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The OTF tale thread. [Revisited]

Not Fade Away

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Aug 28, 2001
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I have 'unearthed' all but the first of of trover's tales that were lost.

If you had written a tale and it was in the original tale thread, if you would like to have it added to this, email it to me and i'll get it added when I can.
 
You Don't Know Dick. (By trover)

Ever have a Dick for a boss?

No, not a body part… well…

Dick was a blue collar guy, born and raised in hard scrabble Green Bay to parents of meager stock, good people who believed in hard work, self-sacrifice and the deification of their only son – Richard the Great. Think I’m kidding? His middle name is Merlin. Despite no trappings of wealth or privilege, it was ingrained early within Dick that he would be giant among men, if not in physicality – he was of normal size with a tendency to carry about twenty extra pounds – then in the minds of men. He never forgot his upbringing, and throughout his life, he’s made every effort to bury his red neck under a gold collar.

And Dick has the tools to do so, well… sorta.

Possessed with a powerful brain, one which would attract scholarships to UW and Harvard Law, where Dick excelled with Phi Beta Kappa and law journal honors, his gene pool hit the jackpot… mostly. As so often is the case when normal or below normal parents produce a prodigy through an aberration in genetic composition, something is left out of the stew. In Dick’s case, the social graces were left in the drain. The guy has no social clue.

Dick likes to intimidate, to dominate and watch people squirm. Not because he’s cruel, although that was the impression many people formed, but because deep down he never feels worthy – what he sees in the mirror is a blue collar kid from Green Bay. I think he lives in fear somebody will unmask him, yell out, “Hey, there’s a kid from Green Bay here. Let’s get him!”

I first met Dick when I interviewed for an attorney job at his company, a giant aerospace and industrial complex headquartered in Rockford, Illinois. Dick spent most of the interview telling me how great he was, all while he picked lint off his $2000 Italian wool suit and stretched his handpainted silk tie so I wouldn’t miss it. And of course, he made sure I saw his Gucci boots, made sure I knew they were Gucci. At one point, he rocked back in his luxury chair, plopped his Gucci’s on his wide mahogany desk, and considered the sheen of his fingernails. I don’t think he listened to a word I said, the interview was really about him. When he took me to meet the next interviewer, the VP of HR, he even forgot my name.

Now, all of you have participated in job interviews, so you know how they go. You’re looking to impress, to find cache. The interview with Dick left me puzzled. He was the General Counsel, a VP and Secretary too, and he’d had no interest in me. Couldn’t even remember my name. Surely that didn’t bode well for my job prospects.

But every interview I had at this company — after Dick’s, went well. But each interview was dominated with comments about Dick. Seems people were surprised he hadn’t screamed at me; he screams at everybody, they said. His slightest whisper is a full-throated bellow. They were surprised he hadn’t insulted me, called me stupid or something. He did this to everybody else.

Uh oh. How badly did I want this job?

Well, they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, weird interview with Dick notwithstanding, and a month later I was there. I didn’t see Dick much at first, although his office was just across the hall. He spent most of the week golfing, practically every afternoon. But I heard his bellow in the mornings before his daily racquetball game. Seems the comments I’d heard about him yelling and screaming were right. I learned quickly that most of the other VPs kept their doors closed, not because they didn’t want interruptions, but because of Dick’s noise. There was a high pitched killer tone to his bluster, one which caused even the most hardy to cringe.

What had I gotten my self into?

After my first week, Dick asked me to play racquetball with him. The company had to attract aerospace engineers from the west coast, so we had outstanding health club facilities and gardens right on premises, and as one of their middle management dopes, I was privileged to use them all day long. Dick played everyday, seven days a week. He needed the release and was so high strung, only the endorphins from hard exercise would placate him. Racquetball for Dick was a contact sport, where he practiced his bellow, where he used deceit and bullying tactics to win.

Just like in the office, huh?

You’d have thought that with all this exercise, Dick would be sinewy and quick. Not so. His enormous appetites dictated that he would always be fat and dumpy, always fidgety. The guy just couldn’t relax, and he fed his fuel needs with sweets. He was famous for arriving at a destination, finding its best restaurant and ordering three desserts, nothing else. Both of his parents died of diabetes. Surely, he will too.

Oh, did I mention he’s an alcoholic? That, in itself, is another story. But I’ll leave that one for another day.

Anyway, after the game, as Dick was checking me out in the showers, I had my first conversation with him since I’d been hired. Even when we stepped onto the court, he’d just grunted and looked me up and down. But here in the shower, we were more relaxed. “I’m hearing good things about you, Small,” he quipped. “Good thing. Otherwise, I’d fire your ass.”

I soon learned that Dick’s favorite word was “fire”. Trump should pay him royalties.

I mumbled something, heard him say something that sounded like, “Keep up the good work,” then he was gone. It was time for his golf game.

I worked for Dick for twenty-three years, and believe it or not, loved every minute of it. For all Dick’s hollering, his hollow threats, his total lack of any social grace, his penchant for saying the wrong thing, the insults, the bullying, what was hidden was that this was all a bluff: Dick carries a heart as big as Nebraska, his motions, sounds and actions to the contrary, are just a mask.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Dick could still be infuriating, could make one stamp and yell. He’s selfish, occasionally deceitful, one who takes credit for other’s accomplishments, and he’s occasionally nasty. But he doesn’t mean any of it. And if you stand your ground, he will listen and often change his mind. He likes to test people, bluster them, see how they react. But if you pass, you are in his inner circle, and you see the real Dick, a guy who cares, who demands excellence and who is one of the funniest people alive.

But many people never saw this side of Dick. The people who worked for him, those who stayed, those who saw behind the façade, they loved him.

Besides, the anecdotes are priceless. I’ll share some with you.

Dick is a wild man at golf. He has an uncontrolled swing, one that is just as likely to cause a whiff as a two hundred yard drive. And of course, there is his non-stop chatter, often sexual, like, “Hey, Small, see that one. Wouldn’t you like to… you know… umpa, umpa, umpa?” Or he’ll say, “Hey, Small, look at that guy’s pants. Mine are better than his. I can buy and sell that guy ten times over.”

Well, one day we were playing at Lake Geneva. Some Seattle execs were in town, one of whom was likely to be the next CEO, so we took them out golfing. It was early spring and the ground was saturated. Our golf shoes were clumped with mud and footing was a problem, not to mention that we were tearing the hell out of the course.

Now, I can’t control my woods, so I don’t use them. I tee off with a two-iron and often out-drive my foursome. Being 6’6” and 250 has occasional advantages. Well, my out-driving Dick with my iron was driving him crazy. “God Damnit, Small,” he bellowed at me, after I led off one hole with a towering drive. “I’m gonna use my two iron and I’m gonna kick your ass.”

I bent over and made a be my guest motion. Then I watched as Dick, splendorous in his bright yellow pants and neon green golf shirt, leaned over his ball, two iron in hand. With a mighty swing, the club head hit the ground a foot in front of the ball. It broke off, the stick nudged the ball off the tee, and the clubhead flew off down the fairway. And as Dick swung, he lost his balance and splayed out in the mud, sending up a spray, followed of course, by a stream of curses.

And it was all my fault.

Another time, we were golfing with a bunch of friends down on Hilton Head, and we both drove off into the high grass. As I was bending over to look at my lie, I saw a small dead snake lying on the ground. Dick, who was supervising, watching me closely to ensure I didn’t improve my lie — like he often did — said, “Hey, let’s play a joke on those @$$holes behind us.” He picked up the snake and stuck it on the back of our cart. At the next hole, he curled it on the tee marker, so anybody who bent over to place their ball, would see it lying close by. He thought that was pretty funny.

Over drinks at the nineteenth hole, one of our buddies said, “Hey, which one of you @$$holes put the coral snake on the tee block?”

I thought Dick was having a heart attack.

Again, it was all my fault.

* * *

For ten years, Dick and I went skiing in Vail, where he had a nice condo. Often, we would take a side trip for a training session to justify borrowing one of the company jets. Sometimes our wives went with us, sometimes it was just a bunch of guys. But always, it was Dick and me.

The first time, I had never skied before. So Dick insisted I take a morning of lessons before we tackled the black and double black slopes. Despite having to listen to him haranguing me for falling over every bump, for skiing backwards not on purpose, I survived. And finally, on the last day of that first trip, I actually made it down one of these slopes without falling. But Dick, who’d been ahead of me and had looked up to critique my technique and form, wasn’t watching where he was going. He took a header off a bump, broke his sunglasses, and of course, blamed me.

Well, one time we went with Jim, his general contractor, and Jim’s wife, Faith, a homely blonde with a boyish figure who despite her youth — somewhere in her twenties — always wore granny clothes, even on the ski slopes. Jim and Faith were religious nutcases, both deacons in some holy roller church, yet they had an abnormal interest in “fisting”, if you can believe it. They professed to be so pure they had only held hands before their marriage, and they’d met at church camp. But they loved to talk about deviancy, especially fisting. Go figure. Something wasn’t right. But I was under strict orders not to swear, not to even hint at anything sexual, or Dick and his wife might be thrown out of their church. I was muzzled. These two holy rollers could talk all night about “fisting”, yet I couldn’t say “darn”.

So, here we were, standing in front of an old whore house in downtown Aspen, a neat bar where the original red velvet décor had been retained, where oil paintings of naked nymphs still adorned the walls, and we were waiting for Dick’s daughter. Dick sidled over to me and whispered. “Damnit Small, don’t let on to Faith and Jim that we know anything about that place. You understand? They’ll throw us out of our church.” Of course, I pledged my silence.

Goldie Hawn walked by and waved when we called out to her. And about then, Dick’s daughter finally arrived. Her first words, “Hey, Dad, are you gonna take us to the old whore house again?”

Now I had brought my video camera that week. And one morning, I took it up on the first lift. As Dick and I were slowly gliding uphill and the early morning sun was shimmering across fresh powder, I began shooting the scene. Meanwhile, Dick kept up a steady banter in my ear. “Jeez, Small, do you believe that Faith. How would you like to screw that? My god, that’d be the lousiest lay in the land. She’d just lie there, don’cha think? I wonder if Jim even knows where to put it.”

I tried to shush him, but he just kept on. “Bet he’s never gotten any oral sex, poor guy. I bet he’s never even seen her equipment. My god, I’d go gay if I had to screw that every night. How often do you think they do it? I bet they leave the lights off. Probably even do it in their clothes, huh?”

I shushed him some more and kept on shooting.

Now, years go by, and one weekend, Dick and his wife were up at my lake cottage. We’d been boating all day, and were just finishing a nice dinner. Dick noticed all these Beta tapes in a bookcase and asked me about them. “Yeah,” I said. “I chose wrong, so I keep those tapes up here where I’ve still got a Beta player. Hey, I’ve still got that one I shot of your father that time in Vail.”

Dick’s father had passed away, so he insisted on seeing the tape. And truth be told, I’d forgotten what else was on it. You shoulda seen Dick’s face — and especially his wife’s expression — when that conversation on the chair lift came up. I couldn’t get to the TV fast enough. Then his wife made me leave the volume up. Sitting there, a frosty glare on her face, she insisted on hearing it all.

They left soon afterwards. And I know who didn’t get any that night…

You can imagine what happened to me the next workday...

One time, on one of these Vail trips, we had taken our wives and the jet, planning to justify the trip on a tour of a new plant. We landed and went to the plant, only to learn that it hadn’t been built yet. One guy, a black HR rep, was present. For an hour or so, he walked us over the grounds pointing out which hole would be machine tools, which hole would be offices, and which hole would be the reception area. As we climbed back on the plane, Dick said, “That’s what I like about this company: The way we give coloreds a chance.”

Horrified, Dick’s wife jumped on him. “Dick! That’s a racial slur.”

He looked puzzled. “No, it isn’t. They are colored.”

“You can’t say that, Dick. That’s a racial slur. Negroes want to be called ‘black’”. [Editor’s note. This was in the eighties, before the term African-American became PC, even if it is inaccurate. After all, Gary Player is an African-American.]

I was shrinking into my seat, figuring it was only a matter of time before this too was my fault.

“What do you think, Small? Is ‘colored’ a racial slur?”

I assured him that it was.

“Well, damnit, Small, when I say something stupid, just say ‘Shutup, Dick.’”

My wife leaned forward. “Shut up, Dick.”


* * *

Dick has handwriting that was so illegible that nobody — including him — can decipher it. I can’t tell you how many times a bunch of us, Dick included, would be assembled around a table, trying to decode some important note he’d written. The best code-breaker was Suzanne, his extremely tolerant and long suffering secretary. Suzanne could even duplicate his unique signature, which looked like Islamic text.

One time I went into his office with one of his memos that didn’t make any sense. Usually, Dick was an outstanding writer, but this memo didn’t meet his standards, it was ambiguous. He read it and looked at the signature. He’d authorized Suzanne to duplicate his scrawl, and she was pretty good at it. Instead of buzzing her in, his voice boomed out the door. “Suzanne! Suzanne! Is this your Dick or my Dick?”

You could hear doors slam all around the office.

* * *

One time, we were in Beverly Hills, staying on Rodeo Drive. Dick wanted to commune with the stars. We’d attended some meetings, then went back to our hotel. Dick decided he wanted a haircut. “Dick,” I said. “You’ll spend a fortune here. Can’t you wait?”

“No. I want one like the stars get. Let’s go get one.”

I went with him, lest he get mugged by somebody he offended. I mean, the guy didn’t have a social clue. He’d hike his leg and fart in a meeting, even when women were present, and if it was a good one, he’d comment about it. I swear, there were times I wanted to crawl under a desk and hide, pretend I didn’t know him.

He found Jose Eber’s shop, although he didn’t have a clue who Jose was. I mentioned that Jose was Liz Taylor’s hairdresser, so that’s where he wanted to go. But he didn’t have an appointment. No problem, they said, if he’d be willing to wait a while, they could take him. He pointed to Jose, said, “Can I get that guy with the pony tail?”

I wanted to die.

When it came Dick’s time, he was handed a smock, told to go into a changing room and put it on. Ignoring the difference between closed curtains and open ones, he pulled one curtain aside and stood in front of a topless Farrah Fawcett. As Farrah struggled to cover herself, Dick just stood there, his mouth open, his eyes wide. He stammered something unintelligible but didn’t move. After a moment, Farrah just dropped her smock and smiled at him. “Well, it’s obvious you’re much more upset about this than I am. Might as well get your money’s worth.”

As I scrunched into the back of my chair, I made sure my vision was unobstructed. Right after she put her top on, I slipped back to the hotel. I didn’t want anybody to know that I knew him.

* * *

One time, my wife’s twin sister, a powerhouse lawyer in her own right, was attending a General Counsels’ conference at Northwestern. As she told me later, all through the morning, she’d been sitting in the audience listening to some buffoon behind her burping and farting, smelling the digestive products of the fiber he’d had for breakfast, and thinking that the disruption caused by changing seats might well be worth the embarrassment. Then the man asked what she thought was a really stupid question. She said, “So, I turned around to see just who this nutcase was, and Ben, it was your boss!”

Another proud moment, huh?

* * *

Despite being extremely wealthy – Dick had been General Counsel of a Fortune 500 Company for over twenty years – he’s a cheapskate of the first order. He once cost me $800 by changing a date for a Pacific Northwest trip because he wanted to play in a charity golf pro-am. You see, not being stupid, I’d arranged for a business trip, a training session, so the company would pay my transportation on my honeymoon. By changing the date, I had to pay for the transportation myself. And Dick knew this. He just didn’t care. The pro-am came first.

When he and I would take business trips, especially training sessions where I would do all the work and he would pontificate and threaten, we would often schedule it so we could take neat side trips and have the company pay for them. Like to the Pacific Northwest, with meetings on Thursday and Tuesday, leaving four days for fun. But on these trips, Dick would pick up all the meals, which were reimbursable; I was responsible for the entertainment, which was not.

On one such trip, I made reservations at Paradise Lodge, high on Mt. Rainier. I was a little worried about this trip, because Paradise Lodge is rustic, and Dick doesn’t do rustic. But if you can get past the mice in your room, the incredible views, the large paneled lobby, the huge walk-in fireplaces, the gourmet food and the magnificent dining room and cool mahogany bar — where FDR once drank and where famed mountaineers go for a beer — all make the place very special indeed.

We arrived early in the morning and immediately went out climbing. All along the way, up about five miles of the eighteen mile summit trip, Dick was complaining. “What the hell do you think I am, Small? A mountain goat? This is the last time I put you in charge of entertainment. I shoulda fired you years ago.”

Standard stuff…

We kept climbing. I’d been there before, many times in fact. We wouldn’t go up to glacier level; we weren’t equipped, but I wanted Dick to see the view from Panorama Point, at about the seventy-five hundred foot level.

If you’ve never been to the Pacific Northwest, let me just hint at the splendor there. Rainier has about eight climate zones, from rain forest to arctic. You’ll see just about every kind of fern, moss, wild mountain flower, and tree imaginable, from Douglas Fir to Indian Paintbrush, and animals to boot. Mule deer, brown bear, mountain lion, mountain goat, marmots and pika abound. The Cascades make the Rockies look like foothills. Die-hard Rocky fans will dispute this, but truth be told, while the Rockies top out at fourteen thousand feet, the base of their big ones is usually around ten or eleven thousand feet, making the mountains about two or three thousand feet tall. Hell, even flat Denver is a mile high!

The Cascades start at sea level and rise to fourteen thousand feet.

Nuff said.

I was beginning to think my job could be in jeopardy. Dick wasn’t enjoying the climb at all. He was sweating heavily in his business-casual clothes — he didn’t own any jeans — and he didn’t own any mountain boots. His racquetball shoes just weren’t appropriate for what we were doing, in fact, they were flat-out dangerous. I knew I’d have to watch out for him. A couple of times, we had to cross a snow field, one which sloped steeply downward. One slip and you’re gone. I chopped out foot holes for Dick, and made him hold sharp rocks, so if he slipped he could perform a self-arrest.

Dick wasn’t seeing the humor or beauty in any of this.

And then we reached Panorama Point, and everything changed. As I turned him around and sat him on a rock, he was able to see beyond the Tatooshes, which surround the south side of Rainier, to Mt. Adams on the left, the blown out hole of St. Helen’s straight ahead, and beyond that, Mt. Hood, just outside Portland. To Dick’s right was the mighty Nisqually Glacier, many miles long and over a mile deep, Puget Sound beyond it and the Olympics even further out. Dick’s breathlessness was now due to awe.

But now he wanted to go higher, and as I said we weren’t equipped. I suggested instead a lateral traverse over to the ice caves. We’d be off-trail, so we’d have to be careful, but it was the only practical way around to the east side of the mountain.

And that’s how I came to save Dick’s life, for the first time.

It wasn’t really a big deal, but his screaming and howling made it one. We were traversing a gravelly chute, when Dick began sliding. Twenty feet ahead of him were two rocks, standing like horns, which guarded a thousand foot drop like entry doors. I had already crossed the chute, so as Dick began sliding and panicking, I just leaned over and grabbed his hand, pulling him across. I am certain Dick would have caught himself at the horns, but he didn’t think so. He called me his savior, this despite my putting him in harm’s way in the first place.

Two hours later, we’d made it over to the ice caves, which were these deep, ice shrouded water passages, covered over by centuries of snow. The ice caves were beautiful; sunlight radiated through the translucent snow and ice, casting a bluish glow to the surroundings, shaded in different hues depending upon how much ice and/or snow was on top. They are an eerie place, very other-worldly. Dick had never seen anything like them.

But danger lurks there also. Just after we turned to head back to Paradise, we heard a loud thump and turned back to see that a block of snow the size of a boxcar had fallen right at the entrance to a cave, where we’d stood just minutes before. Trust me, something like that will get your attention.

That night at Paradise Lodge, sitting in the bar, me sipping beers, Dick hitting the mineral water, he was telling anybody who’d listen of our adventures. Never mind that the people in this bar were legendary mountaineers. Both Whitaker brothers were there; Jim was the first American to scale Everest, his twin Lou ran the Guide Service and has led any number of Everest expeditions.

Again, I wanted to climb under a table.

But the Whitakers humored Dick well. In fact, that’s one of the most amazing things: Somehow, Dick always gets away with these things. Something I could ever do…
The Whitakers had him stand center stage, telling everybody in the room his adventures. Dick never realized he was the butt of the joke, but then he never did. And I certainly didn’t have the heart to tell him. Hell, he wouldn’t have believed me anyway…

* * *

Now, from all this, you may think Dick is a buffoon, an incompetent, someone who just masquerades as a business exec. But let me warn you, you should never sell Dick short. He has one of the finest business minds ever constructed, can simplify complex matters instinctively, getting right to the nub, and he can negotiate better than anybody I’ve ever met. Put Dick in a business meeting, and his ingenuity and brilliance shine. Put him in a social context, and he’s a fart in a space suit.

One time, we were negotiating a joint venture with a Chinese company. Dick made a speal, giving them our overview of what we wanted to accomplish, then he took off his shoes, kicked back and planted his socks right under the nose of the Chinese leader, as everybody’s mouths dropped. You see, to an Asian, especially the Chinese, showing someone the bottom of your feet is a tremendous insult, something degrading and very personal. I had to reach over and scoop Dick’s feet off the table all the while protesting his ignorance, lest the Chinese call Security. We were in their friggin’ country. No telling where we would have ended up if I hadn’t fixed things.

But Dick had no idea what he’d done. He was mad at me for making him look foolish.

One time, he was attending an Investigative Hearing the FTC was conducting on a divestiture we wanted to make. I was handling the hearing, was outgunned eight to two (if you counted Dick), and I knew he didn’t have the slightest idea how these proceedings were conducted. He was there to urge the FTC to act quickly because while the deal was pending, we were losing good employees, people who’d decided to look elsewhere rather than accept a transfer to the new employer. So, I finished with the hearing, hoping beyond hope, that Dick would keep his mouth shut, when Dick suddenly said, “You know, I hope you will hurry up with your investigation. We’re losing a lot of good people and have over two hundred of them working on satisfying your requests. This weekend, they’re busy purging documents.”

Okay, so everybody in the room knew Dick meant “gathering” instead of “purging”, which of course would be a felony. But these agency types don’t usually have a sense of humor; they enjoy their power, and the FTC especially enjoys frustrating business leaders every chance it gets. But Dick got away with it. Even the top official, the Director of the Bureau of Competition, guffawed. If I’d a said that, I’d probably still be breaking rocks.

* * *

Dick once went to Florida for a week of business meetings, the good kind, the ones with sessions only in the mornings. Dick had forgotten his specially made golf clubs, so he spent his free time at the pool working on his tan. Trouble is, at the end of the week, he called his wife, and she told him she’d found his swimming suit. What on earth was he wearing at the pool? Turns out, Dick had a pair of underwear that looked like his swimming suit. He’d never noticed his suit had a fly…

* * *

The day Dick told me he’d been fired – he’d tried to bully the new CEO, a man not used to subordinates with strongly held opinions – was the worst day of my business life. You see, for all his faults, working for Dick was a joy. The guy really believed in developing his troops; he empowered them and while he might steal the credit for a job well done, the one who did the work would be rewarded privately. Dick would tell you your value, make you feel good — or bad — depending on what you deserved. And since he’s lazy, he delegated almost everything. Dick believes in loyalty and he repaid it in spades. He was fun to work for, and if you saw through his bellowing, ignored it or called his bluff, he’d always back down. He was one of those rare executives who actually keep an open mind. Even though he’d say his mind was made up on a course of action, he’d encourage you to make your pitch and often he’d change his view.

The people who worked for Dick, those who stayed and who knew him behind the mask, all loved him. As did the former CEO, who while he understood that Dick could be a buffalo in a china shop in a social setting, also knew there was no finer mind.

Besides, the guy was just so much fun.

I’ve got a book of stories about Dick, which I may tell sometime, but I thought I’d give you just a taste.

So maybe you’d know a little about Dick…

To be continued…

This post was edited on 9/20 11:54 AM by Arussif(GetAdminCookie() != 0) {document.write(' (Revisions[/URL])');}
 
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The Blue Pube. (By trover)

Once upon a time there was a car, well sorta. Christine it wasn’t, if you know what I mean. But let’s call it a car, because that’s what it most resembled. This “car” had probably once been a 50s-something Plymouth, or it might have been a Buick, I just don’t remember any side vents. It was sorta bluish-green, but that may just have been the furry moss growing on its hood and sides. It had wheels, although I’m sure at some time it had lived on blocks. But somebody had taken it down and attached tires, and somehow it ran, well, most times. Sometimes it had to be pushed.

By far though, the car’s best feature was its seats, especially the back one, as long as nobody looked underneath them, where one might find a used condom, maybe a year old ham sandwich or a lost pledge we never found. While one had to be careful to avoid the gaping holes in the floor boards, through which you could drop beer cans conveniently, the comfy, wide upholstered seats were perfect for a little necking, or if you got especially lucky, something more. How do you think the condoms got under the seat, afterall?

Now college kids are always in need of transportation, right? Especially way out on North Jordan. So one day, three of my frat brothers met the car salesman portrayed in Breaking Away, or somebody like him. For the grand sum of $25, no payment book required, he’d let them have his weekly “Special”, this blue-green thing that looked as if it once was a car. Now these weren’t bright guys, they thought trading swats with flattened baseball bats was a good evening of fun. But they thought they could get this thing to work, and the price was right, only a night’s supply of beer. That was a worthy sacrifice, they figured, besides it was a school night and one of them had a bottle of Listerine if things really got tough. So they did the deal. Now one good thing about buying a car that cheap is you don’t need collision insurance, which they couldn’t afford anyway, and as they had no assets they weren’t wearing other than the Listerine, they didn’t think they needed any liability coverage. Obviously, this was well before insurance was required by law.

