THE FLAMING GORGE TRIP, 2001.
Summer of '01, there were a bunch of my friends and friends of theirs going on a camping trip at Flaming Gorge in Wyoming. Probably 30 people all together, rented out several sites, some were tent camping, others had RVs, a few people had boats in tow, it was a scene. My roommate Dan (Stone Cold Steve Austin dead-ringer from the Vegas story) and I decide to drive out. We pack up the car on Saturday morning and depart SLC around 10:00 AM. I had awakened with a 101 fever and briefly considered bailing, but Dan didn't really know most of the people going and I knew he wouldn't go without me, so I sacked up, bought a bottle of Jack Daniel's for the ride, and hopped in his Jeep.
A few hours after departure, we decide to pull off the freeway and stop for lunch in a town called Fort Bridger, WY. By this point, I'd gone through maybe 2/3 of a fifth of Jack, so I had a decent buzz going. As we're rolling into town, we keep seeing signs for "Frontier Days." Neither one of us had a clue what this meant. Evidently, it's a fairly large festival and games. Much like you see Scottish Games every now and again where they do stuff like caber tossing, etc... it was like that, only with Old West skills, like hatchet throwing. As we pull into the dirt parking lot of a log cabin looking restaurant & bar and walk in, we quickly realize that the participants of the recently concluded hatchet throwing competition had retired here for lunch and drinks. As we walk in, there was a palpable tension - everyone stopped talking and was staring at us. Well, not us as much as me. Among the coonskin caps and dusty leather apparel, I was dressed in cargo shorts, a garishly bright Hawaiian shirt and round blue-tinted sunglasses. I basically looked like Hunter Thompson in the "Fear & Loathing" movie, minus the baldness, visor, and cigarette holder. Or to these people, an alien. Loaded as I was, I thought I could use a bold personality and affable humor to charm the locals, so I immediately started cracking jokes : "Howdy, Tex... looks like something done died on your head, Chief. Last time I saw this much fur in one place was when I visited this guy's mom at the whorehouse, am I right?" Not a wise move.
Within minutes, at least half this place was dying to drag me outside and kick the living #### out of me. It probably would have happened had I not had a guy who looked like Stone Cold (down to the physique) standing at my right arm, his presence bought me enough time to calm the crowd down and buy the house a round of beers and shots. This satiated them enough to get us through our lunch and after paying a roughly $250 tab, I got out of there and we were back on the road.
Late afternoon, we arrive at Flaming Gorge. We set up our tent and the party scene is in full force already. Music is playing, ladies are dancing, drinks are flowing. By now, I've finished the fifth of Jack, plus 2 beers and another shot in Fort Bridger, and I begin drinking beers aggressively. I'm probably a 6-pack in when one of my Utah buddies rolls by and whispers to me : "Stick your hand out." I do, and am rewarded with an eighth of powerful 'shrooms. Naturally, rather than eat a cap or two and hand the rest out, I gobble down the entire eighth. A couple minutes later, as I'm looking for something more flavorful than beer to wash the crappy taste of psychedelic mushrooms from my mouth, another friend walks by holding a half-full bottle of Jager. His cousin is with him, the kid's from out of state, I've never met him before. I ask my buddy for a pull from his Jager for palette cleansing purposes and he hands it to me, but as he does, he says to his cousin : "Wait 'til you see this, this guy drinks Jager like I drink water, it's unbelievable." Now, I was really only looking for a sip, but now the stage has been set and I don't want to disappoint my adoring fans. So, what do I do? Drink the entire rest of the bottle, naturally, all in one long pull. My buddy and his cousin are elated, applauding and laughing and I feel like a superhero. For about 15 minutes.
I go back to my campsite and feel like I'm about to heave when a Subaru pulls up and two girls we don't know get out. I guess they've rented the site adjacent to ours. They're moderately attractive and definitely the hippie/granola type - tie dye tank tops and hemp flip-flops, the whole uniform. They introduce themselves and I can barely ####ing see. They don't quite know what to make of me. The sun is still up, so surely, I couldn't be ossified to the degree I appear to be. The b#tch of it is, my mind is working clearly, I can put together coherent thoughts, but something has completely obliterated the ability to send these signals from my brain to my mouth and use it to form a comprehensible spoken sentence. They're asking me questions about what I do for a living and are getting answers that are roughly : "Grvbasjkjkjaskjkll." Dan is translating for me and telling them : "Believe it or not, he actually has a good job. He runs two departments for a brokerage firm..." and they're looking at me like : "Him?" Ultimately, I get frustrated with trying to communicate and I walk off and sit 50-100 yards away from the main camp on a small rock ledge to watch the sun go down.
