As I occasionally do on Friday nights, I spent time with the friends out at the Fruit Loop. The Fruit Loop, for you non-Vegas folks, is the silly name given to the area surrounding Paradise Rd and Naples Dr, in which is found several clubs and bars popular with the homos and homo-friendly folks. Amongst them are 8 1/2 and Piranha, which is actually one club with two individually-named rooms; Gipsy, which used to be the club of choice until the owner bought the building across the street, renamed it 8.5 and cannibalized his own customer base. Gipsy is now left to the lesbians and their fascination with drag shows. But that is the nature of the party-gay, constantly moving from the most recent best thing to the next best thing. Never satisfied. Across the street-- on which they recently installed a crosswalk and stoplight to prevent the drunken bar-hoppers from getting stuck in the grills of speeding taxis-- is FreeZone. FreeZone is where people go for a few minutes to buy drinks for a few dollars cheaper than at 8.5/Piranha. It's also where lesbian crack-heads gather. That's not a joke. The floor there is as tacky as flypaper. Sticky sticky sticky. And then on the southeast corner of the intersection is The Buffalo, where the Levi and leather men gather, the home of the local gay motorcycle club, and the Beary Hairy Chest Contest. Pool tables instead of a dance floor, cheap drinks. A mixed crowd, really. The older folks who don't like the club vibe, and the less-than-old folks who are pre-drinking or who also don't like the club. Beside it is Get Booked, a tiny gay bookstore. Mostly t-shirts and junk, a few books, and porn movies; drenched in rainbows. Then there is the other lounge-type place whose name I do not know. The reason I do not know it is because it is constantly changing. It used to be called Sasha's, after the drag queen who ran the place before absconding off to Reno with some embezzled monies. Then it was called Tramps, then Toxic, then Suede. Maybe some others in between, and now it's something else. Of course, the building that used to be 8.5 was Angles when I moved here, then Icon, and now 8.5. Changes, changes. But that is Vegas.

So now that you've had that long and dry introduction to the Fruit Loop, let me make the point I was getting to. The clubs, particularly 8.5/Piranha where the friends and I spent most of the Saturday early morning hours, is extremely loud. I know it's a club and people dance and gyrate and grind against one another, but really, it's too loud. I've never been to any other club where the music is as loud as it is there, and nobody at those clubs seems to complain that the music isn't loud enough. Verbal communication at Piranha is nearly impossible. I pretend to understand, usually, until it's clear I need to respond, then I lean over and yell into the speaker's ear that I can't hear an effing thing they're saying. That place literally makes my skull rattle. I'm not joking.

I was reminded the other day about that high-pitched sound that kids and teenagers can hear but adults, most people over 19, cannot. Going deaf is a gradual thing that starts early, apparently at 20. As you get older, you lose your ability to hear pitches, in continuously descending frequencies. I used a hearing test in a video on YouTube to determine that there are sounds that most people under 40 should be able to hear that I cannot. I blame it on Piranha. My ears are 11 years older than my body.