Game: Not Having It, And The Hilarious Repercussions

The concept of “game” has always been a foreign one to me. That could very well be because my experiences of meeting female humans have been carried out in the traditional sense. You know, the one where you meet them, talk to them about important things, like FEELINGS and $HIT, then invite them over to watch Harry Potter, even though you secretly hate Harry Potter, then try to hold their hand.

Next time, you will ask them to make dinner with you, because your mom went out of town for business, then you make a $hitty stir fry, and get a Jamba Juice afterwards and laugh about how Strawberries Wild is way better than a** flavored homemade teriyaki sauce. It is at this point that you tell the girl that you think she is “super cool” and would like to “hang out more.”

Then of course, you make-out, and if you are anything like me, you lick her face off like you’ve left chocolate sauce at the bottom of that bowl that is so deep that you get drippings of delicious ice-cream smeared on your chin. That is how everyone makes out when they are 14. Then you realize being 14 sucks, because you just tried to grab the girl of your dreams boob, and she gave you a look of disgust that rivaled her expression when you told her that “Razzmatazz is actually way worse than Strawberries Wild, and Mango Madness sucks.”

Yeah, those were the simple days. Also known as the days when I could actually get a female human being’s phone number.

I recently went out “clubbing” in Bend, Oregon, which should totally not be called “clubbing,” it should be called “going out and seeing women who probably look at you and think ‘you probably went to high school with my son.’

Okay, so middle aged women, no problem, right? 30, 35, 40, cool. They should be willing, even EAGER to pay attention to 21-year-old’s, right? RIGHT?

The night started off normal enough, dancing at a semi-crowded bar with creaky wood floors to “Get Low” and “Yeah” which are officially the two most overplayed songs of all time, but simultaneously the best songs to listen to when trying to seduce women with your killer dance moves, DUH.

It is a very unfortunate predicament that I find myself in at dance clubs. Firstly, God clearly wanted some entertainment when he assembled my body. My quadriceps are the length of a twin sized bed. My feet are the size of the room in which that bed resides. And my dance moves are the sweaty, hairy overweight man that hangs off the side of it while eating a Sub-Sandwich and mayonnaise drips down his naked, exposed fur coat of a chest.

To compound this problem, I also happen to be extremely fond of lyrics. All lyrics. And in some demented way, in my mind, I think knowing the lyrics to these awful early 2000’s rap songs somehow makes up for the fact that when I move my body, the women around me on the dance floor become instantly attracted to things like: other women, that barstool, and the other side of the dance floor.

The result is me, all 79 inches of me, mouthing every single lyric, to every single song, all the while trying to make creepy eye contact with any girl that will look at me. I know it’s weird, I know it’s borderline socially unacceptable, but it makes me feel in my element on the dance floor, and I never, ever, stop. Ever.

Oddly enough, mouthing the words “till the sweat drop off ma ballz/ all these b****es crawl/ aw, skeet skeet mother-f***er/ aw, skeet skeet God D***” to your dancing partner is apparently a worn out strategy in the ever-complicated “game.”

APPARENTLY, chanting a word that is slang for female sexual secretion, and advertising the perspiration that falls from your baby-bag while dancing is “unappealing” and “offensive” to the women that probably made me and their sons frozen pizza after my high school basketball games, when I spent the night at their house. WHATEVER.

I guess that trick wore off in the 8th grade, which was coincidentally also the last time anyone had listened to those songs on purpose.

From the beginning, I was probably wearing a sign on my head that said “don’t acknowledge me as a heterosexual, single, possibly above mediocre-looking man.”
I walked into the bar with a fellow 6’7 basketball player, and a 6’10 friend of ours. To make matters worse, despite my height, I was stopped for a good 3 minutes at the entry, facing all sorts of super-original, ever-entertaining harassment for being tall, awkward, and having the facial features of a pre-pubescent boy.

“Man, you look about a day past 16. Did you just get your license?” The security guard with more hair on his neck than I have on my head asked.

“Yeah, my mom just dropped me off actually. Learners permit,” I say, trying to show this guy I have a good humor about how I look like an less-handsome Shia Lebouff on stilts, Even Stevens era.

