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?
Friday, August 26, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
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!??!?!?!?!??)
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!??!?!?!?!??)
Saturday, August 6, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, July 22, 2011
The Time I Hiked 16 Miles and Didn't Wear Underwear
Okay, so this summer I have been doing a lot of "outdoor" things. You know, things outside that don't involve Facebook, Texting, Ipods, and other electronics that make life worth living. It has taken a tremendous amount of discipline to distance myself from the convenience of having a screen to stare at, but I must admit, getting outside, breathing fresh air, rolling my ankle on uneven surfaces, blistering my toes, and chafing in the area right next to my ball-sack and my inner thigh has been really therapeutic.
People operate under the false pretense that they are adequate in nature. I am one of those people. Though I admittedly have no sense of direction and often turn 20 minute trips to Safeway into 2 hour expeditions to find the goddamn strawberry jelly already, I have this impression of myself as an above average navigator. Like if I REALLY needed to, I could locate the North Star, meet Sacagawea and discover some new land. It's just I haven't been confronted with that situation yet.
Through the combination of a few confidence-building hikes, and recently watching "127 Hours," I was feeling relatively confident. 127 hours made me wonder two things. One... why is James Franco so much better looking than every other male on the planet? And two...after watching him hack through his right arm, I thought to myself, "so what? I could do that. Give me a pocket knife and a handsome face like that, and I will saw all of my limbs off. For FUN."
I never got around to decapitating myself, but I did decide to play Lewis And Clark and lead two of my friends into a nature-walk from hell.
Hart's Cove trail-head is just East of Lincoln City, and is supposed to be one of the most beautiful coastal hikes Oregon has to offer. It is also open seasonally from July 15th to January 15th. If you go in the fall, you can hear Sea Lions barking, if you go in the Summer, there's a beautiful waterfall and breathtaking view of the oceanfront, if you go during the Winter, you're an idiot, and if you go on July 4th, you are an unpatriotic asshole who doesn't wear underwear and will get fucked up by thorn bushes, sent by Uncle Sam himself.
We decided to brave the warning sign that read "This trail is closed from January 15th to July 15th, you idiots. Go home. Seriously. Or find a different hike, you dumbasses. Violation of this is punishable by 6 months in prison, a ton of annoying little cuts on your arms from those thorn-bushes, and fines up to $30,000." And by "we," I mean, "me," decided that we drove all this way, and might as well have a horrific nature-walk to write blogs about.
OBVIOUSLY, we decided to proceed, park our car at a turn-off down the road, and walk on the road until we hit the trail-head.
Throughout the 16 miles of walking with good friends, we said things like, "I fucking hate you," "whose god-damn idea was this?" "Sean is such an asshole," "Sean is such an idiot," "Sean is so ugly," and "Why does Octaviano have such nice calves?" and "is it CALFS or CALVES?" We debated this for a solid 20 minutes, which served as a nice distraction from how much we all hated each other for pretty much the entire hike.
Other complaints that surfaced were various joint pains. Knees, hips, and backs "Fucking hurt," and emotions like pride, ability to navigate, and a general feeling of competence were completely obliterated. However, above all of these things, one underlying fact remains:
I was not wearing underwear.
This is a horribly ironic fact. The reason I was going commando was NOT because I enjoy the freedom of having my privates throw a parade in my boardshorts. No, I do not derive some weird joy from the absence of friction. Yes, I may receive unbridled joy from the feeling of air circulating around my MAN PARTS, but that is BESIDES THE POINT.
The point is, I was wearing boardshorts in hopes of finding this so called "ocean" that the sketchy paragraph write-up I read online promised me. The write-up also promised the hike to be about 5 miles round trip. Not 3 times that amount.
DO YOU GET IT? There was supposed to be an OCEAN that I could SWIM IN, but we never got to it, because the trail was overgrown and ugly and hurty and pokey and dumb, so instead, we just got to walk in mud for 16 miles and talk about who the biggest idiot in the group was, which was both unfair and true because I not only ruined the 4th of July, I also happen to be considerably larger than most human beings.
