Johnny passed a bait shop on the west side of the Gandy. The stuffed snook on the sign wore a Santa hat; in the parking lot were eight plastic flamingos with reindeer antlers pulling a bass boat. Johnny adjusted the bow tie on his tux. He passed a billboard urging him to have eye surgery in a strip mall. More decorations. Inflatable snowmen in bikinis and wise men with sunglasses and elves on water skis. Johnny turned down Fourth Street toward the St. Petersburg bayfront, hoping she would be there.
They had met three hours earlier, on the other side of the bay in Tampa ’s Channel District. It was an after-hours black-tie fund-raiser at the new Florida Aquarium. The lights were low, the stars flickered through the aquarium’s landmark glass dome, and the free liquor flowed as only free liquor can. A promenade of snob cars pulled up for valets at the aquarium entrance. Saabs.
The facility herniated debt, and the fund-raising party was another backhanded effort to get in the black. The aquarium was conceived by politicians and backed with tax revenue, which meant the operation was dumber than dirt when it came to surviving in the real economic world. A marketing corporation hired by the City of Tampa-the same one that advised the city to tear down a perfectly good football stadium and build a new one right next door with tax dollars-concluded that the same strategy was the only way to rescue the aquarium.
“Gentlemen!” the report’s author addressed the city council. “We must destroy the aquarium in order to save the aquarium!”
The proposal was tabled in a close vote.
On this sticky December evening, casino tables crowded the horseshoe crab tank, and a makeshift dance floor squeezed through the mangroves next to the otter pool. The turtle ponds began to fill with crumpled napkins and cigarette butts. The in-house joke: We draw the line at having sex with our animals. Except during bonus pledge hour!
Johnny Vegas’s Porsche screeched up in front of the aquarium. Ahead of him in the valet line was a mega-stretch limousine; on its doors were five multicolored interlocking rings. A dozen members of the International Olympic Committee-scouting Tampa Bay for the 2012 games-got out of the backseat. A smiling reception team of exotic dancers immediately stuffed unidentified envelopes in the suit pockets of the Olympic Committee and led them off to special guarded VIP rooms.
A valet jumped in the limo and sped off. It was Johnny’s turn. He pulled the Porsche up to the curb, jumped out and flung the keys hard, sidearm like Phil Rizzuto turning the double play. The keys deflected off the fingertips of the celebrity volunteer valet and hit him in the teeth.
“And don’t fuck with the stereo! It’s set how I like it!” Johnny barked as the mayor of Tampa dabbed blood off his gums with a handkerchief.
Johnny adjusted his tux, stretched his neck side to side, and strode into the aquarium with the air of a horny adolescent.
Johnny was the man other men hate. A young, bon vivant party hound, impeccably dressed and visibly rich with no visible means of support. His tan was a little too good and his haircut a little too long and sexy to get respect in any business setting. It drove chicks wild. Not those who mattered, of course. None of the educated, accomplished women would take such a man seriously. These were the real prize ladies-mature, focused, substantial in conversation and content. In short, the prizes the other men already had-their wives. Johnny only held attraction for the others, the giddy young bubbleheads with the short skirts and boob jobs who drooled over him. The married men thought: Damn him all to hell!
But Johnny had a dark secret. Even in the realm of gigolos and trust-fund playboys, where everyone scored so frequently it blew the bell curve, someone had to bring up the rear. It was Johnny. He had no problem getting runners on base; he just couldn’t bring ’ em home. Nothing, nada, zip, doughnuts, goose eggs. It was part Johnny’s immaturity, but it was more. Events seemed to naturally conspire against him. Whenever he was close, had a willing babe in his crosshairs, there was always a massive disruption. It was uncanny. Johnny was charting new horizons, entire lost continents, in involuntary coitus interruptus. Forest fires near Daytona, prison escape manhunt in Orlando, circus elephant rampage in Clearwater, and the red-tide marine kill off Sarasota: “Hey, where are you going? It just smells a little fishy!”
Playboy Johnny Vegas, the Accidental Virgin, currently was trying to woo women with his Porsche. Until recently, he tracked his quarry with an orange-and-aqua cigarette boat customized with Miami Dolphins insignia. Then he ran aground and had to get it floated off a shoal in the Marquesas and later crashed it into a floating reggae bar near Dinner Key. The Dolphins sued him when women complained he was impersonating the quarterback. There were insurance problems and storage fees and barnacles, and the reggae bar filed a lien, and it went on and on until Johnny finally threw up his hands and thought, I’d almost rather not get laid.
But tonight at the aquarium everything was clicking with an unblemished ingenue in a strapless evening dress who had the supermodel prerequisites of being tall and sticklike. She said her name was If.
They flirted on the edge of the dance floor, near the marsh. A disco ball and revolving colored footlights disoriented the egrets, who flew out of their ponds and into the bar and restrooms. At the front of the dance floor was a mobile broadcast booth of local radio station Blitz-99, which was DJing the fund-raiser in a publicity swap. Blitz-99 had the hottest disc jockey in Tampa Bay, Boris the Hateful Piece of Shit.
That really was his name, at least according to files in Hillsborough Circuit Court, where Boris legally changed it in a ploy to get around persistent fines from the Federal Communications Commission. When regulators brushed aside the legal maneuver, the radio station compromised, and each time Boris said his name on the air, the last part of the word “shit” was bleeped out by a horn from a Model T automobile.
Boris objected that the compromise was a sellout of values.
Market research, however, showed the distinct Model T sound increased his name recognition, and the horn became the logo for a line of freebie T-shirts, bumper stickers and beer-can insulators.
In the late 1990s, the biggest things going in radio were shows that featured either mean-spirited, intolerant rants or sophomoric sexual innuendo. In a revolutionary breakthrough, Boris combined the two. He became all things to all sexually frustrated malcontents.
Half of Boris’s audience was easily titillated teenagers. His trademark was the call-in confession in which kids graphically described sexual experiences that Boris would grade for arousal and imagination; then he would send them on their way with a plug for God-fearing Americans of European stock. The other half of Boris’s audience was voyeuristic fifty-year-old bigots.
Church groups were enraged, editorial writers had infarctions, city councilmen passed resolutions and then smiled for photographs.
Boris responded with a packed press conference on the steps of City Hall. “It’s First Amendment, baby! I’m an artist!” he yelled, gripping the rubber-ball end of a large brass horn. Dozens of middle school and junior high fans cheered from the sidewalk. Plainclothes Klansmen set up an interactive booth.
Boris pointed at the kids and looked into the TV cameras. “The youth of America will not have their rights trampled. Don’t mess with Boris the Hateful Piece of Sh-AHH-OOOO-GAH!”
Boris’s notoriety exploded, and his appeal began overlapping all demographic lines. If you wanted to draw a crowd to your event, you hired Boris for a guest appearance. And you got your money’s worth, because although Boris was just under five and a half feet tall, he was just over four hundred pounds, most of which was not adequately bathed. Standing still in air-conditioning, Boris perspired like a yak. While songs played, Boris sat like a statue in his DJ chair with arms crossed, wearing dark sunglasses, a beatnik Jabba the Hut.