Into every life, a little blandness must fall, and mine is
no exception. Unfortunately, when you're the greatest writer who ever lived, people expect you to put out new material,
and I keep getting emails from whiney little bitches going, "Miiiiiiiike, when are you gonna post some new stories?!?", or, "Miiiiiiike,
you're no fun anymore!", or, "Miiiiiiiiiike, you gave me the crabs!!!"
Hey! Shut your porn holes!!! You think my life
is a sitcom?!? You think funny shit happens to me everyday?!? You think RID anti-lice ointment works?!?
HELL NO!!!
(Actually, some funny shit DID happen at Bier Garden last
night, as I "accidentally" peed on some guy's shoe because he was standing too close to me at the penis trough. Alas,
I was so drunk, I can't remember much more than that.)
Anywho, something someone posted on Mike's Forum
made me remember a funny story from the Blue Ridge days, and I decided to write it up.
Let me premise this one by stating that it's TOTAL FICTION.
The debaucheries described might open me up to legal prosecution, (if they were true, which they're not), so any resemblance
to an actual event in 1997 with actual people who were actually there- is sheer coincidence. This NEVER HAPPENED...
but even if it had, that was SEVEN YEARS AGO, and certain members of the Black Mountain police department should really learn
to let things go. I mean, really! Assault with a dead possum isn't even a real crime, and what kind of
law enforcement doubletalk is "destruction of private property"? Sounds like a made up charge to me.
Doesn't matter anyway, because this is, again, a fictional
story.
So, in my imagination, I was working at YMCA Blue Ridge
Assembly in Black Mountain, North Carolina, in the summer of 1997. My imaginary friend Rene Ramirez and I were
lifeguards at the time, and it had already been a crazy couple of weeks. We were both on the Board of Directors' shit
list for trumped up infractions like "drinking on the job" and "statutory rape", so we were actually trying to mind our P's
and Q's.
Alas, about the third week of the summer, Blue Ridge booked
two major conferences at the same time: Church of Christ, and Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA). To explain, Blue
Ridge was and is a conference center- kind of like a mountainous Club Med with cabins and dormitories and meeting halls and
ropes courses and tennis courts and bla, bla, bla. Each week the staff and I catered to a new group of patrons, and
this particular week was a doosey.
Not only were Church of Christ and FCA both HUGE conferences,
(about 150 people each), they loathed each other. Evidently, Jesus freaks don't always get along, and the Church of
Christ holy rollers disliked the rowdy "jocks" of FCA. Shouting matches would break out in the cafeteria, pranks were
orchestrated in the dormitories, and one youth minister's Pomeranian disappeared under "mysterious" circumstances.
(That last one had nothing to do with said rivalry, but I'd
always wanted to see what would happen if you put a Pomeranian in an industrial-sized dishwasher.)
As Rene and I were lifeguards, we were yoked with the daunting
task of keeping order at the pool, which I'd equate to being a one-legged man in an asskicking contest. The FCA kids
were large mammals, (most of them wrestlers or football players), so it was tough to command respect. Ah, but Rene and
I both trained with Super Asskicker at the time, so we felt we could hold our own.
It was a little like being bouncers at a night club, except
that we couldn't punch anybody, or rip their still beating colons out of their asses and show it to them before they died.
It was definitely a change of pace, but we still managed to have fun. One of my favorite things to do was to tell some
naive kid that the bottom of the pool smelled like strawberries. Invariably, said kid would dive to the bottom, (in
the deep end, when I did it right), put his nose against the tile, and take a big snort of water.
Talk about FUNNY!!! Man, it was more than worth the
CPR we'd have to administer later.
Anyway, about halfway through that hellacious week, (a Thursday
afternoon, I think), I was guarding the deep end when this big-as-shit junior youth minister started doing backflips off the
diving board. He was with Church of Christ, (as opposed to FCA), but he was a MONSTER! Six foot three, and at
least two hundred and forty pounds of solid muscle. I later learned that he was barely 18 years of age, and this-
coupled with his "leadership" position as a junior youth minister- made him an ultra mega smartass with an aversion to authority.
(sound familiar?)
For insurance reasons, backflips/gainers/etc. aren't allowed
on the Blue Ridge diving boards, so I blew my whistle, called him over, and warned him not to do it again. He was sarcastic
but otherwise receptive, so I figured that would be the end of it. I was wrong.
As soon as he got out of the pool, some of the younger Church
of Christ kids, (who this guy was supposed to be a roll model for), started "ooooing" and "ahhhhing" and saying shit
like, "That lifeguard sure told you, Snatchface!".
That's his name from now on: Snatchface, and solely
because he had a peachfuzz goatee that couldn't have made him look more gay if he'd been wearing crotchless chaps instead
of swimming trunks.
Apparently not wanting to be a pussy in front of the
little bastards that worshipped him, Snatchface went right back to the diving board and did it again.
MU... THUR... FUCKER...
Normally, I would've yanked his big ass out of the water and
smashed his skull with a waffle iron, but there were too many people around to make it look like an accident, and my waffle
iron was back at the staff dormitory.
Mike: (first blowing my whistle) "Hey, you! Greg Luganis!
Come'ere!"
Snatchface: (swimming over to my chair with a labia-like grin
on his face) "Yeah?"
Mike: "Didn't I JUST tell you not to do backflips off
the board?"
Snatchface: "So?"
