Juliana Says...

My weekend actually started last Thursday when I took an early-a.m. flight to Charlotte, North Carolina to visit my college roommate, Mimi. Mimi & I lived together for three years at Rutgers… she graduated a year ahead of me & was like my surrogate-sister there. She’s since married her long-time honey, Brent, and has been living in Charlotte for 12 years now. I've yet to visit her new home or life there… I know I know, I suck.

Anyway, I got there & she picked me up at the airport with her cutie-patootie daughter, Mia, who, unfortunately proceeded to wail her head off upon seeing me… I only mention this because 1) I never quite had that effect on a kid before (usually they love me – really) and 2) it kind of set the mood for the rest of the weekend: anytime I came near the kid, she wailed… we got a little better towards the end, but I certainly couldn’t pick her up without her screaming – which I guess isn’t that bad since it spared my back. hehehe Anyway, to be fair to the kid, Mimi says she’s going through a phase where she cries whenever she sees someone new – even her own granny, which made me feel slightly better considering Granny’s been there since the beginning, but whatever, (Note: I plan to remind the kid of her poor behavior when she’s a teen & wants to crash at her cool Tita Juliana’s place in the big city! But I ain’t bit-tah.) Back to Charlotte, don’t have much to say about the town except that it basically fulfilled all of my expectations: very clean, very bright, very corporate and very suburban. Everything seemed sparsely laid out for some reason… even the traffic. The houses are all lovely and very new looking – even those that are 80-years+. Weird, no? Folks are very big on maintenance. Later that night, after running around all day seeing the sights and such, Mimi, Brent, lil’ Mia & I went to dinner to PF Chang’s, which I think exists in NJ but I've never been to… it’s like a higher-end chain restaurant for Chinese food. I had a medley of bad-for-you-things-that-tasted-yummy [Note: this marked the beginning of my poor eating for the rest of weekend…]

Friday, after waking up relatively on-time (Mia screamed her head off when she & mommy walked into my room & saw me half-asleep; told her I've gotten that reaction before so whatever), we packed the car & headed off with Mia to Myrtle Beach, SC – aka, the Redneck Riviera. [Now, to be fair, I was expecting A LOT worse… you know, Dixie flags, missing teeth, mullets, wife-beaters (both tees & men) etc. Instead, I found the Southern version of the Jersey shore: very family & car-oriented, kind-of-blue-collar but much cleaner. I've got to give it to Southerners, they take better care of their towns than we do.] The drive took nearly 4 hours (yikes) but we treated it like the road trip we never got to do in college – yapping it up, listening to music, gossiping… Once there, we met up with Mimi’s childhood friend Kathy & our fellow alum (& my high school friend) Sira. Mimi & Brent were generous enough to let us all use their timeshare, so hotel was free! (Whoo hoo! I love free.) We stayed in the southern part of Myrtle – I’m told the northern part is the “classier” part… whatever that means.

Anyway, we hung out on the beach for a couple of hours (the water is great – so warm! Like bathwater, albeit clean – or at least as clean as the ocean can be) and then after getting ready, headed off to dinner at this huge complex called “Broadway at the Beach” which basically is a tourist mecca/mini-city unto itself. It houses dozens of restaurants, bars, clubs, kids’ rides & stores where we ate at a Brazilian Churrasceria (yet again pigging out) that piled on the meat – a vegetarian’s worst nightmare. Afterwards, Mimi, Kathy, Sira & I left the manny (Brent) to watch Mia while we went to get our drink on. We eventually ended up in a club that housed three different places in one: a live show & two side clubs that basically alternated the same lame music. Observations: folks like to dance a-la-stripper. Also, there were NO cute folks out. Ok, I know that’s not nice to say but living in NYC you get used to seeing a certain type of beautiful people – it’s actually nauseating after awhile (not to mention exhausting trying to keep up since it becomes such a pricey fashion show), but there we certainly didn’t have to worry about not looking cute enough for the place. Anyway, we closed the place down & grabbed a cab back… [Note: we asked our cabbie where the locals hung out, and he said all the places that we went to… so sad.]

The next morning we had a late breakfast at a local pancake house (where again, the portions were huge – I only mention this because after this weekend, I gained back 5 lbs!) & each headed off to the beach in our own time. I got there at the prime burning hour… normally I’d be more careful, but I've been to the beach a handful of times this summer so I didn’t want to waste any tanning opportunities (I’ll rue the day one day I know). After several hours of just hanging on the beach & swimming, we made our way back to our hotel rooms & rested before going out again. This time we went to a seafood restaurant in that same mega-complex… observation about menus down there: EVERYTHING is fried. Not kidding. Still, managed to find the one dish that was broiled instead of fried, only to discover that they salt the shit out of everything. Mind you, I like me some salt – so much so that friends have threatened to get me a salt stick for Xmas (not that I’d probably mind) – but the food down there was too salty for even me! Crazy!

Anyhoo, afterwards, we decided to check out some of the gay establishments for the evening. We had asked our cabbie from the night before and he had given us the name of three places (yes, that’s right – only three places) and Sira had taken it upon himself to check them out beforehand so we wouldn’t waste time… out of the three places: the first one was lesbian – or at least that night – & useless for our purposes; the second was a “private club” with a (get this) $2 membership fee & $5 all-you-can-drink-fee – Sira peeked in & surprisingly enough, said it looked kind of scary; the third option was called “Hush” (I think it may have had more than one “S” in its name… like a lisp… original, no?). We went with door #3. This establishment had two large rooms, one with the bar area & large lounge/table area that we all decided had potential but needed a serious makeover & to get rid of the florescent lighting, and the other room was it’s complete opposite with dark lighting, a dance floor and long stage area with an aluminum foil covered backdrop. We were obviously the only tourists in there as everyone there seemed to know each other already (*insert Cheers theme song*) and – no joke – had their own little dance that they all seemed to be practiced in (I forget the song, but it goes something like this “You go left left then right right down the stairs down the stairs…”) Sira informed me that all the music played was dirty south whatever that means… However, the highlight of the evening was their drag show. Yup! We got to see a real drag show in good ol’ uptight Myrtle Beach. [Note: Mind you, this is the city that makes it illegal to wear a thong at the beach – I mean, don’t get me wrong, it probably should be illegal & lord knows, you’d certainly never catch me in one on the beach in a 100 years – but good god people! They’ve got time on their hands!] Anyway, there were several performers and while one stood out, the others were frankly scary. Thank god they haven’t brought their acts to NYC because they’d seriously get ripped apart. Poor girls! Seriously, one in particular looked like she was playing dress up with mama’s clothes, down to the white platform mary-janes & blue eyeshadow. It pained me to watch. On the plus side, one fierce lady did that “Umbrella” song in a fabulous emerald green get-up with this huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge green tasseled beach umbrella – she rocked it. Anyway, we stayed there all night because seriously, there wasn’t anywhere else to go. Alas, there were no cute boys there either.

The next morning after having another huge brunch, we each went our separate ways to catch our flights back. Mimi & I drove back to Charlotte where we got caught in this amazing lightning storm – it was pretty scary there for a bit, but pretty amazing to see on such flat spaces. Anyway, caught my flight back to NYC & made it home in one piece despite some rocky going…