Okay, so there’s been much speculation on Mike’s Forum as to my whereabouts lately… whether I’m alive or dead, shacked up or castrated, elected city councilman or cleverly done away with by evil cats.  This is my fault entirely, as I’ve been too caught up in my own petty shit to update the website.  I’m changing jobs at work, one of my best friends is getting married, I snapped a tendon in my ankle, I’m soon to meet a hot-as-fuck internet cohort of mine, Kyle is selling the house, and I’m now teaching a semi-combative jiu-jitsu class on the weekends.  

 

The aforementioned sale of Kyle’s house has likewise forced me to move, and I’ve been hauling my clothes and whiskey and punching bags from one lair to another for quite a while now.

 

As such, FUCK the lot of ya!  It’s MY website!  I’ll post new stories when I fucking feel like it, and- in the meantime- you can all lick my smooth and salty taint!  (I used the adjective “smooth” because I recently shaved my balls, which I highly recommend.  Much to my surprise, it really DOES make your dick look bigger.)

 

Anyway, I figured it was high time I vomited out some new stuff, and, as fate would have it, an email I got last Friday gave me a host of long-forgotten material.  Said email was from one my old summer-camp-counselor-buddies who were gonna call “Tank”.  I’m using that alias because Tank is now a born-again Christian, (despite my most sincere attempts to convince him otherwise), and because, well, he’s built like a Sherman Tank.  Tank’s about five foot six, two hundred and thirty pounds of solid muscle.  He was an all conference football player back in high school, (when I first met him), and though he’s now drifted into the role of happily married youth minister for a Baptist Church in Brandon Mississippi, he could still rip the arms off Beastman from Masters of the Universe.

 

Tank’s never had any martial arts training, yet, our early testosterone driven melees ended with him taking me to the ground and holding me there until I gave up.  True, this was back when we were both eighteen-year-old kids, and nowadays I would choke him retarded with little effort, but Tank’s girth is still an impressive collection of genetic gifts, and I’d choose him for a wingman any day in a fight.

 

In addition, Tank’s very, very good-looking, (according to the numerous girls we’ve encountered from time to time in our exploits together), and I often found it disconcerting when chicks went after him instead of me.

 

Insert vanity…

 

Now, life being what it is, Tank and I would periodically lose contact, each of us going our separate ways for years at a time before one of us would track the other down.  The last time we met face to face was October of 2002.  I had gone to my cousin Marty’s wedding in Mississippi, (which is another fucktastic story in and of itself), and was enduring the thirteen hour drive back to Asheville, when I stopped in Nashville Tennessee.  You see, the post-wedding hangover had left me in a sorry state indeed, and a halfway layover at a hotel seemed a grand idea.

 

I checked in about three o’clock, and an hour after a trip to the local liquor store, I was feeling very, very ornery… and very, very lonely.  Any reader prone to drinking will know what came next, because I eventually pulled my out little white phone list and started drunk-dialing people at random.  

 

Whether by fate or by accident, the first number that yielded an answer was Tank’s cell phone, and the semantics couldn’t have been more perfectly orchestrated:

 

Tank: Hello?

 

Me: Who the fuck is this?

 

Tank: You called me…  Who the fuck is this?

 

(Keep in mind, I hadn’t seen or spoken to Tank in five years.)

 

Me: Who am I?!?  WHO AM I?!?  Bitch, I’m the guy that fucked your mother with a cucumber while the entire cast from Love Boat watched on!  …Isaac was there!  He served me drinks mid-copulation on the Pomona Deck!

 

Tank: Mike…?  No fucking way!  Mike?!?

 

Me: That’s my name, you son of a bitch!  Who are you?

 

[Unabashed laugher on the other end of the line, and then:]

 

Tank:  Are you completely wasted or something?  You called me, ass!

 

Me: Oh…  Tank…  Yeah, okay…  How’d you know it was me?

 

Tank: Nobody else would use the word mid-copulation while insulting my mother.  Where are you?

 

I laughed as well, though I was already too drunk to form coherent sentences.

 

Me: Nashville…  Holiday Inn…  West Inn Ave…  Room 206…

 

Tank went apeshit on the other end of the line, because he was presently in Johnson City for some kind of homo convention, and since it’s only a three hour drive from Nashville…  Yeah, you know what happened.