They named this beast “The Blue Pube.” Don’t ask me why; I think that came after they’d hit the mouthwash.

From the first day, The Pube was a mainstay in our parking lot, partly because it was such a great party car for making out and drinking beer, mostly because it wasn’t running much of the time. Heck, it didn’t even have plates: it simply wasn’t meant for daylight transportation. The Pube had headlights, well one of them anyway, but the brakes were only part-time and inconsistent at best. Anybody who actually drove The Pube soon learned that the only way to stop it in motion was to pump the brakes madly or point the damn thing uphill. Most week nights and weekends, the Pube was stationed in its traditional spot at the end of our parking lot, which was downhill, where there was a tree which served as an effective Pube-stop. We padded the tree with sliced through tires, so as not to give our beloved Pube too great a body-shot.

One of my mates had taken an auto mechanics class in high school, and he went to work on The Pube. He improved it so much that on a good straight stretch, one could actually get it up to 30 mph. Of course, stopping was another matter, as I’ve said. It was an unwritten rule that one did not drive down Jordan toward 10th because that hill at the intersection was far too much for The Pube’s brakes. We didn’t think IM Pei had envisioned The Pube as part of the library he’d designed.

Despite its age and condition, The Pube didn’t smell bad, which is probably why we were able to entice our gropees to enter. But just to make sure, we burned incense frequently, you know jasmine and frankincense and other smelly stuff that covered staleness, the scent of spilled beer and the occasional dropped piece of pizza underneath a seat.

So what’s the point of this story?

Well, you see, I killed The Pube. Didn’t mean to do it, but kill it I did.

It happened one night after I’d gotten a lucky call, an husky invite from someone I considered a sure thing. She had been studying and wanted something to drink, maybe fool around a little. Now that’s something NO COLLEGE MALE can resist, a woman in heat and a hot one at that.

But it was about 9 on a Saturday night, and there was only one guy around with a car. He wouldn’t let me drive his car if I was going to be drinking, but he did agree to buy me some Schlitz Malt Liquor. Wow! Now, that’s good stuff! Babe-making elixir, sure to make my little honey-to-be warm in the loins and fuzzy in the head, if she didn’t barf first. Just what I needed.

But how to get over there, especially since I’d be lugging a case of SML and an ice chest?

What about The Pube? I checked and nobody was using it. It was a warm night and most of the date-gropers were out in the woods behind the house. I couldn’t find one of the three owners, but it was considered a community party-house on wheels, so I just copped the keys.

The Pube started like a Ferrari, well not quite. At least it was running. Maybe a little Cachunka, Cachunka, Ping, Ping, but beggars and horny-enough-to-die mooches can’t be choosers. Besides, a few malt liquors in her and my date wouldn’t notice, I figured. And the AM radio worked, maybe if I cranked up the volume, I could cover the mis-firing pistons while mine – or something like it -- were driving, so to speak.

Off I went, although making it up the hill took a few running starts and back-end tree bumps. Than goodness for those tire-bumpers. Once at Jordan, I had a decision to make: How to get across campus without driving down Jordan and becoming part of the library décor?

So, I turned left, then right and was soon traversing across various flat stretches to one of the dorms on the far east side, a circuitous route to be sure. But I made it. And it was a good thing I had the beer; the look on my date’s face when she saw The Pube was probably matched only by Jamie Lee Curtis when she met Michael Myers.

Somehow, I induced her to climb into the front seat, although she refused to go anywhere except the back of the parking lot because of the gaping holes in the floor boards. That suited me; I had what I wanted and I was frightened to drive it anyway. So we moved to a new parking spot and after I complained repeatedly (and persuasively) about having to wrestle with the ice chest in the back seat, she agreed to move back there.

From that point on, let’s just say nature took its course, helped along maybe by a few SMLs, quite a few in fact, enough to fell a horse, more than enough to pickle me. You know what they say: “If you see the Pube rockin’, don’t come a knockin.” Well, a couple hours later, I wobbled my date back to her door and actually remembered where I’d parked The Pube, which I’d left running because I’d needed the radio’s tunes for “atmosphere”, and to cover the Cachung, Cachung, Ping, Ping of missing pistons. Plus, I’d been afraid to shut the damn thing off.

Now, how to get home, a problem since 17th street to Jordan was a downhill run? Damn! I hadn’t thought about that! In the heat of the hunt, I’d only been focused on pursing the Divine Triangle and its nearby heavenly passage. And I was in no condition to plan. So, I drove aimlessly on back streets, hoping for some inspiration or for a place to park where The Pube wouldn’t be towed and I might remember where to find it in the light of day. Alas, I became lost, and as I attempted to pump the brakes to round a corner, what was left of whatever braking The Pube had, disappeared. There was nothing but air in that tired old pedal, in what was left of the brake drums, or in my stuporous noggin.

Suddenly, a tree ran out to greet me, just popped out of nowhere. KaBam! The Pube hit that tree like Butkus on a cheerleader, and I went through the windshield.

I don’t remember how I got home. Somebody said a passing motorist rescued me and brought me back to the house before the cops arrived.

When I awoke the next morning, with the worst hangover known to man or beast, I stumbled into the bathroom to retch, wondering why I felt like there was a black cloud – it might have been a bag -- over my head. One look in the mirror brought me back to reality. My face was a mess of scabs and drying blood, and I even had some glass in my eyebrows.

Uh oh. I couldn’t go to a doctor’s for stitches because I suspected the cops would be looking for someone who’d gone through a windshield. I would have to self-medicate. Luckily, I knew a nursing student who came at my call.

But I still had to deal with the three owners of The Pube; it’s absence from its assigned space had already been noticed and suspicion for some reason was falling upon me. So, I copped to what I’d done, or thought I’d done, since I couldn’t remember much, and I paid each of the guys his portion of the $25. But now we had to cover up my crime. So one of the owners called The Pube in as having been stolen, which I guess was sorta true, but the caller claimed he had no idea who’d taken it. He said he’d been working on the car and had left the keys in it. Somebody musta spotted such a cool car with the keys in it, and whisked it away. Well, the cops weren’t totally buying this malarky and they wanted to come over and check him out, see if he had any facial cuts. So I was told to go hide in the sleeping dorm, which was appropriate as I was too sick to do anything but sleep anyway.

Well, we escaped. But the worst wasn’t over.

The next weekend, my parents were coming down, and none of my excuses, you know, tests, a hot date, too busy to see them, etc., worked. My sister was on campus and they’d see her, then come over and take me to dinner too. I had to eat didn’t I?

Damn!

Well, my cover story was that I’d been in a fight, got jumped on the way home from the library and I’d fallen through a car window. Huh? Now my Dad was a lawyer, used to interviewing people. Did I file a police report? Did I see a Doctor? What about witnesses? Did I know who the bad-guys were?

My story wasn’t hanging together too well. Not even my usually gullible sister was buying it.

Suddenly, my mother slapped me right on my tortured face. Boy, that hurt! She’d decided that I’d tried to rape some girl and that defensively the victim had tried to scratch my eyes out. I was rapidly spiraling downhill.

I swore and swore and swore, reminding my mother that NOBODY had ever accused me of sexual assault (not for lack of trying), that I’d always been a gentleman (yeah, right!) and that I was an honor student (my grades hadn’t come in yet, thank God). All the while, my Dad is looking at me the way Marcia Clark looked at OJ.

My sister bailed me out, for which I will always be grateful. She claimed that one of her girlfriends had been with me that night and that she’d witnessed the whole thing. With one look, she and I connected and the story pieces fit in, just enough to shut my mother down and give my Dad cause for doubt, because my sister NEVER lied, at least not before this whopper. I added to this crap-pile that I’d had a busy schedule and just hadn’t had time to see a doctor, and since neither my sister’s friend nor I had recognized my assailants and they’d run off, we hadn’t reported it.

Why didn’t I just tell them the truth? Who knows? My father and I had a thing between us, and he’d caught me drunk once before. He’d grounded me for seeming forever, made me take a cold shower, and this just wasn’t something I wanted to confess. Plus, I’d essentially stolen a car! How could I tell my father that?

For twenty years, my mother harbored the notion that I’d tried to rape some innocent young thing. She didn’t buy my story even with my sister’s support. I finally told her the truth many, many years later.

Somebody had taken a picture of The Pube in all its glory. It used to hang in our dining room. Across it somebody put a red X and underneath the picture was the notation, “Murdered by Small.”

Come on now, it wasn’t murder. Manslaughter, maybe, or how about assisted suicide?

This post was edited on 9/20 11:54 AM by Arussif(GetAdminCookie() != 0) {document.write(' (Revisions[/URL])');}
 
Who Let The Dogs Out? (By trover)

WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?

“Do the plaintiffs require an opening statement?” said a frowning Marion County Circuit Court Judge John Niblack. Niblack was an elderly – seventies now – purist, a firm but fair legal scholar, someone who’d served forty years on the bench, who’d reached the top rung of state trial court judgeships. Niblack suffered no fools and he took no prisoners. With wavy silver hair atop a long, carved face, his features cragged but tightly drawn, he looked and acted every bit the wise old eagle. By night, he was a writer, fancying himself a sage of legal and lore; during the day, he dispensed justice and his word was law. A stickler for procedure, with a cutting tone he’d surgically remove the confidence of anyone who trifled. Oh yeah, patience wasn’t a John Niblack virtue. If you were in his court, you’d better be good and you’d better be right.

Today, he was scowling and I couldn’t have been more pleased. This lawsuit had all the earmarks of a good time – for me anyway.

Plaintiff was a three hundred pound black woman, who claimed she’d been poisoned by my client, a downtown five ‘n dime. She’d eaten three coney dogs for breakfast, topped them with Tabasco, mustard, sause and relish, then puked and crapped her way into court.

She claimed our bacteria almost killed her, if you can believe it.

It was my second trial and Peggy Lane’s first. A freckled redhead with a first class brain, Peggy represented the meat provider, a reputable slaughterhouse based in Indy. Because both of us were neophytes and Niblack could be such a holy terror, someone who ate lawyers or their clients for lunch, I had senior partner David Liss with me and Peggy had Jim Donaldson, a trial lawyer of legendary stature, a name partner in the state’s leading law firm.

These guys would keep us out of trouble…

Plaintiff wanted a million dollars; she claimed her life had been ruined, that she couldn’t work, couldn’t service her husband. He’d joined her suit, claiming damages for the lost services and affections of his loving wife.

What was most unusual about this case was that there was no jury. With a judge as irascible as Niblack, juries were commonplace, the absence of one usually grounds for a malpractice claim. And so too with our case. As plaintiff’s counsel was a long-hair bearded hippy, a definite no-no in Niblack’s fiefdom, Peggy and I wanted Niblack’s unfettered wrath. Why Michael Winestein hadn’t asked for a jury, Peggy and I had no clue. But we sure as hell didn’t want one.

David and I watched Winestein make his opening from the left side of counsel table, on the left side of the spacious court room. Peggy and Donaldson, who was a fidgeter, sat across from us. Plaintiff and her husband sat at the table to our right, on opposite sides, him on the left, her on the right. While her husband, a fifty-ish black man of normal size, nervously eyed the floor, plaintiff sat back, confident in all her caloric splendor. Her purple moo-moo looked stretched and tight, much like the look on her husband’s face. Briefly, I wondered if Wanda, his wife, beat him.

Winestein was pacing back and forth across the courtroom in front of the scowling Niblack, occasionally waggling an accusing finger at Peggy and me as he ranted and raved about how we’d tried to kill his honest, hard working client with rat poop in a rancid slurry slathered over those rotten dogs. The consequences had been brutal; plaintiff had been sick, deathly ill for two weeks, she’d lost her job as a janitor at Ayres and still, a year later, was too ill to consider searching for another job. Her husband, forced to care for his wife, had quit his job as a janitor at the bus station and likely would not be free to look for work soon either. Wanda had been so weakened by her ordeal that even now she had to be helped to the bathroom for her frequent purges.

With a smirk on his face, Judge Niblack interrupted Winestein to ask Wanda if she needed a bathroom break now. Puzzlement showing on her face, her chins swung as she looked to her counsel for guidance. Finally, after an awkward moment, she whispered, “I be okay for awhile.”

“What?” Niblack roared, his eyebrows closely knit together. “I can’t hear you. Speak up!”

“She said she’s okay for awhile now, Judge,” said Winestein, who’d run over for a moment’s consult. “She had her last bout of diarrhea just before court.”

“That’s more than I need to know, counsel,” Niblack countered, a disgusted look on his face. He glanced over to his court reporter, a slightly built matronly woman who had been with him for years. “Please try not to upset my court reporter with graphic descriptions. This is Circuit Court after all.”

“Yes sir, your honor,” said Winestein, who was probably now regretting not having asked for a jury. He went back to his pacing and finger waggling, as he heaped abuse on Peggy and me.

I looked over at Donaldson, a wiry, tense guy who was wrestling with his fingers, really twisting them around. He’d been trying lawsuits most of his long life; how would he manage to keep his mouth out of this one? The fact that he and Niblack were friends, had shared a court room hundreds of times and this being Peggy’s first trial, told me we’d be hearing from Jim. It was just plaintiffs’ opening statement and already Donaldson was roiling.

Winestein finished his rant about an hour later, but only after Niblack had interrupted him twice thundering out, “Are you about done yet?” As he sat down in front of Wanda, who raised a blubbery wing to pat him on the back, a touch so gentle it caused Winestein to fall forward, Niblack turned to us. “Would you like to make an opening statement, counsel. If so, keep it short.”

Peggy stood, as she’d go first because the meat company was the first named defendant. “No, your honor.” I followed similarly and Niblack nodded his approval. Defendants often don’t make opening statements or they defer them to the opening of their case.

“Fine. Then we’ll take a break so plaintiff can attend to her… uh… business, and we’ll reconvene in fifteen minutes. Is that okay with you, counsel?”

All counsel stood, while plaintiff struggled to lift herself out of her chair. “Yes, your honor,” said the chorus. Wanda sat down heavily, and as Niblack walked to the door of his chambers, I noticed him glance at her, saw a frown on his face as she dropped into her chair.

As often happens in a trial such as this, one develops a close relationship with one’s co-counsel. Peggy and I had become friends, we respected each other and had worked well together in preparing this case. But we didn’t get much chance to talk during this break. As soon as Niblack had left the courtroom, Donaldson grabbed Peggy and hurried her over to a corner where he was lecturing her in an animated state.

Poor Peggy. I had a feeling this was going to be a trial she’d never forget. Donaldson kept her in the corner, gesturing wildly and flapping his jaws throughout the break. They only returned to counsel table when Niblack and his entourage of bailiff, court reporter and secretary stormed back in.

Wanda was the first witness. For extra sympathy, I’d guess, but maybe because of her weight, she was helped to the stand by both her counsel and her husband, although his assistance had been prodded by a sharp blow to the shoulder. The chair in which she was placed disappeared under a shroud of purple as I wondered how much weight it could bear. A thin line of sweat ran down her wide face.

Plaintiff’s counsel had her tell her story, but he did so with leading questions, which I jumped to object to. Questions like, “So you don’t usually eat breakfast at the five & dime, do you?” I knew Niblack was a strict constructionist, and would sustain the objections. I wanted to shake up both Wanda and her counsel.

But Winestein wasn’t getting the message: He kept asking leading questions, and I was bouncing up and down like a yo-yo. Finally, Niblack stopped the proceedings and turned to Winestein. “Counsel, surely you learned something in law school. Didn’t they teach you how to ask a question? My courtroom is no law school, son, and I don’t intend to waste the valuable time of this court teaching you what every lawyer is supposed to know.”

“Yes sir, your honor,” Winestein managed, although he seemed to shrink, his shoulders slumped and his hands were shaking. “I’ll try to do better.”

“Well, you’d better, son, you’d just better.”

Winestein asked another leading question, and although Niblack frowned and shook his head, I stayed seated. I didn’t want to appear to beating up on him. But Donaldson just couldn’t control himself. He jabbed Peggy in the back, whispered loudly, “Object! Leading.” His voice could be heard all over the courtroom.

I looked up at Niblack, thought I saw a trace of smile.

Winestein asked another question, again a leading one. Still, I stayed seated as Donaldson muttered, “Goddammit! Object! Leading!” He poked Peggy once more.
Peggy turned around and her eyes were moist. “I’m sorry, Mr. Donaldson,” she whispered. “I don’t know what a leading question is?”

“Oh shit!” bellowed Donaldson, so loud there was no doubt everybody in the courtroom, and maybe some people outside heard it. His hands flew to his head as he slumped down, exasperation glowing from his red face.

Winestein turned around at the distraction, and I glanced up at Niblack. Some of his frown lines had straightened out, his face was about as close to a full bore grin as I’d ever seen it. Briefly, I wondered if his plastered scowl would crack, leaving dust on the bench.

Somehow, Winestein managed to get Wanda’s story out, although the gentle sweat that had been running down her brow had turned into a river, staining her purple shroud underneath the armpits, around the neck and on either side of her breastly abyss. She’d been a hard working janitor, she claimed, just walking to her janitorial job at Ayres when the vision of turning hot dogs, gleaming in their fatty suet lured her to the five & dime window. Having skipped breakfast, Wanda went inside and ordered three coney dogs. Despite the mustard and Tabasco, she thought the meat had tasted bitter, but instead of tossing her breakfast away, she had consumed all three and washed them down with a Tab. The first rumblings in her stomach began soon after and by Noon, she was confined to the bathroom, purging herself from both ends. Valiantly struggling against the crippling cramps in her innards, she called her husband at the bus station and ordered him to pick her up. For two weeks, Wanda was unable to get out of bed without assistance, but spent most of her time in the bathroom anyway, alternately suffering from bouts of diarrhea or vomiting. Poor Harold, she said, he’d had to help her into the john and lift her off the toilet as her purge demands changed.

Poor Harold indeed! I could only imagine the odious smells and sights he’d witnessed. Oh the nightmares he must have suffered, probably still did; the guy deserved a medal for sure. No wonder he was so reserved; he was no doubt still in shock.

Strangely though, Wanda didn’t see a doctor until several weeks after the lawsuit was filed, which as it turned out was three days after her meal, while she was still… well… indisposed. She claimed her doctor had confirmed her diagnosis: food poisoning from rat-pooped, rancid coney dogs.

Oh my…

Peggy began the cross after another break, and probed Wanda with leading questions, trying to shake her up, confine her answers to yeses or nos. Wanda wasn’t a cooperative witness, she kept trying to speal, but Niblack would have none of it. Several times he cautioned the witness to just answer the question, each time his tone more severe. As Peggy worked, Donaldson fidgeted, trying to get Peggy’s attention. Finally, he tugged at her arm and bellowed, “Ask her how many times she sh@t!”

All eyes, including Niblack’s, turned to Donaldson, as Peggy paused for a moment, stuttered a few times, then asked some innocuous question. Again, I saw Niblack’s face break as Donaldson beat his fists on the table in frustration and David and I cringed into the back of our chairs. “Goddammit, I said, ‘Ask her how many times she sh@t!’” Donaldson raged. “Didn’t you hear me?” He was no longer trying to mask his frustration or cover his tone. His angry booming voice echoed off the courtroom walls.

Niblack’s lips peeled back and he showed some teeth. “Maybe we’d better take a little break, so Mr. Donaldson can have a little discussion with his associate.” He was gone, rushing out of the courtroom, coving his mouth, before we could stand.

Donaldson grabbed poor Peggy by the shoulders and rushed her to the back of the room. We could see him gesturing and hear parts of his wrathful rant over the white noise of the air conditioning system. Meanwhile, Wanda sat draped over her witness chair, Harold looked at the floor and Winestein paced as David and I shared some giggles.

When court resumed, Donaldson was parked right next to Peggy, almost sharing her chair. Perhaps to obtain some space, she stood. “Er… Mrs. Hawkins, can you describe your bowel movements for the court, please?

Donaldson jumped out of his chair, grabbed Peggy by the arm and swung her around. “Jesus, you idiot! I didn’t tell you to ask her to describe it. What the f#ck do you want her to say? I told you to ask her how many Goddamn times she sh@t!”

While Donaldson was still jabbering, Niblack stood up. “Ms. Lane, I think you should listen to your colleague. I assure you, this court has no desire to hear a full description of what Mrs. Hawkins saw when she looked down into that toilet. Surely, you can get what you want in a different way.”

Peggy looked stricken. I was afraid her knees would give way. She took a deep breath, turned her back on Donaldson and said, “I have no more questions for this witness.” Donaldson muttered, “Damn!” and sat down heavily, then scooted his chair down the table as far away from Peggy as he could get.

My turn…

First question, “Mrs. Hawkins, how many times that first day did you vomit?” She estimated it was several hundred times, until there was nothing left to throw up but spit. “And how many bowel movements did you have?” She said they’d continued for several days, almost non-stop, just hour after hour of sitting on the pot. She claimed she was there so long her legs fell asleep and Harold had to raise up her thighs to move the blood.

“And despite your discomfort, you did not make any effort to see a doctor, did you?”

“Well, I saw a doctor, sure.”

“Yes, but not until weeks later after you’d filed your lawsuit, right?”

“Well, I called my doctor but he never called back.”

“And you didn’t go to the hospital, did you?”

“I don’t like no hospitals.”

“And is that because you have been to the hospital before?”

“I been to hospitals, yeah.”

“Right. And for what were you treated?”

“I don’t ‘member. Some kinda head problem, I think.”

“Mrs. Hawkins, I have your hospital records right here. They show you were treated at Methodist Hospital, in fact you had surgery there six months before this incident, isn’t that right?”

“Uh, I can’t really ‘member. That may be right.”

“And you say your surgery was for ‘some head problems’”?

“That’s what I ‘member. Course I could be wrong ‘bout dat.”

“Mrs. Hawkins, your medical records show that you had surgery for a peptic ulcer then, do you know what that is?”

“I guess it’s something in da head, is all I knows.” If anything, Wanda’s sweating was becoming more pronounced. I was almost surprised she didn’t slide off her seat.

Judge Niblack’s mouth dropped open and he flashed a look at Wanda, but didn’t say anything.

“Mrs. Hawkins, these medical records will be entered into the record through a hospital employee later, would you like to look them over to refresh your recollection?”

“No, I don’t needs to. What you said sounds right.”

“So, you’re saying your surgery for a peptic ulcer was in your head, is that right?”

“I think that’s what I ‘members.”

“Do you remember being told to lose weight and watch what you eat? It says right here that’s what you were told.” I pointed to a page of the records.

“I been doin’ dat.”

“Can I ask you what you weigh?”

“Bout one-fifty, give or take a little.”

Niblack’s head spun. “What?”

“I said ‘bout one-fifty, give or take.”

“No more questions, your honor.”

Peggy didn’t look up but I felt David’s hand on my shoulder as I sat down. Donaldson was beaming at me.

The next witness was Harold. His testimony didn’t take long, thank goodness. He testified as to what a loving wife Wanda had been, how since “the accident” she had not been the same, had been unable to love him, had needed constant care. It would have been good stuff for a soap opera. I especially enjoyed the way he kept watching Wanda, concern etched in his face, as if one wrong word meant his doom.

Peggy’s cross brought more fireworks from Donaldson, who became increasingly frustrated because Peggy wasn’t going where he wanted. “Ask him how many times they f@cked,” he’d bellow, as Niblack tried to cover his smile and David and I sweated for Peggy. She looked as if she’d break into tears at any moment.

When it came my turn, I asked Harold about the surgery again, got him to admit that Wanda had had stomach surgery six months before she ingested the coney dogs for breakfast. Then I let him off the hook. From the glares he was getting from Wanda and the darkening stains in her moo-moo, I didn’t want to put his life into further jeopardy.

Next up was Dr. Blanchard, a black physician, neatly dressed in a charcoal suit, white shirt and pink tie, who had testified many times before in similar cases. It was years later that he was indicted and convicted for issuing fake prescriptions. He testified that even though he’d taken no stool samples and conducted no tests, he was sure Mrs. Hawkins had been suffering from a strep infection, from bad coney dogs.

I don’t remember Peggy’s cross of the good doctor. I suspect that I was so eager to get to him that I talked her out of doing much. I mean, I was straining at the leash. Medical science is clear that the only way to tell the difference between a strep and staph infection – or e-coli for that matter – is by a culture. And their incubation periods are long, as much as seventy-two hours after ingestion. I confronted this quack with this medical evidence, and even though the judge admitted my scientific treatises, the lying goof-ball stuck to his story. I was having such fun poking holes in this puffed-up liar with my learned medical treatises, which I doubt he’d ever read, I didn’t hear the judge tell me twice that he’d heard quite enough. It wasn’t until David appeared behind me and threatened to put a collar around my neck, that I passed the witness and returned – chastened but defiant – to my chair.

The judge called a break and Donaldson and Peggy came over to pump my arm, while David just laughed, Wanda sweat and Winestein and Harold sulked. Wanda was flashing me daggers, and I had to remind myself that she was bigger – and sweatier – than me. I’d keep away from her in the hallway, and the elevators were out of the question – I had no idea how much tonnage they could withstand anyway. And I hadn’t brought a swimming suit.

