CHICA

        In 1999 I had just graduated from high school. I was temporarily working as a dietician at a convalescent center. Which translates to: I was the guy putting vitamins and old people food into a blender so old people could swallow it easier.

        I wasn't particularly stoked on the job, the pay was less than rat shit, and it was kind of gross. On the other hand; I do like old people; and if they are coherent enough to tell me a story about what it was like when they were young.... (Not the “when I was your age, I could buy a snickers bar for a nickel”story) but actual lifestyles of the 40's, 50's or whatever. I talked to a guy who played chess with John Wayne, and played football with Elvis. He served in 2 wars and he still considered Marilyn Monroe the most beautiful girl that ever lived and quite frankly.....He was just a bad-ass in general.

        For the most part, the inmates of this geriatric prison were just the unfortunate victims of their family's disinterest or unavailability. These places are a huge financial burden on the family.... and I believe it takes a lot of “financial burden” to send a family member that you have known your whole life to be cared for by someone else, no matter how clean or well rated the place is amongst the other old folks homes. It is after all still just a giant bedpan for old folks to slowly decompose before they are finally ready to drift off into oblivion. I have been there(both as a grandchild and great-grandchild) and I know exactly how much our grandparents and great-grandparents really want to be there (sarcasm intended). No son or daughter, actually wants to resort to actually leaving their parents in such a place....even great grand kids quiver at the idea of putting someone that they have known and loved their whole lives into a home, but sometimes life forces us on such unfortunate events that we don't believe in ....including but, not limited to why we pay taxes:

Dear readers:

If you don't want a head full of obnoxious political jargon...skip to "The point".

        We pay taxes to the I.R.S. Which funds the people who give us traffic tickets (even if we were not maliciously avoiding the speed limit, or slowly going through a red light when there is obviously no traffic in sight) Our Law enforcement is given a monthly quota, so they are actually forced to further punish us. We pay taxes to the I.R.S. Which funds the government who make all of the rules for us, and the decisions for us(whether we believe in them or not). There are more examples of retarded ways that we are forced to spend our tax dollars than there are freckles on a Ginger's face.

For example: Here are some facts about death row that most people don't want to believe (Just one of the incredibly stupid government controlled costs that our tax dollars are paying for ever day):

The U.S.'s capital punishment process: 

 

(1) is fraught with error;

(2) discriminates on the basis of socioeconomic status, race, and geography;

(3) is arbitrary and capricious, including its use against the mentally ill and defendants who did not kill anyone and did not intend that anyone be killed;

(4) costs taxpayers far more than life imprisonment without release;

(5) does nothing to protect people from crime;

(6) seriously harms the survivors of homicide victims;

(7) is plagued by cheap legal representation - the worst, not the best, of American lawyering; and

8. greatly diminishes the worldwide stature of the United States and its ability to work to end human rights violations in other countries.

   Capital punishment solves nothing!!!! It's expensive, and statistics have found that 91% of the families of the deceased don't even want the killer to be euthanized. I mean really, in a perfect world, the 9% of the population that actually does want to bring the killer to death should be able to do it themselves however they want to do it. The law has already decided that the convict should be put to death. Leave it up to the family to do it when they want and how they want, if they actually want to. The country is being taxed millions of dollars a year to keep these criminals in prison for years. Why not just cut the bullshit....and leave the killer in a room with the family of the victim for a couple of hours. PROBLEM SOLVED!

        While we are on the subject of incredibly unnecessary costs; lets not forget the wars that our entire nation are all openly apposed to, even the military doesn’t believe in what they are doing...and that is after being brainwashed by our government. Somehow or another we still continue to pay ridiculous amounts of money to fund not only our own U.S. Military, but also fund the weapons for other countries to actually take down their own country. Just for a few colorful Examples: Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Russia, Pakistan....the list goes on and on, but basically the whole world looks at us as a country that is just there to stir the pot, just for the sake of stirring the pot, because it is some form of action....not even necessarily backed up with any sort of positive intentions towards our own country. The government will never allow us to just stop paying taxes so we are forced as civilians to create a critical mass of awakening via the internet to ensure that we as civilians actually have no say in what our dumb ass government is trying to do to the rest of the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkamZg68jpk

"THE POINT"...

