Greek Haze

If I ever wanted to know what it was like to be in a sorority, which mind you, I have never, ever, ever had the urge to do, but for the sake of cultural experiences and being a team player, yesterday was the day to broaden my horizons into this very American phenomenon.

I’m in Tampa, a city, up till a few months ago I could not have picked out on a map, let alone known anything distinguishing about. I have now learned in my ever expanding world that Tampa is the home of strip malls, strip clubs and white people with big boobs, bleached blonde hair and muscle shirts. Here, I look like a freak of nature and they all look normal. In four days in this city I have seen 5 Asian people, excepting the Asian people in the Thai restaurants, sushi bars, and local Asian groceries which is like going to the zoo to see the natives. Not to say that any of this is negative, but ultimately different after leaving a Caribbean Island of blacks and whites and the melting pot of Vancouver where not seeing an Asian person or mixed race couple would be anomaly. Speaking of which, I have not seen any Amer-Asian couples here either... or black and white...

Back to yesterday, there is town event called Gasparelli, where grown adults in their 20-40s re-live their college Greek days in a haze of alcohol and senseless festivities, bonding mindlessly over copious amounts of alcohol, I say mindlessly because with the level of noise and preoccupation in the quest for inebriation nothing of substance would formulate. I have to say I was immensely curious but with definite forebodings as the preparations for the day’s drinking became the focus point of all planning and I got to know the players in the game. This is all under the guise of a parade to celebrate pirates plundering Tampa Bay, truth is more along the lines of a reason for women to dress like slutty wenches and men to act like boorish unkempt pirates with the slutty wenches. Really a good day to throw out inhibitions and be your inner slut.

I met Celia, Latin, high spirited, luscious lips, single mother of a 23 month old child who had my jaw hanging to my toes as she told me about partying with her baby into the wee hours of the morning as it was her given right as birthing being to extend her baby monitor’s range down to the local bar. Ok, I have to say, I am a liberal mom, I’ll hike my kids across countries, demand they eat foreign foods to broaden their horizons and I have a sink or swim, face your issues teaching style, but, this is for their greater good, not mine, I'm not sure where my 5th tequila shot at the neighbourhood bar enables my toddler the next morning when she is off schedule and screaming at her lack of sleep while I fight off a massive hangover and the need to slit my wrists while holding my head in the toilet. Celia is also with Guido, madly, crazy in love with Guido, who broke up with her 2 weeks ago.

Then there’s Guido, exactly as the name implies, lots of hair gel, skinny, huge smile, but likely a big dick. He’s with Celia, but not really with Celia, because he broke up with her in a drunken haze, but they’re still together, but I can’t diss that as my track record on the break up be friends is a long and involved project. However, it seems, Guido, like myself, has some side projects already in works, but unlike me, the current project is still in the works and no where near ending, so my conclusion will be Guido and Celia will stay together as well as Guido and Leila and Guido and Myra and Guido and Reina and Celia will become bitter and hostile bemoaning her lot as a Latina female but will marry Guido.

Then there’s couple B, who I met at the Alumni lunch, the lunch at which I was not an Alumni, and felt yet again, strangely in a different space, rather like an alien stuck on the wall, observing but not quite clicking. Couple B has issues, they’re newlyweds, with issues. She’s beautiful, Latin (Celia's BFF who hates Guido) delicate features, mocha skin, gorgeous hair and pretty smile (an overbite but if you don’t look too hard you wont see it just like her snippy looks she gives her husband while still trying to stay pretty and charming), but also a very dominant personality when it comes to her husband who I daresay is likely henpecked but thinks his wife is probably prettier than he would ever find in the average white girl so he’s in for the ride. He’s your average white guy, kinda cute in the right light but not quite there. I daresay he is probably a swell guy, but not much came through amidst the 4 other strong personalities in the room, and a hazard a guess his wife would withhold sex for the next year if he let his white boy corniness come out too much (which on half a day of drinking was rearing its white head). I hazard she got an almost cute white boy and he got a pretty dime a dozen Latin girl, and they look good in the social perfect world of America driving their Jetta to their cottage in the soon to be perfect neighbourhood.

So this is the group, my group. Nothing like going out with BFFs that you have nothing in common with, and partying with a bunch of Frat kids re-living a dream who you also have nothing in common with forcing Psycho flashback nightmares of your one and only frat party you attended in 1989 where you stood in a beer and puke soaked corner frozen in horror at the vulgarness of your situation while some boy dressed in khakis and a blue shirt tried to dry hump you with his tiny penis while swigging a beer that came from a barrel in a tub.

I am remiss. The Alumni brunch, nothing like my Alumni brunch, but I did get to eat a moundful of breakfast sausages which made me very happy and perhaps I ate away some of my fears but didn’t have enough time to hurl it back down the toilet so then felt like a fat alien for the rest of the brunch listening to drinking, drunk, wasted, totaled, gooned war stories coupled with the best bars, clubs, holes and pubs to frequent if one ever went back to celebrate the glory days of college. I am dying here but I got game face on and the day is young, can only get better.

I managed to excuse myself to pee at least 5 times so as to breathe in the fumes of the bathroom for relaxation and ponder the meaning of my life as I sat on the porcelain throne eking out a few drops so I wouldn’t actually be lying and the preening peacocks in the bathroom not think I was a lesbian hanging in the stalls for a peek of jiggly thigh flesh.

