Way back when I was a child, or as my kids would call it " 3 days before dirt was invented", the American society was participating in a heinous mass-indoctrination of their youth. Children of the 70's and 80's were forced to use something that didn't require batteries to entertain ourselves, called... imagination. Daily we were exiled into the elements, usually uncomfortably overdressed, to entertain ourselves and seek out other wandering miscreants to pack up with. We used to call it playing. This repetitive exercise of our brain and body, the constant assault of fresh, clean air, having to interact and problem solve with groups of peers on such a constant basis lent itself to an unconscious need, no, a inexplicable passion, to use this tool we had developed, this imagination thing, whenever we could. We weren't in control of it, we were pawns...slaves to it. We were consistently programmed by authority figures with statements like "I'm not here to entertain you. Go find something to do, I don't know, use your imagination" or "you better go find something to do or i'm going to start imagining you out mowing the lawn". After the years of abuse that we endured, it is no wonder that there would eventually be some blowback on our oppressors for creating these monsters that thought for themselves.
It was December 27th. Mike and I were lounging in the living room experiencing a post-holiday energetic hangover, Dad was working, Wendy was at a friends' house, and Mom was perhaps over-caffeinated but in deep-clean mode in the family room. We had run out of batteries for whatever head-to-head, hand-held video game we got that year, and so we sat looking at the random clothes that we had received for presents two days before, scattered under the lit Christmas tree. We were eating fudge and avoiding trying on new clothes for size, while listening to mom race over the olive-green carpet with the vacuum. We weren't just eating any old fudge though, it was our Grandmother's homemade fudge. She would bring at least four pans every year for to our holiday celebration and we were just lounging around munching on some of the leftovers.
The weather had been switching back and forth, from rain to hail to sleet to snow and back again, so we got a pass from the authorities to be indoors for the day. It was late-morning in the middle of school break. Any enthusiasm for using our brain was carefully stored in our respective book-bags and not scheduled for re-emergence until school started the following week. Mesmerized by the shimmering lights, Mike and I sat there daydreaming. We were consciously avoiding the impending feeling that the cleaning-tornado, currently ravaging the other half of the house, would eventually make its way into our little bubble. Our subconscious forecast was correct.
"I told you boys that I wanted you to try on those clothes and then clean up under the tree then find something to do. I don't want you just siting around wasting your day." Mom said while breezing through the room gathering things for the dishwasher. Then the programming came out, "you can either find something to do or I'll find something for you to do". The subtext of that statement being "either you use your imagination or work".
Mike and I grudgingly dealt with the mess under the tree for the next 5 minutes. Thoroughly exhausted from such grueling torture, we grabbed books to put on our laps as we resumed our previous positions staring at the tree. The books were excuses in case the storm approached again we could use the "but we're reading" trump-card that superseded most parental logic by insinuating that you were interrupting our intellectual pursuit with trivialities. It worked like a charm when hurricane Kathy came raging back into the room and noticed that not only had we done what she had asked but were quietly expanding our minds. The storm left as quickly as it came but I could see that the programming had taken hold of my brother as he could seemingly no longer embrace the proper slothfulness that the day required.
He was looking at the fudge in his hand and rolling it in between his fingers, when I actually witnessed the programming take hold of his brain. His eyes widened and his pupils dilated, seemingly emitting a sparkle, as a mischievous smile grew across his face. I was witnessing the imagination take hold right before my eyes as though Mike were a werewolf and the full moon just came out. I was helpless to do anything about it. I was afraid to run for fear of him turning on me but also afraid to stay for fear that it was contagious.
"Make sure that Mom stays in the other room for a minute", he said through a crazy grin. Given permission to leave, I ran to the other room with hopes that I didn't get any of this brain altering affliction on me.
While I was in the other room pretending to be interested in the fine art of dusting, Mike was helplessly fighting with the overwhelming force that took control of his body. Fudge in hand, he raced into the spotless bathroom that had just recently been victim of such a thorough scouring I'm surprised the tiles weren't bleeding.
Now, please allow me to give a little backstory for a moment because I feel it is pertinent to the subject at hand. Not a week earlier, us children had been lined up in the bathroom and given a obscenely-long, 4-minute speech in which our mother explained in-depth, the finer points of flushing the toilet after a bowel-movement. Luckily by that time I had honed my anti-programming-fugue-state sufficiently enough to not have any long-term effects from that specific attempt to brainwash me. Yet since this seminar (complete with actual flushing demonstrations, audience participation, and toilet lid/seat workshops) was still so fresh in our minds, it was the part of Mike's brain that got attacked by the demons that infested him now.
He emerged from the bathroom and gave me the universal "the trap is set" sign, which for those of you who don't speak little-boy, is smiling so hard it nearly rips the skin on your face, with a single finger held vertically in front of it. As he tiptoed back into the living room, I suddenly feigned disinterest in cleaning Hummels, announcing that alas, I was going to return to my book. Passing the open door of the bathroom I saw the horror of what this thing eating my brothers brain had made him do.
Laying on the floor was a piece of art.
To the layman, it would look like a balled up handful of used toilet paper laying on the floor next to the toilet, but to me it had a magical effect because of all the subtlety and attention to detail displayed.
There were little things that insinuated the brazen carelessness of a child who has only vaguely listened to what their parents said. 1. the fact that the ball of tissue was still attached to the roll on the other side of the toilet. Paper was unrolled over the seat, into the bowl and out, then draped back over the other side to the paper holder in one long line like it was a Family Circus cartoon and little Jeffey had just gone to the bathroom by himself for the first time. 2. While the toilet paper was all over the place, the lid was closed over it and the bowl was clean thus fulfilling the power-points from the aforementioned seminar. 3. Mike had used the fudge with nuts and not gotten overly intricate. One quick swipe was all that was needed to set the scene.
Overall, the picture that I still have burned in my mind insinuates haste. It was as though someone had taken a shit and flushed before wiping. Then realizing that they had forgot, grabbed a handful of tissue, not bothered to rip it from the roll and then made a less than convincing attempt at cleaning themselves. To compound that, the imaginary perpetrator had taken the time to close the lid on the toilet, yet had discarded the used portion of toilet paper with complete disregard on the floor next to it. Which insinuated that in their hurried state this person had, while observing all of the recent lessons, completely missed the underlying hygiene message that governed all of these lessons in the first place.
The brilliantly evil trap was set. There were only two perpetrators possible and we knew it. I was the youngest and suspected that it was going to be automatically assumed that I was the culprit but I was happy to play my part in this masterwork. We waited for what seemed like hours but in reality was probably more like minutes.
The sound of the trap being sprung was akin to the sound of locked tires attempting to stop a rapidly moving vehicle. KEVIN!!! MICHAEL!!! GET IN HERE NOW!!! It was time for our game faces. We donned our Sunday-church personas and went to face what we had caught.
WHO DID THIS!?!?!?!? WHO DID THIS!?!?! DONT TELL ME WASN'T ME!! THERE ARE ONLY THREE OF US HERE AND I KNOW I DIDN'T DO IT!!!! SO WHICH ONE OF YOU TWO WAS IT!?!?!?
That was the signal that my brother needed to enact phase 2 of his plan that even I had not suspected. He had moved into the bathroom with the air of someone intent on getting to the bottom of the mystery. He picked up the ball of tissue and brought it to his nose, inhaling deeply. "Doesn't smell like mine but I'm not really sure..."
MICHAEL THROW THAT IN THE TOILET!! NO MICHAEL DON'T !! NOOOOOOOOOO! was the last thing she said for hours as here knees gave out and she slumped onto the dryer for support. She was still conscious yet dazed with horror as Mike in an overdramatized performance that I thought almost tipped his hand, extended his tongue and licked the tissue like it was the first lick on a jumbo soft-serve ice-cream cone. "I think its Kevin's" was all he could get out before my mom let out a little whimper of defeat and I fell on the floor laughing. It was right around the time that Mike was picking out the nuts and eating them off the paper that my mom came to the realization that she was the victim of an elaborate ruse.
The 5 o'clock glass of wine came early that day and Mom had the rest of the afternoon to contemplate how her participation in these brainwashing techniques had backfired so horrifically. We got a break from the programming for a while as my parents worked out the technical difficulties, thus leaving us to enjoy the rest of our vacation completely imagination-free.
Thursday, May 19, 2016
The Poop Diaries Volume II "How to cure embarrassment"
So in creating the first of this series, I was challenged by some readers that believed that I have better shit stories to tell... that I may have been holding back some of my more seasoned anecdotes many have heard me tell in reference to this subject." What's holding you back?", cried the masses. Well after many sleepless nights spent tossing, turning, pacing, I am now able to put down on paper a story that has frequently fallen from my lips amidst tears of laughter (my own mostly) . You asked for it Derek.
As an 8 year old my family and I used to frequently visit my grandparents house on weekends. Their residence was situated approximately 1 1/2 hours journey away on the north shore of Boston, so when we would visit, there would more than likely be relatives that lived in the more immediate area dropping by to let the cousins hang out while the adults visited with on another.
My grandparents' house was built into the side of a hill that allowed for some pretty kick-ass sledding and "king of the Hill" competitions right in the side yard. Many a day was spent on that hill as a child laughing and playing with my cousins regardless of the season. Their neighbors were like family and often their children would join in whatever shenanigans were going on with their dog "Mickey".
Now Mickey was a monstrous 160+ lb male German Shepard that was sweet as pie and loved playing with children. He treated us as his pups and guarded us as fiercely. There were many times that I used to go over their house just to see if the dog could come out to play because he was always ready to have a good time and it was like I was rollin' with a gorilla as my posse. He was clearly the alpha male regardless of what neighborhood he was in or whatever species came along and he was watching my 6. So as an 8 year old boy hanging at my grandparents house my cousins and I didn't have to worry about shit. Well... most of the time.
As you can imagine, an animal that consumed life in the manner that he did, also deposited the remnants of such a lifestyle, in toddler-sized deposits around the back yard. Lest you not be confused I mean that he left piles of shit the size of a toddler not the size that a toddler would leave. To the layman wandering into that yard and merely witnessing the scat alone, I could easily understand how they could assume that the owner possessed a domesticated a polar bear or baby elephant. I know, I was 8, everything seemed bigger then, but I remember that being the only time in my life that I ever heard adults, in a group, standing and marveling at the enormity of a pile of shit.
"Jesus, You could get your car stuck in that".
This particular story took place on a crisp, overcast, October New England afternoon. The maple trees were bare, and the leaves left but a few green patches of lawn to be seen amongst the layers of the red, orange and yellow quilt now laid out before us on the ground. Normally we as children, on days like those, could coerce hot-chocolate and a little television time as long as we didn't interrupt the adults by fighting amongst ourselves, which was usually a one-way pass to play/do chores outside for the rest of the day depending on 1. the level of the interruption -usually measured in seconds of required adult participation. For "problem solving"of over 20 seconds it was chore time, over 35 seconds and there was a distinct possibility of the paddle coming out then no-one was safe, and 2. if there was blood involved then it was sore-assed chore time for the ones not bleeding. It wasn't an exact science, as a matter of fact there were some horrifically unjust flaws in this system which when pointed out were usually greeted with the conversation ending statement of "life isn't fair kid", the 80's version of today's commonly used phrase "deal with it". Suffice it to say, the hard lessons in immediate conflict management in the face of iminent danger have stuck with me, although that particular detail has absolutely nothing to do with the story.
This day had blessed my brother, sister and I with the presence 30 lbs of pure hell, in the form of our 4 year old cousin, Derek. It is because of the love, respect, and admiration for his talents that I have today for my cousin, that I can say, he used to be 90% percent pure making stories up/tattle-tailing little asshole at that point in his life, who left a Tasmanian devil style wake of disaster wherever he went and yet was treated with Golden-child kid gloves by the authority figures while we were consistently blamed for whatever he had done. It represented a conundrum for us cousins that were used to a more traditional heavy-fisted punishment style, to see him treated this way, especially for the level of mayhem and pure passion of destruction that he encompassed.
Derek had arrived, to my recollection, on one of a handful of days that my brother, sister and I, were actually sitting quietly watching tv, all getting along and agreeing on the shows we watched. We could hear him as soon as the kitchen door slammed. Squeals of delight, and the sound of frantic little steps that only someone jacked up on sugar with tiny legs could produce, quickly increased in volume as he raced through the house to lunge onto my lap from 6 feet away for a "hello" knee to the nuts. From there it was climbing all lover something or everything in between intermittently running to the grown-ups with some grossly over-dramatized fabrication of how recent events unfolded and how unfair it all was. We were harshly reprimanded for not treating him in a manner that no sane, un-medicated person could have had the tolerance to execute after 10 minutes with this hellion. In short his energy was quickly too much for the room and then the house which led to all of us being kicked outside. To add insult to injury we were shown the rakes and told to rake up the leaves in the yard above the hill into piles to keep us busy. After about 45 minutes of watching through the kitchen window at myself and my siblings shoveling shit against the tide and the futility, of us trying to rake faster than my cousin could obliterate the piles, growing ever more present. The authorities then gave us the new marching orders to make a scarecrow for Derek. It was a particularly harsh sentence to choke down for the three of us who had been peacefully co-existing not an hour ago, for like the first time, ever. To go from warm couch to cold chores, then to run around and do the bidding of the very person who had so rudely interrupted your relaxation while watching the efforts of your chores undone before your eyes to the amusement of those handing out punishments. Life isn't fair...or that's what I thought in that moment as they tossed some old clothes out on the porch railing and I grudgingly retrieved them for what was to be the next round of anarchy.
So the next hour was spent trying to make a scarecrow that repeatedly, morbidly lost in the throws of battle with the pint-sized destructor, usually about half-way through assembly. Derek knows that the last orders we were handed was to make him a scarecrow, so he figured that as long as he kept ripping it apart mid-assembly then we would have to keep making it. He knew, as we did, that there was no possible way of even broaching the subject of going back indoors with the authorities until we had completed the task at hand.