        What I am trying to say is that it really blows when you don't have a choice in the matter, but you are still forced to do something that you don't really believe in. War, Law,and in this particular situation....being forced to have someone else care for your family members because you no longer have the time or availability to do it yourself sucks giant stinky donkey balls. A lot of these old folks where Alzheimer patients or dementia patients. My own grandmother, who is still very healthy, extremely intelligent and a very respectable person in the community has said, and repeated. “If I ever get to the point where I cant remember who you are, just shoot me”. In the convalescent center that I worked at most of the patients didn't even recognize anyone in their own family when they came to visit. It was sad to see families trying to get a response when introducing a new grand kid or great-grand kid to their elder kin, with no actual verbal or physical response. Which poses the question: “When does it get to the point when you actually have to hire someone to look after your parents, grandparents or great grand parents”? I can only assume that the family finally put them in a home like this when they can't even remember how to fart let alone if the situation escalates to the point where that fart goes too far and they can't communicate the fact that they need a change of pants.

        That being said; after watching 200+ Crypt keeper impersonators soil themselves all day in the convalescent center certain standards seemed to drop off the face of the planet. For one: it made the select few Nurses assistants that i worked with.... (within a decade of my age) suddenly look like the Swedish bikini team. One girl in particular named “Chica”. Chica was probably a 5 or a 6, but the fact that she was the only tail in the building during the late shift that I wouldn't have to dust off to take out to dinner, turned her into a solid 7 1/2.

        After looking at some old pictures of myself with Chica, I will have to be fair and say that I was not much of a prize myself. I only vaguely remember this short period in my life where I apparently lacked the ability to shave or go to the gym. I was Grizzly, and horribly out of shape. My man-boobs where probably bigger than Chica's, but I was too proud to actually wear a bra. On the other hand, I was getting pretty good at drinking contests. I was the undisputed beer shotgunning champion at my high school, and since that was the only thing I could validate as a talent, it was also the only pick up line I had.

Me: Hi I'm Hef.

Chica: Hi I'm Chica

Me: Wanna come over and shotgun some beers with me after work?

Chica: Sure!

I had little to no tact in my high school years, but my diabolical scheme proved to work time and time again....

A) Invite Victim over for drinking contest

B) Convince victim that she is winning the contest

C) Victim becomes inebriated, so I become the hero who offers her a place to crash...(which happens to be in my bed, with me)

D) Inebriated Victim demands spooning partner for night time heat

E) Spooning then leads to forking

F) I WIN!!!!

Granted, at this point in my life I relied pretty heavily on alcohol to convince girls that I was attractive and/ or interesting. I was chubby, hairy, had gnarly snaggle teeth, and I still lived with my mom. Lets face it, I was like a 3 or a 4 at best.

Chica came over that night after work, and my diabolical scheme pretty much went accordingly. We ended up dating for a few weeks and we got to the point where we were starting to meet eachother's extended family. It then came time for Chica to meet my dad.

At this point in my life, my dad was more of a drinking buddy than a real dad. I'm not complaining though, dad taught me a lot of things about fishing, working on cars, woodworking, and he single handedly inspired me to play guitar. Dad had a kegerator within reaching distance of his hot tub, which to me, at the time; was pretty much the equivalent of having a pot of gold within reaching distance of the love grotto pool at the Playboy mansion.

Chica and I arrived at dad's house around 2pm. It was July of 1999, the weather was beautiful and when we got into his house at the Washington state salmon hatchery in Gold Bar, Washington.
There was a full bar set up on the counter in his Martha Stewart-esque kitchen which lay-ed in the center of his nice white 3 bedroom 2 bath manufactured home just a few hundred feet from the bed of the Skykomish river. From what I understand Dad was a bartender in his younger years and, he claims to be one of the pioneers of the matchbook-pusher-man/ bartender tactic. What is the matchbook-pusher-man/bartender tactic you ask?

The Matchbook-pusher-man/ Bartender Tactic:

The idea is simple, yet it can be an elegant and effective strategy to make some extra cash if performed correctly. The difficult part of this diabolical tactic is keeping it simple. Sometimes people get greedy and bite off more than they can chew, and that's when they get caught.

1. Load up a bunch of match books with one drug of choice. (If your D.O.C. Is too big to fit in a matchbook, discard the idea of selling it and slap yourself in the face as hard as you can for trying to sell pot or mushrooms at a bar. You're dumb! Weed and shrooms are bulky and too easily detected, plus you will never make enough money to make it worth your while. and ... what? Are you 12? Think smaller and more expensive).

2. Make sure that the buyer/ buyers are friends that you trust. Don't trust any recently acquired drinking buddy or a hot girl with awesome knockers that just so happens to be into which ever D.O.C. You happen to be selling. There really isn't a set of knockers in the world worth going to jail for.

