Lake Day

**Chronologically, this story should be directly before the 'Breakfast Burrito' story**

It is one thing to have the token dumb friend in a group. It is another thing entirely to have a group of friends who become progressively dumber the more alcohol you feed them. In my case, we are the latter. My friends are the type that once you get a few beers in them, they will agree to anything.
One weekend over the summer, we had a few friends with the day off of work and nothing to do. We all decided we’d meet at a buddy’s lake house and take out the boat and jet-skis for the day. Most of us had woken up at Blake’s after partying the night before and most of us had also started drinking at Blake’s early in the afternoon. Actually, by the time we reached the lake, everyone in Blake’s car was plastered with the exception of Blake himself, who was driving. He quickly remedied that by popping his first beer the second his truck was parked in the driveway of the lake house. It was late Saturday afternoon by the time the rest of our friends arrived so we decided to load up a cooler and head out to the dock to start partying as soon as we could. After a few hours of drinking games, and swimming, and teasing the girls, and a few drunken laps on the jet-skis, we were all feeling like gold and the beer was beginning to run low. Brandon had just arrived back on the last jet-ski and wanted another beer, but the last of the cans had just been given away to everyone sitting on the dock. Blake, always quick to fuck with a friend, came up with a great plan to make Brandon EARN his last beer of the afternoon.
“Hey Brandon, you see that tree over there?” Blake yelled at him. Blake was pointing at a tree that had fallen into the water and was about half exposed above the water line.
“Yeah, it looks like its dead,” Brandon yells back.
“Would you climb on it for this last beer?”
“I’d give a baby elephant a hand job for that beer.” Blake and I looked at each other. That was a pretty weird thing to say, even from Brandon, even if he was drunk. Blake shrugged and turned back to Brandon.
“Well, sir, you don’t get to touch an elephant cock, but hop up there and run across it and I’ll give you this beer.” Blake looked at me. He had one of the most scheming, evil looks on his face.
During the conversation, Brandon had tied up the jet-ski and was standing on the end of the dock, about to walk over to where we were sitting. Upon hearing his dare, he spun on his heel, tied his swim trunks tighter, and took a two step dive over the parked jet-ski and into the water. He flailed his way over to the tree, and I got my first pang of conscience. Brandon looked like a toddler trying to swim with another toddler on his back. He wasn’t a strong swimmer with as much alcohol as he had in him and I actually feared for a few seconds that he might drown. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief when he finally made it to the tree, and after a few tries, managed to haul his ass up onto the top, straddling it like he was riding a horse. He shakily stood up and started to tip-toe down the trunk, which wasn’t to Blake’s liking at all.
“Oh hell no…” Blake muttered before yelling,

“I SAID RUN LIKE A FUCKING LUMBERJACK YOU SHITBAG!”

Brandon looked over to where Blake was waving the beer in his hand, broke into a full sprint and made it just past the halfway mark when his front foot slipped out from under him. He must have stepped on a slick spot of the trunk because one second he was running and the next he was suspended in air with a terrified look on his face. He fell onto the trunk of the tree on his stomach with his body laying perpendicular across it. He slid for probably about ten feet through the branches sticking out of the trunk and the ones tangled over the water before rolling off. He fell into the water with a splash and came up gasping for breath. I’ve never seen so many people on the ground laughing at the same time. All of us on the dock were in tears, rolling on the wood planks with side-splitting laughter. Brandon slipping and eating shit on that tree trunk was the funniest thing any of us had ever seen, or at least it seemed so at the time. Blake finally forced himself to stop laughing or risk pissing his pants and he looked over at Brandon, who was bobbing in the water still trying to catch his breath. He started to paddle back over to the dock and received applause and cheers when he finally pulled himself onto the dock. His entire stomach and chest were covered in scrapes and cuts from the tree branches, and bruises were already forming on the side that had hit the tree first. He looked at Blake and asked for his beer. Without missing a beat, Blake pulled it out of the cooler, held it up to Brandon, and then hurled it fifty yards out into the lake.
“Go get it,” Blake told him, starting to laugh all over again. Brandon turned, muttering plenty of colorful language under his breath, grabbed a minnow net from the boat, hopped on the jet-ski, and buzzed his way over to the beer. It was still bobbing in the waves when he got to it, and he used the net to scoop it out of the water. He got back to the dock, tied up the jet-ski, cracked open his beer, and headed back up to the house to get cleaned up. The rest of us, still fighting back laughter, packed up the cooler and followed a few minutes behind him to get ready for the party planned for that night at the lake house.
We walked back up to the house and Blake ran out to grab something out of his trunk. He came back with a jug of brownish liquid that looked like it had dirt floating in the bottom of it. I would later learn this dirt was called “the good stuff” and the jug contained a gallon of his grandfather’s recipe of “homemade rum”. It was rumored to be around 170 proof, or 85% alcohol. I will tell you this stuff tastes so sweet, like sugar water, but as soon as you swallow, it turns into molten fucking lava running down your throat. I thought if I tried to smoke a cigarette, that I would breathe fire every time I exhaled. Chasing it with sprite turned out to be the best combination for me and we sat around on the porch at the house, watching the sun set over the bay, passing the jug around taking gulps. We built a bonfire down near the water, and a few people started wandering over from the houses on the inlet. This was the same as any normal weekend. They’d bring over a bottle of liquor or some beer or sometimes even some food, and in turn we’d let them hang out and party with us. It was great when they’d bring friends over, specifically girls, and we’d have a really good ratio at every one of our parties. For the next few hours, we hung out, enjoying each other’s company, listening to music on the outdoor speakers, and always passing the jug around. And let me tell you, that shit was potent. We started getting more lively around halfway through the jug. A glow in the dark Frisbee started making its way around the yard, and we made the bonfire even bigger. A game of beer pong started up underneath the porch lights, and a few more people had shown up. We all crowded around the beer pong table waiting for our turn to play, when an argument arose about a ruling during the game. The argument over the rules turned into a competition of who was tougher, which turned into who could chug their beers the fastest, and it went downhill from there. Somehow in their drunken stupor, the two guys arguing, Sean and Lee had decided there was only one way to decide who was tougher. They planned on running at each other from across the yard holding inflatable tubes and slamming into each other sumo style until one of them quit. We all knew this was a terrible idea, but we were too drunk to give a shit, and it sounded like it was going to be hilarious, so we let it happen. They paced off about twenty yards each, making them forty yards apart. They stood and stared at each other for a long time, both talking shit and telling the other how they were going to knock them into next week. Derek stepped up and decided to make himself the ref for the event. I told him not to let them kill each other, and he said he had a plan to end the argument. Sean was a bit bigger than Lee, and Lee was technically in the right about the original argument, so he was at a disadvantage when the contest turned physical. I didn’t give a shit about the argument, but it was holding up the beer pong games and the rest of the party was beginning to get sick of it. Derek counted down from five and the guys took off running. You could see in their faces just how hard they were struggling to sprint with all the alcohol in their bloodstream, but they still both managed a pretty good clip. Lee, being fresh out of basic training in the military, was used to taking orders without question, and Derek, a former Marine, knew this. When they got to about ten yards apart, Derek spoke up, yelling at Lee.
“AIRMAN HIT THE DECK!” Derek barked at him. Instinctively, Lee went into the fetal position mid-step and dropped to the ground from a full sprint. Sean, also at a full sprint, didn’t have time to stop running or avoid Lee, only to attempt to turn sideways. Lee’s curled up body hit Sean right above his knees as Sean tried to spin out of the way. He flipped over Lee’s body, rotating a full flip and a half in the air before crashing to the ground flat on his stomach with a thud. He popped up gasping for air. The wind had been knocked out of him. Lee, once he realized what had happened, popped up laughing his ass off. Once he regained his breath, Sean punched Derek in the chest for the indirect cheap shot, and went to go get cleaned up from the dirt and grass stains all over his shirt. The rest of us finally got to go back to our beer pong games, and the rest of the night went without a hitch. We finished the jug of rum, even drinking the sediment at the bottom and all of us were pretty toasted. The beer ran out long after the neighbors had drifted back to their homes, and the fire had dwindled to hot coals a few hours before. We all trudged our way back into the house and passed out in our own beds, dreading the hangover that was sure to greet us all in the morning.

