isn't it also true," you ask, "that this guy was cast by the Magic Kingdom people to play Snoops from The Rescuers?" She says no.

There's a Black Angus waitress named Jen who puts Brittany to shame a half-hour or so down the line. You and Jason end up talking to Jen after she goes off-duty - she's one of those people so humble it's annoying, who can sing like a fucking angel and is not at all bad to look at yet is uncomfortable with compliments and attention. Jason descends upon their nearby table, which is inhabited by a pair of older, unattractive guys and a girl who's in the same boat. None of them, Jason ascertains, is in any way attached to Jen, so he invites her back to the hotel room to enjoy the free booze and quarter-a-pop vibrating queen-size beds. She says she'll think about it.

Meanwhile, your only romantically themed encounter comes when you're waiting for a pitcher at the bar and notice a pair of underage hotties sitting down by the trivia box. They're jailbait on the level of the Olsen twins, and some middle-aged black man is offering to buy them a drink or something. When he walks away, defeated, you ask the girls, "What, are you getting hit on by 50-year-old men over here?" And they both look at each other and start giggling self-consciously, like you’re the biggest loser in the history of pervertdom. Your attempts to dig yourself out of the hole, lines like, "It's just guys aren't used to being in a bar, half-drunk and kinda horny and then suddenly looking over and being like, 'Holy fuck, she’s hot, but I bet I already had pubic hair when she was born,'" do further damage. You excuse yourself to get drunker.

Sometime after you sing "Delirious," Jason comes up and whispers in your ear, "If you know what's good for you, you'll pick up all that shit and get your ass over to this booth in the corner, where there are two girls totally ready to go home with us." You're tempted to let out one of those short, scoff-heavy bursts of air when he says, "The hot one saw you sing and is dying to talk to you. The other one's kind of nasty, but I'm willing to take one for the team here." So, loaded with curiosity, you grab the pitcher, your boot-shaped Black Angus mug and ice water and make a cumbersome appearance at the booth in the corner.

They're both blonde, and not exactly from the same generation. Stephanie, the "hot one" is indeed hot, 28 years old and born and raised in Kentucky. She lives in Tampa now, as does the older one - both work at Chaise Manhattan and are spending the weekend in Orlando, in the adjoining hotel. Jason asks you how old you think the older one is, which is a beautiful opportunity for you to put your foot in your mouth. You figure this woman, Jean, to be anywhere from 40 to 48, and she tells you fifty. Jason won't have to worry about birth control, at least.

Stephanie's putting her hands on you already, which is a pleasant half-buzzed surprise, and you help yourself to a friendly embrace of your own. She's got a rock-solid body and a Southern accent that turns you on - what's more, she has the attitude of a groupie, talking about how she can't sing for a shit herself and how much she admires people who can. Asks you what you're going to sing next, and you say something by Stevie Wonder. She says too bad, she likes country. Surprise, surprise. You say that's Jason's territory, you're lucky to even know the chorus to "Friends in Low Places," and she starts rattling off her favorite country artists.

The list includes John Michael Montgomery, and suddenly you remember his cover of "I Swear," the guilty-pleasure All 4 One ballad from your senior year of high school. You tell Stephanie you'll pull a song switch on her behalf, and she seems flattered and excited - the ridiculous amounts of alcohol she's been imbibing the past eight and a half hours no doubt raising the intensity of both those emotions. When you get called up to sing "I Swear," Stephanie pops up below the stage (yeah, there's actually a stage) to make sure you’re singing it to her. Oh, you are, by the moon and the stars in the sky. She even comes up to the stage and freaks on you from behind, which earns you both subdued grin of approval from Katie the karaoke lady.

You and Jason get the invite back up to the Stephanie-Jean hotel room, and after last call you take off to grab two bottles of Ten Bucks sparkling wine/champagne from the liquor stash and the individually wrapped, war-torn condoms Jason has been waiting to use for months. You also grab your $34 Best Buy boom box and pocket your one-hitter, figuring if nothing else a few tokes may ensure your drunken dick of a solid erection. Jason bitches at you when you get back to the car - it was supposed to be a stealth snatch-and-grab, and you took almost six minutes. He wants to make sure to get back to Room 368 before the chicks pass out or change their minds. He's aching for that half-century-old snatch, and who can blame him?