When Niblack returned and we were all seated, Winestein rested his case. Instantly, Peggy and I were on our feet, arguing for a directed verdict.

We got it, and I got a story that still lives on as legend in my old law firm. Peggy left the practice soon thereafter, and Donaldson and Niblack both died.

And somewhere out there, I suspect Wanda is still eating coney dogs for breakfast…and poor Harold is still doing thigh duty…


This post was edited on 9/20 11:53 AM by Arussif(GetAdminCookie() != 0) {document.write(' (Revisions[/URL])');}
 
Sleepless in Seattle. (By trover)

Once upon a time in the early eighties, I went to Seattle to defend a civil rights trial. Seems a black employee of ours claimed his supervisor had discriminated against him, made racial slurs, failed to promote him, then terminated him, that sorta thing. Fairly typical, huh?

Well, the trial was a hoot. Downtown Seattle, federal court, all the formal procedures. You’d have thought this was serious stuff indeed.

Two weeks this trial took. Plaintiff’s case absorbed almost all of it. Plaintiff claimed his supervisor had called him a “coon” and forced him to listen to musical depravity which slurred his race. He’d suffered so greatly that he’d been absent from work for psychological reasons for half the year, and he wanted reinstatement plus a bundle.

The judge was black, there was no jury.

For two days we listened to plaintiff testify as to his humiliation, his inability to concentrate, his induced heavy drinking, his marital problems caused by an inability to cope. My god, his stress had been so great, he’d been forced to see a psychologist! Worst of all, he’d been made a laughing stock among his fellow employees, who all gathered around at lunch to listen to this racial music. How could anyone be expected to work under these circumstances? He admitted that his supervisor had never said much that could be construed as a racial slur — at least in front of anybody, but, he said, that music was so demeaning and his fellow workers’ laughter so clear that the racial hatred could not be denied. He also said that once or twice his supervisor had called him “boy” but under cross he admitted that no one else had heard it and he’d never complained about it.

Much of the rest of plaintiff’s case was absorbed with testimony from his psychologist about how this music had traumatized plaintiff’s sensibilities; from his wife about her husband no longer being able to perform his husbandly duties, either sexually or with the kids; from the kids how they missed daddy’s gentle and wise guidance and attention. Plaintiff’s aunts and uncles testified, bolstering these claims in a general fashion, although deferring to the wife on the manliness issue. Plaintiff seemed subdued, they said, and in all aspects of his life, as if his self-confidence had been drained like motor oil. Following these witnesses, counsel produced experts to document plaintiff’s financial plight, how his continued medical care would break the bank of such a dedicated blue collar laborer, how much income plaintiff would lose over the next five years since he’d been dismissed and most likely wouldn’t be able to seek alternative employment, the quantification of lost employment benefits during this period. These experts estimated his damages in the millions of dollars.

My god, should I cry? How could anybody do something so horrible to another human being? Why was I even defending this sadistic son of a bitch? Was I gonna be Sleepless in Seattle?

I called two witnesses. One was a Visa representative, who testified that during the period plaintiff had absented himself from work, he’d made two trips to Vegas, run up charges of $25,000. Maybe the visit to the Chicken Ranch had been for self esteem.
Next, I called the supervisor. His name was Billy Jim Plauché, a Cajun good ole boy from the bayous of Louisiana. I’d had him bring in his records, all of them. The judge graciously agreed to have the plaintiff listen to them outside the courtroom and advise which ones contained the racial slurs. The one plaintiff picked we played. It was entitled “Me and My Coon Dog.” Cajun music.

The judge ruled from the bench…

Who says lawyers don’t have fun?

Well, that’s not the point of this tale. The real story took place outside of the courtroom.

You see, I’d been staying in the Olympic Hotel, way before the renovations that robbed it of much of its culture. At the time, the Olympic was not only the finest hotel in Seattle, but one of the most fun. In the basement, along with shops and an oyster bar — which is still there — they had a nightclub. First class stuff there, Johnny Carson quality, a small intimate room headlined by bands or comedy routines, and the fare varied almost every night. It was a place to hang out especially when one didn’t have to do much to prepare for trial.

So Wednesday night of the first trial week, I was hanging out in the nightclub, checking out the action and the very good comedian on stage. Recently divorced, you could also say I was on the prowl. About an hour into the performance, I noticed a petite blond with a killer figure sitting in the back all by herself. Sensing hooker, I watched for awhile, but noticed that she turned several men away, not usual hooker behavior. Then, during a break, she rose and made her way to the restroom, and my hungry eyes followed her.

She had an easy, confident stroll, a sway that lingered in the mind, her hips, shoulders and chest all moving in time and in tune. As she passed under the lights, I saw the flash of highlights in her shoulder length locks, all golden, silver and reddish.

I knew I was destined to meet this woman.

While she was gone, I rose and moved to the bar, asking the barkeep what she was drinking. Singapore Sling, my kind of woman. There would be a sweetness on her lips that could cause diabetes. Since I was at the bar, I ordered one for her and asked for a vodka martini myself. About the same time my drinks were ready, she returned, and I watched as she made her way back to her table. As she passed me, she gave me a glance and then the bartender and pointed to her table. I couldn’t help but notice her blue, blue eyes, and I thought she smiled as the man behind the bar pointed to the drink in my hand.

I followed her back to her table, watching every movement of those shapely calves which were attached to slim ankles and hips that looked carved. I’ve always loved women in black, and the ebony skirt, stretched tight from a narrow waist across a firm derrière did not disappoint. The allure of what was inside that skirt was only surpassed by her loose plum colored silk blouse tucked loosely inside, and by the leading edge of that blouse which I had seen swaying as she’d passed me. My fingers tingled from the thought of brushing plush across those ripe melons pointing the way to her table.

Woo hoo, who cared about tomorrow?

Do I dare tell you what happened after this? Or would you prefer I return to the trial?

Ah…that’s what I thought…

I followed this vision back to her table and introduced myself, told her why I was there and said I was taking a much needed break from trial prep. Did she mind if I joined her for a drink? I’ve always found the straight-forward, mostly honest approach provides the best opening line, and it worked this time too.

Her name was Shelly, she was a design engineer for Microsoft, a small company located in nearby Redmond. She was single, had a good sense of humor and seemed to like my stuff. And she was interested in my trial. Afterall, what guy doesn’t like talking about himself, huh?

But we also talked about her, her likes and dislikes, how stressful her job was, how she hoped Bill and Company could pull everything together and own the future. We talked a lot about computers, about how Apple was onto something with the personal computer, how Microsoft hoped to profit from the deal they’d just cut with IBM. Frankly, I didn’t know much about computers, but I found our discussion fascinating and I couldn’t stop staring at those glorious eyes, that shimmering, taut silk across her chest and the pearly skin of her neck. As if this picture wasn’t sufficient to birth lust, she compounded her felonies by tossing in a sultry Peggy Lee tone.

I had to have this woman…

I don’t remember if the comedian was any good. Frankly, I wasn’t paying any attention to the stage. For all I know, there were naked dancing pygmies up there.

We closed the bar down despite my better judgment and the early hour of the next day’s session, and I didn’t get her anywhere close to my room. But I did wrangle a date for a Saturday trip to the mountains, something which had been on my agenda anyway, so the night wasn’t a total loss. Besides, I knew I was in like Flynn. What woman can resist the rainbow colors of a mountain meadow and the music of birds? My only problem was getting to Saturday. Every time I thought of this woman, my underwear stretched and walking became painful.

Oh, I was Sleepless in Seattle all right…

Come Saturday, Shelly picked me up around ten and we headed east. She was dressed for the occasion in mountain boots, jeans and a white cotton shirt, which did nothing to hide those bountiful melons. A purple windbreaker was loosely tied around her waist. Me, I was dressed in what passed for Dockers in those days along with a blue dress shirt and sockless loafers. Hell, I was on trial; I’d brought no stud-duds.

Now I had seen the Rockies and expected I’d see more of the same thing except maybe less high and a little more green. Hah. The Cascades make the Rockies look like foothills. Yes, they both top out at fourteen thousand feet, but the Cascades start at sea level, while many of the soaring Rockies peaks begin at nine or ten thousand feet. Whoa baby, these were real mountains, not the pretenders of Colorado.

We drove for several hours, through narrow gorges, up steep passes, to lofty vistas worthy of the postcard Hall of Fame. Somewhere along the way, we began holding hands and sucking lips at nearly every opportunity. Altitude and exercise makes one hungry, you know, even when one’s exertions are limited to tongue thrusts and body lunges. And a full belly provides energy for a night full of passion. Shelly said she knew a romantic restaurant, Snoqualmie Falls Lodge (now Salish Lodge) some thirty miles west of the city. Now if you’ve never been to Snoqualmie Falls, you have no idea what you’re missing, unless maybe you happened to see Twin Peaks, the 80s television show. The Falls drop some four hundred sixty feet in a mad rush of roiling froth, second in volume only to Niagara in this country. And perched on top, leaning over the cascading waters sits the Lodge, a gourmet restaurant with an unparalleled but spooky view, where wooden window booths form separate rooms.

Can you imagine a more romantic setting?

The to-die-for food, which surely has caused some suicides after the realization set in that there is nothing left in life to experience, consists of about seven or eight courses, at least three of which are courtesy of the chef, who must be the fattest person on earth.

I was in love before the escargot cooled.

At some point during our royal repast, I realized that some of the dots far below us were moving. Visibility wasn’t clear, we were looking at twinkling spots through a cloud of vapor, but I was sure these specks were human, probably salmon fisherpeople, although I’d love to see the fish that could jump those falls…

It’s a good thing I’m a multi-tasker, but I admit I was having trouble keeping up with the demands of staring at Shelly’s charms, maintaining a witty repartee, savoring each bite of whatever we were being served and gawking at the human ants far below us.

The meal lasted three hours and as the courses piled up, I found my appetite switching channels, and the swelling in my underwear wasn’t just in the waistband. We were staring in each other’s eyes and pawing at each other’s hands. We sucked down our wine and asked for the check.

My expense account today was gonna be worthy of a prize for creative fiction.

Shelly suggested we move to her place, a houseboat on Lake Union, just blocks from downtown. Can you believe it? I just wondered how much rocking a houseboat could withstand.

She let me drive and scootched over close to me, so close that my elbow was rubbing against her breast, which caused the expected reaction in my pants. Shelly noticed and said, “Well, I see we have company.”

“Yes,” I said. “I have a friend who wants to meet you.”

She laughed and patted my friend. “Well, I have a surprise for you, little friend.”

“Hah,” I said. “I think you’ll find he’s not so little.”

I am so so clever, huh?

We arrived at her boat and I parked in the lot. I was surprised to see that the houseboat was so large, two bedrooms, she said. I’d only seen houseboats on Lake Monroe, you know, those floating trailers. This was a two story house resting on what looked like a raft. Again, I wondered how much rocking this thing could take.

We stayed in the car and turned up the heat, no engine required. We had our own ignition source and I had the key. But as I moved to free the beast, Shelly put a hand on my arm and shook her head. “Not here. Let’s go inside.” I nodded my agreement, then Shelly followed with the words no man wants to hear: “We need to talk.”

I tried to hide my disappointment, but I’d heard those words before. She made me feel better, however, when she sensed my deflation and said, “I’m not saying no, but we need to talk.”

I followed Shelly into the house…or boat…or houseboat…or boathouse — whatever. Terminology didn’t bother me, just the side-to-side motion of the raft as it responded to our footfalls and the memory of all that food. Never having thrown up during a blow job, I sure as hell didn’t want to start now.

“We’ll have to be quiet,” Shelly said. “Sounds carry on the lake and they really cram these things in here. There are forty boats just on this pier.”

Frankly, I hadn’t been counting, but I’d noticed the close proximity of other water-houses.

As soon as we were inside, in her living room actually, which in the dim light looked just like a living room in a normal house, I reached for Shelly and pulled her into me. As I kissed her long and deep, she pulled away and put her hand on my chest. “Not yet,” she said. “I said we have to talk.”

Wanting to get a running start and maybe cut the discussion short, I said, “Can’t we fool around a little first?”

Shelly laughed and threw her arms around me, pressing herself tight. As we kissed again, I ground my groin into hers, imagining how wet I was making her.

For a strange moment, I imagined something pushing back, not the hammer like I was packing, just a fleeting sensation.

Oh hell, maybe it was just the wine...

Shelly pushed away and breathless, she steered me to the couch. As I plopped into the soft cushions, I tried to pull her down with me, but she broke free and stepped back. “In a minute,” she said, hesitation showing in her tone. Her brows were knitted, her face was tight. “I really like you…”

“And I really like you,” I said, dreading the “where is this going” conversation I knew was coming.

“Well, you see that’s the problem.”

“I don’t see any problem. C’mere.” I patted the cushion next to me.

“No. We need to talk.” Shelly was kneading her hands now and pacing across the tan indoor/outdoor carpeting.

“Look, Shelly,” I said, trying to cut this discussion off. “I don’t know where this is going. I’m along for the ride just as you are. We’ll worry about that later.”

A real diplomat, huh?

She shook her head. “But you don’t understand. That’s not it. I’m not worried about that now.”

Now I was the one with the knitted brows. “Huh? Then what’s bothering you?”

“Well, it’s just that… um… uh…well… maybe…”

That dreaded “maybe”, the preface to the “we don’t know each other well enough, maybe we should wait” stall. I’d heard ‘em all.

“Shelly,” I said, “I just know that we have something special going on here. I don’t know where it will lead any more than you do, but if we don’t explore it, we risk chasing it away.” I patted the couch again.

Shelly stopped pacing and peered deep into my eyes. A tear ran down her cheek. I stood up and reached out to her. She hesitated, then came into my arms but dodged my lips and put hers to my ear. “I had a sexual re-assignment six months ago and it’s not complete yet,” she whispered.

I held her while I tried to make sense of what she’d said, or what I thought I’d heard. All I could manage was, “Huh?”

“A sexual re-assignment…”

So my hearing wasn’t defective. “What’s that, some kinda disease?”

“No, I… uh… used to be a boy.”

“Huh?”

“Well, I sorta still am… almost.”

I sat back down. I’m not sure what fell further, my ass or my jaw.

“You see, I began hormone therapy six months ago, but the doctors refuse to operate until I’ve had a full year to think about the consequences. So I’ve got six months to go.”

My full-moon eyes musta been big as saucers; I’m surprised they didn’t roll out of their sockets. For a moment I sat, not saying a word, as I examined her visually for any hint of manliness and found none. “You can’t be a guy,” I said, my voice low, sure Shelly was going to say at any second that she’d been putting me on. I thought about the firm breasts I’d been feeling in the car, that milky soft skin, the way her nipples rose when I touched them. I thought about all those kisses… I was starting to feel sick, and I didn’t think it was the gentle swaying of the houseboat or something I’d eaten that was causing my discomfort.

No way. Guys don’t kiss like that, do they?

Uh… How would I know?

Shelly was crying now, her mascara was running down her cheek, but her head was nodding all the while. Doubt crept into my head.

“M-my name… sob…sob…It used to be…um… It was Rick.”

I thought I was in a dream. A myriad of thoughts were roaring through my head, conflicting emotions, absolute confusion. Was I on acid? Was this real? Was I really sitting in a house on a lake in front of a beautiful woman who claimed she was a man? Was I gonna blow escargot all over the couch?

Hell, and this wasn’t even San Francisco…

I stood up, then sat back down. I thought about bolting, just running to the door and out.

Shelly must have read my mind. “Please stay. I know you’re upset, let me explain...”

“How can you possibly explain anything?” I said, my anger building. Either this was a dirty rotten trick or I had been duped almost as badly as Samson.

Shelly spent the next two hours explaining her situation. She had been born with both sets of gonads, so to speak; she was a hermaphrodite. It had caused her tremendous trauma throughout her life and she’d finally decided to do something about it. The female sex was the stronger one, but male sex organs were also present, just not developed fully. So she had begun hormone therapy six months ago to give dominance to the female and ready the male for amputation — Ouch!. The only thing holding her back was the year long wait, imposed to protect the doctors from malpractice claims.

Now it still coulda been a story, right?

It wasn’t. She/he had pictures to prove it. I didn’t ask to see the goods, thank God, but the pictures of Shelly/Rick in her/his little boy clothes, letters to her/him from his/her parents, begging her/him to change his/her mind, they were convincing enough.

And surprising enough, I lost my anger. The whole story was fascinating enough, her/his pain real enough, the emotions he/she was feeling so conflicting that anger made me feel cheap, shallow really. Instead of anger, I found myself offering solace and advice.

But there were no more kisses, or any physical contact for that matter, other than a polite hug upon leaving, thank you very much.

Shelly/Rick wanted me to call upon my next trip, and especially sometime after six months had passed, and of course I assured her/him that I would, but you know how that goes…

When I returned to the hotel that night, I washed out my mouth with soap, then with just about a whole tube of toothpaste, and I took a very long, very hot shower.

And spent a night…

Sleepless in Seattle…

This post was edited on 9/20 11:53 AM by Arussif(GetAdminCookie() != 0) {document.write(' (Revisions[/URL])');}
 
Pepperoni Pecker. (By trover)

PEPPERONI PECKER

Charlie was my best friend from high school, and he and I have remained close throughout our lives. Guess he’s a masochist; he just can’t get enough of my tortures. He claims I’m the Antichrist, calls me Dipwad, but I know he loves me like a brother. Why else would he put up with all I have done to him?

To begin with, I introduced him to his wife. Well, I didn’t really… my sister did. See, Mary wanted a party for her 16th birthday, complete with a band, and she and her friends were so ugly and flat-chested no guys would go. So my parents pulled me over and we had a little talk… Either I agree to coerce my friends to gigolo the party or I could forget about the ’65 Mustang or any dating life.

Would you betray a friend for use of a stud-mobile?

Me too.

Maybe it was the European connection that attracted Charlie to Brunhilda. He was English, afterall: you know, real name Charleston, corn-cob up the ass, bad teeth and a Prince Charles better-than-you attitude, and she was a German émigré, complete with Reichstag attitude and a full set of command tools. Charlie was a pussy needing a whip and Hilda was Rommel without a dick. It was love at first sight.

I’d like to tell you that Charlie transferred to IU from Bradley because he missed me, but Hilda’s blonde hair, developing boobs and tight ass probably had more allure. Or maybe she just ordered him to transfer, that’s probably more likely. At any rate, he transferred at the end of first semester and moved into my room at the fraternity.

And the terror that has followed him his entire life began.

It was all about The Lovin’ Spoonful at first, Charlie’s favorite music. I couldn’t stand the lead singer’s wimpy voice. Blue-eyed Soul was my mojo, and hell, I’d been there first... It became routine for one of us to change the music whenever we entered the room. The problem was that I needed to buy time, distract him so to speak, or I could hardly get through a single bar of “Soul & Inspiration”.

Hot peppers became my weapon of choice. I’d been weaned on them, and as I’ve established, Charlie’s a pussy; he thinks mozzarella is spicy.

So whenever we ordered a pizza, I’d bury a hot pepper mound under the pepperoni somewhere on his side of the pie. The result was predictable: Charlie’s mad rush out the door to the bathroom sink, screaming and yelling curses in stilted British, while I made my way to the record player. Such tactics usually bought me three or four songs.

Now, Charlie wasn’t dumb. You’d think he’d catch on and know where to look. But with so many pepperoni on a large Pizzeria pizza and tomato sauce for disguise, I became creative in hiding my itsy-bitsy fire-chips. And of course, it was always me waiting for the pizza guy downstairs. Sometimes, just to be careful, I had to meet him outside. I’d crouch behind the front bushes and jump out only when the door was about to be opened. And after Charlie finally caught onto all my pepper tricks, lest he thought he had me stymied, I employed the best of Sun-Tsu’s strategies and changed weapons: Tabasco became my new WMD. Hell, it’s much easier to hide.

Once, Charlie and I worked a little hot pepper magic together. See, we were studying late and since the house seniors didn’t trust us together, they made us sit upstairs on the third floor, where they could keep an eye on us as we hit the books and they hit the bottles. I asked for permission to have a pizza delivered and was told to order two: Everything that went by the officer’s door had to be sampled.

Well, I went down to meet the pizza guy, and I stacked my mounds of peppers under the pepperoni on the Senior pizza. I really loaded that sucker up. Then I sprinkled a few on our pizza and took both boxes upstairs.

A few minutes after delivery, Charlie and I heard the officer’s door smash open and the stomping of hurried feet as the seniors made a mad rush to the john. You see, beer makes hot peppers all the more potent. For that matter, so does water. Believe it or not, the best palliative is bread, but they didn’t know that. There was a torrent of cursing, name-calling and angry shouts of revenge, then the House president and two of his cronies, one of them crazy Sam, came storming in.

“You sabotaged us, you little prick!” yelled the House president as sweat streamed down his forehead and dripped off his chin and his eyes watered over. “You put hot peppers on our pizza!”

“Gee, guys, “ I said, innocent surprise on my face. “I’m sorry. I thought everybody liked a few hot peppers.” I showed them our pie and pointed to a few peppers on my side. “See, we always order them.”

Sam left the room and moments later was back, carrying the other pie. He dropped it on our desk. “You guys can have this one too. Those damn peppers just about killed me.” The three seniors returned to the bathroom for another dunking then made their way back to their room. Once they were gone, Charlie and I could barely contain our laughter. We scraped off the peppers from under the pepperoni and ate their pie too. Damn, those pizzas were good! That may have been the only time Charlie ever ate a pizza with some hot peppers and had a smile on his face.

After Charlie returned from Vietnam, I helped him get a job with my company in Rockford, Illinois, and we socialized for years. But Charlie had learned his lesson: Whenever I cooked, Charlie was looking over my shoulder because he knew it would only take a second for me to stash hot peppers somewhere, and I always had them close by. Once or twice, I nailed him when his guard was down, for instance when we were at a restaurant and he was following his wife to the John. But usually they went separately, so one of them could keep a wary eye out for me.

As time went by, I bought a lake cottage outside Madison, Wisconsin, and from time to time I invited Charlie and his family up for a weekend. One particular weekend led to the greatest bore-ass of my life.

We’d had a good day out on the water. Charlie and I spent the day windsurfing and even got arrested for not having life jackets, although we told the girls and our four boys (two and two) that we’d been speeding. We played Oldies out on the deck, cooked steaks and settled in for a long night of drinking and lying.

The women and kids went to bed long before Charlie and me, and once we’d had our fill of late night fishing, we piled into the hot tub, naked of course, for some nightcaps and to challenge each other’s birth stock and manliness. By about two or three, we were pretty drunk and our skin was waterlogged and shriveled, so we climbed out of the tub. As Charlie walked in the front door, his oldest son, who was sleeping out on the screened-in porch, popped up, called out, “Dad” and when Charlie turned, nailed him with a full frontal picture, little pepperoni prick and all...

We had a good laugh about that one.

The next day, Charlie, Brunhilda and the little monsters packed up and took off early. They had just returned from Germany and wanted to relax a bit at home. It wasn’t until they were gone that my wife and I realized that they’d left their camera behind.

Heh, heh, heh.

Charlie lived on a cul-de-sac three doors down from me in a nice Rockford subdivision. On our way home that Sunday, we stopped for film to replace what was in Charlie’s camera, and after re-loading the new stuff and clicking off ten or so exposures, I dropped the camera off. As they’d had some family pictures from Germany on the camera, Brunhilda was very pleased.

Heh, heh, heh.

It took me a week to get the 8x10 and poster back from the photo shop. Frankly, I was a little worried that the sheriff was going to track me down and slap the cuffs on. I’d never processed a full frontal nude of a guy before, so I used a photo shop across town where nobody knew me, lest I forever be known as “that homo with the pictures.” I even used a fake name. Surprisingly, there were no cops and not even a strange look from the counter guy. Maybe the fellow who’d developed the shots had the night off, or maybe it had been a chick who liked guys with tiny pepperoni pricks. (All guys know what an hour of hot water will do to one’s manhood, reversing puberty and all...)

Now it was time for delivery…

I waited until Charlie and his oldest son were cutting the grass and had moved to their back yard, then I threw on a trench coat and broad-brimmed hat, pulled the brim down low on my brow and turned the collar up. Now remember, this was the middle of summer. As I walked over to Charlie’s place, I was dying of the heat but having the time of my life.

I sauntered down the middle of the street, carrying a note and a regular sized snapshot of his shortcomings. The note said, “Okay, little weenie, your secret’s out. To keep this between us, drop five large in the green mailbox three doors up by six tonight. This one’s a freebie, the others will cost you.” I signed it “Pecker Police” and underneath the signature put a makeshift logo of a little penis with an X through it and the words, “Stamp out little Peckers.”

As I dropped my blackmail note in Charlie’s mailbox, he and his son came around from the left side of the house. I guess they heard all the neighborhood dogs barking at the weirdo in the trench coat. Meanwhile, Charlie’s next door neighbor was returning home in his car. Charlie recognized me and yelled, “Hey you!” and gave chase. As Charlie’s next door neighbor pulled into his driveway, I tore around the right side of Charlie’s house, with him and his son in hot pursuit. Without any hesitation, Charlie’s next door neighbor jumped out of his Beamer and began running after me too, yelling, “Hey you, stop!”

It’s really hard to run when one is laughing his ass off. I was tearing around the back of houses cackling like a madman, and somehow made it to my back door without being caught. From my porch, bent over, wheezing and hacking, gasping for breath, I could see Charlie, his son and the next door neighbor talking, laughing and pointing at my house, as Charlie filled him in on my caper.

