Musical Memoirs Goes Does Cleveland On a Fake ID
By the fifth time I heard “You Give Love A Bad Name,” I wanted to tear my ears off and stomp on them. By the seventh, thoughts of murder surfaced.
But it was a free trip, I kept reminding myself. To beautiful Cleveland.
We were driving somewhere near Mansfield — or maybe it was Wadsworth — when Bon Jovi’s “Slippery When Wet” flipped over in the cassette player for the 8th time. Why do I get myself in these situations, I asked myself. Then in my head, I chided myself: Stupid, stupid, stupid!
In my defense, the pitch had sounded good: This kid in our pre-law club* offered us a free trip to Cleveland. Ostensibly to visit a couple of law schools there, he promised to also throw in tickets to the the Browns and the Cavaliers.
I liked sports, and I’d never been to Cleveland. Besides, several club members — including a few of the more attractive ones — seemed interested. Why not be a little social? This was college, after all.
On the day of the trip, I was bummed when only two others showed up. So it was me, the nerdy guy who set the thing up, and the nerdy couple who joined us.
Party time.
We drove together in the main nerd’s car. His name was Aaron**, and his family lived in Cleveland. Apparently, he really liked Bon Jovi because once he pushed that cassette in, it continued to play through most of the 7-hour trip until the cherub-like guy in the back finally suggested, “Hey, you think we should change albums?” To which Aaron said something like, “Oh, yeah — I didn’t even notice.”
Didn’t notice seven hours of Bon Jovi? It was going to be a long trip.
Before we made it to Cleveland, there was another horror: The nerdy couple in the back told us they had friends they were staying with in Cleveland. Which meant that I alone was going to stay with Aaron at his parents’ place.
Before this weekend, I’d never even talked to the dude.
When we first arrived, Aaron greeted his dog, allowing the mutt to lick his face — right on the lips — for about two minutes. Not wanting to watch this repulsive scene but yet unable to turn away, I thought to myself: “Did he just stick his tongue out?”
I felt like I was watching something I wasn’t supposed to see.
While his family was kind enough to make dinner for us, the meat was so bloody, I felt like one of those lions you see munching on a caribou in “National Geographic.” I fantasized that I was back home, eating Ramen noodles and keeping to myself.
Luckily, Aaron said, he was going to take me out on the town, which meant getting out of that house. Problem was, I was only 20. No problem at all, Aaron said. He knew of a place. All I needed was $7, and they’d make me a fake ID.
I posed for my photo, and the owner handed me the worst-looking ID I’d ever seen. I’m pretty sure I could have made a better one with crayons and markers. But as far as bouncers knew, I was a 23-year-old from Michigan.
So this thing with Aaron was getting a little better. I was in a different place, buying beer. But then he took me to a seedy bar, which turned out to be a seedy strip club, leading me to wonder: How did I manage to wind up in a Cleveland strip club with a fake ID and a nerd who lets his dog French him?
There are a few more stories about that trip — like how Aaron repulsed the wives of the Cleveland Browns — but you get the idea. It was an awkward weekend.
But, hey, at least I got a fake ID out of it. And when I got back to Indiana, a good half the bars thought it was legit.
Still, whenever I hear Bon Jovi, I think about Aaron, Cleveland and dogs. Then I try to picture what kind of law he’s practicing today.
.
* I thought it would look good on law school applications; it didn’t.
** Not really
Posted on November 11th, 2009 by Pat
Filed under: Songs in the Key of Life: My Musical Memoirs
“We’d all like to flee to the Cleve,” Pat.
But some of us can’t afford the gas money.
So which one of those five faces is on your fake ID?
I took a trip from Moran, Wyoming, with four other people I worked with at a lodge at the Grand Teton National Park. Someone had the idea that we should drive to Red Rocks in Colorado to see Jimmy Buffett. Sure. Sounded like an adventure. So we piled into Rita’s Toyota Corolla and hit the road to Boulder, Colorado.
I had no idea before this trip how BIG Wyoming is. It’s WIDE, baby — real WIDE. It took us 10 hours to get to Boulder, Colo. I remember we drove over to a Kmart to buy cheap Hawaiian print shirts to be part of the group that in 1980 wasn’t called Parrot Heads yet. To kill more time, we cruised by Mork and Mindy’s TV house, Frank Shorter’s running store and the Coors bottling plant. (Did you know they also have a porcelain company, next door?)
About a half hour before the concert was set to start, it began to drizzle. I’ll always remember the roadies on the stage, which was glistening from the water, staring upat the sky. The stagelights backlit the rain. Doesn’t look too good, I remember thinking. About 30 minutes later, they postponed the show. Bummer. We couldn’t get another day off, so we got a refund (Alex used his to buy a T-shirt, at least!) and got in Rita’s Corolla for the 10-hour trek back home to Moran, Wyoming.
Maybe that’s when I ceased to be a Jimmy Buffett fan. I remember a lot of complaining. Hours and hours of complaints. The only good thing about the return drive was that I had caught a cold and was able to sleep through most of the sniveling drive home.
The concert trip, in a word, was HELL. But at least it wasn’t Cleveland.
It could have been worse.
You could have had to listen to their unbelievably bad followup, New Jersey, for the entire trip…
“Your love is like BAD MEDICINE…”
and at that point in the video, Ritchie Sambora flips his guitar over to reveal the words
BAD MEDICINE
painted on the back of his guitar. Wicked cool.
“They’re just a flash in the pan” I said.
Dan
This reminds me of your story where you ended up with the rednecks. Strange things happen to you…