It all started Saturday morning. According to my clock it was 9:30, and I should have been in a deep slumber. But no, I was awake and sitting on the toilet, waiting for the inevitable whiskey shit. It had been Fitz's birthday celebration on the previous night, and I'd gotten myself wasted beyond belief. I was so far gone I'd karaoked the Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk to Fuck."
So I found myself scrunching up my face, trying to force the diarrhea that had to come, and nothing happened. I'd farted pretty loudly, but that was about it. I gave myself a cursory wipe (Just In Case), and I forced myself into the shower.
Remember this shit business. It'll come in handy later.
Anyway, I headed out to Jay's because we were going to go camping way out by Utica. I don't remember the name of the place. Hickory something-or-other. Jay and Stephanie gave me directions, and they told me that they were going to stop off at Dave's place first before heading down to the campground, just to make sure we were all together on the same page.
We went down to Darien, I think, and Dave joined our wagon train. We were shortly on our way to Utica. It wasn't as long as the horrible, ill-fated journey I made out to Red Oaks in Wisconsin, but it was still a long time to hang out in traffic.
On the way we stopped at a Wal-Mart in Ottawa (their motto: "This is the first place Lincoln's voice was heard") because Jay and Stephanie needed to replace their air mattress. Stephanie was the only one of us who was doing anything productive; Dave distracted Jay and I by coming around the corner with a huge fuckin' box. It took me a moment to realize that he was holding the new Millennium Falcon. It came in a box so bit that it had handle-holes cut into the sides.
"Look at this!" he said, grinning. I was impressed. When I was a kid, I'd always wanted the Falcon, and my mom never had enough money for it. (The only thing I wanted more than this was the original Megatron, for the record.) Not only were there at least ten Falcons on sale, but they all came with Han and Chewy. I looked at the diagrams of the inside of the Falcon, and I realized how privileged kids were these days. I'm sure the original Falcon was nowhere near as cool as what Wal-Mart was selling to today's kids.
It was selling for $150. If I had money, I would have bought it on the spot.
But no, this Falcon sighting only aroused the geek within myself, Jay, and Dave. While we were pouring over the Star Wars and G.I. Joe toys, Stephanie was walking around looking for an air mattress.
Eventually she succeeded, and though the pull of the toys was almost overwhelming, we managed to break free and get back on the road.
The first thing I did when we found our campsite was to set up my tent. I knew I had to hurry because everyone was ready for lunch. While we were waiting for Cindy and her boyfriend to show up, I threw my tent together, but I didn't have enough time to start into my booze. That was fine, I thought, because we were going to get a burger for lunch and then go out hiking.
I should have known better. Before the hike was through, I'd be screaming for alcohol.
We all noticed that there was a huge gnat population where we were camping. Across the gravel road and by the corn, there were none. However, we started spraying each other with bug spray, so we were in fairly good shape. The gnats still got caught in our arm hair, and we had to keep blowing them out, but we weren't so bad off.
Soon we were ready to head into town, and I caught my first glimpse of Utica. First, let me tell you that they've been unfortunate enough to not only get flooded recently, but they also had a tornado come down that killed a dozen people, so they've been on edge for the past few weeks. As Dave drove us into town, I saw a sign that said there were about a thousand people who lived in Utica. Aside from that, the only thing I was able to glean from this sign was that Utica was "historic."