“I wouldn’t joke about it, when it’s true, man,” he says, effectively telling me what is funny and what is not.

“Look, I seriously don’t believe that you are 21,” he says.

“I mean, you look just like your ID picture. It’s not like I think this wasn’t you when you were 16. I just think this picture was taken yesterday,” he added.

“Yeah, I know, I look young.” I say, growing irritated and embarrassed.

“What are ya, a basketball player?” He asked.

“No, water-polo,” my friend responded.

I laughed.

“S**t’s not funny man. Water polo is hard. Except it probably wouldn’t be for you, you could touch the bottom. You’d just be standing the whole time. You’d be great at it!” Security-a** said.

It was at this point that the other people in line started getting into it, trading various “how’s the weather” comments, before he let me in to the club.

Once in the club, I managed to dance with two girls. One for ten seconds before she said she “has to pee, but will be RIGHT back” and the other who probably said “I wish I had to pee, so that could give me an excuse to get away from you. Also, why are you sweating so much?”

I never saw either of these girls again. Oh wait, that isn’t true. I saw both of them, five minutes later, dancing happily with other guys.

“Probably just a bad club. Everyone has a bad club. I just wasn’t feeling the vibes there, you know? The dance floor was too hot. My feet hurt. That DJ sucked. Those girls were ugly anyway,” I blurted to anyone who would listen.

“Totally, man. You’ll get ‘em next time,” my friend said.

But when my friend said “you’ll get ‘em next time,” I think he meant “never try to speak to a female human again. They hate you. Deal with it.”

Dancefloor #2:

The problem with me and dancing is not so much the fact that women at clubs don’t find it appealing. The problem with me dancing is that I dance.

Think of all of the things that you are not very good at. They are probably also the things that you stay away from. Snakes. Are you a snake handler? Do you play with snakes? Do you run around with a pile of snakes, just hanging out, doing snake stuff? Do you hate snakes? I don’t like snakes. I stay away from snakes.

Country music. I can’t sing like Garth Brooks. I am not as confusingly attractive as the 15-year-old Miley Cyrus (I said it, you were thinking it). Country music is awful. I don’t have country music on my ipod.

Dancing. Are you good at dancing? If the answer is yes, you do it all the time.

Dancing. Are you AWFUL at dancing? When you dance, does it look like your pant-legs and the sleeves of your t-shirt are on fire, and you are trying to fan them out when you dance? Do people swarm to your rescue? Does it look like you are in pain when you move your body? Even if the answer is yes, YOU STILL DO IT. Much to the dismay of everyone around you, YOU STILL DO IT. Because it is socially unacceptable to stand still in the middle of the dance floor.

“Are you okay?” This reasonably attractive woman said to me. I was so excited that a woman was speaking to me, I went to my go-to reply line, even though I had no idea what she said.

“I know, right?” I replied. I figure it’s a solid line, because it’s impartial. It works for most everything, because, really, I am just agreeing with what you said. Unless the preceding statement was “my grandmother just died, I am really sad. Also, you are ugly, and the way you dance makes me want to leave the country.”

“I KNOW, RIGHT!?”

“Um, I asked if you are okay,” she said, louder this time.

“I’m not gay!” I replied.

“Are you OKAY!?” She screamed.

“OH! Um, yeah, why?” I said.

“The way you were dancing. It looked like you were hurt,” she replied.

It was at this moment that I laughed, and figured this was a start to a really sweet romance. Like, the spunky, sassy girl who calls you out for being tall and awkward, but ends up being totally into you, and you stay at the club until 3 AM dancing your blistered toes to the bone.

“Haha! Yeah, duh. Does it LOOK like I am fine?” I said, most likely before a poorly executed spin move of some sort that involved way too much finger-pointing, and probably a wink or maybe an eyebrow raise. My confidence was undoubtedly ill-conceived, considering how the earlier part of the night went.

“Alright, my friends wanted me to ask you, because we thought it looked like you twisted an ankle earlier, or something. It looks like you are in pain,” she replied.

