RUABelle and I had a Saturday night to kill in Key West and very little plan other than a dinner reservation at a nice seafood restaurant called 7 Fish. So our intent was to just wander the streets of Old Town and ask for advice on the next venue from every service personnel we encountered. May I recommend this sort of plan the next time you have absoultely no clue what to do in a strange city.
We hit the stereotypical spots, the crazy joints, the locals hideaways and the best live music bars for 1-2 beers apiece and had a great time!
But about midway through the evening, I noticed a strange phenomenon happening. People were walking in a wide path around me and refusing to make eye contact. I’m not in any way a threatening guy. I’m the guy who, if there’s twenty-seven people waiting in line for a hot dog at a ball game and I’m number nineteen, the pass-through cut will invariably open up in front of me. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons cross to the other side of the street when they see me coming because they figure somebody’s already gotten to me and my rap might be better than theirs. I once had somebody else’s cat back up to my foot and take a dump on my tennis shoe. I’m that kinda dude.
So the concept of people looking intimidated by me baffled me. Then I realized what I was wearing. Another one of the presenters at the conference I spoke at last week was the past-CEO of Harley Davidson. So all of us speakers got nice black long-sleeve Harley Shirts with a logo on the front and some flames on one of the sleeves. Nothing too aggressive. It was a little bit windy and just a bit on the chilly side, so I opted to wear my new shirt out since I didn’t have anything else clean with long sleeves.
But I wore it with khakis, ferchrissakes! What could be intimidating about that? Then I realized that most of the bars we were drinking in were in the 700-800 block of Duval Street, AKA “The Pink Triangle.” Not that you would have noticed in most of them, since all of the bars were full of an eclectic crowd anyway.
But that was it…your friend, CeeElCee, intimidator of the alternative lifestylers. Yeah, right.
For proof, here’s a picture of me leaning up against my hog.
Vroom, vroom. Ciao.
Posted by ceeelcee
