Skippy was Lonesome That Nite on Miami Beach

Skippy was Lonesome that nite on Miami Beach

Not long ago enough my buddy Ken and I decide to enter a bar located near his office on Lincoln Mall South Beach Miami, it was Happy Hour time, How happy we were to find out soon enough.

A neighborhood cheers type place, or so we thought, cheers was an understatement as it turns out,and we were apparently the first customers of the day.

We sit at the bar and order a couple of beers from the barman, who happened to be wearing a cowboy hat, we assume that it must bee a country and western joint,which is cool with us, ha! But everything is cool. Were shooting the breezed minding our own business when a couple of dudes walk in and sit at the opposite end of the bar, we are now not alone, which is an understatement as it turns out

It is eerily quiet, dark and dingy, thinking to cheer up the scene I I saunter? over to the jukebox and put some coins in when one of the new clients apparently a regular asks me to play number 101, being polite I figure why not and continue with my selections as well, as it turns out he might as well have asked me to dance!

So number 101 is the first selection that is played, as Elvis came into the room sinning “Are you Lonesome Tonight”??. A sense of something not quite right is in the air, but it passes, just for a second until?.

Ken at almost the same moment spots a cardboard box near the cash register and on it is written the name “Skippy and and $$, being the curious type Ken asks Mr. Barman what the significance of the dollar symbol is. Mr Barman then proceeds to tell us as if we were supposed to already know that “Skippy” formerly a regular at the lets call it the” Dew Drop Inn” as the name is lost to me these many years later, and that Skippy had passed away from the plague that is haunting us all? that was rampant in the world in those day, AIDS.

He looked at us in a knowingly way as we nodded our heads that yes indeed we understood now of course why that box with the dollar symbol was there.

It is at that exact moment that we hear animal like sounds coming from the television set above the cash register, at first we assume it was on the Wild Kingdom channel, but we became finally aware that there is a hard core sex movie playing on the television, and in fact one of the duo had a resemblance to Marlin Perkins, so we were sort of on point, yet not!

Two well grown men were at it with each other sexually,luckily large screen televisions were not yet in style. Luckily.

Ken and I being fast thinking city boys sit closer together less anyone think we were not a couple.
Were trying not to laugh at our predicament , but it was not easy. We ask for our bill, insist the change be put in Skippy's box and get the hell out of Dodge them City..

We hop, Skippy and jump into my CJ7 jeep and spend the next ten minutes laughing our asses off, easy to do now that we were “ safe:

PS/ Has anyone out there ever heard of a gay man named Skippy before? A first for us.

PS/ Heh man,We missed seeing the neon sign!