PISS & PERFUME: STORIES YOU MIGHT HEAR AT AN A.A. MEETING #1

PISS & PERFUME: STORIES YOU MIGHT HEAR AT AN A.A. MEETING #1

To remember a wild high school party that you went to back in the 70s is a hard thing to do. Especially when your mind is starting to slip due to age - and all the booze and dope that you consumed over the years doesn't help matters.

But this one really stands out!

This guy I knew in Albert Lea (MN) high school came from a Catholic family, which meant that that they had a shitload of kids. Both parents were world class lushes and the old man was a degenerate gambler.  Eventually, he'd lose the family home PLAYING CARDS at the VFW. Playing fucking cards! 

In a town of of less than 19,000 - we're not talking a major metropolitan area here, he must have been stupid enough to be playing cards - and losing - to some of the toughest & meanest local dudes in the county. The kind of guys that will break your fucking legs if you don't sign over your house.

The last I heard was that any surviving members of the family currently resided in some shithole trailer park. In the same shithole town.

They were also the kind of parents that would take off for a week and leave the eldest child living at  home in charge - brain surgeons they were not. The oldest at the time was this buddy of mine. So on a Saturday night, with a little persuading from his good friends, he decided to throw a small get together.

This was in the middle of winter in southern Minnesota, cold as fuck out, there wasn't shit going on, word started to spread, and before you knew it, the small get together turned into something right out of Animal House. It was like there were billboards advertising the blower posted all over town.

The ages at the party must have ranged from 14 to 24. There were kegs of beer, booze that other party goers brought along, weed galore, and of course, truckers speed. You can't have a party in a redneck town without truckers speed! I had contributed a box of nitrous oxide poppers and several heavy duty balloons. Within just a few hours, the joint was rocking and a rolling.

The host of the party was a well known lightweight. "Drink a beer, spill a beer, puke a beer, and then pass out!" could have been his drinking motto. The party had started earlier in the afternoon when a group of us had been just drinking beer and watching a hockey game, and he was already locked in his room and down for the count so he had no idea what was going on.

By about nine o'clock, there were so many fucking people in the house that you could hardly move. Some older guys took charge and moved all the living room furniture outside into the snow banks. Someone went on a beer run and "borrowed" the family car and plowed into a fireplug after losing control on the black ice. There were a group of guys playing darts and were using the family photo for a dart board. Cigarette butts and roaches were being extinguished on the carpet - either by being ground out with a foot or sizzling out on the alcohol and vomit soaked carpet.

A couple of us snuck down into the basement to smoke a joint so we didn't have to share it with the seemingly hundreds of party goers. We were hidden in a small storage space with the lights off when a friend of ours came down with this chick that he always claimed was a "hog" that he would never be caught dead screwing. He was obviously full of shit because after just a minute or two of passionate spit swapping, they dropped their pants and then reclined on the bare cement floor and proceeded to (without downing a condom) "make sweet love." Somehow they never heard us in there giggling and biting our hands trying not to be heard - especially when it was pointed out that their genitals were directly over the drain in the floor! They probably couldn't hear us over he sound of Deep Purple jamming on the stereo upstairs.

Rather going out to piss in the snow, I snuck upstairs into his parent's bedroom which had been deemed "off limits." For some crazy reason that rule was being followed but you could tear the rest of the dump down if you wanted...but stay out of the parent's bedroom! But fuck that, it was cold as hell outside and the other bathrooms were either beyond disgusting with piss and puke all over the place or couples were getting it on in there.

Before I took a leak, I was hit with a bolt of inspiration! His mother had her two favorite perfumes, I assumed they were her favorites because they were (& probably purchased at Woolworth's) aligned on a special little doiley with a cross stitched on it on the bathroom vanity. With a little bit of effort, I pried the tops of  them off, poured the majority of the perfume out and filled them back up with my urine! The holes on the bottles were small making it was hard to piss in them so it took me several times to covertly sneak up to accomplish this classic mission!

