Storm trapped me in a (new) bar.

So, the other week  I was out hitting up some new bars, and an approaching storm ended up hitting right after I got to the 2^nd (new) bar of the night, this sort of upscale Tex Mex barspace with food that was just jammed with people and a bit overstaffed since it had just opened.

As I was walked in, the (younger) (hispanic) host guy who was standing at the door was like, “Welcome.”

“Thanks!”, I was like.  “It's my first time here.  If a tornado’s coming straight for us, I hope you guys hand out free shots of tequila.”

“I hope so too,” he was like.

Then, I sat down at the bar, and the bartender who came up to me was this tatted up (white) girl with (bleached blonde) hair and a black halter top.

And, I made the same joke.

Then, she was like, “Actually, tornadoes wouldn’t hit us because…”, and with that she launched into this long explanation of funnel cloud formation and how heat gathered up in city’s pavements interfere with that process.

“I love weather,” she confided, after her long, incredibly detailed explanation was over.

“Wow,” I was like, “You’re like this strange combination of shot girl and Neil de Grasse Tyson.”

“Thanks!”, she was like.

Then, she talked about how she grew up in a smaller city to the southwest of the city, and they always had tornadoes, and her dad would take her out back and show her funnel clouds as they formed.

Once, too, she was caught on a highway in a bad storm where visibility went to zero, and the wind was shaking her car so bad that she got out and laid in the ditch like you’re supposed to if there might be a tornado coming, and then suddenly after a while the wind just stopped, and as she got up soaking wet from the ditch, she looked around, and all around wherever she looked there were other people getting up from ditches everywhere, and there were all these cars stopped and pulled off on the side of the highway.

And, there was a newstruck, and that night she got on the news.

“You’re on the news!”, her mom had called her and said, and there she was, sopping wet and looking dazed.

I also told her my gay Orlando shootings killer theory, where a condomless Puerto Rican threesome made the guy think he had AIDS, which led him to donate blood and then go on a rampage for vengeance.

“That’s wild,” she was like.

Then, she said she also used to go in this one tavern where Jeffrey Dahmer used to come and visit.

“The old owner died like in 2009,” she was like.  “He would talk about him sometimes, if you asked him.  He said he was cute, that all the guys liked him, and that he was just the nicest person.”

She also said that what really sticks with her about the Orlando shootings is that she read somewhere that everyone was calling their loved ones to see if they were all right, so all the police who were in the club were just walking around through this giant club in the middle of all these bodies, and it was totally quiet except for 50 cell phones ringing and ringing and ringing.