Mike: "So?!? What- am I speaking Hebrew or
something? Don't do it means DON'T DO IT! Understand?"
Snatchface: "Not really," he scoffed, "It's not that big a
deal."
Mike: "No, not for you. But I'm guessing you're one
of the youth leaders, yeah? And that these kids look up to you, right? So what happens when some ten year old
tries a stunt like that and spills his cerebellum all over the board?"
Snatchface: "Man, you need to chill out."
His dismissal enraged me, and I leaned down in my chair and
gave him the patented 'Descado Glare'.
Mike: "Lemme' tell ya something, Sport. This
is my pool! You're a Christian, right? Well, on this deck there's me, and then there's Jesus, savvy?
You do one more flip off that diving board, and you're out for the rest of the week. Are we clear?"
Snatchface: "I don't know about you, but Jesus comes first
in my-"
Mike: "ARE WE CLEAR?" I barked, cutting him off.
Snatchface: "Uh, yeah, sure, whatever... Ya know, we
pay a lot of money to come here."
Mike: "Really? Well you're gonna pay a lot more
in medical bills if one of these kids cracks his head open trying to imitate you. The last thing I need is
to carry some pre-pubescent nose miner to the hospital because a pigfu-"
...I was gonna say, "a pigfucker like you",
but I stopped myself mid-sentence, instead taking a deep breath, composing myself, and exhaling slowly. "Look,
I know you're here to have fun, and I WANT you to have fun. But just do it safe, okay? You're a leader, act
like one."
Snatchface shrugged in resignation, and then nodded.
"Sorry man, won't happen again."
I thanked him, and he swam away to start a game of 'roughhouse'
with some of the younger kids in the shallow end. Another thirty minutes went by without incident, before me and the
other three lifeguards rotated positions, (which we did every hour to combat boredom). The Blue Ridge pool is a
giant "L", so two guards watch the shallow end, and two watch the deep end. I ended up guarding the shallow end with
Rene, while the youngest member of our staff, a guy named Burt, watched the deep end with our only female lifeguard, Julie.
Julie was blond, curvaceous, and very cute, with breasts the size my nuts, (which made her about a Double D).
On a side note, I had the opportunity to, well, FUCK
Julie one night when we were both drunk, but she had a tendency to be a drama queen, and she started dating some guy from
Black Mountain shortly after. In retrospect, I would've liked to have pushed those tata's together to make a "Mike Sandwich",
but I missed my chance.
Okay, so, despite what I thought was an amicable
resolution between myself and Snatchface, I continued to watch him like a hawk from the shallow end, something in his general
demeanor warning me that he wasn't through showing off. I donned my Oakley sunglasses so he couldn't tell where I was
looking, and I eventually noticed him in the center of a Church of Christ huddle, he and about six other kids talking in low,
hushed whispers.
I knew he was gonna do it again; I just knew it. But
there was nothing I could do about it. I'd set the boundary, and I was helpless until he crossed it.
Again, the deep end was now guarded by Burt and Julie respectively, but I
stood up and crossed my arms when Snatchface got out of the water and headed for the diving board. True to form, that
muscle bound ass bandit did a two-and-a-half gainer right in front of Burt, and- I SWEAR TO GOD- the entire pool started clapping.
MU... THUR... FUCKER...
Since I was the pool director, Burt looked over at me and
mouthed, "What should I do?", to which I mouthed back, "Kick his monkey ass out of the god damn pool!"
I augmented this by dragging my index finger across my neck: the prearranged signal to ask a patron to leave... or, to
cut a patron's throat. Burt didn't have a knife on him, so he went with the first option.
Given the distance and the clapping, I couldn't hear the conversation
that ensued, but it probably wasn't pleasant for Burt. Snatchface climbed out of the water and loomed over Burt's chair
with his hands on his hips, as if daring Burt to stand up. Regardless, Burt told him to leave, and after laughing in
Burt's face, Snatchface started walking around the deck towards me, (since my position was right next to the exit).
I wanted to break the son of a bitch in half. I wanted
to punk him down in front of all the kids that were clapping for him. But I decided to refrain. Once he came my
way, I'd tell him not to come back and then let it go... but he didn't come my way.
Instead, Snatchface sauntered over to Julie's chair, bent
down on one knee, and started flirting with her.
Aw, HEEEEEEEELL NO!!!
Fully prepared to lose my job in exchange for choking this
motherfucker retarded, I stomped to the deep end and came to a halt, my shadow falling across the kneeling Snatchface.
"Let's go," I growled, "You're out... permanently!"
Snatchface didn't move. He merely glanced
up at me, rolled his eyes, and then put his hand on Julie's thigh.
"So, is that a yes or a no about tonight?" he asked her.
"That's a no," Julie replied, obviously annoyed but
still polite, "I told you, I have a boyfriend."
"Don't know what you're missing," Snatchface chuckled, then
rising to his full height and glaring down at me, "Can I help you?"
"Sure can," I answered, "You can follow me to the desk." (to
clarify, the "desk" was right in front of the entrance/exit, where we checked patrons in and out. A female collegiate
from food service was manning it at the time.)
Snatchface: "Yeah, whatever... Bye Julie."
Julie didn't respond. She just kept looking at the pool.
Mike: "Let's go... NOW!!!"
