drink drank drunk

[the_siobhan]

Over in smogo's LJ he is commemorating the moment in the life of a new pub owner when you first find poo-filled underwear stuffed behind the toilet. It reminded me of a story I've told to my friends on a number of occasions of the drunkest person I've ever seen.

I'll call him Derek.

Derek had a bit of a problem.

Actually, Derek had a lot of a problem.

His drinking problem was legendary among the group I hung out with. On more than one occasion he returned to pubs we had been drinking at the night before with a bouquet of flowers and an apology for the waitress. I took to taking his car keys from him when he first arrived and was still sober because I knew it would save me hours of arguing later on that night. Derek was the person who once fell off my roof at a house party. Once while on a camping trip he got into his car, gunned it up the incline that led towards the road, and over the other side to land splat against a tree. For years when we visited that campsite we would point to the scarred tree, slivers of headlight glass still lodged in it's bark.

In spite of that we still hung out with him, mostly because he was genuinely one of the sweetest men I knew. We would talk to him about his problem, he would agree he needed to cut down, and the next time we got together he would have to be carried home and put to bed.

So it so happened that one of our mutual friends - I'll call him Adolph because that was his name - used to organize these trips out to the Ottawa Valley to go whitewater rafting every summer. He organized a bus, booked the rafts and collected the money. On the morning of our departure we would drag tents, coolers and sleeping bags to the edge of town and collect together outside the subway station bright and early to wait for our bus. The trip was open to anybody and pretty soon we were chattering with co-workers, friends and friends of friends in a big chaotic mob.

The bus showed up and we all piled on board. As we hit the road Adolph stood up, ceremoniously cracked the first beer and the party was on.

I regret to report that we did in fact sing, "100 bottles of beers on the wall".

The campsite belonging to the rafting company was divided into "Quiet Camping" and "Not So Quiet Camping". We elected to camp in the not-so-quiet space. The bus dropped us off and we dragged our things out of the storage bins while Adolph tried to convince the bus driver that he should use one of the leftover rafting tickets to join us. (He succeeded. Our bus driver rocked.) I was busy talking to some of the people I knew about where we were all going to set up our tents so I wasn't paying too much attention to Derek, who was facing away from us and assuming the classic bladder-emptying pose against a nearby tree.

I had just loaded my bags up and my shoulders and was starting to walk away, when out of the corner of my eye I saw Derek sloooooowly tip over backwards.

I and a another couple of people dropped our things and ran over to see if he was ok. He lay on his back with his eyes closed and he was snoring deeply and peacefully. He still held his penis in one hand, a few last drops of urine dripping onto his trousers.

By process of elimination we figured out which collection of gear was his. We rolled a jacket up as a pillow and stuffed it under his head, tilting his face to the side in case he puked in his sleep. We dug out his sleeping bag and threw it over top of him. It was the middle of summer and pretty damn warm, but we figured his modesty was more important and none of us particularly wanted the job of stuffing his dick back into his pants.

We left him there for the moment, figuring he was unlikely to come to harm and went to set up our tents. When we were done we retrieved his and set it up nearby, putting his bag inside. That done, we went back to get him. We found only the wadded-up jacket and the sleeping bag. We put those into his tent as well, told everybody in our group "If you spot Derek, tell him his stuff is here" and got on with our day, figuring we would run into him eventually.

The rafting company made everybody who went on the rafts sign a waiver that they had not consumed any drugs or alcohol for five hours prior to getting on the boat. I saw more than one conversation where somebody who was obviously three sheets to the wind was checking their watch and saying, "Sure! I've got three more hours before I have to quit." The "Not So Quiet Campsite" was hoppin' and there would be more than a few empty spots on the rafts due to overindulgence the night before.

It was long after dark and I was sitting on the beach and talking to an attractive young man I had just met (and who I think was hitting on me) while enjoying the colourful effects of the mushrooms I had imbibed earlier in the evening. I saw something white glistening in the dark and I squinted at it, trying to figure out if I was seeing something reflecting the moonlight or if I had just hit an interesting new peak in my altered blood chemistry.

