"Who was the genius who first convinced women that beads were the currency for showing their tits?" an angel-faced, smiling cutie asked me when the woman across from him flaunted her cheap, plastic baubles. He had come out to see local metal outfit Dark Star Revolt kick off the GGW event.
While the band played, metalhead women tossed their long hair in circles and conducted the musicians with devil-horn-shaped hands. None of the rockers, male or female, seemed to be interested in the bimbo ball that followed.
"So what exactly is supposed to happen tonight?" I asked. "Is it a show?"
"Nobody has any idea," Cutie Pie said. "It's just a vague iniquity of possible nudity."
Someone had been spending time with a thesaurus.
"It's a recruiting trip," Bauble Babe said. "They have professional girls that go from show to show."
The drink-slinging hotties were all dressed in GGW boy shorts and tank tops. I guessed those were the pros.
In the lobby bar, a jiggly Pocahontas sported gourds so ridiculously enlarged that their weight bowed her back. She was plainly using her ass as a counterbalance. She jittered the long fringe on her flesh-colored bikini top into a perpetual swish as she exuded a self-absorbed nervous energy that fed on attention. I pegged her as an amateur hoping to go pro.
On the dance floor, a hot-bodied honey in red velvet, hot shorts, and black cami top was going braless. The hardball-sized mounds were immobile even as she danced and strutted confidently in her clear plexi high heels. Surely one in the biz.
Uncharacteristically, I missed it when the first naked boobies made an appearance. On the stage, two slender women were dancing fully clothed while two black-clad camera guys trained their lenses on them.
"I just flashed to do it. I didn't know there were cameras," Tracy, a 35-year-old from Fort Lauderdale, claimed after being "lei-ed" by the Jägermeister girls after her stage performance.
Tracy had danced over and began grinding her ass in the direction of my crotch until her friend Doreen pulled her off.
"What are you doing?" Doreen admonished. "She's a reporter!"
It wasn't long, however, before Doreen herself was confiding details of her sex life, perhaps wanting to be part of an exposé on alternative lifestyles.
"We're swingers," she shouted over the music, putting a hard g in the word as she pointed to Tracy and two other girls on the dance floor.
"He doesn't know it," she said, gesturing to the bald-headed guy with a big, round belly and an even bigger smile, "but he's fucking all of us tonight."
"Well, not all tonight," he countered.
"Yeah, that's my boyfriend," Tracy boasted, still dancing.
Well, good for her.
And her. And her. And her.
Meanwhile, back on the stage, another boob was making an appearance. A young woman had tied her halter-top so that it was a sort of sling beneath her right breast. The exposed nipple glittered with body paint in the stage lights.
As Cyclops Tit and her two fly girls danced on stage, behind me, the guys were one-person deep around the upper level railing for the best view of girls who dared to bare. If I'd doled out 25 clams, I'd have made sure I got a good view of the little action there was too.
Lucky me, I got one of the few benefits that, I guess, helps equalize the wage divide: Girls got in free and could drink all we wanted from complimentary red plastic cups issued upon entry.
"Lose it and you're done," one of the many head-shaved, black-shirted bouncers had said when he handed it to me on my way in.
I didn't have a chance to show how well I could hold my liquor because I couldn't even hold onto the cup. I went to the bar for a beer instead, and when I returned, Pocahontas had been Westernized (appropriate on this Seminole land corrupted for the sins of the White folks). Now, she was wearing an aqua GGW tank (another reward for going wild) and revving an imaginary motorcycle as part of her dance routine.
When Pocahontas jumped onto a table, MC Cyrus saw his chance for a photo op and placed his hairless scalp — freshly airbrushed with a Girls Gone Wild logo — between the Indian princess' skull-sized orbs. The GGW camera crew jutted their equipment into the action, and Pocahontas grabbed her breasts and raised the left one to give it a lick.
Close to the action, I was immediately lost in a sea of camera phones. I guess it was all right. I mean, the sign on the door read "No flash photography." And since she was topless, she wasn't really flashing. Right?
The night wouldn't be complete without a dance contest. All the evening's wild ones assembled on stage — a mere ten participants — for this grand finale.
"This is gonna be on TV, on DVD," Cyrus announced, trying to get more contestants. To no avail.
The amateur show spontaneously organized itself into four groups — Pocahontas and a chick with a pretty good Shakira shimmy; a threesome of boney beach bunnies; Uniboob and her fly girls; and two free agents, Velvet Shorts and a topless newcomer in a black miniskirt.
During the dance contest, the girls slithered over one another awkwardly, appropriate to their amateur status. Uniboob got her painted nipple sucked by one of her posse. Velvet Shorts dropped her pants. But most of the attention went to the newcomer's large areolas.
"We've got silver dollars here!" Cyrus verbally ejaculated as Outkast's "Hey Ya!" blared. "I could go play the slots with that shit!"
Yup. That was about it. Just ten wild girls and maybe 100 rubberneckers filled the venue. The dance contest was soon over, and the crowd began to disperse. I never heard a winner announced, but maybe that's because I was too distracted by the party animal on the dance floor. A Jack Russell terrier was the dance partner to a guy who clearly preferred things doggy style.
As the night wound down, Pocahontas copped a squat on top of one of the booths as she leaned against the balcony railing and wrapped her legs around a guy in a plaid shirt. I tapped her on the shoulder, hoping to get a little insight into what exactly made a girl want to go wild at an event like this one.
She turned around and shot me a dirty look.
"I work for Pure Platinum," she spat, turning away to indicate that the interview was over. I'd been put in my place — clearly, 15 minutes of fame in print meant nothing when there were video cameras around.
The gorgeous Velvet Shorts, who called herself Chris, had an actual answer to my question.
"If I don't do it now, when will I ever get to do it?" she explained, causing me to stare at her open-mouthed when she added. "I'm pushing 40. I've got three kids."
Was it great genes or a genius surgeon? I didn't have the heart to ask.
Instead, I asked a different question to a guy as he was leaving, "Was it worth the 25 bucks?"
"No, for 20 bucks, I'd see more at a strip club," he said grimacing. "And I could get a lap dance."
Now I had nothing left to do but pay my tab and amuse myself with bad puns on the hike back to the car: Perhaps in a place less jaded than South Florida, the evening would have been more titillating. The Girls Gone Wild crew had certainly milked it for all it was worth. In all, though, the event was a bust.