3. Simplify your business strategy by having only two options in the amount of that ONE drug of choice going into the match books. (by adding a second, or third drug you have just created a liability to inevitably fuck up, resulting in confrontation with the buyers that are now at your place of work )

4. Create code words for the amount of the D.O.C. That they intend to buy: 1 gram = “1 beer, and a book of matches” or 2 grams = “Double shot of whiskey and a book of matches”.

5. Ring in transaction to the cash register nonchalantly, cleverly pushing the clientele to not only pay for the drug, but buy a drink as well (chances are good that they will not only pay for the loaded matchbook, but also tip you for the drink you have just poured them as well).

6. Proceed to win at life.

        The easiest and most common way to fuck this up is to use the three words that have and will destroy any underground operation. “Tell your friends”. If you are trying to boost your sales, and have a steady flow of product, stick with your original clientele. Let that clientele do the dirty work for you, they want to do it, and it is easy to sell in bulk if you know to prepare yourself in advance for a large purchase. There is nothing more annoying than having a liability walk into your bar. A liability that you have never even met, and he/she just so happens to be fiending for the drug that you have just sold to a mutual friend. The only way to turn this around if there are witnesses, is to make the fiend the negative center of attention. Have security escort them out (claim that they are crackheads and just offered to suck your dick to find them some drugs) By the time all of the commotion of having a crackhead escorted out of the building has died down, most people wouldn't even consider the fact that you might have enough Coke on you to have Scarface crying in a corner.

Dad started us off with some of the basics: Duck Farts, then B-52s then “Ooooh, wait B-52's are good, lets have another”....and another. Now why don't we just drink Crown royal straight.....That was delicious!...lets do that again!...and another.....ooooh lets have another B-52.... etc.etc....etc

It was a gorgeous day in the middle of summer, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Chica and I had planned to go down to the river behind dads house. Before we did however, we decided to get busy with dads kegerator. I probably sucked down 5 or 6 beers just to show off my new found ability to chug beer to my dad.

I had my shirt off and again; I was chubby, hairy and tremendously out of shape.

“Jeez, Hef, you're starting to look like your old man”. Dad said chuckling. I didn't really know how to take that comment, but I looked at the both of us in the reflection of his sliding glass door next to the kegerator. We were both overweight, balding, half drunk. We were both wearing almost identical khaki shorts and nothing else. The difference between him and I was that I actually kind of looked older from a distance. My body was much hairier than his. I was kind of grossed out by the idea that my dad looked younger and healthier than I did. I vowed that day to get my ass on a decent diet and workout regimen...which worked eventually, but it took a couple of years before I actually got ripped and toned. I also started ridding myself of unsightly body hair...aka: shaving everything....I mean everything.....except eyebrows and armpits.

Chica was relatively silent during this whole encounter. She was an adopted child and was home schooled by a military family most of her life. She rarely spoke unless spoken to.

I asked dad if it would be o.k. if we went down to the river for a bit, he said sure why don't you save a few minutes and take the 4-wheelers (He called them “The Puppies”)?

Oh HELL YA!!! I cheered!

4 Wheelers or ATV's are some of the funnest and most entertaining things that god ever bestowed the human race with on this planet. Its a car, with no doors or a roof, huge mud tires and the ability to go anywhere on it, even through several feet of water....and get this...there is a beer holder right in between the handle bars. Brilliant!! It's like a golf cart on steroids!

Following a short tutorial on how to drive the little ATVs we were on the path to the river. I have had a lot of experience riding these things so I was going really fast and Chica was right behind me. I was starting to feel the effects of the7+ shots of hard alcohol and 5 or 6 beers warm up my belly. It was then that I also learned that you should probably eat something before you drink that much in such a small period of time. My stomach was empty until the shots and keg beer filled up my guts. I was full blown drunk in seconds....like retarded drunk. It only just dawned on me that Chica had kept up with me on every drink that I had ingested and that she is keeping up with me on a narrow trail with cliffs on both sides on a vehicle she just learned how to drive 2 minutes ago....drunk. She was no longer behind me. DAMMITTTT!!

I came to a screeching halt and got off my ATV and looked back where Chica should have been by now. I got off of the puppy and backtracked on foot for what seemed like a mile. I was starting to think that she had just turned around and went back to the house. I looked on both sides of the narrow path and saw only the rocky embankments that were once a river bed. The river level had gone down monumentally due to the heat and lack of precipitation. I couldn't hear the rumble of the small engine that was following me any more. All I could hear was the wind through the leaves. I was stumbling at this point and my lips and face had gone numb due to the excessive amounts of alcohol that I had guzzled in the last 30 minutes. My vision was blurry. It hadn't even occurred to me to call out her name until now. Chica!!! Chicaaaa!!!!