Little fucking punk...or at least the eight year old equivalent of that was going through my mind as I grudgingly stuffed leaves into a shirt with its sleeves tied in knots at the ends for the 11th time. Derek bounced around gleefully at play( while his subjects were hard at work fulfilling his whims) with little jumps in the air and squeals of delight at the majic of it all. All I knew was that this little kid had us over a fucking barrel and he knew it which led him to use every trick in the book to continue this attention grabbing behavior. He wasn't yet wise to the fact that it was the opposite of attention we were looking for and he was fucking up the whole plan.
Mickey had been out when we were bounced from the house but had since gone back inside his own house, probably to take a nap after the effort it must have taken him to shit out what looked like a sleeping baby deer, still steaming, at the bottom of the hill. I had noticed it after the smell had assaulted my nostrils, but didn't tell anyone due to the potential future hilarity that it represented, regardless of the fact that it was surely some sort of record-breaking size, even for him.
And then it happened.
Derek in one of his little tyrannical leaps of joy, lost his balance and disappeared over the side of the hill, He was on his feet when I caught my final glimpse of him before his date with destiny, but I wasn't confident he would be for long.
He vanished and all went quiet...for about 5 seconds.
We had all taken falls down that hill too numerous to count. The hill's very nature was to provide us cousins a place to experiment with gravity in one way or another. Basically what I am saying is that none of us were really worried for his safety when he went over the side, it wasn't the first time.
Then we heard the scream. It started with a confused gurgly sound in a pitch reserved only for children under 6, then developed into a full-blown, blood-curdling, "the world is coming to an end", scream of horror. The origin, however, was not coming from directly at the bottom of the hill which we could not see from our vantage stuffing leaves away from the edge, but from across the yard somewhere. It was far away and seemed to be coming toward is a at rapid rate. We scrambled to the edge of the hill to view the carnage.
Granted, I did not actually witness it with my own two eyes, but when your hear a crash and turn around to see a car wrapped around a tree and skidmarks leading up to that crash, you can make some reasonable observations that a crash occurred and while you may not be a physics professor you can tell by the skid-marks usually whether or not the person driving the car was going fast. Based on that rationale alone the scene was horrifying when I got to the edge. My mouth fell open as the overwhelming realization of what happened dawned on me. Down at the bottom of the hill where there had been previously a pile of shit that would have made Sasquach proud. there was now merely the beginning of a 60 foot long brown stripe across the backyard and running back toward us was what looked like a furious little oompa-loompa. I quickly realized that he had basically taken a head first dive into an enormous pile of shit and shot across the lawn as if out of a cannon. He had single-handedly, and out of season I might add, beat the sledding long- distance record owned on that hill, with his improvised vehicle.
Still somewhat in shock, and marveling at the sheer magnitude of what Derek had achieved on his little ride, I hadn't closely observed until he came running up to me wanting me to carry him the remaining 20 feet to the house, the extent of his ordeal. From the tips of his finders to the tips of his toes and all points in between were COVERED in shit. He had shit in his nostrils and stuck between his teeth. His hair was matted down and there was no discernable color on the front of him but brown and the smattering of orange from the occasional leaf now stuck to him. Looks like you are going to have to walk the rest of the way to the house kid because I'm going to be here trying not to piss my pants with laughter.
Most adults would find it difficult not to chuckle at this scene... some didn't even bother trying. My brother,sister and I still got bitched out for somehow allowing this to happen, My logic was that I didn't crap at the bottom of the hill nor force Derek to dive in it so I didn't see my culpability. The fact that we were still laughing uncontrollably I'm sure didn' help things out. I thought that if anyone were to blame for this then it ought to be those that chose put us in charge to watch him while knowing clearly that even if we could've stopped it from happening, the indecision as to whether or not we wanted to, would have rendered us ineffective at stopping it anyway. The men laughed, the women did not, except my sister who had the same fit of giggles that I did.
Long story short, a quick 10 minute prison-shower in the back yard with the hose followed by an 1 1/2 hour long bath with several tooth brushings later and Derek was back to being the rambunctious punk he always was.
Oh yeah I almost forgot, I was going to teach you how to cure embarrassment. Ok so when you have a cousin who blushes excessively whenever even slightly embarrassed, and that cousin has taken a head first dive into a giant pile of shit, the way to cure his embarrassment is to tell the story of him taking a dive into a pile of shit to any and all crowds of people you find yourselves together in,always. Worked like a charm. 20 years later nothing can make that guy blush.
You're welcome Derek
As an 8 year old my family and I used to frequently visit my grandparents house on weekends. Their residence was situated approximately 1 1/2 hours journey away on the north shore of Boston, so when we would visit, there would more than likely be relatives that lived in the more immediate area dropping by to let the cousins hang out while the adults visited with on another.
My grandparents' house was built into the side of a hill that allowed for some pretty kick-ass sledding and "king of the Hill" competitions right in the side yard. Many a day was spent on that hill as a child laughing and playing with my cousins regardless of the season. Their neighbors were like family and often their children would join in whatever shenanigans were going on with their dog "Mickey".
Now Mickey was a monstrous 160+ lb male German Shepard that was sweet as pie and loved playing with children. He treated us as his pups and guarded us as fiercely. There were many times that I used to go over their house just to see if the dog could come out to play because he was always ready to have a good time and it was like I was rollin' with a gorilla as my posse. He was clearly the alpha male regardless of what neighborhood he was in or whatever species came along and he was watching my 6. So as an 8 year old boy hanging at my grandparents house my cousins and I didn't have to worry about shit. Well... most of the time.
As you can imagine, an animal that consumed life in the manner that he did, also deposited the remnants of such a lifestyle, in toddler-sized deposits around the back yard. Lest you not be confused I mean that he left piles of shit the size of a toddler not the size that a toddler would leave. To the layman wandering into that yard and merely witnessing the scat alone, I could easily understand how they could assume that the owner possessed a domesticated a polar bear or baby elephant. I know, I was 8, everything seemed bigger then, but I remember that being the only time in my life that I ever heard adults, in a group, standing and marveling at the enormity of a pile of shit.
"Jesus, You could get your car stuck in that".
This particular story took place on a crisp, overcast, October New England afternoon. The maple trees were bare, and the leaves left but a few green patches of lawn to be seen amongst the layers of the red, orange and yellow quilt now laid out before us on the ground. Normally we as children, on days like those, could coerce hot-chocolate and a little television time as long as we didn't interrupt the adults by fighting amongst ourselves, which was usually a one-way pass to play/do chores outside for the rest of the day depending on 1. the level of the interruption -usually measured in seconds of required adult participation. For "problem solving"of over 20 seconds it was chore time, over 35 seconds and there was a distinct possibility of the paddle coming out then no-one was safe, and 2. if there was blood involved then it was sore-assed chore time for the ones not bleeding. It wasn't an exact science, as a matter of fact there were some horrifically unjust flaws in this system which when pointed out were usually greeted with the conversation ending statement of "life isn't fair kid", the 80's version of today's commonly used phrase "deal with it". Suffice it to say, the hard lessons in immediate conflict management in the face of iminent danger have stuck with me, although that particular detail has absolutely nothing to do with the story.
This day had blessed my brother, sister and I with the presence 30 lbs of pure hell, in the form of our 4 year old cousin, Derek. It is because of the love, respect, and admiration for his talents that I have today for my cousin, that I can say, he used to be 90% percent pure making stories up/tattle-tailing little asshole at that point in his life, who left a Tasmanian devil style wake of disaster wherever he went and yet was treated with Golden-child kid gloves by the authority figures while we were consistently blamed for whatever he had done. It represented a conundrum for us cousins that were used to a more traditional heavy-fisted punishment style, to see him treated this way, especially for the level of mayhem and pure passion of destruction that he encompassed.
Derek had arrived, to my recollection, on one of a handful of days that my brother, sister and I, were actually sitting quietly watching tv, all getting along and agreeing on the shows we watched. We could hear him as soon as the kitchen door slammed. Squeals of delight, and the sound of frantic little steps that only someone jacked up on sugar with tiny legs could produce, quickly increased in volume as he raced through the house to lunge onto my lap from 6 feet away for a "hello" knee to the nuts. From there it was climbing all lover something or everything in between intermittently running to the grown-ups with some grossly over-dramatized fabrication of how recent events unfolded and how unfair it all was. We were harshly reprimanded for not treating him in a manner that no sane, un-medicated person could have had the tolerance to execute after 10 minutes with this hellion. In short his energy was quickly too much for the room and then the house which led to all of us being kicked outside. To add insult to injury we were shown the rakes and told to rake up the leaves in the yard above the hill into piles to keep us busy. After about 45 minutes of watching through the kitchen window at myself and my siblings shoveling shit against the tide and the futility, of us trying to rake faster than my cousin could obliterate the piles, growing ever more present. The authorities then gave us the new marching orders to make a scarecrow for Derek. It was a particularly harsh sentence to choke down for the three of us who had been peacefully co-existing not an hour ago, for like the first time, ever. To go from warm couch to cold chores, then to run around and do the bidding of the very person who had so rudely interrupted your relaxation while watching the efforts of your chores undone before your eyes to the amusement of those handing out punishments. Life isn't fair...or that's what I thought in that moment as they tossed some old clothes out on the porch railing and I grudgingly retrieved them for what was to be the next round of anarchy.
So the next hour was spent trying to make a scarecrow that repeatedly, morbidly lost in the throws of battle with the pint-sized destructor, usually about half-way through assembly. Derek knows that the last orders we were handed was to make him a scarecrow, so he figured that as long as he kept ripping it apart mid-assembly then we would have to keep making it. He knew, as we did, that there was no possible way of even broaching the subject of going back indoors with the authorities until we had completed the task at hand.
Little fucking punk...or at least the eight year old equivalent of that was going through my mind as I grudgingly stuffed leaves into a shirt with its sleeves tied in knots at the ends for the 11th time. Derek bounced around gleefully at play( while his subjects were hard at work fulfilling his whims) with little jumps in the air and squeals of delight at the majic of it all. All I knew was that this little kid had us over a fucking barrel and he knew it which led him to use every trick in the book to continue this attention grabbing behavior. He wasn't yet wise to the fact that it was the opposite of attention we were looking for and he was fucking up the whole plan.
Mickey had been out when we were bounced from the house but had since gone back inside his own house, probably to take a nap after the effort it must have taken him to shit out what looked like a sleeping baby deer, still steaming, at the bottom of the hill. I had noticed it after the smell had assaulted my nostrils, but didn't tell anyone due to the potential future hilarity that it represented, regardless of the fact that it was surely some sort of record-breaking size, even for him.
And then it happened.
Derek in one of his little tyrannical leaps of joy, lost his balance and disappeared over the side of the hill, He was on his feet when I caught my final glimpse of him before his date with destiny, but I wasn't confident he would be for long.
He vanished and all went quiet...for about 5 seconds.
We had all taken falls down that hill too numerous to count. The hill's very nature was to provide us cousins a place to experiment with gravity in one way or another. Basically what I am saying is that none of us were really worried for his safety when he went over the side, it wasn't the first time.
Then we heard the scream. It started with a confused gurgly sound in a pitch reserved only for children under 6, then developed into a full-blown, blood-curdling, "the world is coming to an end", scream of horror. The origin, however, was not coming from directly at the bottom of the hill which we could not see from our vantage stuffing leaves away from the edge, but from across the yard somewhere. It was far away and seemed to be coming toward is a at rapid rate. We scrambled to the edge of the hill to view the carnage.
Granted, I did not actually witness it with my own two eyes, but when your hear a crash and turn around to see a car wrapped around a tree and skidmarks leading up to that crash, you can make some reasonable observations that a crash occurred and while you may not be a physics professor you can tell by the skid-marks usually whether or not the person driving the car was going fast. Based on that rationale alone the scene was horrifying when I got to the edge. My mouth fell open as the overwhelming realization of what happened dawned on me. Down at the bottom of the hill where there had been previously a pile of shit that would have made Sasquach proud. there was now merely the beginning of a 60 foot long brown stripe across the backyard and running back toward us was what looked like a furious little oompa-loompa. I quickly realized that he had basically taken a head first dive into an enormous pile of shit and shot across the lawn as if out of a cannon. He had single-handedly, and out of season I might add, beat the sledding long- distance record owned on that hill, with his improvised vehicle.
Still somewhat in shock, and marveling at the sheer magnitude of what Derek had achieved on his little ride, I hadn't closely observed until he came running up to me wanting me to carry him the remaining 20 feet to the house, the extent of his ordeal. From the tips of his finders to the tips of his toes and all points in between were COVERED in shit. He had shit in his nostrils and stuck between his teeth. His hair was matted down and there was no discernable color on the front of him but brown and the smattering of orange from the occasional leaf now stuck to him. Looks like you are going to have to walk the rest of the way to the house kid because I'm going to be here trying not to piss my pants with laughter.
Most adults would find it difficult not to chuckle at this scene... some didn't even bother trying. My brother,sister and I still got bitched out for somehow allowing this to happen, My logic was that I didn't crap at the bottom of the hill nor force Derek to dive in it so I didn't see my culpability. The fact that we were still laughing uncontrollably I'm sure didn' help things out. I thought that if anyone were to blame for this then it ought to be those that chose put us in charge to watch him while knowing clearly that even if we could've stopped it from happening, the indecision as to whether or not we wanted to, would have rendered us ineffective at stopping it anyway. The men laughed, the women did not, except my sister who had the same fit of giggles that I did.
Long story short, a quick 10 minute prison-shower in the back yard with the hose followed by an 1 1/2 hour long bath with several tooth brushings later and Derek was back to being the rambunctious punk he always was.
