Oh, hey, look at that! Another photo from the dock. Neat!
At some point hanging out with each
other wasn’t enough. There are only so many dick and fart jokes you can make
and take and after the first night around the campfire we had run out of grade
school stories to rehash. We needed to make some new ones. Girls. We needed to
hang out with girls.
Enter Rico Suave.
“Dude, Rico fucking Suave.”
Sorry. Rico fucking Suave, Chris’
sudden alter ego. Clearly he saw the need to guide us in the ways of picking up
women.
“You gotta be Rico Suave,” he says.
“Rico fucking Suave,” says Mark with a mocking smile.
Step
one—and one is all you need with Rico—get ‘em with the giggles.
We
had made it a habit of snagging at least one meal per trip at a restaurant across
the lake. Food wise, it was nothing to brag about, but it always had at least
one or two female prospects, not like we were going to do anything about it
anyway. Well, that was until Rico showed up.
He
flirts with the waitress that served us, literally the only women of our age in
the place. She seems receptive to his brand of humor, so he tries out the best
joke he can think of.
“I
left a coupon with the tip.”
“You
what?”
“Yeah,”
he says with a smile. “It was a foot long sub for the price of a six inch.”
We
laugh. We laugh some more.
“What,” he asks with a shrug of his
shoulders. “She laughed.”
We
pause and consider that the playful gesture may have worked, getting him the
closest we’ve ever gotten to picking up a woman at the cabin.
“Hey, Brad,” Mark says. “You should
ask her if she and some of her friends want to come back to the cabin.”
“Yeah,” Chris chimes in. “It’s your
cabin. They could chill with us by the fire.”
Fuck. Not cool, guys. This isn’t
my department. Yes, I'm an entertainer, but nowhere in the weekend get-away brochure
does it say anything about women. And what the fuck happened to Rico?
I shake off the nerves, pop a
dinner mint in my mouth, and approach her.
“So, have you worked here long?”
She gives me a crooked look.
“Ah,
yeah. Why?”
“Ah,
I just have never seen you.” My confidence is eroding like a sand sculpture in
a windstorm. Quick! “When do you get
off?”
Her face is blending awkward and
confusion before my eyes.
“Well, I mean, the reason I ask is
because my friends, you should bring some friends.” FUCK! “We’re having a bon fire tonight and you and some
friends should come hang out with us.”
The confusion disappears. Awkward
doesn’t.
“Ahh, no thanks.”
I
nod, turn quickly, walk past Chris and Mark and out the front door of the
restaurant into the parking lot.
“What
happened?” Mark says catching up.
“Yeah
man,” Chris says.
“She
said no.”
“Dude,
Rico Sua—“
“Shut
the fuck up Chris and get in the car.”
They
laugh. We laugh. And 20 minutes later we’re back at the campfire, rehashing our
newest story.
...
There was one time when we were
actually successful in enticing girls back to the campfire. Their names
were Kayla and Francis and, not surprisingly, they worked at that same
restaurant.
We had been playing darts while
flirting with them. We asked if they'd come have a few beers at the campfire and,
to our delight, they said yes.
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Wait, what?"
"Chris, you're ruining the fucking flow of my blahg. Just say "yes"."
"Yes!"
We gave them directions before leaving and about an hour later they were sitting with us around the fire, drinking stolen beer, and telling us their stories.
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Wait, what?"
"Chris, you're ruining the fucking flow of my blahg. Just say "yes"."
"Yes!"
We gave them directions before leaving and about an hour later they were sitting with us around the fire, drinking stolen beer, and telling us their stories.
I’m not even gonna try acting like
I know what all was said that night. Truth be told, I was half in the bag. But
we talked about what all teenagers talk about. School. Extracurriculars. And me being
gay.
What?!
Exactly. For some reason Mark and
Chris thought it would be hi-larious to convince Kayla and Francis I was gay.
Maybe they were jealous of my bleach blonde-tipped hair or Goldie Honda. Or
maybe they were threatened by my innate ability to make these two women laugh.
I’m not sure, but it didn’t sit well with teenage Brad.
PAUSE. Public service announcement: There is absolutely nothing wrong with being gay. I have the utmost
appreciation for the LGBTQ community and their bravery to be themselves in times and places where it may be frowned upon is nothing short of
inspiring. Some of my best friends fly the rainbow flag and I love them, not
just because they’re gay, but because they’re also amazing people, looking for what we all want and need: love.
But this was around the time in our
Catholic-upbringing adolescence when being called “gay” wasn’t a good thing.
Unfortunately, looking gay or talking gay wasn’t a good thing either. And
convincing two women we lured into our man den that I was gay was a terrible thing!
I’m the host of the party. That’s
my MiniDisc player and my umbilical tape adapter thingy and I’m the one who has
to deal with my parents if they catch us drinking the stolen beer we’re all
trying to pretend we like. Sure, the world is my stage and I have a flair for the dramatic, but those are two things I have in common with all comedians. But now I’m gay?!
“Is he really gay,” Kayla asks to
the two people she shouldn’t be asking, because clearly I can no longer be trusted. With an air of “All is fair in love and
war,” Mark and Chris confirm what they know to be false.
“I am not gay,” I tell the girls,
almost pleading for them to believe me, but they’re not buying it. And now I have no chance of touching boobies!
You know what? You’re gay. You’re all gay. Your boobs are gay, this fire
is gay and this party is suuuper gay. Imma take my gay anger and my gay beer and
find a nice patch of gay grass on which to lay and look at the gay stars. Gay,
gay, GAAYY!!
So that's what I did. If their plan was to eliminate me from the equation, it worked. But you know what? I saw a shooting star and something that looked like a shooting star but turned out to be a satellite. So take that, assholes.
...
Not our lake. One far Superior.
A campfire is the great uniter. It has the power to
bring a group of people together to talk over its destruction and absorb its
creation, to draw out the words that would’ve been kept secret, and to
illuminate memories burned into forever. Fire was another staple of those
trips, the greatest and the original...
For PART FOUR of "The Boys of Summer" click here.
