Spring Break Is Still Decadent and Depraved — and Awesome, Dude!

Downstairs, at Fat Tuesday, a bouncer closely inspected what was supposed to be a South Carolina driver's license. He looked at the young men before him, who were wearing Theta Chi shirts. "Don't you ever, ever come back here with these," he said, handing the ID back to the spring breakers, who quickly headed for the stairs.

"This is supposed to be the place where everyone gets drunk and everyone gets laid," another one complained.

In time, the other side of A1A went dark and the sun rose on another day of spring break. The beach slowly filled with tan young people. Girls arranged their towels in groups and discussed life's stresses while wearing $300 sunglasses and $200 bathing suits that can't get wet. Many wore heels to the beach. Toned, tanned guys tossed footballs and waded in the ocean. Banners flown by small airplanes advertised drink specials and car insurance. For a moment, at the right angle, it could have been 1985; put larger hair on the girls and it could have been 1960. But even Where the Boys Are has a dark side — one of the girls, played by Yvette Mimieux, gets date-raped.

The bearded homeless man came back the next morning, wearing the same blue jeans and black shirt. He spotted the Ball State kid with the Mohawk, who was sprawled on a towel on the sand. "Hey, you said to meet you here," the homeless man said.

"What?"

"You said I should come back in the morning."

"Oh! Oh yeah." He turned to his friends: "This is the guy who wanted crack." A small group gathered by the homeless man.

The Mohawk kid picked up a small white rock. "Here it is!" he said, raising the pebble. His friends cackled.

"You said you had crack, man."

"Yeah, yeah, this is crack... Where's your pipe?"

His friends chimed in: "Smoke that crack rock, we got it for you."

Eventually they got the man to put the pebble in a small glass pipe he had.

"I know it's not crack," the man said. "I've seen a crack cocaine rock. I'm not a crazy idiot."

One of the kids turned his back for a moment. "Fine. Here, we're sorry," he said. "Have a beer, man. We're sorry we tried to get you to smoke a rock that wasn't crack."

The homeless man looked skeptical but he reached for the blue plastic cup. He took a sip and cringed. He threw the cup down and spit into the sand. The Ball State spring breakers were in hysterics. "Holy shit, dude," one said. "We just got a homeless guy to drink piss — how crazy is that shit?"

By Thursday, Kacey, his face still bluish, was wistful. With one more night left in Fort Lauderdale, he was at Sloppy Joe's in BeachPlace for a wet T-shirt contest. Blitzed, he became nostalgic for the trip he was still on. "These are the best times in our lives," he said. "I'm serious about that."

The wet T-shirt contest had been scheduled for 11:30 p.m. It was almost 1 a.m. and still no girls had signed up. They were just feet from where the Candy Store Lounge once stood, where the wet T-shirt contest was born. In the '80s the Candy Store was the epicenter of the party-as-a-verb spring break crowd; when it was razed, in 2002, it made way for the St. Regis, the first five-star resort in Fort Lauderdale.

Kacey circled the room, hugging girls he'd met earlier in the week, raising drinks to toast the good times, soaking up the last drops of the party. He thought about the drinking, the drugging, the hellacious lasciviousness, and decided that this had been the best week of his life so far.

His phone vibrated. It was a text message from a girl he'd met on the beach and seen a moment ago near the dance floor. It said "I want 2 make love 2 u in this club 2nite."

Kacey looked at his buddies. If this had been an '80s party movie, this is where the screen would fade and the credits would roll to cheery music replete with a blazing saxophone, but life is not a movie. So Kacey spread his legs and bent his knees and, clearly feeling all the joy that is a depraved spring break gone precisely according to plan, he pumped his fist in the air.