Oh yeah I almost forgot, I was going to teach you how to cure embarrassment. Ok so when you have a cousin who blushes excessively whenever even slightly embarrassed, and that cousin has taken a head first dive into a giant pile of shit, the way to cure his embarrassment is to tell the story of him taking a dive into a pile of shit to any and all crowds of people you find yourselves together in,always. Worked like a charm. 20 years later nothing can make that guy blush.
You're welcome Derek
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Irtish Eyes : AKA The Twilight Zone
So living off the grid for the past 5 years has incapacitated my ability to regale you with some of my more asinine life stories. I sometimes get to the point where my brain becomes a log jam of these tales and the only way for me to proceed with any sort of linear thought process is to take the time to sort them out on paper for you, my friends, to get a glimpse of the weirdness that happens to me on a regular basis. This particular story took place 14 years ago while living in Boston.
It was an oppressively-muggy Friday evening in June. The day had been that kind of city-hot where you feel as though you are hallucinating from both dehydration and the fact that everywhere you look is slightly distorted from the heat waves rising off the blistering pavement. My day had been spent working with my friend/co-worker Dave. We had the unfortunate task that fateful day of donning full body suits, gloves, hoods, respirators and goggles to finish the demolition on a gut renovation of the third-floor in a house in north Boston. Somerville to be exact.
The first half of the day was spent wielding sledge-hammers, sawzalls, and crowbars as we leveled walls, tore up floors, and tore down the 100 year old lathe and horse-hair plaster off of the remaining walls and ceilings, The accumulation of several decades of dust in these walls and ceilings was sometimes an inch thick and created a black death-cloud when disturbed, that allowed for about 2 feet of visibility. By noon we had sweated through our clothes to the point that we were now carrying around pounds of extra weight from the dust and debris that now clung to our saturated clothing. The second part of the day was spent removing lumber and bags of plaster down three flights of stairs to the 40 yd dumpster occupying the 2 parking spaces out front. Needless to say by 5pm we had earned some relaxation time. It was pay-day, so after dragging our asses to the shop, then to the bank across the street we were making our way to the Sullivan sq. "T" stop, but decided that we needed some re-hydration before the 35 minute public commute to the more familiar watering holes of our neighborhood. Besides, having drank 4 gallons of water each that day we needed something with a little more of a beer flavor before we trudged our steel-toed boots one step further. We found ourselves, upon reaching this conclusion, in front of the "Irish Eyes" pub.
I opened the door with the exhausted attitude of someone not really paying attention to their surroundings just merely determined to reach their goal before falling down. It had been bright outside, so to get my bearings I took a moment after stepping in the doorway to allow my eyes to adjust to the darkly lit interior. My initial impression was that the bar was empty. There was not a sound to be heard and as my eyes adjusted, proportionately, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I realized that sitting at the bar were 2 dozen or so burly working-class guys all bearing the evidence of whatever their work day had entailed. Their presence wasn't the issue. It was the fact that every single one of them were silently staring at us as though we had just scratched the needle across the record and they were all having a telekinetic debate amongst themselves as to whether or not to go for their guns. I felt as though I walked into a major drug deal on the verge of going bad. There was a tension in the air that even in my beat down state made me consider relocating to another establishment, but then I thought to myself " if I'm going to have to fight my way out of here anyway then I might as well do it after I put a Newcastle and a shot of Jameson in me". Besides, these guys, while a formidable looking group couldn't be any meaner than my desire to sit down, relax, and wash the horrid, dusty taste residing in my mouth. I didn't care what their business was and was determined to make it none of mine as long as it didn't stand in the way of my refreshment.
I walked toward the bar and in unison every head swiveled back and looked at their respective beers. Suddenly no-one would make eye contact except for the bartender that I had made my way up to. He wore an awkward grin as I placed the order for beers and shots. " 'ad a rough day 'ave ya boys" he said in an Irish brogue pouring our drinks all the while stealing quick glances toward the other patrons who were all silently staring forward. I nodded and there wasn't another sound to be heard except Dave pulling out his chair well across the room. I collected the drinks and walked over to the table somewhat relieved to put some distance between me and the bar.
So as not to upset the atmosphere of things Dave and I took a couple of silent pulls off of our beers while having a non-verbal conversation with our eyes, shoulders, and facial expressions that went something like this:
ME: shoulders and eyebrows raised looking left to right "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN HERE!?!?!
DAVE: eyes widening, shrugs his shoulders while shaking his head back and forth, "I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA!!
ME: appreciatively smiling at the beer in my hand as I hold it up in front of me and mime "here's to the ass we kicked today and to the debaucherous upcoming weekend . CHEERS!"
Clink of our beer glasses
DAVE: with an eyebrows raised, mocking half-smile nods at the drinks and then over his shoulder towards the door "YEAH, HEY KEV I GOT AN IDEA...WHY DON'T YOU PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS AND FINISH UP YOUR DRINKS SO THAT WE CAN GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE BEFORE WE GET OUR HEADS KICKED IN. Reaches for his shot and polishes it off with a slight tilt of his head and pushes out his chair.
ME:Llooking quickly around the room while my smile quickly disappears, my discomfort rapidly returning as I am brought back to the situation at hand from my momentary relaxation. There still hasn't been a peep in the whole place in the 5 minutes since we had stepped over the threshold from any of the other customers in the establishment. Nodding my head "YEAH YOU ARE PROBABLY RIGHT "
Finishing off my beer, I reached for my shot as I made another sweep of the room. There were dozen backs to us, heads pointed straight ahead except the bartender who was leaning against the back-bar staring at Dave and I with his arms folded across his chest, seemingly fully following our brief body language conversation and grinning from ear to ear. His face was contorted from straining to hold back laughter and it made him look slightly insane. Our eyes locked and there was a twinkle in his as he nodded to me as if to say "NOW THINGS ARE REALLY GOING TO GET WEIRD"
It was at that exact time that the room was suddenly filled (with dolby surround sound) with some of the only sounds of my evening in here so far. It was music. The first notes sounded vaguely familiar. Then the singing started and I knew exactly what it was but couldn't figure out where it was coming from.
OOOOOOOOOH MYYYYYYY LOOOOOOOOVE, MY DARLIIIIIIIIIING, I HUNNNNGER FOOOOOR YOOOOOOUR TOUCH,
The sudden perplexed look on my face must have been the last straw for the bartender because he doubled over in peals of laughter while maintaining eye contact with me. I glanced at Dave and he had the same baffled look on his face as he was looking around the room trying to find the origin of this sudden barrage of the "Righteous Brothers, Unchained Melody".
It was then that I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye and turned toward a previously unnoticed television directly above where the bartender was now making animal-like noises in the throes of hysterical laughter. The image on the screen was that of a woman sitting at a pottery wheel throwing some bowl or vase or something... HEY WAIT A FIRGGIN MINUTE THATS DEMI MOORE...OH MY GOD THATS PATRICK SWAYZE GLOWING AND SITTING BEHIND HER!!!!!
My thought process quickly unfolded as the dawning realization hit me as to what I had walked into on this seemingly innocent day. We had just walked into a bar full of large, hairy-knuckled, working-class, Boston men who had been all intensely watching the movie "Ghost". It was at the last scene when Patrick Swayze is a ghost and he is sort of implying that he is going to haunt Demi Moore by making ghostly love to her every time she goes to whip out a coffee mug. I think that it was supposed to be romantic but what the hell do I know. It was the last scene of the movie I believe and I was still in shock at what I was witnessing. The newly morphed look on my face was enough to nearly send the bartender to the floor as howls of laughter erupted with new vigor and he grasped the bar in front of him for support. A barload of somber men looked down at their drinks as the credits rolled up the screen and the song continued to play.
One or two from the bar to excused themselves hastily to the bathroom while little grumbles of conversation could be heard erupting here and there. The bartender, who I retrospectively realize was the mastermind behind the whole situation, was desperately trying to gain control of his composure enough to seize the opportunity that he had created to bust the balls of everyone in the room. He had set the trap. HE put the chic-flic in, exposed the raw nerves of his patrons and waited for some schlep like me to walk into his cleverly orchestrated twilight zone situation. We had walked in at the perfect time and his plan was unfolding even better than he had expected.
"YOU BUNCH OF FREAKIN PANSIES!!!" He managed to choke out, trying not to let the moment get away from him, before he looked at me again and lost his composure. At that moment I broke out of the trance I was in and realized that I was now standing in the middle of the room with a shocked expression on my face still pointing at the t.v. from when I had discovered it 2 minutes previously. I turned, dropping my arm and closing my mouth, to look at Dave who still had the frozen surprised "deer in headlights" look on his face that I had just unsuccessfully attempted to wipe from my own.
That's when the bartender recovered with the determination of someone not about to let this moment go to waste. It was as though he had been waiting for this day for a long time. "YOU BUNCH OF SNOT NOSED MOPEY-FACED SISSIES! THERE ISN'T A DRY EYE IN THE LOT OF YA! THESE TWO (motioning toward Dave and I) POP INTO HERE AFTER A HARD DAYS WORK TO A BUNCH OF TAFFIES WEEPING INTO THEIR BEER OVER A CHIC MOVIE"
There was chuckling and grumbling of almost equal volume but I couldn't tell which came from where. Either way there were men not-so-discreetly wiping their faces off with their sleeves all over the place which only fueled the barkeeps relentless onslaught on everyone there.
"WHART KINDA BAR 'AS THIS TURNED INTA?!?!?!?"
"DON SLIP AN FALL IN THE PUDDLE OF TEARS UNDER YER STOOL"he exclaimed to a patron who was just standing up.
"NO WONDA YOU BLOKES HAVE TO WATCH CHIC FLICS TOGETHA AT THE BAAAR! IF ANY OF YER LASSES COULD SEE YOU NOW THEYD BE OUT LOOKIN FER REAL MEN!" He was calling out everyone for everything he had seen throughout the course of the movie.
"AND THAT ONE SCENE I THOUGHT YOU TWO WERE GONNA START HOLDING HANDS! "He exclaimed to a couple patrons.
"YEAH, RIGHT ITS THE SMOKE MAKIN ALL YER EYES RED YOU BUNCH OF DELICATE FLOWERS!!"
WHY DON YA GO HOME TO YER MUM AND GET SOME HUGS AND CUDDLES YA WEE FAIRY" He aimed at one guy who was clearly unseasoned in the art of Boston Bar-Room Ball-busting. Now, ediquette dictates that the quickest way to diffuse a Ball-Busting, in a pants down, caught red handed situation, is to agree with the ball-buster thus taking away his ammunition and throwing them off guard. Then a proper response would be to the effect of " I think I'll stop at your moms house on my way" or "my mom died last week" but you have to keep a straight face for that one. The
"IS THERE ANY BEER IN THAT GLASS OR IS IT ALL JUST SALT WATER", continued the barman. which was when the young man who was clearly outclassed in the art of defending himself verbally, decided to attempt to protect his honor physically instead. His mates next to him grabbed him before he got over the bar and put him back in his seat, but he was still struggling to get a piece of somebody. Tensions mounted quickly in the room and oddly enough they weren't all pointing toward the bartender who was clearly inciting this escalation.
I started having the same "OH SHIT" feeing rise up again that I had when I first walked through the door as I was watching what looked like was going to be a full-scale bar-brawl unfold before my eyes. A whole group of rough burly men were being called out on their sexuality all at once and it was getting ugly quick. It seemed like it was "GO" time in every sense of the term as I looked for alternate exits. There were chests puffed and mild shoving before the room took on a brief frozen pause that I can only liken to what it must have been like just before the director yelled "ACTION" in on of those old-time wild-west barroom brawl scenes. You know, that second before three chairs are shattering simultaneously over peoples heads, someone gets thrown down the length of the bar, everyone just turns to their neighbor and starts kicking the shit out of them randomly, as bottles are broken and tables dissolve under people falling from the unseen fights in the balcony. You know... Instant mayhem.
It was in that pregnant pause, as I was thinking of what my exit strategy was going to be, when a man stood up in full Somerville policeman's uniform brushing stray popcorn kernels from his chest and put his hat under his arm. Officer(?) rose to his full 6'8" height, puffed out his chest and proceeded to polish off the pint in front of him. "ALL RIGHT BOYS! I'M OFF TO FIGHT CRIME!" He bellowed as he pushed out the stool. "DON'T MAKE ME HAVE TO COME BACK HERE TO SORT YOU FELLAS OUT AGAIN!" He roared, then he threw back his head and let out a deep barratone belly laugh that commanded the rest of the room to laugh with him and completely release the tension from the room...again.
As I stood there marveling to myself at the range of emotions that I had felt inside of 5 minutes upon entering this establishment the cop strode to the door. Dave advised me again (this time verbally) that we should take the opportunity to indeed "GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE". Slipping the bartender a smile and a nod for the entertainment I threw back my whiskey and we briskly strolled out the door behind the cop into the stifling evening air. "COME BACK ANYTIIIIIIIIIIME" the bartender yelled in a mock-falsetto voice to us as the door closed behind us. The cop climbed into his cruiser, grinned, and yelled to us right before he gunned it out into traffic "THE THINGS YOU GOTTA DO TA GET A FRIGGIN BEER AROUND HERE, HUH?"
Dave and I looked at each other and he said "I'm not sure that the rest of the weekend can get any weirder, but lets go find out."
"I think I need another drink" I replied as we began trudging along with dazed looks on our faces to the train, falling into the shuffle of nameless commuters who were completely unaware of our recent brief encounter with the twilight zone.
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Camel-Toe...its not just for the desert anymore.
So...
I've been hearing a lot about the objectification of women lately in the media. I have a take on it that few of you are going to be happy about but I feel as an avid observer of the society around me it is time to vocalize my thoughts into a hopefully coherent, tasty little morsel for your brain to chew on for a while.
