The Boys of Summer, Part 4

Here's part 4 of "The Boys of Summer," my float down memory creek with some of the best boys stolen beer can buy.  When: my parents cabin. Where: high school, college, and beyond. How: fist pump. You should really start at the beginning, so if you missed the first three, all together now! Uno, Dos, Tres! 

I call this series: Fucking Around with my Camera. 

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.

…

It’s windy. Really windy. And Chris and I are having a hard time finding a place where the smoke from this fire allows for seeing and breathing. It’s being a bully, following us around the schoolyard, making us cry and cutting off our air supply.

And we’re out of ideas. We've removed all the leaves from the flames, spaced the logs apart, and even erected a tarp structure to block the wind. Nothing’s working. We end up diving under the tarp and wrapping it over us. It’s not the most comfortable thing. Chris’ face is blue. My face is blue. Everything we see is blue and the air is thick with plastic. But it beats hanging out with bully blaze.

It’s nice. Just hanging out with a friend, under a tarp. Cracking jokes. Shooting the shit.

“Is the fire brighter than normal,” Chris asks.

“No, man. Seems fine to me.”

We chat on, talking about how much Jesus rocks! In actuality our conversation probably fell between the hottest Playboy playmate, which actresses we’d like know biblically, and which letter of the boob alphabet makes for a better pillow (when in doubt, pick C). Basically the stuff Catholic boys shouldn’t be talking about.

“Are you sure the fire's not brighter?”

“Chris, chill. It’s fine.”

But it’s not fine, and a quick check reveals the fire has hopped out of the pit and is devouring the pile of leaves at our feet.

“Oh shit. Shit! Shit! Shit!”

We hop into action, knowing full well the possibilities. As my dad would always say, “The wind's just right” and it was dry. We trounce every last flame like we’re in a Kid Rock video while laughing our asses off and when victory is declared, we fall back into another pile of leaves and laugh some more. The laughing dies down. The wind doesn't. 

“Wanna go watch a movie,” I ask.

“Sure.”

We spout laugher at the naked trees, douse the fire, and head inside.

…

And yes, it bites.

           My father bequeathed to me a great appreciation and passion for both fire and blowing shit up, which is why I will blame him for Adam’s singed hair. Boredom may have been a factor, but Professor Pops taught me everything I know.  And it was he who decided to leave us alone that day.

            Dad had purchased a 40-acre plot of land for hunting a few years prior. It was the perfect location for a few of our science experiments. We started small, just a few dry ice bombs dropped into a beaver hut. “For the trees,” we shouted as the first one shot mud and branches into the sky. 

            "Holy shit, man." Adam had never seen a dry ice bomb. I flash a knowing smile and prepare the second. The sun is high. The surrounding trees bow in the wind, almost giving thanks for our assault on their main threat.  Shortly after number two, however, the nosy neighbor comes out to put a stop to it all. His dirty looks pushed us into the forest, where our new tree friends concealed our shenanigans.

            There were three ingredients: cardboard, kindling, and gasoline. And the recipe read like this: place piece of cardboard down, splash some gasoline, put kindling on top of cardboard, splash some more gasoline, repeat until stack is two feet high.

“Really? Two feet,” Adam asks.

            “Yeah, man. It’s the recipe.”

            And you have to follow the recipe. You should also follow common sense when it tells you to throw the match. 

            “HOLY SHIT!”

            “Ouch! Fuck, I burnt myself!”

            “You alright, dude?”

            “Oww, oww. It burned my hair.”

            Sure enough, he was right. The massive fireball, that stood seven feet and spread four, had melted a decent patch of Adam’s arm hair.

            “Dude! It burned your bangs too!”

            He grabs at his hair. “Holy shit!”

Now, I’m my dad’s son, and a few scorched hair follicles never stopped him, so we head back to the cabin. Another idea dawns and we rustle up some hiking sized sticks, wire coat hangers, and gasoline-soaked rags. And we fight, but not each other. That’s just stupid. Darkness is our enemy and even the sky isn’t safe. We take turns tossing the torches into the air and running for cover. We stop when the torch slips its wire-hanger knot while 15 feet in the air and the sudden meteor crashes 20 feet away.

            Words aren’t needed because our wide eyes do the yelling. “Holy shit!”

…

            My best campfire story begins the night before the fire was lit. The players are Chris, Kevin, Mark and myself. Guest appearances by my brother and his wife...

Click here for Part 5! 

If this entry whet your appetite for the rest of "The Boys of Summer" and you're too lazy to scroll to the top for the links... all together now! You're! So! Laaaaaazy! 

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.