Massholes

Auburn, Massachusetts is a sleepy little town. Let me rephrase that. Auburn, Massachusetts is a comatose little town. I spent yesterday desperately attempting to kill time and discovered that in Auburn, time has more than nine lives. Took a spin around the local mall, which took, including stopping at their four-restaurant food court for lunch, 20 minutes. You gotta love a mall that takes more time to walk TO than walk THROUGH. Luckily, Ted had brought a bunch of books with him, so while he's back in Boston, I utilized the in-room library. It didn't exactly kill time, but it did give it a good beating.

Thankfully, there was a fire lit under a number of our cast to go find karaoke last night. And lo and behold, there's a Chinese restaurant nearby that has karaoke on Saturdays! Whew--something to do. So Flo, Carol, and I made our way through the (surprisingly) empty streets of Auburn to Yong Shing's, where we had not only some of the best Chinese food I've experienced in a while, but also one of the more packed karaoke bars. Believe me, gentle readers, you have not lived until you've entered a too-small bar jammed to the rafters with drunken Massachusettians on the prowl. I never would've thought that a chinese restaurant's bar could be such a meat market, but oh my. Yong Shing's is apparently where Auburn goes to get silly drunk and engage in ill-advised liaisons. We got into the bar at about 10:00, and within three minutes were accosted by a guy in a baseball cap and polo shirt (why does anyone think that's a good combo??) who whistled at the girls, and then as I passed him got in my space and whooed at me, saying, "You're a lucky man!" My response (internally) was "Really? You're already intrusively drunk at 10:00? People in Auburn don't know how to pace themselves." And considering the fact he was drinking Bud Light, he must've started drinking sometime around Friday night to get that hammered by 10 p.m. The place was so crowded there was no place to sit, and barely a place to stand, so we sort of leaned up against the wall whilst thumbing through the karaoke guy's song list. I knew we were in trouble pretty quickly when I realized that a) he had a paltry Elvis selection and b) his artists were in something that weakly approximated alphabetical order. For example: The Bee Gees followed by Clint Black followed by Boz Scaggs. Technically in alphabetical order, but sometimes by first name, sometimes by last. At least he didn't do what the place in Boston did, which was use "The" as a word to alphabetize with. But undaunted by both the lack of personal space and the apparent illiteracy of the KJ, we forged ahead and put in our songs. I don't know if it's a Northeastern thing or what, but the KJ  insisted on playing songs in between the singers. Bad, BAD electronica dance music after each and every singer. I find it odd, but I guess it gives him time to go through the really difficult job of clicking onto the next song on his fully computerized music system.

The people at the bar were like most karaoke crowds--drunk and appreciative once they hear a song they know. But the characters...oh boy. I learned a new word last night--Massholes. This applies to males from Massachusetts of a very specific type. Apparently if you wear a popped collar and a Red Sox hat, you are a Masshole. The place was crawling with them, most of whom were drunkenly trying to hit on the Auburn debutantes that had come out in full force, hairsprayed and eyelinered to the max. Flo managed to attract the attention of someone who didn't fit the description of a Masshole, but who I believe was so far beyond that status as to be the Uber-Masshole--an almost Nietzchean construct of over-the-top machismo mixed with almost palpable desperation. Alice (who was not with us last night but told me this at breakfast) calls all men of this ilk "chad". I apologize to any Chads out there who do not fit this description. Our Chad had a bad spray-on tan, short spiky, overgelled hair, a groomed-to-nearly-nonexistence goatee, earrings, and wore a white dress untucked over jeans that you know were pre-weathered and distressed when he bought them. Add to this the fact that as the evening wore on, the dress shirt, which had started with the top two buttons open, became less and less buttoned, until b the end of the evening he may as well have just taken it off for all the coverage he was getting, and you get an idea of the type of guy Chads are. And he was eyeing Flo like crazy. He also had a great move--one which, in the interest of full disclosure, I will admit to utilizing myself (although I never paired it with the watch-as-I-gradually-undress-myself-in-public-to-show-off-my-Earl-Scheib-tan move). He would finish his song (Every Rose has its Thorn by Poison and Wanted Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi) and then as he made his way back through the crowd, would make sure his path took him past Flo, where he would also make sure he had to sort of lean into her path of vision or near her personal space to get around someone and just sort of ....pause...then move on. The pause was infinitesimal--barely noticeable consciously, but you FELT it. At least, that's the way it's supposed to be. He was a little heavy-handed on the pause, but still not too obvious. It's the pause that says, "Yeah, I'm here. You see me, and I know you want to see more of me, so I'm going to let you gaze upon me a little longer tha the other girls get to because I want YOU to see me. You saw me? Good. And I'll see YOU later...." That's just paraphrasing, you understand. The direct translation involves a lot more oily "heeeeeeyyyyys" and used car salesman hand gestures. Thankfully for Flo, she didn't take him up on the advertising and before long he was getting de-shirted by a rather drunk lady who had done a guttural rendition of "Son of a Preacher Man", proving once and for all that there's someone for everyone, even a Masshole from Auburn.