It’s cool though, because when the music is so loud at clubs, you can pretend she’s saying something else. Obviously, in an attempt to salvage my ego, I read her lips, and she definitely said “I just wanted to let you know that you don’t look injured at all when you dance, and I actually need to go get new underwear because of the way your body moves. I pissed myself at the very thought of you and I dancing together. If you were any sexier, I would call the fire department, because your attractiveness could burn this mother effer down, you filty beast of masculine sex appeal.”

Actually, I didn’t picture her saying that at all. I pictured her saying the words to the song being played, which was far less offensive than asking if I was in pain while dancing.

“Party Rock is in the house tonight,” she SAID.

“Everybody, just have a good time,” she added. And I did. I had a great time. A GREAT TIME, okay?

Then we got Jamba Juice, and watched Harry Potter. Game? Psch. Who needs game?

First Strip Club: Part 2

What we got, for 20 dollars a person, was not the world. It was access to a shady strip-club (redundant?) and a ride in a 12-seater bus that had one woman in the corner puking into a paper-bag, and 4 other people, having a logistically-improbable 4-way make-out session that was not so much interesting to observe, but more perplexing to try and wrap one’s head around.

Things went from bad to worse on the ‘party-bus,’ as the middle-aged woman next to me put her hand on my leg, winked at me, then proceeded to spill her vat of margarita all over my lap. Talk about moment ruined.

It wasn’t the cool spill that you see in movies, either. You know, the one where the attractive woman ‘accidently’ splashes some red-wine on your khakis, then dabs gently around your lap so it won’t stain, meanwhile she seduces you with her beautiful eyes and smile.

No, this was more like, “Oh F***!” then a gallon of margarita soaked through my shorts. Before even pretending to make an effort to clean up the Atlantic ocean of alcohol that now saturated my lap, she tried to save what was left of her drink, scooping up the ice off of the floor of the party bus, and dumping it back into her gigantic cup.
“Sorry, sweets,” she said.

It was at this point that I realized this woman was old enough to be my mother.

It was 2 minutes later when I realized she was taking off her top, twirling it above her head, and standing on the seat, incoherently shouting “Wha’ happen’ in Vega’, stayed there, okay? F**k! Now, guys got wet-lap! S**t!”

And the fun was just beginning. Once we got into the stripclub, I was horrified. A large man with facial hair asked me for 20 dollars to get in. I politely handed the large man my money, and calmly said, “here’s your money, don’t beat the s**t out of me.”

To which he replied, “you look like you are 12 in your license photo.”

To which I replied, “You look like you’ve never looked like a 12-year-old in your life. Even when you were twelve. Please let me go.”

Finally, we pick a spot in a dark corner. A strip club is a physically impossible structure. It’s like that never-ending staircase in “Inception.” Normal rooms have four corners. Strip clubs have an infinite amount of corners, constructed for the sole purpose of doing sexual things, and consequentially, making me feel really uncomfortable.

“One for the big man!” My friend incoherently slurs.

I look up, and there is a petite Asian woman walking up to me, sliding her bra strap off of her shoulder. It reminds me of the start to a really bad porno-flick.

“Um…” I stammer.

“It’s fine sweetie,” she says, in a way that makes me believe it really is fine.

“I’ve never done this before,” I blurt, like that nervous seventh-grader that got flashed a vagina for the first time.

“Oh, you funny!” She laughs.

It is at this moment that my mind clears, and I become extremely offended. The stripper-lady doesn’t believe that this is my first strip club. She thinks I am a pervert. Do I look like a pervert? Do I look like someone who would go to strip clubs often?

She is now giving me a lap-dance, and I have no idea what to do. She keeps asking me “are you okay?” and I keep saying, “I have no idea. This is weird.”

Now, she starts lifting up my shirt, and I am pulling it down feverishly, like a prude prom-night date, refusing to let her date get to second base.

“This is MY body, and you’re not TOUCHING IT!” I envision myself squealing.
“Eeeuukk. Hah, eh…um, er…hah,” I say, in reality.

“Ooooh, baby. You work out?” She asks me.