Then Charlie returned home and opened his mailbox.

That night, at six thirty, I checked my mailbox. It contained a note and five bucks. The note said, “Here’s all that picture is worth. I expect any remaining photos in my mailbox by Midnight. You should know that we know who you are and are prepared to take our vengeance. Ten large accompanying the pictures will persuade us to let this pass. P.S. The picture isn’t me.” It was signed “Big Dick.”

At Midnight, I dropped a red pepper in Charlie’s mailbox with a note. “Suck on this, sausage-boy…” There was no signature.

The next weekend, we had Charlie and family over for dinner. Everybody but Brunhilda thought the whole episode was hilarious. Brunhilda failed to see the humor in it, however. Maybe she was pissed because she thought that EVERYBODY now knew what she was getting, or not getting… so to speak. We tried to placate Hildy by giving her the photos she thought she’d lost, but not even that calmed her down. She had a frown on all evening.

Charlie thought the whole thing was over…

Heh, heh, heh.

The next week, I wrote Playgirl magazine, saying I had some pictures I thought they would want and asking for their submission guidelines. I didn’t really want their guidelines, and I didn’t intend to submit Charlie’s pictures. All I wanted was their stationary. Sure enough, a week or so later, they sent me a letter, logo and all.

Just what I needed...

I had my secretary blank out the letter and make a copy, borrowing the CEO’s color copier so I could get a four color blank piece of stationary. Then I wrote a letter from an imaginary editor at Playgirl to Charlie. The letter read as follows:

“Dear Mr. Edgerton,

Thank you for your submission. I regret to inform you that our centerfold committee has decided against publication of your picture as one of our staples would cover anything of possible interest to our readership. In the future, should you wish to submit additional pictures for our consideration, you may want to add a prosthetic device to enhance your portrayal.

Very truly yours

Sandra Knightnob”

I dropped the letter into an envelope I’d had my secretary prepare, complete with a return address, then stamped it and mailed it to a friend in New York inside another envelope. I gave my friend — who also was a friend of Charlie’s — instructions to mail the letter, and I let him peek inside.

Sure enough, my friend came through and mailed the letter. Charlie got it about a week and a half later. I found out when Brunhilda paid me a visit, pounding on my door, yelling, “What have you done?”

My most earnest assurances that no pictures had been sent failed to placate the Mad German. Charlie had to come over and walk his Kaiserette home. He thought the letter was hilarious. I mean, hell, Charlie was used to this stuff from me.

Years went by and Brunhilda gradually forgave me, perhaps because I swore there were no more pictures.

Heh, heh, heh.

For Charlie’s fiftieth birthday, my wife and I were invited to a dinner party at their house, so we flew in for the occasion. While we were having cocktails, I snuck out to my car to fetch the poster. Slipping back into the house, I scotch-taped the poster to a picture which hung on the wall behind Charlie’s chair in the dining room. As all twelve of us filed in for dinner, a full blown Little Charlie was there to greet us.

And on Charlie’s plate, a hot pepper lay.

It may take another ten years for Brunhilda to forgive me this time. Just in time for his sixtieth, I figure... I still have the 8x10 afterall…

And plenty of red peppers…



This post was edited on 9/20 11:52 AM by Arussif(GetAdminCookie() != 0) {document.write(' (Revisions[/URL])');}
 
Here's Johnny. (By trover)

[Editorial note: As the “John” in this story was an extremely famous person, well known to any sports fan, and as his kids are alive and might sue, I have changed the names and some of the details of this story to protect my ass. Otherwise, the story is true.]

I first heard that the son of John the Legend was a member of the house while I was a high schooler attending a weekend pledge party. During our weekend of beer, quarries and whoring, I had caught glimpses of Little Johnny either driving off in his red Corvette or standing in the parking lot encircled by friends, but I didn’t meet him. In fact I was warned away from him; the word was that Johnny was crazy.

So I had to meet him.

Walking into Little Johnny’s room on the third floor of the house (the senior floor) sometime during my first week of school, the thing that struck me was the large fish tank in the middle of the room, but there was only one fish in it, a six inch long, buck-toothed, nasty-looking thing, gray in color but turning salmony then pinkish as the coloration stretched toward its mouth. My immediate reaction was That’s the ugliest fish I’ve ever seen.

I musta said something to that effect, because Little Johnnie, who’d been napping on the bed, probably sleeping off the slaughter of more brain cells, moaned something that sounded like, “Paauunna.”

I didn’t look over at the bed, I was too transfixed by what looked like Jaws in a can. But I managed an intelligent reply. “Huh?”

I heard a stirring behind me, a few muffled curses. I assumed Little Johnny was rolling out of the hay to go barf in the bathroom. I kept my eyes on the fish, who was eyeing me in return.

Behind me, I heard a door open, a gentle whooshing sound, followed by the rustling of Saran-wrap. A moment later, a slab of what looked like sirloin splashed into the tank and caused me to jump. Immediately, the fish was onto the meat and in about a second-and-a-half, it was gone. “Whoa!” I said, jumping back. “What the hell is that?”

“I said, ‘Piranha’, dumb-ass”, mumbled Little Johnny.

I whirled around. “You’re kidding?”

L’il Johnny was holding his head. “Ooh, not so loud.”

“That’s a piranha?” I said, my eyes wide. I had of course heard of these Amazonian terrors, and once I saw a picture of one in a World Book.

“You don’t believe me? Put your finger in there.” L’il Johnny was moving toward me and I was stepping back. I didn’t like the look in his eyes, sorta like Jack Nicholson would look in a few years in that Stephen King flick as he was peering in through the smashed bathroom door...

“No, I believe you. Thanks.” I was standing by the door now, ready to make a quick exit.

Johnny stumbled up to the fish tank, stuck his pinkie in and moved it along the glass in a quick darting fashion. The fish followed his finger tracks and started and stopped, sorta like a dragster at the line at Raceway Park. I had the impression that Johnny and the fish had played this game before. I wasn’t able to do a finger-count, but maybe it was the gauze bandages on Johnny’s arm which led me to this conclusion.

About then, my fraternity father, Stan, walked in. “Did he tell you how he terrorizes his dates?”

I shook my head.

“Go ahead, John, tell him.”

Johnny frowned and withdrew his finger. Without another word, he slunk over to his bed and tumbled once more into it, facing the wall.

Stan. “He gets them up here, then tells them if they don’t put out, he’ll feed their arm to the fish.”

My jaw dropped. “You’re kidding!”

Stan shook his head. “Nope.”

“Has he ever done it?”

Johnny rolled over, his hands holding his head, agony on his face. “Not so loud! I was just kidding them…. What’s the bid deal anyway?”

Stan walked over to me, put his arm on my shoulder and turned me around. As we exited, he whispered, “It’s a good thing Johnny’s got money…”

* * *

I didn’t see much of L’il Johnny that Fall, but occasionally I heard of him. It seems Johnny had a penchant for putting his fist through plate glass windows in downtown Bloomington, especially those of theaters which dared to show movies that didn’t measure up. When I did see him, I couldn’t help but notice the gauze on his arms. The guy wore more bandages than Michael Jackson.

Come Spring, I was busy organizing a Spring Break trip to Grand Bahama Island. Several sororities were going, and that was enough for us. I was assigned to make the arrangements. It proved to be easier than I thought; I just called the same travel agent the sororities had used. We nailed a package for $150 per and filled up a plane.

A week before we were to leave, Johnny came to see me. “I want to go too.”

“We’re full up John. You should contacted me earlier. We don’t have any seats left.”

“Sell me yours. I’ll pay you five times what you paid.”

I was tempted, but I’d gone to great lengths to set up a scenario with a pretty Chi O, and I wanted to consummate the deal Oceanside on a blanket in soft sand under a full Bahamian moon. “No can do, John. Sorry.”

“Look, you don’t understand. I’m going one way or another.”

“Then you’ll have to make your own arrangements or buy somebody else out. Sorry, John.”

Little Johnny called his daddy who chartered a plane for him. This wasn’t the first time daddy had come to his rescue. In his freshman year, L’il Johnny wanted to play basketball, so daddy put in a full court, paved and all in back of the house. And daddy didn’t go cheap. This time, he chartered Johnny a commercial airliner, and Johnny permitted anybody who wanted to go to fly free. The result was that my flight suffered cancellations, which meant we all had to pay more.

Upon our return from a glorious Spring Break, etched forever in my memory by a victory at sea, a successful strike at the curse of virginity the pleasure of which had only been partially dulled by an excess of rum, Johnny came visiting.

“You got a date for Little 5?” he asked.

I hadn’t begun to think that far ahead. I was still strutting around the house showing off the scratches on my back, pretending that I was in pain. “Not yet,” I responded. “Why?”

“My parents are coming down and they’re bringing my sister. She’s a high school senior, not bad looking. Wanna go out with her, maybe double with me and my date?”

“I don’t think four will fit in your Corvette, John.”

“No sweat. We’ll grab my dad’s Lincoln. We’ll do the race, then dinner, followed by the Kingsmen Concert and dance. You like ‘LOUIE, LOUIE’ doncha?”

There was no better anthem for the sixties than “LOUIE, LOUIE.” The Kingsmen had just about made Indiana their home since Matthew Welsh had banned the song from the airwaves.

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “Who doesn’t?”

“Yeah, but you gotta treat my sister right. No getting drunk, no pawing her and stuff. If she has a bad time, she’ll tell my ma, who will kill me, then I will have to kill you.”

I was excited to meet his family. His father was a legend afterall. And then there was the money. I mean, his father had invented a whole industry! And this was BEFORE he became a sports legend; that was yet to come.

The Saturday morning of Little 5, Johnny and I drove to his parent’s rooms at some hotel in downtown Bloomington. I had never been to this hotel and now I can’t remember its name. I just remember his parent’s room was the largest hotel room I had ever seen. The door was opened by a tall, thin but buxom blonde wearing a thin robe and not much else. Her shoulder length hair was wet, but kissed her shoulder much as I’d like too, with a touching dart, a swift pass.

I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

“Let me introduce you to my mother.” L’il Johnny said, and my mouth must have dropped because I saw mom’s azure eyes gleam and the hint of a smile cross her lineless face. How on earth had this woman borne two kids? I wondered. She looked to be my age, maybe younger.

Oh well, if her daughter looked anything like momma…

No such luck. Carla was tall and lean but had no chest at all. Her face was one large freckle which matched the color of her hair. She was so pasty I feared she’d need sun block in moonlight.

Johnny was watching me closely as I was introduced to Carla, monitoring my reaction I’m sure. I glanced at him as I flashed my best cover grin but was distracted a moment later by a sparkle of bright light. Turning back to Carla, I noticed her braces reflecting a beam of sunlight around the room like a laser off a reflecting mirror.

No way was my tongue darting through that cage door…

Despite myself, I had a good weekend with Carla. She was intelligent and fun, sorta like the kid next door. We didn’t come close to making out, though, although I did give her a peck on the cheek when it was time to leave. Once we got to the dance, L’il Johnny and his date left us, ditched us would be more accurate. I guess there were some things little sisters weren’t supposed to see…

I didn’t meet John Senior that weekend. His wife said he was in meetings to buy something. In fact, I later learned, he wasn’t even there. He was on the West Coast buying the franchise upon which he would gain national fame.

Carla came down again that summer and I went out with her again. She’d lost her braces and had picked up some curves; that or she’d stuffed herself with Kleenex tissues or foam rubber. Even her freckles seem to have faded and her skin was looking more like milk than parchment. She was developing quite nicely. We had dinner and pledged to stay in touch, although she said she planned to attend the University of Colorado instead of IU.

For the next year, Carla and I wrote each other occasionally, and once or twice I called her at home. L’il Johnny had graduated, so there was no longer any reason for Carla to come down to Bloomington with her family. She invited me to come see her in northern Indiana where her parents lived.

One weekend that next summer, John and I took Carla up on the invite. She’d arranged a date for John, someone she assured me would meet with his approval. So we left early afternoon one Friday for the long drive north.

We stopped in LaPorte and found a motel which we could afford. Since we were going out with classy chicks, we thought we should at least have access to a shower. Then, while John did just that, I left to pick up Carla. We’d pick up John’s date later.

The trip to Carla’s estate took about thirty minutes, although as there weren’t many signs, I had to stop and ask directions. On my way, I found a florist, and breaking from my usual mode, bought some red roses. Boy, was I going to make an impression!

Finally, I found an estate that could only be theirs and I turned in. There was a mansion up ahead, so I pulled over and brushed my hair, before pulling ahead and into a parking area.

The mansion was huge, at least ten thousand square feet spread over three stories. It was tucked into a nook carved from a forest of blue spruce. I counted six chimneys on the house and there was a four car garage on the side, unattached. Feeling small and insignificant, I made my way to the front door and pushed the button. After a minute or two a large black woman came to the door. “Is Carla in?” I said.

The woman’s broad lips pulled back and her eyes glowed. “Why, you at da maid’s quarters, sonny. Da main house is up da road.”

I musta looked like Inspector Clouseau sitting naked in the car in the Paris intersection because the woman smiled at me again and winked. “Don’t you worry now, sonny. Dis happen all da time. You just go on up the road. I’m sure Miss Carla is waitin’ for ya.”

Pulling my fractured dignity around me like a cloak, I returned to my car, not daring to glance at the house for fear of seeing laughing, peering eyes in the windows.

I won’t describe the main house except to say it dwarfed the maid’s quarters in all respects. Carla must have seen me coming, or maybe she’d been forewarned, because she met me at the door and gave me a kiss like we were long separated lovers.

And how I wished! Not having seen Carla in a year left me gawking at the changes in her. Gone was the immaturity, gone were the freckles, while front, center and prominent were the breasts. Even Carla’s legs had taken shape; I swear they had turned from sticks to carved beauties. And her skin was silky smooth, the color of light pearl. Her eyes glowed green, although I later discovered that was the result of contacts, and her red hair flowed to the middle of her back. Ooh la la, why had I brought John?

Carla brought me in and sat me in a couch in the sitting room, plopping down beside me and wrapping her arms in mine. I leaned over to give her a kiss but she pulled away, which surprised me. I looked at her for some explanation but she shook her head and put a finger to her lips. Anxious now, I looked around for a camera but didn’t see any.

“We’ll go in a minute,” she said. “My mother wants to say hi. Johnny’s out of town.”

I nodded and prepared to lean forward for another try, but again Carla peeled back, her eyes darting around nervously.

I started to say something, but about then I became aware of a cat mewing behind me. Thinking a paw was about to swat my head, I turned half-way around… and met the face of a white haired man.

“Eeeeyow!” yelled the white haired crazy man, as he jumped up from where he’d been crouching behind the sofa and came leaping out in front of me. “I got you!” he yelled, cackling like Doctor Jekyll.

I jumped to my feet and clutched my chest, somehow resisting the impulse to beat this goofball to death. Glancing at Carla, I saw disgust on her face. “Well, I guess it’s time you met daddy. He thinks what he just did is funny.” She was shaking her head.

About then, Carla’s mother walked into the room. “John! You should be ashamed of yourself. When are you going to grow up?” Other than the look of consternation on her face, Carla’s mother looked as fetching as she had when I first met her, although I missed the robe-effect and the sight of so much skin. Today, she was dressed in a jeweled jeans outfit that probably cost more than my car.

John Senior was still laughing. He had dropped into a chair across from us and was holding his guts as his face turned red and his white hair shook. He looked to be in his fifties and for a moment I wondered if he was going to have a stroke.

We spent about a half hour getting to know the old man, or rather letting him get to know me, and a curious one he was. But then, of course, I was going out with his baby daughter. One can’t be too safe, you know.

John asked about my parents, my major, my goals in life, and for the moment at least, I seemed to pass muster. I didn’t really ask any questions myself. I have to admit, I was awed by the man. Remembering how crazy L’il Johnny was, realizing that the crazy gene had come from somewhere, and having just seen the old man in action, I wanted to make off with the fair Carla as fast as I could.

We were finally released with a firm instruction for Carla to be in by Midnight, and then we were off, back to pick up the other John.

As it turned out, John’s date was a stunner too. Tall and firm, with long black hair, Mandy looked as if she’d just stepped off the New York runway. She had high cheek bones, a raised chin, pouty lips and coal black eyes ready to combust. It was hard for me to believe a girl so attractive could have brains too, but she was a Michigan freshman and last time I checked, Michigan didn’t admit based upon one’s picture. For once, even John seemed awed by a woman’s charms.

We ate at a South Bend hotel restaurant, one recommended by the girls because we didn’t have reservations anywhere else. And since we were underage, it was a dry dinner although we’d had a few pops of vodka beforehand and after. Talk at dinner was lively and fun, and afterwards, we parked and sucked face until the girls turned into pumpkins. As I kissed Carla goodnight, she suggested we go to the beach the next night, there was supposed to be a full moon. My ever-ready blanket in my trunk and my hormones raging, I thought that was an excellent idea.

I broke the news to the others on the way to Mandy’s and was pleased at her endorsement. I knew I didn’t have to ask John.

John and I slept restlessly, our woodies reminding us of what he next night would bring. I didn’t look, but I’m sure my sheets needed washing. They were a bit stiff if you know what I mean….

The hours of the next day passed like concrete through a long, thin pipe. We couldn’t pick Carla up until five and we were up at dawn. So, we decided to tour Chicago. Afterall, there wasn’t much to see in Da Region.

Come four-thirty, we were at Mandy’s door. She’d dressed for the occasion, cutoffs and a sweatshirt, braless — you know, a college kid’s negligee. I was afraid John might shoot in the car.

I pulled into the right house this time, and ran up to the door for Carla. Her father opened the door and without saying a word motioned me in. Once I was inside, he motioned for me to sit on the couch., then he sat in the chair facing me.

Uh oh. Had I done something? Carla’s father just sat looking at me.

“Is Carla about ready?” I said.

John Senior raised his hands to his mouth and made like a megaphone. Then he raided five fingers.

“Five minutes?” I said, a little relieved.

John Senior nodded. Then he lowered his hands and laid them out in front of him, palms up. He saw me staring, so he gave me a quizzical look and began moving his right hand, his pinkie out in rapid circles.

I didn’t have a clue what he was doing. The crazy gene came to my mind again.

A frustrated expression crossed John Senior’s face. I turned to look at the doorway, hoping to see Carla as I said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know what you’re saying.”

I turned back to see John Senior holding his hand to his ear, shaking his head, then pointing first to his eyeball and then to my mouth before making a back and forth motion between me and him.

Huh?

He repeated his motion, and as he did, Carla came into the room. “Oh, don’t pay attention to him. He’s pretending he’s deaf and dumb.”

Huh? I had met the guy last night. Guess I’d made a lasting impression…

“Daddy, you met him last night,” Carla said, confirming my insignificance. “You talked to him for a half hour after jumping out from behind the couch.” She turned back to me. “You haven’t seen his full bag of tricks yet. Wait until he shows you his mad dog routine.”

“Mad dog?” I said, and I saw a look of pride in John Senior’s eyes.

“Yeah, and he does a good dancing homosexual too, don’t you Daddy?” Carla was smiling in proud that’s my Dad way.

John Senior pointed to his ears and shook his head.

“Okay, Dad. We’re leaving now.”

John Senior must have heard that. He jumped up, took Carla’s hand and pointed to the twelve on his watch.

“Dad!” she said. “It’s Saturday night. Can’t I stay out past Midnight?”

There was a firm shake of the head and John Senior looked at me, then ran his hand under this throat. Carla and I both nodded.
On the way out, I guessed Mandy and Carla had coordinated outfits. I mean, they were both wearing the same thing, just different school names on their fronts. I remembered John Senior’s hand across the neck motion and hoped he hadn’t noticed the naked bounce of her boobs.

All the way to Michigan City and its beaches, we sipped vodka mixed with ice and grape juice. Carla was scootched over against me, letting my right arm brush against her left masterpiece, while I could occasionally hear face-sucking in the back seat. We stopped at a McDonald’s so we wouldn’t run out of energy and wolfed down our burgers and fries.

It was about six-thirty when we arrived at the beach, with Carla and Mandy directing the way. They led us to a parking lot, where we could unload our stuff and truck it to the beach. As John and I lugged the blankets and cooler, Mandy and Carla ran ahead to find a suitable and cozy beach spot.

Now, I’d never been to the park before, and I had no idea how far it was to the shore, nor how hard it is to walk in those dunes let alone to carry about thirty pounds of cooler and stuff. And both John and I were wearing shoes, another big mistake. As our shoes became more sand-filled, we trod more slowly and twice had to stop to empty the damn things. We should have just taken them off, but with blankets and cooler, well, our load was awkward. Plus, the cooler’s handles were already biting into our hands; we didn’t relish adding more weight to the load, no matter how light it might be.

So we stumbled on, sweating profusely, attracting flies and mosquitoes with our manly musk.

It must have taken an hour for John and me to find the freakin’ water and the girls. We were exhausted. But no sooner did we arrive, then Mandy said, “You know, there’s a breeze by the lake. It’s chillier than I thought. We need a fire.”

Carla. “Oh, that’s a good idea, Mandy. Did you guys bring some wood?”

Well, we had, but the burning we’d anticipated would not cause smoke. And our wood couldn’t be whittled, just massaged.

Our panicked expressions must have given us away. “We’ve got to have wood,” Carla said. “Haven’t you guys ever done this before?”

Isn’t it amazing how women can make a guy feel so inadequate?

“Well, maybe you can find some along the shore, you know, driftwood...”

As the girls laid out on our blankets and fixed themselves a drink, John and I turned to the water’s edge. As we left, Mandy purred, “Hur-ry ba-ack.”

I wanted to scream.

We walked at least a mile, finding only scraps. At some point, we decided it was useless to carry what we were finding down the beach and back. We would just deposit our sticks and pick them up on the return. Problem was, we weren’t finding much.

In the light of the full moon, John could make out trees to the right across some expanse of sand. We headed in that direction, treading through that Goddamn sand again.

Well, the trees were further away than they looked and it took us about forty-five minutes to make it there, two rest stops being required. But we found some limbs that would pass for logs and we made our way back, both of us loaded down. After all, this was not a trip we wanted to make twice….

The trip to water’s edge took longer coming back and four rest stops were required. By now, our scent was more than musk-fresh; it was bordering on dead meat rotting.

Realizing we couldn’t return to the girls like this, John and I stripped then plunged into the lake.

Now realize, neither John nor I had ever been to Lake Michigan before. Okay, we may have seen it while driving by, but for sure we had never swum in it. Hailing from Ft. Wayne, John was used to Lake Wawasee and I was used to Lake Monroe, both shallow lakes which heat up quickly in summer. We had never experienced anything so cold as Lake Michigan.

It’s a good thing we screamed underwater, because the girls might have run off thinking we’d been axed to death slowly. I’m sure they would have heard those screams even from our distance. Our balls shriveled up into peas and may have moved back up the canal. I thought I still had a penis but my hands were so cold I couldn’t feel it. My breathing was coming in gasps and my heart was racing even though the blood it was pumping was turning into sludge. Somehow, I made it out of the water on feet I could only guess were still there, and saw John right behind me.

“JESUS! Th-a-at’z cc-old!” I managed, as shivering made my muscles largely useless. I fell to my knees and saw John drop down beside me. The sand was warm, it was still remembering the afternoon sun. I laid down and rolled, trying to cover my body in earth’s natural heat. Gradually, my shivering became more controlled.

John was the first one to stand, brush himself off and step into his jeans and sweatshirt. I followed his example. But the only way to entirely rid ourselves of sand was to plunge back in, something we WOULD NOT DO.

So we made the best of a bad situation: We grabbed our wood and walked wide-stepping all the way back to the girls. Trust me, every step was misery, like having sandpaper for shorts and running a marathon. I swore I’d never go to a beach again.

It was ten-thirty when we arrived back at the blankets, although my watch had stopped and John told me it was only nine. I have no idea why I believed him. Probably because I wanted to.

The girls were furious at us, as you might expect. Mandy was making noise about going home, while Carla was just giving me the silent treatment. Since neither of them was wearing a watch, John did his best to placate them by saying that we hadn’t been gone that long, after all, it was only nine o’clock.

I don’t know if they bought this or were just lonely or drunk. Or maybe the fire we built helped. Regardless, they thawed enough for pleasantries — like saliva and tongue exchanges.

As my hand moved under Carla’s sweatshirt, she blocked its forward progress with a sudden start. “Your hand and arm are all sandy. Eeuw!”

I may have heard an echo but I think it was Mandy.
 
Blue Balls in the Bowels of Bloomington. (By trover)

Blue Balls in the Bowels of Bloomington

Am I cool or what?

We had the perfect plan, I mean this one was so good NOTHING could screw it up, not even Malcolm because we didn’t invite him...

No, Carl, John and I couldn’t miss.

See, we’d each line up a fox, Grade A Choice, with lean lanky legs meant for wrapping, one most likely impervious to a full frontal seduction but one who could be lured there with the right animal scent.

And we thought that scent was carbide.

It had begun, as many adventures do, over a few too many beers. John, Carl and I had been listing women we guessed were unassailable and the defense mechanisms they used to remain that way. Once we had a list, which was longer than we’d have liked, we began considering how we might remove some of those names by hook or… well… you know...