Years later, when I was working at the Minnesota Security Hospital, I worked with a nurse who had been a huge drunk at one time but had kicked the habit. When I told him the perfume bottle story he told me that when he would go to parties that he'd get so shithoused that he'd sneak into the host's bedroom and take a shit under their pillows or pull the blankets back and crap on the mattress and then cover it back up. If that all failed, he'd find the laundry closet and find the folded clean towels and take a dump in one and fold it back up. Jesus Christ! Could you imagine that? Crawling into bed after a long night and then discover some asshole took a crap under your pillow!

As I was coming down the stairs after completing my task, I heard someone yell "There's a shitload of cops pulling up!"

It was damn near midnight by then. I couldn't believe that the it took the neighbors that long to call the authorities.

The stairs were close to the kitchen so I shot down the steps and ran through the kitchen and out the back door before the cops had come around the back. I jumped over a fence and hid in a shed where the neighbors were storing their snowmobiles. I hid out for at least an hour until things started to cool down and I could make my way to my car which was luckily parked about a block away and make my escape.

I actually had gotten so ripped that night that I forgot about the perfume bottles for at least a couple of weeks. I decided to keep it a secret since people tend to get riled up when they find out that their mother has been spraying on your piss before she heads off to Mass.

But about ten years later, when I was home for the holidays on leave, I bumped into my old pal and decided to tell him. Not only did the guys who were standing around listening laugh so fucking harder that a few had tears running down their faces - but the former party host had the stupidest look on his face that I'll never forget!

" I could have been a fragrance millionaire, Jerry!"

- Kramer - Seinfeld The Pick

BRASS KNUCKLES

I’m sorry. I know that these are flag waving, George W. Bush and Billy Graham praying, ultra-conservative, Toby Keith patriotically singing with tears in his eyes, politically correct times. But there is still no way to say it but just like this - I was sitting on the stool, reading a Penthouse, and taking a cocaine rush induced shit when the murder went down.

It just has taken me until now to get the guts up to write about it. Hell, to even think about it.

It was the summer of 1975. My high school days had ended just about a month previously and I had no immediate plans other than to continue on what I had been doing for the past two years which was getting stoned and dealing some weed and desperately trying to get laid for the first time. Contrary to public opinion the two do not mix as I was soon to find out. Not the getting laid part, I meant the dealing and getting stoned part.

I was looking at this lesbian pictorial - Are all lesbians that hot? - and just thinking about jerking off when I heard the front door bust open. Lynyrd Skynyrd was jamming so goddamn loud on Don't Ask Me No Questions, that at first I couldn't hear or understand what was going on. The door buzzer had gone off first and I had assumed that it was just announcing more folks, hopefully chicks, coming in to party. Man, was I fucking wrong!

The stylus on the turntable scratched across the record. The music stopped. In fact, it sounded like the turntable was knocked right onto the floor.

"Hey dude, what the hell are you doing! Watch the fucking album. I just bought the goddamn thing. Fucking thing cost 5.99!" Mike was seriously stoned. "Hey! What are you doing here?"

“Just keep your ass in that chair and don't move a muscle you lowlife motherfucker!”

My scrotum tried to crawl up into my stomach. I knew who's voice that was. His name was Cletus la Favor. A local thug, pimp, and drug dealer. Two weeks ago I had broken into - technically the door was unlocked - his Corvette that he had left parked in his driveway. I had been riding my ten speed home down his dark street when I had seen la Favor park his car in front of his house and stagger through the front door, his tattooed, tree trunk arm wrapped around one of his whores. I don't what the hell had gotten into me to do it, probably the nine beers that I had drank, but to my utter disbelief and joy, I had discovered a half a pound of Hawaiian Bud and a chrome Colt .45 in the backseat, damn near in plain view. I had ripped off both items but hadn't told a soul about it. la Favor was bad news. He had done hard time in Stillwater and there was a local urban legend going around that said he was known to strap on a pair of personalized brass knuckles when people were dumb enough to cross him.

To my horror I suddenly realized my mistake. Several nights ago, Mike and I had gone to a small keg party and in a lame attempt to get in the pants of a hot number who was way out of my league, I had turned her on to a couple of joints of the Bud. That had to have been how la Favor had found out. The backwater town we lived in got buzzed mainly on Hamm's beer, white cross speed, and Mexican ditch weed. It wouldn't have taken much for la Favor to put two and two together.

