As we entered the club we were struck by a wall of smoke and darkness. The place reeked of cheap booze, cigarettes, and sex and the volume of the band was so loud my brain immediately shut down. Word had gotten out Jerry Lee was playing that night because a good half of the denizens of the place were well-dressed women. Some kind of women's business convention being held at a local resort hotel learned about it and apparently this was the scheduled entertainment for girls' night out. There were half-priced drinks for women and they were already in high spirits with a few drinks under their belts. No debutantes here, these women were raspy and rowdy and loud as drunken sailors on shore leave. 

Jerry Lee listed in the direction of the bar and the crowd parted like the Red Sea to offer up a seat. Women were all over him but the bouncers kept all but a couple good-looking ones at bay. The bartender set them up with drinks---he had that practiced vacant stare and pale pasty skin that comes only with years of working in a strip club bar and wore the look of a man with a suspended driver's license.

As my eyes adjusted to the light I looked around. Black light illuminated everything in the room including teeth and white shirts and altered them to that alien blue-white tint that first found its way to my bedroom in tenth grade. The noise from the band was relentless, their one goal in life to permanently impair our hearing. People whirled across the dance floor---women with blouses half-buttoned moving uninhibitedly; dervish-like; it didn't matter if they danced with men or women or by themselves. The music was punctuated with raucous laughing and rebel yells. Wobbly tables with pitchers of beer were banged against and the floor painted wet from spilled drinks. Chain smokers flourishing in their natural habitat, made sure everyone inhaled at least a pack by the end of the night, stubbing butts out on the floor or else dropping them in half-full glasses of some else's drink.  

I had to relieve myself so negotiated past gyrating women in the direction of the john. Bumping against a few of the pretty ones, the fragrance of perfume mixed seductively with the dusky ambrosial scent of their sex. Two or three smiled at me and I started thinking, "This place ain't half bad." But that frothy sentiment was displaced seconds later, once within ten feet of the bathroom and the pleasing odors were replaced by a wafting bouquet of piss and stale vomit. As evidenced by the floor within, the urinal was more a suggestion than a practical plumbing device. I didn't walk so much as skate out of the stench.  

Once back in the bar and having laid a trail of wet footprints to get there, I found a chair in the corner in which to sit. But then awkwardly realized in the dark someone was already in it, and almost sat down on the lap of a huge trucker. He took a drunken swing at me, but I easily avoided the blow and moved on.  

Being the limo driver I was under strict legal orders not to drink, though I can tell you I sure could have used one about then. I'd smoked a little weed while Jerry Lee was checking in at the hotel and my mouth was dry. With all the beer spilled on me that night I probably wouldn't have passed a Breathalyzer test anyway, simply from the absorption factor. My eyes readjusted to the dark and I realized a few feet away a scrawny cowboy with a straw hat was having a stripper perform a lap dance. It got funky pretty quick and I looked around elsewhere to take in the scene. It seemed the strippers were outnumbered two to one by the convention women and there was an added competitive tension in the air as a result. A couple of the non-strippers had pulled their dresses up high, unbuttoned their blouses and were showing off their stuff. The regular patrons were eating it up. 

The house band took a break and the lights came up for a set change. With more light the place looked stranger, the women coarser and the rednecks surlier. It looked like it was time for Jerry Lee to do his thing. As if on cue, our man stood up from the bar stool, put his right hand into the air and pushed that blonde hair back as if steadying himself to climb a gangplank. A hush of anticipation fell over the crowd. Two strippers were pushed off the stage to make way for the grand piano being rolled out.  

Jerry Lee walked up to the drummer and I overheard him say, "Can you play a back beat?"  

The drummer replied, "Man, that's all I do."  

"Mister Guitar, can you play in the pentatonic scale?"  

And he replied, "Yessir. That's all I do, too."  

With a gleam in his eye Jerry Lee said, "It looks like we're good to go," then shouted after hitting the keys with the perfunctory lead-in...

"You shake my NERVES and you rattle my brain, too much love makes a man insane. You broke my will but what a thrill...goodness gracious GREAT balls of fire!"

We were off to the races and the joint went nuts. The song pounded with a fury and sexuality unlike any I'd ever seen or heard in my twenty-one years on earth. Halfway into the song, the first barrage of hotel keys hit the stage. It was like an incoming mortar attack, followed by a second barrage of panties. The strippers had gathered to the right of the stage and were dancing with each other and making out; overcome by the sexual fever pouring out of Jerry Lee.