Generally Discontent

I suppose this is just a fact of my life: I can go to a party filled to the brim with hundreds of people, and I'll still meet the craziest fucker there.

The crazy one in particular was... Okay, I'll get to that. After a day of driving around Plant City with Becky, meeting her dad and grandparents, getting a few strawberry-based food items from Parkesdale Farm Market, and grabbing some tasty fried chicken, we headed back to the house and chill for awhile before getting ready to go to the Christmas Party. I put on my gay clothes which I guess didn't look so gay after all, Becky and Mike got ready, and away we went!

The party was at the A La Carte Event Pavilion, which is an extremely fancy and huge place. The theme was Key West, so they had a guy juggling flaming sticks at the door. I don't know if juggling flaming sticks is indicative of Key West, but there he was nonetheless. Upon entering and passing the coat check, we were greeted by none other than famous author Earnest Hemingway, who looked rather good despite being dead. You would never guess that he'd blown his head off with a shotgun by looking at him. Actually, I had the sneaking suspicion that this was not really Earnest Hemingway, but I stifled these doubts so as not to insult anyone.

The ball room was colorful and decorated in the fashion of the islands, complete with small bars covered in grass and palm trees and stuff, and dozens of upside-down umbrellas hanging from the ceiling. Well, I guess that's the fashion of the islands. It all looked real nice, anyway. Scattered among the bars and food tables were people drawing caricatures and an area for folks to have their pictures taken by a professional picture taker guy.

And finally, there was the stage/dance floor, where the DJ was spinning Key West's greatest hits, from Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville" to Jimmy Buffet's "Cheeseburger in Paradise". I swear the guy played those two songs about ten times each, occasionally segueing into country-western's best Christmas songs, which really weren't very good. At one point he played actual dance music, including "Hammer Time" (which I'll get to later, as well), and this goddamn annoying hip-hop line dancing thing that I'd heard in Maryland and hoped to never hear again. It's basically some DJ guying telling people to "cha-cha" and "spin" and "whatever the fuck", though it is funny to watch drunk people trying to follow his directions.

Of course the best part was the whole "free food, free booze" thing, and the bartenders were quite adept at letting the booze flow freely. It didn't take long for the party to go from stuffy and formal to drunk and crazed, I'm pleased to say. We wandered around, Becky introduced me to a bunch of people I can't exactly remember now, and Mike and I played some pool. I thought that I really hadn't learned anything about how to play pool from spending so much time with Vani and Jay in Maryland, but I found myself trying some things that I'd seen them do and was pleased and surprised when they worked every so often.

Smoking had to be done outside, of course, and that's where things started getting nutty. Early in the evening, we were out having a smoke and noticed a loud, obnoxious guy out there as well. About six-two, about fifty-something, grey hair long and hanging around a red face, grey beard, and glassy, psychotic eyes behind a pair of glasses. Black dress shirt open and revealing a hairy grey chest, a huge gold cross hanging just below that, and a demeanor that screams "THIS IS THE GUY YOU WANT TO GET AWAY FROM IF YOU VALUE YOUR SANITY AND LIFE". Too bad we didn't listen to that scream, for this was Johnnie, and he was legion.

We'd see Johnnie a few times over the next couple of hours, usually during smoke breaks. At one point, he actually kicked the door open to come outside, bursting onto the scene and fortunately not targeting us with his insanity. Not yet, anyway. So we'd share glances, laugh him off as just a drunken, colorful character. So it goes.

Then it happened. Mike and I were out having a smoke, and so was Johnnie. We didn't know his name yet, as his hand-written nametag read Grande Murenga or something like that - he explained that it meant "Large and In Charge...below the waist! HAHAHA!" He had a crazy laugh that made you expect a punch in the nuts as soon as he was done. Since Johnnie couldn't find any women to terrorize, which was his modus operandi, he targeted us.

