You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
Being so hung over your hair hurts. Partying like it’s 1999 and Prince is the DJ in your own private Idaho.
What am I talking about? I’m talking about guys who have circumnavigated the sun 40 times but they are acting like college boys again, who have only circled El Sol half that number.
What am I talking about? I’m talking about boys being boys. I’m talking about a college reunion with a bunch of friends on a mission to create new stories to fill the void where the old stories have become somewhat fuzzy.
These boys weekends, though fun, can be taxing on your brain, brutal on your liver and dangerous to your sense of equilibrium.
On these weekenders where day and night blur together, laughter often erupts from your bowels and random ruminations under the influence flow like wine at a Chinese checkers convention.
This year a bunch of us ended up in Texas. The only beginning was when we landed and group hugged at the airport. The only end was when we hugged at the hotel bar and got in cabs for the run back the airport and the reality of life. Other than that, this boy’s weekend was just one fun filled random moment to the next.
Here’s an example of a typical conversation going nowhere fast.
GODFATHER: I’m excreting Jack Daniels from my pours.
YOUNG BUCK: Did you know you can drink your own piss three times to rehydrate yourself before it becomes toxic to your system.
CRAZY: How do you know this?
YOUNG BUCK: I’m in the military baby. They teach you this in survival school.
CRAZY: So why bring that up now?
YOUNG BUCK: Because I think that piss is pretty awesome! So awesome that it can save your life.
DOUBLE A: Hey only drink your own pee, not your buddy’s pee.
GODFATHER: That is just common sense.
That was ridiculous mind numbing banter that was par for the course. As soon as this stupidity ended, another batch of crazy talk began.
laugh and laugh some more I say.
That brings me to the venue for this insanity. Austin Texas is a city where mini skirts and cow boy boots are the rule not the exception. The sidewalks are clean and the vibe salacious.
The Capitol City of the Lone Star State is burnt orange because of the proximity of the Texas Longhorns. Everything in this blue dot city in a red state is predicated on keeping Austin Weird and Hook Em Horns.
With that said, here are some random ruminations from a trip where laughter was the common denominator.
As you know it’s Halloween weekend. For you that means putting a carved pumpkin on the stoop. It means answering the door a hundred times between 6 and 8pm.
But in Austin Texas, Halloween is an event. It means tens of thousands of people flooding the downtown district, along 6th Street. Halloween means countless scantily clad college co-eds shaking what they got. It’s a boulevard closed to traffic, and cops standing by for a possible riot that never materializes. 6th street is a thoroughfare lined by pulsing music, neon blasting bars and the scent of raw adrenaline. Humanity is so thick along 6th Street, it’s like walking down a sidewalk coated in peanut butter.
It’s 2 am. The bars have just shut down. Every human has been told to get out.
“You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!”
A throng of drunk people flood into the street, inebriated, crazed, decorated with ideas so provocative, so creative, you want to hand out blue ribbons.
There are so many people, so much flesh and confusion, condensed into one street, you can literally taste the body odor in the air. People are staggering across the street, like human pin balls, bouncing off an unpredictable ebb and flow of congestion.
Like so many cock roaches on a hot skillet, moving in every direction, the crowd undulates and scurries, then stops and reverses course.
As you walk through the menagerie of 6th street, you are assaulted by people. Their shoulders and boobs and masks smash into you, coming and going, banging into you like bumper cars in a haunted mansion filled with alcohol.
The night feels like Mardis Gras without the beads but all the skin. The imagery comes in waves, ferociously, aggressively.
I see girls crying here, girls shouting at their boyfriends there. I see costumes so rank Larry Flynt would blush. I see people hanging out of windows dry heaving. I see girls with no clothes and costumes so elaborate you wonder if it took all year to construct.
To help me regurgitate some of these undigested memories, I have asked my 3 amigos for help.
The Godfather, Double-A and Young Buck.
Friday morning, the three stooges of death and defiance hit the ground with a double Jack Daniels and they never looked back.
3 days isn’t three days with these warriors. Three days is literally 72 hours with no sleep and a burning desire to make the next moment greater than the last.
Football games and tailgate parties and cowboy dance clubs and dueling piano bars. its amazing how much you can do when you never sleep.
But if there is one singular moment that will burn brightly in the minds of these men, I would say it took place at 3am Saturday night. It was on the Corner of 8th Street in the shadow of the Omni Hotel. It is here that a young celebrant sat on a wall beside us and entertained us for 30 minutes.
DOUBLE A: What are you wearing for a costume, your purse?
It’s 3am and thousands of people are heading to where ever they go when the bouncers tell them to get out. An attractive young Asian woman arrives. Though it is dark, life’s spot light is upon her. She is slender and athletic. Her hair is silky and straight. She is quiet, emotionless, tired or drunk or perhaps both. What sets her apart from the other 30,000 Halloween celebrants is what she is wearing, or in this case, not wearing.
in short: She has on a pair of high heals, black laced panties and pasties on her chest.
We’re not in a night club called Chivas, mind you. This is downtown Austin. It’s cold at 3 am, perhaps in the 50’s. I’m wearing long sleeves and feel the chill in my bones. She is wearing scotch tape on her bosoms and she is solid as a rock, as if ice is her natural state of being.
We stare at her and laugh.
“Where’s your clothes,” Double A blurts out while snapping pictures of the young ice princes.
She is a Halloween Ninja, staring straight ahead like a pirate preparing to walk the plank. She is a no nonsense character who says not a word. She has a posse of friends, also wearing limited clothing.
As the crowd exits the bars, men stop to gawk, to take pictures, to try and warm her up the old fashioned way. She will have none of it. She politely stands to take pictures with groups of revelers.
When the flash goes off and the laughter subsides, she allows her slinky black hair to flow over her shoulders and cover her very exposed breasts.
This goes on for half an hour. The purpose will never be revealed to us. The motivation for her costume, a question for all eternity.
As we walk the final yards up the sidewalk to the warmth of the Omni Hotel, I hear this conversation among the warriors of the weekend.
DOUBLE A: Did you see how she was trying to cover herself with her hair?
GOD FATHER: She needed more hair.
YOUNG BUCK: If you don’t want to be stared at, you need to wear more than your purse.
In the immortal words of the loud speaker announcement at Maggie Mae’s: IF YOU FLASH, YOU WILL BE ASKED TO LEAVE THE BAR.
And that my friend is crazy.