So. My online friend’n’neighbour Val (from Valleycat, link on the left) on SIT tells me I need to update more often or people will think I am either dead, amnesiac (I think that’s the term, Val) or too good for SIT. For some reason, perhaps politeness, they leave out “lazy.” Option D, if you like; or none of the above. Nevertheless, point taken, Val. My bad. So anyway... I mentioned last time that I would have a doozy of a story to regale you with this time, readers, and hot diggity damn, it’s a winner. So y’all pull yourselves up a chair now, and listen close. Unless you’re offended by public displays of drunkenness, of course. Then you should stop reading right now. And if you’re offended by public displays of private parts, then turn around and head back over yonder to where you came from, because my goodness, this is a story in which bums and knobs and all sorts of things sho’nuff have a starring role. Were there an Oscar for winkies on display in a blog, it would be heading over here forthwith. Okay, so consider yourselves warned. Any moral crusader found loitering with intent to tutt disapprovingly will be shot on sight. The scene: Tony’s 21st birthday party. One of my minions er... protégés from karate is of age and can officially drink and drive in the USA. The limit for that is 18 here, by the way; although the way some parents practice parenting, 12 seems to be a good time to get the sprogs started. I’m showing my age now, but come on, people! So anyway, young Anthony is officially turning into twenty-something Anthony, and there was a big bash planned at his place as is custom for these things. There are another 3 kids in his family – two slightly younger sisters and the youngest child, his little brother Jason, likewise a minion from my junior karate class. Also in the mix, Tony’s mom who I have met once before some years back, and her latest husband. Perhaps not a fair statement; I think he’s only officially number 2, but him and Tony had issues during the courtship – actually, none of the kids really liked him, one way or another – and so I am obliged to side with the sprog on this one. The husband seems nice enough; my guess is because both Tony and Jason could tear him a new one without thinking about it; and especially since Tony – the very same chap referred to in an earlier entry (The MRIs, entry #92 on the right) as Tony the Nazi – is extremely fast and lethal and not small. I think they declared somewhat of an uneasy truce some years back when the husband realised he was there only by the grace of Tony. Nevertheless, I get to Tony’s place and I am immediately cornered by a somewhat tipsy Keenan, who needs some help fetching and carrying wood for the fire. I don’t know too many people at this thing – my other minions and lieutenants have a tendency to operate in a half-hour late window – so I was only too happy to assist. By the time we got back, more people had arrived – probably about 60 in total – and the party was in full swing. The problem with having 60 people having a drunken and debauched party at your house when it only has one bathroom is that it only has one bathroom and 60 people are trying to use it. Tony’s mom, ever the flirt, and IMHO trying way to hard to seem cool in front of her kids and their friends – judgmental, I know, but that’s the privilege of my station, you see – is making sure that everyone has far too much beer and wine, and spirits for the old people, so the queue for the bathroom is long. It is a good thing that a large proportion of the queue-ees were guys, and even more fortunate that across the road from Tony’s folks’ place is a daycare center flanked by a school and a large playground with copious amounts of vegetation. When your bladder is the size of the proverbial football, and you’re a dude, and the Great Outdoors is right there, it’s a bit of a no-brainer. Cue rows and rows of guys peeing into said shrubbery. A word, at this point, on the Way of Things: Keenan is a hell of guy. I hope he would say likewise of me, because I don’t think I do too badly in this regard, but that’s not the point. Keenan may be a little wayward, a bit of a hot-head, a mite on the wild side, a little too impetuous, and far, far too driven by the pursuit of pleasure (his, and other people’s, as Spud declared in Trainspotting), but he really is a truly awesome guy with a heart of gold and a cast-iron constitution and body moulded of pure titanium. I would be tempted to trust him with my life, probably seven days out of ten. It would have been higher, but sometimes he’s just a little too psychotic. I, on the other hand, am merely not shy to the point of seeming downright brazen. However, when it comes to personal safety, I tend to see the logic of not inflicting grievous bodily harm on or about my person, and so I opt to sit a lot of these things out. Yeah, kind-of chickeny, but hey, that's survival. So anyway, amused by the enormous line of cross-legged females hopping up and down and pounding on the bathroom door, we make our way to the line of guys outside and take up station alongside. Keenan – and this is the booze talking – is already fairly loud and raucous. The booze talks a lot through him, it must be said. Once it convinced him to Jackass himself off a roof so that he fractured his ankle on a gutter. Once it suggested setting his backside on fire to do the Jackass ass-in-a-glass stunt. Once it merely hinted at a Jackass-esque game of nutball. Do you see the trend here? This was much milder by comparison, but he did step into the middle of the road and proceed to drop trou, unlike most others who merely unzipped and let rain, and proceeded to shuffle arse-naked (ass-naked in American), bits flapping in the breeze, to across the road to do his pee, then stand on someone’s car and whoop and holler like an idiot, still sans pants. Anyway, he was eventually shouted down and we proceeded back inside, whereupon Mrs Tony’s Mom leaped upon me and showered me with hugs and kisses like I was her long-lost whatever, then pinched my backside and carted me around to all the other old people there (old as in older than me) like her sisters and brother and her dad (who later passed out. How many Grandparents pass out from alcohol at 21st birthdays, for fuck’s sake???) to point me out as Tony’s friend. Why the hell she did that, I do not know. It was a