"You here for the mud wrestling?" the shuttle driver asked.
"Mud wrestling?" I repeated, weighing the box of promo gear I was to handout at a wine tasting against my primal need to watch naked women squabble in mud.
"Just get in," The driver said, and I did. It turned out he was just screwing with my emotions. There were no kiddie pools filled with mud or women to wrestle in them at the Don CeSar. There was, however, a model in pasties being painted with a scene of the wine country, but I was assured that she didn't take tips nor would she wrestle another girl covered in paint.
The Tampa Bay Wine & Food Festival proved to be three full days of high class debauchery. Saturday, The Don CeSar hosted a Grand Tasting Village on the beach beneath a tent large enough to house a royal wedding. The place was consumed with the kind of people you'd find having fun in travel magazines, wearing sunglasses in the shade, floppy straw hats, sun dresses, khakis, polo shirts and white linen pants.
Not only did the soft white sand provide a cool ambiance, it also acted as a landing pad for anyone who had too much wine and for the hordes of high-end gals I couldn't afford who stepped into the event wearing heels. From behind, these perfectly tanned 40something cougars looked 20. A few looked just as young from the front with mask-sized sunglasses and distracting boob jobs. There were also plenty of younger women with professional sales jobs — wild girls all grown up but who still bore the smudged party-girl tattoos of their college years.
Not only was there every kind of wine imaginable, but there were appetizers like bacon-wrapped jumbo shrimp and crab cakes, top shelf liquor you could swallow without wincing, and cork-bottle beer. Usually I choose wine the way most people do: first based on price and then by the label (I prefer labels with nude women or clever names like Il Bastardo, as these winemakers obviously understand what I like). Although this system worked at the supermarket, it wouldn't do for a wine tasting. Instead, I chose wines based on the hotness of the promo girls pouring the samples. Let me just say now that I have a thing for promo girls. They are paid to be attractive and flirt with you, kind of like strippers, except you don't have to tip them and they give you free booze.
After smelling and swirling the wine, I would make some clever quip like, "Umm, this shit tastes like really fancy cheese. You know, that French cheese that smells like feet." The promo girls were always rendered speechless by my gift for description, or maybe they weren't, but at least I managed to restrain myself from making the unforgivable wine joke: "Do you spit or swallow?"
After my fourth or so selection, when I did in fact use the aforementioned joke, I began to realize that the only thing keeping me from being a dirty old man was the fact that I'm not old. I couldn't help but wonder when this transformation took place. Would I receive some sort of notification in the mail? Or maybe I'd know the first time I got a face full of mace from a girl who failed to understand my wit. Looking around the crowd, I noticed most men successfully flirting with the promo girls right in front of their hot wives. It was then that I realized the difference between a dirty old man and an attractive older gentleman — money. With this revelation in mind, I ran over to the Escalade (being painted to look like a motel beach scene) and filled out an entry form to win a new Cadillac.
That night I drove my imaginary Cadillac to WMNF's Tropical Heatwave, held at the Cuban Club in Ybor City. This year, the event lived up to its name. After walking a handful of blocks with my promo gear and two bundles of papers, I was dripping with sweat. Luckily the festival crowd didn't mind a little sweat.
Ninth Avenue was setup like a hippie carnival, vendors selling tie-dyed goods, homemade incense, handmade jewelry, henna tattoos, sarongs, glass-blown bongs (I mean water pipes) and hippie munch-ables from The Jerk Hut and Skippers Smokehouse, as well as hot dogs, cotton candy, and funnel cakes. The ever present interpretive dancer set up shop on the sidewalk, dancing alone even when a band was not on stage. Couples examined the craftsmanship of glass pipes and hemp necklaces. One toddler in cowboy boots and a miniature do-rag spun a hula-hoop twice her size while clutching the tips she earned.
When I walked up, Amanda Shaw was on the Louisiana Stage fiddling like she was trying to start a fire with her bow. Sonny Landreth followed her act with a wailing slide guitar that did most of the singing for him. Between bands some patrons gravitated back to the parking garage, which acted as a kind of VIP lounge for people wanting to turn their cars into smoking dens. I ventured into the venue to meet people before the music drowned out my pickup lines. Completely by chance I found myself talking to two girls seated on the ground.
"What are y'all doing sitting on the ground?" I asked.
"Waiting for group sex."
"Group sex?" I repeated, much the same way I had said "mud wrestling."
"Groovesect," one of the girls corrected me, explaining that it was a jam band with a saxophonist and an organ player.
"Oh," I said. "That sounds like music I'd listen to in my Cadillac."
"Your Cadillac, huh?"
"Well," I said, preparing to shield my eyes from an onslaught of pepper spray, "when I win it."
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This article appears in May 21-27, 2008.