About 15 minutes later, I'm tripping balls and watching the sunset when I notice the party at camp has gotten quieter. I look over and see two uniformed cops walking through the site with flashlights, as it's now dusk. Immediately, my mind recoils in panic and I wonder what I should do. Run away? Return to camp, act natural and blend into the crowd? Stay where I am and hope they walk on without coming over to where I am? I was pretty sure I had weed on me too, but I'm checking my pockets casually and don't feel any. Did I put it in the tent? Am I too wasted to feel that it's in my pocket? As I'm wrestling with these issues, I'm not paying much attention to the scene at camp. When I turn back around, the two cops are about 2/3 of the way between camp and me and they're striding right to me. I damn near had a heart attack. They walk up and ask what I'm doing. I reply :
"Frrrngppphhphmmmmm" (translation : just watching the sunset, officers.)
Cop : "Come again?"
"Grkafngtimpppplppppp" ("Admiring the view, good sirs. I grew up in New Jersey and vistas like these are uncommon.")
One cop grabs the other and they take a step or two back and initiate a conversation under their breaths while casting furtive glances every so often at your old pal EG. I was nearly in tears at my inability to get my mouth to articulate the pithy (and flattering to their lovely state/park) observations my brain was hatching. I know I'm headed to jail, at this point I can only hope they don't find the weed on me. Is it on me? Just then, they start speaking to me.
"Ohhhhh-Kayyyy. Haaave a goooood eeeeveniiing...."
Why are they speaking so slowly? Is my brain melting? What the f### is going on?
The feeling of relief as they walked away and out of sight was at least somewhat tempered by the unease that had set in as a result of abject confusion. It was what I imagine living the "Snozzberries" scene in Super Troopers would be like if that had actually happened to someone. After the cops were out of sight, two of my friends from camp walk up and I'm looking at them with utter confusion. All I managed to get out intelligibly was "Wh? Whhh?" Maybe by dumb luck, maybe by divine intervention, one of my friends had done me a solid.
Apparently, as the cops were looking through the camp (alcohol was not illegal there and people managed to keep the drugs hidden, so no harm done) they spotted me on the rise and asked what my story was. Presumably, I was going to be headed for the drunk tank, but my buddy looked up, saw me (in his words) sitting there, slack-jawed and drooling, and told the police I was the mentally challenged step-brother of one of the other party guests. They walked up to assess the situation and I was so wasted, they were instantly convinced. Friends, that's how you know you're stewed. I know Tucker Max calls the "ultimate" stage of inebriation "Tucker Max drunk" but I'd be willing to wager that he's never been catatonic enough that with a 15 second review, two police officers were convinced he was actually retarded rather than just plastered.
Anyway, the rest of the evening was a blur of visuals, trails, drunken stupor, etc. Slowly, my ability to speak returned and the balance of the evening carried on without incident. The next morning, I wake up around 6:30 AM in the tent and can't get back to sleep. The sun's coming up, it's stuffy in the tent, and I just want out. I climb out and obviously no one is awake yet. I'm milling about, trying to shake off the effects of my intense hangover with a beer, when the door to one of the RVs flies open and my friend Mops leans out : "Yo !! Come on over, we're making breakfast !" With visions of scrambled eggs and bacon in my head, I jog across the site and up the steps into their large RV. "Breakfast" was a giant bowl of weed and a batch of bloody mary that was being stirred up. Great. Oh well, breakfast of champions it is.
He hands me the pipe and gives me the green hit. What a guy. As I look into it, I see a bud that has, no lie, yellow and orange hairs on it. I had never seen anything like it. He told me he'd gotten it at a concert and that it was grown in Oregon. Underneath it, he had a special treat, an early predecessor of Ice-o-lator hash that one of his hippy friends had made that was purportedly 15-20% THC. So, of course, I shrug and blast away on this thing 3-4 times and pass it along. He hands me a bloody mary that's barely red. I take a sip and it's probably 60% vodka, 20% mix, and 20% ice. He explains that they didn't buy enough mix, so that's what everyone's drinking. Mind you, this is in a 24 oz plastic glass.
I finish the bloody mary and have another beer and realize I'm pretty messed up. I really have to piss, but someone is in the RV bathroom, so I exit and walk the 50 or so yards to the porta-john just across the road from our camp site. As I exit the RV, I note that it's 6:56 AM. I kind of weave my way toward the rancid ####box, enter, and begin pissing. And pissing. And pissing. It's going on so long, I start to get bored. It's then that I realized I don't believe I've urinated since we got here. As I'm thinking about how dehydrated I likely am, I start to feel a touch woozy. I chalk it up to the bloody and bud and keep whizzing. But then I start to get quite light-headed. I'm trying like hell to snap it off, but the piss just keeps flowing. then, I feel even more light-headed and start to worry about finishing up and getting out of there to sit down before I black out.