Such a serious discussion requires a careful assessment of one’s strengths and weaknesses — and lots of beer, unless you’re planning on being morose. Having no money was certainly a negative, as was our unfair association with the “Animal House.” (Please note that this was before Belushi’s movie. We had the original article; he just rode our fame – or was it flame?) And we weren’t artistic, musical or jocks.

Okay, so we had some liabilities…

What were our strengths?

Uh…

Well, we could drink a lot of beer. But these weren’t the sort of chicks who were impressed by a burping contest or beer fart. No, they had higher standards; that was one of the reasons we wanted to debase them, you know, bring them down to our level.

We were in a pickle, stymied. We needed to consider this issue more, like maybe when we weren’t so gassed.

The three of us went spelunking the next weekend, as we did about once a month. There are over three hundred limestone caves within fifty miles of Bloomington, and we had maps for them all. Caves are amazing and unique in nature; they have their own life forms — fish and salamanders with no eyes, for instance — and stalagmites and stalactites (one goes up, the other down — which is which I don’t remember) in weird and wondrous formations. And the bats don’t bother you unless you bother them — except maybe the mad ones. You’ll see waterfalls, hundred foot high ceilings, huge mud walls, which when sprayed with water become fun-house roller coaster-like slides, and other strange things: Squire Boone Cave contains the remains of Dan’l’s brother; another one has bones and a 1700s date scratched in the wall above it. And caves can be explored in all seasons, although Spring floods can be dangerous, because the temperature is fifty-six degrees year round. Believe it or not, one guy built a home in a Bloomington vicinity cave, I kid you not.

The cave we chose was Sullivan’s Cave, about thirty miles south of B-Town. It’s entry was the most unexpected thing, if you didn’t have a map you’d never find it; it was marked only by a small hole underneath the rootball of a sweeping maple tree several hundred feet along a game path through a forested field. There were no signs; you either knew it was there or had a map, and even if you’d been there before you might miss it on a return trip. Assuming you found it, you climbed through a narrow hole down about sixty feet using secure natural rock footholds, no rope required. Then you looked for a hole above you, which was the entrance to a narrow, low passage, suitable only for crawling. After about thirty feet or so, the passage opened up to about six feet wide and four feet high, which meant you either had to duck-walk or stick your butt out and bend forward. This position became uncomfortable after awhile, and the passage is long, more than a quarter mile. Most people take several rest breaks. Why go through all this misery? Because once you left this thigh-burner, you stumbled into a massive room at least a hundred feet high and a hundred feet wide, a room with rockfall, where you could echo a whisper like a Swiss yodel. And beyond the rockfall was a fast moving shallow stream leading into passages thick with knitted and furled stalactites and stalagmites untouched for millions of years, not to mention the occasional waterfall over quartz rocks which flashed white in flickering headlamps.

Just like candlelight, eh? Now you’re getting the mood.

I need to mention, that if you explore Sullivan’s Cave today, assuming you find it, the passages to the Great Room have been concreted up, by whom I don’t know. Evidently, there’s too great a risk of drowning or terminal headache, or some insurance company thought there was. So all you get for that knee-torturing duck walk is a return trip. You could probably have more fun in a dentist’s office.

It must have been the quartz, although methane gas is a possibility, which caused us to think spelunking was the answer to our grand seduction plan. Could we sell adventure as an aphrodisiac? Was that our lure?

Hah! Cans priests sell religion while they’re buggering altar boys?

So we scouted our list and dropped some hints, mostly on deaf ears. Those who were into fashion dismissed us immediately, probably the dirt turned them off, although it could have been that our Madras slacks were the wrong shade for our eyes. So we moved to the second tier. There too we found resistance. At this level, the prospect of sleeping in wet clothes — definitely not our plan either — seemed a turn-off, and our protests that Sullivan’s was a dry cave met these lame dismissals that this was a contradiction of nature. Huh? So what if caves were formed by the movement of water? That was a long time ago. Did anything stay the same?

We moved lower on the list, well off the list actually — we’d moved from “unassailable” past “available” to “more or less a sure thing.”

What the hell? We’d invested too much thought in this — and too much beer —to just let the idea go.

Okay, so we settled for a step — well maybe an edge — above hookers. These chicks we thought would put out for a joint, the where wouldn’t be part of the equation. So sure, we could just do it in the Pube, or out in the woods, but we’d romanticized ourselves into the notion that Sullivan’s was the natural equivalent of a Paris weekend with Brigitte Bardot. We were making history here. And the symbolism of a cave entrance wasn’t lost on us; we thought the girls would notice it too.

Look, I have to be truthful: What I said about not inviting Malcolm… Truth be told, at some point he learned about our plans and when we invited him, albeit somewhat reluctantly, he turned us down. Okay, pleading…even threatening to raise his rent didn’t work on him; it seems Malcolm didn’t have a machine washable suit, or so he claimed...

We left Friday night about seven and found Sullivan’s at about nine. We had all the equipment we’d need, packs, sleeping bags — two per couple although we guessed only one would be needed, heh heh heh — helmets, multiple carbide lamps for both helmet and hand, flashlights, extra batteries, food, drink — Red Ripple, because we thought the babes would appreciate that we weren’t just beer drinkers — and of course, grass, our elixir of love. I had also stashed a cheap tape recorder I’d bought for twelve bucks from a New York City pawn broker. More about that later.

You want to know about our dates, huh?

Carl’s date was Peggy, a freshman from Wolcott who’d grown up on a farm and was used to animals… well… increasing their numbers. She was medium everything, except for her teeth which looked a bit horsy. Dirty blond hair of shoulder length, she wore no make-up, had facial color showing high cholesterol and the hint of a double chin. But her butt was tight and her boobs were firm — aren’t they all at that age?

Carrie Mae, a hyper major from Cincinnati, with firm legs, firmer bust and calves which would make a ballet dancer jealous, was John’s date. John was a Tom Cruise look-alike, although of average size in comparison to the diminutive star. He had a certain way of carrying himself, sorta standoffish to chicks, which drove them wild. John fancied a James Dean look, complete with motorcycle, a Honda Scrambler 250, and a brown leather jacket, tight jeans and a T-shirt. Now, I don’t like to dwell on what a guy looks like, but chicks certainly dug his package. Truth be told, I never saw John with an ugly chick, even his dirty legs were lookers. Sometimes I hated him.


Tall and lean, with green eyes to set off her long yellow hair, Carrie resembled Courtney Love, and like the singer, she had a come-f#$k-me aura which was nailed into a promise by thick red lips, lips she frequently slicked with an alluring stroke of the tongue. The notion of Carrie naked gave me a woodie, but those calves gave me pause. I wondered if John would be squeezed into diarrhea. Hell, he wouldn’t care. Would you?

What was someone like Carrie doing with this group? She was as dumb as a Halloween pumpkin a week later; she was so dim she thought birds and bees actually mated, so ignorant she thought Elvis Stahr had recorded “Love Me Tender” and she was awaiting his concert dates announcement. Hell, she was so stupid she’d agreed to come with us. Nuff said.

My contribution to this ensemble was Janice, a short-haired brunette from my high school that seemingly only I had neglected to boff. She wasn’t ugly, just sorta nondescript, one of those girls who walk by but nobody notices. Everything about Janice was average, I guess, except for her proclivity to mate. She didn’t look the part, there was no come-get-me sneer like Carrie Mae possessed; but Janice had been a legend in my high school and was reputedly a tiger in the sack. I wanted to be eaten.

The girls seemed thrilled as we entered the cave. Climbing down into the great unknown is scary but exciting, especially the first time. I imagine that like the stream beyond the Great Room their juices were running down their thighs. Indeed, there was a somewhat musty smell behind us as the guys descended to lead the way.

The Duck Walk was long and tiring but the girls soon got the hang of it. A few bumped heads taught them the flip side of messing their hair with a hard hat. We took some rest breaks and the chicks were rubbing their burning thighs. This made my mouth water and I had to pace my breathing to keep from hyper-ventilating. I noticed Carl and John trading grins and John was helping Carrie Mae rub. Briefly, I worried we wouldn’t make it to the stream beyond the Great Room before the orgy began.

And then the baby bat attacked.

We had the first hint of a problem when we heard a soft flapping sound in the distance behind us, moving closer. “What’s that sound?” asked a wide-eyed Carrie Mae.

John. “Probably just a bat. Don’t worry, it won’t bother us.”

Janice. “But aren’t bats rabid.”

Me. “Some, but don’t worry. We’ve never had a problem with them.”

Whoosh! The bat sped by just inches from our heads. The girls screamed and so did Carl as we all dropped flat to the ground. John and I were too shocked to make a sound.

“It’s after us!” Carrie wailed. “What do we do?”

John. “It’s past now. We won’t see it again.”

Peggy. “Are you sure? I think I hear it again.”

The bat, a little one, maybe a baby, dive-bombed us again, this time close enough to ripple Carrie’s shoulder length hair. “My hair!” she screamed and clamped her hands around her ears.

John raised up to his knees and swung his hands palm down in front of him, a classic calming motion. “It’s okay. You’ve got a helmet. He’s probably just lost.”

Janice. “They’re blind aren’t they?”

I nodded. “Yeah, they use sonar to find their directions.”

Janice’s eyes looked like saucers. “So he’s after us isn’t he? He almost got Carrie.”

Carl was looking ahead, trying to peer through the flickering light to see if it was coming again. “Maybe his sonar is messed up,” he said and I could have shot him.

Janice looked to me. “Doesn’t rabies screw up their sonar?”

I didn’t want to answer her question. Instead, I rose and started moving forward. “Come on. There’s a rock ahead. We can hide behind it.”

The others followed me to a large rock that stood about four feet high, nearly touching the ceiling. Just as we reached its safety, the flying rodent blew by us again, just missing the rock. The girls screamed once more, and I rose up and began moving down the passage. “Follow me! We have to get to the Great Room.”

We hurdled through the Duck Walk, ignoring the pain in our knees and our burning thighs. Just as we turned to enter, I saw the bat jetting toward us. “Down!” I yelled and hit the turf, watching as everybody else followed me. The bat was making a beeline for Janice, who put her hands in front of her face and wailed. At the last moment, the bat diverted and went cascading past us down the tunnel.

Carl jumped up and hurtled through the passage into the Great Room. “This way!” He bellowed. We didn’t need a second invitation.

As we entered the Great Room, we plastered ourselves against the wall, all of us breathing heavily, waiting to see if the bat would follow. Several tense minutes passed, a long silence as our breathing stabilized. Janice poked me in the arm and motioned to me. I leaned toward her. “I pissed myself,” she said, a little too loud.

“So did I,” said Peggy as John began scowling. “We have to go back.”

Carl and I looked at each other. “Uh, that’s okay,” I said. “There’s a stream on the other side. We can all wash off there.”

Peggy. “But then I’ll be all wet. I can’t sleep in wet pants.”

The corners of Carl’s mouth curled up. “Oh, that’s okay. We’ll figure something out.”

“What? You want me to take my pants off?”

I smiled and turned to Janice. “It’ll be like skinny-dipping. We can wash out our pants and run around in our underwear. Your jeans would just get wet anyway, so why not?”

“But I’ll get cold,” Carrie protested.

John. “We’ve got wine to keep you warm. And since it’s in the high fifties in here, you won’t get that cold. The bags will keep you warm when we’re done exploring.”

Janice. “I don’t know. I think I want to go home. That bat scared me and now I’m wet. I don’t like walking around in piss.”

I sat down and removed my boots, then my pants. “Look, Janice,” I said as I was re-tying my boots. See, no problem. We can wash out our pants and let them dry, then go back tomorrow morning.”

Janice. “Yeah, but they’ll still be wet.”

Me. “They’ll be damp, Janice. That’s not too bad. Besides, do you want to do that Duck Walk now while you’re soaked in piss?”

I have such a way with words.

Everybody dropped to the ground and began unlacing their boots and dropping their pants. While they we doing this, I used my lights to scan the room.

Carrie looked up. “Wow! It looks like a big room!” Her mouth opened in awe as she heard the echo of her words. “That a… what’s the word?”

I told you she was dumb.

John. “Echo. Yeah, the room’s about a hundred feet high and a hundred feet wide, a big dome.”

Peggy. “But look at that ceiling. It’s all jagged. Do those rocks fall?”

It was hard to deny the pile of rubble in the middle of the room and how it had come to be there.

John. “Look, this room has been here for millions of years. What are the odds that a rock is gonna fall now?”

Janice. “Yeah, but this room isn’t used to noise. What if the vibrations shake something loose.”

I let out a massive bellow, causing the girls to jump. As my primal scream bounced off the limestone walls, I looked around for telltale rockfall. There was only the resonance of my pent-up heat in a room otherwise loud with silence. “See,” I said in triumph. “If that didn’t do it, nothing will.”

Janice poked me in the ribs. “That wasn’t funny. You almost made me pee myself again.”

When we were all stripped to our skivvies, the guys’ eyes glued to Carrie’s pink lacies and how she moved in them, we began heading toward the stream on the other side. The chicks moved gingerly, as if cushioning the sound of their feet would prevent the sky from falling.

The stream was at the end of a long mud slide and the water, although shallow, was running clear and pure at a pretty good clip. To give the chicks a feeling of community, the rest of us tossed in our jeans in too, and we scrubbed like banshees while we splashed and laughed. Soon, all of us were dripping wet, and I was admiring the view of thatch beneath linen, especially Carrie-thatch. Even in the dim light, Carrie’s rippling buttocks were enough to make my woodie grow sprouts. I have to admit, I took some pride in the way my briefs were sagging. And I wasn’t alone; I noticed both Carl and John were standing legs spread wide too.

Down stream, Peggy found a salamander with no eyes clinging to the wall over the cave equivalent of a tidal pool. She called us over to marvel and play with the creature. I think it was Carrie who remarked, “But how does it see?” Yup, it had to be Carrie.

Just past the salamander, the cave opened up into a long passage with a fifty foot high mud hill on the right sloping down into a clear, five foot deep pool. We splashed water on the hill, then climbed up and slid down into the pool, shrieking all the way.

We were having a ball and the chicks were getting playful. John gave Carrie a wedgie which was a thing of beauty, and she and the other girls retaliated on us. Pretty soon, we were all grabbing at crotches and making lurid promises. Frankly though, my woodie was getting painful, the cold water made it as hard as the limestone walls. I needed to find a warm place for it — and soon — to keep my boys from going blue.

John suggested some wine, and everybody agreed. So, Carl, John and I returned to the Great Room to fetch our stuff.
We settled down on flat areas adjoining the stream and rolled out our bags. One by one, as we unscrewed our Ripple and settled in, we doused our lamps.

If you have never been inside of a cave, let me assure you that there is no light, none, nadda; it’s a claustrophobic darkness, one which envelops you like a tomb. It can be a bit unsettling when one can’t see anything, not even movement.

As I was connudling Janice, stroking between her legs as she was stroking mine, both of sucking in some red mood-juice, she leaned into me and whispered. “This is spooky. Can you just turn on a light for a minute?”

I felt around for my pack and a small flashlight I had inside it.

A word about Carl is appropriate here. Carl was from Da Region, a big tough guy who had a bearish quality about him. Covered with black hair, on his back, all over his chest, his stomach and legs, he could have passed for Sasquatch if he’d lived in the Pacific Northwest. About six feet one and two hundred eighty pounds, Carl could be quite imposing. The only reason people weren’t struck with fear at his appearance was his ever-present big, stupid grin, a toothy one which made his face light up like a full moon. One couldn’t look at Carl when he was grinning, when his laugh started at his pelvis in a deep soothing heh heh heh without it becoming infectious. His laugh made Carl seem less like a brute, more like a teddy bear, granted a big one.

When I found my flashlight, I pulled it out and flipped it on.

Two feet in front of us, hovering like the boogey-man, his arms in full clutch-at-ya swoop was the grinning moon face of Carl.

I think my heart stopped but I wouldn’t know; I was screaming too hard to notice and just barely I could hear Janice’s screams too. But I had much more to scream about than she did. At the time I’d flipped on my light, Janice’s hand had been stroking my penicular probe, and the shock of seeing Carl had made her…uh… snatch it in a way…uh… no one had intended. Ever have a hair ripped out by the follicle? Well, imagine something much, much larger…

I was in a death grip and death would probably have been a welcome relief.

As my lungs continued to punch air through my larynx in bunched bursts, I dropped my light and tried prying Janice’s fingers from my strangled probe. No luck, Janice’s scream drowned out her reason and her hand moved like it belonged to a cracked up kid on a joy stick. I could hear Carl’s guttural, “Heh, heh, heh,” but truth be told, I wasn’t paying attention. I was now beating on Janice’s hand trying to work myself free. In between screams, I had a future vision of me sitting to go potty.

Finally, I heard Janice wail, “You’re hurting me! Stop!” and the pressure lessened. Once free, I rolled over and massaged my tortured member, willing that it was still attached.
Now as I was rolling over and back, I heard Janice cussing both me and Carl, but for very different reasons. Carl had gone back to his bag across the stream and he and Peggy were having themselves a good laugh. Somewhere down the passage I heard John and Carrie laughing too.

I’d have followed Carl across the stream and killed him, but of course, I was in too much pain already. And besides, both Carl and I knew he could bend me into a pretzel any time he wished. So there was nothing I could do but curse him, and I did that with a flurry.

But now Janice was beating on my chest, angry that I’d smacked her hand. She was yelling at me while I was yelling at Carl.

It took awhile for things to settle down, for Janice to forgive me, for me to forgive Carl and for my injured member to feel like exploring again. A little Ripple helped, and some dubie to make the mood, but then I had to go to the bathroom before we began the preliminaries.

Remember the little tape recorder I mentioned? I had recorded some ghostly hoos and wooos, moans and things like that on a time delay, and it was my turn to shine. Taking my flashlight and recorder with me, I made my way down the passage to take a leak. When I was finished, I placed the recorder down, turned it on and returned to Janice’s open arms and legs. Some minutes later, as Janice and I were once again heating up, snuggling, exploring and slicking the way, the tape recorder played back its message.

And time nearly stopped. I swear, with the first echoed, “Woooo,” bouncing off the cave walls, the air stopped moving. All ears were wide, eyes too I suspect, although as I’d turned off the light, who could tell?

“What was that?” Janice whispered. I could hear much the same from both Peggy and Carrie, although Carrie’s was sorta muffled like she had a mouthful of marbles. Then Carl and John echoed their concern.

I was nearly beside myself I thought it was so funny. But I couldn’t let on. “Shhh,” I said, making sure Janice’s hand was somewhere safe.

Now came the moans, starting softly and cascading over us like a ghostly wind. I have to say, the echo-effect really enhanced the effects. I doubt John Landis could have made a spookier scene.

“Who IS that?” Janice hissed, her voice now carrying some urgency.

I pulled her into me and whispered into her ear. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you. Why don’t you climb into my bag.”

“Shhh. There’s somebody HERE!” she said.

“Nah, we’ll be okay. Trust me. Just come over here.”

I probably would have been okay if the sounds had stopped there, but I hadn’t known how much tape to run. So the sounds continued, made all the more eerie by the echos off the walls.

Janice had moved into my bag but as the sounds continued, she pushed me away. “We’ve GOT to get out of here!” she whispered and began scrambling out of my bag.

Across the way, I heard a loud SLAP, followed by a grunt from Carl. Then I heard Peggy’s voice. “Janice, I’m scared. I’m getting out of here. Are you coming?”

From John and Carrie’s direction, I heard Carrie say, “I’m going with them. If you guys don’t want to come, fine. Just show us how to turn these damn lights on.”

I heard John curse, then the sound of his hand running over a lamp’s flint-wheel. In moments, one of John’s lamps was on, and he used it to light some others. Carl followed suit, both of them cursing softly and looking over at me.

Janice was slipping into her panties, then rolling up her bedding, stuffing things into her pack.

“Look,” I said to everybody. “Just relax. I played a little joke. When I went to the bathroom, I set up a recorder to play back a few ghost sounds I’d recorded. There’s nobody here.”

Nobody laughed. Not even John or Carl.

Janice looked at me with loathing. “You little worm,” she said through her teeth.

I smiled, trying to disarm and said, “Well, it’s actually larger than a little worm…” I grabbed my crotch for elaboration.

“No, it’s a little worm and so are you. Tell you what, worm-boy, you just stay in your little hole, because Carrie, Peggy and I are leaving. Maybe the three of you can play with yourselves and your little worms…”

Why is it that chicks will ALWAYS stick together? Neither John nor Carl had done anything to their dates, well, nothing that wasn’t mutually desired anyway… But do you think that won them any brownie points?

Hah.

I don’t think anybody spoke to me as we tread back through the Great Room, then through the long Duck Walk in cold, drenched jeans. I would have passed off the silence to our body temperatures, which were plummeting, but the chill was deeper than that. The only good thing was that the bat left us alone.

John and Carl forgave me, although it took a pizza and a couple of cases of beer before that happened.

Janice, Carrie and Peggy? Forget it. We were the only guys who ever struck out in their batting cages. The saddest thing was remembering that my bat had been in Janice’s hands; she’d wanted a sweet spot connection. And I’d sniffed it and whiffed it...

Sometimes, when I’m at the urinal, pulling after a pee, I think of Janice. But then I wince. Some memories are just too painful.
 
Malcolm in the Middle. (By trover)

Malcolm in the Middle

You met Malcolm in Crab CockTale, albeit obliquely. There is oh so much more to say about him. But first, I have to tell you that Malcolm is not his real name. Malcolm periodically runs for Congress, and I very much doubt he’d appreciate being linked to my twaddles. So, I gave him another name. Hope you don’t mind.

My father, a law school dean, one of the stiffer of the stiffest, who would recognize another stiff blindfolded, once said Malcolm was the oldest young man he’d ever met. I think that meant Malcolm was a stiff. Seriously, the guy was so dry and grave, he’d make John Kerry seem like Carrottop. And Malcolm was so conservative, he stood almost alone on campus as someone FOR the Viet Nam war. I used to say he wore his three piece suit to bed.

But like most stiffs, that distinctive and consistent rigidity made Malcolm the perfect foil, especially for two relentless pranksters like John and me. Oh what tortures we put that boy through! Ashton Kucher thinks he invented Punk’d.

Nonsense. John and I did, but we called it “bore-assing”, and Malcolm was our victim of choice.

Many things we did to poor Malcolm, like spiking his coffee with Ex-Lax, stuffing pot in his cigarettes, hiding his car, etc., don’t deserve much mention; they’re commonplace and kid-stuff. So, I’ll only tell you about some good ones.

But before I do, I have to say, John and I had nothing against Malcolm. We loved him like a brother, and despite all we did to him, he loved us too. Heck, he even named his first child after me. And no, the kid’s name is not “S#$thead.

Above all, despite whatever John and I did to poor Malcolm, he always kept his humor. Most people didn’t see that humor, but it was always lurking under the surface; it was always there.

Many of our bore-asses, Malcolm just endured with a grim smile, one that said, “Good try, guys, no cigar. But we always knew we’d scored big-time when Malcolm would run outside screaming, “I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE!”

That would bring down the house. That would give us satisfaction for days.

Okay, first story.

You have to understand that Malcolm, for all his political activity, was a little shy around girls. Shy, hell, he was petrified. Tall, dark and handsome though he was, chicks were usually repulsed when his come-on line was something like, “Do you really think welfare should be parceled out to unmarried women who refuse to be sterilized?” Trust me, the look he’d receive in return was not conducive to reaching for a boob.

But Malcolm just couldn’t help himself. Politics and being a stiff were in his blood. The shyness came, I suspect, as a product of the cumulative build-up of wrong-topicitis rejections and a serious lack of moves.

So John and I had to help Malcolm a little, just a little, like over the side...

One time, a Kappa honey named Jenny, a silky-haired brunette with high cheekbones, blow-job lips and teeth so white you needed shades, a busty beauty in need of a permanent bodyguard if there ever was one, stopped by to see John and me. We’d had a long standing bore-ass battle with Jenny and her roommate, fun stuff but mostly minor league, and she was bringing us flowers to reward us on our latest success. Now, neither John nor I had ever dated Jenny; there’s no way she would have trusted either one of us for an evening, but we were good friends -- at arm’s length.

Well, while we were talking, Malcolm came down. One look and Malcolm was in love. But he spoke not; he just nodded and walked to the kitchen, then back again, then back yet again, and so forth for about six trips. I swear, the poor guy was wearing tracks in the carpet. But we weren’t paying attention, we and Jenny were laughing at how she and her roommate had fallen for our latest prank.

That night, after some hemming and hawing – that was Malcolm’s way – he finally confessed his undying love for Jenny, which for Malcolm went something like this, “Um… that… um… that girl today… um… what was her name?”

One of us told him.

“Um… How… um… do…um… you guys… um… know her… ? Um… how…um… I mean… um… did…um… you…um… date her or something?”

I swear, that’s the way Malcolm talked about women. Here was a guy who could deliver an address on the policy platform of the Republican Party for an hour with nary a stutter nor pause, yet when it came to sniffing out a date, he was nearly catatonic. Now earlier, I mentioned that Malcolm would make a stupid political statement about politics to a woman, and I didn’t portray him as retarded. See, that’s because he was talking politics, not love. Are we straight about this? When it came to love, it wasn’t that Malcolm lacked the emotion, he didn’t know the language, didn’t have a clue.

Well, it didn’t take long for John and me to realize that Malcolm wanted a date with Jenny, and being faithful and nurturing roommates, we agreed to intercede. John called Jenny, and he confirmed that all Malcolm had to do was call and ask her out. But Malcolm had to do THAT himself – Jenny didn’t like intermediaries.