The strangest part of the whole ordeal was not the time where I admitted to my hiking partners that "this chafing is seriously going to make my tinky fall off," or the time Laura said, "You guys are seriously so fucking dumb, why am I friends with such idiots?" Or when we got to the end of the trail that was supposed to be a beautiful waterfall, and Octaviano said "I would literally rather be dead right now than walk back. I am serious. I never want to see another tree, a fucking fox-glove, or a shitty blade of grass for as long as I live."
No, the strangest part of the excursion was the fact that we were all in extremely high spirits at the end. On the drive back to Salem, cool breeze streaming through my fingers, salty trail mix crumbs coating the sun-soaked leather seats, hot air steaming off to remind us there's much more summer to come.
We made it back to Salem barely in time to see our fellow Americans light shit on fire to show how much they love their country, but amidst all the joy of fireworks, glow-sticks, and crushed keystone light cans, I found my return to civilization bittersweet.
Besides the fact that you can fart in nature and blame it on a weird plant or the rotting raccoon you just passed, I really missed the beauty of the random forest service trail that seemed to never end.
A small part of me missed my bleeding arms, sweat dripping into the cuts like wounds salted twice-over. A tiny bit of my soul missed the collective misery shared between new friends...blazing trails and wondering why the hell we didn't just stay home and check our Facebooks.
There's a unique adhesion that takes place when you can all hate something together. Which sounds awful, but is true. For the day, mother nature was our enemy. For the night, she was our best and most missed friend. Undoubtedly, we will meet her again...hopefully this time with underwear, and an in-season trail. But if not, it's all part of the adventure, right? Even the chafing thighs, random insults, and abundance of cuss words. Fuck that trail, but the experience was fucking cool. Fuck yeah.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Being Dumb, Sweaty, and Unemployed: Pretentious People and Their Motives.
Going to a private university is pretty cool. People are always willing to help you, professors are completely open for communication, and there's a real community feel to the whole on campus experience. All for an affordable price of $47,000 a year.
The problem is, because Willamette is a private university, everyone is smarter than you. And if you don't ACT like you are smarter than them, they will smell blood, and devour you at their first chance. This can make for some very interesting interactions. I like to call them pretentious-offs, or smart-offs, for my non-private university readers. Aka mere mortals, aka idiots. Pretentious-offs are kind of like face-offs in hockey, except more teeth, no sticks, and the loser goes to state school.
I am 0 for 7 in pretentious-offs. Here's my latest defeat:
I am looking for a job. You know this because you read every one of my blog-posts, and have a deep interest in what I do with my life. Always.
I decided it would be best to go to the "Willamette Career Center" to find work, because it has the word "Willamette" in it, which is French for "Expensive education," and "Career" in it, which is English for "Find Me a F***ing Job K?"
APPARENTLY, the direct translation of "Willamette Career Center" is "You don't have a job? Or a resume? Or a 4.0 GPA? Why are you dumb? Get out of my office, you tall athlete who is inferior to me because you didn't use 7 big words in the first sentence we spoke."
I walked in to the "I am better than you, you mere mortal Career Center," and my conversation with the "Counselor," AKA "A$$hole" went like this:
"Hey, so I got promised a work-study job this summer, but now I don't have one, because I got screwed over. But I need money, and I have available work-study funds. Who should I speak with to get some advice?"
"What's your name?"
"Sean."
"Sean what?"
"Sean Dart."
(Other woman counselor-lady who looks to not want to devour my face opens her door)
"Do you have a resume?" she asks.
"No."
(eye-roll so loud that it hurt my ears.)
"Come in," she said, in the least inviting way possible. Kind of like the way that you answer the door when a door-to-door feces-salesman swears that it will only be 10 minutes, but 15 minutes later, you have poop all over your carpet, and you just bought a bag of $hit for $39.99. Kinda like that.