 

I spent the next three hours drinking and masturbating and looking through the local yellow pages for nearby clubs Tank and I could peruse.  Needless to say, I was in full “Drunk Mike” mode by the time he knocked on my hotel room door, and since I’d already taken a shower and gotten prettied up, our greeting went something like this.

 

* knock * knock * knock *

 

“Hey man!”  Tank exclaimed, moving in to hug me behind a goofy looking smile.

 

I pushed him away and out into the hall.

 

“No time,” I grunted, “Drinking…  Chicks…  Must…”  *burp*  “Drinking…”

 

We “caught up” as I led him down the stairs and out into the parking lot, intentionally downplaying the warranted sentimental shit for more pressing matters- like walking across the street to the nearest bar.  No need to tell you what we talked about, how I learned of his marriage and his new spiritual vocation.  It doesn’t matter.  What matters is what happened when we got to the bar, and keep in mind that I only re-learned of these exploits recently when I got Tank’s narrative email.  I was so drunk that night, the entire memory of it had completely faded.

 

Thanks, bourbon…

 

Okay, so the “bar” was an Applebee’s; one of those restaurant type establishments with memorabilia on the walls.  For some reason, I felt it necessary to steal a piece of said memorabilia for myself- a long horsehair rope reputed to be the magic lasso from the TV series Wonder Woman.  I doubt it was the real thing, but it did appear to have truth-telling powers, as the first hot girl I lassoed told me I was a “fuckhead”.

 

Undaunted, I lassoed a second hot girl and screamed, “I’m Wonder Womb, and you wanna suckle me in the bathroom!”

 

“Uh, no I don’t,” she replied, “Get away from me!”

 

“Stop fighting it!  This lasso makes you tell the truth!  TELL THE TRUTH!!!”

 

She continued to deny the obvious, so I figured my magic lasso was broken.

 

Regardless, since Applebee’s was surprisingly deserted that night, (Sunday, according to Tank), I gradually became a one man show for the ten or so diners, my notoriety causing Tank to start power drinking at the bar while desperately trying to convince the restaurant manager that he didn’t know me.  Ah, but said restaurant manager, (a semi-hot hippie girl in her thirties), was totally cool, and she only made me stop when I “accidentally” lassoed this old couple’s picture of ice tea and spilled it all over Grandpa’s crotch.

 

After comping the old couple’s meal, Hippie Manager actually sat down with us and did a few shots, eventually getting a little tipsy herself and inviting Tank and I to a party at a friend of hers apartment.  Apparently, the $11.50 an hour the Applebee’s corporation paid her to manage wasn’t enough to secure even the slightest measure of responsibility.

 

Naturally, Tank didn’t wanna go, and I was forced to introduce his balls to the business end of my Timberland boot.  No, I’m only kidding.  Actually, all it took was seven or eight shots of peach-flavored rum to get him onboard, (fucking fairy drink, in my opinion), and “Married, Christian Tank” soon became “Drunk, Horny Tank”.  I was so excited by his newfound willingness to be my partner-in-debauchery, that I failed to ask Hippie Manager about the semantics of the impending party.

 

Insert foreshadowing…

 

So, Hippie Manager let herself off at about 10:30, and since Tank had left his car back at the hotel, we rode to the party in her pimped out Honda Accord.  The vehicle itself should’ve tipped me off, as it was primer gray with a heinous spoiler on the back, ground effects, and a foursome of chrome hubcaps that probably cost more than the rest of this ghetto death wagon combined.  I also noticed that Hippie Manager’s speech patterns changed as soon as we were out of the restaurant, going from “white laidback business woman” to “Snoop Dog gangster ho” in less time than it takes me to sperm myself in a Kiera Knightly movie.   

 

“Dis party gonna be FAT!!!” she told us, “Wall ta wall fly motherfuckers!  Aw shit!  Awwww shit!  My peeps gonna LOVE ya’ll”

 

It was then that I realized that Hippie Manager wasn’t a hippie at all, but a hip-hop whore who only looked “hippyish” because she was high on crank.  At one point, Tank actually leaned over and whispered, “Why is she talking all Black?!?”

 

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!!!  DANGER!!!

