My birthday week was exhausting. I’m never going to drink again.
“Yeah,” said my friend
Dave
, snickering. “Good luck with that.”
But I knew it was going to be trouble. The actual date of my birth was mid-week but we started on Monday, as
Mr. X
and I joined forces to celebrate his birthday and last night on the island. We went to the
Tiki Lounge
in Kihei and almost immediately became inundated with boobs, b-day cocktails and mysterious shots from friends and strangers.
We made nice with these two ladies who looked like
Hustler
centerfolds. Upon my suggestion, the one wearing a birthday banner sidled her sizable accoutrements up to Mr. X, who then squeezed my knee in fear. Men! They want it until it’s in their face and then they do lots of Jager shots and run away screaming… Wait, did I say
men
?! Yeah, read on.
The next night at midnight, I celebrated my birthday starting at
Hecocks
with
Circle
,
Rainbow
,
Cooper
and Mr. Charming himself,
Jerry
. I made
Kevin
do a
Mind Eraser
with me. Then I went to the
SandBar
. Northern Calif. reggae band
Groundation
was on, while Dave and fellow-Piscean
Reeny
gathered libations in my honor.
On my birthday, people were really nice and gave me presents. I even got some lovely and creative, called-in birthday songs. Ah, having musician friends finally pays off!
Later in the afternoon, I went to my tattoo consultation with Circle at
Evolved Art
. Afterwards, high on adrenaline, I met
Sasha
for dinner at
Sam Sushi
. Then we went to see
The Sea Inside
at the MACC. And it was off to the
Sly Mongoose
, where
Jen
was bartending.
Thursday night was the big
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
show at the
Hard Rock Cafe
in Lahaina. And on Saturday, I went on a private whale watch excursion at sunset. The
Blue
Family
was there, as well as a small gang of us looking for a little breach action before we got hammered on champagne and beer. FYI: we did get much action, on both counts.
We also passed an imaginatively colored barge called the
Red Rhino
.
“Isn’t that the name of a vibrator?” someone asked.
Did I mention
Sonja
was on board? Yeah, we determined she’s not so much Scandinavian as she is Scandal-
labian
.
So after the cruise,
BJ
,
Kim
and I went to
Charley’s
in Paia. Unfortunately, we missed the
John Moore Project
but Kim got to see her favorite Maui band
The Easy
. And then
Marty Dread
performed and made me crush on him all over again as he dedicated a birthday song to me.
Hey, don’t hate me ‘cause I give shout outs.
I might have missed some details here and there but basically, birthday week was good times… And I’ve noticed—especially during this past week—that it’s hard to achieve the balance of actually having fun and doing this column stuff. What does my editor call it? Oh yeah, reporting.
It says so right here in
Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs
: “The Pisces writer may be tempted to lounge for years in bars, telling himself he’s gathering material, when he’s really just gathering moss and unpaid bills.”
Ouch.
Needless to say, I took the next week off to recover.
But by Friday, I had decided to hang out on the Westside to see
Go Jimmy Go
at
Paradice Bluz
. Before that, I had to give
Kim
a ride to the
Mango Cafe
in Ka’anapali. She’s been co-hosting a new nightclub-y thing there and had been trying to get me to check it out. Of course, now that I’ve become a Central Maui girl, I’ve previously declined with a great deal of smirkitude. Alas, paybacks are a bitch.
I must say the place really does have potential. It’s open-air, looks over the Ka’anapali golf course and has a decent dance floor. And there were some surprisingly attractive people collected around the easy-to-flirt-across rectangular bar.
And I met a bee-yoo-tiful Southern boy who my friends call—maybe for some reason I don’t want to know—
Gutter Rat
. You can tell I thought he was cute ‘cause the next day I was really hung-over (read: we did many Jager shots. Thanks a lot,
DJ Half-Pint
). And then I ran away.
Um, how about I’m never going to drink
Jagermeister
again? Damn devil’s drink.
MTW