A couple was writhing in the surf about 15 yards down the beach from me. The guy appeared to have his pants around his ankles, but it was too dark to tell whether he and the girl were actually having sex in the Clintonian sense of the word. Given the fact that there were about 30 other people in the immediate vicinity, all semblance of "From Here to Eternity" romance was pretty much lost. The Panama City Beach police officer who was with me at the time didn't seem at all fazed by the spectacle of public fornication. "Spring break," he said, giving the couple a cursory glance as he wrote me up for carrying an open bottle of beer. "It's a different set of rules here." He handed me my warning citation. "If you're gonna drink on the beach, buy cans. Right now you'd better take those bottles back to your hotel room before I give you a real ticket." I thanked the officer and took off up the beach. The fact was, I didn't have a hotel room. And -- since I'd graduated from college a few years earlier -- I wasn't even there for spring break. Technically, I was in the process of delivering a Ford Taurus from Kansas City to Key West. I'd only stopped at Panama City Beach late that evening out of voyeuristic curiosity. After all, MTV (which has developed into a kind of youth-culture Vatican) had decreed Panama City Beach to be America's spring break destination of choice, and I was dying to see what all the fuss was about. Since I'd gone to college in the Pacific Northwest, all my personal memories of spring break were fraught with Dionysian inadequacy. While the hipsters of my generation were out venting their bacchanalian urges on the MTV-approved beaches of Florida, Texas and Mexico, I shivered away my spring breaks backpacking in the Oregon Cascades. I always enjoyed myself, but I secretly longed for a spring break that more closely resembled the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, a rap video or a cable-TV movie about an endearingly wacky fraternity vacation. This auto-delivery stop-off in Panama City, I figured, was the perfect chance to redeem myself. Unfortunately, it's hard to be a loner in the land of spring break. When I'd first arrived that evening, I'd made the mistake of bar-hopping along the main highway. Every single beer hall felt like a starter culture for middle-aged barflies -- each catered to the ideal of sunset-hued cocktails, superficial camaraderie and the suggestion of anonymous sex in sandy-floored hotel rooms. I sat alone with my beer at a succession of bars and watched tables full of beefy, sunburned college boys suck down drinks, whoop at each other and peer around at the token females. I tried to strike up a few conversations, but the guys stuck to their groups and the girls seemed preoccupied with glancing around and sizing up other possibilities. It was a Tuesday, the fourth night of a cycle that begins each Saturday when a new wave of tour-package charter buses roll in from places like Wisconsin and Georgia. Already, the storied drinking-holes of Panama City Beach were exuding a bored, vaguely desperate atmosphere of grim hedonism. Everyone I talked to, it seemed, was merely looking for something tangible and meaningless to happen -- something to recall years later, perhaps, when they could look back on it and call it their youth.
Stymied by both the bars and the police of Panama City Beach, I determined that my only hope in chalking up a classic spring break experience would be to pose as a college student and infiltrate some hotel parties.
Figuring it as good a place as any, I hiked to the Holiday Inn high-rise at the far end of the beach, sauntered into the hotel courtyard, shucked my shirt and shoes, and plopped into the whirlpool. Across the bubbling water from me, a short, burly guy from Michigan immediately declared that he was there to protect me. He was nearly too drunk to speak, but I was encouraged by his friendliness.
"I'm big," he said. He must have been a full half-foot shorter than I. "I'm an ass-kicker. Stick with me and nobody'll mess with you. I won't let anyone steal your clothes." He babbled along on this theme for about five minutes. Not sure how to respond, I threw in an occasional "thank you."
He eventually left to look for some cigarettes and vomit into a hedge. This left me with his friend, a very pale and tubby Michigander named Tad. "Don't worry about him," Tad said. "He just wants to be somebody's hero after humiliating himself last night."
"What did he do last night?"
"He passed out in the hot tub, and somebody stole his clothes. I say that isn't so bad. It gives him a story to tell. That has to count for something, since all anyone's been doing since we got on the bus in Michigan is drinking. There are only so many variations on getting drunk."
"This may be a dumb question, but why are you here if you're so skeptical about drinking? Isn't that like going to the Super Bowl when you don't like football?"