 

Alas, it was too late to do anything about it, as we were barreling through the nighttime streets of downtown Nashville at NASCAR speeds, the base-driven thump of an Eminem song blaring from this bitch’s sub-woofers.

 

Having gone to public school, I had a feeling what we were in for, my fears confirmed when we pulled into a disturbingly project-esk apartment complex that looked like it’d come right out of Escape from New Jack City.  The twenty or so apartments made a “U” around a courtyard overgrown with brown grass; beer cans, broken furniture and what appeared to be piles of human feces giving the massive lawn a quaint little, “demilitarized” look.

 

The only light came from one of the apartments at the center, the same brand of “I hate cops” music echoing into the warm Tennessee night.

 

Oh crap…

 

“Come on, ya’ll!” prodded Hippie Manager, then leading Tank and I up to the apartment in question.  The cracked white wood of the front door bore the tell-tale scars of a police battering ram.

 

Hippie Manager announced our presence with a series of heavy fisted knocks before bursting in without waiting for an invitation, a tidal wave of marijuana smoke enveloping us as soon as she opened the door.

 

Now, anyone who reads this site will know how I hate to use movie references, (yeah, uh huh), but the ensuing scene was right outta Animal House.  Remember when the frat boys go into the “negro” bar to hear that Otis guy that played at their party a few weeks back?  And all the regulars stop and look at ‘em?  Yeah, well, that’s exactly what happened.  In fact, it seemed as if the music screeched to a halt, and Tank actually turned to me and said, “Uh, Mike?  We’re the only white people here.”

 

No shit.  The apartment was literally packed with gansta types, the men boasting gold chains and track suits, the women adorned in outfits so revealing, I felt like I was in a female anatomy class.

 

Steve Erwin would’ve said, “And if we’re real quiet, boys and girls, you’ll see the African cervix in its naaatral environment.”

 

Tank was so drunk and so naive that he didn’t appear to care, but I knew we were fucked.  The black girls were immediately eyeing us with that “Hmmmm, Jungle Fever” look, while their male counterparts appeared to be contemplating ways to orchestrate our deaths, (undoubtedly after some grim violation of our intestinal tracts). 

 

I heard someone sneer, “wonder bread”, over the pounding music, and I immediately changed strategies, (or, as Tank put it in his email, I completely lost my shit). 

 

“Okay, okay, okay, you negros!” I bellowed in my best Nerdly S. Poindexter voice, “The honkies are here!  Anybody need a racquetball partner?”

 

Silence… and then everyone laughed, apparently thinking I was just drunk enough, (or stupid enough), to provide some entertainment.  Don’t get me wrong, a few guys bowed up like they wanted to beat Tank and I black, but Hippie Manager spoke up to proclaim our urban coolness:  “They a’ight!  They a’ight!  Ya’ll muthafuckas chill!  My boy Tank is straight up!”  Or something like that, which led me to believe that Hippie Manager was all about The Tank. 

 

Fine by me.  Any primal lust I’d harbored for this socially ambiguous bitch had evaporated the moment I saw her project-issue Caucasian sled.  And, by the way, I’m not exaggerating about the stereotypical dialogue thus far.  I’m making this point because, well, I don’t want anybody to think I’m taking creative/racial liberties with the things I heard.  There’s nothing Klu Klux Klanish about pointing out the differing and humorous nuances with which people articulate themselves, kinda like the way I revert to Mississippi redneck whenever I get pissed.  If you wanna call the NAACP on me, go ahead.  I supported the Million Man March…  FUCK YOU!!!

 

Okay, so the next hour or so progressed to find us enthusiastically assimilated into a literal BET house party- me by my disarming Nerdly S. Poindexter voice, and Tank by his isolation.  Ya see, Tank had been physically backed into a corner by Hippie Manager, who was now trying her damnedest to probe his stomach with her tongue.  To his credit, Tank wanted no part of her open-mouthed overtures, his marriage vows stalwart enough to negate the desire for a piece of drunken strange that probably would’ve fucked his balls off.  I’m not kidding, that skank was just enough of a mixed culture amalgamation to show him God; and, (no offense to Tank’s wife), it would’ve done him good to succumb.

 

He didn’t…  Or perhaps, it’s better to say that I messed things up before his resolve crumbled.  But we’ll get to that.