The media has been spewing forth more and more stories about the objectification of women in society. I don't tune into mainstream media, so for this to have reached me means that this issue must be raging across the world like Godzilla on meth. Now having listened repeatedly to how men are treating women as mere sexual playthings and how this line of thinking has to stop, I need to finally stand up and call out "BULLSHIT!" Having said that, let me clarify that I'm not saying that I condone masoginistic attitudes or any sort of behavior that takes power away from women. As I have repeatedly stated in other blogs (See "Why I Will Never Put The Toilet Seat Down Again"), I have a daughter and I want her to grow up confident and strong in a world where gender equality is a real thing and she isn't being discriminated against in any way... but I also realize that my role as her parent, is to educate her to help her bring that change, and not to scream at the top of my lungs in every store that markets mini-skirts to 10 year olds, "MY DAUGHTER IS NOT A WHORE!!!"
Once again, men as a gender, are being singled out for not being able to control their instincts. Now i'm not going to be so brazen as to hop on some moral soap-box and start preaching some conservative diatribe here, but what ever happened to discretion ladies? I know...I know... the media, the advertisers, society dictating it... I know. I've heard it all before. I'm talking about your own internal choices. Lets put all of your insecurities and years of brainwashing that insist that you need to look a certain way aside for a moment and look at this issue from a logical, completely emotionless perspective for a couple minutes. I know its difficult but I promise you won't break a nail.
Tangental point : Isaac Newton's third law of physics states that "any action has an equal and opposite reaction". Now remember this because there will be a quiz later.
Now lets get back to the surface here and discuss fashion, particularly women and girls fashion in this here American society. FASHION RULES...and here we all thought for the longest time that it was the oil companies, banks, insurance companies, lobbyists, government and other major corporations that were the ones that had us by the short hairs... we were wrong. If there has been an industry that has twisted society mentally and financially into knots it is fashion. I can say without hesitancy that fashion has touched upon the vanities of every individual that I know in some way or on some level, at some point of their lives. The nagging need to fit in, that makes you change your appearance so that at a glance you will appear more socially acceptable...Yeah I remember it...I rocked a mullet in the 80's...I know of which I speak. I could barely keep my hands off of myself I was so damned sexy... not that I was really trying to.
So lets take a look at fashion and what society today deems socially acceptable. The amount of accessories, surgery, form altering apparel, make-up, and body care products that flood the market in this here "free-world" is astounding. I would venture a guess that there is a several billion dollar industry that is thriving off of the (mostly female) insecurities involved in attracting a mate and by participating in aforementioned industry you are perpetuating (1) the myth that we are all supposed to look a certain way and (2) You need to deceive a potential mate into noticing you...thus starting every future relationship based on a lie. And lets be serious about this...its mostly the ladies who are guilty of this.
Now I'm not saying that at no period in time has there never been the occasional sock stuffed in the trousers for false visual effect by NO man ever... but for the most part we stopped that shit in the 70's. If the objective is that you are going to be seeing it later on in the evening anyway we figured it wasn't best to embellish thus creating an awkward moment at game time. We adapted into a new game plan. In this year of 2015 men are still doing what we have been doing for decades to attract ladies. We'll maybe get a gym membership, a haircut, a shave and a vehicle that proportionally emphasizes the size of the dick that we wish we had. Yeah we know it...and we own it ladies, but thats about the extent of it unless you include our participation in the thriving pharmaceutical industry that levels out the libido playing field amongst men so that now I have to sword-fight every polyester-clad, antique, trouser-tent that has popped a little blue pill. To them I have to say...YOU WERE OUT OF THE GAME COMPLETELY LIKE 30 YEARS AGO!!!! NOW I HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU TRY AND OUT-CHARM MY GIRL-FRIENDS PANTS OFF?!?!?!? YOU ARE LIKE 92 YEARS OLD!!!! THIS GIRL WOULD TEAR YOU IN HALF OLD MAN!!! TURN THAT THING OVER TO THE ASTROGLIDE AND PACHOULI-SCENTED COUGAR SECTION IN THE CORNER THEN COME BACK HERE IN 4-6 HOURS SO I CAN KICK YOUR ASS WITHOUT THINKING YOU ARE ENJOYING IT!!!!
Sorry...where was I? Oh yeah...So men take up a fairly small percentage of the whole when it comes to fashion or the" industry that feeds off of our souls". A truly fashionable man who grooms himself incessantly and is never donning anything less than spectacular is either dressed by his mate (stay tuned for future blog: Men who are so pussy whipped that they dress in matching outfits an ride on tandem bikes and my justifications for running them of hey road.) or most likely gay and is therefore out of your breeding pool anyway. So my point is that hetero men don't occupy much space in the fashion industry and since the vast majority of us don't give don't give a flying-fuck about it, we don't need to have our egos stroked incessantly every time we leave the house by throngs of random strangers. It is a pain in the ass to have to deal with people interrupting the flow of your day to try and win your attention. The funny thing is ...that most men realize that the less we care about what women look like the more they want us to notice them. We clearly don't create fashion so therefore are not responsible for the vast amount of fashion issues taking place today...only for its subsequent effects of how we sometimes respond to the jaw-droppingly overt attempts to gain our attention.
SO...lets break down a few of the issues with fashion today that pertain directly to men objectifying women:
PADDED OR FORM ALTERING UNDERGARMENTS
This is just ridiculous...we are going to find out eventually. Thats the whole point. Nothing says "I'm out for a one-night-stand" more than a padded push-up bra. Yup..from 13-96 everyone can have tits like a 25 year old and guess what ladies??? When you put them in our face... WE NOTICE. So does every other man in the room. Thats why you are wearing it!!! But the whole principle here is to get people to notice you for a body feature that is basically a lie. You know it, but still use it to gain to attention you so desperately seek on a daily basis. That's kind of sad isn't it?
FORM ENHANCING YOGA PANTS
Clearly you don't all do yoga and aren't in the Tour de France so what the fuck??? I'm getting a little tired of admiring the ass crack of yoga pant clad, flourescent-thonged geriatrics walking ahead of me on the sidewalk or the horrifyingly-pedaphilic feeling of checking someone out and realizing "that girl is like 13 years old". Either way I feel shame. So at least half of the the females wearing these prosthetics (and yes I call wrapping yourself in elastic a prosthetic) are doing so to get honest heterosexual men to loathe themselves several times on a daily basis. I have gotten to the point that I refuse to even look down at anybody wearing yoga pants or spandex for that matter. I've been let down too many times. the worst by far is the woman who can't even fill them out and the elastic sags down like the jowls of a sad old hound dog. I won't even go into the opposite end of that spectrum that makes me wonder if I can actually hear the fabric straining to contain what you shoehorned into it. But for the most part it looks like you painted fabric on your body. If I can tell the length of your clitoris or what kind of pubic hairstyle you are sporting then guess what?? You need to put some more fucking clothes on not to be objectified. There is clearly no discretion on your part but you are demanding discretion on a mans part when we see what looks like an endless burlesque show walk past us??? You are fucking with our instincts now! Would you like us to sneeze with our eyes open too?
ACCESSORIES
From make-up to fake implants to plastic nipples that make you look like you have been standing in the frozen food section for the last half hour, its all a ruse to get men to act on their instincts and then shame them for doing so. Why has this deception become so accepted as commonplace in the beginning of a relationship? Am I supposed to respect someone who has done their best to trick me into thinking that they are someone they aren't?
SO... in today's society where its just as commonplace to for me to see some geriatrics perky new tits standing up and thrust in my face (when a year ago they were being tucked into a belt) as waking up next to a seemingly perfect stranger who is laying on a pillow that looks as though it spent the night wrestling with three clowns, I'm now, not supposed to treat people in the manner that they portray themselves.
What you call objectification I call honesty. There is a difference between being called out on something and being attacked. One of those things is actually justified and just because you can't handle the reaction to your action, doesn't mean it isn't justified. Don't bitch at us for looking at you in the manner that you have gone out of your way to portray yourself as.. I've heard the argument... "a woman should be able to wear whatever she wants whenever she wants". And to that I would say yes that is true...I agree. But if you dress as though you are looking for sex then you are inviting people to look at you in that manner. ALL OF THEM, NOT JUST THE CUTE ONE AT THE END OF THE BAR. Some women feed off exposing themselves to everybody. Thats fine, they own it. They are at least in touch with their need to be ogled by many. More power to them (A) because they don't discriminate against those who look at them and (B) because they clearly have bigger issues to deal with.
There is a reason that hookers dress a certain way. I'd like to see a study done over the past 20 years regarding fashion trends vs. prostitution unemployment rates. I would think that the confusion alone would have fucked up those numbers.
I know also that any exotic dancers that I have befriended throughout my life have a distinctly different wardrobe in public than at work. They don't want or need to draw that much attention to themselves when they aren't working, because they understand the art of seduction, the power they wield, and the ripple effect that their daily wardrobe has on the general populous. So if you want all of this respect that you claim to deserve, than act like it. I wouldn't expect to be treated with respect if I walked into a business meeting with my dick hanging out. So don't expect to gain respect or non-objectification when your tits are bursting over your blouse or I can tell what color underwear you are wearing within 30 seconds of you walking into a room. Guess what?? There is a reason that you don't know the color of mine...because I haven't shown you... that I'm not wearing any.
Now let me sum this up by saying that to those of you who can consciously admit to yourself that you fall into the category of using your sexuality to navigate your way through life, don't get pissed that its working but you can't control who it works on. Men are tired of being set up to take the fall for the issues of women who don't realize that its way sexier to make us notice your personality and leave a little to the imagination. To You women I say quit your bitching about it or (and I never thought I would say this) put some fucking clothes on and maybe you won't have these issues.
I've been hearing a lot about the objectification of women lately in the media. I have a take on it that few of you are going to be happy about but I feel as an avid observer of the society around me it is time to vocalize my thoughts into a hopefully coherent, tasty little morsel for your brain to chew on for a while.
The media has been spewing forth more and more stories about the objectification of women in society. I don't tune into mainstream media, so for this to have reached me means that this issue must be raging across the world like Godzilla on meth. Now having listened repeatedly to how men are treating women as mere sexual playthings and how this line of thinking has to stop, I need to finally stand up and call out "BULLSHIT!" Having said that, let me clarify that I'm not saying that I condone masoginistic attitudes or any sort of behavior that takes power away from women. As I have repeatedly stated in other blogs (See "Why I Will Never Put The Toilet Seat Down Again"), I have a daughter and I want her to grow up confident and strong in a world where gender equality is a real thing and she isn't being discriminated against in any way... but I also realize that my role as her parent, is to educate her to help her bring that change, and not to scream at the top of my lungs in every store that markets mini-skirts to 10 year olds, "MY DAUGHTER IS NOT A WHORE!!!"
Once again, men as a gender, are being singled out for not being able to control their instincts. Now i'm not going to be so brazen as to hop on some moral soap-box and start preaching some conservative diatribe here, but what ever happened to discretion ladies? I know...I know... the media, the advertisers, society dictating it... I know. I've heard it all before. I'm talking about your own internal choices. Lets put all of your insecurities and years of brainwashing that insist that you need to look a certain way aside for a moment and look at this issue from a logical, completely emotionless perspective for a couple minutes. I know its difficult but I promise you won't break a nail.
Tangental point : Isaac Newton's third law of physics states that "any action has an equal and opposite reaction". Now remember this because there will be a quiz later.
Now lets get back to the surface here and discuss fashion, particularly women and girls fashion in this here American society. FASHION RULES...and here we all thought for the longest time that it was the oil companies, banks, insurance companies, lobbyists, government and other major corporations that were the ones that had us by the short hairs... we were wrong. If there has been an industry that has twisted society mentally and financially into knots it is fashion. I can say without hesitancy that fashion has touched upon the vanities of every individual that I know in some way or on some level, at some point of their lives. The nagging need to fit in, that makes you change your appearance so that at a glance you will appear more socially acceptable...Yeah I remember it...I rocked a mullet in the 80's...I know of which I speak. I could barely keep my hands off of myself I was so damned sexy... not that I was really trying to.
So lets take a look at fashion and what society today deems socially acceptable. The amount of accessories, surgery, form altering apparel, make-up, and body care products that flood the market in this here "free-world" is astounding. I would venture a guess that there is a several billion dollar industry that is thriving off of the (mostly female) insecurities involved in attracting a mate and by participating in aforementioned industry you are perpetuating (1) the myth that we are all supposed to look a certain way and (2) You need to deceive a potential mate into noticing you...thus starting every future relationship based on a lie. And lets be serious about this...its mostly the ladies who are guilty of this.
Now I'm not saying that at no period in time has there never been the occasional sock stuffed in the trousers for false visual effect by NO man ever... but for the most part we stopped that shit in the 70's. If the objective is that you are going to be seeing it later on in the evening anyway we figured it wasn't best to embellish thus creating an awkward moment at game time. We adapted into a new game plan. In this year of 2015 men are still doing what we have been doing for decades to attract ladies. We'll maybe get a gym membership, a haircut, a shave and a vehicle that proportionally emphasizes the size of the dick that we wish we had. Yeah we know it...and we own it ladies, but thats about the extent of it unless you include our participation in the thriving pharmaceutical industry that levels out the libido playing field amongst men so that now I have to sword-fight every polyester-clad, antique, trouser-tent that has popped a little blue pill. To them I have to say...YOU WERE OUT OF THE GAME COMPLETELY LIKE 30 YEARS AGO!!!! NOW I HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU TRY AND OUT-CHARM MY GIRL-FRIENDS PANTS OFF?!?!?!? YOU ARE LIKE 92 YEARS OLD!!!! THIS GIRL WOULD TEAR YOU IN HALF OLD MAN!!! TURN THAT THING OVER TO THE ASTROGLIDE AND PACHOULI-SCENTED COUGAR SECTION IN THE CORNER THEN COME BACK HERE IN 4-6 HOURS SO I CAN KICK YOUR ASS WITHOUT THINKING YOU ARE ENJOYING IT!!!!