I'm horrified to say this, but the newest thing I'd seen in that town was the sign that declared it to be historic. And for the record, of that thousand people at least half of them are bikers, and very few of them are young. You wouldn't think it just to look at the town. Without seeing the people, you'd think that it was a dying farm town. No, the first thing we saw in the downtown area was a row of motorcycles, and a bunch of grizzly, middle-aged guys and gals sitting on or around them. I'm not kidding when I say that there were biker families out there. The younger folks, those who didn't escape from this small town, undoubtedly came from the older bikers we saw sitting outside of rickety old bars and leather shops.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Utica has blown away over the night. Many of the houses are about a hundred years old and crumbling away. Occasionally you'll find a few "USA all the way!" signs in front yards (surrounded by pink flamingos and lawn gnomes and jockeys and bird baths and Virgin Marys and a surprising number of other lawn ornaments), and other patriotic declarations, but you can tell this town is on its way out. Even the industrial areas seem dull and inactive and uber-religious. For instance, when I was leaving town I saw a bunch of Christians holding hands and begging the Lord to stop fucking with them. I don't blame them. Do you think you could take a tornado and a flood, one after the other? God clearly hates this cursed stretch of Illinois. You have to be stupid or stubborn to continue living here. They have a plague of gnats and natural disasters, and they don't have sex shops. It's sad to see such a doomed place, where people pray 24/7, and they constantly gnash their teeth and gnaw at their own tongues.
In Utica, they drive cars that are at least three decades old, and they operate out of storefronts that might have been new when Jesse James was robbing trains. If you ever want to see a live-action definition of entropy, stop by Utica.
SUS SAVES, says a sign. I know what they mean, but someone clearly doesn't give a shit about anything in this town. Religion has failed these people, and the government isn't helping. For Utica, it is the end times. The ultimatum has been handed down: evolve or die. And these people have chosen to die. Given the current economic situation, I don't blame them.
The burger in Duffy's Bar wasn't all that great. The environment was pretty cool. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's always St. Patrick's Day in Duffy's, considering all the green flags and mannequins dressed in green and the genuine love of Guinness, but the cheeseburger crunched when I bit into it, and a burger should NEVER crunch. Jay showed me the very pink insides of his own burger and suggested that he might have wound up with mine instead. He then proceeded to point at me and mock, for which I cursed his name and the waitress that accidentally switched them on us.
While everyone else was finishing up their food, I felt a familiar rumbling in my guts, and I thought now was finally the time to get rid of the whiskey shits that have been living inside me for several hours. I went to the bathroom and regretted it instantly. First of all, there was a scrim of wet filth on the seat, and secondly, if you had to sit down, you would have to sit sideways because the toilet paper roll was too big, and it went where your legs would go.
Not good. I decided to piss instead. A wise move. In the process, I let out a horrible strip-the-rust-off-an-engine fart. It seemed to relieve my guts, at least temporarily.
After the meal, Cindy and her boyfriend fled back to the campsite, and I later wished I'd gone with them. Instead Jay, Stephanie, Dave, and I were going to a hiking trail in Starved Rock.
At first it wasn't so bad. There were a bunch of stairs leading down to the path we would eventually take. I'm not talking a few flights of stairs here, I'm telling you there were at least 500 steps before we reached the path we would take. It wasn't so bad going down them, but . . . I'll tell you later.
The guard rails (where they had them, anyway) were surprisingly ineffective. If I wasn't watching where I was going, I'd probably wind up taking a fifty-yard drop. but that is neither here nor there. I like an existence without guard rails. However, there would soon be parts where I'd be surprised they let anyone walk, much less walk without guard rails.
I remember there was one part where we were descending a bunch of stone steps, and we were in a dark and spider-webby place. A lot of you are writers, and in such places you know how your imagination runs. Well, mine went in kind of a Jack Ketchum direction, and I said to my companions, just before we reached the bottom of the stairs, "This looks like a good place to rape someone." And it's true. I'd hate to be trapped in this area after dark, where a rapist or serial killer would be able to run amok and do as they wish.
Karma would make me pay for my lack of discretion . . . .
Before long we found ourselves off the gravel path and wading through mud. The floodwaters had receded, but here we were, slipping and sliding through a bunch of mud on our way to the bottom of the crevasse.
Things were going decently until we reached the Bridge of the Damned. Maybe it was straight and even fifty years ago, but now it was so lopsided that in order to cross it you had to hold both rails and step lightly, or you'd slip off and fall into the stream. We all managed, but on the way back . . . well, we'll get to that later.