Poor Malcolm fretted all day. He tried numerous lines on us, and of course we did everything we could to be helpful. We play-acted roles as if we were Jenny, and Malcolm tried various lines of communication, all leading up to the fateful question. After several hours, Malcolm felt he was ready. He was confident and he had notes to which he could refer.

We agreed that I would call Jenny, and when she was on the line, I would hand the phone to Malcolm, then leave. Malcolm thought having John and me present would tie his tongue, inhibit him, cause him to lose his edge. Hah! Malcolm’s edge with chicks on his BEST day was as sharp as tofu. But John and I had readily agreed to his demand; we knew we had three phones in the apartment.

Heh, heh, heh.

So, I actually called the Kappa House and asked for Jenny. Someone said she’d go find her. Now this was in the days when sororities had house phones, not individual lines. As soon as I heard John’s voice on the other end, mimicking Jenny, I handed the phone to Malcolm and flashed him an “OK” hand sign as I left the room.

I ran into my room, shut the door and picked up my hand-set, making sure I covered the lower portion with my hand.

“Jenny?” said Malcolm, maybe a bit tentative.

“Yes,” said John in Jenny-voice. “Is this Malcolm? John has told me so much about you.”

“Really?” Malcolm sounded surprised. “Um…”

Uh oh! Could he hold it? Would he lose it? What about all that practice? I could just imagine Malcolm consulting his notes.

I heard him take a deep breath, then, “Well, that’s nice to hear. Um… I meant to talk to you when you were here today, but you and John and Ben were laughing so… um… hard… um… I didn’t want to… um… interrupt you.”

He was doing okay. When was John gonna push it?

“Oh,” John/Jenny said, “that was nothing. I really wanted to talk to you too, but those two just kept going.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes, Malcolm, I’ve wanted to meet you for some time. I mean you are such a leader. I just love it when you speak on campus. That’s one of the reasons I came over today; I wanted to meet you. I’m just sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk and get to know each other.”

John was laying it on thick. I had to sit on the floor I was laughing so hard.

“Well, I… um… I’m a little surprised…um… Jenny, I had no idea… um… you knew… um… who I was. I’m…um… very flattered.”

“Oh, it’s me who should be flattered, Malcolm. I mean, it’s not everyday I get a phone call from someone like you.”

“Well, um… I’m glad to hear that…um… Jenny.” Malcolm was hitting a stride, well a crawl maybe. “See, that’s… um… why I wanted…um… to call you. Did…um… John…um… tell you why I wanted to call?”

“Well, he said you thought I had a great ass…”

Dead silence from Malcolm, then I swear I heard a gurgle. Malcolm cleared his throat. “He did?”

“Why yes, Malcolm, and he said you thought I’d make a great set of ear muffs.”

I was rolling around on the floor. I could hardly contain myself.

I could hear Malcolm breathing heavy. I imagined his head spinning, his thoughts whirling. But he said nothing for almost thirty seconds. Then, “Grady!” That was John’s last name. “You rotten son of a whore, you mother-f@#king asshole! You stinking pile of s$%t! You were dropped out of a pig and rolled in slop to be presented to your mother in a condition she’d recognize!”

Malcolm was so wrapped up in his litany of expletives he failed to hear the real Jenny say, “Hello?”

Malcolm kept going. “Your relatives are all vermin, you flea infested sack of dead rats! Your mother was a grub worm who sucked vole-dick, your father a cockroach with no cock! You are the slime that comes from squashed worms. Your hair is fur, your face is acne-ridden and matches your ass, and your mouth is a runny anal pore!”

“Malcolm?” said Jenny, who sounded a little surprised.

There was dead silence on the phone, followed by a soft click.

In moments, Malcolm was running downstairs, then out the door, screaming all the way, I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE!”

Aces!

* * *

Second story.

Sometime during the summer of 1968, John and I decided to venture north to Indiana Beach for a weekend Righteous Brothers concert. We were able to get a weekend off from lifeguard duties at Lake Monroe, or maybe we were on suspension, I don’t remember.

Suspension, you ask? We’ll talk about that later.

Now Malcolm didn’t know the Righteous Brothers. When he heard us talking about Blue-Eyed Soul, he thought we were meeting with the Religious Right, and if he went along he might meet Jerry Falwell and Jim Bakker, two of his heroes. John and I were about as thrilled to have Malcolm join us as one feels receiving an enema from a pretty nurse, but we didn’t have the heart to burst his bubble, especially so soon after the Jenny episode. Malcolm’s presence would be a problem; we were planning on mooching a place to stay by leeching onto chicks, and well, Malcolm was a needle to the balloon of love.

But what the hell, we owed it to him, and Malcolm’s reaction to having been duped yet again would probably be worth the aggravation. So off we went in my white ’65 Mustang convertible, surely a counterweight to Malcolm, the human version of Off when it came to chicks.

Malcolm’s reaction to the concert was disappointing, I must say, but I suspect he was just determined not to please us by showing his surprise. He looked a little silly though in his three piece suit; heck, he looked like the FBI. As you might imagine, dubie was everywhere, so wherever Malcolm went, at least ten feet of open space encircled him. From the air in daylight, I’m sure the image would have resembled a negative of a Colorado crop-circle, with Malcolm you know where (See title). We distanced ourselves from him as much as we could, ducking down occasionally, staying on the move, but dammit, he always seemed to find us.

The concert was only so-so. Medley was on, but Bobby Hatfield was only slightly more animated than he is now. As the evening wore on, we paid less attention to the music and focused more on Malcolm-evasion, so John could work his magic and get us connected. Finally, just before the concert ended, John latched onto a chick from Butler who was hosting a slumber party in a Lake Shafer cottage. She and her friends were willing to let us join them, although it was unclear whether we’d be in the main cabin enjoying the fruits of love or be banished to the furnished garage. Alas, as we were leaving, our connection to Malcolm became clear, so you can guess where we stayed...

The garage was unattached, like us, but comfy. Wide enough for two cars, it had retained its doors, but lost its original purpose; a toilet, sink and rudimentary, exposed shower had been installed along with cots and a refrigerator. We were provided blankets and pillows for the cots.

Except for Malcolm, we were all a little drunk and most of us were stoned. We partied for awhile on the lakeside screened-in-porch and John and one chick went skinny-dipping (that bastard!), but I was meeting resistance in satisfying my love-muscle. Malcolm had arrived in my car, after all, so I couldn’t very well disclaim him, and despite my best efforts to cleanse myself, I couldn’t seem to shed his Junior G-Man taint. Somehow, John must have persuaded his babe that he didn’t know Malcolm, but she was pretty wasted. If that prick had been in more of a sharing mood, I might have gotten lucky too.

Sometime after three o’clock, I gave up trying to score and took my blue balls to bed, joining Malcolm in the garage; he’d preceded me by at least two hours. John and his chick were nowhere to be seen, although occasionally, somebody claimed to have heard oohs and ahs somewhere outside.

We all awoke the next morning when one of the girls thought it would be funny to open the garage door with the remote. Ha ha. We made her shut the door and bring us coffee as penance, and I snatched the remote while she put down our tray. She left us to our morning routines when we threatened to perform them in front of her..

While taking a dump in front of friends is a little disconcerting, the shower felt good, and that combination, plus the coffee, seemed to revive me. John and I were a little grumpy, I guess, although I’m sure our reasons for it differed. I don’t think John got much sleep, the bastard, but I didn’t want to hear about what he’d been doing. I told him I’d be on him like paint if I heard one word about it. Malcolm was chipper and that was pissing me off too; I was blaming him for my Blue Ball Syndrome. So I turned on a radio that was on the counter and cranked up the volume to shut them up.

John followed my bathroom lead, as Malcolm was slow to rise. Hell, Malcolm was slow to do anything, dammit, why should his morning routine be any different? Besides, it was best to have Malcolm go last; his showers were so notoriously long, to have him go first risked the availability of hot water. So we were used to making Malcolm go last; in fact, we always insisted on it.

As Malcolm showered, the bud of an idea flowered in my fertile imagination. John and I were so used to bore-assing Malcolm, we didn’t need much communication. I caught his eye, nodded over to where Malcolm was draining away the lake and pointed to Malcolm’s suitcase.

John smiled.

Moments later, we had removed all the suitcases, blankets, towels and clothing from the garage and we were assembling the girls outside by my car. There were eight of them, and they were in a playful mood. When we had arranged ourselves in front of the door, and one of the girls had set up her camera, I hit the remote.

The garage door rumbled open.

Perhaps it was the radio and Malcolm’s singing along with it that prevented him from hearing the garage door opening, or maybe he thought the sound was just a rumbling of the pipes. Regardless, he didn’t realize immediately that he was showering in the open in front of ten people, one of whom had a camera. He was scrubbing his ass, his legs spread wide, working up quite a lather, as the shower beat on his chest and face and the camera clicked off exposure after exposure.

It was when Malcolm turned to rinse that awareness struck him. I’d compare the moment to a deer in headlights, except a deer doesn’t understand his predicament.

But then, neither did Malcolm, fully.

As panic etched his face and his eyes grew to full moons, Malcolm screamed, and one hand flew to his crotch while the other reached for what proved to be the empty security of a bare towel rack. Screaming out obscenities now, he raced from the stall, one hand in front, one in back, trying to cover as best he could. Turning to the cots, he saw they were bare; turning to his suitcase and clothes, they were gone.

And the camera clicked on.

Now, I must say, this didn’t end quite the way John and I had expected, you know with our I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE reward.

No. Malcolm surprised us, and for that I give the guy gobs of credit. If you’ll pardon the pun, I’ll even say he showed some brass balls.

Instead of reacting the way we expected, Malcolm dropped his hands, stood up straight, and with shoulders back and both chest and chin thrust out, he walked proudly past us to the car. Opening the door, he even turned around and bowed before seating himself in the back seat.

What could we do but applaud?

* * *
Okay, so how did we get suspended from our lifeguard duties?

One of the crap duties attending life guard status at Lake Monroe was the rotational Sunday cleanup, and, of course, the crapiest aspect of that task was outhouse cleanup. But being smart college kids, John, Malcolm and I had developed a system that was both efficient and which minimized the amount of time any one of us were sucking in methane gas.

We didn’t have to actually climb down those holes -- sorry to disappoint you -- we just had to clean around them, do the mirrors, make sure the supply of sandpaper toilet tissue was adequate and wash the floors. The last job was the worst one for it took longer to mop than it did to wipe and store. Each time we had to perform these chores, we decided our tasks by a succession of paper, scissor, rock challenges, the only manly way to make decisions.

On this particular day, Malcolm lost, but he grabbed his trusty mop with resignation and awaited his turn in good humor. And everything went fine until we hit the fourth outhouse. You see, there was a very fat, very pregnant lady in that one, and none of us had seen her enter. Hell, for all I knew, she might have been in there all night. There are such perverts, you know.

Well, I was an outhouse ahead when I opened that door to wipe the mirror and add sandpaper, and in my shock to see this woman sitting there, I just quietly closed the door and moved on.

Okay, I might have been chortling.

John was next, and to his credit, his reaction was the same as mine. Both of us stood behind the next commode to see what Malcolm’s reaction would be.

Now Malcolm hadn’t been paying attention to us, so he didn’t ask how John and I had finished our hole duties so quickly. He just opened the door and walked right in, the spring action of the door closing it behind him. A moment later, we heard a scream, a blood curdling one, too deep for a woman’s unless she was a hermaphrodite, which I rather doubt (Truth be told, I hadn’t checked), followed by Malcolm bursting forth, his arms flying as he cast off his mop and bucket and made hay for the water. And he didn’t stop there; he kept going until he was submerged, and he stayed down for awhile.

But before he went under, John and I got most of what we wanted: We heard the first three words of I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE.

I think it’s a safe assumption that the rest of the sentence was heard by the fishes.

Okay, you ask, why were we suspended? Well, the woman complained.

It seems some people just can’t take a joke.

* * *
Conclusion.

You know, the thing that has always intrigued me was that those pictures have never showed up. I keep wondering if one of these times Malcolm runs for Congress, we’re going to see an exclusive in The National Enquirer.

In other words, I may yet hear I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE one more time.
 
Crab CockTale. (By trover)

Crab CockTale

Except for Mary Jo Kopechne and soldiers in Viet Nam, 1969 was the perfect year, with a summer memorialized by Bryan Adams, the first Moon-walk, good, cheap pot (Okay, I too was a child of the sixties) and my graduation from college.

But it didn’t start out that way.

1969 began as an auspicious year for me: I had outgrown most of my immaturity (See The Blue Pube, Batman and The Legend of Chicken Hawk), I’d been admitted to Law School the following term; I was consistently on the Dean’s List, and I was engaged to the most beautiful girl on campus, a blonde beauty of Brahmin Chicago stock who said she’d love me to death. (Little did I know then that she occasionally rode a broom or that her Brahmin upbringing carried some plague-bearing fleas).

Way out east on Third Street, I had a three bedroom Knightridge Manor townhouse apartment and three wonderful roommates, all good friends and two of them my fraternity brothers. John and Carl were the fraternity brothers, and I’d met Malcolm while he was president of our Freshman Class and I was its treasurer. The four of us had jelled like pudding. Malcolm ran campus politics, John was the biggest stud in Bloomington and Carl was a giant with a Teddy Bear disposition. I’d fallen into a fairly consistent routine by then: classes late morning and early afternoon, a Noon shift at the Gables, six hours of concentrated study in an Administration Building room, then some hours for a party or a poke with my fiancé.

Life was good. But little did I realize that I was about to encounter one of the most unpleasant and embarrassing experiences humans can suffer.

It all began one Saturday night when I returned about Midnight from a date with my fiancé, who for some reason wasn’t spending the night. Awaiting me at the apartment were John, Carl and Tim, another fraternity brother who I hadn’t seen for awhile. Malcolm was away for the weekend at some political function probably plotting the next stage of the Viet Nam war.

Sadly, Carl, John and Tim weren’t alone. Accompanying them, guzzling our home-made, ultra-potent, gut-rotting red wine, stuff which made Ripple taste like a fine Bordeaux, were two of the poorest excuses for women, if that’s what they were, that I’d ever seen. Both of these skanks were well over forty and one of them outweighed me. Now I was a big guy, 6’6”, 220, but this broad could have tossed me around like a feather pillow. She looked like a larger version of Tony Soprano’s sister although I didn’t check for the breast tattoo. I thought she looked a little familiar, perhaps as someone last seen in a children’s book baking Hansel and Gretel into cookies. The other woman, again that term is used loosely, resembled Anne Bancroft, not as she looked as Mrs. Robinson, but as she looks now.

Eeeuw, you say? That’s how I felt.
Not wanting any part of what I suspected was about to transpire, I said hello to Tim, nodded to the trailer-trash, grabbed a beer and made my way to my bedroom, mine alone by luck of the draw. Now, I’m basically a lazy guy when I can be, and I saw no purpose to sleeping under a sheet and blankets if I could avoid making my bed in the morning. My fiancé liked a made bed, so when she wasn’t around, I slept in my sleeping bag. That way, my bed was always made, and when she stayed with me, she made it before leaving. I thought it was a good system.

So I finished my beer, climbed into my bag and zipped up. As I’m a light sleeper, I tuned my radio to a soft classical station, hoping to drown out what I anticipated would be raucous calisthenics in the other bedrooms.

Sometime later, through a Mozart haze, I either dreamed or heard some muffled giggling, the soft whoosh of my door slowly opening, a whispered “Shhh”, then a gentle rustling, like clothing landing lightly on the carpet at the end of my bed. Moments later, I was crushed under a slobbering blob of fat, which was moving up my bag to my face, murmuring or cooing something that sounded like, “Oooh, baaaby, let mommy gobble you up. I got lots a love for you, thweet baaaby”

I sensed myself being swallowed by an anaconda.

Instantly awake now, struggling to find the zipper of my bag while I tried to climb up the headboard to escape, I saw the grinning faces of John and Carl before they shut my door.

Now, I’d had trouble with zippers before, you know, how they tend to get stuck while you’re in the urgency of reaching your spear before the moment passes? But this was a new urgency, like running from fire. And I was panicking. Wrestling with Godzilla’s mother, my arm was pinned and I couldn’t get a good grasp on that damn metal tab, and once I had it, I couldn’t yank it down with any force. I rolled to the left, then to the right, trying to shift the blubber with enough momentum to tear that tab down.

No such luck. A gigantic boob to the left of me, another to the right, Beast-woman was centered, and my movements were becoming more constrained as she moved ever upward. For a moment, I had visions of smothering between flabby thighs, of gasping in noxious vaginal fumes and expiring in a place only whale-sized tampax should see. Then, as she began grinding my compressed gonads into mush, she raised up and my arm swung free. Not bothering with the tab any longer, I wrapped my left arm around that flab and lunged myself to the right, rolling both of us off the bed. Thank God I landed on top, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this; I’d be in a very long, very wide, very flat coffin. In a flash I was out of the bag and on my feet, in another flash I was at the door. “Get the hell out of here!” I raged. “Put your clothes on and get out!”

Bulbous was sitting on the floor, her boobs nearly touching the carpet, a dazed look in her sullen, dull eyes. “Come back, baaaby,” she moaned. “Momma wants you.” She wasn’t making any effort to follow my command.

I flipped on the lights, hoping she’d see how foolish she looked. No dice. She stayed where she was.

“Goddamit, Carl, John!” I yelled. “Come get this piece of shit!” There was no sound, their doors were shut. “Dammit! This isn’t funny!” Again, no response. I reached for my jeans and my sweatshirt, and went into the hall, trying their doorknobs as I hurriedly dressed. Both doors were locked, and I could hear some giggling from John’s room.

I turned back to my room and saw Blubber-butt still on the floor. Her flabby arms were raised, imploring me to return.

What to do?

“Okay,” I said as I walked into the room, grabbed the clothing they’d tossed in, then hurried back out. “I’m taking your clothes and I’m putting them outside. If you want to see them again, you better get your ass outside. You can dress there.” Then I did exactly that, tossed her clothes outside while I stood at the open door like a sentry. Some minutes later, weaving to and fro, her boobs swinging in long arcs, Whopper-lady made her way outside. I averted my eyes as she passed, fearful that her swinging mammaries would make me seasick. She said something but I didn’t catch it. I was too fixated on slamming and locking the door.

Problem solved, I made my way back to my room, cussing my roommates all the way. I had no idea where the other woman, the aged Anne Bancroft look-a-like was, and I didn’t care. I locked my door, undressed and went back to my bag.

Some twenty or so minutes later, I heard a loud banging on our front door. I yelled to my roommates but they still weren’t answering.

The banging continued.

Muttering to myself, yelling at my roommates, I struggled out of my bag again, dressed and went downstairs, fearing that Whale-woman was back.

Nope. It was the County Mounties.

The two cops, both looking to be in their thirties and sporting typical cop-guts, were friendly. Obviously, they’d spent some time dealing with college kids. “Look buddy,” one of them said, “this fat woman says you threw her clothes outside and took her purse.”

“Huh?” I said. “I threw her clothes outside because that was the only way I could get rid of her.”

The cop’s eyebrow rose and I could see the other one shift his stance. From a distance, he said, “That’s not a very nice way to treat a lady, buddy.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But she’s no lady. Look, I’ve never seen her before and I didn’t invite her here.” I told them the story.

“Okay,” the first one said. “But what about the purse?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t seen any purse.”

“Look,” he said. “Why don’t you let us in and the three of us can look for her purse.”

I shrugged and let them in. Together, the three of us looked all over the downstairs area.

No purse.

“Oh crap,” I said. “I bet she left it in one of my roommate’s rooms.” I gestured upstairs.
“Let me see if I can get it.”

I ran upstairs and did a quick once-over of my room. No purse. Then I went to each of their doors, rapped on them, and said. “Hey, there are cops downstairs. They say you have that fat woman’s purse.”

I could hear giggling from John’s room but he wouldn’t acknowledge me.

“Damn it, John! I’m not kidding around. There are two sheriff’s deputies downstairs and they say you have her purse. They want it. Now fork it over or there’s gonna be trouble.”

Still they wouldn’t acknowledge me. I turned and saw one of the cops coming up the stairs. “They won’t answer me, officer. They think I’m getting even with them.”

“Let me try.” The deputy pulled out his long, heavy flashlight and banged it sharply on the wood. He followed this with his name and said that if they didn’t come out immediately, he’d kick the door in and arrest them for theft.

Through the wood, I heard John’s closet door slide open. A moment later, both his door and the door to Malcolm’s room opened. It was just Carl and John. Anne Bancroft had evidently been called to another performance.

Well, the cop took us downstairs where he and his partner gave us a stern lecture. Then he forced John and Carl to search for the purse, which John found in his room. The purse tendered, the cops left, and after I railed a bit at both of them, we all went to bed, relieved that this problem was over.

They say it takes about three or four days for crab eggs to hatch and grow. Not being familiar with this phenomenon, I had no idea why my groin began itching four days later. Neither did Carl, John or Malcolm. We had all been working out quite a bit, and maybe hadn’t done our laundry very well, so we just assumed it was crotch-rot. A little talc should take care of it.

But the itching grew more intense Friday, and Friday night my fiancé and I were due in Chicago for a fateful meeting with our parents to discuss our wedding day. Malcolm, in turn, was due in Indianapolis for a meeting with legislators about school funding. And John was meeting with his former fiancé, maybe they could patch up their relationship. Carl was staying home alone.

I cannot explain the full agony of that weekend in Chicago. My hands were constantly in my crotch, which itched so badly I wanted to scrape it with a blade. And my fiancé, who’d had sex with me during the week, was beginning to itch too. And it wasn’t just my crotch that itched, my arms, armpits and my head did too. I itched all over. What’s more, I couldn’t sit still; I’d fidget, shift, stand up, sit down, all desperate attempts to alleviate the infernal itching. I showered three or four times a day, using one excuse after another, and nothing seemed to help.

Finally, I could take this misery no longer, so I locked myself in the bathroom on Sunday, stripped and checked things out. As I was studying my crotch, I noticed a little speck of red. It moved. Then I saw another, and it moved. The more I looked, the more I saw them, and they were all moving, quite rapidly I might add. It was if whatever had infested me was on Pogo-sticks. My pubic hairs were swinging vines for these Tarzanic-bugs. Being the curious scientific sort, I found a powerful magnifying glass in one of the bathroom drawers and I applied it to these dancing specks.

I had crabs; there was no mistaking them. Now, maybe I’d been sheltered, but I’d never heard of crabs so small, but crabs they were. The magnifying glass didn’t lie.

I couldn’t get out of that condo fast enough. Making up some lame excuse, I insisted we pack our bags and return to Bloomington. My fiancé wasn’t happy, but when we got to the car, I told her why. By now, she was just as miserable as I was, scratching like a banshee, cursing, but being female, she was much better at hiding her “equipment problems” than I was. Fortunately, she hadn’t looked through a magnifying glass.

My revelation to her about our plight -- and the likely cause of it -- raised my fiancé to heights of anger never before witnessed by man nor beast. That’s when I first saw the broom, but had no idea how often it would show in years to come. Suffice it to say, the trip back to Bloomington was long and painful, in more ways than one.

First thing Monday, we were visiting doctors: my fiancé, John, Malcolm, Carl and me. And John’s former fiancé, with whom he’d re-established relations, was soon to follow. Boy, I would have loved to have heard that explanation. If I know John, he blamed me.

We had to wash and disinfect everything in our apartment, douse ourselves with special shampoo and crab-killing goop, and do it over and over again, because these little buggers leave lots of eggs. And my fiancé and John’s had to do the same with their rooms, plus inform everybody with whom they’d had contact.

But what about the parents and the legislators with whom Malcolm had met? Sure enough, our respective parents were now itching too. You can imagine what fun those conversations were. As for Malcolm’s contacts, we decided to let sleeping bugs lay. I must say the notion of a bunch of legislators scratching madly at their crotches was sorta entertaining.

You think this is the end of this story?

Not hardly.

Ten years later found me happily (I thought) married, a proud papa of a baby boy and well established with a prominent Indianapolis law firm. Thinking of my little boy, I decided to visit the local Boy Scout chapter, where after one meeting, I found myself leading the troop on a spelunking overnight. Now, I had spent many a day and night spelunking around Bloomington. I considered myself almost a pro. So, I’d agreed to lead.

As I was the only person who forgot a ground cloth, I was the only one who froze all night in my sleeping bag, and I was the only one who got stuck in a narrow passage. Great trip!

And guess what? That sleeping bag? Yup. The same one I’d used the night I was almost smothered by Crab-woman. I’d never washed it; I’d just thrown it into the closet.

Duh! Wanna guess what I got three or four days later?

My wife didn’t believe my story this time, so I had to schedule an additional appointment for my doctor to assure her that crab eggs will last forever in a sleeping bag, just waiting for someplace warm, like my toasty crotch.

Is it any wonder I don’t eat crab salad?

My ex-wife is an avid camper. My only regret is that I didn’t give her my sleeping bag in the divorce...
 
Bring on the Dogs. (By trover)

“Would the plaintiffs like to make an opening statement?” said Marion County Circuit Court Judge John Niblack, the scourge of Indiana state court justice for over forty years. Niblack, a scowling, self-absorbed legal purist, who from his numerous writings apparently felt that his longevity had given him insights no other peer could muster, seemed eager to begin this case.