Sorry...where was I? Oh yeah...So men take up a fairly small percentage of the whole when it comes to fashion or the" industry that feeds off of our souls". A truly fashionable man who grooms himself incessantly and is never donning anything less than spectacular is either dressed by his mate (stay tuned for future blog: Men who are so pussy whipped that they dress in matching outfits an ride on tandem bikes and my justifications for running them of hey road.) or most likely gay and is therefore out of your breeding pool anyway. So my point is that hetero men don't occupy much space in the fashion industry and since the vast majority of us don't give don't give a flying-fuck about it, we don't need to have our egos stroked incessantly every time we leave the house by throngs of random strangers. It is a pain in the ass to have to deal with people interrupting the flow of your day to try and win your attention. The funny thing is ...that most men realize that the less we care about what women look like the more they want us to notice them. We clearly don't create fashion so therefore are not responsible for the vast amount of fashion issues taking place today...only for its subsequent effects of how we sometimes respond to the jaw-droppingly overt attempts to gain our attention.
SO...lets break down a few of the issues with fashion today that pertain directly to men objectifying women:
PADDED OR FORM ALTERING UNDERGARMENTS
This is just ridiculous...we are going to find out eventually. Thats the whole point. Nothing says "I'm out for a one-night-stand" more than a padded push-up bra. Yup..from 13-96 everyone can have tits like a 25 year old and guess what ladies??? When you put them in our face... WE NOTICE. So does every other man in the room. Thats why you are wearing it!!! But the whole principle here is to get people to notice you for a body feature that is basically a lie. You know it, but still use it to gain to attention you so desperately seek on a daily basis. That's kind of sad isn't it?
FORM ENHANCING YOGA PANTS
Clearly you don't all do yoga and aren't in the Tour de France so what the fuck??? I'm getting a little tired of admiring the ass crack of yoga pant clad, flourescent-thonged geriatrics walking ahead of me on the sidewalk or the horrifyingly-pedaphilic feeling of checking someone out and realizing "that girl is like 13 years old". Either way I feel shame. So at least half of the the females wearing these prosthetics (and yes I call wrapping yourself in elastic a prosthetic) are doing so to get honest heterosexual men to loathe themselves several times on a daily basis. I have gotten to the point that I refuse to even look down at anybody wearing yoga pants or spandex for that matter. I've been let down too many times. the worst by far is the woman who can't even fill them out and the elastic sags down like the jowls of a sad old hound dog. I won't even go into the opposite end of that spectrum that makes me wonder if I can actually hear the fabric straining to contain what you shoehorned into it. But for the most part it looks like you painted fabric on your body. If I can tell the length of your clitoris or what kind of pubic hairstyle you are sporting then guess what?? You need to put some more fucking clothes on not to be objectified. There is clearly no discretion on your part but you are demanding discretion on a mans part when we see what looks like an endless burlesque show walk past us??? You are fucking with our instincts now! Would you like us to sneeze with our eyes open too?
ACCESSORIES
From make-up to fake implants to plastic nipples that make you look like you have been standing in the frozen food section for the last half hour, its all a ruse to get men to act on their instincts and then shame them for doing so. Why has this deception become so accepted as commonplace in the beginning of a relationship? Am I supposed to respect someone who has done their best to trick me into thinking that they are someone they aren't?
SO... in today's society where its just as commonplace to for me to see some geriatrics perky new tits standing up and thrust in my face (when a year ago they were being tucked into a belt) as waking up next to a seemingly perfect stranger who is laying on a pillow that looks as though it spent the night wrestling with three clowns, I'm now, not supposed to treat people in the manner that they portray themselves.
What you call objectification I call honesty. There is a difference between being called out on something and being attacked. One of those things is actually justified and just because you can't handle the reaction to your action, doesn't mean it isn't justified. Don't bitch at us for looking at you in the manner that you have gone out of your way to portray yourself as.. I've heard the argument... "a woman should be able to wear whatever she wants whenever she wants". And to that I would say yes that is true...I agree. But if you dress as though you are looking for sex then you are inviting people to look at you in that manner. ALL OF THEM, NOT JUST THE CUTE ONE AT THE END OF THE BAR. Some women feed off exposing themselves to everybody. Thats fine, they own it. They are at least in touch with their need to be ogled by many. More power to them (A) because they don't discriminate against those who look at them and (B) because they clearly have bigger issues to deal with.
There is a reason that hookers dress a certain way. I'd like to see a study done over the past 20 years regarding fashion trends vs. prostitution unemployment rates. I would think that the confusion alone would have fucked up those numbers.
I know also that any exotic dancers that I have befriended throughout my life have a distinctly different wardrobe in public than at work. They don't want or need to draw that much attention to themselves when they aren't working, because they understand the art of seduction, the power they wield, and the ripple effect that their daily wardrobe has on the general populous. So if you want all of this respect that you claim to deserve, than act like it. I wouldn't expect to be treated with respect if I walked into a business meeting with my dick hanging out. So don't expect to gain respect or non-objectification when your tits are bursting over your blouse or I can tell what color underwear you are wearing within 30 seconds of you walking into a room. Guess what?? There is a reason that you don't know the color of mine...because I haven't shown you... that I'm not wearing any.
Now let me sum this up by saying that to those of you who can consciously admit to yourself that you fall into the category of using your sexuality to navigate your way through life, don't get pissed that its working but you can't control who it works on. Men are tired of being set up to take the fall for the issues of women who don't realize that its way sexier to make us notice your personality and leave a little to the imagination. To You women I say quit your bitching about it or (and I never thought I would say this) put some fucking clothes on and maybe you won't have these issues.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
The Red Storm App. (patent pending)
Ok gentlemen, it is time to impart my brilliance to you once again. We live in an age where everything is available at our fingertips and communication has never been easier. Some call it the communication era and with that misnomer in our heads we go through our daily life thinking that everything is under control, otherwise we would have heard about it by now. I have been finding lately that there may be a few gaps in this age of instant interpersonal communication that desperately need filling so that life can actually continue to move forward smoothly. After 4 minutes of arduous brainstorming (well it was more like a drizzle on a partly cloudy day) I have come up with a solution that integrates modern technology with one of the more prominent issues in our lives. It addresses that chaos factor in every mans life...the one that can take a perfectly settled day and tun it into a hectic frantic mess that makes you wonder why you even bothered getting out of bed that morning. I have come up with a simple phone app. that will remove this chaos factor from your lives and allow you to enjoy the freedom that you were led to believe you already had. You may be inundated with Apps. already and think to yourself "why do I need another? what can Kevin possibly have to say that hasn't been done already? How could one man change it all?". Well my answer is this. Do you REALLY think that you have control over your own life? Are you REALLY master of your own domain? Well you REALLY can be, and here is how.
I have entitled this bit of genius, this life changing billion dollar idea "THE RED STORM APP." As a child of the 80's I think I know what you are thinking. "But Kevin the cold war with Russia is over". Yes I agree that Russia is no longer a threat to our existence but I would argue that the cold war isn't over. It still takes place in our very homes on a monthly basis. It incapacitates our lives in a way that we shouldn't have to deal with and turns our beautiful days into nightmares. We have just gotten so used to it that we don't realize how debilitating it actually is, yet it governs our daily existence.
SO now to unveil the mechanics of this extraordinary invention so you can all stand and applaud. Here it is... we take every womens phone and affix a hormone sensor to it that measures their levels on a daily basis. It then sends us a text to warn us when things are out of balance so that we know what we are up against before we even step foot into our own house. Of course this only applies to ladies of menstruating age, but hey, they are the only ones that we really need to worry about anyway.
It could have several different levels of messages specifically geared to the individual women from "Do not approach without chocolate" to "Go fishing with the guys this weekend" to "This looks like it could be menopause, batten down the hatches you are in for a rough ride for the next couple years".
Ladies I don't mean for you to feel like you are being excluded from this at all. Wouldn't you like to have us men be more understanding of your plight? Wouldn't you like to have your man walk in the door and draw you a bubble bath and make you dinner without a word having been said between you because he already understands the emotional firestorm that you are experiencing due to your "Aunt Flo" making her monthly visit. Wouldn't you like to have us be more sensitive to your needs with out you even having to communicate them at a time when it is most difficult to do so without weeping or throwing your belongings at us? I have heard your pleas, I feel your pain, and now I can digitally map it with a spreadsheet and flowcharts (pun intended) that allow me to free up some time that would be normally spent apologizing profusely for being an insensitive clod to a locked bathroom door. The Native Americans understood. They would just send the "unclean" women to the other side of the camp for a week until the demons disappeared. I am merely trying to bring that philosophy to the digital age without having to set up a tent in the yard.
Shit they call them smart phones for a reason, lets actually use them for the betterment of mankind. Let the bidding for the copyright of this ingenious idea begin...now.
I have entitled this bit of genius, this life changing billion dollar idea "THE RED STORM APP." As a child of the 80's I think I know what you are thinking. "But Kevin the cold war with Russia is over". Yes I agree that Russia is no longer a threat to our existence but I would argue that the cold war isn't over. It still takes place in our very homes on a monthly basis. It incapacitates our lives in a way that we shouldn't have to deal with and turns our beautiful days into nightmares. We have just gotten so used to it that we don't realize how debilitating it actually is, yet it governs our daily existence.
SO now to unveil the mechanics of this extraordinary invention so you can all stand and applaud. Here it is... we take every womens phone and affix a hormone sensor to it that measures their levels on a daily basis. It then sends us a text to warn us when things are out of balance so that we know what we are up against before we even step foot into our own house. Of course this only applies to ladies of menstruating age, but hey, they are the only ones that we really need to worry about anyway.
It could have several different levels of messages specifically geared to the individual women from "Do not approach without chocolate" to "Go fishing with the guys this weekend" to "This looks like it could be menopause, batten down the hatches you are in for a rough ride for the next couple years".
Ladies I don't mean for you to feel like you are being excluded from this at all. Wouldn't you like to have us men be more understanding of your plight? Wouldn't you like to have your man walk in the door and draw you a bubble bath and make you dinner without a word having been said between you because he already understands the emotional firestorm that you are experiencing due to your "Aunt Flo" making her monthly visit. Wouldn't you like to have us be more sensitive to your needs with out you even having to communicate them at a time when it is most difficult to do so without weeping or throwing your belongings at us? I have heard your pleas, I feel your pain, and now I can digitally map it with a spreadsheet and flowcharts (pun intended) that allow me to free up some time that would be normally spent apologizing profusely for being an insensitive clod to a locked bathroom door. The Native Americans understood. They would just send the "unclean" women to the other side of the camp for a week until the demons disappeared. I am merely trying to bring that philosophy to the digital age without having to set up a tent in the yard.
Shit they call them smart phones for a reason, lets actually use them for the betterment of mankind. Let the bidding for the copyright of this ingenious idea begin...now.
Saturday, November 29, 2014
The Poop Diaries: Volume 1
I was given some extremely insightful wisdom about 11 years ago by a 4 1/2 year old boy known as Simon. To those who know me personally, you understand why this young man could gain and ultimately hold my attention enough to impart this pearl upon me. To those who don't, lets just say he is an integral part of my life.
In a world of seemingly un-ending falsehoods, the words that Simon said to me that day have yet to be disproven. They have passed close scrutiny and I now believe that they should be adopted by society as one of the few remaining constants left in this ever changing world.
Simon: " you know kev... poop is always funny"
Me: (trying not to laugh)" Yeah sim... but what if you fell face first into a giant steamy pile? You wouldn't think it was so funny then."
Simon: " No...but you would"
Me: "good point"
There it was. His irrefutable logic left me practically speechless on that fateful day. I felt as though I had climbed a mountain to see the wise old man, meditated for 30 days, and had one of life's deeper messages given to me on a scroll by singing angels. The reflection that I have given to these words for the past decade, from things I witness daily to applying them in stories of my youth, has left me with a "faith", if you will, in something more true than any religion has ever provided. I defy you, the reader, to think of a time in your life when something tragic happened to you involving some form of excrement. Something grotesque. Now tell that thing to a close friend or family member and you will understand what I mean. POOP IS ALWAYS FUNNY!
On that Note, I would like to refer you all to an incident that tested the boundaries of this theory.
It was a warm and vibrant summer-sunrise and I was the first one to stir. Unzipping the tent, I drank in the symphony of wildlife that that abounds on such early-mornings at our usual camping spot next to a river in the mountains of Vermont. Armed with only a small folding spade and some toilet-paper, I frantically tip-toed through camp and out on my downstream trek to find a distant place to deposit the reminder of last nights dinty-moore and excessive-beer gastrointestinal fiasco. Nothing funny unless you count me almost falling in the hole while trying to pull up my pants. It was funny to me while trekking back to camp only because I had come away unscathed. Had I not, then I might not have thought poop could have been funny at all that day.
Upon my return to camp I found that there was another early-riser. For confidentiality purposes lets call him Bryan Woodbury. Bryan was squatting next to the fire-pit, poking at coals from last nights blaze, encouraging them back to life to heat the morning coffee. This group of friends had camped together multiple times before, in this exact spot, over the years. In Bryan I have seen the type of person who is content with being silent in the mornings at our campsite, more to bask in the beauty of mother nature at that magical hour, than out of respect to those still sleeping in the 5 tents around us. I quietly stowed my shit-tickets back in my tent, filled the percolator with beans and water, placed it on the grate over the budding fire and sat down on a log across from him without a word having been spoken between us, merely a head nod of acknowledgement. For the next 20 minutes, as we sat both hypnotized by the fire, waiting for our fresh, hot, delicious beverage. Not a thing could be heard but the melodious sounds of happily chirping birds, the water of the stream flowing over the rocks, and the occasional snoring or grunts from aforementioned surrounding tents.