At first, he was comical, but in the sense that a disease-ridden, legless hobo clown is comical: you might laugh at it, but you want it to go away. We've all been there. He started off by complimenting/insulting us, saying that I looked like the "smart computer nerd type", that Mike and I looked like brothers because we have the same kind of goatee, other various things that really made no sense but were made funny because of his erratic behavior. It didn't help that the guy was three, no, twelve sheets to the wind and was very touchy-feely-headlocky.

Then the stories came. Johnnie was in the Marines, you see, back when 'Nam was going on. But Johnnie didn't go to 'Nam. Instead, Johnnie went to prison after a year of being a jarhead, since someone had supposedly framed him for pot possession. So Johnnie went to jail for five years, but only stayed in for two or three, because the parole board knew he was a "smart kid". I was getting pretty drunk myself, so half the stuff he said I couldn't really follow. That didn't stop him from talking, though.

On and on it went, and we had no means of escape. He went to prison. He's still a Corps Man to this day. He once shot a black guy in the neck with an air rifle over an argument about taking out the trash. He... Well, at some point, Johnnie got scary. Or he was trying to be scary. He got up real close and personal, clicked his teeth real loud, said something to the effect of, "I could tear your throat out with these teeth." followed by that loud, maniacal laughter, an arm around the shoulders. "AH'M JUST KIDDIN'! HAHAHAH!" Fucking A.

But at least he was entertaining. Fairly harmless, really. Just a nutty guy out of his element, though I'm not sure what his element was. Probably a place where rivers of gin flowed down the slopes of a constantly-exploding volcano while people ate babies and had orgies and ate oysters off smiling, decapitated heads, but all of it drawn like it was made by the creators of the Smurfs. That's what I imagine Johnnie's mind looks like. But yes, he was entertaining, anyway. To a point.

After telling us for the fifth time that he could tell us stories, the real stories, the scary stories, but we just didn't have enough time right now, Johnnie noticed a young black couple standing nearby, talking to someone. He glanced over, glanced back and scowled, expecting me to do the same, to growl and get angry that them niggers were here at a white people party, gawdammit.

"Dayum, I can smell that Jerri curl from here!" he muttered and grinned with his clicky teeth and glared with his fogged-over eyes.
"Uh." That was about all I could say.

So Johnnie was a douchebag as well as a moron and crazy person. Finally, the gods got bored with torturing us and sent Johnnie back inside, presumably to get another drink. He made us promise that we'd be there when he got back, so we of course high-tailed it back inside as soon as he was out of view. Fortunately, we didn't have to talk to him for the rest of the night, though we did see him rampaging around every so often.

The insanity finally ended, and we grouped up back inside. I met a few more people, including Becky's friend and co-worker Jessica, who is pretty damn cool. Also met my "date" for the night, Tara. See, Becky had secured Tara's date pass for me though I wasn't actually going with Tara. This led to a huge buzz around the office, since Tara is married. Everyone wanted to know who this dashing, handsome young man named Josh Russo was. So when I met Tara, she kept thanking me, though I had no clue what for. I can only guess that she was thanking me for putting her in the center of gossip or something, I don't know. She was nice, though.

I also met...um. Can't remember their names. I think one was named Mike. Two guys who were fairly smashed and who were also obsessed with MC Hammer's Hammer Time dance, since that's what the DJ had just played. So while we would be talking, they would take turns doing that "shimmy back and forth" dance while shouting "HO! HO-OO! HO-OOO!" and laughing their heads off. Even when I went up to get a shot of tequila with them, they were doing it. Weird folks, but not fucking lunatics like Johnnie, not even close.

The evening finally wound to an end, I managed to grab a free bottle of wine and a wine stopper, even though I don't think I was supposed to. Becky and I were pretty lit by this point, and after stopping by Wendy's, we came back to the house and collapsed. Oh, I also kind of stole the photograph of Johnnie, as all the pictures taken over the course of the evening were sitting on a table together, and he was long gone by that point, undoubtedly already digging into their fifteenth bottle of whiskey or whatever. But I don't feel so bad about taking the picture, as I'm positive they can get another copy. If they even remember that they had the picture taken in the first place, which I'm guessing is a longshot, may God have mercy on their livers and children.