I then go into a detailed explanation that, yes indeed I do workout, and my desire to do so if fueled by the fact that I am a collegiate athlete, and play basketball for a small private school in Salem, Oregon. I use words like “training to prevent injury,” and “core strength.” Before I could get to my problems with my free-throw stroke, it appears that she wants to murder me.

This random unveiling of information to small-Asian-stripper-lady is met with little enthusiasm.

“Your friend pay for conversation, or dance?” she asks me, which in stripper language means, “Listen, kid. You’re a bit of a p***y. Stop talking, let me rub on your body and call you muscular. It is my job. Odds are, I don’t even think it. Just put your hands back or something. Or touch my butt, I really don’t care, because the reality of it is…I just made 40 dollars in the time it took Ludacris to say ‘We want a lady in the streets, but a freak in the bed,’ so, good for you for playing a sport or whatever, but please, never try to make conversation with me again. Unless you have more money, you idiot.”

It is at this point that I stop talking, and begin brainstorming things I would rather be doing than having this small Asian woman rubbing her bottom all over my lap. This list included, but was not limited to; knitting, P90X, dipping my head in hot-lava, watching “Blue Crush,” eating cinnamon toast crunch, and memorizing the entire first verse of Jay-Z’s “Hard Knock Life.”

Finally, the dance is over, and I wish the woman a good night. To which she replies, “(hair flip, butt shake, walk away.)”

I caught my breath for not even a minute before my drunken friend returns.

“Two for the big man!” he spits.

That’s right. Two. For the big man. That’s me. Instead of one attractive woman, this time I get two sort-of cute girls, who ambush me from left and right.

They are not as conversational as little-Asian-woman. This causes quite an inconvenience for me, as my natural reaction to nervousness and anxiety is to run my mouth.

“So, is this, like…your job?” I say to the woman on my left. Not only is she intimidating because there are two of her, she’s also intimidating because she is mounting my left leg, and is build like a linebacker.

“No, sweetie. I have two master degrees. I drive here from LA on the weekends,” she said.

“Oh, nice,” I say, as her bare breast is grazing against my cheek.

“What are your degrees in?” I say.

It really sounds more like “Mut mare mour megrees min?” as my voice is entirely muffled by her cleavage.

There are a few seconds of silence, as “Party Rock Anthem” plays in the background. I sheepishly admit to my new stripper-best-friends that I secretly enjoy this song.

“It’s like my guilty pleasure,” I say, oblivious to the irony of admitting a pop-song is my guilty pleasure, at a gentleman’s club.

More silence proceeds my imbecilic comments. I decide to let them know why I am a walking stick of awkwardness.

As they are rubbing their privates all over my lap and body, I ask them to take a second.

“Hey! Hey…” I manage.

They stop dancing for a moment, to stare at the virginal idiot who keeps asking them questions.

“So…I don’t really know what to do with my hands,” I say.

“What?” They reply, in unison.

“Like, while you are dancing, I have no idea what to do with my hands,” I explain.
More silence.

“Like, do I fold them? Do I put them on the small of your back? Do I sit on them?” I continue.

“Baby, it’s Vegas. You can do whatever you want,” she says.

“See, now, that’s not specific, I still have no idea what to do” I say.

She rolls her eyes. “Look, there’s not an instruction manual, okay? Just let it happen,” she says.

“I am not a pervert. Just because it is Vegas doesn’t make it okay,” I challenge the woman that is basically telling me to touch her body.

As I am having this moral dilemma, wondering if I am a bad person for sitting here, refusing to touch this stripper-lady, the awkwardness is gladly interrupted.

“What is your cup size?” my friend barges in and slurs, spilling his whiskey on my lap. The color compliments the margarita spill from before.

“Excuse me?” She says, visibly offended.

Just as things were beginning to be increasingly testy, my other friend barges in.

“F**k this S**t, F**k Keith, F**k these cheap-a$$ girls, we are OUT of here, boys. This girl just tried to charge me 80 bucks for a CONVERSATION,” He says, to nobody in particular, but loud enough to make a few heads turn.

