Key West Vacation—Day 4

We had breakfast again at the poolside bar and restaurant. I had the “Caribbean French Toast” today, Very yummy. We had a lazy day, just hanging around the resort, so I’m going to capture something in today’s entry that actually happened on Friday. If I were home, this would be much like a buscapade.

We were on our way out to the clubs on Friday, and outside the front door to our guest house, there were these two queens absolutely going at it. Well, actually one was—the other one was just standing there being berated. The berator was screaming at the top of his lungs, and this is the part I overheard before we disappeared around the corner and out of earshot of them:

“I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WOULD SAY SUCH A THING! SOMETHING SO ABSOLUTELY VILE!! SO UTTERLY DISGUSTING!!! I CAN’T EVEN BEGIN TO IMAGINE HOW YOU MUST HAVE BEEN RAISED TO BE ABLE TO SAY SOMETHING SO RUDE, DISGUSTING, AND VILE TO ANOTHER PERSON AS, ‘I MAKE MORE MONEY THAN YOU.’ WHAT KIND OF PERSON CAN SAY SUCH A THING?? ‘I MAKE MORE MONEY THAN YOU!’ DO YOU KNOW HOW PURELY DISGUSTING THAT IS TO SAY TO ANOTHER PERSON? WHAT IS IT ABOUT YOU THAT YOU FEEL YOU HAVE TO LET SOMEONE ELSE KNOW YOU MAKE MORE MONEY THAN THEM??? THAT’S JUST SO VILE!”

OMG, when he got to that part about what the other guy had actually said to make him go off like that, I had two immediate thoughts, both about the screaming queen of course:

  1. “Honey, could you be any more dramatic?”
  2. “I CAN’T EVEN BEGIN TO IMAGINE HOW YOU MUST HAVE BEEN RAISED TO MAKE SUCH A VILE AIRING OF YOUR DIRTY LAUNDRY IN A PUBLIC PLACE FOR ALL THE WORLD TO HEAR! DO YOU KNOW HOW RUDE, DISGUSTING, AND VILE IT IS TO SUBJECT EVERYONE TO YOUR PERSONAL BUSINESS IN A PUBLIC PLACE RIGHT AT THE ENTRANCE AND EXIT TO THE GUEST HOUSE IN WHICH YOU’RE STAYING?”

We decided to check out karaoke this evening, since it was an early activity (relatively), running from 5:00-8:30. We walked down to 801 Bourbon Street, arriving at about 7:00 or so, and it was fairly festive, and not of course, without its characters:

  • Two big-boned and hefty guys who had this fairly large boxer sitting up on a barstool at the bar. At various points it: 1) drank water out of a plastic cup, slobbering excess water all over the bar onto napkins that had been spread around for this express purpose, 2) licked the living hell out of this adorable man sitting next to it (not one of the two owners), and 3) tried to eat a little, hairy chihuahua (I’m pretty sure it was) for a snack, when it and its owner got nearby.
  • The lady who joined “Clyde” (I think that was his name, a guy standing next to us), who proceeded to bump into us as she did, and then turn around and hug me, Joe, and a guy named Jay like we were her oldest friends on the planet. She then proceeded to draw us into her inebriated drama (at least I hope it was the liquor talking and not her normal personality) when Clyde (or his partner, can’t remember which, and really don’t care, nor does it matter) went up to sing karaoke. “Ain’t he great? He’s my neighbor! He lives right next door to me.” (Ah, yes, that would be the neighbor part.) And then later when Clyde (or his partner) was finished singing, barging into the middle of our conversation, nudging us, “Clap for him!  Hey, clap for him! That was so great! He’s my neighbor.”
  • The dancing mess that grabbed a feather duster (a stick with fringe on the end of it), which was hanging from the wall, and pranced around like he was the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins, kicking and pointing his feet to a song, making his way up to the stage while someone else was singing the karaoke song, and eventually leaning on a table that was on the stage, which promptly broke and crashed to the floor.

I mentioned Jay, whom we’d met fairly quickly after arriving. Turns out he’s on Twitter, and he “followed” me so that I’d have his Twitter address when I got back to my iTouch or laptop to “follow” him back.

Since it was his first visit to Key West, he wanted to check out some other places, so we walked with him down to La-ti-da, where we had just one drink, as the visit didn’t start off at all well with a female bartender who was kind of flippant, and for some queer reason thought it would be a good idea to pull open her blouse and show three gay men the pasties that covered her nipples, after which she handed us a post card advertising her business, Gina’s Gems:

Gina’s actually on the left.
That’s her sister on the right with the pasties.


As she told us about her business, and while I was thinking, “And the three of us would care about this because?” she pointed to a long, plastic box up above the register and said, “I made $200 on them today during tea dance.”

Okay.

[You can click on the photo above if you are truly interested in more of Gina’s wares, or if you’re a straight guy, or a Lesbian, her wares on various “clients.” (May be a little NSFW, depending on where you work.)]

We moved away from Gina’s life story, and stood around a table overlooking the sidewalk, so we could people-watch both inside the (outdoor) bar area and out onto the sidewalk. Shortly after that, a tragic drag queen to our right bent over exposing men’s, white boxer briefs under her skirt. That, in and of itself was tragic enough, but to add insult to injury, the crotch of the boxer briefs were facing the back, and there appeared to be a potato inside them, right in the middle.

“She could have at least peeled the brown skin off the potato,” I noted.


Our next stop was Aqua nightclub, where there was a drag show going on and the doorman said, “It’s $15 a piece, gentlemen,” referring to the cover charge.

“Oh, we can’t pay that,” I said, “We’re not going to be here that long,” and we started to walk away.

He ended up letting us in for $8.00 each, and after some mass confusion about giving him $21 for two of us, so I could get a $5 back, his calculator-less mind finally acquiesced.

This show turned out to be pretty good. Jay left shortly after we arrived, and Joe and I hung around for a while, thoroughly enjoying the straight people going absolutely nuts over the drag queens. It’s always fun to watch the emotions many straight men go through seeing good female impersonators, ranging from “Wow, she’s hot,” when looking at them to “Damn, that’s really a guy!” when they come up to them and start “the tease.”

I particularly liked the drag queen who did Cher and the plus-sized, white girl, who actually pulled off Beyonce’s All The Single Ladies dancing by herself even.


On the way back, we stopped for a slice of pizza at Pizza Joes, where we met a straight couple who had just arrived today in Key West and were on their honeymoon. They had been on a cruise from California all the way ’round to Key West.

They asked what was going on down there, and we alerted them to the fact that they were in the “gay area” of Key West, and we told them about the drag show that was going to start at 11:00 over at 801 Bourbon Street, which was pretty much across the street from where they were.

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