As I turned around on foot to head back to the Atv that I had jumped off of and had pointing in the wrong direction on a 4 foot wide balance beam of rock and dirt, The bright blue fenders of Chica's ATV caught my eye. It was on its side, 20 feet down a rocky embankment. No sign of chica. I stumbled down the rocky embankment to find Chica laying on the ground behind the overturned ATV. She was moving but silent. I finally scaled the embankment to where her body was laying. There was blood all over her pant leg and she was moaning in pain. “I think my leg is broken” she muttered.

I looked at her in disbelief. She was probably just in shock and It really isn't as bad as it seems. I asked if I could move her and she said I could try. I picked her up like a vietnam vet trying to take a wounded soldier to safety. Her arm was over my shoulder and her body weight was balancing on my hips.

Me: still think it is broken?

Chica: I don't know, it just hurts a lot.

Me: do you think we can get you back to the trail?

Chica: ya Grunt* I think so.

        It had occurred to me that she had ingested more than enough alcohol to blanket the pain of a broken bone, as well as being able to settle the shock of basically dropping off of a cliff side on a vehicle she had no idea how to operate. This may actually be worse than we thought.

        We, climbed to the top of the rocky embankment and I left her at the pathway so I could get my ATV and bring her back to dads house for help. I drunkenly jogged back to my ATV so I could her her back to safety as fast as possible. I had so much adrenalin surging through my system that I actually picked up the front end of the vehicle and turned it around to face back towards the part of the trail that I had just left Chica.

        I loaded her up behind me on the ATV and kept her leg elevated over the top of my thigh. The blood was seeping through my pants and I could feel it go from warm to cold as the fast air was coagulating it. I had just enough television knowledge to look for protruding bones amongst her bloody pant leg. I saw none, so I figured we were just looking at a flesh wound and some bruising. We pulled up to dad's house, and I walked in as nonchalantly as possible. Hey man, we had a little accident. After a few drinks dad starts to sound like a wwf wrestler and hollered back at me. “Jeez Dave what did you do to your girlfriend?”

“Pop, I think she broke her leg, should we take her to the hospital?”

Dad: Shit Hef, the hospital is in Monroe, 50 miles away and we are all drunk. By the way, both of you are underage. Does that sound like a good idea? I can see the headline now: “Drunk old bastard drives drunk underage kids to the hospital because he got them whiskey drunk and they got themselves in a ATV wreck”? “That don't sound good to me niether”

One thing I can never accuse my father of is being irrational when you have to think through a distress scenario on the fly. He was right. If we drove to town drunk we would get caught. Even if we didnt get caught by the cops we would still have to explain the scenario to the hospital....in which case we would ultimately screw ourselves further.

Me: I dunno, man what about an ambulance?

Chica enters the room limping towards us and bleeding on the carpet....

Dads face now red and pissy.

Me: do you have insurance?

Chica: yeah, grunt* but if I have to take an ambulance my dad is going to find out and then he is also going to find out that I was drinking with you and he will never trust you....(starts crying irrationally)

Dad: well, I guess we are going to have to wait and sober up then.

Me: ummm...we all drank our weight in hard alcohol and keg beer, none of us are going to be sober by morning.(slurred)

Dad: Well, lets see if we cant at least patch her up till morning then?

I have always found that in a pinch dad is very creative in these kinds of situations.

Dad: Alright Hef lets get your girlfriend into the bathtub so we can clean her off and see what we are looking at.

        Dad turned on the bathroom light and started the faucet. Once Chica sat down on the side of the bathtub with her back against the opposite side from the faucet she pulled up her pant leg to reveal the bloody mess that the ATV had bestowed on her. She was wincing in pain as she slowly splashed some water on it. Dad didn't gasp or even flinch when the wound was fully exposed, he calmly grabbed a bottle of astringent and a bottle of whiskey out of the bathroom cupboard at the same time. ( I had a feeling this wasn't his first rodeo) “Drink this” he said with that same WWF wrestler tone.

        Her leg was swollen and it was a bloody mess, I could see the exposed bone now, which put me into shock. I didn't know how to handle a situations like this. Dad was as calm as a cow in tall grass. Dad had broken a few bones in his day and knew exactly how to handle the situation. “First, I have to put the bone back in straight” he exclaimed. “How, exactly are you going to do that pop'? I asked. Chica was wincing at the cold water that dad was helping her wash the wound with.

Just...Like....This!!!!