The intimidating women gets up, and looks even more like a linebacker. She is now no longer using the sexy, stripper voice, but the Ray Lewis, I am going to obliterate your very existence in less than three seconds, then bench-press you, you girly-man who wants to talk about my education voice.

“Give me 80 dollars,” she growls.

“Um, what?” I say, pissing myself.

“Give. Me. Eighty. Dollars.” She says, in a deeper, more purposeful voice.

“Um, I didn’t pay. Like, I didn’t even ask for you to dance on me. My friend did…”
“OH, I F***IN PAID! I F***IN PAID THEM!” My friend shouts.

“No. You owe me 80 dollars. 40 for me, 40 for her.” She explains.

A few feet from my table, my good friend is undergoing a similar debate. The nice stripper lady was asking for her money, and my friend, who has a hard time paying full price for Old Navy V-Neck Tees, insisted he owed less than she demanded.

“Eighty dollars,” she demands, which is apparently the going rate for all strippers.

“No. I am not giving you 80 dollars. Are you KIDDING me?” My friend says, after one dance.

“80 dollars,” she says.

“Look, I’ll give you 10,” my friend says. “That’s enough for 2 Old Navy V-Necks,” he probably added.

“No,” she replied.

“Lady, do you want the money, or not!?” My friend responds.

The woman takes my friends 10 dollar bill, and rips it in half. Right in front of his face.

As this back-and-forth is going on, my other friends are managing to get in a skirmish with security guards who could eat me. It is at this point that I realize I am in over my head.

“Okay. Um. Here’s 20 dollars. I am really sorry I don’t have your 80, but at the same time, you are ridiculous, and trying to scam me. I am going to leave now, because, honestly, there’s a good chance I just messed myself. Sorry about the smell,” I say. One of the strippers laughs. The other one contemplates how she is going to bury my body tonight. I run.

We are now sprinting out of the strip club, in the middle of Vegas, as shouts are being exchanged between my friends, myself, and large strip club bouncers in suits.

Between shattered glasses, obscenities and “oh my god I am never going to a strip club ever, ever again,” we eventually escape, and walk a couple miles back to our hotel, at 5 in the morning.

The night concludes with me and my good friend swimming in the shallow end of our hotel pool. It was closed, because it was being chlorinated and cleaned, but it seemed like a good idea, and I was convinced the yetis posing as security guards couldn’t find us underwater.

We watched the sun come up, and I floated on my back, ears submerged in the overly-chlorinated water, drowning out the bright lights and noisy traffic. I take a second to reflect on the madness that occurred that night. I can’t tell if it’s extraordinary, or just another night in Vegas. All I know is, lying there, suspended in water that probably wasn’t safe to swim in, I felt much cleaner than I did in that god-forsaken strip joint.

My First Strip Club: Part 1

My first experience where a woman was naked in front of me was that one time I walked in on my parents when I was 3. That was pretty awkward, but at least I walked out of there convinced that my mom was looking for her earring, and my dad was just helping her. Naked.

My next experience with the naked female body came in 7th grade, when one of my classmates asked me, “have you ever seen a vagina?” To which I replied, “What?” Then I looked up, and he was flashing me a card of an attractive blonde woman spread eagle on top of a mustang. “America,” I thought. The only thing covering up her genitals was a big white star, with text running over it that said “Ooh!” I immediately started blushing, and reported this misbehavior to the teacher.

Ooh was right.

After being forced pornography at the tender age of 12, my next encounter with the female body was in my awkward, pubescent youth that involved playing games like “nervous,” where you asked questions like “are you nervous?” while your hand slid up some girls knee-cap, towards her mid-thigh. I always lost “nervous” because I always ended up asking the girl if she felt violated. To which she replied, “No, why are you such a p***y?” Then went to make out with the dude that slapped her butt between every passing period, before high-fiving all of his friends.

Then, we got to high school and you got to ask different questions, instead of “are you nervous?” you got to say things like, “will you give me a handjob?” and “what size cup do you wear?” And by “ask questions” I mean “questions I heard my friends ask, because I was way too terrified to even pretend like I knew cup size was not a reference to what I drank my lemonade out of, and handjob sounds as weird as it looks when it is typed up.”