 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’d become engrossed in a spirited game of “Spades”, (no pun intended), with five black guys around a small, rather unstable card table.  To my own credit, I was cracking these “G’s” up, constantly entreated to further degrade African Americans in my Nerdly S. Poindexter voice.

 

“Okay, you negros!” I’d indulge them, “I’m gonna lay the smack down, here.  As Dr. King is my witness, you’re gonna have to cash some welfare checks to cover the hand I’ve got now!”

 

And they laughed… 

 

I raked in fistful after sweaty fistful of one’s and five’s, my own bets ludicrous given the fact that I wouldn’t have had the cash to cover ‘em if I’d lost.  Or, more to the point, if hadn’t won every single hand I bet upon…  Yeah, in situations like this, I’m THAT good.

 

And so it went… me occasionally surveying the room to pretend I didn’t see the desperate yet unspoken pleas from Tank in the corner; his defenses faltering against Hippie Manager, a cacophony of dark-skinned revelers dancing and talking and making sexual deals with enough distracting fervor to make my faux ignorance to Tank’s plight seem genuine.

 

In the email, he asked me why I didn’t intervene, perhaps by kicking Hippie Manager in the head, but I continued to lie and say I never saw him getting molested in the corner.  Of course, I realize Tank will discover the truth once he reads this, but HEY!!!  He’s a Christian, so he’s unconditionally required to forgive me.  It’s what Jesus would do… 

 

All in all, though, I DID intervene by getting us chased out of the party.  How did it happen?  Well, let me explain. 

 

At some point during my merciless monetary beat down of my fellow card players, I caught the fancy of one of the girls at the party, and, unbeknownst to me, she’d made it her mission to impale herself on my penis.  I’d like to tell you she looked like Halle Berry, but in truth she bore a closer resemblance to Chuck Berry.  I was unaware of her interest at the time, and it was in utter oblivion that I excused myself from the table and walked down the hall to the bathroom.

 

Steve Erwin: “Watch as the wildebeest stalks its prey… striking only in that fateful moment when the young cub leaves the safety of the herd…”

 

Like everything else, what happened in the bathroom is a bit of a blur, and since Tank wasn’t there to narrate via email, I’m gonna have to make due with the fragmented flashes my drunken memory can recollect.  Okay, so I’m standing there peeing, and I hear the bathroom door open and close behind me.  I almost didn’t hear it with the music assaulting my eardrums, but the tip off gave me just enough time to shake, pack, and zip.  I wasn’t finished, but an all black party was the last place I wanted to show people my honkey-sized dick.

 

With my bits and pieces safely stowed, I turned around to see the female Chuck Berry standing behind me; all two hundred pounds of her bulging against a tight pink dress, her Janet Jackson weave in disarray, her color contacts giving an eerie gray tint to her bloodshot eyes.  Now that I think about it, she had a very pretty face, and an enormous pair of breasts that would’ve normally enticed me, were they not resting on her stomach.  She had a bottle of wine hanging limply from her right hand, one she took a drooling swig from before opening her mouth to speak.  Two of her teeth were gold.

 

“You ever been with a sis’tah?” she slurred, simultaneously placing the bottle on the nearby vanity sink.

 

“Uh, yeah!” I replied, “My wife’s black.”

 

Though I was trying to sound TOTALLY serious, my comment made her laugh, and she advanced on me with the unstoppable presence of a rhino in heat.

 

“You so crazy…” she giggled, pushing me back so that my shoulders collided with the wall.  The next thing I knew, her tongue was in my mouth, her fleshy pelvic region grinding against my blue jeans. 

 

I remember thinking, ‘Holy shit, I’m about to get raped…  Here, in this bathroom…  And there’s nothing I can do about it!!!’

 

Of course, I could’ve pulled back and karate chopped her in the throat, but violence to females is something I abhor, not to mention the swift and destructive retribution that would’ve followed from the patrons in the living room had I orchestrated my escape with physical force.  I did tell her “No”, however.  I said it many times.  But she was so big and so strong and so adamant, that my protests were smothered by her suction cup of a mouth.  More terrible still, was the fact that I was actually getting aroused, the Little General rising to the occasion without regard for the mind that supposedly governs it. 