One of those grunts turned into a shuffle and then the unzipping of a tent as (lets call him Jason Pontbriant aka: Jay) dragged himself out of his canvas domicile in nothing but his boxers. He stood up, scratched his ass, and looked startled to see Bryan and I sitting there through the quarter of an eyelid he could muster raising. The indentations on his face, from riding his pillow through a hard nights sleep, were indicative of someone who had only very recently regained consciousness. He had the look of a man who has absolutely no intention of staying awake any longer than the time it takes to perform the task that is keeping him awake. He grunted at us and meandered off into the woods to relieve himself of whatever bodily function had so rudely interrupted his REM sleep.
Thats when it happened. This post-card-picturesque serenity that Bryan and I had been experiencing for the past 25 minutes of just sitting in the forest on a breathtaking summer morning was shattered by an ear-piercing, blood-curdling, disgusted scream.
Bryan and I made eye contact. It wasn't the kind of worried eye contact that two parents make when they hear their child screaming in the other room, it was more like the kind of look that the two parents next to them give each other as they are mentally assuring each other "not our kid". We went back to staring at the flames dancing around the coffee pot, patiently, in our zen happy-places.
Seconds later the peace was disrupted again when what sounded like a bull came charging out of the forest into the campgrounds in front of us. There he stood with a horrified incredulous look on his face pointing to his foot which he held off the ground, his pillow marks quivering with rage.
I JUST STEPPED IN SHIT...!!! Jay bellowed as he pointed to the elevated foot which I now noticed with a glance was dripping a tan mud-like substance from between his bare toes and saturated toilet paper stuck to his heel. "Wow that sucks" I thought to myself not really willing to give up my pre-coffee meditation for his misfortune. I glanced at Bryan but he was still staring into the fire wearing the totally blank look that I felt on my face.
I JUST STEPPED IN SOMEONES SHIT!!!! He screamed, to all within a 1/2 mile radius. He was hopping mad.
I...JUST... STEPPED...IN... SOMEONES... SHIT !!!! He announced to the world with a rage in a pitch that would make dogs cringe.
I glanced up at him with a slight look of sympathy, so as to acknowledge the situation, with the intention of giving him a "that really sucks" or a "sorry man, no one should be shitting that close to camp", but when I actually saw what was standing before me I bit my lip and refrained from saying anything. Jay stood there on one foot furiously pointing to his shit and toilet paper covered foot looking like he wanted to fight me and Bryan at the same time. The pillow lines were gone and replaced by veins jutting out of his forehead and his face had turned a color red that I didn't think possible in anything but turkeys. He was practically drooling with fury and at the same time trying to desperately to stand on one foot. So he kept hopping around trying not to fall over while going into a tirade about whomever had shit behind his tent.
WHOEVATHEFUCK SHIT BEHIND MY TENT BETTER... GET... OUT ...HERE ...AND FUCKINPICKITUP!!!
ONE OF YOU FUCKINASSHOLES SHIT BEHIND MY TENT AND I FUGGIN STEPPED IN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!
The problem was, that neither Bryan nor I were giving this explosion that was going off next to us much thought. Neither of us were the guilty party so we could still sort of feel for the guy in his nasty predicament. We were both still completely silent..hadn't moved a muscle... kind of still in our own perspective mental nirvana...or so I thought.
I glanced at Bryan and our eyes met. I realized then that he had started to put on his poker face and there was a tiny twinkle in his eye. In that .005 seconds that we made eye contact I knew that I couldn't look at Bryan again, while Jay was hopping around next to us, without losing the composure that I hadn't thought to lose previously.
There was a pause in the tirade after Jay had tried to coerce everybody out of their tent to hold an immediate public inquisition followed by promises to wipe his foot off on the guilty party with a good solid ass-kickin'. There was not a sound to be heard from any of the 5 tents.
Apparently this momentary pause in his rant, as he waited for takers, allowed a certain paranoia to creep in. The hours of merciless ridicule that he could foresee for the rest of the day dawned on him so he decided to try and nip it in the bud.
ITS NOT FUCKIN FUNNY!!!
I hadn't even thought to smile before because I could so closely feel the anger and horror that my good friend was going through. I mean...what a shitty start to the morning. Everyone says that but how many of you can actually mean it... literally? Bryan might be losing his composure but mine was still in check right up until about the sixth proclamation that this wasn't indeed "fuckin' funny". I can only surmise, in retrospect, that the little glimmer that I had witnessed in Bryan's eye, had grown into something more as Jay repeated this same phrase over and over with a higher pitch and volume each time and it was directed back at us. No one else showed up to his rant, and while realizing that the guilty party wasn't directly in front of him, he wanted a fight nonetheless. By the 6th repeated time of the statement he sounded like alvin the chipmunk with his balls in a vise.
ITS NOT FUCKIN FUNNNNYYYY!!!! Jay squeaked.
If looks could kill I'd be dead on the ground. And then it happened. In his zeal to express to us the unfunnyness of the situation he only achieved the opposite. I heard a noise come from Bryan that can only be described as though he had stuffed a live duck up his nose and was trying to stifle a sneeze at the same time. He had cracked. Thats when I realized... that this was actually extremely hilarious. Bry and I both burst out into loud riotous laughter in Jay's face. Jay could have chosen to beat us senseless right there, without either of us fighting back, we were laughing so hard. A look of anger, frustration, and betrayal clouded Jays face as I fell off the log I was sitting on. He was speechless with fury. Thats when all at once the 9 or so occupants of the tents all burst out laughing as well, which continued into a 10 min. group laughter where none of us could see each other but the sound of each others laughter only fueled the situation. Defeated, Jay swear-ingly hopped back into the woods to wash his foot off and seethe for a few hours muttering threats while refusing to set his foot to the ground lest he feel that squishing feeling again.
I guess my point to this all is... even when someone is trying to convince you otherwise, poop is always funny. Even when faced with danger, poop is always funny. Even when threatened with bodily harm ...you get the point. This theory has been unshakeable since it was laid down to me.
On a side note. 5 years after the incident, the real culprit finally fessed up to to the incident and Jay is now married to her.
Thanks for the laughs Ange, that was some funny shit.
In a world of seemingly un-ending falsehoods, the words that Simon said to me that day have yet to be disproven. They have passed close scrutiny and I now believe that they should be adopted by society as one of the few remaining constants left in this ever changing world.
Simon: " you know kev... poop is always funny"
Me: (trying not to laugh)" Yeah sim... but what if you fell face first into a giant steamy pile? You wouldn't think it was so funny then."
Simon: " No...but you would"
Me: "good point"
There it was. His irrefutable logic left me practically speechless on that fateful day. I felt as though I had climbed a mountain to see the wise old man, meditated for 30 days, and had one of life's deeper messages given to me on a scroll by singing angels. The reflection that I have given to these words for the past decade, from things I witness daily to applying them in stories of my youth, has left me with a "faith", if you will, in something more true than any religion has ever provided. I defy you, the reader, to think of a time in your life when something tragic happened to you involving some form of excrement. Something grotesque. Now tell that thing to a close friend or family member and you will understand what I mean. POOP IS ALWAYS FUNNY!
On that Note, I would like to refer you all to an incident that tested the boundaries of this theory.
It was a warm and vibrant summer-sunrise and I was the first one to stir. Unzipping the tent, I drank in the symphony of wildlife that that abounds on such early-mornings at our usual camping spot next to a river in the mountains of Vermont. Armed with only a small folding spade and some toilet-paper, I frantically tip-toed through camp and out on my downstream trek to find a distant place to deposit the reminder of last nights dinty-moore and excessive-beer gastrointestinal fiasco. Nothing funny unless you count me almost falling in the hole while trying to pull up my pants. It was funny to me while trekking back to camp only because I had come away unscathed. Had I not, then I might not have thought poop could have been funny at all that day.
Upon my return to camp I found that there was another early-riser. For confidentiality purposes lets call him Bryan Woodbury. Bryan was squatting next to the fire-pit, poking at coals from last nights blaze, encouraging them back to life to heat the morning coffee. This group of friends had camped together multiple times before, in this exact spot, over the years. In Bryan I have seen the type of person who is content with being silent in the mornings at our campsite, more to bask in the beauty of mother nature at that magical hour, than out of respect to those still sleeping in the 5 tents around us. I quietly stowed my shit-tickets back in my tent, filled the percolator with beans and water, placed it on the grate over the budding fire and sat down on a log across from him without a word having been spoken between us, merely a head nod of acknowledgement. For the next 20 minutes, as we sat both hypnotized by the fire, waiting for our fresh, hot, delicious beverage. Not a thing could be heard but the melodious sounds of happily chirping birds, the water of the stream flowing over the rocks, and the occasional snoring or grunts from aforementioned surrounding tents.
One of those grunts turned into a shuffle and then the unzipping of a tent as (lets call him Jason Pontbriant aka: Jay) dragged himself out of his canvas domicile in nothing but his boxers. He stood up, scratched his ass, and looked startled to see Bryan and I sitting there through the quarter of an eyelid he could muster raising. The indentations on his face, from riding his pillow through a hard nights sleep, were indicative of someone who had only very recently regained consciousness. He had the look of a man who has absolutely no intention of staying awake any longer than the time it takes to perform the task that is keeping him awake. He grunted at us and meandered off into the woods to relieve himself of whatever bodily function had so rudely interrupted his REM sleep.
Thats when it happened. This post-card-picturesque serenity that Bryan and I had been experiencing for the past 25 minutes of just sitting in the forest on a breathtaking summer morning was shattered by an ear-piercing, blood-curdling, disgusted scream.
Bryan and I made eye contact. It wasn't the kind of worried eye contact that two parents make when they hear their child screaming in the other room, it was more like the kind of look that the two parents next to them give each other as they are mentally assuring each other "not our kid". We went back to staring at the flames dancing around the coffee pot, patiently, in our zen happy-places.
Seconds later the peace was disrupted again when what sounded like a bull came charging out of the forest into the campgrounds in front of us. There he stood with a horrified incredulous look on his face pointing to his foot which he held off the ground, his pillow marks quivering with rage.
I JUST STEPPED IN SHIT...!!! Jay bellowed as he pointed to the elevated foot which I now noticed with a glance was dripping a tan mud-like substance from between his bare toes and saturated toilet paper stuck to his heel. "Wow that sucks" I thought to myself not really willing to give up my pre-coffee meditation for his misfortune. I glanced at Bryan but he was still staring into the fire wearing the totally blank look that I felt on my face.
I JUST STEPPED IN SOMEONES SHIT!!!! He screamed, to all within a 1/2 mile radius. He was hopping mad.
I...JUST... STEPPED...IN... SOMEONES... SHIT !!!! He announced to the world with a rage in a pitch that would make dogs cringe.
I glanced up at him with a slight look of sympathy, so as to acknowledge the situation, with the intention of giving him a "that really sucks" or a "sorry man, no one should be shitting that close to camp", but when I actually saw what was standing before me I bit my lip and refrained from saying anything. Jay stood there on one foot furiously pointing to his shit and toilet paper covered foot looking like he wanted to fight me and Bryan at the same time. The pillow lines were gone and replaced by veins jutting out of his forehead and his face had turned a color red that I didn't think possible in anything but turkeys. He was practically drooling with fury and at the same time trying to desperately to stand on one foot. So he kept hopping around trying not to fall over while going into a tirade about whomever had shit behind his tent.
WHOEVATHEFUCK SHIT BEHIND MY TENT BETTER... GET... OUT ...HERE ...AND FUCKINPICKITUP!!!
ONE OF YOU FUCKINASSHOLES SHIT BEHIND MY TENT AND I FUGGIN STEPPED IN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!
The problem was, that neither Bryan nor I were giving this explosion that was going off next to us much thought. Neither of us were the guilty party so we could still sort of feel for the guy in his nasty predicament. We were both still completely silent..hadn't moved a muscle... kind of still in our own perspective mental nirvana...or so I thought.
I glanced at Bryan and our eyes met. I realized then that he had started to put on his poker face and there was a tiny twinkle in his eye. In that .005 seconds that we made eye contact I knew that I couldn't look at Bryan again, while Jay was hopping around next to us, without losing the composure that I hadn't thought to lose previously.
There was a pause in the tirade after Jay had tried to coerce everybody out of their tent to hold an immediate public inquisition followed by promises to wipe his foot off on the guilty party with a good solid ass-kickin'. There was not a sound to be heard from any of the 5 tents.
Apparently this momentary pause in his rant, as he waited for takers, allowed a certain paranoia to creep in. The hours of merciless ridicule that he could foresee for the rest of the day dawned on him so he decided to try and nip it in the bud.
ITS NOT FUCKIN FUNNY!!!
I hadn't even thought to smile before because I could so closely feel the anger and horror that my good friend was going through. I mean...what a shitty start to the morning. Everyone says that but how many of you can actually mean it... literally? Bryan might be losing his composure but mine was still in check right up until about the sixth proclamation that this wasn't indeed "fuckin' funny". I can only surmise, in retrospect, that the little glimmer that I had witnessed in Bryan's eye, had grown into something more as Jay repeated this same phrase over and over with a higher pitch and volume each time and it was directed back at us. No one else showed up to his rant, and while realizing that the guilty party wasn't directly in front of him, he wanted a fight nonetheless. By the 6th repeated time of the statement he sounded like alvin the chipmunk with his balls in a vise.
ITS NOT FUCKIN FUNNNNYYYY!!!! Jay squeaked.