Tad frowned amiably and splashed his hands in the water. "Look around, man! The trim here is incredible. Any size or shape is fine for the Tadster. Except the ones who've been spending their Indiana winters popping tanning pills. They look like carrots. I don't do orange women." He paused for a second and looked agonizingly at a long-legged girl getting out of the swimming pool. "Except her. I'd take her if she was lime green."
"How's your luck been?"
"Actually, I don't think I've even talked to any. But I promised myself I'd cheat on my girlfriend at least once while I was here."
"Revenge?"
"No, she's too romantic and loyal and all that crap. She'd never do anything on purpose to make me mad, and that pisses me off. She gets sentimental about everything. There were two letters from her waiting for me at the hotel when I got here, both talking about how she wishes she was with me. Shit, man! She had to be with me still when she wrote those letters. That means she was getting sentimental in advance. That girl's so sentimental she couldn't go to a funeral without wishing she was the dead person."
I laughed. "So you want to give her the boot?"
"Heck no. I just want to cheat on her, is all."
"Won't that be kind of strange when you get back, I mean, with the guilt and all?"
"Look. My psychosexual world hasn't been the same since I found out that Princess Leia is a lesbian."
"What do you mean?"
"Just like I said it. I read a couple months ago that the actress who played Princess Leia on 'Star Wars' is a lesbian. I haven't been the same since. Can you believe it? She was the first woman I ever felt lust for! Look what it's done to me."
Tad got up to leave after a while, and when I jokingly suggested that he was leaving to call his girlfriend, his face turned red. He returned 30 minutes later with news of a party on the fifth floor of the Holiday Inn. Since the whirlpool was beginning to lose its novelty, I followed him up.
The door was open when we arrived, like an uncertain invitation to go in or get out. Inside, spring break was starting to unravel. A generally good indicator of party vitality is male/female ratio, and at this point the party was limping along. The only females present were a couple of tired-looking, chubby-faced girls who obviously didn't know any of the males very well and sat on the floor by the wall, uncertainly clutching slushy red rum drinks. About 10 guys were present, all valiantly trying to keep one step ahead of boredom. Apparently having given up on the chubby-faced girls, they had turned on the television and were offering sluggish analysis of everything they saw.
"Whatever happened to Macaulay Culkin?" one of them said, peering at a movie preview. "He was the cutest kid ever in 'Home Alone,' but now he's just another pubescent shit."
"Who does he think he is?" another guy yelled. "Let's go kill the little bastard." All of them jumped up like they were going to find rakes and hoes and hunt down the child actor -- but they were quickly distracted by something else and went rushing out to the balcony. I followed them outside, where they cheered as a drunken kid a couple stories down made a big show of throwing things off his balcony. Everyone whooped heartily when the kid landed a thermos in the swimming pool.
When this form of entertainment lost its charm, the focus of the party switched over to the task of stealing a water-bong, which sat out on the table of an adjacent balcony. Working together like they were trying to save a baby from an artesian well, a couple guys tied some towels together and tried to snag the bong in a makeshift lariat. "It's gonna be spring bake!" one cowboy yelled over and over as they tossed their soggy lasso at the other balcony. They succeeded only in knocking a couple beer bottles off the balcony onto the courtyard revelers below and finally gave up on the bong.
Everyone filed back into the room to discover that someone had passed out on one of the beds. Nobody knew who he was; he had apparently wandered in by accident. A heated argument ensued over what to do with the unconscious fellow, who lay open-mouthed and slobbering on the bed. One of the group, a gnomish drunk with a nasally laugh, suggested that we all write messages on the stranger's skin with a felt pen. "My brother was in a frat, and they did that to a freshman pledge once," he said, giggling through his nose. "Then they shoved a carrot up his ass." A couple of vaguely sober souls checked the stranger to make sure he was still alive. Some other guys went down the walkway, checking rooms to see who the unconscious reveler belonged to.
This fragmented the party, and I ended up sitting in the bathroom talking with Tad, the chubby-faced girls, and a big mustachioed blond named Dan. After a while, Dan started to entertain the rest of us by presenting us with math riddles and story problems, writing out his equations on the mirror with a piece of soap.
Four nights of spring break, and the Michiganders had gravitated back to academics.
I spent the remainder of the night sipping a rum drink and making grand guesses at Dan's math riddles, secretly wistful for the chilly peacefulness of the Oregon Cascades.