I turned then and started to walk away, a host of beatdown
scenarios already playing in my mind. The concrete pool deck was a devastating place to unleash a throw or takedown,
but I figured the loss of my job warranted something spectacular, and- if I looked back and saw that Snatchface WASN'T
right behind me- I decided right then and there to tackle his ass into the pool, take him to the bottom, and hold him
down until he passed out. I'd been a lifeguard for five summers by that time, and I could hold my breath for minutes
at a time.
(My record is four minutes, twenty-seven seconds. Beat
that, bitches!)
But Snatchface came along; perhaps because of Julie dissing
him, or perhaps because he subconsciously knew that I was at the end of my rope. Who knows? Regardless, the brief
conversation between the deck and the exit went something like this:
Mike: "I assume Burt told you not to come back?"
Snatchface: "Who's Burt?"
Mike: "The dark haired lifeguard at the deep end."
Snatchface: "Yeah, he mumbled something, but he
never got the words past his throat."
Mike: "Uh huh, well, I don't seem to have that problem,
so lemme' make it crystal clear for ya. You're out. Don't come back to my pool- not this week, not next year,
not the year after that. You've lost your aquatic privileges."
Snatchface: "You're a fucking prick."
Mike: "How very Christian of you," I sneered, then donning
a markedly homosexual lisp, "Don't let the gate hit you in that tight little toosh on the way out."
Snatchface stopped dead in his tracks. "Huh?"
Mike: "You heard me, big boy. I don't wanna see
those sleek, muscular buns bruised... not by a gate, anyway."
His face contorted in horror, which was exactly what I was
expecting. You see, fundamentalist teenagers in the south are terrified by homosexuals, and he reacted to me 'hitting
on him' the same way I did the first time it happened to me, (see the Viva Los Gaygas story for more on that).
I thought he was gonna shit his trunks right there on the
pool deck.
Mike: "Run along now, pumpkin. Maybe we'll see each
other again at the Blue Ridge gym. You know where that is, right? What am I saying- of course you do! I
can tell you like to get sweaty."
The nearby desk girl from food service cracked up, but Snatchface
didn't seem to know I was fucking with him, and he got his stuff and hightailed it outta there like I'd just exposed my penis.
Perhaps if he'd been with his friends, Snatchface would've
thrown a punch at me. But, as I alluded to, he was a young ignorant Baptist from bumblefuck Alabama somewhere, and he
lacked the cultural intelligence to do anything but freak the fuck out.
"Bye sweetie!" I called after him, and the chick at the desk
cracked up again.
The girl in question, Sarah Bracken, was a good friend of
mine. But even if she hadn't been, I'd gained enough of a bushmaster reputation at Blue Ridge that no one would've
ever believed that I was actually homosexual, (despite the fact that I did and still do act that way sometimes for a cheap
laugh).
As I've mentioned, my life would be a whole lot easier (and
less expensive) if I poked the prostate, but, unfortunately, I'm all about the puss.
The next day, (Friday), came and went without incident, and
I left work at 5:30 to attend Super Asskicker's class in Asheville. Rene stayed behind on account of a date he'd made
with this little hottie from Black Mountain, so I went alone. By the time class was over, I had all but forgotten about
Thursday's confrontation, and I returned to Blue Ridge at around 8:00 PM.
Now, the road that leads to the staff dormitory goes right
by the pool, and I turned up said road to see a large group of people milling about on the pool deck.
"What the fuck?" I gasped, yanking my car into the rear parking
lot and skidding to a halt in the gravel.
The pool itself is surrounded by a fourteen foot, chain link
fence with barbed wire at the top, but the rear gate was open, and I saw one of the Blue Ridge operations managers, John Thomas,
talking to a group of Church of Christ leaders. I also saw Snatchface at the far end of the pool deck sitting in
my lifeguard chair.
Needless to say, I was livid.
Covered in sweat and still in my workout clothes, I stomped
over to John Thomas and just stood there too pissed to speak.
"Ah, Mike!" he greeted me, "I'm so glad you're here.
The conferees wanna have a baptism, but I told 'em we need a certified lifeguard present. Rules are rules, ya know."
John was acting annoyingly glib, but I could tell it was only
a facade to hide his nervousness. I was a loose cannon, after all, and I suspect he had no idea how I was gonna
react. Beyond him, a group of about five or six Church of Christ leaders, (all older men in their late thirties, early
forties), were watching me with smug, expectant expressions. Meanwhile, fifty or more kids were running around on the
deck unsupervised.
"John," I stated calmly, "Can I have a word with you
over here please?"
"Sure, sure!" he replied, then glancing back to the waiting
Church of Christ leaders, "Hang on for a second, I'll be right with you gentlemen."
The two of us walked over to my car, at which point I leaned
against it and crossed my arms.
"Uh, John? Why is half the CoC conference running
around on the deck without lifeguards?"
He put his hands up, opened palmed, as if I needed calming
down.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. I told 'em not to get in the water."
"That's not what I asked."
"Well, I let 'em in. I didn't have a key to
the front, so I opened the back gate."
I shook my head, remembering a conversation I'd had
with my direct boss, Polly, at the beginning of the summer during which I warned against anybody having keys
to the pool except for me.
"Look John, I know you're a lot higher up on the food chain
that I am, but you can't do stuff like this. If they wanna have an unscheduled pool event, then, fine! But you
should've kept 'em out until my guys could get down here. I'm sure Burt or Julie are up at the dorm, and all you had
to do was call for-"
"No, no," John cut me off, "I didn't have time to call.