"Thanks for your help," I say, before I have received any actual help.
"Have a seat," she says.
I am reluctant to do so, because I just got done working out, and was water-logged in every sense. My shorts were literally dripping. I realized the seat was black-leather, and looked like it didn't want to be touched by Sweaty Sean Butt.
"I'm fine, thanks." I say.
"Sean. Sit." She demanded.
"Okay."
"How do you expect to get a job if you don't have a resume?" She asks.
"I don't know. Work for people that know me? Painting fences and shoveling can't require too much of a background, right?" I say, thinking 'check-mate, ass-lady.
"Cute. You know, Sean. You need to wake up. It's time to wake up" She says, preparing to breathe fire all over her poorly decorated office.
It is at this point that I realize my sweaty bottom is sticking to her nice leather chair, and the plaque next to me says "The only thing better than a good friend, is a good friend with chocolate."
Never trust these people. Anyone with clever stitched-pillows or welcome-mats are to be immediately be dismissed as insane, extremely rude, or at the very least, dragons. It is extremely weird to feel a need to purchase a decorative plate that advertises your fondness of chocolate. Everyone likes chocolate. Get over it, mean-career lady.
"Um...I mean. I am awake. I had a job all year, I just was promised work this summer, and they decided they didn't need me just this last week," I said, reiterating the fact that I am the one getting screwed here, and shouldn't be getting yelled at.
"Don't put your eggs all in one basket, Sean." Butt-head lady says, in that weird way that people use your name 2 minutes after learning it.
Example:
"Hi, I'm Sean."
"Nice to meet you, I am a$$hole career lady, and I look forward to belittling you for the next 15 minutes. This is my job. How do you like my horrible plaque, commemorating my love for chocolate, Sean?"
See? See what she did there? She used my name. Prematurely. This should have been the first red-flag. The second should have been when she asked if I smelled rotten eggs.
I wanted to reply, "No, that's just my body," but I decided leaving an over-sized bottom-stain of sweat on her seat was enough.
She then asked me what my skills are. Sitting here, I could type out my skills relatively easily. I am tall, sometimes I can spell words correctly, and I can tell you all there is to know about every single player on the Los Angeles Lakers' roster. See? Those are my skills. (Insert Napoleon Dynamite Outdated Joke Here.)
However, doing this in person, in front of someone that looks like they want to destroy you, is much harder.
"What are your skills?"
"Uh. Um....uggh, uh,"
"Public speaking? Hahaha," she joked, but she really meant, "why are you a blabbering idiot?"
She went on to use some words with a lot of letters in them to explain why it is important to have a resume.
"Look, it's like you're a product. And you want people to want your services. You need to promote. You need to advertise. You need to sell yourself," she said.
It is at this point that I went into an extremely inappropriate day-dream, in which this career-lady suggested prostitution as a Summer job for myself, then licked her lips, wiped her table-top clean, and offered to be my first customer.
I woke up from my daytime wet-dream to her snapping fingers, and trademark death-stare.
"Look, Shane. I think what your skills would be best suited for manual labor," she decided, which could, and should have been translated to, "you seem big and dumb. So big and dumb that I can't remember your stupid name."
At the conclusion of our extremely constructive meeting, I mean, once she was done passively-aggressively demolishing my fading self esteem, I walked out of there with 2 phone numbers, and a dampened sense of self-worth.
Also, she handed me a packet that read "Your Resume And You: Building Skills to Market Yourself...you IDIOT."
I considered this whole ordeal to be a draw. Sure, she tore me apart, but as I felt my shorts peel off of the leather, and as my dried sweat left the lingering stench of salty gym socks, I felt a sense of accomplishment.
I left my mark in that room. And by 'left my mark' I mean, I literally left a full-sized damp imprint of my gigantic bottom on her black leather seat.
I may be dumb with no resume, but I have a sweaty bottom. That'll show em.
