Faded & Confiscated

[Or, How to Survive Club Level]*

— Friday —

7:25
Arrive at Indy Airport just in time to park the whip and receive a text from Scuba who has just arrived a pleasant flight from Dallas and will be coming down shortly. I turn up some music and try to ignore the guys in blue outfits riding their segueways. So far, so good.

7:35
I am sliding down my seat when someone kicks the back of the car. For a moment, I am certain a rent-a-cop is getting me on my way but realize that Scuba has arrived. I pop the back, get his baggage loaded and we do the greetings and are on our way.

I spin out into traffic and after a few minor misdirections and Scuba frantically checking both of his phones, we manage to find the hotel where I throw the valet our keys and we grab our gear and access the front lobby.

We engage in a brief verbal conflict (over a room/roll-out bed combo) with the front desk person who is eying us suspiciously…and which will not in fact be taking place because there is a wrestling convention in town and the only room they have is on Club Level. [Note: This will be the first of several displeasing incidents linked to the wrestling convention people.] We grab our gear and head off, grumbling because we have to share a bed.

7:50
Upstairs, we spread out and call Rockmedz to tell him to meet us in the lobby as we clean up and ready for an Indianapolis Friday night. We haven’t had any beers yet, so are still relatively sane and have a good feeling about the night.

8:07
We get back downstairs and J Burner is already waiting. We convene in the hotel bar where a few expensive and light pour cocktails goad us into a sense of action. It is time to blow this joint. Rockmedz has arrived and we are going to roll.

8:15
We arrive at Rock’s car and proceed to a brief celebratory band practice as we talk beneath the tree in the park. The paranoia sets in and it’s time to go.

8:25
We hop in the ride, secure the perishables and proceed to a CVS for vodka, lighters, mixers and cigarettes. The parking lot is a freakshow and we get back to the boys and head to the main strip on Meridian. J Burn is telling us we should check out The Tilted Kilt and I tell him I know show people there.

We head that way only to find that all of the tables are taken by the wrestlers. We curse at them and carry on, meandering quite uncertainly to Kilroy’s where we find that once again the wrestlers have staged another #Occupy Sports Bar Movement and there are no tables. We do the next best thing: order drinks, scoping the restaurant for openings.

8:45
We find a table, order food and talk about the latest. RockMedz and I are on some geek shit, so we exchange some ideas and talk about what we’re using and all that. I think I know a chick across the bar but turns out I don’t. We have cocktails and eat; then decide that the sports bar is way too loud. Nobody knows any dive bars. We stumble out the door into the vibrant night street.

10:30
We wander circuitously among the nightlife with no specific purpose, looking for a more viable venue for smalltalk and casual conversation. Scuba is getting over a sickness from a road tour he has just endured for over a week, so he is popping pills of some sort as we slide into a booth at Ram’s. The lights are bright, but at least we can hear one another without yelling. Scuba and I are on a vodka kick (Kettle 1, specifically) and J Burn and Rock order beers…big beers.

12:30
We close down Ram’s and it is time to head home. We got families to take care of and such. Scuba and I have a bottle to kill and papers to roll at the telly. Rockmedz and J Burn drop us off and we use a CVS bag to fill the bathroom sink with ice. Scoob and I kill a bottle of Kettle as things get twisted.

I pour stiff drinks as we recap Scuba’s most recent tour (cue video buffering problems) and we make big plans. Smoking cigarettes out the window, we are going to get breakfast tomorrow and promptly pass out.

— Saturday —

11:00
We wake, clean up and get out to the streets in order to find breakfast. Scuba’s brother tells us to find a small café that used to be the spot back when he lived downtown. We quickly become lost and finally make it to a different breakfast spot called Sisters which is perfect for our uses.

We order the Big Sister Slammer – 2 eggs, Americn fries, bacon, 2 biscuits and gravy – and proceed to clog arteries and slam coffee. A few regular regulars talk softly around us as we sink into the haze of the Midwestern Day. A pregnant woman with what Scuba refers to as a “stomach goiter” strolls in and I decide I have had enough. We leave and head back to the hotel.

12:00
We rest and watch a documentary on Nazi Germany, casually smoking and hydrating which is just the kind of surreal you can’t normally enjoy unless you are in a hotel far above things without a care in the world and a belly full of grease.

3:00
We get ready, don our suits, pour a stiff vodka drink into coffee cups and make our way downstairs dismissing the wrestling teams and other hotel patrons, escaping to the sidewalk and beginning our hike down Meridian to the wedding Steve has called me here for in the first place.