Some of 'em were already inside."
"What?"
"A couple of the older boys climbed the fence, and they were
trying to open the gate from the inside. I was on my way down from the store, and I just happened to walk by."
I felt my face go red, but I tried to keep my voice steady
and even.
"I see... So, your solution to these guys breaking into
the pool was to open the back gate and let the rest of 'em in?"
"Well, um, I didn't want anybody else climbing over.
They're very adamant about this baptism, Mike. I was actually just about to call you, but since you're here now, I guess
it doesn't matter. Look, I lifeguarded in college, and they've got all their youth leaders here. How 'bout you
take the deep end, I'll take the shallow end, and we'll use some of the older people to fill in the rest."
I couldn't believe John was actually suggesting that I let
these motherfuckers get away with what they'd done, but I tried to play the "rational" card.
"I'm guessing we've got over fifty people out here,"
I said, "which means I need AT LEAST two guards. That's certified guards, John- not people who once threw a
lifebuoy at somebody back in college. The specified insurance ratio for a diving-board-equipped pool of this size is
one guard to every twenty five swimmers."
John shrugged.
"Okay, so, call up to the dorm and get some of your people
down here. I think I can convince the conferees to wait."
As soon as he said that, a splash echoed up from the distant
pool. One kid had pushed another into the shallow end, which caused another three to jump in behind him.
Without waiting for further bullshit from John, I stomped
past Church of Christ leaders and jogged over to the deck proper.
"LET'S GO, GUYS!!!" I bellowed, "OUT OF THE POOL!!!
COME ON, EVERYBODY OUT!!!"
Another kid jumped in just as I was speaking, but all
five obediently climbed out. None of the Church of Christ people so much as ATTEMPTED to help me control the
situation; in fact, a few were giggling like it was funny. By the way, it didn't escape my notice that Snatchface was
still sitting in my lifeguard chair at the far end with a sadistic puss on his face.
(I had no doubt that he was one of the ones who had climbed
over the fence.)
As soon as the pool was empty once more, I walked back
out the rear gate and addressed the older Church of Christ leaders, (who were now talking to John again).
"Hello, gentlemen!" I said with a fake smile, "I'm Mike Descado.
I'm the pool director here."
"Yeah, yeah," one of 'em groaned, a portly man with balding
gray hair, "So, are you gonna guard for us or not? It'll be dark soon."
"Sure he is-" John tried to answer for me, but I talked over
him.
"Here at Blue Ridge," I began, "we value the satisfaction
of our guests above everything except their safety, so I'm afraid I can't allow this to go on. I don't have the staff
present to adequately serve you at this time, but I'd be more than happy to arrange something tomorrow night."
"The Rapture Banquet is tomorrow night," the fat guy replied,
"This is the only time we have."
"Then I'm sorry. Per the stipulations of your contract,
the exclusive use of any Blue Ridge building- including the pool- has to be scheduled in advance."
"So, you're saying no to me? You're telling
us we can't celebrate our faith?"
"Nope. I'm saying that I value your patronage too much
to provide substandard service."
The other guy huffed.
"You're saying no to me. That's what I'm hearing.
You know how much we pay to come here every year?"
Snatchface had made a similar statement the day before on
the pool deck, and this pissed me off.
"No, I'm afraid I don't know. Finance isn't
my department. This pool is. But I dare say you don't pay enough to do whatever you want. If I allowed
you to go through with this, not only would I be exposing this non-profit conference center to certain insurance
liabilities, I would also be sending a message that it's okay for you and your people to climb over a fourteen foot fence
and attempt to break into one of our facilities. I have no intention of doing either, so, if you please, gather your flock
and go."
The portly leader just stared at me, groans of disapproval
coming from the others within earshot. I think I also heard John Thomas gasp like I'd just called Jesus a flatulating
butthead, but that was so long ago, I can't really remember.
(Uh, I mean, none of this ever took place, so I'm gonna
leave John's imaginary response up to the discression of you, the reader. If you want him to gasp, he
did. If you want him to pull his pants down and jerk off, he did. And if you don't, he didn't. ...Writing
fiction is tough!)
Amazingly, the older conferees obeyed me, and thus began
to gather up the kids and herd them off the pool deck. I stood by the rear gate with John Thomas as child after child
filed out, many of them glancing up at me with pouting expressions that seemed to say, "I hate you, mister...
You stole Christmas..."
Instead of countering with, "Fuck the lot of ya, you medieval-minded
little shits!", I smiled genuinely at each and every one of them, hoping to convey empathy rather than triumph. I really DID
feel bad, because it wasn't the kids' fault that their adult guardians were too "right with the Lord" to play by the
rules. All the latter would've had to do was ask to use the pool, and I would've gone out of my way to accommodate
their farcical aquatic ritual.
One of the last to exit was Snatchface, but he seemed more
smug than upset. The bastard actually stopped in front of me as he made his way past the gate.
"Hey! How's it going?" he greeted like we were old friends,
then leaning in close to my ear, "You just lost your job, faggot!", he hissed under his breath.
"Wow!" I mocked him, "I'm sure that's just what Jesus would
say!"
They departed in mass, but not before the portly Church of
Christ leader loudly announced that the baptism would continue in one of the creeks further down the mountain. I locked
the rear gate and then turned on John Thomas.
