5 Weeks of Spring Break

Four days before Dan and I arrived in Panama City Beach, I landed us some jobs doing promotions through an ad I found on Craigslist. I had absolutely no information about what the job was until I got to a meeting I was told to attend. I learned that we would be handing out drinks in front of a stage on the beach at the 2^nd biggest club in Panama City Beach, and helping out at various events for the next four weeks. This was by far the most intense promotion going on there. The bosses made it clear that they wanted us to "uphold the image of the brand" by having a good time with spring breakers and flirting with girls while giving free stuff to the hottest ones. It wouldn’t be easy, but it was a challenge I was prepared to undertake.

It seemed like all the pieces started falling into place. I found a condo on the beach just two doors down from where we worked for a great price. The only thing between our building and the 2^nd biggest club in Panama City Beach was the 1^st biggest club in Panama City Beach. It was an old, small, dirty apartment that was decorated by a Christian grandmother. It was perfect. Our first move was to take all of her little glass trinkets, crucifixes, and figurines and store them in the closet, because we both knew they had a minimal chance of surviving the next month, and we didn't want Jesus or The Immaculate Mother Mary witnessing the sins that were to be committed in that apartment.

The next month of my life was a complete and utter blur of amazement. I met so many great people that I’ll never remember. I made best friends with people for a week at a time that I’ll never talk to again. I was making decent money, I always had time to party, and there was never a shortage of people looking to do the same. I spent every day on the beach and every night in the VIP.
            They say if you love what you do you never work a day in your life. I couldn't imagine a more fun job and it turned out I was a great at it. Being a hard working northerner surrounded by my lazy southern coworkers made me feel like how a black guy must feel in a shower full of white dudes. I would put forth normal effort at work and all the bosses would praise me like I just developed a cure for AIDS. There were days I would literally receive a standing ovation from my bosses in front of company executives. My superiors were giving me offers to work all over the South East.  It looked like my mentality of saying "go for it" for every life decision and my refusal to sign anything that resembled a long term commitment finally worked out in my favor.

I spent a lot of time thinking about all the different ways my life could’ve gone. I had managed to graduate college a semester early and with a better GPA than almost all my friends. Sure, I could've had a more serious job, a stable living situation, and a good idea of where I would be in life a month later, but I loved the idea that anything could happen.  I could've been waking up early every day to an alarm, trying not to bust my ass on ice on my walk to work, and sitting in a cubicle making phone calls and reciting a sales pitch. Instead my alarm was the music from the nearby stage, I walked through sand instead of snow, and my biggest issue with a customer was explaining that they didn't have to pay for the drink I was handing them. I would just laugh to myself thinking that if my life had gone as planned I’d be missing out on all of this; that it wasn’t the good successful times but all the shitty and desperate times that landed me in this position. It was all the times I refused to settle for good pay and a mediocre lifestyle. It justified every respectable job I'd ever turned down because I knew I wouldn't enjoy it.

My Spring Break office. The row of blue umbrellas is the beach in front my condo.

            Every day I woke up at 10 o’clock, walked along the beach to work, and spent my days hanging out with crazy spring breakers from all over the country. On the really tough days I would be asked to recruit competitors for the “Miss Spring Break Bikini Contest”. This involved walking through the crowd in search of “10’s and only 10’s”, and asking them if they were interested in being in a dance competition on stage for some huge prize. While I will admit that not every girl is thrilled at a stranger’s offer to shake her ass in front of thousands of people, most were flattered at the invite. Every now and then there'd be a girl that was totally into it until her pile of muscle of a boyfriend showed up to put his arm around her with clenched fists and ask me what the fuck I wanted. There was nothing to do but just roll my eyes behind my sunglasses, give him a grin, and walk away. More often than not there would be a friend of the 10 that all the others would agree would be way better at using her body to get hammered frat boys riled up. The slutty friend of the group I presume. There are few things that give a man the confidence of repeatedly telling 9’s that are literally begging to dance like whores that they can't because they aren’t 10’s.
              By the end of the promotion all the guys had a daily 5 dollar pool to see who could recruit the day’s winner of the “Miss Spring Break Bikini Contest”. Before the competition I would pull my candidate for "Miss Spring Break" to the side of the stage and deliver inspirational pre-dance speeches reminiscent of Herb Brooks' pregame speech from Miracle. You know, if you just change the words "skate" to "shake" and "hockey player" to "spring break bitty" I'd imagine it went something like this:

                                 

           We would all gather above the crowd on the roof of the bar and watch our handpicked girls on stage do whatever they could to get cheers from shitfaced spring breakers and win us money. Misogyny at its finest. Now I can understand if girls read this blog and think of what we did as sleazy; that I am someone who objectifies women; that gambling on a woman’s ability to use her body to get cheers from a crowd of drunks is wrong. But in my defense,…. (I caught a terrible case of writer’s block here and that’s why it took 6 months for this blog post). Go watch Magic Mike, read 50 Shades of Grey, and get off my case, lady! I’ll grow up someday…. 

"Left a good job in the city
Workin' for the man every night and day
And I never lost one minute of sleepin'
Worryin' 'bout the way things might have been" - Creedence Clearwater Revival