        To this day, I have never seen anyone do anything as crazy or psychotic, and we are talking about my dad here...my dad: A man that I adore, and will love till the day I die. The man who admittedly taught me what NOT to do in order to succeed in life (and he will be the first one to tell you). The man who taught me how to freebase crack on Christmas, euthanized his cat with a hatchet, and killed an endangered species in front of a school bus full of children. 

        From what I have gathered from both of my parent's brief story of their relationship was sort of insane on it's own.  Apparently, Dad met Mom at his own prison release party and I was conceived at a Rush concert while they were both on shrooms. I could go on for days about the insane stuff that my dad has said and done. I love the man, and frankly I am proud to say that the apple does'nt fall far from the tree.

         He grabbed both sides of Chica's wound with his bare hands and with a tremendous thud that shook the floor....pounded Chica's leg against the pillow that was bolted on the back of the tub for back support. He gave it one more solid whack before anyone knew what was going on. Chica let out a yelp of pain...shortly followed by a “What the fuck??!!?!?!?!” It almost harmonized with the “what the fuck” I had exclaimed at that very moment.

Dad's notorious redneck WWF wrestler drawl rang throughout the house with a hearty echo.

“Well, there ya go darlin, all better!!!”

Chica had tears running down her face, but she wasn't crying. She was just very, very surprised.

Chica: Why didn't you tell me you were going to do that?

Dad: Heh, heh, if I told you what I planned on doin, ya never would uh let me do it would ya?

He had a point.

Dad: Now lets sterlize this sone-bitch and wrap her up.

        Dad grabbed a cap full of astringent and put it right on the top of the wound and daubed it off with the hand towel. He dressed her wound with a couple of gauze pads with the precision of a neurosurgeon and hollered “alright, now we need a splint to keep it straight”. As I was exiting the bathroom. I probably spent 10 minutes trying to find something that was at least competent enough to keep it straight. I was retarded with fear and amp-ed by adrenalin. I was running a mile a minute trying to find anything that was even just straight and easily salvageable. I searched dads shop...PVC pipe....nah, 2X4 chunks...nah....”that's not classy”....oooooh...”there's an old lawnmower blade” it would probably work but that would be weird if she showed up at home with a sling blade on her leg.

        We obviously didn’t have any pain killers....so we resorted to whiskey. Probably the worst idea ever. We took whiskey shots....as fast as we could. We decided that the sling blade was too long for Chica's leg so I kept looking. I was about to give up the search when I noticed the perfect solution. Dad had the most amazing back scratcher in the world....unfortunately that backscratcher was the one that he used to scratch his Basset hound “Tater's”Butt. I don't think I realized it at the time but Tater's butt scratching unit was sort of an icon in the household, but it was the perfect splint, length width and all!!!!

Against our better judgment; we left Tater's butt unattended for the night and proceeded on with our psycho surgery. It was the perfect length and size and we were desperate, however when it came time to tape it on we were without surgical tape so we had to get crafty. Dad and my eyes met as we knew exactly how to handle the situation...we both said aloud in perfect drunken harmony to one of gods greatest gifts to mankind: Duct tape!!!!!

Yes, that is correct. We duct taped Dad's basset hound's butt scratch-er on to Chica's leg with surgical precision and carried on with the night. Poor Tater was forced to find other means of Butt scratching for the evening.

        The adrenaline that had been surging through my system was starting to wear off and I could finally feel the effects of the whiskey we had been drinking through the surgery. Chica was as calm as a cow on heroin.  Which meant there was nothing shielding the 15+ shots of hard alcohol from my brain any more. It was the second time my body had gone numb from alcohol that day and I was grateful. I booked it to the back porch where I projectile vomitted like a pro, right into the flower bed below the back porch. Dad and Chica both watched the whole thing go down. Dad cheered me on as he came outside to grab the garden hose. He gave me a pat on the back as I stood up wiping my lips with my bare wrist. I hunched over and attacked his garden one last time as dad started  to spray down the kaleidoscope of colorful stomach grease chunks that I had bestowed on his porch and rose garden.

        I was buckled over in exhaustion and after the last bit of my kaleidoscope movement made its way on to dad's garden, I mustered up the last bit of energy that I had to literally crawl to the guest bedroom . I was out like a light within seconds....but not for long....

        Dad woke me up an hour or two later and said “Hey Bo-ugh! (boy)  Drink this, it'll make ya feel better”!

        I didn't ask any questions. I was parched enough to have happily drank Rush Limbaugh's ball sweat off of Chris Farley's asshole if it would quench my thirst. I guzzled the ungodly awful concoction, and after I got down to the last inch of the pint glass full of what I can only describe as alcoholic diarrhea, I looked up at dad with a face filled with horror. “Jeeeezusss man! What is that?” I gurgled.