If looks could kill I'd be dead on the ground. And then it happened. In his zeal to express to us the unfunnyness of the situation he only achieved the opposite. I heard a noise come from Bryan that can only be described as though he had stuffed a live duck up his nose and was trying to stifle a sneeze at the same time. He had cracked. Thats when I realized... that this was actually extremely hilarious. Bry and I both burst out into loud riotous laughter in Jay's face. Jay could have chosen to beat us senseless right there, without either of us fighting back, we were laughing so hard. A look of anger, frustration, and betrayal clouded Jays face as I fell off the log I was sitting on. He was speechless with fury. Thats when all at once the 9 or so occupants of the tents all burst out laughing as well, which continued into a 10 min. group laughter where none of us could see each other but the sound of each others laughter only fueled the situation. Defeated, Jay swear-ingly hopped back into the woods to wash his foot off and seethe for a few hours muttering threats while refusing to set his foot to the ground lest he feel that squishing feeling again.
I guess my point to this all is... even when someone is trying to convince you otherwise, poop is always funny. Even when faced with danger, poop is always funny. Even when threatened with bodily harm ...you get the point. This theory has been unshakeable since it was laid down to me.
On a side note. 5 years after the incident, the real culprit finally fessed up to to the incident and Jay is now married to her.
Thanks for the laughs Ange, that was some funny shit.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Instant Karma (The Most Disgusting Thing I've Ever Seen)
I have worked in varied fields throughout my life which I would like to think has allowed me to witness a diversity of thought in different situation that, in retrospect, has been pivotal to my growth. Looking back I can pinpoint certain times that I now realize held more importance than others. Its these little slices of memory that pop into my head and allow me to navigate current situations merely by recalling how much worse things could be...or have been.
There is one such event that stands out in my mind that over the years has continuously educated and prepared me way more than I could have originally suspected on that fateful day. This experience made me believe in miracles and Karma in a time when my religous beliefs had all but come to a halt. This experience gave me a sense of something greater than myself governing the cosmic lessons, that occasionally, have to be forced upon us so that we will be able to deal with the future stresses of life without imploding.
I was 16 years old with a summer job on a deep sea/sport fishing boat which I had gotten because my sister was dating the son of the captain. Her boyfriend was a short, boistrous Irishman that enjoyed continuously ordering me around. Yes, I was the second mate and technically as first mate he had all of the power to lord over me in front of clients 5 miles offshore, that he desired. He knew this and was particularly fond of making me clean out the head whenever his machismo was threatened. Which turned me into an expert toilet cleaner. He was loud, brash, and annoying but I dealt with it knowing that if he ever stepped over the line too far I would beat the shit out of him once we made port. On this particular day his relationship with my sister was on the rocks and he had apparently decided to transfer whatever anger issues he had with her onto me. I was his bitch on the water... and he knew it.
The charter that day was packed. The 55' boat was filled to capacity with 45 office types that seemingly hadn't been this far from land for... well...ever. The sun was shining after a rainstorm that had blown through the previous evening and the resulting 6' swells moved the boat around enough to keep the khaki and izod crowd shuffling back and forth. There was the general restrained, underlying nervousness of a crowd of people who had been taken out of their comfort zone and dropped into something that they were hyped up to believe was going to be a lot cooler than what they were experiencing. I could tell quickly by the joking and one-upsmanship that they had brought the office dynamic to the boat and while the pecking order had been obvious when we left the dock it had morphed into something more based on the the shade of green that most turned by the time we set the anchor for the first time that day.
I had been running like crazy since 4:30 that morning when I stepped onto the boat. I began by wiping down the seats and benches from the nights precipitation and mopping the decks of their moisture as well. I diced up 6 gallons of sea-clams, some of which were still frozen and some teetering on the brink of liquification due to decomposition. (The bad clams usually went over the side without my dinner from the previous night...barely.) Then I tested all of the poles and gear that we would use that day, then made extra weighted leader/hook rigs for when we would inevitably need them later that day. The customers showed up en-mass at around 5:30 loaded up their beer, wine, and catered lunches and we were under way by 6:00am. My job was to keep them fishing, which included showing them how to bait their own hooks (...teach a man to fish...), then wrestle whatever came in over the side. This included dogfish, wolf-fish, sea cucumbers, herring, bluefish, striped bass, haddock, cod, flounder, etc. Also in my job description was untangling lines, setting up new rigs, washing the decks off, weighing anchor and every unsavory thing that the first mate could think of.
We moved the boat several times that day before finally settling into a decent spot where the fish were hitting more vigorously, all the while having the first mate ride my ass as though there were a speed of working greater than a flat-out run. He was trying to ingratiate himself to the corporate higher-ups by showing them how he strictly he ran his boat. Since I was lowest on the totem pole that day I had to bust ass and do all of the grunt work while he took the easy jobs, spent a lot of the time socializing, and kissing ass so that he would get a good tip at the end of the day.
The catered lobster-lunch brought on board that day had been obviously ordered by someone without the forethought not to bring something that was practically indescernable in smell to that of both the sea clams ( of which there were hundreds diced in buckets sitting in the sun next to every customer) and the fish we were pulling in over the sides and storing in the coolers for gutting and filleting on the way back to port. Needless to say most of the lobsters that had been served that day were released over the side, back into the wild, (having been partially digested) by those who could not wait for the head to be unoccuppied. There is a certain point in everyone when privacy with bodily functions is no longer an issue, and several people had found that point within themselves, that afternoon, as they " chummed " in front of and on their co-workers regardless of eithers company status.
There were maybe a dozen or so that were not bothered by the conditions. The CEO was one of them, which by my estimation made this whole excursion his idea and everyone else jumped on board for maybe a little quality, bonding, face-time with the boss. Those not fishing were sitting down with pained fake smiles on their faces, trying not to be the one that suggests that we go home lest they ruin this fine outing, while trying to keep their eyes on the horizon and not vomit into their fanny-pack. (yeah...we are talking 1980s here).
Per usual I had singled out the person on the boat that I could give shit to. Today it was the CEO. He was by far the coolest person on the charter and seemed to enjoy both that I wasn't lining up to kiss his ass, and the playful banter that with someone who didn't care who he was every other day. We had been at it for most of the day and I had caught him off gaurd with a couple of colerful comments. He had good-naturedly recovered in front of his subbordinates quite well, when (per usual) the first mate joined the puckered ranks and jumped to the CEO's aid as though he needed it.
"HEY KEVIN WHY DON'T YOU GO CLEAN OUT THE HEAD" he bellowed as he nudged the CEO, "AND TAKE AN EXTRA BUCKET OF WATER DOWN TO WASH THE WALLS TOO! HA HA HA!" There were a couple of chuckles from those on board who were clearly comfortable with reminding people where their place was. Nobody else was laughing especially those who had been in the bathroom in the last hour. I smiled and silently took a 5 gallon bucket with a rope tied to its handle, threw it overboard and pulled it back in before descending to the hold. I had tidied up the head approximately an hour earlier so was unprepared for what I was going to witness upon opening the door. It was the most horrifying scene I had ever witnessed. In the past hour that particular 12 square feet of boat had been baptised over every square inch with close to every possible bodily fluid. I fought my gag reflex as I surveyed what looked like a septic tank explosion and tried to decide how to begin. Gloves, mop, more water, to wash down walls, ceiling(?), floor, then unclog the head. I threw up in my mouth.
I donned the elbow-length rubber gloves and with several buckets of water and the mop, washed down all of the areas surrounding the toilet which I could do without actually entering the space. When I finally decided to enter (which took a while even though I was already covered from the neck down with fish scales and clam parts) I brought a fresh bucket of water to pour into the marine pump-toilet to get it unclogged. It was filled with a sewage collage, the sight of which made me almost add to it. The symphony of bodily fluids/solids and paper products (bloody and shitty) that occupied that bowl was something out of a sewage workers nightmare. I poured some water into the almost overflowing bowl and gave the handle a couple dozen pumps to try to get the contents to evacuate into the tank below...to no avail. I couldn't make the bowl flush no matter what I did short of reach my hands in, which is where I drew the line... gloved or not. The humiliation of dealing with the smug little prick upstairs wasn't even enough of a motivator to take that plunge into a dozen peoples' voluntary and involuntary bodily expulsions.I put my proverbial tail between my legs and climbed the stairs to the main deck to admit defeat to my nepoleonic boss.
He was in the middle of telling an embarrassing story about me from earlier in the season involving 10' swells, a bad tequilla hangover and a bucket of rotten sea clams that he had left in the sun the day before, to a group of guys that were still on their feet, the CEO among them. As I approached he was acting out the punchline of the story by holding a bucket, pretending to open it, making a horrible face, and then fake vomiting into the bucket. The group all burst out laughing at my expense as I drew near to inform their master story-teller that I had failed in my attempts to clean out the clogged shitter.
"GREAT" he bellowed with an over-dramatic stage-voice to make sure everybody on the boat heard. "HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TEACH YOU TO FLUSH THE TOILET ?!?!?!?" he orated while giving grinning sideways glances to his newfound successfull buddies. "I'M NOT GONNA SHOW YOU HOW TO WIPE YOUR ASS TOO!!! C'MON GET SOME WATER !!! JESUS! I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE!! C'MON LETS MOVE IT SAVLEN!!" As he descended the stairs the volume of his voice increased with each step to make sure his attentive audience could still hear the dressing down I was about to receive. "C'MON MOVE YOUR ASS I DON'T HAVE ALL DAY" he continued grabbing the bucket of water out of my hand. "YOU HAVE TO POUR THE WATER IN THE BOWL" here his condescension vanished for a second as he caught a glimpse of the contents already occupying the bowl. There was a quick gasp and almost a gag before he snapped to and remembered his performance. "THEN YOU GOTTA REALLY USE SOME MUSCLE SAVLEN AND PUMP IT HARD!! SOMETIMES IT GETS CLOGGED THEN YOU REALLY GOTTA PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT AND PUMP!! He grabbed the handle and began to pump as vigorously as his drama led him to believe was necessary.
It was as if time slowed at that moment to allow me to fully absorb what I was witnessing. He was looking at me to his left and grinnging during this whole performance while pumping authoritatively with his right arm. "YOU GOTTA HOLD ON TIGHT AND GIVE IT A GOOD PUMPIN!! YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THAT RIGHT SAVLEN?!?!?!? MAYBE YOUR JUST NOT OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW WHAT A GOOD PUMPIN IS LIKE!!!" Thats when we broke eye contactand he turned to peek if his furious intention had yielded any effect. He was still mouthing the word "like" and with his overemphasized enunciation if the word he turned and pumped on the downstroke at the same time.
That is when it happened. My life changed in that one milisecond that plays out in my mind over and over again. The inner turmoil/anger from busting my ass while having to listen to this hard-on all day immediately evaporated as the laws of physics took over and the magnificence of instant-karma was presented to me. SOMETHING...to this day I cannot say for sure what, finally gave. The fruit of his efforts dislodged from the bubbling fecal stew and started its fatefull trajectory, thranscending space, time, and a myriad of other unsavory obstacles, to make its seemingly pre-destined journey out of the bowl.
It was kinda beige and about the size of my thumb.
To butcher a basketball saying: "IT WAS NOTHIN BUT UVULA"
His eyes widened as his last word was cut short by the "something" in the back of his throat now blocking his airway. His hands went to his throat as the dawning of what had happened produced the mose grotesque facial expression imaginable and he started projectile vomiting.
All I could think as overwhelming spasms of uncontrollable laughter wracked my body and I fell to the floor was " I'm glad I don't have to do the Heimlich maneuver because he'd have to wait a while".
I did what most men do when faced with similar situations. I grabbed my dick and let the all-consuming wave of hilarity incapacitate me for the next five minutes until I couldn't breath and tears were shooting out of my eyes...as he painted the freshly cleaned walls of the head with his breakfast and perhaps a little of someone elses.
Eventually I heard the loudspeaker. While the sharp bark of the captains voice made my laughter almost subside, the dry-heaving made it continue. He had long since evacuated everything including probably yesterdays meals and was now wretching from just the pure disgust of it all. I couldn't say that I blamed him, but from where I was laying on the deck it was still just fucking hilarious.
"COULD I GET ONE OF MY MATES UP HERE NOW!!??" the amplified captains voice boomed through the speaker. I guessed that meant me because the other mate had a freshly soiled head to clean. Wiping the tears and drool from my face with a wet rag, I mustered just enough control to pull myself up the stairs to a mixture of confused faces staring at me. The ones closest probably had the unfortunate positioning to have auditorily witnessed the entire proceedings. Their faces while seemingly sharing in the sheer humor of it all, winced a little while mine would light up every time we would hear another heave, reminding them of their own recently discovered tender constitution. Still clutching my stomache ( I had done the bladder-control check at the bottom of the stairs and got the "OK" to release myself so that I could navigate the stairs) I made my way as quickly across the 18' beam as any person still feeling the after-shocks of such an emotional onslaught could in 6' swells. It was apparent by the time I had got to the captain that he had guessed the whole story. In his, I saw a face that must have mirrored my own, with a smile that widened every time we heard the clearly audible sounds of his son calling dinosaurs down below.
I merely had to fill in the details to the now gathering crowd, which took more control than I could muster at some points. Everyone (sick and not) now wanted to know how the "scene" had played out. After a couple of minutes of laughter while newcomers were filled in to the story, the captain took control of the situation as good captains do. He hushed the crowd for a moment and beckoned us all to listen with a hand-to-ear gesture. We could'nt hear a thing. Then he flipped on the loudspeaker again and spoke into the mic. "HEY IF YOUR DONE EATING OTHER PEOPLES' LUNCH DOWN THERE, YOU WANT TO FINISH CLEANING UP THE HEAD AND HELP US OUT TOPSIDE?!?!?" The response was an immediate one. I mean so immediate that it was heard even before the peals of laughter broke out from the passengers over the captains comment. The response was in the form of a sound that one would imagine could be heard when witnessing someone trying to pass their own rectum, ...orally.