little disconcerting – pedestals are all well and good when you deserve them, but this was not exactly my night and I was the one on parade. Secondly, it's a bit off-side to grope your guests, I thought, especially with your husband and parents watching. In an entirely different way, Tony was also on parade though – his mom had hauled out a whole lot baby photos and stuck them up all over the place with amusing, badly-written captions all over them, once of which was him on probably Day 2 after birth, buck naked and with the reddest set of balls in the world, and some-or-other lewd caption lambasted thereupon. I digress though. Fortunately, Keenan rescued me fairly early on before she could kiss me again and I was dragged thankfully out of there to go and hide elsewhere. “You’ve never met Tony’s mom before, right?” “Yeah, once, I think. At his last birthday party, maybe?” “Ah. Should have warned you that she gets a little touchy-feely-flirty after a couple glasses of wine” “I wish you had, Keen.” “Cool. Now you know. Don’t go near her after the champagne, though, or we’ll never see you alive again! She’s a man-eater.” Forewarned and forearmed, I tried to avoid Mrs Tony for the rest of the night. So the toasts came and went, Granddad’s slurred testament to his eldest grandson barely uttered before the old geezer’s eyes glazed over and he passed out, and many many glasses of champagne disappeared down various hatches and Keenan was soon discovered to be somewhat beyond his earlier stages of “ticking” and “tanked” and had stepped through the realms of “hammered” and “wasted” and had arrived somewhere on “blotto.” He was not looking or feeling his best and one look at him told me and Click and Wim, all of whom were there and thereabouts in the kitchen, that projectile vomiting was imminent. I was charged with the task of seeing to it – Tony wanted him out of the kitchen, for obvious reasons, Wim suddenly had to see to the music and Click was just “no ways, bro” so I took him to the bathroom. Unfortunately, someone had beaten us to it. I don’t mean it was occupied. I mean someone had thrown up all over everywhere. Later reports claimed young (15) Jason was the culprit; others reckon Granddad was the one. Either way, the place reeked and was not a place anyone wanted to be in. Luckily, the copious amounts of vegetation were still across the road, so that’s where we went. Keenan was rambling on about zombies, I think it was, or maybe vampires, or maybe demons – he has a love for the esoteric, especially when it contains demons and angels, but more demons – and we were partaking of the fresh air when my glass of champagne began knocking on the door and I was obliged to take Mr Lizard for a walk, as they say. I don’t know who says it, but that’s the expression I’ve used for some time – much the same as “Going to see a man about a horse,” or in common parlance, going for a piss. It’s just me and Keenan out there at this point, so I head back to the nearest bush and proceed to drop trou. They actually shimmy all the way down to my ankles at this point, but hey, nobody’s around, and so I couldn’t really be arsed about it; not that I would care anyway. Suddenly Keenan’s beside me, again. “What are you doing?” Slurring badly. “What does it look like, Keen?” “Oh. I see. So is this the piss pot, then?” “Only for tonight, I suppose.” “Who puked in the toilet?” “No idea, dude.” He also has a pee; as before, the pants and boxers are all the way down. We are in the bushes just a few steps away from the entrance to the daycare center, wisely barred with a security gate. “So.” “So?” “Yeah.” “So what, Keen?” “Just so.” “Okay. So.” “So.” “Haha you are sooooooooooooooo smashed, Special K.” He doesn’t like being called Special K – slang for ketamine, a powerful tranquiliser used for horses and, for some reason, babies. It has a bad rap though as something once used for date rapes. We use it in the Kellogg’s sense, though, because he is always a complete ball of energy, even at Hell Night at karate, and hence we look at him, shake our heads in disgust and mutter “guess who got it all this morning” to one another. “Yeah. I’m smashed in the piss pot.” “Yeah, dude.” Time passes. Yes, it’s fairly inane conversation. See, guys are not used to the whole communication-while-you-pee thing. That’s the way it is. Even if we were sober the conversation would have been similar. This is why guys can go in a public bathroom without having all their mates along for support. Unlike women. And why having someone talk to you while you pee is so utterly unnerving. “So... if this is the piss pot, where is the... wank bank?” He giggles. Guys don’t usually giggle, but Special K is a giggler of note. “The what?” I may have had a good beer buzz at that point, but phrases like that tend to take the edge of it somewhat. “The wank bank. You’re in the piss pot, I’m heading off to the wank bank.” Surprising, indeed. Not a common topic of conversation, certainly, but hey. I laughed to myself until he aimed his bits at the security gate and started er... having a go... et cetera. I’m sure no further explanation is necessary. Do you believe this guy? I finally convinced him put it away and go inside by actually pulling up his pants for him and telling him that there was a security camera just behind the gate. Even then it was a struggle. I headed home after that, pretty much right away, my Dali quotient up to its limit for the night. Now I don’t want to come down on Keenan. And I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about him. Yeah, he’s a complete nutcase. But he’s a good guy. Rene later mentioned that Special K is prone to doing “weird shit like that” fairly frequently; a worrying prospect since he also is big into shaking hands with people. Rene also told me an extremely amusing story along similar lines which I probably shouldn’t tell the world. For argument’s sake, though, imagine that it’s, I don’t know, some guy who's name begins with K and a friend of his, watching some or other p0rn movie at 14, mutually deciding that this was a big turn on (both of the lads only 14, right?) so it would not be weird to, er... you know... while watching, each on his own chair, of course, nothing gay about it. And then no doubt being rather surprised and horribly embarrassed by having Mr K’s Dad walk in on them halfway through. -d-