The next thing I knew we were on a mud path where no human being was meant to walk. I knew things were bad when I started holding mossy rocks and dead tree limbs to prevent myself from taking a spill down the mud hill and into the filthy, green-scummed stream.
And then I looked up and realized we were a hop, skip, and a jump away from scaling a fucking CLIFF. There was no path, we were just traversing hills and rocks and fallen logs to get to the end of our journey.
We were all stumbling except for Stephanie. While I hung back, bitching to Jay that we were drunkards, not athletes, and that we should be back at camp drinking booze, Stephanie was hopping along without a care in the world, as if she were playing in her back yard instead of stumbling over impassable terrain. She was just about jogging along, and the rest of us were grasping for flora and fauna, trying not to fall into the mud. She taunted us from afar as we produced impossible amounts of sweat.
Yes Jay, you have chosen your mate well. In that moment I was convinced that Stephanie was Satan Incarnate.
After crawling over rocks and logs and streams, we finally reached the end, which was a rocky crevasse with a circle-shaped mucky stream around the inside walls. I found a rock and sat down, trying to get my heart rate down while wiping my sunglasses free of steam. Yes, I was so exhausted and sweaty that my sunglasses were fogging over. My hair hung in strings around my eyes, and my chest and arms were slicked over with sweat. My boxers were so soaked that it felt like rocks were tied around the insides of my jeans.
Meanwhile, everyone else explored. They crossed streams and walked through caves and the whole time I sat, catching my breath.
And then it came time to leave.
"Wait," I said. "There's an elevator that's going to take us out, right?"
"Uh, no," said Stephanie. "We have to go back the way we came."
"What?! No!"
It was horrible. I suggested that we call 911. I was fully willing to claim that my leg was broken, just so we could get a helicopter lift out of there. It was bad enough to take the path down to this filthy hellhole, and now we had to go back the same way? Maybe it was my imagination, but I seem to remember thinking there was a family down there weeping at the very prospect of going back. They were screaming and cursing God and rending their flesh with their fingernails. I knew how they felt.
I briefly considered taking up residence down there. Surely it wasn't so bad living in the crevasse. Of course, there was the constant threat of flooding, but I was fairly confident that I could live out the rest of my life down there.
But they were insistent. We were leaving.
As we clambered over mossy boulders, I remembered thinking I was touching the fuzzy nuts of nature, and I suddenly hated everything around me. I started drafting a letter to the governor of Illinois in my head. Dear Blago: You're a businessman, and I know you, like other politicians, are interested in paving over everything in sight so you can build houses no one can afford as far as the eye can see. I hate to tell you this, but you've missed a spot. This rotten crevasse must be filled in at the earliest possible convenience. Granted, it's not good land to build on, but I think you can put an Ewok village there on the cliffs, or perhaps an Eloi town like in the awful remake of THE TIME MACHINE. Think of the possibilities. And if this doesn't appeal to you, remember: this path is not handicapped accessible. Don't you think people in wheelchairs would like to see this so-called nature? Pave this fucking place over. Now. [NOTE: Blago is now on trial for corruption. This could have all been avoided if he'd paved over Starved Rock in the first place. I'm just sayin' . . . .]
Anyway, on the way out I noticed a family with well-prepared boys using walking sticks to traverse the hard parts. They were doing a good job, and I hated them for it. I considered knocking over one of the younger ones to steal his walking stick, but I didn't think that would be wise, since their dad was standing nearby. I'm sure my friends would have backed me up under ordinary circumstances, but I feared this situation would be a bit too grim even for them, so I kept my thoughts to myself.
Along the way I nearly slipped down the hill and into the stream, but I righted myself at the last second by holding a tree trunk. It was in that moment that I felt a burning at my rectum. Yes, the whiskey shits were threatening to push out. I knew that if I slipped for whatever reason, my pants would be full of shit because of it. For the rest of our journey, I tried to keep my thighs together from The Fear.