3:25
“How’s your coffee?” Scuba asks. We are now at Omni, after having walked around the Circle and arrived through purchase of a parking lot and a quick smoke leading out the back of the lot. People don’t mind. Neither do we.

Inside the Omni, we finish our coffees and drop off the wedding gift which Scuba scrawled infamously drunk the night before, club level. After a brief discussion on why weddings use bird cages as a means of collecting presents – which we never come to a satisfactory answer – we decide to enter an Irish Pub across the road for a few drinks…easing into the evening.

4:00
We down a few vodkas and head back to the Omni for the wedding, one of Steve’s old high school friends.

5:00
After an intricate ceremony and the trading of the bands and all of the filigree and lace that weddings are, we let out into the dining hall and upstairs to the bar. The line is too long, so Scuba and I head to the downstairs bar and score some stiff, overpriced cocktails which we take back to the wedding and post up, clowning and lamping at this point.

5:20
We engage in a little small talk and decide that there isn’t enough room at the tables for the two of us, so it was back to the pub for a fantastic supper of Shepherd’s Pie and fish & chips.

6:00
Posting up and having a smoke outside of the Irish Pub, we notice a man across the street parking a van and listening to some chopped & screwed jams to which we comment in the affirmative and he introduces himself as “Freedum.” He tells us we can come down to Club Sensu later to listen to Indiana Jones spin. We give him the glad hand and proceed to the Omni.

6:10
At the Omni and now fairly hazey, the dancing has begun. We step lively and I get to meet some of Steve’s friends outside the coffee shop or across the street at the Pan Am Plaza…which once seemed so gargantuan but now is just small. We are now completely wilding and the world is spinning quite a bit as we look down upon the ice at the happy faces of adoring hockey moms and blue collar dads.

All sense of time is lost.

We are using the downstairs bar as our refuel point, smoking cigarettes outside and dancing here and there. The place is filling up and everyone looks like they have crude face paint smeared all over them. The room reels. Drinks are tossed, glasses dropped. The smoke plumes climb to the void Indy night sky.

We meet a girl who tells us we are the funnest people she has met all weekend. She gets really stoned and keeps talking about random things. Not entirely annoying, we manage to get in trouble with her boyfriend and he comes to carry her back to the party. We are drinking and chatting in the lobby at this point.

I meet a girl who tells me she used to chase me around preschool back in the day. We party and bullshit and meet fun people. Scuba grabs the microphone, I do the robot. The entire room is dancing and we are all clowning and falling down. We have choreographed a simple dance and I am blind with laughter. The wedding ends and the lights come up.

We manage to escape the throng and head to Sensu where we slide past the waiting line due to our friend Freedum. We find ourselves to the bar where the drinks are expensive and light and we stay for only a few before meeting our friend Todd back at the pub. He and his girlfriend are making out in a corner.

After cheering and laughing, we end the night with a few street dogs and wind up back at the telly where we raid the Club Room and destroy what provisions we have left in the room. Sleep comes dark and noisily.

— Sunday —

11:00
We awaken and pack up all of the bottles, bags and refuse, showering and getting our gear back into suitcases. Scuba leaves a banana and a couple oranges in the form of balls and a phallus. We chuckle our way downstairs, sans coffee this time. I am reminded of my college days.

12:00
After a long drive, we find ourselves at a nondescript Pizza King that looks like an oasis out here beyond the Metro area. We slosh down Colas, grubbing pizza and Stromboli, as anyone who knows Skoob knows of his fondness for the sausage and tomato masterpiece.

1:00
We are left in the booth with anotherseveral hours to kill; to which Scuba asks while laying on the booth seat, “Wanna see if they’ll bring out some pillows and blankets?” We get gas and decide to head to the airport where at least Skoob can grab a couple magazines and ride out the tail end of the hangover.

1:45
I am back on the road with Project: Doomsday turned all the way up. The day is sunny and I have on my driving gloves and sunglasses. I am going fast and make my way home to the LayFlat City in good time. The Indiana landscape – fields and brush – become a brown-gray blur. I am excited to be home with my woman again and she texts me that she and her friend will be returning from lunch with Prime Rib for me.

I turn up the music and push down on the gas. Life is good.

* Most names and some details removed to protect the guilty. You know the drilly. Also, my sense of time was almost completely lost at certain points. Porps to Scuba Gooding Sr., Rockmedz, J Burn, Todd & Michelle, Schanelle, & my man, Freedum – I got your card, brother!