"Can I have your pool key, please?"
John just shook his head.
"You could've handled that better, Mike..." he said, then
jogging off to catch up with the Church of Christer's withOUT giving me his key.
I was fucked...
If he actually existed, (which he doesn't), John Thomas was
and is a super nice guy who currently works as a desk clerk at the new Reuter Family YMCA right here in Asheville. If
he actually existed, (which he doesn't), I got to see him again at about the same time I encountered the JKD instructor Turd
Ferguson in the story, "Holy Statutory Rape, Batman!!!" If he actually existed, (which he doesn't), I'd say that-
while he doesn't seem to remember me- John is very customer service oriented, very amicable, and very savvy with his communications
skills. Hypothetically, he's also one of the few Christians I know that actually tries to live like one. No violent
crusades for John. No. He simply endeavors to be a decent human being, and I respect that.
Nevertheless, I could tell by the look on his face seven years
ago, that my time at Blue Ridge was over. John's service with the YMCA, coupled with his formidable position as an operations
manager, pretty much ensured that my side of the story would hold no more weight than a fart in a hurricane,
and I came to blame.
Standing there alone in the gravel parking lot, my mood fell
to darkness, and- while it might make me seem like a pussy- I actually felt like crying. I'd worked at Blue Ridge
for three summers and one of the off seasons, (once I graduated from college), and the thought of leaving it was
unbearable. Over the last year, Blue Ridge had become my home, and the people I lived and worked with were like my family.
I came to blame...
I'll never know if Snatchface was solely responsible; in fact,
I'm sure he wasn't. But he became the target for my disdain, him and his Church of Christ holy rollers.
Ah, the righteous. How they speak with two
mouths. One pair of lips proclaim peace and love and salvation, while the other threatens damnation unless you
agree with them. Those conferees thought they could do whatever they wanted in the name of God, and I almost wish that
one of those kids had gotten hurt climbing over the fence, or running around on that pool deck. Perhaps then they would've
realized that...
I stopped writing just now. I laughed. I took
a shot.
This isn't a rant on religion, after all. This
is a (fictional) story about me and my (fictional) friends, and the (fictional) revenge we unleashed upon the Church of Christ.
As such, let's get back to what I like to call...
Night of the Black Mountain Nutriders!!!
After wiping the imaginary tears from my cheeks, I got in
my car and drove up to the top of the mountain where the staff dormitory- Younts Hall- was located. Now, Younts was
co-ed in the off season, which meant that twenty something guys and girls lived in close proximity to one another, kinda like
college without the classes. (Nightly orgies, anyone?) But during the summer, the staff grew to the point where
the guys took over Younts, and the girls lived down the mountain in a dormitory called Weatherford.
Anyway, Younts was all dudes at the time of this tale, so
I was dragging off my sweaty workout clothes as soon as I got out of the car. A shower and a new pair of jeans later,
I walked down the hall to Rene's room, hoping against hope that he'd already be back from his date. Rene was the dorm
director, so he had the "big" room, which boasted its own bathroom and shower.
Much to my surprise, Rene answered when I knocked, and
I found he and two other members of my "crew" sitting around the television watching Monty Python's: Holy Grail,
and taking tequila shots. The latter two were Matt McCoy and Pat Defrancisco.
Rene's been in other website stories that- unlike this one- were
"true", so I won't elaborate further on his pussy-gettin' Mexican ass. But Matt and Pat probably deserve a little description,
and I'll give that now. They were both about my height, (5' 9"), yet thin and gangly. Matt sported brown hair
and glasses, his deepset eyes always half closed, like he was perpetually high on pot. Matt also had a slow, "hippie"
way of speaking that further augmented the latter assumption. Contrastingly, Pat was a rowdy, black-headed Italian from
Boston, (I think), and he talked like a gangster on the HBO original series, The Sopranos. I have no idea if
Pat or his family was connected with the actual Mafia, but, if he wasn't, he certainly fostered that impression.
Whenever I got drunk enough to flat out ask Pat,
he would always shrug, smile, and say, "Of course not, Mike... But, if I was, I couldn't tell ya about it."
I miss Pat. He was one crazy son of a bitch. I
miss Matt and Rene too, but life has a way of dissolving the friendships of the past, and preserving them only as memory.
Who knows what those guys are like now? But, back then, we were all inebriated, sarcastic, and totally fearless.
Okay, so, I went into Rene's room, helped myself to one Tequila
shot, then another, and plopped down on an unoccupied futon. I offered the standard "what up's?" to the guys, but my
small entourage could tell that something was wrong- undoubtedly because I didn't laugh when the Monty Python rabbit attacked
King Arthur and his armor soiling knights.
"Who shit in your cornflakes?" Rene asked at last.
"Jesus..." I replied, "Jesus took a divine shit right in my
cornflakes."
"Huh?"
"Aw, never mind... What happened with your date?"
My question prompted Rene to go into a misogynistic tirade
about how said date had NOT met him at Applebee's in Asheville, and how he had every intention of never speaking to her
"flat-chested ass" again.
Replying to a tale they'd heard before I arrived, Matt and
Pat started in on Rene, thus insinuating that the girl was probably lying about her age, and that she'd probably stood him
up because it was past her curfew, and that they were gonna report him to the Buncombe County Sheriff's department as a pedophile.