 

When I was a child, my mom used to tell me that cats have a second brain in their tails.  My penis is like that…

 

Would I have had sex with her?  Honestly, I don’t know, because my almost-rape was stopped mid-erection by what I can only assume was Chuck Berry’s boyfriend.  The bathroom door imploded inwards, and I jerked away to see a mass of shoulders and biceps filling the threshold.  Six feet tall and almost as wide, the newcomer stood there seething, his Red Wings hockey jersey rising and falling with each breath he took.  This guy was so black he looked like a struck match, his bald head accentuating a menacing goatee.

 

“You want him?” he asked my rapist, “This white mutherfucker?  You playing me for a punk ‘cause a him?!?”

 

The female Chuck Berry started to say something, but there was no time.  Angry Black Boyfriend stomped towards us, his fists clinched by his sides.  Keep in mind, this all happened in a couple of seconds, but, since I didn’t know if he was about to hit me or her, I attacked.  Grabbing a crystal jar of what I’d guess was either shampoo or liquid soap, I shot forward and smashed him in the forehead with it.  The jar broke, thus covering Angry Black Boyfriend’s face in a stinging glob of thick turquoise goo.  He cupped his eyes with his hands and gave a muffled scream, but I charged on, thus picking him up with a double leg takedown and blasting him back.  Out the bathroom, across the hall, and into an adjacent bedroom I drove, ultimately slamming him down onto a pile of dirty clothes, his left shoulder hitting a cat litter box and dumping its contents on his chest.

 

Pandemonium ensued…

 

Suddenly, people were everywhere, the entire living room crowd pushing their way into the hall.  My drunkenness aside, I knew a lynching was imminent, and I did what any martial-arts-master-slash-beatdown-hero would do…  I ran.

 

“HE’S HAVING A SEIZURE!!!” I yelled, ducking my head and barreling through the football gauntlet of soft, sweaty bodies, “CALL 911!!!”

 

Someone punched me in the back, a girl screamed, “What the fuck!”, and then I reached the spatial freedom of the living room.  Thankfully, the continuing music only added to the chaos, as everyone’s questions were mottled if not downright drowned.

 

I stumbled to a halt and peered around, guys and girls pushing past me within the haze of marijuana smoke.  I located Tank standing some feet to my left in unabashed bewilderment, his cheeks and neck marred with Hippie Manager’s lipstick, Hippie Manager herself on his arm.

 

“RUN YOU JESUS FREAK!!!” I bellowed, grabbing Tank by the sleeve of his maroon button up and pulling him into a sprint.

 

As I said before, I abhor violence against females.  But, in my exuberance to manhandle Tank out of the apartment, I inadvertently caused him to spin and elbow Hippie Manager in the nose.  I have no memory of this, but Tank described it vividly in his email- the way Hippie Manager’s head snapped back, the way she stood there glassy-eyed for the briefest of moments, before toppling sideways to the carpeted floor.

 

Royce Gracie forgive me for saying this, but the bitch had it coming.

 

We fled…  Out of the apartment, across the cluttered courtyard, and down the street beyond, our pace increasing when we heard the distant sounds of pursuit behind us.  The more ferocious members of the party had apparently ascertained what had really happened, and, whether it was my fault or not, they were gonna get us.

 

I was in pretty good shape back then, and I feel confident that I could’ve outrun them.  Alas, being “saved” appears to have a negative effect on one’s cardiovascular stamina, because Tank was huffing and puffing long before we reached the safety of downtown Nashville. 

 

“Go on…” he gasped at one point, then stopping to double over, “I didn’t do nothing...  They aren’t… after… me!”

 

Oh, how naive, my summer camp friend. 

 

This is gonna be the most raciest statement I’ve made so far, but I genuinely feared that our pursuers would fuck Tank up because he was white, (as my black classmates had done to me in high school), and I refused to leave him behind. 

 

Scanning in all directions for some sort of safe haven, I settled on a nearby trash dumpster, one that harbored the waste from a Hilton Express we had no time to reach because of a steel barred fence.  You know the type, my reader; a huge, rust-covered cubical wherein all manner of refuse resides.

 

“Get in the dumpster!” I commanded, “They’ll never see us!”

 

Tank glanced up, frowned, and then narrowed his violet eyes.