Yeah...yeah it will.
The problem is, because Willamette is a private university, everyone is smarter than you. And if you don't ACT like you are smarter than them, they will smell blood, and devour you at their first chance. This can make for some very interesting interactions. I like to call them pretentious-offs, or smart-offs, for my non-private university readers. Aka mere mortals, aka idiots. Pretentious-offs are kind of like face-offs in hockey, except more teeth, no sticks, and the loser goes to state school.
I am 0 for 7 in pretentious-offs. Here's my latest defeat:
I am looking for a job. You know this because you read every one of my blog-posts, and have a deep interest in what I do with my life. Always.
I decided it would be best to go to the "Willamette Career Center" to find work, because it has the word "Willamette" in it, which is French for "Expensive education," and "Career" in it, which is English for "Find Me a F***ing Job K?"
APPARENTLY, the direct translation of "Willamette Career Center" is "You don't have a job? Or a resume? Or a 4.0 GPA? Why are you dumb? Get out of my office, you tall athlete who is inferior to me because you didn't use 7 big words in the first sentence we spoke."
I walked in to the "I am better than you, you mere mortal Career Center," and my conversation with the "Counselor," AKA "A$$hole" went like this:
"Hey, so I got promised a work-study job this summer, but now I don't have one, because I got screwed over. But I need money, and I have available work-study funds. Who should I speak with to get some advice?"
"What's your name?"
"Sean."
"Sean what?"
"Sean Dart."
(Other woman counselor-lady who looks to not want to devour my face opens her door)
"Do you have a resume?" she asks.
"No."
(eye-roll so loud that it hurt my ears.)
"Come in," she said, in the least inviting way possible. Kind of like the way that you answer the door when a door-to-door feces-salesman swears that it will only be 10 minutes, but 15 minutes later, you have poop all over your carpet, and you just bought a bag of $hit for $39.99. Kinda like that.
"Thanks for your help," I say, before I have received any actual help.
"Have a seat," she says.
I am reluctant to do so, because I just got done working out, and was water-logged in every sense. My shorts were literally dripping. I realized the seat was black-leather, and looked like it didn't want to be touched by Sweaty Sean Butt.
"I'm fine, thanks." I say.
"Sean. Sit." She demanded.
"Okay."
"How do you expect to get a job if you don't have a resume?" She asks.
"I don't know. Work for people that know me? Painting fences and shoveling can't require too much of a background, right?" I say, thinking 'check-mate, ass-lady.
"Cute. You know, Sean. You need to wake up. It's time to wake up" She says, preparing to breathe fire all over her poorly decorated office.
It is at this point that I realize my sweaty bottom is sticking to her nice leather chair, and the plaque next to me says "The only thing better than a good friend, is a good friend with chocolate."
Never trust these people. Anyone with clever stitched-pillows or welcome-mats are to be immediately be dismissed as insane, extremely rude, or at the very least, dragons. It is extremely weird to feel a need to purchase a decorative plate that advertises your fondness of chocolate. Everyone likes chocolate. Get over it, mean-career lady.
"Um...I mean. I am awake. I had a job all year, I just was promised work this summer, and they decided they didn't need me just this last week," I said, reiterating the fact that I am the one getting screwed here, and shouldn't be getting yelled at.
"Don't put your eggs all in one basket, Sean." Butt-head lady says, in that weird way that people use your name 2 minutes after learning it.
Example:
"Hi, I'm Sean."
"Nice to meet you, I am a$$hole career lady, and I look forward to belittling you for the next 15 minutes. This is my job. How do you like my horrible plaque, commemorating my love for chocolate, Sean?"
See? See what she did there? She used my name. Prematurely. This should have been the first red-flag. The second should have been when she asked if I smelled rotten eggs.
I wanted to reply, "No, that's just my body," but I decided leaving an over-sized bottom-stain of sweat on her seat was enough.
