Once Bitten, Twice Shy.

Many years ago, as some of you may remember, there was an unfortunate situation in Rhode Island involving the band "Great White", some pyrotechnics, and a bar full of people.  Given my inherent goofiness, I'll forgo making light of that topic as it would be wildly inappropriate.  Luckily this isn't really about that.

The thing happened with the fire, and that was awful, so there was some speculation as to whether the band would continue their tour.  The next gig they were scheduled to play was at a favorite  hangout of mine in Oklahoma City called the Classic Rock Cafe.  That bar is now closed, which isn't my fault as far as I know.   I was not aware of the fact that Great White was supposed to play there until I showed up with a group of friends for a run-of-the-mill night out, and the marquis out front gave it away.

"Holy crap" I said eloquently, "Great White is supposed to play here tomorrow!"
"Holy crap!" said everybody.  Then we all forgot about it and commenced ordering drinks. 

"Everybody" included the following folk:
Me, (colloquially referred to as Gorilla, Lurch, High-Tower, Grape-Ape, Bjorn, or Too-Tall depending on some factor or another that I've never figured out), Taco, Pierre (P), Grump, and Jim.  Jim hadn't been around long enough to acquire a nickname.

Grump put away a few beers and became increasingly excited about rounds of shots.  Tequila happened a few times.  It was at this point that one of us happened to notice that there was some commotion outside.

There was a little deck on the side of the bar facing the street, and the marquis.  We piled out onto the deck, and found to our delight that a news crew had set up and was getting ready to shoot a story with the marquis in the back-drop about the situation regarding the Great White tour.  "Will the Great White be continuing their tour.... etc. etc... "  was what I imagined the story would sound like.

A reporter with too much makeup and a scarf was checking her hair and getting her microphone situated, cameramen fiddled with tripods and lights, and the driver of the van helped as best he could by standing nearby smoking a cigarette.  I quickly realized that the backdrop of the shot included not only the marquis, but the deck of the Classic Rock Cafe as well.  That's where we were.

That gave me an idea.  I turned to Pierre and pitched it to him.

"Dude" I said.  "Let's stage a fight in the backdrop of the camera shot!"
"Alright" said Pierre.

I was thinking about how to go about staging said fight when I noticed P had begun reaching back behind him for something.  I was impressed, he didn't even look... he just reached back and closed his hand, so I figured he'd found it.  Then I noticed that hand coming towards me, and I figured he wanted to show me whatever it was he had there, so I leaned in to get a better look. 

That hand was getting awful close, and I watched it, dumfounded.  Had P forgotten that I no longer wore glasses?  Now, I used to wear glasses, but it had been a while and I certainly didn't have them on at the time, so I wondered quietly to myself as to why he'd think I needed such a close look at what he had there.  Surely I wasn't so near-sighted as that.  

He punched me square in the mouth.  Stars appeared briefly, which soon morphed into penguins in sombreros.   

I reeled around like a lopsided dreidel for a minute, then collected what little wits I had about me and did the only gentlemanly thing I could think to do, which was to administer a bear-paw to the side of P's head as if he'd come between me and my cubs. 

He hit the deck like mortars were incoming, but popped back up as if he'd packed his wallet full of bouncy balls.  Next thing I knew we were scrapping like school-yard kids over a botched game of tiddly-winks. 

Then, suddenly, we weren't scrapping anymore and I found myself sitting inside around the table with a bottom lip bigger than if I'd stuffed an entire pack of Big-League Chew in there.  P was holding his ear, rather tenderly.  We ordered more shots.

Later that night, it became obvious that we should probably go home or die trying.  The waitstaff brought us coffee on the house, which tells you something right there. 

Cell phones existed, but none of us had one.  There was a period of time when not everybody had one... that's how long ago this story took place.  Grump saved the day.  He walked past Taco, who was hitting shamelessly on the oldest woman I've ever seen in my entire life, and blatantly stole some lady's phone that she'd left sitting on the bar.  He called my girlfriend to come and pick us up and slipped the phone back to that lady as smoothly as a career ninja.   

She showed up and we piled into her car, I had blood all over my shirt and looked like I was trying to smuggle a baseball in my lip.  None of us could walk particularly well. 

Jim called the trunk, which made the rest of us jealous because the trunk is by far the best place to sleep on a 30 minute car ride.  We stopped at Whataburger and Grumps pants fell down while he was ordering.  He didn't pull them up, he just shuffled around with his tray full of burgers and got twenty five little cups of ketchup from the condiment pumps like nothing was the matter. 


Then ten or fifteen years passed and I forgot about the entire story until a few days ago when I turned on the radio and that song by the Great White came on, "Once Bitten, Twice Shy", and I simultaneously realized that not only did I have a tale to tell pertaining (vaguely) to that band, but the song isn't even very good. 

I have no idea if the news crew had the cameras rolling when Pierre punched me in the mouth, but I sure like to think they were.  Maybe it's the romantic in me that still believes... somewhere, deep in the archives of some reporter's closet, is that footage. 

It'll resurface when I run for president. 