If You Can't Handle Your Liquor...

If you've ever drank in your life, you've had one of those nights when it all goes wrong. The ones where you ened up hugging the toilet or making a complete ass of yourself in public. The latter can lead to some pretty shitty situations, but the former is by far the worst experience one can have while drinking. There's nothing quite like waking up hungover, half naked, and wedged between the sink and the toilet bowl. Every one of these nights inevitably follows the same terrible path to the ultimate destination of using a bath towel as a mattress. It begins like any other night, you get hammered and possibly text your ex-girlfriend looking for a booty call. Then as more alcohol soaks into your bloodstream, you start yelling obscenities at old men you don't even know. A little farther down the spiral and maybe you threw up in a fake potted plant in the corner of the bar, or have been relegated to plastic cups because you shattered half of the bar's stock of pint glasses by knocking them off of your table. A little embarrassing, slightly asinine, but you're still conscious (mostly) and upright (kinda) so everything is peachy. The bottom of the spiral into alcoHELL, things get bad. Not just "my friends laughed at me" bad. I mean, "my friends refuse to talk to me anymore" bad. Maybe it was your first threesome, which normally wouldn't be a bad thing. But in this state, it was probably pretty likely it was your first threesome that topped the 500 pound marker, and that's without tallying your hefty ass in the total. Reasons like this are exactly why I'm such a huge advocate for knowing your own limits. My limit comes approximately one six pack after I start throwing things and yelling at everyone. I know, for me, that another shot or beer past that limit and I will be cleaning up my dinner, sixteen hours after eating it. I have had the good fortune when in situations such as hugging porcelain, knocking over my own cup of drinking water, and then laying in the puddle...in someone else's house, that it was at a place like Blake's mom's house. She loves me like her own son, and to this day gives me shit about my night of acting like I'd never seen a beer before. But I've learned from these experiences. The only times I have nights like that are when I am on a mission to get belligerent, or when I severely miscalculate the amount of booze I'm pouring down my throat. Some people don't learn from their mistakes, and those are the people who should be taking notes from this chapter.
We had a kid named Kris who came down to the house for a week or so. Just a normal college kid looking for a little vacation. He was a distant relative of Lee's who the rest of us had never met before, but we let him stay in one of the extra rooms. We should have known from his first day in the house that the kid was gonna be a problem. He had barely set his luggage down when we had him shotgunning beers with us. He got a little buzz from the first few beers and started in on how he was a heavyweight drinker and how high his tolerance was. I remember Blake and I looking at each other and the challenge was born. At the time, we were the two biggest guys and heaviest drinkers in the house, and we weren't gonna let some weekender come into OUR vacation and take our title. We decided we'd call his bluff and I grabbed a handle each of Crown Royal and Skyy. We had nothing to chase the shots but pre-mixed cocktails, and for the sake of the contest, we held off on those so that we could drink more shots. Blake and I each filled up a large QT cup with water and sat down at the table. Water wasn't the best chaser, but it was a lot better than nothing and I sure as shit wasn't gonna take numerous shots without anything to chase it.
We got our first inkling that Kris was gonna have a bad night when he walked out of the kitchen with his chaser. In his left hand was a giant mug filled to the brim with skim milk. The thought of it alone made my stomach turn. He sat down at the table and we started with our contest. We alternated between shots of Crown and Skyy. Water was a terrible chaser, but there was no way milk was any better. He kept up for about an hour and finally tapped out just as Blake and I were starting to get REALLY drunk. We had gone through around eight shots of Crown and seven shots of Skyy each, so we were all feeling pretty lit. I was happy then that I'd been chasing my shots with water because the water itself had already soaked into my stomach, and I still had plenty of room left in my stomach if I needed it. Kris on the other hand had been steadily looking sicker and sicker as he threw back more shots, and we knew it was only a matter of time until he threw up. He should have known not to challenge two professionals. As we got up from the table celebrating our victory, the time came. Kris took off to the bathroom and we heard him start to throw up. As the noises came fewer and farther between, we figured he had emptied his stomach and sent Lee in to check on him. Lee came back out laughing which puzzled me until I heard the story.
"Dude, he's fucking crying," Lee said. Blake immediately started laughing. I was curious as to what the fuck happened.
"Why is he crying?" I asked.
"I guess he thinks he has alcohol poisoning and tried to call his mom and she didn't answer," Lee told me. No fucking way. That was too funny. I walked back with Lee to the bathroom to make sure he wasn't actually dying and to this day it was one of the funniest things that's ever happened to me in a bathroom in my life. Kris was laid out over the toilet, propping himself up with both hands, dry heaving into the bowl and sobbing like a little girl.
"Call an ambulance, I'm dying!" he sobbed.
"Dude, you're fine. If you're still conscious and still talking, you don't have alcohol poisoning," I told him, trying not to laugh in his face.
"Gimme the phone, I'm calling them." He dialed 911 and held the phone up to his ear. "Hi, yes, I think I have alcohol poisoning.......I dunno, a lot.........my name is Kris.......Address? I don't know it.......No, I said I don't know the address.......WAIT, NO!" He turned and set the phone on the counter and started sobbing again.
"Well? They coming?" I asked. He answered between sobs.
"No, they *sob* hung up *sob* on me." Holy fucking shit. Not only was this kid throwing up a nasty concoction of milk and liquor, but he had just been hung up on by 911. At that point, we decided he was fine and just playing it up and making his own situation worse for the rest of the night. We went back into the living room and sat down to play PS3. Every so often we'd hear Kris yell from the bathroom that he hated us and we weren't his friends anymore. It was hilarious. He was legitimately pissed at us for not calling an ambulance to come get him, and he wasn't THAT drunk. About an hour or so later, he came walking out of the bathroom wiping his mouth, sat down on the couch, and didn't say a word for the rest of the night.
He didn't drink more than a few beers the rest of the week that he stayed with us, but he did manage to ruin another night of drinking for the rest of the house. The last night that he was supposed to be crashing in the house, we invited the local college's women's volleyball team over for a party. They didn't have any matches for a while so they agreed and about ten of them came over. After a long night of drinking games and obnoxious flirting, we decided to get into the hot tub. Three of us from the house stripped down to our boxers and five of the girls went topless wearing nothing but their thongs and we climbed in. Alcohol and hot tubs is a wild combination, which is discussed in more detail in another chapter, but that night it led to wonderful things. The drunker the girls got, the more free they became with each other. After a few beers in the hot tub, they were making out with each other, rubbing all over each other as well as us, and the night took a turn for the epic. Imagine five hot, nearly naked, girls all over each other like it was late night Cinemax. It was about the time that they started taking each others thongs off that Kris came wandering out to the hot tub and got in. At first we didn't mind because he stayed quiet and in the corner, but after a while it became clear that the hot water and steam was just amplifying the few beers that he'd had that night. His eyes started to look glazed over and he began telling the girls what to do like he was directing a porno. After a few minutes, he sat back down and closed his eyes. We thought he was asleep when after about five minutes he sprang upright and his eyes got wide.
"Oh hey sorry guys" he mumbled.
"What the fuck? Shut up, Kris," Lee snapped at him.
"No, really, I just pissed in the hot tub," he announced, "Sorry, I'm really fucked up right now." The entire group stopped dead. Granted, we had chemicals and chlorine and all that shit in the tub but are you fucking kidding me? The girls all immediately bailed out screaming and rushed inside to clean themselves off. Lee, Joe and I hopped out and jumped into the pool to rinse off what little, if anything, was actually still on us. As we climbed out of the pool, dried off, and went into the house hoping to continue what the girls had started in the hot tub, we saw all five of them come out of the bathroom at the same time, fully dressed and not making out with each other at all.
"Goddamnit, FUCK!" Lee said. He immediately made a beeline out to the back porch where Kris was still soaking in the tub and punched him square in the side of the head. Kris got out of the hot tub slowly and, without a word, went into his room where he stayed for the rest of the night. Apparently six beers, hundred degree water, and ruining three guys' once-in-a-lifetime chance was enough to take the energy out of him. We ended up just hanging out with the girls, drinking and bullshitting all night, and it took all of us another two weeks to get in any of their pants, when it should have been sealed that night. Nobody has heard from Kris since he left the next morning, and even Lee has avoided talking to him at family reunions and holidays because he was still the most pissed out of any of us about what had happened. It just goes to show you that if you can't handle your liquor, for the sake of your friends around you, please don't drink.