“Son, that was the hangover cure”. He cackled in between bursts of laughter, chuckling and shaking his head.

        Surprisingly enough withing a few minutes I did actually feel better. I got up and went into the kitchen where dad and Chica were watching T.V. I asked dad again what I had just drank and this time he brought me to the liquor cabinet and opened it. “A little bit of everything son!” “You really are a shameless, boozeguzzlin hussy ain't ya?”

        Years later I could identify the bottles that I had seen in his liquor cabinet...they all spelled bad news for a hangover. Peach, peppermint, and watermelon schnapps. Crown royal, Yukon jack, Crème de cocoa, and blue curacao. These are literally the best ingredients to give someone a hangover that would have you gladly suck down the spunk of 1,000 El Salvadorian midgets to avoid a hangover of this magnitude even for a minute. Which seems sort of strange that they had managed to elude mine so quickly.

“Well, young Hef: I just took a shot from each one of these bottles and topped it off with tomato juice. Pretty fuckin tasty eh?” Dad said sarcastically as he was fixing us both up another cocktail.

“Well, to be fair pop....ya I actually feel pretty good”. I answered back as I was keeping my balance using the countertop.

        I felt the sudden urge to clean myself up a bit. I still had a mosaic masterpiece of vomit chunks plastered across my shirt and pants. I was smart enough to bring an entire change of clothes (that were meant for changing into after playing in the river). There was no better way to fashionably get cleaned up than the hot tub...which was conveniently located right next to the kegerator....by the way...dad is obviously a genius for locating the kegerator within reaching distance of the hot tub...just saying.

        I was feeling well enough to start drinking again...”Dad, I think it is hot tub time”. He nodded in agreement as he was handing me a fresh Crown and coke. “Ya, a dip in the hot tub, would be good for all of us”....he raised his glass and took a swig. “There is a couple of mats out back that we can prop up your girlfriend's leg with so we don't get her fancy new leg splint wet”....Chuckles.

        Dad has that hoarse ex-smoker chuckle that almost sounds like a cough. When combined with his WWF wrestler voice it is intimidating but oddly makes any dash of humor sound a hundred times more funny than if any other person was announcing these kinds of statements.

        As Chica and I were getting ready to get into the tub, dad was turning on some tunes. We were just getting adjusted to the heat from the tub on our legs as the sounds of Led Zeppelin started blaring through the outdoor speakers above our heads. I poured a beer for dad and one for Chica. Dad jumped into the tub with no warning and immediately started scratching his legs and back to fight the pain of heat shock......”GAWD DAMN THAT'S NICE”....”YA TAH HEEEEEEY” he hollered as I was pouring myself a keg beer. I was super dehydrated from the copious amounts of alcohol I had not only ingested but dispersed of as well. My mind and body were starting to believe that keg beer was water, and that I needed to drink it as quickly as possible. My body was starting to believe that it was rehydrating me and my mind was believing that it was making me feel better. I drank 3 or 4 back to back and then challenged dad to a beer drinking competition. He declined....so I win!!! “oh yeah? What do you win there poncho?” “Another beer!” I exclaimed with childlike delight. We all chuckled because we were feeling better about the situation and also felt as though we had gotten through the worst that the night could possibly have to offer us.         Chica's body was fully submerged in the tub with the exception of her face and her “Dog-Butt-scratcher-Leg” She was leaning up against me, guzzling a beer of her own. Dad was across the tub from both of us, showing us his amazing “magically appearing bubbles trick."

        Dad was a master of the art of fart. He liked having an audience to bask in the glory of his flatulence. He was a pioneer of making farts funny. He was always creative with his butthole burps and would make a spectacle of himself whenever the occasion presented itself...Which was pretty regularly. Most of the time he would either make a funny gesture like a train conductor pulling the horn as he unleashed a whole mortuary of shit ghosts, followed by a movie quote or uncanny original. 

        The hot tub was in silent mode, so in the few short breaks between Zeppelin tunes dad would fill in the gaps with his comedy/ colon relief. He cracked a fart so guttorally huge that in between "Stairway to heaven, and Battle of Evermore" he was actually silent for a few seconds. Everything was silent for a few seconds. He had a semi-frightened face all of a sudden. 

Dad: So, uhhh....when you burp and a little bit of puke comes up it's called a gurp right? (he was very quiet all of a sudden) 

(Everything was quiet...no hot tub jets, no Zeppelin tunes...just silence and the slow slow gurgle of hot tub water.)