You gain admission to 368, and Jason pops the first Ten Bucks cork. None of the four of you have the class or subtlety of sobriety, so you pass the bottle around the room while conversing about topics of scant import. When Stephanie and Jean find out the boom box is in the car - it takes some explaining on Jason’s part to make their drunk asses realize you’re not talking about yanking out his car stereo or taking them down to the car - it's time for a double-car reconnaissance mission. Stephanie's got her two favorite non-country CDs out in her hooptie, Nelly and 'N Sync, so you and she head out to retrieve all of the above. She's leaning into you and manhandling you the entire way out. You note a look of scorned concern on the front desk clerk's face when he sees you two stumble back through the lobby with the stereo.

Further conversation in 368 reveals that Stephanie has a serious boyfriend and a jealous linebacker of a brother, and that she and Jean are both raging racists from the Ole South. It’s a little surreal to watch their dancin' booties come to life to Nelly beats while they're badmouthing the entire black race. ("Why do they call their girlfriends 'my boo'? What the fuck's that all about? Is 'Boo' the last name of some bitch named 'Jigga'?”)

But for the next hour you guys party in the hotel room, trading off the Nelly for the 'N Sync, and vice versa. Stephanie keeps wanting to hear "Hot in Herre," and each time she doesn't realize it was just on a few minutes ago. Whatever. When Jean finds out you've got weed, her 1952-vintage eyes spring to life - "Pot? Yeah, I wanna smoke some pot." Stephanie, however, wisely turns it down.

So you're in the bathroom trading batties with Jean for a couple minutes when there's a sharp knock on the hotel room door. Jason tells you and Jean to stay in the bathroom, and in a minute gives you the all-clear. It was the Arab desk clerk, none too happy at the noise emanating from 368. ("Not just that, but did you have to play 'Pimp Juice' seven times in a row? I mean, come on.")

The party doesn't slow down in the least - Jason starts telling Jean she doesn't know how to smoke properly and he's going to show her. So they disappear into the bathroom, you're sitting on the edge of the left bed and Stephanie starts turning on the lap-dance charm. You've got your legs spread, she's freaking in between them, dancing along to whatever shitty song, and your hands keep roaming. Grabbing ass, caressing thighs, whatever. She starts raising her shirt up, you cup her tits and even the 'N Sync doesn't sound half bad all of a sudden. That's about when Jason and Jean descend back upon the room.

You're feeling like calling Muhammed Atta at the front desk and inquiring about the possibility of checking yourself and racist-ass Stephanie into another room so you can get down to business when - lo and behold - she passes out on the left bed. Great.

But you and Jason and Jean keep drinking and talking and laughing, so much so that Atta is back rapping on the door within twenty minutes' time. ("If you do not cease and desist with all noise, we will call the Orlando police! I am not playing around, you fucking capitalist pigs!") Jean, her head now full of pot, is starting to worry about getting kicked out of the room or arrested at four in the morning. The music gets turned down, the lights get turned off, and Jason's ass settles in with Stephanie.

At one point, sex or no sex, both ladies consented to letting you both sleep a few hours in their room to sober up. So you're getting to know the right half of Jean’s bed, you have some softer music on and, holy crap, the semi-darkness melts about twenty years off her perceived age. You're starting to think older women aren't so bad, that you might want to get to know a Fabulous Fifty from the inside.

It's around this time that she says, uh, you guys, she doesn't want to be rude, but she can't fall asleep with two strange men in her room. The marijuana you gave her is turning on you. She's kicking your asses out. But you go without a struggle and Muhammed Atta, from behind his desk down there, breathes a sigh of relief.


09.20.02 - LATE AFTERNOON

Jason goes on and on about all the Latina hotties down here in Florida, so much so that he lets one sucker him into the deluxe package of a computer-generated picture of himself posing with President George W. Bush. You're exiting WonderWorks - this interactive tourist attraction that's like the Magic House in St. Louis times six - and this 19-year-old Mexican cutie calls out, "Pose with a celebrity. Free trial." You start looking at the wall of celebrities, wondering if you'll look cooler on a T-shirt standing next to Master P or the Olsen twins, when Jason happens upon the picture of G.W.

It's George Jr. in a suit, against a black background, solemn look on his face with a faceless suit-wearing individual next to him. So over the next, God, half hour or so, he gets his picture taken digitally, gets it retaken, manages to crash the computer system with his suave semi-smile and hits on the Latina girl endlessly. When all is said and done, he's managed to spend forty bucks and doesn't get so much as a phone number. But he has two 8½ by 11's, four 3 by 5's and an extra-large T-shirt of him and the president, with the caption, "Me and My Dubya, Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue." You have to help the Latina girl spell "courtesy."