we do it up right

I never should have doubted Nashville coming through.

After explaining what it was, I took my houseguest down to lower Broad for a night of honky tonkin’. The night did not start out well. We kicked off with an inaugural beer at Legends, but the crowd was severely lacking in sequins, Elvis sideburns, fake boobs, and hairspray. We did, however, choose to sit at a table stationed next to a trash can that smelled deliciously like beer vomit. Bonus.

At Tootsie’s we somehow lucked into the booth at the front window and the band was good, but holy jeebus it was hot so we just sat there in a pool of sweat. Tootsie’s used to be my go-to LB bar for good times but the heat and the crowds were not conducive to a good time, and I was beginning to wonder if she’d ever get the full honky tonk experience or if we’d get too hot and tired and just give up and go home.

Thank God for Robert’s. Everybody wearing eighties hair, jackets adorned with sequined crucifixes, tube tops over stomach bulges and silicone boobies, and cowboy boots with mini skirts converged over cheap beers and ashtrays. We sat at the back table while Brazilbilly set up, and were just buzzed enough by the time they started playing to make fools of ourselves. Somehow we befriended an Uncle Fester lookalike named Ace, who was missing one of his front teeth and whose daddy had played with Kitty Wells. Ace’d just spent his last four bucks on a PBR and was catching a 3:15 AM Greyhound to Alabama to play a gig.

I volunteered my friend to dance with him (dancing with random people, the more ridiculous the better, is an integral part of honky tonkin), so we squeezed through to the dance floor where Pappy Merritts made eyes at me for a song or two. I thought I must have been looking extra hot, but then between songs, he leaned down and asked me if I was from Erie (I was wearing my Happiness is Lake Erie shirt in honor of my pal being here). Turns out that Pappy worked at the same factory my father did in the teeny suburb where I was born. He’s my new boyfriend.

Now that we were buzzed enough to take drunk pictures with the Elvis statue and anyone else who wanted to pop into frame, we hit the street and the hot dog stand, where we became best friends with the doorman at Bluegrass Inn and the weenie vendor. Over the din of every fire truck siren in Metro, the hot dog guy told us that a police officer had apparently just ran over a drunk guy crossing Broadway in a wheelchair. We got through about half a beer at the Inn before the guy who was wastedly passing the band’s tip jar started yelling at people to put a dollar in. Then we went into the late night souvenir shop where a woman from Chicago was crying over finding Alan Jackson’s address in a ‘homes of the stars’ book and I bought my friend a tin rooster painted with the confederate flag.

It was a good night.