Dateline: Orange Beach. Come as you are.

If you have no conscience, go to Vegas. If you have no morals, go to South Beach. If you have no sense, go to Detroit. If you have no shame, well, Orange Beach is waiting.

On the beach proper, it’s perfectly acceptable for men to walk around shirtless. Up the road in the grocery store produce aisle, apparently the same is true. Regardless of one’s physique or preponderance of body hair.

And the wife beater tee is the preferred choice of apparel for any five star resort restaurant. It’s a status symbol. Or maybe it’s a defense mechanism. I don’t know. But whatever it is, it screams at me not to approach. Either because I’m not worthy or I’m not likely to survive the ensuing biting.

Cigarettes aren’t optional here. That is to say, they’re mandatory. As a non-smoker, I’m doing my best to avoid detection by the Nicotine Squad of the Department of Homeland Security. If I’m found out and they go Level III Body Cavity Search on me only to discover that I have no tobacco on or in my person, somebody please place a call to The Johnny Cochran Law Firm on my behalf. Tell them to play the race card if they have to. My wife is 1/3 Cherokee.

But all kids love it here. It’s a great big wide-open playground everywhere you look. It even inspired one little girl to forego the otherwise cumbersome trappings of the bikini top and pull a South-of-France bear-chesting on everybody at the pool. While it’s not tasteful, since she’s roughly 6 years old, it’s at least excusable. Her 11 year-old sister, however, gets so such slack. The DHR office in these parts is either defunct or simply overrun with other topless adolescent female bather cases to investigate.

Because I know it’s wrong to look, I’ll avert my eyes. Because her father figure sports a wife beater, I’ll condemn in silence. And because the stain on the front could be jelly from this morning’s breakfast, but most likely dried blood from last night’s dinner, I’ll do so from a safe distance.