Fast forward 8 years, and I had my first experience where women were dancing on a pole, getting paid to show their private parts to perverts. I got dragged to “amateur strip night” in wholesome Bend, Oregon at Boonedocks. I think it sucked. I say “I think” because I was staring at the wall the entire time, cracking my knuckles, counting ceiling tiles, wondering if refusing to look at mediocre naked women made me any less hetero-sexual. My nervous racing thoughts were soon interrupted by the emcee, who was speaking some of the vilest, most putrid, appalling, coarse play-by-play I’ve heard in my life.

As the girl was dancing:

“Check out that cornnhole!,” he shouted, as our entire table turned to each other, wondering two things: 1.) what the hell is he talking about? And 2.) Did he just say ‘corn-hole?’

“She wants your dollar bill in her kiester, say hello to the brown eye!”

It is at this point that I start blushing, and contemplating the location of the nearest exit.

Finally, the home-run-ball, “I bet he’s got a real log-jam goin on!” The Emcee screams over the PA system, in-between slugs of his Keystone Light.

I still have yet to assign meaning to that last one, but hearing the words “corn-hole” and “logjam” make me want to simultaneously vomit, die, and stay away from any place that you are supposed to pay money to see girls take their clothes off.

And stay away I did. That is, until I met Keith. Fast forward to Las Vegas, 6 months later.

Keith seemed nice enough. And when I say “Keith seemed nice enough,” I mean, he was wearing a suit on the Las Vegas Strip, and it was at the very least debatable whether or not he was a member of the Mafia and would steal my kidneys that night.

“Aye, boys, you tryna’ go ta tha strip-club?” He asks me and four of my friends. He was not asking for my liver. This was encouraging.

I get flashes of “corn-holes,” and “log-jam’s” and reply for the entire group.
“Absolutely not,” I say.

“Ah, cam’an. Why not? D’ja somekinda’ girl?” Keith replied, in literally one word.
“No. I am a man. I am also fairly confident that there are at least 20 girls in this casino that would enjoy a strip-club more than I would. Maybe you should try them.” I say, relatively proud of my retort.

“Ah, so youz some kindaGay, eh? Understood, have a nice night,” Keith replied. Such a sly dog.

It is at this moment that I pause momentarily between the bright lights of The Strip, the constant traffic of drunken 20-somethings, and the girls blowing kisses on the tables to whoever will receive them, and I wonder, “How many people does Keith get with this “so, you must be GAY” bit, every night? Because, obviously, gay people are the only people in this world that wouldn’t want to blow $100 for lap-dances.”

Before I can come up with a solid estimate, my drunken friend barges in, spilling his whiskey mixed drink on my right shoulder, infuriated, before he says, “Ah, no NO F***that, Keith! We are SO not gay!”

“Ah, yeah? Well, djawanna go toda strip club then, if youz so straight?” Keith replied.

It has now turned into a masculine-off. You’ve seen it before. It’s not as rare as we’d like it to be, but it’s still a sight to behold. You know, the guy at the party who refuses to let you drive him home because “F***that p***y s**t, I feel FINE,” or the guy who arbitrarily seeks out fights at any given party, “Alright, who’s down to BRAWL!?!?”

I was half-expecting my friend to reply, “you wanna know HOW gay I am NOT? Let’s go to TEN strip clubs. And watch A MILLION girls dance and shake their privates at us! That’s how gay we are not, Keith! I’m talking THOUSANDS OF VAGINAS!”

Then Keith would say something like, “I knew ya had it inya, ya p***ies! Now, come hop in my van, and I’ll sell your eyeballs on da Black Market!”

Then there’d be that weird moment of silent tension like in the movies, before he let out a bellowing laugh that shakes the sidewalk, to show us that Keith is really just a cool dude in a cheap tuxedo.

“Aaaah, I’m just messin witcha! Come on, we already called da party-bus!” Keith said, promising us the world.