She then asked me what my skills are. Sitting here, I could type out my skills relatively easily. I am tall, sometimes I can spell words correctly, and I can tell you all there is to know about every single player on the Los Angeles Lakers' roster. See? Those are my skills. (Insert Napoleon Dynamite Outdated Joke Here.)
However, doing this in person, in front of someone that looks like they want to destroy you, is much harder.
"What are your skills?"
"Uh. Um....uggh, uh,"
"Public speaking? Hahaha," she joked, but she really meant, "why are you a blabbering idiot?"
She went on to use some words with a lot of letters in them to explain why it is important to have a resume.
"Look, it's like you're a product. And you want people to want your services. You need to promote. You need to advertise. You need to sell yourself," she said.
It is at this point that I went into an extremely inappropriate day-dream, in which this career-lady suggested prostitution as a Summer job for myself, then licked her lips, wiped her table-top clean, and offered to be my first customer.
I woke up from my daytime wet-dream to her snapping fingers, and trademark death-stare.
"Look, Shane. I think what your skills would be best suited for manual labor," she decided, which could, and should have been translated to, "you seem big and dumb. So big and dumb that I can't remember your stupid name."
At the conclusion of our extremely constructive meeting, I mean, once she was done passively-aggressively demolishing my fading self esteem, I walked out of there with 2 phone numbers, and a dampened sense of self-worth.
Also, she handed me a packet that read "Your Resume And You: Building Skills to Market Yourself...you IDIOT."
I considered this whole ordeal to be a draw. Sure, she tore me apart, but as I felt my shorts peel off of the leather, and as my dried sweat left the lingering stench of salty gym socks, I felt a sense of accomplishment.
I left my mark in that room. And by 'left my mark' I mean, I literally left a full-sized damp imprint of my gigantic bottom on her black leather seat.
I may be dumb with no resume, but I have a sweaty bottom. That'll show em.
Yeah...yeah it will.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Refereeing a 4-Square Game, and Other Reasons 8-Year-Olds Suck
"Pffffffttttt." The sound of the end of a duct-tape roll being stretched over a recycled cardboard box. It was packing time at Richmond Elementary, and I was soon to be reminded that, indeed, 8-year-olds will liken anything to the sound of flatulence.
"Ppppffffffftttt," I sealed another cardboard box full of posters and math supplies. I labeled it "miscellaneous," which was an abbreviated way of saying "this classroom has no organization, and in all reality, this box contains random $hit that should probably be thrown away. You own 700 plastic triangle cut-outs. And we're in a budget crisis." Miscellaneous.
"Pfffftttttt," I snapped the tape after it overlapped the top of the box, only to hear a couple muffled giggles.
Then, it happened.
An onslaught of high pitched yelps, coupled with hearty "HA-HA-HA-HA's!" before a slew of accusations:
"Sean farted!"
"He farted!"
"Eeeewww! Sean!"
"Oh my gosh it smells like eggs, you guys!"
I have to admit, it was pretty funny. I started laughing, but apparently, that was a bad move. The fill-in teacher of the classroom decided packing was a distraction and informed me, "Sean, your packing duties are postponed for the day."
Rats...what can I possibly do, if I can't make fart-noises with duct-tape? Looking back on it, I should not have asked this question, because the answer was one of my darkest fears:
Referee a four-square game.
If you've ever played four-square, you remember it either as the game you loved because you kicked everyone's a$$ when you were 8, or you remember it as the game that scarred your competitive confidence for the rest of your life.
For a tall, lanky kid who sometimes (always) cried if he got out, getting a red rubber ball smacked at me as hard as the opposition could propel it was not exactly a fond memory of mine.
Regardless, I tried my best to, you know, watch the kids, make sure they don't kill eachother, and always, ALWAYS call out the "Liner's."
"LINER!" The short, chubby 3rd grader screamed to me, on the verge of tears.
"What?" I replied.
"It was a LINER!" He said.
