Savannah sojourn

When the chance to attend the most relevant and interesting conference in distance library-dom came up a few months back I of course jumped at it. I can be a bit of a library geek if you get me in the right mood :-). Anyways, the conference took place over three days at the end of last week in the soothingly comfortable confines of a posh hotel in downtown Savannah, which I had never before been to. My rear hotel room sliding door let directly out onto a 4th floor sundeck and a clear view of the Savannah river and the beautifully constructed bridge over it. The real letdown, however, was that there was no free internet and the per day fee high speed in-room service was for wireless-capable laptops only, which my work-provided decrepit portable comp was less that adequate for! Ce la vie! I had also arranged to stay the extra friday night (at a cheaper hotel) so that I could partake of some detailed city exploration and librarian-free nightlife.

Savannah, for those who have never been there, is a bit of an anomaly. While it has touches of big city hanging around its edges, it has a definite small-town, easy-living feel to it, which I think the denizens of the city promote to keep the tourist dollars flowing. And there were lots and lots of tourists wandering around in chinos, hawaiian shorts and birkenstocks, with cameras flashing and folded up maps under their arms. In my own aimless wanderings I passed several city horse carriage, bus and trolley tour businesses that had lines going down the street half a block. The downtown area is also punctuated with a series of southern-style little grotto-like parks. These little pockets of nature really give the city flavor and served me well several times when I needed a break from hoofing about under the glaring sun.

But back to the conference. I should say right out that I have a touch of social phobia in that I can get extremely wallflowery when confronted with a room full of strangers (which in most cases for me, is most work-related social events), although this suaree was to be a little different because an old college suite-mate who I hadn't seen since graduation was attending and presenting. He was coming down from Canada with his fellow librarian wife, both of whom it was wonderful to meet. We had previously touched base and I had luckily had the forethought to let him in on the various "radical changes" that had occurred in my life since our undergrad days. Needless to say he was awesome and gracious about that issue and when we met, he and his wife put me at ease from the start. Beyond that that the conference was very informative and useful but I would never dare to bore my faithful readers with further droll details...lol.

I ducked out of the last sessions a couple hours early on friday to explore a bit of the nearby city and then, with rolling suitcase in tow, headed over to the other, cheaper, rattier hotel I had reserved (and which my employer would not pay for b/c the conference was over). And believe me it was a hole, but sufficient for my needs as a place to rest my head come late friday night. After checking in I strolled over to a cheap buffet at a nearby chinese joint and then prepared for my planned excursion to a nearby night club.

The club was the infamous Club One, famous for having drag shows that sometimes feature Lady Chablis, the feisty TG woman who was featured rather prominently in the movie version of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." Anyways, I had of course left all the materials detailing where the place was and what was happening at home, but I had managed to pass by the place in my earlier wanderings and it was only about 4 blocks from the hotel. I was under the impression that they had an industrial/goth night at the club on fridays and so had brought and donned for the evening all my dark accountrements - hehe. Alas, I was mistaken - the goth thing was the night before and I would have to settle for a drag show and dancing.

As you can imagine, I stuck out a little bit amongst the friday night club crowd - which primarily consisted of bachelorette parties and older men oogling at them and or the performers. I was wearing my sleeveless black corset top, black, above-knee length crocheted skirt, black biker boots and heavier make-up than I am used to wearing out these days. But it was still a good time when right off the bat this older guy buys me a drink and then later comes over to talk. Turns out this guy is just about insane - not in a bad way - but in a full-of-life, say anything, throw money at everything, fuck anything that moves way. lol.

So we get to talking and he asks me if I like to get high because he has a stash in his car nearby and I say yes with a qualification that it is a rare pleasure for me these days and that my acceptance of said offer will in no way lead to any sexual contact whatsoever. Dangerous move? Probably, but I was feeling a bit buzzed and confident that this guy was harmless, so I accompany him out to this brand new $40,000 slick white sports car (no idea what it was - thats how little I care about that shit) with all the options in it. It's parked right on a main street with cars drifting by regularly, but we light up one of his joints anyways right inside with the windows shut. I catch a very good high and we head back to the club. Turns out this guy has been married 3 times, has a platonic relationship with his current wife (said he hadn't had sex with her for several years but they both were free to explore elsewhere) and that he had bought the car and had just stopped by in Savannah from picking the car up on his way back to Arizona to give it to his wife as a present. This guy has a little spare cash, ya think? He even, later on in the night, off-handedly offered to give me money for my surgery - to which I reacted vehemently that that was something I had to pay for myself as much as possible. But he was a nice guy no doubt.

Through this guy's outgoing antics, I met a group of girls making up a bachelorette party. Almost all bleach blondes, and all from Atlanta. They were all quite cute and surprisingly around my age. They were shocked when I told them I was their age - they had assumed I was in the 20's, which of course, I never get tired of hearing :-))

So that's about it for the trip - the girls left for another club, the older guy had disappeared and I headed back to my hotel room. I returned to the much colder and sodden environs of upstate NY content with the results of the trip and happy that the following weekend I would be traveling down to NYC to be with mi amour...