Before he was a Tea Partier, Marco Rubio was just a plain old hard partier. His new memoir, An American Son, is out today, and while reviews seem to indicate it's what you might call sort of boring and politically safe, Florida's junior Senator does admit to drinking and partying in his past. In fact, he once threw up on a plane in front of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and attended foam parties on South Beach.
Perhaps the most risque anecdote Rubio retells in the book is his attendance at foam parties. From The Huffington Post:
Rubio writes that one night, his now-wife, Jeanette, told him that if he went out to a nightclub that evening, their relationship would be over. He went anyway to a "foam party," where he writes that he "watched the foam descend from the ceiling ... a sight to behold."Beepers? Pay phones? South Beach foam partiers? How '90s. In fact, back in the '90s New Times chronicled the Beach's then in vogue trend of foam parties:
While there, he had revelation when his beeper buzzed with Jeanette's number:
"As I contemplated my predicament, I looked down at my shoes. They were perfectly white. They had been black when I arrived. ... Maybe because I took it as a sign the life I was leading was phony and unsustainable or just that I had suddenly found myself wearing white shoes, a South Beach fashion faux pas, I left the club and found the nearest pay phone."
As the name implies, a foam party features gallons and gallons of soapy foam, which is pumped onto an enclosed dance floor, creating what amounts to a giant bathtub in which revelers are encouraged to slip and slide and bump and grind to their hearts' delight. To facilitate the process, the participants are likewise encouraged to strip down to bathing suits or underwear."From what I could see, the whole thing is basically an excuse to get fucked in public," smirked one observer of the gay foam party scene, though their straight counterparts tended to be slightly more tame. Slightly.
Mostly, though, we're just wondering how exactly one's shoes pull a Michael Jackson on the dance floor, and we don't mean moon walking. But the '90s were a crazy time. We mean, New Times was writing nightlife trend pieces. We were all doing stuff we don't do now.
Rubio also admitted to getting so drunk on a plane that he threw up infront of his former political mentor Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. From The Herald:
A modest drinker at most, Rubio recalls one moment of excess after a 1996 Bob Dole presidential campaign event in New Hampshire. On the flight home, he got into a vodka-shot competition. He wound up vomiting on an operative in front of his first political mentor, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and current state Sen. John Thrasher."I realized I wasn't going to make it," he writes. "I was going to throw up in full view of some of the most prominent Republicans in Florida. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen sat to my right. To my left sat a well-known political operative who had volunteered on the campaign. I could either vomit on a congresswoman or on a fellow volunteer. I chose the latter."
That perhaps might be the most exciting story to ever come out of the Bob Dole campaign.
Ros-Lehtinen meanwhile teased Rubio about the admission on Twitter.
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