Going across the lopsided bridge was even harder this time because our feet were covered in mud. Sure, none of us had taken a fall (which was purely a matter of luck), but our footwear was sopped from sole to ankle with mud. Trying to keep our balance on such a poor bridge was nearly impossible, as our feet tended to slide toward the edge.
But we made it, and eventually we got back to the rape stairs. The going was a bit rough, but we made it to the top, where the smarter people had decided to stay.
"Is the going good down there?" an elderly couple asked us.
I immediately responded that only a fool with a deathwish would go down there. "The going is treacherous," I said. "Good men are dying down there for no good reason at all."
That seemed to get the idea across to them. I told them that it was beautiful down there, but no beauty was worth going through hell to see. They could see the very same thing from the bridge many yards up without having to go down there.
I think I saved lives that day.
"Which way should we go?" Stephanie asked.
"Whichever path leads to the car," I said. "I've suffered enough today, thank you."
So we started back toward the parking lot. The path became a lot easier to traverse until we reached the stairs that would bring us back to the offices. Holy shit! The exorcist didn't have to fall down this many stairs.
The others were transfixed by the beauty around them. I was filled with the overwhelming desire to shit my guts out. While they stood on a platform, I started the long and savage trek up the stairs. It felt like I'd been going up them forever, and I started noticing that my feet were no longer lifting up high enough to get to the next step. My legs were starting to go numb. I didn't think I was going to make it.
I looked up and saw just as many stairs leading up as I had before. "NO!" I screamed. "What am I, in the movie, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS?! I'm stuck on a fucking mobius loop!"
Still I trudged on, and when I looked up after about three minutes, I saw the exact same amount of stairs. It was enough to make me want to gnaw my own face off, but still I continued, thinking, "So this is how Frodo felt on his way to Mt. Doom."
To my right, something moved, and I realized it was a chipmunk, hopping merrily along its way. I took it as an insult, so I shouted, "Fuck you, nature! Fuck you in your horrible, shit-reeking ass! I was always on your side until now! Now I understand why the corporations feel the absolute need to pollute everything in sight! For your crimes against me, I demand that you surrender yourself to be paved over!"
And then I reached the very top, and I shouted, "HA! Fuck you! I beat you! I beat you!" And then I cringed, remembering the end of "The Raft" in CREEPSHOW 2.
Nature did not strike back. Parents, on the other hand, looked aghast at me and covered their kids' ears, turning them away from the ugly, sweat-stinking spectacle of me shouting obscenities at nature.
And I wasn't even drunk.
Hikers, fresh and smiling with ignorance of what lay before them, looked at me funny, but fuck them. When they get to the bottom, they'll realize the reasons for my angst.
I rushed to the bathroom, and after shoving my muddy jeans and sweat-soaked boxers down, I slid around on the toilet seat as a shit rocket shot itself out from my insides. I trembled for what seemed like ten minutes as my guts spewed out into the porcelain bowl. While I suffered in my stall, the guy in the stall next to mine was cursing God's name and shouting all manner of racial epithets to his own shit. I wondered if he'd gone through the same ordeal as me.
When I was done, I tried to flush the toilet. The water swirled and sputtered, but it wasn't enough to handle my action. When I tried flushing a second and third time, I noticed that nothingt happened.
Something moved inside the toilet. Something that had once been inside of me.
When your own shit comes to life, it's time to go. Fuck it, I thought, I'm getting the hell out of here. I drank a midget's worth of water before stumbling to Dave's vehicle. We then drove back to camp in the relative comfort of air conditioning.
Shortly after arriving, after being swamped with gnats and mosquitoes in spite of the bug spray, we were able to hold them at bay by starting a fire. When the flames started to climb, we were pretty much bug-free, and then the debauchery could begin.
Good music, great whiskey, good times. As soon as the bugs were no longer an issue, and I was no longer considering having a state preserve paved over, I was able to begin enjoying myself.