Cut to : exterior, porta-john. A 60-ish year old woman from down the road in the campground is out taking her morning stroll with her puppy and decides to make a quick comfort stop. As she walks up and reaches for the handle to open the unoccupied (maybe should have turned the lock thingamajig) stall, out crashes the unconscious body of your old friend EG, pants around his knees. I'm pretty sure I managed to get El Toro back in the paddock before I blacked out, but there are differing accounts. I don't know whether those telling me the hog was out grazing were trying to embarrass me further or those telling me that the Shamu show was over were trying to be kind. In any event, I came thisclose to finishing before I lost consciousness, but not quite. I must have fallen to the left as I went out and hit the door that wasn't quite closed and flopped out onto the ground. Evidently, her screams of horror awoke not only everyone in our site, but basically most of the GD campground as well. Word spread like wildfire throughout the grounds that some kid passed out in a porta-john, and there were unsubstantiated rumors that he was mentally retarded.
I finally got up and walked back to camp and thought it prudent to lie in the tent for a while. As I was doing so, I hear Dan recapping the tale breathlessly to the two granola chicks next door. This guy was the King of getting me laid. Every time we met females, he would always rap to them and usually would take subtle or not so subtle shots at me in order to increase his own relative sexual value. I didn't mind at all, invariably, he'd go too far and turn them off, making me look great by comparison. I can't tell you how many babes he chatted up at a bar for an hour, only to ultimately offend. I would then swoop in, bring them home, and knock the bottom out, usually while he listened and probably whacked off from the next bedroom. But I digress. Anyway, he's telling them the story and they're horrified. One of them, I keep hearing say : "Can I go check on him? Someone should give him some water..." Shortly thereafter, the tent flap unzips and I'm waiting to see my patchouli scented angel with an ice cold bottle of Dasani - instead a can of Budweiser flies in at about 50 MPH, just missing my head, hitting the back of the tent, and falling onto the air mattress next to me. The conversation outside the tent :
Girl (very concerned): "What are you doing? He needs water, not beer !
Dan (cooking hamburgers over the fire) : "It's mostly water...."
Girl : "Seriously, he's probably badly dehydrated, that can be really danger-"
*Sound of can opening from inside tent*
Girl : "Nooooooooooooo !!! Don't drink that... you need water !"
Dan : "Ahhh, just fire a f###ing beer in there every fifteen minutes or so, he'll be fine.."
Me (from inside tent) : "Great idea !"
Girl (now screaming) : "WHAT THE F#$% IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE !!!!!!"
Dan : "Hey, open your mouth, I'll fire a f###ing cheeseburger into your skull...."
When he said that, I damn near died laughing. It still makes me laugh every time I think about it, I'm laughing right now typing it. I don't know if it comes off nearly as funny in print as it sounded in his gruff, Steve Austin voice, but in the moment, it was maybe the funniest thing I had ever heard. The granola babes stomped off, not to be seen again until much later that night. We spent the day on the boats riding around the lake, drinking more, throwing up (at least I was, I'm prone to seasickness.) At this point, everyone was calling me "Porta John," a nickname I carry among certain folks to this day. We got back to camp around sundown and granola chick #1 that was concerned about my well-being was happy to see me up and about, but dismayed that I was still crushing beers. I told her not to sweat it and brought her over to the main camp. They hung out and got baked with us and after a few hours, granola chick and I went for a walk around the campground. This got boring quickly, so I ushered her back to the tent. We climbed in, laid down on the air mattress and started fooling around. I was about ready to go, but she was balking a bit and after a couple start-stops, I was about ready to throw her out and pass out. Eventually, though, I managed to get her panties off. This was a mistake. This girl had the hairiest and worst smelling vag I've encountered in 43 years on this planet. It smelled like a Norwegian garbage dump if someone rolled it to the Equator and left it outside for 3 weeks. I almost yorked on the spot. My erection didn't have a chance, it disappeared like a square of toilet paper down a nautical toilet. Of course, knowing her Sun-Tzu, as it retreated, she pursued, but it was useless. As she mashed the ball of dough rendered ineffective by her olfactory assault, I just wanted her to leave. Thankfully, my prayers were answered when a voice called out :
"Seriously, you have the worst smelling p###y in the history of the world !"
Turns out, Dan was in the tent on his side in a sleeping bag the whole time and neither of us had noticed. Granola chick shrieked and bolted from the tent, never to be seen again (by us, she didn't die...) I wanted to console her, but couldn't stop laughing enough to do it. Dan and I were both cracking up, I laughed so hard, I puked some beer up onto the floor of the tent. I said : "Dude, I just yacked on the tent floor", the response to which was a pair of boxer shorts flying across the tent and gently fluttering down over the puke stain. "There, all taken care of," he said, and we both laughed ourselves to sleep.
-THE END-
P.S. The next day, we stopped for breakfast on the way home and I realized I hadn't crapped since we left Salt Lake City. I grabbed a newspaper and headed to the bathroom and passed a log that was roughly the size of a 55 gallon drum. It remains, to this day, the most painful turd of my lifetime.