Beer Pong's a Rough Game

It was a Saturday night and for the first weekend since we had been down there, NOTHING was going on in town. No concerts, no special events downtown, nobody at the clubs. Everything was still open, and probably had a good crowd, but with nothing other than the normal group of people that were there every weekend, the regular spots just weren't cutting it anymore. Everyone in the house had been on a mission all week to find something new to do. The night before we had all sat around the house drinking and brainstorming and still had no promising leads. The last thing any of us wanted to do was spend another night drinking and playing PS3, passing the controller whenever we died or needed to refill our drinks.
It was getting way too close to midnight for us to still be sitting around, and everyone was getting restless and agitated. Blake had made a beer run and had been gone for a while, and everyone was steadily working toward a buzz waiting for him to get back. A few of us started to wonder aloud what the hell was taking him so long when he exploded through the door like a SWAT team leader. He dropped two cases of beer on the couch and immediately jumped into a story that began with the first step he took out of the house.
"Ok, so I walked out and went down to the car to-"
"Get to the point, asshole" Sean said from the couch. We'd all heard too many of Blake's famous way-too-detailed stories. Blake looked over at Sean just long enough to give him the finger.
"Ok, first off, fuck you. Second, get up and get dressed. I got a keg in the truck and we're going to a party." Perfect. Sometimes I thought that we kept him around just for that reason. Whenver we needed something to do, somehow he came through in the clutch and found our plans for the night. How he pulled this one off, I'm still not sure. He mentioned something about meeting a girl at the liquor store, but by that time I was in my room getting dressed and not paying attention to the rest of his longer-than-fuck explanation of meeting a girl.
After we were all dressed we met back in the living room to figure out the ride situation. Blake drove a stock Chevy Silverado. It wasn't a small truck, but it was a regular cab with stock tires and stock everything, so it wasn't big either. It barely had enough room for two in the cab and one in the bed holding the keg. Joe and I rode in my car while the other three guys piled into Blake's truck for the short drive out to where we assumed we'd be partying all night and getting laid and acting out our wildest fantasies...or some shit like that.
The cars started lining up about a quarter mile from the house in either direction, on both sides of the road. It was a pretty big party, with a lot of people there. Hopefully it wasn't a sausage fest or Blake was never gonna hear the end of it. We passed a few little crowds, most of which were girls, so it looked pretty promising. As we rounded a small bend, the house rose up in front of us. It was huge. Possibly the exact definition of a mansion, the house was one of the biggest houses I'd ever seen in my life. Every light was on and music was thumping out into the night through the windows and doors. Apparently the neighbors were either gone for the weekend, or didn't care, because the party looked like the busiest night of the biggest fraternity house I'd ever seen. Blake said he had heard of the two girls who lived in the house, which was their parents, and that they were known for their epic parties and spending daddy's money on more beer, booze, and drugs than Nikki Sixx after winning the lottery. I didn't really care much about the drugs or the dumb, fucked up sluts who were doing them, but I was enticed by the amount of girls walking toward the house and the amount of beer I was undoubtedly going to consume. I parked on the street and hopped into the bed of Blake's truck, as did Joe. Blake got the wonderful idea that because he was bringing a keg, he could park wherever the fuck he wanted. Apparently the spot that he wanted was about twelve feet from the front door. Five guys in a truck pulling up a driveway into a party that rivaled Mardi Gras wasn't the best idea we'd had that night, and that point soon became clear. It was like driving a truck through Times Square on New Years Eve. The crowd parted and moved out of the way, but slowly ,and while hurling all sorts of insults our way. Blake did his part by getting on his PA system and yelling indeterminately at the crowd.
"You ugly fucks! Get outta the road, this isn't a goddamn parade!" The crowd seemed to speed up their movements a little and after crawling through the last bit of the driveway, we made it to the front of the garage. Blake parked directly in front of BOTH garage doors and got out of the truck. He hopped into the bed to help lower the keg to the ground. We carried it into the humongous garage, which was connected to an equally huge finished basement. We didn't want to share our beer with everyone at the party, but we weren't gonna be stingy bastards about it either. We put our keg next to the beer pong table and Sean and I decided we weren't going anywhere else for the rest of the party. The "rest of the party" turned out to be just over an hour. Sean and I had steadily beaten all challengers in beer pong, and we'd been on the table for almost fifteen straight games. Nobody else wanted to play us, so Joe and Blake hopped on to the table to play us again. A small crowd had been gathering while Sean and I were on our win streak, and there was probably about twenty people watching us play. A few more people trickled over to see what was going on when we started talking shit to Blake and Joe across the table. For their part, they did put up a good fight. It was our closest game of the night, but eventually we wore them down. It was only a matter of time until we found our stroke and got them down to their final cup. As Sean got ready to try and end the game, I saw a tall, lanky dude lean over to Blake and say "You fags are gonna lose" in his ear. Blake brushed the kid off and told him to keep his hands to himself. Sean threw his shot. It was almost a perfect shot. It dropped into the cup and began spinning around the plastic about an inch above the beer. Blake leaned down and blew into the cup, pushing the ball out over the rim before it touched the liquid. Good save. Usually we reserved the blow move to females, but we didn't want to make a mess by trying to pull the shots out with our fingers, the guy move, so we allowed it. Sean and I were both fucking with Blake, congratulating him for a good save and telling him he was gay and was still gonna lose when the lanky kid came back.
"Only bitches blow. Are you a bitch?" he asked Blake. For the second time as many minutes, he put his hands on Blake. If there are two things not to do if you don't know Blake, they are put your hands on him and talk shit about him. This kid had just done both in one breath. Before the kid could finish his shit-talking, Blake shoved him HARD in the chest. I'll never forget the sight of the kid going airborn. Blake had about thirty pounds of muscle on the kid, the element of surprise, and the low center of gravity and leverage that would make a high school football coach proud. The kid flew into a cabinet holding the stereo, knocking it over, and continued on to hit a chair and a mini-fridge before slamming into the wall on his back. Everyone in the room froze, and Blake started yelling at the kid. I started laughing but stopped as I heard the thundering sound of who knows how many sets of shoes pounding down the stairs. I turned toward the door, ready to fight my way out of the garage like fucking Double Dragon. One of the first girls through the door was one of the ones who lived in the house, and she immediately began yelling about her stereo and how Blake was going to pay for everything that he damaged. Blake looked at the girl and told her to shut her fucking mouth. Surprisingly, this elicited a few laughs from the surrounding crowd, and nobody else approached any of us. We figured it would probably be best to just leave so we packed up our shit and loaded the keg back into the truck. We were on our way back to the house, all of us drunker than shit, when Blake had his second clutch moment of the night.