The rest of the day went comparatively smooth considering for the rest of the day I had to do both of our jobs as the first mate was curled up in a groaning fetal position in the foreward hold. The morale of the boat was boosted as the swells subsided to a generally more agreeable 3'. Most on board had recovered from their own bouts of sea-sickness and all of them now had a story to joke about now and at the water-cooler next week regardless of how may fish we caught the rest of the day. The tips flowed generously in my direction from both passengers that appreciated that I did 2 mates' work and from those who just enjoyed the show. The CEO's plan of a comradery-building, out-of-office gathering turned out to be a fantastic success which he expressed to me by including me in a series of laughing, on-the-dock, posing with the catch, photos and $300 expertly placed into my hand (with eye contact) and the words "This is for you, you earned it."
There is one such event that stands out in my mind that over the years has continuously educated and prepared me way more than I could have originally suspected on that fateful day. This experience made me believe in miracles and Karma in a time when my religous beliefs had all but come to a halt. This experience gave me a sense of something greater than myself governing the cosmic lessons, that occasionally, have to be forced upon us so that we will be able to deal with the future stresses of life without imploding.
I was 16 years old with a summer job on a deep sea/sport fishing boat which I had gotten because my sister was dating the son of the captain. Her boyfriend was a short, boistrous Irishman that enjoyed continuously ordering me around. Yes, I was the second mate and technically as first mate he had all of the power to lord over me in front of clients 5 miles offshore, that he desired. He knew this and was particularly fond of making me clean out the head whenever his machismo was threatened. Which turned me into an expert toilet cleaner. He was loud, brash, and annoying but I dealt with it knowing that if he ever stepped over the line too far I would beat the shit out of him once we made port. On this particular day his relationship with my sister was on the rocks and he had apparently decided to transfer whatever anger issues he had with her onto me. I was his bitch on the water... and he knew it.
The charter that day was packed. The 55' boat was filled to capacity with 45 office types that seemingly hadn't been this far from land for... well...ever. The sun was shining after a rainstorm that had blown through the previous evening and the resulting 6' swells moved the boat around enough to keep the khaki and izod crowd shuffling back and forth. There was the general restrained, underlying nervousness of a crowd of people who had been taken out of their comfort zone and dropped into something that they were hyped up to believe was going to be a lot cooler than what they were experiencing. I could tell quickly by the joking and one-upsmanship that they had brought the office dynamic to the boat and while the pecking order had been obvious when we left the dock it had morphed into something more based on the the shade of green that most turned by the time we set the anchor for the first time that day.
I had been running like crazy since 4:30 that morning when I stepped onto the boat. I began by wiping down the seats and benches from the nights precipitation and mopping the decks of their moisture as well. I diced up 6 gallons of sea-clams, some of which were still frozen and some teetering on the brink of liquification due to decomposition. (The bad clams usually went over the side without my dinner from the previous night...barely.) Then I tested all of the poles and gear that we would use that day, then made extra weighted leader/hook rigs for when we would inevitably need them later that day. The customers showed up en-mass at around 5:30 loaded up their beer, wine, and catered lunches and we were under way by 6:00am. My job was to keep them fishing, which included showing them how to bait their own hooks (...teach a man to fish...), then wrestle whatever came in over the side. This included dogfish, wolf-fish, sea cucumbers, herring, bluefish, striped bass, haddock, cod, flounder, etc. Also in my job description was untangling lines, setting up new rigs, washing the decks off, weighing anchor and every unsavory thing that the first mate could think of.
We moved the boat several times that day before finally settling into a decent spot where the fish were hitting more vigorously, all the while having the first mate ride my ass as though there were a speed of working greater than a flat-out run. He was trying to ingratiate himself to the corporate higher-ups by showing them how he strictly he ran his boat. Since I was lowest on the totem pole that day I had to bust ass and do all of the grunt work while he took the easy jobs, spent a lot of the time socializing, and kissing ass so that he would get a good tip at the end of the day.
The catered lobster-lunch brought on board that day had been obviously ordered by someone without the forethought not to bring something that was practically indescernable in smell to that of both the sea clams ( of which there were hundreds diced in buckets sitting in the sun next to every customer) and the fish we were pulling in over the sides and storing in the coolers for gutting and filleting on the way back to port. Needless to say most of the lobsters that had been served that day were released over the side, back into the wild, (having been partially digested) by those who could not wait for the head to be unoccuppied. There is a certain point in everyone when privacy with bodily functions is no longer an issue, and several people had found that point within themselves, that afternoon, as they " chummed " in front of and on their co-workers regardless of eithers company status.
There were maybe a dozen or so that were not bothered by the conditions. The CEO was one of them, which by my estimation made this whole excursion his idea and everyone else jumped on board for maybe a little quality, bonding, face-time with the boss. Those not fishing were sitting down with pained fake smiles on their faces, trying not to be the one that suggests that we go home lest they ruin this fine outing, while trying to keep their eyes on the horizon and not vomit into their fanny-pack. (yeah...we are talking 1980s here).
Per usual I had singled out the person on the boat that I could give shit to. Today it was the CEO. He was by far the coolest person on the charter and seemed to enjoy both that I wasn't lining up to kiss his ass, and the playful banter that with someone who didn't care who he was every other day. We had been at it for most of the day and I had caught him off gaurd with a couple of colerful comments. He had good-naturedly recovered in front of his subbordinates quite well, when (per usual) the first mate joined the puckered ranks and jumped to the CEO's aid as though he needed it.
"HEY KEVIN WHY DON'T YOU GO CLEAN OUT THE HEAD" he bellowed as he nudged the CEO, "AND TAKE AN EXTRA BUCKET OF WATER DOWN TO WASH THE WALLS TOO! HA HA HA!" There were a couple of chuckles from those on board who were clearly comfortable with reminding people where their place was. Nobody else was laughing especially those who had been in the bathroom in the last hour. I smiled and silently took a 5 gallon bucket with a rope tied to its handle, threw it overboard and pulled it back in before descending to the hold. I had tidied up the head approximately an hour earlier so was unprepared for what I was going to witness upon opening the door. It was the most horrifying scene I had ever witnessed. In the past hour that particular 12 square feet of boat had been baptised over every square inch with close to every possible bodily fluid. I fought my gag reflex as I surveyed what looked like a septic tank explosion and tried to decide how to begin. Gloves, mop, more water, to wash down walls, ceiling(?), floor, then unclog the head. I threw up in my mouth.
I donned the elbow-length rubber gloves and with several buckets of water and the mop, washed down all of the areas surrounding the toilet which I could do without actually entering the space. When I finally decided to enter (which took a while even though I was already covered from the neck down with fish scales and clam parts) I brought a fresh bucket of water to pour into the marine pump-toilet to get it unclogged. It was filled with a sewage collage, the sight of which made me almost add to it. The symphony of bodily fluids/solids and paper products (bloody and shitty) that occupied that bowl was something out of a sewage workers nightmare. I poured some water into the almost overflowing bowl and gave the handle a couple dozen pumps to try to get the contents to evacuate into the tank below...to no avail. I couldn't make the bowl flush no matter what I did short of reach my hands in, which is where I drew the line... gloved or not. The humiliation of dealing with the smug little prick upstairs wasn't even enough of a motivator to take that plunge into a dozen peoples' voluntary and involuntary bodily expulsions.I put my proverbial tail between my legs and climbed the stairs to the main deck to admit defeat to my nepoleonic boss.
He was in the middle of telling an embarrassing story about me from earlier in the season involving 10' swells, a bad tequilla hangover and a bucket of rotten sea clams that he had left in the sun the day before, to a group of guys that were still on their feet, the CEO among them. As I approached he was acting out the punchline of the story by holding a bucket, pretending to open it, making a horrible face, and then fake vomiting into the bucket. The group all burst out laughing at my expense as I drew near to inform their master story-teller that I had failed in my attempts to clean out the clogged shitter.
"GREAT" he bellowed with an over-dramatic stage-voice to make sure everybody on the boat heard. "HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TEACH YOU TO FLUSH THE TOILET ?!?!?!?" he orated while giving grinning sideways glances to his newfound successfull buddies. "I'M NOT GONNA SHOW YOU HOW TO WIPE YOUR ASS TOO!!! C'MON GET SOME WATER !!! JESUS! I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE!! C'MON LETS MOVE IT SAVLEN!!" As he descended the stairs the volume of his voice increased with each step to make sure his attentive audience could still hear the dressing down I was about to receive. "C'MON MOVE YOUR ASS I DON'T HAVE ALL DAY" he continued grabbing the bucket of water out of my hand. "YOU HAVE TO POUR THE WATER IN THE BOWL" here his condescension vanished for a second as he caught a glimpse of the contents already occupying the bowl. There was a quick gasp and almost a gag before he snapped to and remembered his performance. "THEN YOU GOTTA REALLY USE SOME MUSCLE SAVLEN AND PUMP IT HARD!! SOMETIMES IT GETS CLOGGED THEN YOU REALLY GOTTA PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT AND PUMP!! He grabbed the handle and began to pump as vigorously as his drama led him to believe was necessary.
It was as if time slowed at that moment to allow me to fully absorb what I was witnessing. He was looking at me to his left and grinnging during this whole performance while pumping authoritatively with his right arm. "YOU GOTTA HOLD ON TIGHT AND GIVE IT A GOOD PUMPIN!! YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THAT RIGHT SAVLEN?!?!?!? MAYBE YOUR JUST NOT OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW WHAT A GOOD PUMPIN IS LIKE!!!" Thats when we broke eye contactand he turned to peek if his furious intention had yielded any effect. He was still mouthing the word "like" and with his overemphasized enunciation if the word he turned and pumped on the downstroke at the same time.
That is when it happened. My life changed in that one milisecond that plays out in my mind over and over again. The inner turmoil/anger from busting my ass while having to listen to this hard-on all day immediately evaporated as the laws of physics took over and the magnificence of instant-karma was presented to me. SOMETHING...to this day I cannot say for sure what, finally gave. The fruit of his efforts dislodged from the bubbling fecal stew and started its fatefull trajectory, thranscending space, time, and a myriad of other unsavory obstacles, to make its seemingly pre-destined journey out of the bowl.
It was kinda beige and about the size of my thumb.
To butcher a basketball saying: "IT WAS NOTHIN BUT UVULA"
His eyes widened as his last word was cut short by the "something" in the back of his throat now blocking his airway. His hands went to his throat as the dawning of what had happened produced the mose grotesque facial expression imaginable and he started projectile vomiting.
All I could think as overwhelming spasms of uncontrollable laughter wracked my body and I fell to the floor was " I'm glad I don't have to do the Heimlich maneuver because he'd have to wait a while".
I did what most men do when faced with similar situations. I grabbed my dick and let the all-consuming wave of hilarity incapacitate me for the next five minutes until I couldn't breath and tears were shooting out of my eyes...as he painted the freshly cleaned walls of the head with his breakfast and perhaps a little of someone elses.
Eventually I heard the loudspeaker. While the sharp bark of the captains voice made my laughter almost subside, the dry-heaving made it continue. He had long since evacuated everything including probably yesterdays meals and was now wretching from just the pure disgust of it all. I couldn't say that I blamed him, but from where I was laying on the deck it was still just fucking hilarious.
"COULD I GET ONE OF MY MATES UP HERE NOW!!??" the amplified captains voice boomed through the speaker. I guessed that meant me because the other mate had a freshly soiled head to clean. Wiping the tears and drool from my face with a wet rag, I mustered just enough control to pull myself up the stairs to a mixture of confused faces staring at me. The ones closest probably had the unfortunate positioning to have auditorily witnessed the entire proceedings. Their faces while seemingly sharing in the sheer humor of it all, winced a little while mine would light up every time we would hear another heave, reminding them of their own recently discovered tender constitution. Still clutching my stomache ( I had done the bladder-control check at the bottom of the stairs and got the "OK" to release myself so that I could navigate the stairs) I made my way as quickly across the 18' beam as any person still feeling the after-shocks of such an emotional onslaught could in 6' swells. It was apparent by the time I had got to the captain that he had guessed the whole story. In his, I saw a face that must have mirrored my own, with a smile that widened every time we heard the clearly audible sounds of his son calling dinosaurs down below.
I merely had to fill in the details to the now gathering crowd, which took more control than I could muster at some points. Everyone (sick and not) now wanted to know how the "scene" had played out. After a couple of minutes of laughter while newcomers were filled in to the story, the captain took control of the situation as good captains do. He hushed the crowd for a moment and beckoned us all to listen with a hand-to-ear gesture. We could'nt hear a thing. Then he flipped on the loudspeaker again and spoke into the mic. "HEY IF YOUR DONE EATING OTHER PEOPLES' LUNCH DOWN THERE, YOU WANT TO FINISH CLEANING UP THE HEAD AND HELP US OUT TOPSIDE?!?!?" The response was an immediate one. I mean so immediate that it was heard even before the peals of laughter broke out from the passengers over the captains comment. The response was in the form of a sound that one would imagine could be heard when witnessing someone trying to pass their own rectum, ...orally.
The rest of the day went comparatively smooth considering for the rest of the day I had to do both of our jobs as the first mate was curled up in a groaning fetal position in the foreward hold. The morale of the boat was boosted as the swells subsided to a generally more agreeable 3'. Most on board had recovered from their own bouts of sea-sickness and all of them now had a story to joke about now and at the water-cooler next week regardless of how may fish we caught the rest of the day. The tips flowed generously in my direction from both passengers that appreciated that I did 2 mates' work and from those who just enjoyed the show. The CEO's plan of a comradery-building, out-of-office gathering turned out to be a fantastic success which he expressed to me by including me in a series of laughing, on-the-dock, posing with the catch, photos and $300 expertly placed into my hand (with eye contact) and the words "This is for you, you earned it."
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