 

“No way I’m gettin’ in there!  Just go, Mike!  I don’t know what the hell you did, but it’s got nothing to do with me…”

 

The pound of running footsteps negated any further negotiation, and I executed the absolute greatest Judo hip toss I’ve ever employed in a quarter century of martial arts training.  I grabbed Tank by the lapel of his shirt, yanked him over to the yawning lip of the dumpster, and then bent over.   

 

Wham!!!

 

Forcefully freed from terra firma, Tank flew head over ass to land in a fathomless assemblage of tin foil, rotting lettuce, and leftover room service.  He had three point six seconds to curse my good Scottish name, before I leapt into the abyss and clamped my hand over his mouth. 

 

“Shhhhh…” I hissed, “Here they come.”

 

Five in all, (including the guy I hit with the jar), they ran right past us and on down the street, and it was only when their shouted threats faded in the distance that Tank forcibly removed my hand from his mouth.

 

“You tore my shirt, you fuck!  And your hand tastes like ass!”

 

He said some other stuff and punched me in the ear, but I was laughing too hard to hit him back.  I’m sure my hand DID taste like ass since we were both covered in shit.  Regardless, we weren’t out of danger yet, and once I was sure the thugs were long gone chasing no one, I climbed out of the dumpster and helped Tank down. 

 

I have never been so filthy in all my life, but I think Tank was worse.  His sandy blond hair had bits of tomato in it, his forehead was bleeding from a small cut above his eyebrow, and his nice polo button up was saturated with cooking grease.  Added to this, his pouting expression was that of a five-year-old girl whose puppy had just died.

 

“I don’t wanna be your friend no more,” he told me, but I prodded him into a run, thus going back around the rear of the Hilton Express until we reached the safety of the lobby.  The desk clerk, (a portly, white-haired woman in her sixties), verbally tore us new rectums for tracking crap all over the floor, but I employed the Jedi mind trick to convince her to break a dollar so I would have change to use the payphone.

 

Ya know, it’s funny how life works, because the only reason I had cash on me to pay for a taxi, is because I’d won almost forty dollars at the card game.   Anyway, we reached my own hotel room just before one in the morning, and after a shower and a change of clothes, (I let Tank borrow some of my stuff, which I never got back), the two of us retired to the downstairs bar for a few post-apocalyptic drinks.

 

I told him what happened with the female Chuck Berry and her boyfriend, and he told me how Hippie Manager had pinched his nipples.  We had a great laugh about it, but Tank was forever changed- a fact I only realized when the hotel bar started closing down.

 

“I meant what I said before,” he somberly confessed, then clapping me on the shoulder, “I can’t be your friend anymore, at least not like this…  I’m married now, Mike!  Mar’eeeed!!!  And this is not the kinda thing The Lord has planned for me.  I love ya.  Always will.  But tonight was the last time, understand?”

 

I nodded and tossed a twenty on the bar top, the two of us standing to come eye-to-eye.  I extended my hand, and he took it.

 

“I understand, Tank.  This was the last time…”

 

Tank nodded in kind and turned.

 

“Until the next time,” I muttered under my breath.

 

“Huh?”

 

“Nothing...  Hey!  You’re too drunk to drive all the way back to Johnson City tonight, so how ‘bout we go upstairs and have sweaty man sex?”

 

“Yeah, okay,” he replied with a straight face, “but I get to be on top.”

 

That was to be the last joke I ever heard Tank make.  Yes, he stayed in my room that night, (me in the bed, him on the floor), but he was gone the next morning when I woke up, his shit-stained clothes gone with him. 

 

No note, no goodbye, no closure.

 

From then on, I truly thought I’d lost a friend, pride preventing me from making any attempts at reconciliation.  I never tried to call Tank again, I never emailed, and I never asked about him in the company of mutual acquaintances.  All in all, I guess I was just enough of a selfish, narcissistic asshole to erase his entire existence from my mind- that is until he emailed me last Friday.

 

What does the future hold?  No one knows, not even Tank’s God.  But the two of us are talking again, and, sooner or later, I’ll seduce him into an innocent drink, and then the legacy of Mike and Tank will rise anew from phoenix ashes.

 

Such is my wish…  My, command…  And- if you’re reading this, Tank- know that I’m more real than the Devil of your mythology.  To quote Anne Rice, I have a restless mind in my heart, and an insatiable personality.

 

See ya soon…