And no wonder. This lawsuit had all the earmarks of a good time. Plaintiff was a three hundred pound black woman who claimed she’d become violently ill from food poisoning after ingesting three coney dogs for breakfast at a downtown five & dime. The tabasco and mustard wasn’t to blame, she claimed, she’d been fed bacteria infested meat. She’d sued both the store – my client – and the meat provider.

It was my second trial, Peggy Lane’s first. She represented the meat provider, a reputable slaughterhouse based in Indy. Because both of us were neophytes and Niblack was a holy terror who ate young lawyers for lunch, I had senior partner David Liss and Peggy had Jim Donaldson, a trial lawyer of legendary stature, a name partner in the state’s leading law firm, to keep us out of trouble.

Circuit Court in Indiana is the top of the line, where the big cases that aren’t federal go. The news media make it a practice to stake out the proceedings, although I doubted there would be much coverage of this one. Plaintiff wanted a million dollars, she claimed her life had been ruined, that she couldn’t work, couldn’t service her husband, who’d joined in her suit for his lost consortium, the lost affections of his loving wife.

What was most unusual about this case was that there was no jury. With a judge as irascible as Niblack, juries were commonplace, the absence of one usually grounds for a malpractice claim. And so too with our case. As plaintiff’s counsel was a long-hair bearded hippy, a definite no-no in Niblack’s fiefdom, Peggy and I wanted Niblack’s unfettered wrath. Why Michael Winestein hadn’t asked for a jury, Peggy and I had no clue. But we sure as hell didn’t want one.

David and I watched Winestein make his opening from the left side of counsel table, on the left side of the spacious court room. Peggy and Donaldson, who was a fidgeter, sat across from us. Plaintiff and her husband sat at the table to our right, on opposite sides, him on the left, her on the right. While her husband, a fifty-ish black man of normal size, nervously eyed the floor, plaintiff sat back, confident in all her caloric splendor. Her purple moo-moo looked stretched and tight, much like the look on her husband’s face. Briefly, I wondered if Wanda, his wife, beat him.

Winestein was pacing back and forth across the courtroom in front of the scowling Niblack, occasionally waggling an accusing finger at Peggy and me as he ranted and raved about how we’d tried to kill his honest, hard working client with rat poop in a rancid slurry slathered over those dogs. The consequences had been brutal; plaintiff had been sick, deathly ill for two weeks, she’d lost her job as a janitor at Ayres and still, a year later, was too ill to consider searching for another job. Her husband, forced to care for his wife, had quit his job as a janitor at the bus station and likely would not be free to look for work soon either. Wanda had been so weakened by her ordeal that even now she had to be helped to the bathroom for her frequent purges.

With a smirk on his face, Judge Niblack interrupted Winestein to ask Wanda if she needed a bathroom break now. Puzzlement showing on her face, her chins swung as she looked to her counsel for guidance. Finally, after an awkard moment, she whispered, “I be okay for awhile.”

“What?” Niblack roared, his eyebrows closely knit together. “I can’t hear you. Speak up!”

“She said she’s okay for awhile now, Judge,” said Winestein, who’d run over for a moment’s consult. “She had her last bout of diarrhea just before court.”

“That’s more than I need to know, counsel,” Niblack countered, a disgusted look on his face. He glanced over to his court reporter, a slightly built matronly woman who had been with him for years. “Please try not to upset my court reporter with graphic descriptions. This is Circuit Court after all.”

“Yes sir, your honor,” said Winestein, who was probably now regretting not having asked for a jury. He went back to his pacing and finger waggling, as he heaped abuse on Peggy and me.

I looked over at Donaldson, a wiry, tense guy who was wrestling with his fingers, really twisting them around. He’d been trying lawsuits most of his long life; how would he manage to keep his mouth out of this one? The fact that he and Niblack were friends, had shared a court room hundreds of times and this being Peggy’s first trial, told me we’d be hearing from Jim. It was just plaintiffs’ opening statement and already Donaldson was roiling.

Winestein finished his rant about an hour later, but only after Niblack had interrupted him twice thundering out, “Are you about done yet?” As he sat down in front of Wanda, who raised a blubbery wing to pat him on the back, a touch so gentle it caused Winestein to fall forward, Niblack turned to us. “Would you like to make an opening statement, counsel. If so, keep it short.”

Peggy stood, as she’d go first because the meat company was the first named defendant. “No, your honor.” I followed similarly and Niblack nodded his approval. Defendants often don’t make opening statements or they defer them to the opening of their case.

“Fine. Then we’ll take a break so plaintiff can attend to her… uh… business, and we’ll reconvene in fifteen minutes. Is that okay with you, counsel?”

All counsel stood, while plaintiff struggled to lift herself out of her chair. “Yes, your honor,” said the chorus.
Plaintiff sat back down heavily, and as Niblack walked to the door of his chambers, I noticed him glance at her, saw a frown on his face as she dropped back into her chair.

As often happens in a trial such as this, one develops a close relationship with one’s co-counsel. Peggy and I had become friends, we respected each other and had worked well together in preparing this case. But we didn’t get much chance to talk during this break. As soon as Niblack had left the courtroom, Donaldson grabbed Peggy and hurried her over to a corner where he was lecturing her in an animated state.

Poor Peggy. I had a feeling this was going to be a trial she’d never forget. Donaldson kept her in the corner, gesturing wildly and flapping his jaws throughout the break. They only returned to counsel table when Niblack and his entourage of bailiff, court reporter and secretary stormed back in.

Wanda was the first witness. For extra sympathy, I’d guess, but maybe because of her weight, she was helped to the stand by both her counsel and her husband, although his assistance had been prodded by a sharp blow to the shoulder. The chair in which she was placed disappeared under a shroud of purple as I wondered how much weight it could bear.

Plaintiff’s counsel had her tell her story, but he did so with leading questions, which I jumped up to object to. Questions like, “So you don’t usually eat breakfast at the five & dime, do you?” I knew Niblack was a strict constructionist, and would sustain the objections. I wanted to shake up both the plaintiff and her counsel.

But Winestein wasn’t getting the message from my objections and the judge’s sustaining them. He kept asking more leading questions, and I was bouncing up and down like a yo-yo. Finally, Niblack stopped the proceedings and turned to Winestein. “Counsel, surely you learned something in law school. Didn’t they ever teach you how to ask a question? My courtroom is no law school, son, and I don’t intend to waste the valuable time of this court teaching you what every lawyer is supposed to know.”

“Yes sir, your honor,” Winestein managed, although he seemed to shrink, his shoulders slumped and his hands were shaking. “I’ll try to do better.”

“Well, you’d better, son, you’d just better.”

Winestein asked another leading question, and although Niblack frowned and shook his head, I stayed seated. I didn’t want to appear to beating up on him. But Donaldson just couldn’t control himself. He jabbed Peggy in the back, whispered loudly, “Object! Leading.” His voice could be heard all over the courtroom.

I looked up at Niblack, thought I saw a trace of a smile.

Winestein asked another question, again a leading one. Still, I stayed seated and I heard Donaldson mutter, “Goddammit! Object! Leading!” He poked Peggy once more.
Peggy turned around and her eyes were moist. “I’m sorry, Mr. Donaldson,” she whispered. “I don’t know what a leading question is?”

“Oh shit!” bellowed Donaldson, so loud there was no doubt everybody in the courtroom, and maybe some people outside heard it. His hands flew to his head as he slumped down, exasperation glowing from his red face.

Winestein turned around at the distraction, and I glanced up at Niblack. Some of his frown lines had straightened out, his face was about as close to a full bore grin as I’d ever seen. Briefly, I wondered if his plastered scowl would crack, leaving dust on the bench.

Somehow, Winestein managed to get Wanda’s story out. She’d been a hard working janitor, walking to her janitorial job at Ayres, when the vision of turning hot dogs, gleaming in their fatty sweat lured her to the five & dime window. Having skipped breakfast, Wanda went inside and ordered three coney dogs. Despite the mustard and tabasco, she thought the meat had tasted bitter, but instead of tossing her breakfast away, she had consumed all three and washed them down with a Tab. The first rumblings in her stomach began soon after and by Noon, she was confined to the bathroom, purging herself from both ends. Valiently struggling against the crippling cramps in her innards, she called her husband at the bus station and ordered him to pick her up. For two weeks, Wanda was unable to get out of bed without assistance, but spent most of her time in the bathroom anyway, alternately suffering from bouts of diarhea or vomiting. Poor Harold, she said, he’d had to help her into the john and lift her off the toilet as her purge demands changed.

Poor Harold. I could only imagine the odious smells and sights he’d witnessed. Oh the nightmares he must have suffered, probably still did; the guy deserved a medal for sure. No wonder he was so reserved; he was no doubt still in shock.

Strangely though, Wanda didn’t see a doctor until several weeks after the lawsuit was filed, which as it turned out was three days after her meal, while she was still… well… indisposed. She claimed her doctor had confirmed her diagnosis: food poisoning from rat-pooped, rancid coney dogs.

Oh my…

Peggy began the cross after another break, and probed Wanda with leading questions, trying to shake her up, confine her answers to yeses or nos. Wanda wasn’t a cooperative witness, she kept trying to speal, but Niblack would have none of it. Several times he cautioned the witness to just answer the question, each time his tone more severe. As Peggy worked, Donaldson fidgeted, trying to get Peggy’s attention. Finally, he tugged at her arm and bellowed, “Ask her how many times she sh@t!”

All eyes, including Niblack’s turned to Donaldson, as Peggy paused for a moment, stuttered a few times, then asked some innocuous question. Again, I saw Niblack’s face break as Donaldson beat his fists on the table in frustration and David and I cringed into the back of our chairs. “Goddammit, I said, ‘Ask her how many times she sh@t!’ Didn’t you hear me?” Donaldson was no longer trying to mask his frustration or cover his voice. His words caroomed off the courtroom’s walls.

Niblack’s lips peeled back and he showed some teeth. “Maybe we’d better take a little break, so Mr. Donaldson can have a little discussion with his associate.” He was gone, rushing out of the courtroom, coving his mouth, before we could stand.

Donaldson, grabbed poor Peggy by the shoulders and rushed her to the back of the room. We could see him gesturing and hear parts of his wrathful rant over the white noise of the air conditioning system. Meanwhile, Wanda sat draped over her witness chair, Harold looked at the floor and Winestein paced as David and I shared some hidden giggles.
 
Batman & Robin in Bloomington. (By trover)

Once upon a time, specifically Spring of 1966, Bloomington needed some excitement. Our basketball team had sucked, Vietnam was claiming lives and we still had some weeks to go before Little 5.

Kevin Duffy and I decided to liven things up.

Kevin was Chicken Hawk’s roommate, and a finer figure of a human being, albeit crazy, you never saw. Kevin was a footballer too, a middle linebacker who gained national exposure during our Rose Bowl appearance. You see, Kevin looked like a movie star, played linebacker, despite having lost his spleen during a game in 1966 or 1967, and was cut like Arnold da Gov. He and Chicken Hawk had been boyhood friends in Connecticut and had always roomed together. Kevin had a smile which lit a room, which is part of why he became something of a national celebrity during the Rose Bowl. (The other reason was sympathy and admiration about his recovery from the spleen operation and the fact that while he was in LA, he came under the wing of some Hollywood types who may have stuffed some funny stuff under his nose).

Now I realize that the old TV show Batman is passé today, but in 1966 it was THE TV show nobody wanted to miss. It swept the IU campus just as it did the imagination and funnybone of the nation.

Kevin and I decided The Joker must be somewhere on campus and that a visit from Batman and Robin was in order.

Having hailed from Indy, I knew of a shop where costumes could be rented. So one afternoon, Kevin and I drove up there and found that they had the fixings for a believeable Batman and Robin costume. We rented the stuff and returned to B-Town. The next day, a Friday, Kevin and I donned our costumes and drove into campus, parking in the Memorial Union lot, near the back, where we could enter and leave the car in relative obscurity. Obviously, we weren’t wearing our masks -- yet.

As we approached Ballantine Hall, we donned our masks and began running. We entered the Hall and stormed through several of the lecture halls. We moved so fast and struck so quickly, nobody thought to give chase. You can imagine the shock and wonder on the faces of students, some sleeping, some taking notes, and especially at the podiums, as we ran through several lectures and stopped them in their tracks. “Have you seen The Joker?” we shouted. “Kazaam! The Joker has escaped!”

From Ballantine, we headed east toward the Education Building but found an older building in between which had a fire escape. Perfect! We pulled down the ladder and up we went, bending down under windows so as not to be seeen until we reached the top. Then, once there, we began peering in windows, gesturing to catch the instructor’s eyes, then ducking down as the students turned to see what the instructor was gawking at with open mouth. As I recall, there were about four stories to this building, with two classroom with windows accessible via the fire escape. We played this game for about twenty minutes, working our way down until we reached the bottom. By this time, some students were leaning out the windows yelling at us, and exit doors were opening.

Toward the Education Building we raced, but slowed down when we realized nobody was chasing us – yet.

Now understand, we were wearing costumes with full masks. Kevin had the full Batman outfit, including cowl, while I was wearing a yellow T-shirt, Robin’s thin mask and Speedos (Yes, I even looked good in them then, or so I thought). And we had our best running shoes; we figured we’d need them.

Well, we couldn’t run forever. We had to stop and catch our breaths and plan our next attacks. As we were standing there, our chests heaving, Kevin’s much more than mine because there was so much more of his to heave, a coed neither of us knew walked by and as calm as howdy-do, said, “Hi Kevin. Hi Ben.” To this day, I don’t have a clue how she recognized us; well maybe me because of the tiny mask and my spindly legs and pencil-neck. But huh? We’d seen plenty of other people we knew and they hadn’t seemed to recognize us, how did she when neither one of us knew her?

The Education Building and Music buildings were next, where shock and awe prevailed, but as we left the Music building, we began hearing sirens.

Uh oh.

The main thoroughfares were out: that’s where the cops, local or campus, would be. So we had to double-back running through alleys and around buildings. By now classes had broken and students were everywhere. And we were collecting some groupies, or at least people following us, waiting to see us taken down.

Somehow we made it west to a back entrance to the Memorial Union, where we slipped in a back door and entered the cafeteria. That was fun. The cooks and staff weren’t particularly appreciative when we ran through the kitchen. Maybe they were worried we’d see the cat carcasses they may have been serving. Or maybe they objected to our copping a few french fries and sticking our fingers into a few pudding bowls. Some little guy wearing an apron took particular offense and chased us, yeah, like he was going to stop a future All Big-Ten linebacker and his long,tall skinny sidekick in a Speedo. Or maybe it was me he was after; maybe he liked my Speedo…

The little guy was yelling, “Stop! Stop! Police!” as he chased us, but we lost him, probably because he was embarrassed to be running around in an apron that looked like a dress.

This was during the oh so long period when Herman Wells was chancellor. You’ve seen pictures of Herman. Big fat friendly guy with jowls that could hold a 19 lb turkey with dressing. Boy, I’d have hated to walk into his bathroom in the morning. Well anyway, while he had been president, Herman had installed pictures of food everywhere in the Memorial Union, maybe so he could smile while he walked down the halls, maybe because he figured nobody would try to steal them. Well, Herman was no longer president, but nobody had taken his pictures down. So, as we’re running, I kept seeing bowls of fruit, steak dinners, mashed potatoes, and as my lungs were hurting, my stomach was turning.

It was time to bail or I was gonna hurl.

We knew we couldn’t just run down the steps and out the front door, then rush to our car and exit through the pay gate. That would be too obvious, and if there were any Campus Mounties around, that would be where they’d be waiting. So we took the stairs up, then ran down a hallway to another stairwell further west, which meant we’d exit somewhere at the back of the Union.

This tactic worked. We ran along behind the Chapel to Kevin’s car, popped his trunk, donned some sweatshirts and offed our masks. Then we calmly drove out of the parking lot, which at the time charged 10c/hour, and drove back to the House to a hero’s welcome. There were cops around but they were looking for two dufi wearing masks, not two students in sweatshirts.

Well, the next few days were hectic. Batman and Robin were the talk of the campus, in the IDS, on radio and in the HT. Everybody was waiting for a second appearance, it seemed, and the cops weren’t having any luck tracking the perpetrators. (Thank God, our fraternity brothers could keep a secret!)

But Kevin and I decided not to push our luck. The Administration had taken a dim view of our stunt, and Kevin was worried about losing his scholarship if he was caught. And as our fraternity was already on social pro for somebody punching out a cop (another story yet to come), we had to be careful. Afterall the president of the Intrafraternity Council lived in the house across the street, the one terrorized by Chicken Hawk after the touch football taunting incident mentioned in my story about Chicken Hawk. How he would have loved to nail us for this prank!

So, we returned our costume material and laid low.

I don’t know what happened to Kevin. After his Rose Bowl celebrity, he seemed to flip out. Once in law school, I ran into him during a workout in the weight room. He’d grown a beard and said he was living in a tent with a German Shepard somewhere outside of Bloomington. He said the feds were looking for him, something about drugs.

But he must still be around. I got an email from Chicken Hawk some weeks back, saying he and Duffy were coming home for a weekend in the next few months and did I want to meet them for breakfast.

I’ll probably think of Herman Wells as I eat.

This is a true story; well maybe I stretched it a bit saying I looked good in the Speedo…
 
The Legend of Chicken Hawk. (By trover)

The Legend of Chicken Hawk

Once upon a time (mid sixties) there was this football player with big muscles and matching surgical shoulder smiles, big guy -- really BIG -- about 6'2", 260 and no fat. He liked to pump up, see how wide he could make the scars. No kidding! His first game, the very first play, well he sorta launched himself at the opposing line and squashed four Kentucky players about as flat as a turtle on State Road 37. After all the bodies were sorted out, limbs re-attached and stretchers carried off, he was tossed from the game.

From that time on, he was known as "Chicken Hawk", or "Hawk" for short.

Trust me, you never saw anything scarier than Chicken Hawk when was riled. During four years at IU, there were numerous fights, often with opposing teams' players who'd heard of Hawk and wanted to try their luck at a party after the game; or occasionally some moron would get drunk and say the wrong thing. To my knowledge, nobody ever made that mistake twice. These were all one punch knockouts.

See, Chicken Hawk was also a Golden Gloves champ and pretty quick with his hands. And he was fearless.

Once, at a street party after the Oaken Bucket, which we'd lost as usual, a PUke lineman was mocking The Hawk, who was in a full leg cast after having torn out his knee somehow. This PUke bully thought he was safe. Hah! As if a full leg cast would stop the Hawk. Bang, the guy was OUT! One punch, as usual.

Well, after a few games it was decided Hawk couldn't play the line any more. We couldn't afford the penalties and the other teams' trainers were tiring of having to re-inflate their squashed linemen, so Hawk was relegated to kicking field goals and extra points. Everybody knows kickers are crazy, afterall. And what do you know, by the time Hawk graduated, he was the all time IU scoring champion.

This is no lie.

But the best is yet to come. One day, we were all outside our fraternity house, playing touch football, and some dweebs at the house across the street threw out some taunts. You know, stuff like, "Yoo Hoo, burly boys, playing with your little balls?"

Big mistake! That certain look came into Hawk's eyes, you know, like they were spinning or something, and off he went like he was after the Kentucky line. My brother in law, who was a member of that house remembers the day well. Hawk tore through their front door and called everybody out. Not a sound could be heard in response. Hawk stood there for a full fifteen minutes, breaking stuff, yelling, and NOBODY showed his ugly mug. My brother in law says everybody was in their closets or under their beds.

I've often wondered how I survived. You see, Hawk's senior year, I had custody of the fraternity kitchen. I had the keys and only I could enter when meals were finished and everything was locked up. Well, Hawk had an amazing appetite. He once ate a 32 OZ steak at a local restaurant on a dare. The promotion was that anybody who could eat the steak and the watermelon-like baked potato that came with it in one sitting without throwing up, would eat for free. Hawk took that challenge and not only ate the steak, he wanted dessert. On most nights, Hawk would rush to the team dinner after practice, then race back to the House for another course. Well, one night he was late and I'd already closed down the kitchen and locked up. He found me on the third floor and asked me to open the kitchen for a snack. Quivering in my Weejuns, I said no. Hawk got more insistent, and I dug in. Finally, I said, "F#$k you, Hawk, rules are rules."

His face scrunched up, his eyes glazed over and his fists curled into anvils. Then he started shaking -- yes, shaking -- I kid you not. As my life was passing before my eyes and I was wondering how high I would bounce from three stories up, Hawk turned and just walked away. Fifteen minutes later, he was back and in a soft voice he said, "Don't ever say that to me again."

As you might imagine, I was only too happy to accomodate him.

Don't get me wrong, Chicken Hawk was a nice guy, someone you'd want to be around, well, when he wasn't pissed. And he was a loyal friend. Hawk was never arrested, never in trouble. But you just didn't mess with him.

An example why it was good to have Hawk around. One time, I got on the wrong side of a linebacker from Notre Dame, something about a girl, his sister in fact, who I'd... um... enjoyed... and not called back. Well, she told her brother, and he wanted to correct my attitude and readjust the placement of some of my bones. So he calls me, tells me he's coming down to Indy for some NFL workouts -- he had a long career in the NFL -- and that he's gonna drop down to Bloomington later to pay me something of a painful visit. While my roommate and I were discussing what city I should visit for the evening and how quickly I could get there, my other roommate went to fetch Chicken Hawk. Before I could pack my bag, Hawk was at my door, asking what was happening. I told him about my little conversation with the Incredible Hulk and about my plans for a tour of Terre Haute, and Hawk started laughing. He said, "Don't worry, Pencil-Neck" -- that's what he always called me -- "I'll take care of this."

About six hours later, big brother actually came calling. Hawk had thought it was a bluff, but said to call him when and if Bluto appeared. Well, I tried and couldn't find him; his roommate didn't know where the hell he was. I considered running but feared Beefcake could outrun me, and I thought that might cause even more disfigurement. Besides, I had a gift for gab; maybe I could talk myself out of trouble.

I went downstairs and then outside, so I wouldn't ruin the entry carpet with pools of sticky red stains. And no sooner was Beefo explaining what he was gonna do to me, and that it was too late to make things right by his sister, when out walked Hawk, shirt off, muscles bulging -- he'd been doing his neck raises with his usual 360 pounds or so of weights (No BS, I swear!). Turns out, he and Beasto knew each other. So, they spent about ten minutes getting re-aquainted, probably sharing steroid dosage data, then they clapped each other on the back playfully, and The Hulk climbed back into his car. Hawk smiled and walked me -- or maybe carried me cause I was a little shaky -- back inside. As I started to stumble upstairs, Hawk whispered, "Maybe you'd better call her and apologize. Send some flowers too."

Needless to say, two dozen yellow roses were sent the very next day. And I called too. It musta given her great pleasure to hang up on me, maybe not as much as a picture of me in pieces, but I'm glad I was able to give her... um... a little more satisfaction.

True story.

So what happened to Hawk? What jail is he currently ruling? How many years is his sentence?

He's Senior VP of Sales for a major pharmaceutical corporation.
 
***WILL RETURN SOON***CJ's HS story. (By Clubjockey)

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***WILL RETURN SOON***Drinking with foreign girls. (By clubjockey)

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***WILL RETURN SOON***Tales of terror and peril (By clubjockey)

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The price of getting big. (By dolfingus)

I figured I would jump into the storytelling fray here. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

During my sophomore year of college I started a pretty intensive workout program to lose the 95 pound weakling tag that had been affixed to me after years of long distance running. My best friend from high school, Mark, was well in ahead of me in the bodybuilding arena and acted as my personal trainer. He was already competing in local shows and was the authority on nutrition, proper excercise form, and supplementation.

After months of hammering the weights in the gym I was displeased with the marginal gains I had made and constantly complained to Mark.

"Dude, you're an ectomorph, whadda you 'spect?" was his mantra. I wanted to be a mesomorph, or whatever morph that packed 20" biceps.

Mark said, "Well there is another way", nervously looking at the ground.

"And what would that be?", I reluctantly asked.

"Well supposedly there is a doctor in Indianapolis that supplies the Colts with steroids as has been known to hook people up without any questions asked."

It was at this time I visualized a 290 pound MD in an elaborate sports medicine complex with treadmills, free weights, and nurses with big knockers handing out little pills to Ivan Drago clones.

"So whadda ya gotta do? Do I need an appointment?", I inquired.

"Yeah, let me get his number.", Mark offered.

A couple of days later Mark produced the number and I went through the mental gymnastics associated with making a call of this magnitude. What exactly do you say the appointment is about? Do you just come out and say, "I wanna be huge?" With all this weighing so heavily I postponed the call.

A week later I bumped into another buddy at the gym, James, and told him about the doctor in Indy.

"Wow dude, that is unreal. I'll tell you what, if you make the call, I will go with you. I have always wanted to try a little cycle."

I should note that this was very unusual coming from James because he was one of the biggest, strongest, most timid individuals I had ever met.

"Really, you wanna go?", I asked.

"Hell yeah, it's a doctor dude, it must be on the up and up.", he exclaimed, giddy with the prospect of his bench going over 500 pounds.

I got the nerve and dialed the number.

"Dr Baker's office, how may I help you?"

"Well, ya see, I got your number from someone that mentioned that you might be able, to sort of, help with the process of putting on muscle mass."

"Would you like to make an appointment?"

"Ummm, yeah, but I have a friend coming. If that is okay?"

"Sure thing, I will schedule you both. How is this thursday?"