When Tradition Can Get You Arrested

Tradition is a huge part of society today. But it can also lead to trouble if the people around you are uptight pricks with no sense of humor. Those were the types of traditions my friends and I had. I spent a while in my early years of college playing rugby, so I had a pretty solid background in doing things just because the veterans and older players said so. It's pretty much hazing, but since we do it to the rookies every year, we can call it tradition. We weren't the only team doing these things either, so we were never singled out for any trouble. But when you've stripped naked in a crowded bar on the busiest night of the week in a huge college town and run around the bar taking shots at different points like a streaker relay race, you have a good sense of just how great and ridiculous traditions can be. My friends and I didn't have quite as many as the rugby team, but one in particular that we took down to the beach with us almost landed a few of us in prison.
It was a few days after Christmas, about the time that people who aren't slackers start taking down their decorations, and right about the time that the members of our group who had gone home for the holidays were starting to trickle back into the beach house for the last few weeks of freedom before school started back up. I chose to milk my vacation for every last second I could, so I stayed at the beach over the holidays along with Joe and Derek while Sean and Blake and the girls went home to see their families. Everyone ended up back together on December 30th, New Year's Eve.....eve. We threw ourselves a little get-together and all got hammered, as was customary for friday nights at the house. It was only after the majority of us were wasted that the topic of our tradition came up. The first part was already taken care of, which included getting hammered, driving around picking up discarded Christmas trees and bringing them back for a bonfire later. Imagine the sight of 5 guys piled into a pickup truck, hanging off the back and out the windows dragging no less than 3 trees down the middle of the road while the truck was swerving, trying to keep control. We usually did it in our own neighborhoods back home, so we knew we weren't gonna be in any trouble, but this wasn't our neighborhood. We did this around 1 or so in the morning, and a few people saw us and cheered us on. We finally got back to the house and dropped off our firewood and that's when the darker side of the traidition began. None of us remembers how it started, but sometime in the past few years, on one of the runs to grab the trees from the curb, one of us had grabbed a wreath, and then another grabbed a candy cane, until we had all grabbed a souvenir Christmas decoration from someone's front yard. This year started as soon as we made our next run. Joe leaned out of the passenger side to grab a light up candy cane, and to his surprise ended up with an entire thirty foot length of interconnected candy canes popping out of the ground on after another, dragging behind the truck until he had time to reel them in with his arms and shut the door. At a stop sign, Blake hopped out and grabbed a light up reindeer. Sean was driving, but still got a prize when he instructed Joe to grab another reindeer a few moments later. For his part, Lee hopped out of the back without us even noticing he was gone and took a plastic snowman from RIGHT NEXT to someone's front door. Not to be outdone, I took a plastic Santa and we tore off down the street with our new decorations.
After getting back to the house to compare our loot, everyone got the itch and decided on what our next run would bring. It looked like a bounty hunter's hit list. Joe wanted a wreath. Lee and Blake both wanted giant tree ornaments that they had seen earlier. Sean was freelancing, looking for a target of opportunity that would beat all other takes for the night. My prize was possibly the most ambitious, and also reserved my cabin in hell. I wanted a baby Jesus from a manger scene. We split up into two cars, Sean and I in one, and the rest in the other. We passed them only about a half mile down the street, two of the three bounties already found, but we kept going right past. Sean and I weren't satisfied with this pussy shit. We wanted to go bigger. We ended up driving around looking for our bounties for so long that the other car found what they'd wanted and headed back to the house to close out the night.
By the time we found the perfect house to collect BOTH of our rare prizes, it was late and we were so drunk anything was a good excuse to head back home for the night. We had decided we weren't going back home empty handed, and that proved to be our downfall. We should have been back at the house, asleep and safe, hours ago. The house was absolutely perfect except for one small problem: the resident. It belonged to a prominent politician (whom I will not name, of course) which meant 24/7 police presence in the driveway, and a twelve foot wrought iron fence surrounding the entire property. But aside from those two things, it had everything. Sean set his sights on a six foot inflatable light up bear that looked a lot like a CocaCola bear, and I saw a manger scene with an even better prize, a little black baby Jesus. Now Sean was used to free-running and climbing shit, apparently that's what they did all day every day growing up in California, and I wasn't in BAD shape, but neither one of us was in any condition to be climbing a fence, much less holding our bounties. But we were determined. We parked down the street and headed toward the darkest corner of the yard.