(PART 2 TO FOLLOW. CAN YOU EVEN WAIT!?!?!? I CAN'T! LAS VEGAS STRIP CLUBS! I MEAN...HOW COOL IS THAT!??!?!?!?!??)

S****ing in the Woods

Alright, it’s not what it looks like. It’s not another blog post dedicated entirely to; pooping, farting, boogers, or other things that made you laugh when you were twelve. I swear I am way more mature than that.

First, I would like to ask you a question, dear reader. Have you ever relieved yourself in the wilderness? I am not talking about drunkenly peeing in the yard at your friend’s house during last weekend’s party, because the line for the bathroom was too long. No, I am talking about executing a perfect bowel movement in all of its glory in front of birds, trees, fellow hikers, woman, children, and Mother Nature herself.

This weekend, I hiked South Sister, which was sweet. It’s a mountain, and I walked up it. To do this, I used only my legs, two water bottles, a ham sandwich and some homemade trail mix. On the way up, I got to see those super outdoorsy people, decked out in Patagonia, hiking boots, and walking poles.

These people would say things to each other like “Oh, jeez! Great boots! Where’d ya get those?”

Then their fellow outdoorsy people would say “REI, for 90 bucks!”

Then I would stand there in my cutoff and basketball shorts and feel increasingly bad about myself.

You need to be careful around outdoorsy people. They are mostly harmless, but if you do things like dump motor oil at the summit of a beautiful mountain, or say things like “Target is more affordable than REI,” they can get really vicious.

For example, I discarded a grape stem in front of some of my fellow hikers, figuring it would obviously be bio-degradable, or something. For the record, I am not clear what the hell ‘bio-degradable’ means. Nonetheless, I tossed the grape-stem.

“What are you doing?” one of my fellow hikers who owns more North Face clothing than I remarked.

“It’s biodegradable.” I retorted.

“Leave no trace, man,” one of the male outdoorsy men said.

“That will totally be a grape-tree by next year,” I said, trying to introduce them to a thing called humor.

“Pack it up,” the man demanded.

“Seriously?” I said.

“Gosh, I got it,” the woman said, swooping in to pick up my grape-stem, as if I had just taken the most violent, carnal, hideous s**t right in front of her, at her favorite water-stop on the South Sister Trail and refused to clean it up. Which I may or may not end up doing by the end of this cheap-bathroom-humor-inspired-blog-post.

Once we reached the summit, we did the typical outdoorsy photo shoot, and ate our extremely stereotypical lunch consisting of spinach, quinoa muffins, dried fruits that you didn’t even know existed, and almond butter and honey sandwiches with honey organically extracted from bee’s that the owner named and cared for daily, taking them on walks and enrolling them in bee school, where they learn to s**t a viscous, tasty liquid that eventually ends up in the mouths of hairy-under-armed woman everywhere.

“I hope these bees were treated well in the process of making this honey,” they probably said.

“Bees are so cute. And innocent,” someone would support the previous ridiculous statement, while I sat quietly, wondering why the hell, of ALL things, I brought a ham sandwich to this organic-gourmet-picnic.

“Oh, what’s that, a ham sandwich?” they would ask me.

“Yeah. My mom made it for me. She got the ham from Costco.” I would reply.

This would be the part where they throw me off of the cliff and condemn me for wearing a cut-off and killing pigs.

“No, this is actually ham-tofu,” I said, trying to make up ground.

“ It’s made to look just like it, but it tastes like an a**hole, so you know it’s vegan, organic, and all those other fancy words you guys use to describe the taste of cardboard!” I would reply.




After another failed attempt at humor in front of the hikers around me, I decided it would be best to keep to myself for the remainder of the hike. My choices were: roll-up into a ball, and hope to not hit rocks on the way down, use my size 15 Saucony’s as ski’s on the snowy slopes, or be in the defensive stance the entire time walking downhill, and pulverize my knees to the point that they start yelling at me.

I decided skiing would be cool because my feet are practically the size of skis anyway, and if nothing else, speed would be to my advantage.

This was the best idea I’ve had since that one line about ham-sandwiches and tofu, as I made it to the flatter portion of the hike significantly faster than during our ascent.

