The Cabo Wabo Experience, Part 2

Can I really have more to say about this night? I can. It really was just a very surreal kind of night. Had someone walked in wearing a chicken suit, it really wouldn’t have fazed me. It was that kind of night. Or that kind of place, anyway. Perhaps it was the diversity that was mind boggling because, at least here in the Midwest, when you go out to a bar or restaurant generally people are all the same. They’re all of the same general ethnic background, age and economic background which is why they’re there in the first place. In general people tend to go to their little enclaves where they feel comfortable and won’t stick out as having a different skin color or being too old or young or not being dressed properly due to lack of funds. Consequently, the people tend to look all the same and act all the same and the most excitement you will get is if some old guy gets drunk and falls off his chair at which point his wife will collect him off the floor and as discreetly as possible take him to the car. The excitement is over before it’s even begun. So perhaps it’s about the touristy bar and the fact that you get people of every age and economic background and ethnicity and throw in some locals and there you have something you would never see at home and that alone is worth the price of admission, which in my case was one jacket (yes, I am going to harp on that jacket business for a very long time. At least until it’s replaced which will be never because the chances of finding the perfect denim jacket for $12 again is next to impossible) and an earring and the cost of 3 buckets of beer (my husband says 4 but I don’t believe him).

On to more weirdness. The band was local I suspect and very bad. But they had their own groupies. Wives, perhaps, although I think in the case of the one she might have been someone’s mother. It was that kind of band. They used sheet music which I have never seen before in a rock band and no, it was not a play list. I was next to the stage and I know what I saw. I am quite sure this was one of their first 5 gigs. Anyway, the one groupie was the girlfriend/wife of the drummer who was actually very good, even if the dreadlocks and hemp anorak didn’t fit into my idea of what a heavy metal drummer should look like. He was also at least 10 years older than the rest of the band. However, he was a good musician and patient with his younger and less experienced band mates. It was amusing to watch him wait good-naturedly, his sticks poised, while the guitarist mangled the intro to Sweet Child O’ Mine. Longest intro ever. And again I am off topic, which again tells you what kind of night this was. Everything was just so off. Back to the girlfriend/wife and her disturbingly short wrap skirt!

And actually, it wasn’t disturbingly short. Yes, it was short, but so was she and she had fantastic legs. I suspect she was an aerobics instructor judging by her exuberant bouncing across the dance floor and her amazing stamina as the bouncing went on for hours. You go girl. What was disturbing was the wrap part. A mini wrap skirt? Manic bouncing on the dance floor? Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me and it made me very, very nervous.

Cut to the spring of 1975. The asphalt playground at Sharp Elementary (it was the 70’s and grass wasn’t considered an important play surface for children. Scraping layers of skin off while playing kickball was considered character building). I am in Kindergarten and we are having one of our rare gym days. We split into two groups and race from side of the playground to the other. My group goes first and stands at the finish line to wait for the other group. One girl, Kristen is fast and she knows it. She wants to win. Her arms pump, her knees are high and she does win. It is only after she crosses the finish line that she realizes what we all saw the second she left the starting line. She has left her adorable white and pink plaid mini wrap skirt in the dust. Literally. The grin disappears from her face as she realizes she is standing victorious in her white granny panties. And me? I am so mortified for her that I want to cry. Fortunately she is more composed than I am and she high tails it back to her skirt. Because she is fast and she can do that. She comes back red-faced but laughing. I was and am still impressed by her poise and I’m glad it happened to her and not me although I had a similar incident later in life involving my left breast and a prom dress and I think given the choice I would have chosen the wrap skirt debacle.

At any rate, back at Cabo Wabo, I fear this very thing for the woman on the dance floor. It seems so precarious, just that little tie on the side. It could come loose from all that bouncing. Someone’s finger could get caught in it and whoops! There it is, on the dance floor. Such is the nature of wrap skirts. I’m worried about her, this woman I don’t even know. I don’t want her to be embarrassed. And truth be told, I’m quite certain she’s not wearing white granny panties.

While I’m not worrying about the girlfriend/wife and her precarious skirt, I’ve got my eye on this average girl next door up there on the elevated dance floor dancing for her bodybuilding “boyfriend”. I use the term boyfriend loosely because he was standing with his arms folded across his chest looking bored while she shimmied and gyrated (there was so much gyrating going on that night!) on the platform above him. It’s possible he was in fact her boyfriend and was just really annoyed by her drunken behavior but I didn’t get that impression although that could have been the buckets of beer I’d been consuming. She seemed to really be trying to impress him with her sexy dancing. However, when one is the girl next door, sexy dancing just really isn’t. She seemed like a nice, if misguided girl and my heart really went out to her. Perhaps I was recalling my own ill-advised college years when it seemed nothing was too extreme to get that guy to like you even though that guy was a supreme asshole. Personal dignity is nothing when there is a hot guy on the line!

The worst part of it is that she was wearing a skirt. Not a short skirt, just a regular kind of skirt. When she danced on the platform for the bodybuilder who couldn’t have cared less, she didn’t realize she was giving quite a show to the geek squad sitting at the table below. It was kind of a bad table, shoved into a corner, out of the way. The kind of table a geek squad would choose to be in on the action yet still out of the way. It was likely the most action they had ever seen…well, ever. They didn’t move all night probably in fear they would lose their killer table. And the smiles on their faces? Beatific.

I wanted to go tell her that he wasn’t worth it, the body builder guy. I wanted to tell her that she was better than this and that he just wasn’t that into her and that in the long run a member of the geek squad would probably make a better choice for boyfriend material. I wanted to tell her to save her dignity and that going down this road of self-degradation was only going to lead to heartache. I wanted to protect her and warn her and send her home with her self-esteem in tact. I wanted to tell her, at the very least, that she was giving the geek squad quite a show and she might want to consider hitting them up for tips.

I thought that if I had enough beer I would be brave enough to do it. I was going to do it. We women need to stick together and stand up for each other. Just a couple more beers and I would have the courage to do so.

Then I thought of all my college days and all the stupid stuff I had done and all the people that tried to tell me that he wasn’t worth it. I didn’t listen. It didn’t matter. It was something I had to learn on my own. I had to go down that road and learn from the journey. I couldn’t take that away from her. I can only hope it ends well for her.

Thus ends the Cabo Wabo Experience…


…and curtain.