It was all fun and games as usual, but the conversation eventually
returned to my sour mood, and- after many, many Tequila shots- I told them the story of Snatchface and the thwarted Church
of Christ baptism.
Since he'd been there, Rene already knew about me kicking
Snatchface out on Thursday, but he was shocked by the more recent incident, increasing inebriation making it seem like an
unspeakable crime to all of us. We kept drinking, and I kept talking, going on and on about how I had fucked myself,
and how I was gonna lose my job, and how I probably wasn't gonna get to go to Japan.
It was Pat that first put the idea of revenge into our heads,
for he went off on a tangent about how easy it was to "whack" somebody.
We were all smart guys, so assassination was never a serious
option- but that didn't stop a subsequent host of brainstorming.
As was true of FCA, Church of Christ would be leaving the
day after tomorrow, (Sunday), and since most of the senior Blue Ridge staff would be in attendance at their Rapture Banquet,
we had to act tonight if we were gonna act at all.
The plan we decided on will become apparent as I describe
it, (not that it ever happened), so I won't go into the details right now. The one thing I WILL elaborate on, is
the name we chose for ourselves. We went through a barrage of possibilities, ranging from The Four Horsemen,
to The Skeletors, to Honkey Thunder.
The last one really didn't work for Rene, since he was Mexican,
so we decided on something totally new... The Black Mountain Nutriders.
Up until very recently, I thought I had personally coined
the term "Nutrider" that night, which refers to an individual with balls so big, that he can ride them like a horse.
Buuuuuut, the other day, someone referred to me as a "Nutrider" on my forum, so, I guess, I can't really take credit.
Anyway, with the courage of South American alcohol coursing
through our veins, Pat, Rene, Matt and I ransacked each other's closets to procure the closest things to ninja outfits we
could find. Our dark jeans and dark, long sleeved shirts were further augmented by used charcoal from the dorm barbeque
grill outside, our hands and faces smeared with grit.
It was eleven o'clock by this time, so we stole from Younts
dorm undetected. Our mission: the annihilation of the Church of Christ conference...
To our knowledge, no staffers in the one-hundred-year tenure
of Blue Ridge had ever wantonly ATTACKED a group of conferees, and I felt a surge of pride when my friends dismissed my drunken
martyr warnings that this night might likewise cost them their jobs.
"They drew first blood," Rene said in a crappy Sylvester
Stalone impression, and the rest is fabricated history.
The moon above was blocked out by clouds, so we crept
through the woods as invisible ghosts; our initial target, the pool. Because the pool house was the only place we had
space enough to store the decorations for the Church of Christ Rapture Banquet, we hit it first, thus kicking
the door in, (instead of using my key), and stealing all the flags and posters and miniature bibles the fuckers planned on utilizing
the next day.
I should probably point out that Matt and Pat were religious
in their own ways- Rene doubly so- but none of 'em had any problem with the desecration that followed.
Thanks, Tequila...
We tore bibles apart, we wiped our sweaty asses with
various country flags, and I'm fairly certain that Pat jerked off on a crocheted, crimson and gold banner that read, "He is
Risen!".
See why I don't believe in God? I mean, really!
If there was a God, he'd have struck us down with lightning bolts, or fireballs, or maybe even some locusts.
Anyway, we carried the Church of Christ decorations down
the mountain and threw them into a shallow creek, (the same creek in which they'd held their baptism), thus insuring that
the remnants would be discovered the next morning.
So far, we hadn't been seen by anybody, and it was time to
put the second part of our plan into play- one we'd brought a host of contraband in vinyl backpacks for.
Now, despite having all the comforts of a modern hotel, Blue
Ridge is still a YMCA conference center at the top of a wooded mountain, so it's kind of cut off from civilization.
The up and down roads traverse a virtually untamed ecosystem, providing an abundance of dead animals whose unfortunate fate
it was to meet up with a passing car.
As such, we spent the next hour scouring the property for
road kill. Our double thick Hefty garbage bag came to sport five squirrels, two possums, and
a raccoon once midnight rolled around, and we furthered our quarry with urine-filled water balloons and a carton of eggs
Matt had stolen from the dorm refrigerator.
Why all the ammunition, you might ask? Well, we had
a catapult.
Okay, it wasn't exactly a catapult, but a twenty-foot bungee
cord with an attached ropes' course harness at the center, is just as good.
The Church of Christ conference was largely confined to the
main building at Blue Ridge: Lee Hall, so the boys and I took up position in the parking lot below, thus using
the roll bar of an uncovered jeep, and the jutting bumper of a Chevy Nova, (with a full parking space between the two vehicles),
to tie off the ends of our makeshift siege weapon.
This is probably a good time to mention Pat's contribution
to the impending holocaust, as he had a cache of fireworks he'd brought back from Johnson City, Tennessee two weeks earlier
during a trip to see his cousin.
With the catapult assembled, (and our rotting ammunition close
at hand), the four of us grabbed fistfuls of bottle rockets and roman candles, swore an oath to remain Nutriders forever,
and then unleashed hell.
Cigarette lighters were sparked, fuses were ignited, and we
ran through the parking lot assaulting every Church of Christ vehicle we could find with Pat's fireworks.
Matt sent a bottle rocket straight into the tailpipe of a Volkswagen beetle, Rene pelted the leather seats of a Corvette convertible
with roman candle flares, and I shattered the window of a Toyota Cressida with an elbow so I could shove an M-80 firecracker
into the glove compartment.
