“Beau Weevil, is the name.” I had left my home in Georgia to be a field correspondent at the annual Naked Pickleball Tournament in Boca Raton, and I was not prepared. The hotel room smelled like coconut sunscreen and assorted regrets. My editor had assured me this was a “vital cultural event,” but the man in the lobby wearing nothing but tube socks and a fanny pack suggested otherwise. His fanny pack, making him look like an outlaw fanny pack slinger from out of the old west…” West Palm Beach.” I had a hearing predicament and wore a clockwork battery operated device enhancing the octaves coming my way. The hotel concierge asked, “Do you have a reservation?
Being a “summa cum laude graduate from an online trading school, I retorted. “What! Do I appear to be an Indian or some Tonto character, perhaps that Hiawatha fellow?” I was almost persuaded to have a conniption, but settled on a lozenge, while reaching out to pet the “in-house”, iguana pet, free roaming on the Pecos of the desk “Please don’t touch the alligator!” Too late…the critter bit off my middle finger, causing a vortex of pain in my hand and a gallon of blood staining the marble floor red.
Quickly, the concierge reached into his fanny pack for a Zippo cigarette lighter to stop the flow of blood and cauterize my finger, However, him being short-sighted, he aroused a red spot on the end of my nose, causing me to scream like a stuck pig. “Goddamn it, man! Are you a concierge or an arsonist?” I bellowed, while the iguana—now confirmed as an alligator—lurked under the desk, crunching my finger like a Slim Jim. The lobby erupted in chaos as naked pickleball players scattered, their tube socks flapping against the marble like wet fish. Meanwhile, I had been retrofitted with a Mr Potato Head, Roman Nose, and I was from Georgia.