Me: Yeah, or just a chunky burp. 

Dad: What do you call a fart when a little bit of shit comes out?

Chica and I looked at eachother with a mutual understanding....an inevitably unfortunate understanding of what he was suggesting.

Me: It's called a shart dad...is there something you want to tell us?

Dad: I sharted.

          He said it like a 6 year old girl that accidentally started drawing outside the lines of her coloring book. "Oooopsie" he said while covering his mouth with a flat hand. I went into immediate spastic laughter, I laughed so hard that  it started to make me cough. Chica sat up to give me some space to let it all out. I was no longer able to control my coughing episode. In between my coughing fits I was gasping for air. I took one deep breath through my nose to try and control myself, and thats when it hit me. I could smell everything dad ate that day. Clear as a glass house. I could smell the ham sandwich that he had for lunch, the homemade biscuits and gravy that he had for breakfast, and even the last couple of keg beers that he muscled down while I was puking my guts out all over his rose garden. I coughed so hard that I started feeling my stomach wanting to eject the 4 beers and mystery concoction from it, and there was no stopping it. I looked at dad with a face of despiration. The lights from inside the hot tub gave me an almost magnified glance at what lied beneath the surface. I could see dad's pasty white legs and his hairless pony keg gut. His shorts were loose on him and although they were black, I could still make out the tiny pebbles of diarrhea that snuck out from under the waisteband, they were contrasted against the front of his shorts and started floating to the surface. It didn't really dawn on me what exactly was going on until the liquid asteroids started to contrast against his pasty white belly. 

        That is shit! and it is not solid!

        Chica was fortunate to get her head out from my beer gurping range. Had she moved just a few seconds too late she would have had a beard of my keg beer gurp on her face that would have made Santa Claus jealous. Chica panicked when she saw my gurp hit the hot tub water and immediately reached her hands up to the side of the tub. Her whole body slipped backwards sending the back of her head right into my nose.F!@$%!$%***

        I saw stars instantly. That's all I could see, because her wet hair slapped me right in the eyeballs as her head slammed into my nose. It felt like it didn't even take a second before my nose started pouring blood like a running faucet. Chica wasn't even aware of the horror that I just witnessed my Dad's rectum emit into the hot tub. The shock of the face bashing and mid beer gurp sent the diarrhea-stank-driven shock wave of nausea into my stomach which immediately turned my belly into a flash flood of alcoholic turmoil which now included 4 keg beers and Dad's mystery hangover concoction. It  had been marinating nicely in my stomach for the last half hour and now my alcohol baby was ready to show itself to the world. My eyes were shut uncontrollably by the pain Chica had inflicted on my face, both by her hair and the back of her skull. I was blinded, but I could still feel her body leaning back onto mine. I could feel her hair and the back of her head on my lap...which meant she had gotten submerged from the awkward position her fall had left her with.

        I felt the inevitable coming on with no chance of recovery. This was going to be the big one. 4 keg beers holding down a pint glass full of the most terrifyingly horrible liquors known to man. I was trapped in my seat by Chica. My nose was spouting blood all over my chest and I didn’t have enough reach to aim the vomit stream over the side of the hot tub. My only option was straight ahead. My eyes still clenched shut with pain, I let out a burp that was spacious and spastic as if someone was beating on my chest as I was belting it out. I could open my eyes just wide enough to see the whimsical look on my dad's face. It was that look that words weren't even necessary. It was the look of “WHAT THE FUCK???!!”

        My body jolted as my stomach was preparing to unleash high pressure death on the unfortunate soul that was in it's path. My hands were pinned under Chica so I had no way to shield the stream of wretch that was about to erupt out of my mouth. It shot at dad with the strength and precision of an inner city fire truck hose. I tried desperately to aim my stream away from him but it was too late. I hit him directly in the chest and the pressure of my stream splattered it onto his face. I could only barely see the reaction that he had for a brief second. It looked like a child getting hit with a solid spray of garden hose water in the summer time. His hands were attempting to block the stream and his eyes were clenched shut. His lips were held so tight together you would think he was in an inner city prison cell in San Francisco. It sent Chica up from the depths of my loin in the hot tub water. If my hands werent pinned under her body I would have tried to hold her under the water until the monumental chuke had passed. She had unfortunately made it to the top of the water gasping for air as she was faced up towards me. I had pasted her face as the pressure of the vomit started to fade, the gasp of air that she was attempting to breathe in with some despair was in fact the tail pressure of my vomit. My nose was still running like a faucet as well, but my eyes were closed so lets just assume that she didnt get a few drops of my nose blood in her mouth along with my copious trail of projectile vomit....because I couldn't actually see it happen.

