A Celebration of All Things Odd

When you habituate taverns as often as I have in my life, you will inevitably wander into one where crazy shit is happening. One evening, many years ago in Chicago, my friend Dennis and I stopped in for a beverage at a bar on Clark Street, totally unaware that it was cross dresser's night. Not trans-sexual, not drag queen, not even transvestite night, but cross dressers. Apparently the term cross dresser is reserved for those men who are mostly heterosexual truck drivers, who just like to put on a frilly frock once in a while. No makeup, no fake titties, just a dress and maybe a wig. It wasn't a pretty sight, but it was entertaining. On another occasion Mark and I visited another bar in Chicago on what turned out to be Girth and Mirth night. That is, the night set aside for corpulent fellows, and the men who love them. We actually stayed for a few drinks, until Mark became uncomfortable with the hungry stares of the fat men. I think he was afraid of being crushed to death in a stampede of rutting tubbies.

This past Friday evening we took a trip up to our favorite bar. All seemed normal until my second vodka when I noticed that the clientele was aging rapidly. I asked Mark if he noticed that everyone around us was much older than usual, and he agreed. After loudly expressing my distaste for spending my evening in a wrinkle room, the owner of the establishment, Lori, came over and explained to me that it was a special night. "A Celebration of Friends", the annual week long get-together of mature men and their admirers. It was then pointed out that I fell directly into that group, as did Mark, who she described as an admirer of a mature man...      

Mark admiring his mature man