Let me add its cold in the sunshine state, cold, cold, cold and I am severely under-dressed, and wearing a rain jacket 5 sizes too big for me, making my head look completely disproportionate to my body and just god damn ugly too. If anyone knows me, nothing gets me worse than being cold and unprepared, this lack of crucial control is crippling especially while group dynamics take over with no visible leader taking center stage (this would normally be me but thought best to not let my need to organize take over while on someone's turf) while standing in the parking lot watching people tail gate (why tail gate in the rain in a university parking lot, really why tail gate at all?) and no consensus on where to go. With weeks leading up to this event you'd think someone would have made a plan?

Ends up the smashing plan is to walk 2 blocks to the bar to make another plan. Common sense would have said we should have just walked to the bar to begin with before we began to pontificate on the best places to get drunk in Tampa prior to a parade in the rain.

Bar, typical college looking bar, pretty much a bar, wood floors, smelly toilets and a juke box. Pick it up, put it down in any college town and it wouldn’t be remiss. Purpose of bar is to drink as much as possible to be as smashed as possible and grunt and dance with strangers in mock camaraderie in the singular goal of getting shit faced in as loud a manner as humanly possible, while also checking out the opposite sex. I found this highly entertaining as long as no one actually touched me for too long or fell on top of me. I did try to pursue a few conversations but eventually realized the futility of this as no one was here to talk and I just seemed moronic. I would have been better off to grab a random male and shove my tongue down his throat and it would have seemed perfectly sane. I think they call this local customs. This is also where I felt I had leapt back 13 years in time to my dorm of sex and alcohol crazed freshman more stressed about rushing the best sorority and fraternity houses as opposed to actually studying and learning which I thought was the point of university. I could be wrong, if I went into Politics I would have had no need to study and would still be a brilliant Republican.

So now, grab greasy Italian sausage sandwich outside of the bar, still in the rain, to join 8 other breakfast sausages busily entertaining themselves in my burgeoning belly. It was good though, lip smacking grease, pound gaining pork and all. Next stop, parade route where we pass an amalgamation of sorts from pretty half naked blonde co-eds (note it is raining), muscle head boys running after the co-eds with coolers in tow and abs on display, to I-f*#@ked-my-cousin to look like this in-bred types, your standard issue meatheads, your cougars and panthers in heat, your basic issue muffin top girls and beer bellied boys and the list is endless. Who needs a parade with such a variety of intriguingly disgusting humanity?

Parade was not what I was thinking. Parade in my mind is pretty lined streets, pretty policeman smiling, an assortment of eclectic stalls, parents and children, friendly neighbours, food from around the world, and organization. I complain that Vancouver is Pleasantville, and y'know, for all my bitching, there are merits to Pleasantville, its clean and civilized and people are too well mannered to morph into screaming, sweaty apes. So, swallowing my shock, I decided to best indulge as the locals do. The point of the festivities, is to scream, jump, yell at passing floats in hopes of being hurled bead necklaces, which is the epitome of gold. Note, drunk, screaming grown men and women, throwing all sensibilities and decorum into the passing garbage for the chance to have more beaded necklaces then Joe-Bob who's married to Donna-Sue, his sister, screaming blind drunk, sweating like a freakin' pig, shirtless in all acneic glory, with matted armpit hairs stuck together with globules of deodorant letting his bestiality out beside me. There is some excitement in the process of dismantling and releasing one's inner red neck and the grotesqueness of standing beside a living breathing redneck.

There is also the observance of male behaviour in this city. If you are a blonde woman, young and with ample breasts, you are the Shining Star of David in this city, like bees to honey I watched the men walking the parade catch the sight and blindly bee line to the subject with armful of beads in hopes of touching the shiny object of lust. Curious. Very curious. I suppose this is why there are no ethnic groups in sight because you are pretty much ugly, and if you want any sort of self esteem its best to move North to a different state or South to Miami.

Not sure what the point of the floats were other than to throw beads. Some were cool but not overly remarkable and you were so busy hollering for beads you had no time to look at the floats whilst trying to break a back muscle leaping into the air for that $.01 beaded necklace before the next guy. I am sure, though did not witness, that one a many a fight has broken out over a purple plastic necklace.

Parade comes to close and I had in mind night time street party, lights, fireworks, picnics, concerts, performers... bahahahaha, I am an idiot.

We walk and walk and walk and walk to go eat bad Thai food, at which point I am done, past done, overly done and just done. I could not be more done and could only excuse myself to the bathroom once to celebrate my done-ness and enough material to write this tome. Did not help that everyone loved the awful Thai food and I smilingly nodded while grimacing internally and trying to tactfully avoid any conversation at this juncture for fear of imploding. Was quite the conundrum at the end of dinner, as plans were being made, yet again, outside in the cold, as to which bar to next frequent. Let me note, on long, long, long walk to Thai restaurant, same discussion ensued, whilst passing several bars, but due to inability of group to coalesce instead decided to walk half the town before negating all bars in lieu of bad Thai. So, coming full circle, I prayed that end result would bring me home, but if not, I would have to consume quite a bit of alcohol to masquerade any sense of liveliness. I was not going to be the party killer at such an auspicious local event, regardless of wet, soggy, cold state, aching knee, bloated belly from aforementioned sausages and complete and total mental shut down.

I was saved from the dead thanks to Plane boy, who echoed need to get home, and even with a 2 mile walk on pounding knee this sounded like heaven and I was happy to walk on coals just to get rid of the din of banality.

So this ends my cultural foray. Though my tone is very sarcastic and tends to the negative, this will be remembered, likely not to be repeated without better planning and a differing personality set, but there are stories to be told, and jokes to be made, and a story to commemorate. I did forget to mention my pee in the porta-potty which in a Third World Tsunami ravaged country I am happy to do, but in a First world nation there needs to be something more civilized...