When we got to the fence, it looked even taller than it had when we'd driven by. The only way we were gonna get into the yard was to use the trees that were growing next to the fence. Sean first and then me; We climbed up the tree and hoisted ourselves over the fence and dropped into the shadows. Twelve feet might not seem like much, but when you've been drinking for a few hours, it is a hellacious distance to free fall and land awkwardly. It took me a minute of regaining my composure and massaging out my now possibly shattered ankle before I got my bearings and got back to the mission at hand.
We were just inside the fence, about 100 yards from Sean's bear. My manger scene was a little more than halfway between us and the bear, so we decided that would be our first stopping point. We kept our heads low and basically crawled to the manger. I snagged my baby Jesus and hid behind the scene while Sean crawled in the shadows to his bear. It looked like it was hollow and light, but it was also huge and obviously awkward to carry. Sean tried several times to get a good grip and lift it, all while keeping low and out of sight and not drawing attention from the cop sitting in his car just about 50 yards away from the bear. Eventually he decided the best choice was to just drag the bear and he got about halfway to where I was hiding when all hell broke loose.
I was crouched behind the manger with the baby Jesus in my arm like a football when I saw the spotlight from the cop car start to sweep across the yard. I immediately dropped flat on my belly as low to the ground as I could get behind the manger scene. The light passed over me without slowing down, and continued sweeping toward where Sean was dragging the bear. I whistled to Sean and when he turned and saw the light coming toward him he did the absolute worst thing possible, he froze. As soon as the spotlight landed on him, his senses came back to him and he took off like an olympic sprinter dragging an inflatable bear behind him the whole way. Figuring our cover had been blown, I popped up and took off toward the corner of the fence where we had climbed in. My baby Jesus was much easier to carry and I passed Sean just about 20 yards in front of the fence. I didn't bother to look back as I hurled the plastic baby over the fence and vaulted myself up onto it as far as I could get. It became instantly clear to me that we hadn't planned very well, and that the trees we'd used to get into the yard weren't reachable to use to get back out. I started scrambling up the fence and felt it shake as Sean slammed into it from a full sprint and began climbing next to me. He was almost at the top when I saw him wrench violently backward and fall off the fence. I looked back just as the cop grabbed my ankle and jerked me free of the iron bars and I fell. I hit the ground hard and the air was knocked out of my lungs. As I was gasping for breath and writhing on the ground trying to stretch my diaphragm back out so I could get some air into my lungs, I saw the cop put his knee into Sean's back and start to handcuff him. I thought about getting up and running away but the cop must have seen the look in my eyes and pulled his tazer and pointed it directly at me.
"Do not FUCKING move!" he yelled at me. Being tased once sucks, and I didn't want to find out if it felt the same the second time around. I rolled back onto my stomach and just as I felt my air coming back, a set of rough hands pulled my arms behind my back and I felt a plastic zip tie close around my wrists.
He sat us up, searched us and found nothing, took our IDs and found no warrants, and just as he began yelling at us and calling us stupid, a porch light of the house turned on, and a man came walking down the stairs toward us wearing a robe and house slippers.
"Well goddamn! I never seen you run so fast in your life, Murph!" he joked with the cop, who's name tag said Sergeant Murphy, "I'd have never guessed you could outrun the long-haired, skinny one." He meant Sean. He turned to us.
"You boys been drinking?"
"Yes, sir" Sean told him.
"Haha, I like honesty, boy. Well if you haven't figured out by now, this is my house. I'm the [political office] of this state and Murph here is assigned to guard my house from criminals and intruders," he told us. The man was a born politician. Here we were probably going to jail for trespassing on what was possibly the worst house in the entire southeast to trespass, and I still felt like the guy was talking to me like we were fishing buddies.
"I guess what I want to know is, what the hell are you dipshits doing running around my lawn at 4am?" he asked. We explained that we were just drunk and doing a prank involving stealing the bear from his lawn when he started laughing, hard.
"You mean to tell me the only thing you came for was that God awful bear my wife makes the landscaper put up every year?" We both nodded. "Well, shit, take the damn thing! I hate it." He turned to Sergeant Murphy and told him to cut us loose and write it up as a harmless prank. Murphy didn't seem very happy but he obliged the politician and took off our cuffs and zip tie. The politician offered to get someone to drive us home but we lied and said we had a driver waiting by the car. We were 'escorted' out the front gate and made the quarter mile walk around the premises to get back to where we were parked. The baby Jesus was lying on the ground next to the tree we'd climbed to get in, and I quickly picked it up and stuffed it into the backseat under a few beach towels. Murphy wouldn't let Sean keep the bear, but we didn't end up going to jail and nothing was ever mentioned in the newspapers or on TV about the incident. I'm not sure if they even noticed the baby Jesus was missing, but they surely would when it was time to take down the Christmas decorations when the season was over. Lucky for us, the politician had a sense of humor about the whole thing, no doubt from a mischeivous past of his own that lent us a little leniency in his eyes. I made up my mind that night that if I ever end up living in an area where I'm eligible, I will vote for that man in any election he enters without question. Unless he asks for my baby Jesus back.

