The Boys of Summer, Part 3

Here's the third installment of "The Boys of Summer," my nostalgic exposé of some wild and crazy times I had with my best boyhood pals at my parent's cabin. You should really start at the beginning, so if you missed part one and two, it ain't no thang, just click and read: Part 1, Part 2.  

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.

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.

And if you missed part one and two, 
don't get sad, get Brad: Part 1. Part 2.

The Boys of Summer, Part 2

Hey pals and gals that are pals, and gal pals of gal pals or pals, here's the second part of my exposé on the great times some of my best friends and I had at my parent's cabin growing up. To read part one, crack a beer and click here. 

Apparently the dock was a pretty great place to take photos. 

The 190 proof Everclear was Dan’s contribution. He stole it from his father’s liquor cabinet and smuggled it north in a plastic water bottle. After we downed a shot in the twin-room tent, we headed to the fire.

Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie” filled the air and was bringing out all kinds of crazy we didn’t know was inside of us.  Mark was wailing on a rake for effect. Chris was head banging while opening a beer. I was stoking the fire and giving it my best Fred Durst. And Dan was slurring his speech.

“Dan, you alright?”

He said something none of us could understand. We looked at each other. There’s no way someone, even drinkers as green as us, could get that drunk off a shot of Everclear and half a beer. We settled on the explanation of Mark’s glance. He’s faking it.

He had all the tell tale signs. The tone in his voice went up, a tactic stolen straight from a poorly-acted Western. His eyes weren’t glassy. And his gestures were too wild and frequent for it to be real. So of course he would elevate the role by falling off the bench. Hitting his head on a log from the woodpile was all part of it as well. And so was the groan. But the blood was real.

We rushed over, still not believing he was actually drunk. But if he was faking it, his performance was Oscar worthy. Any normal teenage boy with face to save would’ve dropped the girlish tone and slurred speech.

“Just kidding, guys. Fuck, did that hurt!”

But that’s not what he said. What he actually said cannot be typed here because it was incomprehensible. His annunciation wasn’t the only unstable thing. His legs were wobbly and it took two of us to bring him back to the tent. The third began implementing operation drunk tent.

The bleeding had stopped and we weren’t about to let a lightweight ruin our fun. So in a matter of minutes we had set up a smaller tent off to the side for Dan to rest in. We grabbed him a bottle of actual water, a bucket for the puke he was threatening us with, and a pillow. We laid Dan inside and listened a bit to his gibberish, holding back the giggles as we instructed him on when and how to use the bucket. We showed him the water and headed back to the fire. 

To this day we have no idea if Dan was faking it or not. Maybe he didn’t want to feel the heat we’d give him if he stopped drinking. Maybe he wanted the attention. Or maybe the Everclear fucked him up right good. At any rate, the rest of us did a hell of a job catching up that night. 

...

            Music was a staple for those weekend escapes, whether we unleashed it from our lungs on the ride up, or jump-jived it into the dirt around the campfire. It was rare, but it even boarded with us when we took the boat out for a spin on the lake. 

The set up wasn’t simple but it worked: momma boombox with child Discman, joined by the umbilical tape adapter. Discman was weaned for MiniDisc, which allowed us to record mixes. This was before the days of burning music to CDs. Then Diamond Rio was added to the family. It was a brand-new device called an “Mp3 Player,” which held a total of 7-9 songs—or 32KB—that you could download off the Internet. This was revolutionary, especially since we were getting all our music for free from a program called Napster. No longer were the days of hauling around a giant case of CDs. The future was here. It was 1999.

Hard rock and “alternative” were topping our playlists. Disturbed. Foo Fighters. Metallica. And yes, even Creed. Incubus was breaking out, new Rage Against the Machine was on the charts, but one song will forever be ingrained into our skulls, whether we want it there or not.

            Chris had taken to “Summer Girls” by LFO like no other. We enjoyed the song, don’t get us wrong, we sang along, we danced, but he was obsessed.

Yup. 

            “Nooooo! Not again,” we’d say, pleading with him to take his finger off the back button. But he’d press it, and we’d listen to it for the fourth time in a row, and we’d sing along, but with melting enthusiasm. With each, “New Kids On The Block had a bunch of hits,” we became more and more sick of the song, sinking deeper into our lawn chairs. “When will it end,” we asked each other with knowing glances. The second we hid the fucking CD from him. That’s when.

…

             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. Women. We needed to hang out with women...

For PART THREE of "The Boys of Summer" click here. 

And if you missed part one, finish your beer and click click here.

The Boys of Summer, Part 1

A summer sunset at the cabin, taken from our dock. 

   

“Fuck that,” I say. “I’m not going to church.”