As for Pat... Well, Pat topped us all by kicking in
the glass door of the Church of Christ travel bus, and then tossing a whole packet of lit smoke bombs inside. As luck
would have it, something caught fire within, and soon, flames appeared in the smoky windows.
And so it went for the next twenty minutes, a kind of euphoric/drunken
rage talking hold of us. No car or truck was too expensive to befoul, and the damage we caused- while superficial
for the most part- must've cost in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Safe within the numbing blanket of Tequila, we waged war on
the Church of Christer's, and it was only when our frantic howls, (and the fire inside the bus), gained notice, that
we changed strategy.
Above, the lights of Lee Hall were flicking on one by one,
and a host of people began to gather on the massive front porch. I could hear their distant whispers, I could see their
shadowed silhouettes, and my eyes locked to a familiar figure- one that stepped out and bellowed a hearty laugh,
as if the fireworks' display was some pre-arranged event orchestrated by Blue Ridge.
I'd heard that laugh before; I'd seen that hulking outline
before, and I knew it was Snatchface...
I probably didn't make this clear before, but, up until now,
Rene had pretty much been the leader. Yet, something about seeing my hated enemy standing aloof on the porch brought
out the commander in me, and I ordered my friends into motion.
"Matt! Rene!" I cried, "The catapult!
Pull it back! Pat, you get the ammo!"
"Don't yell our names, you fuck!" Pat snarled. But I
ignored him, then jogging up to stand behind Matt and Rene.
The latter two didn't seem to give a shit if I yelled their
names or not.
Yanking the sleeves of his shirt down so he wouldn't have
to touch roadkill, Pat delved into the garbage bag and pulled out a mangled squirrel, then running over to put it
in the harness of the makeshift catapult.
Matt and Rene grunted as they pulled the bungee cord further
back.
"DO IT!!!" I said, and they let go, the cord snapping forward
with the most unexpected result imaginable. It turns out that a dead squirrel doesn't weigh that much, and since one
of its ratty little claws had accidentally been hooked around the harness strap, its inertia wasn't enough to launch it
against our enemies.
The cord snapped to its pinnacle and then recoiled, sending
thirty two ounces of rotting animal flesh in the opposite direction.
BAM!!! I got it right in the face...
My open mouth was filled with putrid fur, and though the impact
knocked me flat, I still had the presence of mind to turn over and lever myself up on all fours before vomiting.
"BLAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!"
Now, back in college, I often earned money by drinking or
eating things that people bet I wouldn't. One time, I actually hooked up with a waitress at this restaurant called
Garfield's in Greenville after she witnessed me eating, then regurgitating, half a box of Crayola Crayons.
(Hey! Don't ask me! I can't even imagine
how that was attractive... Chicks are nuts.)
Back to 1997:
It was the most hellacious thing I've ever imbibed,
and, after vomiting my spleen, I looked up to see more and more people coming out to mill around on the porch of Lee
Hall. No one yet realized that the fireworks' show WASN'T vandalism, and my attention returned to Snatchface's distant
but familiar silhouette.
"Again!" I groaned, grabbing the harness and pulling it back
myself, "Get me something bigger, Pat!"
"Dude!" Matt laughed in his pot smoking way, "We are SOOOO
busted! They can totally see us!"
"No they can't!" I said, "It's light up there,
dark down here, and we've got charcoal all over our faces. PULL!!!"
They did, and the bungee cord reached is pinnacle just as
Pat put our only raccoon into the harness.
"FIRE!!!" I screamed, loud enough for the entire conference
center to hear me.
A sharp crack, a whoosh of air, and then a brief silence which
preceded the audible breaking of glass. The raccoon corpse had gone through a window and landed in the lobby beyond,
causing a host of female screams from inside.
Pandemonium ensued, the dark figures on the porch above, zigzagging
this way and that. I heard someone snarl, "It's those gosh darned FCA's!!!", and then a half a dozen people started
running down the steps towards us.
"Let's go!!!" Rene shrieked, him and Matt turning as if they
were gonna bolt.
"STAY PUT, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!!!" I thundered, "ONE MORE!!!
ONE MORE!!! GRAB THAT LINE AND PULLLLLLL!!!!"
To this day I have no idea why Matt and Rene did what I said,
but they helped me yank the catapult back into position. Pat reacted similarly to pluck a disemboweled
possum from the garbage bag, bare-handed, and shove it into the harness.
A small mob was running down from Lee Hall now, Snatchface
one of them. My gaze had never left him, and- since I was holding the harness- I took aim on his charging form...
Ya know, I don't believe in deities, (I think I said as much
earlier in this post), but sometimes, miracles DO happen, and this was one of the few times I encountered a situation
that's beyond chance.
I yelled "FIRE!!!" like Russell Crow in the movie Gladiator,
and ten pounds of mangled fur and rotting possum flesh flew out like a heat seeking missile to nail Snatchface
center mass.
WAAPAAAACK!!!
Remember, this narration is fictional, but, if I really had
done this, and if I really had seen a two hundred and forty pound behemoth dropped by a possum- it was
the most extraordinary displays of employed physics ever witnessed by man. Snatchface went horizontal in mid-air, literally, then
to hit the concrete parking lot like Alex Soprano hitting that clothesline in the "Firecracker Wars" story.