"uhhhh, that works I guess."

"Alrighty then, we will see you then."

I got off the phone and immediately called James to inform him of our impending appointment. He was pumped and offered to drive since I had made the call. We got a list of the drugs we should specifically ask for from Mark and set off for the sterile environment of the sports medicine complex that was surely awaiting in Indianapolis.

"Dude, this is a f*#$@&*& house. Are you sure these directions are right?", James asked as we pulled up to the address I had obtained from the receptionist.

"Yes, I had her repeat it twice."

"Well, go up to the door and see what the f@#$ is going on."

I got out went up to the two story house that ressembled a rental property more than a medical establishment. I noticed the doctor's name next to the mail drop. "Well..", I thought to myself, "it is now or never."

*ding dong*

Slowly the door opens and standing between me and the screen door is man, middle 40', in leopard bikini underwear, smoking a cigarette.

"Can I help you?", he said glaring at me.

"Yeah, I have an 11:00 o'clock appointment with Dr. Baker."

"Jesus Christ, my receptionist didn't call you?", he said craning his neck to look past me at my buddy while he slouched in the car.

"No she didn't. Is this a bad time?"

"Oh hell, you made the trip. Tell your friend to come up. Let me put some clothes on. You two can wait in my office.", he snarled. Charlene, show these guys to my office. For Chrissakes, can't get good help anymore."

I motioned James up and Charlene, who BTW had exteremely small breasts and a hint of Mad Dog odor about her, deposited us in a room that was just what I imagined from the experience at the front door. A desk, blackboard, autographed posters of Colt's players, and stuff strewn everywhere. Not one excercise machine, free weight, and void of any modern day medical equipment.

We plopped down in the two chairs positioned in front of the desk.

"Dude, you have got to be kidding me? Is this for real? Is this guy even a doctor? I am freaking out here, dude.", James muttered nervously looking around the room.

"Like I am not freaked out too. This is the bizarro image of what I had imagined.", I replied.

"So, you two want to get big?" Dr. Baker had just entered the room and was stepping over piles of papers to reach his desk. He was now clad in a hawaii print shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals.

"Well, yeah. I guess. We were told that you could help us out.", I eeked out.

"You boys go to college."

"Yes.", we both offered.

"What are you majoring in?"

"Business management, sir.", James said.

"And you?"

"Physics.", I said.

"Physics?!!??!?!? I'll be godd$%#$%. I had to take physics in college. There was this problem that always stumped me. Hold on a minute." It was at this time that he made his way over to a bookcase and retrieved a physics text book.

"Aha, here it is.", he said pointing to a page while handing me the text book.

"Oh, yeah, that can be a tough one.", I said handing the book back not really taking notice of the problem.

"No, you take it. I wann see you solve it. Go up to the board there and show me how to work it out.", he exclaimed full of glee.

I looked at James who shrugged his shoulders and made me through the gauntlet to the blackboard.

It was the typical tension on a boom at a specified angle problem.

So off I went, showing each step required to solve the problem. I would periodically look back at the good doctor who was feverishly writing also. I remember thinking to myself, "He is taking notes for Chrissakes."

Finally I arrived at the last step and turned to the doctor. "Excellent!" he proclaimed. At this point he got up and walked out without saying a word. I resumed my place back in the chair.

"What do we do now?", James asked.

"I dunno. What do you suppose he was writing?"

"Get up and look. He kept writing stuff on some sort of little notepad the whole time you were talking."

I made sure the coast was clear and walked over to the desk. It seems the whole time I had been talking the doctor had been writing scripts. I picked them up, divvied them between James and I and we headed for the door.

Just as we were getting ready to leave James blurts out, "He didn't give us any deca-durabolin!" Charlene overheard him and said, "Oh he didn't? Well here." and proceeded to write the script herself.

We get in the car and I rememeber James looking straight ahead and so solemnly stating, "I am pretty sure that's not legal." before driving off to the pharmacy.

"Could you go over the 22 guage syringes again?", I asked looking up at the pharmacist. We had arrived at the pharmacy and were trying to get away with the least intrusive needle possible. Mind you, this was at a time when the steroids were legal.

"Yes, these hold 5ccs. Now if the substance is oil based you can mix
different scripts in one syringe so that you can forgo multiple shots in a given week." Satisfied that we had secured the proper paraphenalia we were off to get big.

Eventually our stash ran out so a call to Dr. Baker was in order. I called the number only to find that it had been disconnected. James was distraught. After calling some other gym buddies we were horrified to find out that the good doctor had been arrested for smuggling children in a black market porn ring. Pipe bombs were also found in his possesion. Seems he was busted two days after our office visit. It was at this time that I went back to protein shakes and amino acids. James still "juices" to the best of my knowledge and has a personal best of 650 punds in the bench press.
 
The Story Of Rob. (By Kookie4IU)

Seeing as how Fraternity stories seems to be the rule of the week, I thought I might add at least one of the various sorted affairs of my collegiate years. There are too many places I could begin, but I think that I will indulge my fellow OTFers with The Story Of Rob.

Rob was Canadian. You see, part of being Canadian means that you are born with an inherent ability to consume massive amounts of alcohol, seemingly from birth. There are many theories as to why this is the case. The theory I hold to be true is that Canadians are born to consume massive amounts of alcohol in order to drink themselves through the physical effects of horrendous winters and the mental effects of the American inferiority complex. This I subscribe to, after many nights of arguing with my best mate, Rob. After all, when was the last time you went to a good Canadian restaurant to order some good Canadian food? With the exception of Canadian “bacon”, which is really just American “ham”, Michael J. Fox, and that woman that sings the bitchy songs, there are no real contributions by Canadians to the world. They feel badly about this. For this, they drink.

Here’s another tidbit about Rob…he was a VERY good hockey player in the junior leagues of Canada. So much so, that it got him a full-ride hockey scholarship to one of Detroit’s finest private high schools. This is the type of school you would see in bad Julia Roberts movies, replete with dorms and grand halls and doing its best to look like an Ivy League campus. Why is this important? Because in going to said high school, Rob was 5 hours from home and he became best mates in high school with the son of a very wealthy Detroit resident. I won’t give that famous Detroiter’s name but his name rhymed with Benske. Anyway, Benske’s Jr., as one might imagine, had lots of disposable income. Benske Jr. and Rob spent their high school years making themselves accomplished drinkers. The long and the short of it? Rob was well on his way to becoming a great drinker WAY before he got to college. This, it seems, is not a good thing. By the tender age of 18, Rob could drink his way through just about anything.

Rob and I didn’t hit it off right away. I was sort of a loner in our pledge class to begin with, as the guys in my dorm either dropped out of pledging, went another route, or were not extended bids. I saw Rob as this short, loud-mouthed, silly guy with a large head. He saw me as a tall, stocky, loud-mouthed, somewhat arrogant, opinionated Indiana hick. However, it wasn’t too long before we became the best of friends. We both were accomplished former athletes that had expected to always be at the top of the athletic food chain. Our stories were similar: divorce parents, gifted athletes at a young age, physical ability tapped out on the athletic field about high school, could have continued to live the dream of athletics at a small college, decided to give it up rather than continue the dream, ended up at a college with no athletic program but well regarded academically. We both secretly loathed the decision. We both loved the same things. We both shared the same frustrations. We loved arguing between each other, and others loved listening to us argue. We could argue both silly things and intellectual things. Certain substances, like alcohol and/or THC, made our arguments all the more heated, and apparently all the more enjoyable for others to take part in. We were both intensely competitive, to the point of drunken brawls that started with great vengeance and furious anger but ended up with us laughing hysterically. We had intense, marathon sessions of Monopoly or Risk in a smoke-filled room of the Fraternity. Some lasted 10-12 hours, with only short breaks for bodily functions or food. During one of these sessions, with both of us having a love of cooking, we concocted a recipe so tasty and delicious that is still known to this day by the residents of 1160 DuPont by its original name (and this is a name you might want to remember later on in the story as well). Carol’s Puss is a delectable treat of melted cream cheese, chunky salsa, and shredded cheddar cheese stirred together in a bowl. After the original batch of Carol’s Puss was created in a drunken haze, and it was regarded to how lovely it tasted on darn near anything, it became the stuff (literally) of legend. There is nothing like listening to an 18-year-old freshman coed stumble into the kitchen and order up her first batch of Puss. It still brings a sense of pride and accomplishment to my heart to this very day.

Carol was our cook. She was a large and sweaty 40ish woman that apparently used onions for deodorant and garlic water for douche. Carol was a lifelong townie, about 100 lbs overweight, and still regarded herself as attractive as evidenced by her tube top “bras” that were loosely covered by a holey and faded “tank top”. Her holey and faded “sweat shorts” (literally and figuratively) had a penchant for defying the fight or flight reaction and creeped dangerously towards her nether-regions, exposing the cottage cheese to its full and revolting glory. The fabric was bunched up there somewhere, exactly where should never be known. Her booblage was about 3 times as long as it was tall, and the “bra” seemed to always collect a healthy amount of sweat regardless of her activity level. She wasn’t a good cook. Our semesters were broken up into 3 month quarters, and every quarter brought a new boyfriend for Carol. 1 semester brought Sasquatch, a burly and hairy late-20s mountain of a man that only communicated in grunts and nods. The next quarter, Sasquatch was gone, apparently the victim of a self-inflicted shotgun wound. With a woman like Carol at your side, it was hard to believe a man half her age would have such ultimate thoughts run through his head. Actually, it’s very easy to believe that, but those are the kinds of lies that are told out of respect for the dead. The next semester brought The Rick. Nobody remembers where the “The” came from, but he was always “The Rick”. The Rick showed up in Carol’s life about 1.3 days after Sasquatch was laid in the ground. The Rick was a nice fellow, the kind of guy you’d expect to meet, and the type of guy you’d actually enjoy meeting, in a dive bar in a shady corner of a dive town. 40-something, laborer, about half the size of Carol, friendly, probably a conviction or two somewhere in his past but currently just trying to get by on doing the right thing. The Rick would be Carol’s demise, but on to that later.

Rob was always hard-up for female attention. This is a mystery that confounds me to this day. Rob is a good-looking fellow, funny, articulate, caring…seemingly all the things that a woman would desire. However, I think that he’s lacking the confidence factor that women find so endearing. I found that it’s a much more successful ploy to get women to pay attention to you if you’re a prick than if you’re a nice guy, but that is the enigma wrapped in a riddle that is the female psyche. Anyway, Rob had a long-time girlfriend that dumped him shortly before college, and I think damaged his confidence to very low levels. I mentioned Rob’s drinking before. Rob could drink himself through damn near anything. He became a legend in the eyes of the upper-classmen by bonging 2 PITCHERS of beer back-to-back as a freshman. He held it down for 15 minutes, and I was the only one that witnessed him puke another 15 minutes after that. I never told anyone. A combination of mass consumption of alcohol, little to no women, a secret “slimming factor” that beer had on Rob, and the complete and utter disregard for decision making once a certain blood-alcohol level was reached is a recipe for disaster for Rob. One particular night, Rob and I finished our singing set (we both sang decently and had a group of “fans”) at our local hangout…a place frequented by all types. College kids, elderly drunks, and various other riff-raff you’d find in a tough neighborhood in a tough, down-on-its-luck, Midwest industrial town. A particular girl, actually our age, took an interest in Rob. “Alright!” I think to myself as I see the girl, who’s not all that unattractive, leave with Rob. I leave the bar shortly after knowing that my buddy is finally doing what single college-aged guys are supposed to be doing. Or so I thought.

I visited the bathroom the next morning to see Rob brushing his teeth…actually, in hindsight I believe he was brushing his tongue…with the fervor of a wounded badger trying to bite its way out of a trap. This exchange took place:

Kookie: “Dude, how’d it go last night?”
Rob (between frantic brushing): “Fine. I don’t really want to talk about it”
Kookie: “Whaddya mean? Did you score or not? What’s up? Why are you brushing so hard?”
Rob: “WILL YOU SHUT THE F UP ABOUT IT? F! DUDE JUST SHUT THE F UP, OK?”

About a month later the details came out, after much coaxing. Apparently, this girl had just been with child about 3-4 months (the exact details have been lost to history) and this night was her first night on the town. Rob, to his delight, finally is getting the desire of every colleged aged guy. He goes about his business, to the point of some mammary playtime. Well, apparently, the girl was still TOO close to the birth of child, and when he went for some playtime there was still some mommy-juice in the tank, if you catch my drift. After a brief exchange that went something like this, “Ahhh! What the f is that?” “Ummm….I just had a kid a few months ago. Thought that was over with. Sorry.” “Ohh…Ok” my man Rob thought it OK to go ahead and empty not only one, but BOTH tanks. It apparently made sense at the time. It still makes me LOL to remember this drunken line a few months later, “Dude, it’s sweet and those things can SQUIRT!”

I tell this story to demonstrate the decision making prowess of Milk Man, as he became affectionately known. We now fast-forward to a VFW Hall in the dilapidated industrial city of my college years. It must be known that Carol spends a LOT of time in the VFW Hall. So much so, that she arranged this roast, since alcohol is no longer allowed within the confines of the Fraternity. She also arranged the “stripper” for the senior roast (this was the class ahead of me), which is a crack-addicted, rail thin, late 30s woman that proceeds to go WAY too far and rip guys penises out to try to tie them in knots. She has a voice about 4 octaves below gravelly. If “bouldery” could be a word used to describe a voice, then this was it. She capped off the night of penis tying with a tearful, drunken, dedication to our outgoing senior class that contained gems like this, “HAY!!!! YOU GUZYSS!!! I KNOW DAT I MIGHT JUST BE A STRIPPER, but WAY TO GO! WAY TO GO! SZSEROUIUSLY, You GUYSZS are HEADING TO BIIGGGG THINGSZSS!” At this point, she fell off the table she was standing on, catching her G-string on a chair, snapping it right off. I don’t know if elephantitis of the labia is an actual medical condition, but if it is, then these things needed checking out. So, she says as she’s all sprawled out, meat curtains in full view, “Welp! Gueszszs I din’t need dose! HEHHEHEHEHEH!!!!”

Anyway, through the commotion, I notice that there is no Milk Man to be found anywhere. It should also be noted that between the time of helping plan senior roast at the VFW and the actual roast occurring, Carol was fired. The Rick, after being heart-broken by Carol, told us of the embezzling of food she was doing at our expense. Apparently, she was ordering too much food and loading up a good portion of it when we weren’t looking, and reselling it at the trailer park (true story). However, she did want to be a part of the VFW experience, so she showed up…no hard feelings. So, anyway, I go looking for Milk Man…thinking he might be passed out somewhere. I find a secret VFW hallway that leads to a secret VFW room, and what I found still haunts me to my core to this day. I see none other than Carol and Milk Man, in a full out grind make-out session. He was shirtless, somehow she had managed to get his letters off of him and on to her. She was wearing OUR fraternity shirt, the letters nearly bursting off the shirt, and he had his tounge deep within her huge mouth. I let out a shriek. Carol was noticeably NOT embarrassed. Rob suddenly realized the depths of his depravity and let out his own shriek. He ran from the VFW, fly still undone, still shirtless, into his truck not to be seen for 2-3 days (seriously). Even though it was a clear violation of Fraternity etiquette, we didn’t demand our letter shirt back from Carol. It had been desecrated enough. Rob, to this very day, still denies everything even though there is more than one witness.

The moral of the story? Trailer trash, uninhibited horny Canadians, and mass quantities of alcohol don’t mix.
 
Big End of the Season Post/OTF Celebration: Fee Lane. (Harr & Stunned)

Fee Lane

Lyrics by Harrumph
Artwork by Stunnedmonkey
(Apologies to The Beatles)



Come Together
(The Skeptics)

Here comes old two guard
He come dribbling up quickly
He got shoot the roundball
He one free-wheeled player
He got green light to throw the threes
Got to be the favorite
He just do what he please.

They got no post game
They got no damned footwork
They can't stop the big men
They shoot cold cucumber
He say I know hoops, hoops know me
One thing I can tell you is they've got to play free.
Come together right now as a team.

He bag the motion
He got sloppy spacing
He got no adjustments
He odd motivator
We got smoked twice by Wisky
Look there at his brow line you can see his unease
Come together right now as a team.

They roller-coaster they got early shooters
They got muddy cutters he don't have no answers
They play one on one it makes me scream
Can't see no improvement this is like a bad dream
Come together right now as a team.
Come together.


Something
(The Skeptics)

Something in the way he recruits
Ignores our needs just like a leper,
Something in the way he woos them.
I don't want to hear it now,
I want to believe him and how.

Somewhere on the road he goes
Pursuing one more raw Hamburger.
One to fit the brand of O here.
I don't want to hear it now,
I want to believe him and how.

You're asking me will our team grow?
I don't know, I don't know.
Depends on which ones of them show,
I don't know, I don't know.

Something in the way he knows
Just how to give all the wrong answers
Something in the things he shows me.
I don't want to hear it now,
I want to believe him and how.


BigRedSpec's Death Laser
(Harrumph)

Peach was cute-a-cle,
peddled pharmaceutical cures from coast to coast
Spending most free time on OTF,
Ohh-oh-oh-oh.
BigRedSpec a scarred
Science grad at Harvard
Tells her in a post
Lilly is the job that I want the mo-o-o-ost.
But as she's typing up her reply, a sound comes like a roar.
Zap bang BigRedSpec's death laser shot down upon her head
Zap bang BigRedSpec's death laser made sure that she was dead.

Back in lab again Spec will take a stab again
At his PhD. Boss wants more coffee and he tells Spec now-ow-ow-ow.
"Spec!" yells Boss "I need overnight delivery
"For this new machine!"
The price is just obscene for this new gizmo-o-o-o.
But as the Boss returns to his cave, a sound comes from above.
Zap bang BigRedSpec's death laser shot down upon his head
Zap bang BigRedSpec's death laser made sure that he was dead.

D.C. end of March BigRedSpec in collar starched
Hopes he won't get lost, meeting future boss via the Metro-o-o-o
Wife and Little Spec hope that he is not a wreck
On this interview (Nail this interview)
The office troll chimes in that he hopes not so-o-o-o
But as the words are leaving his lips, a noise comes from behind.
Zap bang BigRedSpec's death laser shot down upon his head
Zap bang BigRedSpec's death laser made sure that he was dead.


Oh! Bracey
(Davis)

Oh! Bracey please believe me,
I'll never do you no wrong,
Believe me when I tell you
I'll never do you no wrong

Oh! Bracey, if you leave me
I'll never make it alone,
Believe me when I beg you
don't ever leave me alone.

When I heard you thought you would jump to NBA,
Well you know I nearly broke down and cried.
When I heard you might follow Haston and JJ
Well you know I nearly broke down and died.

Oh! Bracey, if you leave me,
I'll never make it alone.
Believe me when I beg you
Don't ever leave me alone.

Oh! Bracey please believe me,
I'll never sit you down (Oh believe me Bracey).
Believe me when I tell you,
I'll never do you no wrong.


Clubjockey's Old Trailer
(The Trailer Park Gang)

I like to hang with the whole gang
Down in Clubjockey's Old Trailer in the park
He'd let us in, break out the gin
Down in Clubjockey's Old Trailer in the park.
I'd ask the mates and IUT
To Clubjockey's Old Trailer with me
I like to hang with the whole gang
Down in Clubjockey's Old Trailer in the park
We would keep warm out of the storm
By burning rubber tires in an oil drum
Scratching our heads, lice in his bed
Down in Clubjockey's Old Trailer, drinking rum.
We would sing and drink all night
Get rabies shots for mateys bites
I like to hang with the whole gang
Down in Clubjockey's Old Trailer in the park.
We would shout and then drag out
Stunnedmonkey who lives beneath the wreck
(Lives beneath the trailer wreck)
Oh the fear for every girl who's near
These Mongols who play with half a deck
(Play with half a deck)
We would be so raucous you and me
No one there to tell us what to do
I like to hang with the whole gang
Down at Clubjockey's Old Trailer with you.


I Want You (Recruitment)
(Davis)

I want you
I want you so bad
it's driving me mad
He's so studly


Here Comes The Help
(Davis)

Here comes the help, here comes the help,
and I say we're all right.
Hoosier faithful, it's been a long frustrating winter
Hoosier faithful, we can't compete with the talent here
Here comes the help, here comes the help
and I say we're all right.
Hoosier faithful, the smiles will come back to your faces
Hoosier faithful, we can't compete with the talent here
Here comes the help, here comes the help
and I say we're all right.
Help, help, help, here it comes...
Help, help, help, here it comes...
Help, help, help, here it comes...
Help, help, help, here it comes...
Help, help, help, here it comes...
Hoosier faithful, I know your faith is slowly melting
Hoosier faithful, we can't compete with the talent here
Here comes the help, here comes the help,
and I say we're all right
We're all right.


Because
(Harrumph)

Because the ball is round it turns me on
Because the ball is round...aaaahhh
Because the stakes are high it blows my mind
Because the stakes are high......aaaahhh
Peegs is all, Peegs is new
Peegs is all, Peegs is you.
Because the season's through, it makes me cry
Because the season's through.......aaaahhh
Aaaahhh....


You Never Give Davis Credit
(Davisians)

You never give Davis credit
You have unrealistic expectations
And when he earned that renegotiation
you broke down
I never hear you be upbeat
I only hear you venting your frustration
This season was merely an aberration
Don't break down

Zero tolerance, Knight is canned
Find a new chief, scour the land?
All the money's gone, no one to coach
Interim title, players back
JJ and Haston crash the rack
Coverdale is slow, Davis our Coach.

And then that magic season, Davis our Coach.
Oh, that magic season
Davis our Coach.

One sweet dream
AJ's blocked shot, they're running that pro set scheme
Soon we'll be in Atlanta
Oklahoma-Indiana today
One sweet dream came true that day
Came true that day
Came true that day (yes it did)
No recruits above six seven,
Big 10 big men are in Heaven


Shout Outs
(The OTF)

Here come the Shout Outs
Here come the Shout Outs
Everybody's laughing
Everybody's happy
Here come the Shout Outs.
Trover Cream Goat Kookie KMWinter DJ Fife DerrickC
Cramer ATL tunk dolfingus Lebowskis
Super etecnifibre GOIU serenity


Mean Basil Fawlty
(The OTF)

Mean Basil Fawlty looks like Bill Gates
Cant get no dates he's a day trader
Prowls around the board with Aruss
Goes to work each day on the bus
Thinks that John Kerry is a wuss
Such a weird old man
Such a weird old man.

Aquanetta seeks Basil out
She likes to shout, she's a doppelganger
Probably a poster in drag
NTTAWWT gag
But dressing up is just not my bag
Such a flirty old man
Flirty old man


Allie and Peach
(The OTF)

Well you should see Allie and Peach
They like to hang here but stay just out of reach
Well back in February they went to Arizon-a
Yes you should see Allie and Peach.
Yeah yeah yeah.

Get a dose of Allie's spike heels and skirt
She shows her girls off when she wants to go flirt
And for one more added thrill, she likes to get a Brazil
(I'm pretty sure now that I'm going to get hurt)
Yeah yeah yeah.


They Live Down In IUT's Basement
(The OTF)

They live down in IUT's basement
Luring goats to some nasty fates
They're plastered on their Pabst Blue Ribbon
IUT's wretched little mates.

Didn't anybody warn you?
Don't you hear the livestock screams?
Sundays are their Be A Hun days,
Tuesdays are their pillage sprees.

IUT says he is a broker
He plays with stocks and bonds all day
At night time he's a frog sweat smoker
Letting mates go and have their way.

And so I moved to a new trailer
To put some space between me and them
And though we tried to put out warnings
His new neighbor is now IUJIM.

Didn't anybody warn you?
Don't you hear the livestock screams?
Sundays are their Be A Hun days,
Tuesdays are their pillage sprees.
Oh yeah.


Bonehead Blunders
(The Skeptics)

Once there was a way to win our home games
Once there was a way to win at home
Sleepwalk through the offense, no one tries
The team lays down again and dies.

Bonehead blunders, shots unwise
Booing from our fans a surprise
Sleepwalk through the offense, no one tries
The team lays down again and dies.

Once there was a way to win our home games
Once there was a way to win at home
Sleepwalk through the offense, no one tries
The team lays down again and dies.


Carry That Blame
(The Skeptics/Davis)

Skeptics:
Coach, you gotta carry that blame
Carry that blame at some time
Coach, you gotta carry that blame
Carry that blame at some time.

Davis:
They never gave me their "A" game
They seemed to play with no inspiration
When they returned from the summer vacation
All broke down.

Skeptics:
Coach, you gotta carry that blame
Carry that blame at some time
Coach, you gotta carry that blame
Carry that blame at some time.


The End
(The Skeptics)
Oh yeah, let's hear
Are you going to be our head coach next year?
And in the end the team's poor play is equal to what's taught your way.
Ahhhhh


Mike Davis
(One Skeptic)

Mike Davis is a really nice guy,
but he doesn't seem to have a clue.
Mike Davis is a really nice guy,
it may be time to start anew.
I want to tell him that I love him as Coach
But I got a feeling things won't turn out fine.
Mike Davis is a really nice guy
It's time for Davis to resign, oh yeah,
It's time for Davis to resign.
 
***WILL RETUN SOON***Beer Run. (By: clubjockey)

*
This post was edited on 9/7 2:02 PM by Arussif(GetAdminCookie() != 0) {document.write(' (Revisions[/URL])');}
 
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