Halloween

*A few years ago. Names and minor details changed*

So I had been dating this girl for a while and things were going pretty well. She was stupid hot; the kind you can't leave in a bar by herself. She was also the kind you knew would eventually leave, but while she was around....goddamn it was a wild ride. She was 5'9, dark hair, green eyes that I love, and tattoos in all the right places. In fact, her newest tattoo at the time was a design that i'd drawn up myself and she put it on her body in permanent ink! So of course I was all about her like a lost fucking puppy. It didn't help my situation at all that she was a complete freak in the sack. She like being spanked and choked and tied up and all sorts of wild shit that I knew nothing about at the time. Shit, we were both young, but this girl was years ahead of me in sexual experience (a thought that I didn't like to dwell on much but did enjoy when she broke out the advanced moves). We met playing poker and hit it off immediately. Within a few days of hanging out we were texting obscene shit across the poker table to each other, and sneaking off during tournaments to fuck in the parking lot. When we weren't together we were texting or talking on the phone. We did all of the dumb cute shit that couples do. I can admit it fully now, this chick had me all fucked up and wrapped around her finger. She had me so brainwashed and unaware that I didn't see any of the classic red flag "get the fuck out" warning signs.
It started with a few cancelled dates. We'd have plans to go to a party or go to dinner and she'd bail to hang out with her dad, or say that her best friend needed to talk about something important. There was always another excuse and they were all way too perfect. At the time I believed that she was innocent and that she was telling the truth. But honestly who leaves the house at 1am to drive her best friend to court at 6am and doesn't turn her phone on the entire night. She said she spent the night with her best friend to make sure they both woke up on time, and then left her phone off because she was in the court room. Like I said, an excuse that was TOO perfect. It made sense, but things like that don't pop up with no warning, and I had heard nothing about it until she was walking out the door. Another example: who plays pool until closing time at a late night dive bar, supposedly with their father, and can't manage to answer a text or return a call? Huge red flags, but I was smitten and stupid. It didn't happen all the time. Hell, it wasn't even very often. I still got to hang out with her and get my alone time when I wanted, so I didn't think anything of it. She was a dirty, dirty girl, but in my whipped state of mind I actually believed it was just for me. I should have known when we were out and she wouldn't ever actually claim me as more than a friend. It was subtle, but had I been paying attention I would have noticed she never introduced me as her boyfriend. Shit, after a while, she all but ignored me at poker unless she wanted a drink or it was time to leave. I conned myself into believing that it didn't matter, because she was coming home with me. Well all of the bullshit came to a big, explosive, obnoxious shitstorm one night when I caught her.
I had seen her earlier that day. We had made plans to go to a Halloween party with some friends from her school. The party was about a block off campus and a lot of my friends lived in the same area. Of course, she cancelled. Something about her dad having playoff baseball tickets or a girls' night at her friend's house. Who knows? I couldn't keep all of her bullshit straight anyway, so oh well. Whatever the reason was, I told her I was gonna head to our local bar and spend Halloween there, getting belligerent drunk and acting ridiculous. Lee and I ended up meeting up with Sean at a bar across the street from our local spot. It was a place we'd never been before, depsite how close it was to where we were almost every other night of the week. I was in a shitty mood from being stood up for the third Friday in a row so I was drinking Rusty Nails, nothing but Scotch and Drambouie, with no mix. A terrible drink, but one that will fuck you up with a quickness. Just about everyone else had already been drinking so I had some catching up to do. I pounded the first two Nails like they were Gatorade after a marathon and then took God knows how many shots while waiting for my next one to arrive. Within an hour, I had run my tab up to almost a hundred bucks. Everyone was dreading the direction this level of intoxication was taking me at such an early hour except Sean. He was encouraging my drinking and was the main evil sonofabitch buying me shots. He hated Brittany because he saw through the bullshit that was clouding my vision the entire time we were together.