"SEAN! LINER!" He said, his lips quivering as his body was preparing to go into total and complete shock if I called him out.
"Liner? What the hell is a liner?" I said.
"Adult word! Adult word!" Some kid yelled, running through mud-puddles in the distance, flicking boogers on his classmate.
"It hit the LI-yinnnnE! So it's Ooooowwwt!" He said, in that whiny, awful 8-year-old voice that only 3rd graders can manage.
"Okay, Jesus. Fine. Liner!?" I said.
"WHAT!?!?!?" The 2nd grader who just got called out said, as if he just found out Spongebob Squarepants got cancelled.
He then proceeded to protest my call. It was really hard to take him seriously, because he was as tall as my shin, and sounded like John Mcenroe with a lisp.
"Youw can't be sewious! Wewre you evun watching? That's WEALLY WEALLY BAD!" He said, grinding his teeth, contemplating ways he could climb my body to destory me.
Another key element to 4-square is establishing whether "over-handers" are allowed or not. If you play with the "over-hand" rule, you can hit the ball a lot harder. Since there were 2nd graders in line, I decided under-hand only would be best for everyone.
This was a seamless transition for most kids, except for one little girl, who had some sort of thick European accent that I couldn't decipher.
"Soo, like deez?" She said, motioning her hands forward, with her palms facing down.
"No, sweetheart, you have to do it with your palms facing up. Under-hand only," I said.
"Oooog, ooog, so, like deez?" she said, her palms now facing outward, her elbows turned outside.
"No, no sweetheart," I said.
I reached out to turn her hands so that her palms would face upwards. She would not allow it. She provided an immense amout of resistance, and was not letting me rotate her wrists, or move her arms at all, for that matter.
"Hehe," she said, as she stared directly into my eyes with a weirdly menacing grin.
"I vey strong!" she said, in a voice that sounded like she hadn't swallowed her saliva for ten minutes.
"Haha, oh yeah? Have you been lifting?" I said, jokingly, expecting a blank stare in response.
"Ppppffffffftttt," I sealed another cardboard box full of posters and math supplies. I labeled it "miscellaneous," which was an abbreviated way of saying "this classroom has no organization, and in all reality, this box contains random $hit that should probably be thrown away. You own 700 plastic triangle cut-outs. And we're in a budget crisis." Miscellaneous.
"Pfffftttttt," I snapped the tape after it overlapped the top of the box, only to hear a couple muffled giggles.
Then, it happened.
An onslaught of high pitched yelps, coupled with hearty "HA-HA-HA-HA's!" before a slew of accusations:
"Sean farted!"
"He farted!"
"Eeeewww! Sean!"
"Oh my gosh it smells like eggs, you guys!"
I have to admit, it was pretty funny. I started laughing, but apparently, that was a bad move. The fill-in teacher of the classroom decided packing was a distraction and informed me, "Sean, your packing duties are postponed for the day."
Rats...what can I possibly do, if I can't make fart-noises with duct-tape? Looking back on it, I should not have asked this question, because the answer was one of my darkest fears:
Referee a four-square game.
If you've ever played four-square, you remember it either as the game you loved because you kicked everyone's a$$ when you were 8, or you remember it as the game that scarred your competitive confidence for the rest of your life.
For a tall, lanky kid who sometimes (always) cried if he got out, getting a red rubber ball smacked at me as hard as the opposition could propel it was not exactly a fond memory of mine.
Regardless, I tried my best to, you know, watch the kids, make sure they don't kill eachother, and always, ALWAYS call out the "Liner's."
"LINER!" The short, chubby 3rd grader screamed to me, on the verge of tears.
"What?" I replied.
"It was a LINER!" He said.
"SEAN! LINER!" He said, his lips quivering as his body was preparing to go into total and complete shock if I called him out.
"Liner? What the hell is a liner?" I said.
"Adult word! Adult word!" Some kid yelled, running through mud-puddles in the distance, flicking boogers on his classmate.