I've seen a lot of crazy shit in my time. I've seen
a drunken donkey kick a fraternity brother of mine (Sandy Weathers) through a stained-glass window without hurting him.
I've seen the wrestler Lex Luger start crying on a plane from Atlanta to Los Angeles because this five-year-old girl sitting
next to him called him a "boo boo head". I've seen Super Asskicker beat the hell of a real life ninja without breaking
a sweat. And I've even seen a grown man play leapfrog with what appeared to be a no-shit unicorn, (which didn't work
out too well for him, lemme' tell ya!).
But none of these things compare to the possum assault I beheld
in a shadowed parking lot at YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly in 1997. The odds of me hitting a moving target at forty yards
with roadkill fired from a bungee cord catapult, are astronomical at best. But then, miracles do indeed happen to me,
my reader...
I attribute no supernatural significance to them, yet, perhaps
the Greeks were right, and fortune favors the brave, (whether alcohol is the source of said bravery or not).
"NUTRIDERS!!!" I called, knocking Pat on his ass as I fled
towards the nearby treeline, "RUN AWAAAAAY!!!"
The subsequent pound of footsteps behind me gave assurance
that my compatriots were in tow, and I broke free from the scratching limbs and thorny bushes to see my beloved, fence-enclosed
pool shimmering in the moonlight.
A witch hunt group of Church of Christer's were right on our
heels, but we only paused long enough to throw eggs and urine balloons at them, before vanishing into yet another
assemblage of trees. All four of us knew the flanking wilderness like the backs of our scrotums, and we
lost 'em in the scrub with minimal effort.
Nevertheless, the rendezvous back at Younts was quick
and tense, each of us scampering off to our respective rooms to wait without sleep for a knock on the door that never came.
This was to be the first and only night of the so-named, Black
Mountain Nutriders, and while there were many times before and after that merit mention, this was the single occurrence
under which we immortalized that designation. Despite some of my more recent stories, I have never again acted with
such reckless abandon... and I truly regret that.
Aftermath:
The firecracker assault on the vehicles in the Lee Hall
parking lot, and the road kill volley that followed, were blamed on FCA, (whose long standing rivalry with Church of Christ
made them the primary suspects). No one person was ever named, but- last I heard- the lawsuit between the two
organizations is still going on some seven years later. Apparently, the universal bond of Christianity doesn't quite
supercede the required retooling of a travel bus set on fire by smoke bombs.
The CoC Rapture Banquet went off without a hitch, and both
conferences departed Blue Ridge the following Sunday. Though they still attend each year in the summer, the two groups
were never simultaneously booked again.
As for us, no one ever accused our "Nutriders" of having
anything to do with the holocaust, and we went our separate ways. Rene stayed on at Blue Ridge, (where he works even
now), eventually embracing a certain form of Christianity which allows him to do pretty much whatever he wants. We're
not friends anymore, (for reasons that have nothing to do with this story), but we seem to fall into the old routine whenever
we run into each other in Asheville. The last time was this past New Year's Eve, where his "violent" brand of affection
forced me to take him to the ground with a wrist lock when his drunk Mexican ass decided it'd be a good idea to knee me repeatedly
in the stomach.
Don't get me wrong, Rene was and is a great guy, but his religious
fanaticism has gone beyond the point where I can hang out with him.
Sad...
Matt McCoy stayed in the conference center business, and-
after working several ropes' courses, and even hiking the Blue Ridge Parkway like the hippie he was- eventually became the
Adventure Director for some company whose name eludes me. Matt and Rene still hang out when geography permits.
Pat Defrancisco went back to school and got his degree up
north somewhere, but I lost track of him after that, so I can only guess what became of him. He was a great guy too,
and one of the few people I consider incapable of bullshit.
As for me, well, my first altercation with the Church of Christ
leaders at the pool that day, did indeed cost me my job. I was allowed to go to Japan, (to live out the rest of the
summer); but, after returning to give a pro-YMCA speech to the board of directors, I was informed that my contract
wasn't being renewed. I moved in with my then girlfriend for a little while, did some work as a barroom bouncer, and
then returned home to Mississippi, where I spent the next two years earning my master's degree in Biology Education.
As usual, my stories are as much about learning as they
are about humor, and this one (including its aftermath) taught me a lot. Like Rene, I'd probably STILL be working at
Blue Ridge if this had never happened, and that means that I wouldn't have gone to graduate school- where I truly honed not
only my critical thinking skills, but also my martial arts skills.
After twenty something years training bullshit, and one year
training with SuperAsskicker, I was primed for self-discovery... and that's exactly what happened. The boy that left
North Carolina in 1997, was totally different from the man that returned in 1999, and despite the fact that I'm now a corporate
slave- I love my life!
If I died tomorrow, I would do so knowing that I'd cheated
myself out of very little, and I think that's an important lesson to pass on.
BY NO MEANS am I advocating criminal activity, (which goes
without saying, since this story is a fairytale), but what I do advocate, is standing up for what's just, what's
thrilling, and what flies in the face of adversity. No matter who you are, my reader, this is the only chance you will
ever have, so embrace it, cherish it, and then smile a "Descado" smile.
As the song goes, enjoy the power and beauty of your youth...
Do one thing, everyday, that scares you... Don't be reckless with other people's hearts; don't put up with people
who are reckless with yours... And, most importantly, know that your choices are half chance.
So are everybody else's...