"What's the shotgun for, man? That's not cool, dude. Guns aren't cool!" Mike was going through this weird "violence isn't the answer" hippie period. I think that he thought that would help him attract more women.

"Where's the dope at you little cocksucker? My fucking dope and my fucking pistol? I know that you and your buddy took it!"

Mike's current girlfriend, a sweet dimwitted bimbo named Angel and who was only sixteen but easily could have passed for twenty five, (I think that Angel may have been her stage name) and who stripped on the weekends at the Aragon Bar, screamed out in either fear or pain or both.

“Shut up you cunt! You either shut your goddamn cock holster or I'll shove something in it!”

"Why are yo….” A hideous shriek of agony.

“First you have the nuts to deal on my turf, you dirty fucks! (Our pot operation was so small time I couldn't believe la Favor even knew about it) Then you rip me fucking off! Now I ain't gonna ask again, where are the fucking drugs? My fucking drugs!" la Favor screamed.

"We don't have shit, man! We haven't ripped anyone off!" Mike protested. "Just this little dab of coke is all and this quarter ounce of weed is all we have!. You can take it if you want it!"

"You lying prick! Where the fuck is that little asshole friend of yours that's always hanging out here? He's the one I really need to talk to." There was a pause. "Hey! Get your hands off her tits and check this dump out!" he barked to someone.

Panicking, I realized that I was the "asshole" in questions and that I was trapped as the proverbial shithouse rat. Quickly thinking (for once), I closed the toilet lid and stood up on the stool. There was a panel in the ceiling in the bathroom leading to a ventilation shaft and I shoved the panel aside and slithered like a snake up into the overhead and pushed the tile back into place. It was pitch black inside and smelled heavily of mouse piss. I could feel their little shit pellets crunch under my hands. Someone was in the bathroom below me looking around. Jesus Christ! What's going to happen if they lift the lid and see a fresh shit in there? They'll link me to the turd and start searching for me. Probably shoot me right through the ceiling. I stifled a whimper.

"There ain't anyone in the crapper. Holy shit! You should see these dyke bitches in this magazine, boss!"

"Put the fuck book down and take the slut out to the car, tie her up and throw her ass in the trunk you goddamn moron. We'll take care of her later. I'll handle this little son of a bitch."

I could hear Angel screaming out a blue streak as she was taken down the stairs. The word "motherfuckers" was mentioned predominately. We were a mile out of town in an apartment over a water bed warehouse. There wasn't a soul around to hear her.

"What? What do you want? I'll do anything! I'll give you anything! Just bring Angel back up here and I'll..." Mike's voice was suddenly cut off like someone had him around the throat.

"Too late, asshole. You had your chance."

All I heard after that was this weird, wet sound like someone hitting a ripe pumpkin or melon with a stick. Then I could hear la Favor, all three hundred pounds of him lumber down the stairs. A high horsepower engine revved up and gravel sprayed the side of the warehouse as a car raced out of the parking lot. Then total silence.

I laid up there in the dark with the mice and their shit for over two hours before I could make myself crawl back down in the bathroom. I walked gingerly around the corner into the living room. Mike was sitting straight up in his easy chair with his back to me.

"Mike! Mike!" I stage whispered.

He didn't answer so I slowly walked around the chair. His eyes were open but he was obviously dead. He was the only person I had seen dead except for my grandmother and that had been at a funeral. I remembered that she had looked like she had been cast in wax, real peaceful, but Mike didn't look like that at all. His eyes were wide open and punched into the middle of his forehead, like his skull had been made out of sheet metal, were the initials "ClF."

"Brass knuckles," I mouthed to myself.

I took Mike's wallet with the two hundred dollars that la Favor had missed, he always kept it in the inside pocket of his Levi jacket, and Angel's tip jar that she kept hidden under their bed. I don't think she missed it - no one ever heard from Angel again that I know of.

As for me, I pedaled my ten speed down to the Greyhound station as fast as my legs would take me and took the first bus leaving town.

I've never been back.