Cindy and I had made a deal. She can't drink whiskey, and vodka drives me crazy, so we thought it would be interesting to swap booze. She agreed to drink from my Wild Turkey as long as I drank from her vodka. When she took her shot down, I think it scarred her for life. Each time I waved the bottle in her face after that, she seemed disgusted with not only me but also herself. The vodka was actually not that bad for me. The taste revolted me, but I didn't do anything crazy. Normally one shot is enough to send me raving and naked into the dark, howling obscenities that God hadn't even thought of, but I remained sane. In fact, I even remember the entire evening. This is a rarity for me.
But the hike had taken its tool on me. Not only did my leg muscles ache from the horrible "trails," but so did my arms from trying to keep myself from sliding all over the place. I was so tired that we only got through about three-quarters of the bottle of Wild Turkey before I gave up and stumbled off to my tent. This was probably at about 12:30, and as soon as I was ready, I stripped down naked and crawled into my sleeping bag. At first sleep came pretty easily, but when I woke up in the middle of the night, I realized how fucking freezing it was. It wasn't as bad as the first time I'd gone camping as an adult, when I'd shared a tent with a very flatulent Dave and nearly got frostbite, but it was still pretty bad. I was too drunk to think of putting clothes on, so I curled up and put my hands between my legs for warmth. I then passed out again.
It was then that I had the dream. The gnats and mosquitoes had come back, and they were crawling all over us. Instead of a campfire at the center of our get-together, there was a hog's head on a stick sharpened at both ends. Flies were buzzing all around it, and it was talking to me in a language I didn't understand. The only thing I knew was it was Beelzebub, and we were trespassing on his land.
I told him to fuck off because I was the master of my campsite. Beelzebub growned and spat a cloud of bees at me, but I started screaming about how I was the real fucking Lord of the Flies, and he was just an animal's head on a goddam stick. The head then melted away from the stick, revealing my own face beneath it.
Near dawn I woke up on my back, and I felt something heavy on my belly. It took me a moment to realize that it was a thick log of morning wood. My scrotum had shrunk to the size of a walnut, but my dick seemed to have grown an extra inch. It was radiating heat as if it were a fire in itself.
I was grateful for the extra warmth. I curled up and tried to keep the heat against my belly.
Very soon, I wanted to go out and get more beer, but my erection wouldn't go down, and it started to drizzle. I sat in my tent, listening to the patter on nylon, eating a sandwich with Flaming Hot Cheetos. Still, it was like a crowbar was resting between my legs. I started fearing that maybe I had priapism, that my dick would remain hard until it rots and falls off. I'd read enough Darwin Award stories to know that this was a very real possibility.
Thankfully, blood rushed to other parts of my body, and I was able to get dressed and get outside with everyone else. I had a few more beers (and a few discreet swigs of Wild Turkey) before I packed up my tent.
The rest of the trip wasn't all that great. We were going to go hiking again (this time with real trails), but everything was flooded and infested with gnats. We decided to cut our losses and go home.
One more thing: That morning, as we were sitting at our table waiting to be served breakfast, we overheard a few older guys talking with each other about the 2008 election. One of them said, "I was talking with a black guy, and he said that he was voting for Obama because he was black. I then said that I'm not voting for Obama because he's black. How does that make me a racist?"
Jay and I exchanged glances, and we all but slapped our foreheads at this man's stupidity.
Anyway, I got home yesterday and felt way better than I should have, considering all that I'd drunk. I should have wanted to die, but I was in pretty good shape. I didn't even need to take a nap. At the end of the night I drank the remainder of the Wild Turkey and still felt pretty good.
All that remains to stand testament to the camping trip are my red fingertips (from the Flaming Hot Cheetos) and the mosquito bites. Last night I clipped my nails because there was so much dirt and Cheeto dust under them. Now, I cannot scratch the mosquito bites.
I am the fucking Lord of the Flies.
It's a beautiful city, John, but I would advise you to never go to Edinburgh. The stairs are worse than the ones you depict here, and there are more of them.
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