Porta Potty of Doom: True Tales of Horror and Suspense

The year was 2006.  Summertime, Balad Air Base, Iraq.  I'd been living there for about a year and a half, working as a radar contractor for Lockheed Martin, and was beginning to feel like a permanent fixture.  It was about hot enough to fry an egg on my forehead. 

It had been a relatively uneventful standard 12 hour work day at the radar shop, and all I wanted to do was get back to my room so I could watch.... documentaries... and go to sleep.  We loaded into the truck and, since the shop was located between two runways on the airfield, radioed the air traffic control tower for permission to cross.  It sounded like this:  

"Ground, radar 1"
"Radar 1 ground"
"Ground, radar 1 is at the ATCALS site, we'd like to enter delta eastbound, cross 1-4 and bravo and exit south of the tower."
"Radar 1 hold short runway 1-4."
"Roger, radar 1 will hold short runway 1-4 on delta."

And we held short.  It was at this point that I realized I had to pee.

Nothing happened for a really long time.  No planes landed, no planes took off.  We sat there in the truck and waited for the tower to contact us.  Finally, after about 40 minutes or so, most of which I spent doing the seated pee-pee dance in the back of the truck and contemplating power-washing a section of the flightline, a drone came buzzing in at about 4 miles per hour.  It landed well short of us and turned off the runway.

"Radar 1, ground.  Proceed as requested, report off."
"Radar 1 copies, proceeding across 1-4 and bravo.  Will report when off."   

It always happened that way with a new batch of air traffic controllers.  It takes a while to get used to a new airfield I guess.  At the time, however, I found it hard to be forgiving since my eyeballs were floating and whatever muscle it is that keeps people from peeing themselves was just about strained to the point of failure.

We parked the truck and I bolted. 


The room where I lived was in a compound surrounded by a chain link fence; cypher-lock, big concrete barricades and all that.  It was towards the middle of the compound, so there were a few hundred yards between the gate where we'd park the work truck and the small island of comfort that my little window-mounted air conditioner struggled so valiantly to maintain.

I ran ahead, got through the gate and made a bee-line for the nearest porta potty.  It was only about 25 yards away and I reached it in about five strides.

The second I opened the door to that 120 degree torture chamber I knew I was in trouble.  The blast of rancid heat that greeted me was enough to simultaneously cook and gag a maggot.  I toughed it out and stepped in.  On the left wall hung the little urinal thing.  It was filled absolutely to the brim with foulness.  When I say full to the brim, I mean if someone with an eyedropper had administered one more single drop of liquid, the surface tension would have given way and created a new Lake Nasty on the floor, populated with chunks of urinal mints and chewing gum.

I turned to the main bowl and began decompressing at maximum capacity.  As I regained some modicum of relaxation, I glanced to my left and peeked out of the little vent that all porta potties have around the top.  I can do that, because I'm 6'8".  It's a little known perk.

There, coming toward me at full speed was Mike, our radio maintenance guy.  Mike was 5'4" or so, and  fairly round.  He had his head down, his shoulder up, and was stampeding purposefully towards that left wall of the porta potty upon which hung that grotesque receptacle of evil and bad things.  I looked down at it in terror as each of Mikes thundering strides sent concentric circles vibrating like a nervous chihuahua across the surface of the dark and vile pool of filth.

Mike didn't know.  He couldn't have known.

He might have known.  

I bailed in mid-stream, scrambled backwards for the door, fumbled behind me for the latch, and barely had the door open when every pound of Mike slammed into the side of the porta potty like a wrecking ball.

The world slowed down.  A Mike-sized dent in the wall pressed in towards me, carrying the now mobile instrument of death mounted there along with it.  The liquid within became a living thing; coiling, poising, angrily gathering its strength even as I fell in slow-motion backwards through the door.  The structure shuddered.  My soul shuddered.  Indeed the entire world seemed to shudder as that resilient plastic reached its limit, paused for effect, and snapped itself back into shape like a rubber band.

The resulting explosion blasted disgusting in every direction with the force of a hellfire missile.  My ponderous bulk was in a state of free fall, through the door and out onto the rocks.  Everything from my knees down was still at ground zero.  Just as the top half of my body hit the ground, my unfortunate shins and shoes were struck by the excrement detonation and were rendered instantly unworthy of ever being worn again.

I scrambled like a frightened squirrel trying to get out of a dryer.  My pants and shoes were off and in a pile on the ground even before the blowout had finished happening.  I knelt on the blisteringly hot walkway retching miserably as Mike and a number of other spectators doubled over in laughter at my expense, thinking only that I had been interrupted in the middle of taking a leak.

When the door to the chamber slowly swung open and the full impact of the devastation became apparent, that bastard Mike laughed even harder. 

I walked in my underwear the remaining few hundred yards to my room, on hot rocks in my bare feet, past dozens of armed military personnel, none of whom said so much as a word.  What was there to say?  I got back to my room, got my things and hopped in the shower for so long Lockheed Martin forgot I worked for them and put out a job listing for my position.

Good times.