“Let me show you my new implants,” announced a half-drunk wench Saturday at Tampa’s annual
“Alright,” I said. It was the only logical response.
From my limited experience with breasts, I’d guess that she was lying about her healthy knockers being artificially enhanced, but I didn’t care. Her boobs could have looked like a dog’s ass and I’d still have been interested. Boobs are just plain intriguing. I wasn’t surprised by my inability to decline such offers, but I was taken aback by how many pirate lasses wanted to show off their cleavage or strike a sexual pose for CL’s cameras.
Having grown up in an age of reality TV, Girls Gone Wild, and YouTube, this generation has few apprehensions about acting rowdy on tape. It wasn’t just the women. Entire crowds reacted to the camera like the fake audiences on MTV’s spring break shows. Wherever the viewfinder swung, crews of pirates hoisted beers and gave genuine “Arghs.”
“Chicks love video cameras,” cameraman Clint informed me.
As a young film major at UT, he told me of more than a few occasions when he brought girls to his room and they immediately went for his camera, as though filming were a standard part of foreplay. I was still a bit skeptical until an attractive girl with beer cans strung around her neck like beads used me to demonstrate a sexual position she termed The Delaware Spider.
“You’re going to love this,” her two guy friends told me as they held her legs aside my head and smiled for the camera.
To be honest, we didn’t bring the camera with entirely pure intentions, but I didn’t expect such a welcomed reception. I’d like to think that my unmatched looks enticed so many beaded pirates to make love to the camera. Or, maybe they were seduced by Clint’s tall surfer dude looks, tight pants, and eyeliner. But it was more than that—more than even the trash bins overflowing with empty beer cans. These binging masses were genuinely having a wild time, behaving entirely independent of the lives that existed outside of Bayshore Blvd.
One beautiful young blonde I met tried to convince me she was an adult entertainer named Lauren Nelson. When I Googled her later, for professional purposes, it turned out she, or a girl who looked exactly like her, was Miss America 2007. I didn’t mind being duped. She was an adult entertainer in a way. And, presenting a deranged version of ourselves, concealing our innocence behind eye-patches and three-corner hats, is part of what Gasparilla celebrates.
Fleets of shopping carts converted to cardboard ships were pushed through the crowds, containing cargos of booze and shipmates who lost their land-legs. Party girls young and old flaunted themselves in revealing pirate tights and lace, whether they had the body for it or not. Men dueled with plastic swords in one hand while chugging beers in the other. I traded beads for beers and lost a few chugging contests. Nudged through the layers of bodies, Clint and I were subjected to repeated ass and crotch grabs. Granted these molesters were no Kira Knightley, their unsolicited affections were still appreciated. I was given a few slurps of mysterious pirate juice while Clint was recruited to kiss a lip-biter on camera. We were treated like royalty, but it wasn’t just us. Everyone was having a ball. Even the police seemed to be having fun, leaning on their cruisers and laughing at our drunken antics.
The only thing that disturbed me was the huge percentage of partiers from places like Alabama and Mississippi. Not that I don’t like non-Floridians. It’s just that so many Tampa natives forego this experience each year to scoff at how bad the downtown traffic looks on their TV screens. Perhaps they are afraid—afraid of getting caught on camera actually having fun or peeing in a beer bottle. Or, perhaps they’ve been one of the partied-out people crumpled on the grass median between the street and the sidewalk at a previous Gasparilla. Or, Maybe carrying a vomit drenched friend twenty blocks back to a parked car once in a lifetime was enough.
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This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2009.