A few months ago Willie Nelson came to town. I didn’t go. Afterwards I was livid. I knew I would never forgive myself for that so when I heard Merle Haggard was coming I was dying to go. Unfortunately the tickets were nearly $80.00 so I kept holding out buying them. The next thing I knew it was the day before the concert and I had no tickets. I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going. I set about baking a cake for my grandpa and when I had just put the finishing touches on it the girl in my office called and said, “I know how bad you wanted to go, so I called in a favor and got the tickets can you be here in 40 minutes.”
I’ve never moved so fast in my life. I showered, shaved, dressed and arrived in 28 minutes.
I arrived just in time to get in line at the bar and use the free drink tickets she got
Two Old Fashioned please. (Which quickly turned into six..or eight. I’m not really sure)
This was right about the time the bartender asked me how old I was because I looked too young to be ordering this drink.
Then they came out.
It was beautiful. They took turns singing and playing the back up guitar for each other. Something about old men and guitars had me all revved up to dance.
After the show we headed to the club in the casino that had a country DJ where I proceeded to dance like a fucking honky tonk queen (Unless you were sober….then I looked like a drunk white girl shaking her ass like a dork on the floor).
We took a break and went up to her room. Room 1911. She told me I had to behave because 911 was already in our door number..when I was drunk that made total sense.
This sign however made no sense…look hard
Then we went back and danced. Around 12pm I declared that I must have mashed potatoes. So she left her son in charge of me and went in search of mashed potatoes. If you are wondering what kind of person does that, it’s the kind of person who says, “I know you’ve had a rough few weeks, and if you want to get drunk, dance and eat mashed potatoes you totally deserve it,” Her son did a terrible job watching me though because before I knew it some big burly older cowboy grabbed me on the dance floor and started twirling me around and tossing me around like a ragdoll. I will be honest, as much as I wish I knew how to do all those awesome country dances the most I can do is move my knees in and out while shuffling side to side like Gwenyth Paltrow does in Country Strong. After that all the older cowboys thought it was kind of funny and took a turn trying to teach me to two step or five step or….I dunno it felt a lot like being flung around like a yo yo but it was oooooh so fun. I danced by myself for an hour probably. Finally one guy got brave enough to come up and slow dance with me. It was cute. He had been watching all night and I saw him talk to the person he was with and I saw the moment he made the choice to just walk up to me, grab me and start dancing. I loved every minute of it. Sometimes a girl just needs to feel sexy, dance, and have a good time.
This was right about the time we decided to have dinner (2:00 am). I think I looked pretty damn cute considering I was sweating my face off. I was thankful that night I don’t ever wear makeup because all that dancing would have had it running down my face like a hot mess.
I’m kind of cute if I do say so myself.
Finally I decided I needed some water. I spied an unopened bottle at the bar, sneakily grabbed it, opened it, took a long drink and then stuck it back trying to sneak away. I turned face to face with an old cowboy who was just grinning ear to ear at what this girl in front of him had just done. I blushed and said sorry, but he just picked up the bottle of HIS water, handed it to me and said, “I think you forgot something.” At this point we met three other guys at the bar one of them looked just like Zach Galifianakis. Dammit I wish I took a picture…but it was exactly like this ONLY WITH A SCARF TOO! Fucking hilarious.
Those guys were super sweet and had the bartender get me water in a fancy drink glass so I looked like I was still sipping something fabulous when it was really just water.
We were getting ready to leave when I noticed the cabaret was playing music. The DJ had left a long time ago so I ran over there. There was about 7 black girls and a bunch of guys. Oblivious I ran down and started shaking my groove thing. The girls just started cracking up. Two of them ran up to me and adopted me like I was a little sister or a little doll or something. They were just hell bent on teaching me to dance. They made the DJ turn on the electric slide and tried so hard to teach me. I failed. They were cracking up at this poor white girl trying to have some rhythm. I had NONE. The guys were their husbands and friends from a basketball tourney and they came running over to get a group shot of the seven girls with rhythm and the silly little white girl in her boots and faded jeans. Comical.
I finally made it home (I hadn’t had a drink for about 5 hours) and I was dead tired. But the worst part was the next day. Holy shit dancing is a work out. My thighs are still protesting.