“Is she serious,” asks Mark. “She’s actually making us go to church?” He, Chris and Dan are all shocked that my mother stood outside our tent in her Sunday’s best at 9:20 in the morning to not-so-gently wake us up through the nylon fabric. Her and dad had just gotten back from the early service where she was instructed to deliver a message from God: the big man wanted to see us in his local office immediately.

“I don’t fucking care,” I say while we're getting dressed. “We’ll drive somewhere and park and sleep or something.”

And that’s exactly what we do. It’s only fitting that I stop my 91’ Honda Prelude—also known as “Goldie Honda”—in the parking lot of a bar, considering we’re nursing the worst hangovers known to high schoolers. The air is humid and shade is scarce, and if not for the cool breeze dancing through the windows, we surely would have died. But sleep isn’t coming easy and I regret not grabbing a pillow before we barreled out of the driveway.

“What do we say if she quizzes us on the sermon,” asks Dan.

We try to push the pounding aches in our skulls aside so we can think.

“Maybe we should go get a program to prove we went,” I say cringing at the slight movement of my head. “Or for clues.”

In actuality, we should know exactly what will be said in church. We met in a Catholic K-8, a devout place of learning and worship, a place where Religion class sat firmly between Math and Science, and where weekly mass was mandatory on top of whatever our parents decided to put us through on the “Lord’s Day.” Some of us were allowed to sleep in on Sundays. Some of us wore the “Christmas and Easter Catholics” label with pride. Not me. My mom saw missing a blink of the Sunday word as a crack in the world’s foundation, an erosion of everything sacred and holy and good. To miss church was a stain on the soul and would not be tolerated. She seemed saintly on the outside, what with her delicious home-cooked meals and tidy home, but waking us up that morning was pure evil.

The clock reads 9:50. Church starts in ten minutes. Plenty of time to go snag a program and slip out without any remnants of Jesus—words, flesh, or blood—clinging to us. But that would involve moving.

“We’ll just say Jesus got nailed to the cross again,” Chris breathes out his cracked mouth. “They realized they didn’t do it right the first time.”

We want to laugh, we do, it’s funny, but the fear of pain reduces our joy to sleepy smiles. 

“He just keeps coming back from the dead,” I mutter with my eyes shut. “It’s been 2,000 years and no matter what we do, Jesus just keeps coming back.”

So we sit. And wait. Time moves, but barely. Our hangovers are terrible, but life isn’t. We’re alive, relaxing and waiting for our heads to clear and while we do a few stories sneak in. Some are legends at this point, and others have yet to be written. Thinking about both, I can’t help but smile big.

...

Fourth of July over our lake. 

The cabin, which rested on the edge of a good-sized lake in northern Minnesota, was exactly what a cabin should be: small. It was hugged by split logs of knotty pine stained a reddish-orange that glowed through the trees with the sunrise. There was a medium slope to its a-frame and greenish black shingles lay neatly on top, protecting the panels and beams of more knotty pine inside, which was planed smooth before it all was assembled in ’64. The entrance split an open room in two, the kitchen’s vinyl flooring on the right and the living room’s green and blue carpet to the left. Straight ahead was the sole bathroom, which divided the only two bedrooms. The one facing the lake was my parent’s and the other, which faced the driveway and road, was my sister’s. Above the bath and bedrooms was a loft. Its four mattresses slept my brothers, myself, and any guests we had up for the weekend. The reasons for why we stopped sleeping there on these summer trips could be summed up in one word: volume. We could be louder if we slept in a tent and—a point that became more important in later trips—we could get away with consuming more alcohol.

A fridge in the shed was where my father and his of-age guests sheltered the weekend’s stash. It was common in size, the kind of fridge you’d find in every kitchen in America, but this one stood stocked from top to bottom with booze. Vodka and other hard liquors sat in the freezer. Below, mixers topped the shelves while rows and rows of beer provided a sturdy foundation. It was these rows that yielded a perfect visual effect for the hourly heists.

Beer operations began during the summer before our Sophomore year in high school. The key, as is the key to any secret mission, was to leave no trace, to maintain an appearance that not a single can had been touched. We would memorize the front row, steal from the back, place the spoils in a bag, restore the front row, and casually stroll out of the shed all in under a minute. Three sets of eyes: one to stand watch and two for the take. Every operation was executed with militarist efficiency and speed and the rush was addicting. 

...

"H2Oak", Collegeville, MN.

The 190 proof Everclear was Dan’s contribution. He stole it from his father’s liquor cabinet and smuggled it north in a plastic water bottle. After we downed a shot in the twin-room tent, we headed to the fire.
Limp Bizkit's...    

                          To read PART TWO of 
                "The Boys of Summer" click here.