"I think we should go to that party," he said between tequila shots. I was in no state to make any type of decision or argument, so we paid our tabs and I hopped into his car. We headed out to the party and the closer we got, the more the alcohol began kicking my ass and sending me deeper into my belligerent state. My biggest problem when I drink is that I can handle my alcohol. That might not sound too bad, but it was for me. I could drink like a fucking sailor, and would never throw up, never stumble or slur my words, but my brain would shut off and turn me into a half-retarded five year old until I got some food in me and sobered up. I was almost at that level when we got to the house. Sean knew it and so did everyone else on the front lawn as soon as the car parked in front of the house.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WEARING YOU ASSHOLES?" I was yelling at nobody and everybody at the same time. It was a halloween party, they were wearing costumes. I seemed to have forgotten that I was wearing a huge set of fake tits over my normal clothes. Simplicity in costumes had been one of my main principles that year. I pulled a bottle of what looked like orange soda, but was actually at least half rum, out of my back pocket and continued drinking. Sean turned off the car and hurried after me, already chuckling at the thought of the scene I was going to make at this party. As I rounded the corner to head into the garage, I nearly choked on my drink. There sitting in the driveway was Brittany's stupid Scion. NO. FUCKING. WAY. This could not be happening. I was entirely too drunk to handle this shit. There was no mistaking the stupid car club sticker on the back window, or the shitty rims that she thought made the car look cool. It was hers, and I was not happy. Sean walked up behind me and recognized her car a few seconds after I did.
"Ho-ho-holy shit," he chuckled. I stormed into the house and Sean followed a few steps behind. He stopped in the front hallway as I made an angry lap around and found nothing. As I got back around to the front door, Sean had gone outside and was calling for me.
"Here she is! I found her!" He was enjoying himself way too much. But he hated the girl and wanted nothing more than for me to never speak to her again. I looked to where he was pointing and saw her standing next to a guy I recognized as a cheerleader for the local college. What happened next was not one of my proudest moments, but it was pretty funny and the people who were there still remember exactly how it happened. As it registered in my head that Brittany was standing arm-in-arm with another dude, I lost my shit.
"WELL WELL WELL, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON OVER HERE IN WHOREVILLE?" Brittany looked up and when she saw me staring back at her the color dropped out of her face and she knew she was caught. I saw her mouth a silent 'Oh fuck'. For his part, the dude saw that I was talking to Brittany and bolted. He didn't run, but he let go of her arm, turned, and started speed walking down the street. Brittany turned back to me, and walked over to diffuse the situation.
"Please don't make a scene, I know these people."
"Don't make a- DON'T MAKE A FUCKING SCENE?" She tried to shush me, but I brushed her off, "Here's a scene you lying fucking whore." I spun the cap off of my liter bottle, which was about half full of my rum-orange concoction and hurled it across the front yard of the house. I should have played in the goddamn NFL the way that thing flew. It landed perfectly on the roof of Brittany's shitty car and exploded orange sticky alcoholic mixture everywhere. Brittany was yelling but I ignored her. "Let's go talk to her friend," I said to Sean. I took off down the street after the dude. Brittany was on my heels trying to apologize and explain that the guy was just a friend, but I was on a warpath.
"Lose my number, I'll drop your shit off at your dad's house," I said without losing a step. I yelled down the street, "Come here! I just want to talk!"
Sean joined it behind me. "Hey CHEERBOY!" We watched him walk into a house on the corner of the street and I figured we had him cornered. The door was locked and I tried to kick it in, but nothing happened. A window opened on the second floor and Cheerboy leaned out.
"The cops are on the way. Get away from my house!"
"Fuck you!" I yelled back, "It's rented and its a shithole!"
The window shut and Sean turned to leave but I had one last present for Cheerboy. I pushed open his in-door mailslot, whipped out my dick, and started pissing into the front hallway of his house. I unleashed what felt like a gallon of nothing but liquor and beer from the entire night's drinking. I stood up, zipped my fly, and turned around. Sean was standing in the driveway with a stunned look on his face. As I walked toward him he exploded with laughter. We walked back to the party where Brittany was sitting in her car, crying. She tried to tell me again that Cheerboy was just a friend and that nothing had happened between them. She may have been telling the truth, but at that point I didn't give a shit. We were asked to leave the party; we were already on our way out anyway. We got back into Sean's car and went back to the bar to finish partying for Halloween. The whole experience had sobered me up a bit and I needed more to drink. Brittany texted me and called me a few times that night still trying to apologize. I answered none of it. I tried to call her a few months later to see how she was doing and see if I could hook up a booty call, but apparently she had found out about the mailslot incident and to this day, we've never spoken again. It's a real shame that she was so batshit crazy and such a lying whore; I was gonna miss the freak in her. Guess you really can't have it all.

