Hell is a hotel bar

Yeah so I’m still in Charlotte as I tip and type this, in the airport actually waiting for a delayed plane and pondering the trip I just went on.

If any of you ever travel for work I’m sure you have been privy to the real and absolute phenomenon of extremely (painfully) normal people with extremely (painfully) normal lives turning into binge drinking adulterous sex maniacs upon breathing in the stale, smoky air of the hotel bar. It’s amazing. I have watched the bold and the beautiful, the young and the restless and mostly the ugly and the desperate shamelessly make out in front of colleagues and customers with people that are married but not married to them. I saw it Sunday night, a troll faced bottle blonde Sherman tank of a hag pawing all over some hick who was in town for a plumber’s convention. It was pretty fucking gross but fantastically entertaining.

What I have never witnessed but I am absolutely sure happens all the time is the married dude hooking up in the hotel bar for some freaky shenanigans with another dude. To wit; I was at the bar watching the aforementioned Jabba the Slut crotch rubbing and ear licking Schneider the Handyman and really trying to ignore the boring creepy dope sitting next to me. Creepy as he shall now be known forever and for true was attending the same conference as I was. I had the misfortune of having somehow given him the impression I wasn’t repelled by his very being and further wanted to actually talk to him and not spray him with kerosene and light him on fire which is really what I would have liked to do. When he was sober he was pretty shy and nerdy and fat and kinda creepy (good moniker, huh?) but as he got drunk he got more expressive and progressively weirder. Still I was using my incredible mind skills to blatantly ignore him until I felt a fat bacony hand on my shoulder.

EEP!!!

I had to acknowledge this completely fucked intrusion into my personal shell of awesomeness so I shrugged off the pork-like proboscis resting on my sexy ass broad shoulders and fixed a stern and manly glare on Creepy McFathands. This next exchange scared me more than a car accident and watching Fright Night in the 5th grade all rolled into one.

CMcF – It’s SO smokey in here!
Me – Yeah well that’s North Carolina. Welcome to tobacco country.
CMcF – I don’t think I can take it much longer.
Me – Well, every man has to make these type of decisions sometimes.
CMcF – Well what are you doing?
Me – Sitting here and getting drunk. It’s both a hobby and a lifestyle.
CMcF – We can get drunk in my room.
Me - …..what did you say?...
CMcF – We can have drinks from my mini-bar….

(Here’s where it gets really scary)

CMcF - ….and we can order…..(eyes get wider)…movies! (grins)

I just about crapped myself there on the spot. I mean I was attending the same conference as this guy and while he was not a co-worker or anyone that really had any sort of direct impact on me or my company I still couldn’t drill him in the eye with a broken beer bottle or just run screaming out of the bar (I had a tab open and I was determined to see if Jabba and Schneider were going to start doing the neutron dance right there next to the cigarette machine). Creepy was just sitting there giving me the hairy eyeball and a goofy drunken predatory smile that stretched across his fat greasy face like a rotting eggplant. It was by far the most confident demeanor that Creepy had ever displayed in our brief time of knowing each other and I was really at a loss.

And for all of you., “well what it was a girl…..” naysayers let me say this. It’s not like I have never been hit on by a guy before as hard as that might be for you to believe knowing how totally macho and badasstically hetero I am making babies and all that. I really have never minded it before as I crave attention of all sorts that doesn’t involve cops taking my I.D. or some douche with an internet connection talking out of his ass about what my motivations are. The difference with this Creepy situation was somewhat that I was in a hotel bar in North Carolina and not some club where hitting upon my sexalicious self could (and should) be expected but mostly that it was in an overall quasi-work setting. In that piece of the delicious pie that is my life that tastes like a job I tend to shelf the weirder and entertaining things and focus on staying employed and making cash to support my Hanoi Rocks t-shirt collecting habit and maintain the mansion on the hill and it’s occupants in the manner that they deserve. But to Creepy this evening at the conference was party time half-price burger day at the Castor Oil lunch counter and he was ready to chow down. My usual witty repartee of “get the fuck away from me” and the like just wasn’t geared for the time and place where I found myself and for one of the only times in my life I found myself with very little to say.

I was good and freaked out and also honestly a bit miffed because Creepy wasn’t even a remotely good looking man and who the hell did he think he was perpetrating on me like I would go get all liquored up and watch pornos with his busted ass? I got standards to maintain y’all!!! Still not sure how to handle the situation and with this leering monstrosity way too close for comfort I took the diplomatic (and admittedly wussy) high road and told him that my coworkers were going to be meeting me there to go to dinner (this was at 10:00, thank god Creepy was as stupid as he was drunk and scary). His eyes lowered and his face fell and I had the feeling that this kind of thing happened to him pretty often. If it wasn’t for the fact that I wanted him dead I might have felt sorry for him. He left his drink and just walked out, no goodbye no nothing.

I got good and shitfaced as was my primary intention all along and got back to focusing on Jabba and Schneider going through their cholestoric mating ritual. Schneider was rebuked by the bartender for openly sticking his hand in Jabba’s bra and shortly thereafter they toddled off to the elevator banks together. I’m sure that they’ll both not think one whit about it at all when they go to church on Sunday with their maniac kids and suicide craving wholly depressed spouses to profess horror that the Sodomites want to intrude on the sanctity of marriage. When’s judgment day again? I want to mark it on my calendar.

The next day as I was drinking my 87th cup of bad hotel coffee I saw Creepy peering across the room at me. Actually it wasn’t really peering but more glaring with a hateful gaze. I thought this was totally unfair, I mean it’s not like we were even serious or anything and I had a twinge of weirdness panic that he might actually want to talk about our “misunderstanding” at which point I might have had to knock his head off with a flying spin kick and totally freak out the entire place. Luckily he simply shuffled his way that way and I strolled this way mine and our paths never crossed again save for later that night when I was walking past the hotel bar with a friend and glanced in.

Same bar, same bartender, same smoke…..Creepy was chatting up some 47 year old dude in a polyester tie and looking as creepily carnivorous as he did the night before and Jabba was back all alone and distinctly sans Schneider looking serious and Republican over a big red Cosmopolitan. She wouldn’t be that way for long though, it was early on a Monday night and a convention of textbook salesmen had come in earlier that day so Jabba was sure to get her sex on with some fuckfaced Baptist from Pensacola or one of his ilk. Jabba obviously knew the ropes well and she was sure to tie one on with them again and again to warm her pasty white blue veined and ample to her waistline bosom.

Another round for the bar indeed.