"It hit the LI-yinnnnE! So it's Ooooowwwt!" He said, in that whiny, awful 8-year-old voice that only 3rd graders can manage.
"Okay, Jesus. Fine. Liner!?" I said.
"WHAT!?!?!?" The 2nd grader who just got called out said, as if he just found out Spongebob Squarepants got cancelled.
He then proceeded to protest my call. It was really hard to take him seriously, because he was as tall as my shin, and sounded like John Mcenroe with a lisp.
"Youw can't be sewious! Wewre you evun watching? That's WEALLY WEALLY BAD!" He said, grinding his teeth, contemplating ways he could climb my body to destory me.
Another key element to 4-square is establishing whether "over-handers" are allowed or not. If you play with the "over-hand" rule, you can hit the ball a lot harder. Since there were 2nd graders in line, I decided under-hand only would be best for everyone.
This was a seamless transition for most kids, except for one little girl, who had some sort of thick European accent that I couldn't decipher.
"Soo, like deez?" She said, motioning her hands forward, with her palms facing down.
"No, sweetheart, you have to do it with your palms facing up. Under-hand only," I said.
"Oooog, ooog, so, like deez?" she said, her palms now facing outward, her elbows turned outside.
"No, no sweetheart," I said.
I reached out to turn her hands so that her palms would face upwards. She would not allow it. She provided an immense amout of resistance, and was not letting me rotate her wrists, or move her arms at all, for that matter.
"Hehe," she said, as she stared directly into my eyes with a weirdly menacing grin.
"I vey strong!" she said, in a voice that sounded like she hadn't swallowed her saliva for ten minutes.
"Haha, oh yeah? Have you been lifting?" I said, jokingly, expecting a blank stare in response.
To my surprise, she had been lifting.
"Yez. Mother make me lift milk jug. Over and over. Father have strong arm also!" She said.
"Pushups? Wan see?" She asked.
"No, it's fine...just remember to hit only under-hand, we don't want anyone to get hurt." I said.
Naturally, as soon as she steps foot on the court, she uses her mammoth arms to smack the ball with such force directly at the 2nd grader who is about the same size as the ball, and hits him square in the chest. The force of the ball nearly picked him up off of the pavement, and he started crying on his way to get an ice-pack from the office.
"I did eet!" She yelped, extremely proud of herself.
"No, you are out. You have to hit it under-hand." I said.
"Buh...wha...I...? Ugh...i hit? But...I Hit! I heet ze bol!" She said, in an utter state of confusion.
"You're out." I said.
She looked at me with such confusion and rage, it was unlike any malice I had seen from an 8 year old. She was envisioning me as the milk jug, and I was about to get lifted.
That is, until her friend came along.
"Wanna play house?" Her friend asked.
"Sure," she replied.
"Yez. Mother make me lift milk jug. Over and over. Father have strong arm also!" She said.
"Pushups? Wan see?" She asked.
"No, it's fine...just remember to hit only under-hand, we don't want anyone to get hurt." I said.
Naturally, as soon as she steps foot on the court, she uses her mammoth arms to smack the ball with such force directly at the 2nd grader who is about the same size as the ball, and hits him square in the chest. The force of the ball nearly picked him up off of the pavement, and he started crying on his way to get an ice-pack from the office.
"I did eet!" She yelped, extremely proud of herself.
"No, you are out. You have to hit it under-hand." I said.
"Buh...wha...I...? Ugh...i hit? But...I Hit! I heet ze bol!" She said, in an utter state of confusion.
"You're out." I said.
She looked at me with such confusion and rage, it was unlike any malice I had seen from an 8 year old. She was envisioning me as the milk jug, and I was about to get lifted.
That is, until her friend came along.
"Wanna play house?" Her friend asked.
"Sure," she replied.
Off into the distance she scampered away, laughing about threatening the 4-square referee, and undoubtedly preparing to challenge her friend to a push-up contest.
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