        The hot tub was now a smorgasbord of body fluids ranging from; blood, to vomit, to the fecal matter particles that emitted from dad's rectum as he was showing off his amazing “magically appearing bubbles trick”

        Dad had gotten splattered in the eyes, face, and chest. Chica had gotten a pretty good amount of stomach grease in her eyes as well. We were all blinded by vomit and hot tub water and started to panic to get out of the tub. I remained calm as I slowly reached my hand backwards to find a railing. I quietly and slowly pulled myself out of the tub like a beached baby seal, touching my belly to everything so I could feel my way out as I was blinded.

        Dad rolled over the rack military style. He had a much farther way to go to the floor but he knew his own tub so he dismounted over the top like a professional. He hit the ground on his feet and immediately landed square on his butt as he slipped on the vomit that had made itself all the way to the floor behind him. Dad and I almost harmonized with a good old fashioned “WHAT THE FUCK”! As we hit the ground. Chica was still stuck in the tub. Her bum leg was not allowing her to comfortably move out of the tub. Her adrenaline had run out too, the combination of booze, blood loss and the heat from the hot tub drained her of energy. She was trying desperately to get out of the body fluid stew, but didn't have the gas to get there. She was squealing like an 8 year old girl that had just stepped on a banana slug while barefoot, and she was clawing at the top of the hot tub to the likes of a rabid Wolverine. I was underneath the tub so I could hear her body thumping on the sides of the fiberglass and hear her fingernails trying to grasp anything on the tub that would allow her to escape. She started with her bum leg and pulled her body over the top. I knew it was a bad idea from the start, not only because she couldn't see the ground below to allow herself a safe landing...but, also because... I was the landing down below. I could see her face in the light, her hair was covered in chunks. She was squeeling through her nose which created little snot-vomit bubbles as she was pushing out air. She made one full body hurl in attempt to push herself over the rail of the hot tub. I could foresee a disaster happening if she were to land on top of me so I mustered up the last bit of energy that my body had left, and rolled into the pike position like a drunken stick rolling towards the door opposite the hot tub. I didn't see her land, but I heard her whole body hit the ground with one great wet SLAP!!!! against the cement patio that the hot tub was covering.

        Throughout the course of the night Chica rarely complained or showed any sign of weakness. All things considered, she was a trooper. She had broken her leg, got puked on...shit on, and possibly bled on...in her mouth. Her novice and non-reluctant advancement to meeting my family had officially broken her.....literally. She brushed herself off as she opened the door. Looked at both my dad and I who were still laying in a pool of filth and hot tub water on the ground and announced: “I'm going to go ahead and take a shower”. “Oh....and I hope you don't mind that I am not going to bother wrapping myself in a towel before I go to it do you?” Dad just laughed....then he coughed out the words: ”Shit naww, it' wouldn't do you any good anyways, cough cough*”. Dad had the wind knocked out of him, but he kept his sense of humor about him, as usual.

        Chica went inside as dad and I laid in the puddle of filth and just laughed. We eventually got up and washed our drunk asses off in the river a hundred feet or so from his back porch. We went inside and re-dressed her fancy new splint and went to bed.

        The next day, Chica and I went back home and called out of work at the convalescent center. Chica went to the hospital and was fitted with a real cast.

        Chica's dad got the whole story from Chica at the hospital and was forbidden to see me any more. I got a phone call from the convalescent center the next day and they said I was “no longer needed”. I have a sneaking suspicion that Chica's dad had something to do with that...seeing as how they never gave me a reason.....and Chica didn't get fired despite her broken leg and copious amounts of time off for healing a bone that was broken do to excessive drinking and general negligence (that I may or may not have ensued upon her).

        We loosely stayed in contact for a month or so, but never got the chance to see each other again until one day about 3 years later, we ran into each other at the Department of Licensing. She was with her husband of 2 years and had 2 little half Mexican babies with her. We had a very quaint and polite meeting however...

I have no doubt in my mind that on her way home she explained the story of how she broke her leg while operating a vehicle that she learned how to drive in less than a minute...while drunk. Then got patched up by some drunk old redneck, and some douchebag that she barely knew...with a dogs-butt-scratcher and duct tape. Got puked on, shit on,  bled on, and took a bath in human excrement.

In the off chance that she may actually want to keep this story a secret, I took it upon myself to tell the world about this one really bad date.  

-D'Archangel