The bad news, however, was that ‘skiing’ involved a lot of bouncing. Lots and lots of bouncing.

You know what bouncing + ham sandwich equals? In almost all cases, it equals abhorrent diarrhea. This time was no different.

I spent a good 5-10 minutes convincing myself I didn’t have to go. I thought about the wildflowers. The rocks on the trail. That cute girl we just passed. The sloshing in my shoes from their waterlogged soles.

Pretty soon, the rocks turned into exact replicas of the pebbles of poop sitting in my stomach, and the sloshing of my shoes might as well have been a written invitation to lose my load in the middle of the trail.

So, I did what any reasonable person would do. I started biting down on my lower lip as hard as I could, to take my mind off of the World War that was occurring inside of my rectum.

When I nearly bit a hole through my lip, I decided it was time to call a time-out.
“SO…” I said. I realized this was the first time I had spoken in nearly 3 hours. It was one of those times that you’ve been so quiet, that you are startled by the sound of your own voice. The surprise in itself almost forced me to spill my guts.

“…say, if one, had to, um…relieve themselves in the woods, how would you guys recommend, um, taking care of that situation?” I ask to these people who hardly know me, and one person that knows me well enough to understand there is a decent chance that I have feces trickling down my thigh as we speak.

“Bro, we’re like a mile and a half from the base,” one of my hiking partners says.

“Yeah. No way I am making that. If we are being totally honest, there’s an extremely high likelihood that my a** might explode right now, and spew like a geyser over you and your lovely girlfriends head,” I said, losing all concept of humility, common sense, and decency all in the same breath.

“Dig a hole. Use snow to wipe. And a smooth, clean rock. It’s refreshing, and efficient,” my friend suggests.

I am already halfway up the hill, searching for the nearest closed off area.
“Catch up with you guys later!” I yelp, running up the hill, feeling my trail-mix, ready to bounce out of me.

I find a relatively hidden spot, and when I say ‘relatively hidden spot,’ I mean some trees I can hide behind about 10 feet off from the highly-populated trail. I dig my hole, shredding my cuticles in a feverish rush to empty out the most epic load of waste my body has ever housed.

I was foaming at the mouth, cringing, trying to keep my composure. By the time I had stripped my shirt off (felt necessary) and dropped my shorts, my bottom was making sounds that undoubtedly forced a dozen hikers to turn back, while simultaneously causing a landslide at the base of the mountain.

The birds, 40 feet above me in their nest, were chirping violently, as if to say “stop doing what you are doing. That is disgusting.” It was rather unsettling.

“I didn’t ask for an AUD…uuugggh…IENCE!” I squealed.

“CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP! Stop S****ING IN MY HOME, YOU A**HOLE!” They replied.

But nothing could stop me now. Not even pissed off birds high up in a juniper tree.
As the city of Bend grumbled, and Mt. St. Helens erupted from the aftershock, I stared at my excrement, partly in amazement, and party wondering, “how the hell am I going to cover this up? A bulldozer?”

I then proceeded to use a snowball in a way that snowballs should never be used, and found the nearest rock, that was neither smooth, nor clean, nor pleasant to repeatedly grind against the soft tissue of my out-hole, but I made do.

I called in a forklift, and buried my trace, thinking of that damn “leave no trace” hiker, and as I stood up, I was overwhelmed with the greatest feeling of accomplishment since I was first potty trained, three years ago.

I was greeted by my fellow hikers with hugs, high-fives, and “dude, that was so inappropriate, you were hardly off from the trail,” and “why did you feel the need to take your shirt off?”

But none of that mattered. What mattered was, I was now 10 lbs lighter, and I just had one of the most successful bowel-movements of my 21 years on this planet.

As I neared back to the trail, I looked at my hiking group, and the numerous yuppies just embarking on their South Sister journey in the early-afternoon. I smiled and waved to each and every one of them, half of me hoping to God they stay away from those trees, and the other half hoping they have the exact same experience I just did, at some point in their life. I left a part of myself on that mountain that day. A part I will never get back. And I couldn’t be happier.