The Greatest Breakfast Burrito of All Time

**Names have been changed**


I woke up barely hungover. Suprising, considering how much I'd drank the previous night. Truth is, I was probably still drunk and hadn't had time to move into the hangover stage yet. Either way, a breakfast screwdriver was obviously the best idea, because fuck it, I was on vacation. It was 3 in the afternoon anyway, so it wasn't that big of a lush move. I walked out onto the balcony to check out the beach scene for the day. Joe was playing volleyball, and Sean was taking a nap under an umbrella. No doubt still sleeping off the uncountable number of beer pong rounds we'd played the night before and the victory shots that came along with every game we'd won. Derek was nowhere to be found. He had disappeared the night before with a chick he met at the bar. Last I saw of him, he was trying to convince the girl to fuck him. She was playing innocent and it wasn't looking good for our hero.
I was jolted out of my thought process by my stomach growling, LOUD. Apparently two pieces of toast wasn't enough to soothe the beast so I stepped back inside and went to the kitchen. A breakfast burrito sounded good, and I got started on cheffing one up. About the time I had all of the ingredients laid out, Sean came walking in the front door. "How does it feel to be a champion?" he asked. We had gone ape shit in beer pong last night and destroyed all challengers. It felt damn good. I could tell by the look on his face that he was just as hungry as I was, so I wrapped up another burrito and tossed it on a paper plate for him.
The burritos were pretty fucking good, and did a good job of coating our stomachs. Sean mixed a drink and we stood in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette, and got our plans for the day straightened out. We had planned on taking a tour of a haunted area of town. It was a pretty ridiculous tourist trap, but it was cheap and we got to ride around on Segways, so I was down.
We were just mixing our second drinks when Adam came stumbling out of his room, wearing nothing but his boxers and one sock. He walked into the kitchen with a huge smile on his face and we both knew he had finally succeeded in getting into the girl's pants. He snatched my drink out of my hand thinking it was orange juice. He gulped down a mouthful and barely had time to hand back my cup before his body rejected the potent mix that was nearly half vodka and sent it straight back up from his stomach. He gagged and threw up into the sink and then looked at me like I had just killed his dog.
"What the hell is wrong with you," he whined at me.
"Nothing, don't snatch my shit without asking."
He mumbled a 'Fuck you' and poured himself a cup of juice, no vodka. We heard the shower in his room turn on and both looked to him with the same question.
"She's still here?"
"Yeah," he explained, "it took me all night to get her naked. I just finished before I came out here."
"Well, congrats I guess. Now get rid of her; we got shit to do today." Sean said.
It sounds coldhearted and unreasonable, but we DID have plans and any girl you take home from a bar isn't really the type to keep around for very long, especially not if you were going on a fucking haunted tour.
He took his OJ and walked back into his room to cut the unfortunate girl loose. Sean and I sat down in the living room and fired up the PS3 to play some Call of Duty. The shower turned off, and there was the sound of rustling and talking, presumably as the girl got dressed and packed up her shit. Adam came back out into the living room and told us the girl would be leaving shortly. She walked out of his room and for the first time we saw her in the light. She was pretty, even without makeup, and I made a mental note to congratulate Adam on a job well done.
"Adam, we need to talk," she whispered.
She walked into the kitchen and Adam flashed us the finger behind her back as he followed with a retarded grin on his face. We turned back to our game and thought everything was going fine until we heard yelling from the kitchen.
"I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU! I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU GAVE ME HERPES I WILL FUCKING BURY YOU IN A DITCH!"
Sean spit a mouthful of his screwdriver all over the screen. My mouth dropped open and I paused the game. We sat completely silent, hearing only more talking, the girl's apologetic tone and Adam's terrified voice. After what seemed like an hour, but was only about ten minutes, the girl came stomping out of the kitchen and made straight for the door and left. Adam came sulking back into the living room, obviously pale and upset.
"The reason she didn't wanna fuck last night is that she has herpes," he said quietly, "But she said this morning she thought I didn't care because I kept trying." He went back into his room and locked the door. Sean and I laughed so hard we almost cried. We didn't see Adam for the rest of the weekend, but heard a few days later his test had come back clean. We decided to do the haunted tour without him, and leave Joe on the beach as well. But first we had to pregame.

Be nice to the bouncers

Any time you’re out as much as my groups of friends, around that many new people, and that much alcohol, problems are sure to arise. This brings me to my next lesson so listen up. Don’t fuck with the staff. Actually, do the opposite. Get in good with a waitress, and she might forget that you ordered that last round of shots and save you a few bucks on your tab. Get in good with a bartender, and you can pretty much bank on getting a little extra kick in your sissy, blended daiquiri. Get in good with the DJ and you can look REALLY cool and get any request that our little heart desires played for the rest of the bar to hate. BUT get in good with the security staff and you are fucking BULLETPROOF. Not only do these flashlight jockeys control the line to get in the door, but they are the authority once you’re inside. I worked nightclub and strip club security for years, and so I have no qualms at all telling all of you little protégés exactly how it is.
You have to do it the right way for it to work. That means don’t slip the doorman a twenty on your first night at the club and expect to slip your underage girlfriend past him. And if he’s working inside, for the love of God, NEVER stand directly in front of a bouncer. They are there to do a job and will not, I repeat, WILL NOT hesitate to go through you if you’re between them and a fight that breaks out. If you absolutely MUST talk to a bouncer, at least stand off to the side of him so he can keep his eyes on the crowd while listening to how the big, mean man spilled your drink. Actually, scratch that. Don’t go to a bouncer with every little fucking whiny bitch story. They don’t care if your beer got spilled, they don’t care if there’s a guy doing lines in the bathroom, and they REALLY don’t care if you don’t think it’s fair that some other underage girl gets to drink and your girlfriend doesn’t.
The best way to get on a bouncer’s good side is to treat him with respect. Don’t bitch about the cover, don’t bitch about getting ID’d and don’t start shit....yet. Once you gain the reputation of being a respectable human being who doesn’t cause shit and everyone seems to get along with, perks will be awarded. It may be as subtle as not getting ID’d, or not having to take your license out of your wallet every time you show up. After the first time, don’t assume you’re bulletproof yet. Give the door guy a handshake or a nod or some show of gratitude and go about your business. If they have a tip jar at the door, drop a few bucks in it.
If you play your cards right and do like my friends and I did, you’ll get perks that most people will never get to experience. I live in one of the most vibrant nightlife cities in the country, and I haven’t paid a cover ANYWHERE in almost 3 years. And that’s just the beginning. When you skip a long line on a cold night and hear the doorman tell the two hot chicks in the front of the line that they’re at capacity and can’t let anyone else in, and THEN he opens the door for you and ushers you in, that’s when it all pays off. When you walk up to the door of a bar on a Saturday night and the bouncer is telling the douche bag who cut you off in his car in the parking lot that he absolutely must charge a cover charge for EVERYBODY, and as the guy reaches into his wallet, you walk in without paying a cent, that’s when the circle of life is complete. It gets to a whole new level when “your” table or booth is occupied and when you come in the door the security staff makes whoever is sitting there move just for you. It works well at small hometown watering holes where there aren’t usually VIP booths or a lot of high profile guests. When security moves a group of 6 guys out of your corner table so you and two buddies can sit there, just because that’s where you want to sit that night, it’s a good feeling.
Security is like a brotherhood. After working as a bouncer you start to gain a respect for the bouncers at your local spots, and when they find out you worked security too, the respect is repaid. I’ve gotten in a lot of fights at my local bars but I’ve never once been kicked out or arrested. When the bouncers are your friends that doesn’t happen. I have the good fortune at my favorite bar of having every bouncer, every server, every bartender, the owners, managers, AND the DJ at my back. I could punch the first person I see when I walk in the place, and they’d get kicked out before I did. I’ve been in fights where the security guards have thrown punches for me, just to have my back. All it takes is one look and they know what is going on. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t go looking for fights, but this type of lifestyle isn’t gonna gain you any favor with the dudes whose girls you end up stealing. Haters are gonna hate and people are gonna talk shit, but it’s always good to have someone in authority sticking up for you.