The glistening resolved itself into the figure of a naked man. The naked man approached us and whatever conversation we were having died mid-sentence. Naked man got closer and we could see that he was soaking wet, traces of damp beach sand marking pale tattoos across his white skin. In my altered state he appeared to be some nature spirit, the anthropomorphized soul of some aquatic Canadian mammal rising from the lake to communicate with us.

He ran up to us. "Siobhan!" he yelled, "Where are my clothes?"

It was Derek.

Attractive man faded into the woods like a puff of smoke and I found myself trying to make sense of what the hell was going on using a brain that wasn't entirely up to the job. Derek couldn't really tell me what had happened to him since leaving the shelter of the tree, he just kept asking me for his clothes over and over again. Finally I led him back to his tent where he thanked me profusely and crawled inside. I left him there, hoping he would stay put this time.

A few hours later I was wandering back to my tent and I ran into Adolph on the path. In my somewhat suggestible condition I could swear I saw the steam coming out of his ears.

"Where's Derek?" he demanded.

I led Adolph back to Derek's tent, but it was empty. In our search we ran into the owner of the property. Who informed us that Derek was currently locked in one of the cabins and was bloody well staying there for the rest of the night. Between Adolph and the owner I got the full story.

The campsite had a few amenities they hoped would appeal to the customers. One such item was a sauna. The sauna itself was co-ed, with segregated change rooms. According to the owner, two women had been sitting in the sauna when Derek wandered in from the men's changeroom, fully clothed but soaking wet.

As well as being drenched to the skin - I assume he had fallen in the lake - he was so drunk he had also shit his pants. He paid absolutely no attention to the women sitting there as he took off his trousers. Then, as they watched in horror, he wrung the filthy water out of his clothes and over the hot rocks of the sauna.

The women fled the rather pungent steam and sought out the owner to tell him what had happened. The owner found Adolph and told him in no uncertain terms that they needed to hunt down Derek before he caused any more damage. The staff had ended up coming across him before we did, and had locked him into a cabin with somebody checking in on him periodically to make sure he didn't manage to off himself by accident.

The sauna was closed for the rest of the weekend while it was taken apart and sterilized. Adolph, the rest of the group and I went out on the rafting trip and had a fantastic time. Derek stayed on shore and nursed a hangover. He was uncharacteristically quiet for the rest of the weekend.

Derek didn't come with us the following year.

Comments

[bellafiga.livejournal.com]

That is the BEST THING I'VE EVER READ!!

[artistatlarge.livejournal.com]

DUDE.

That story rocked so hard.

And YOU rock for posting it today of all days, when I could drag home from a long freakin' day of gigs and traffic and more gigs and more traffic and...

... go to bed with a grin on my face.

Thanks. :-)

[(Anonymous)]

New .sig:

"none of us particularly wanted the job of stuffing his dick back into his pants."


Love ya.

M.

[iamjw.livejournal.com]

none of us particularly wanted the job of stuffing his dick back into his pants.

You know, I think it's just the sheer *poetry* of your writing style that makes you such a wonderful storyteller. :-)

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

snowy_owlet recently pointed me to a couple of books by Haven Kimmel about growing up in Tiny Town, Indiana. I've read one of the two and the loosely-related vignette style of it totally reminded me of your stories here and in crazy_boat. I do hope you'll get enough down in type for your own book someday. I know no one with two or three stories like yours, much less 57. =)

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

I recommend also Jean Sheppard for a similar style.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

That is so godddamn funny! And I love the calm way you write about it...

[lastaii.livejournal.com]

LMAO, that's a thing of beauty :o)

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Not only do you have the best stories, it's the way you tell them.

Hurry up and get that book contract.

[tristam08.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing that story...I loved it.
I also agree with some of the others in that you need to get a book published.

[dj-doc.livejournal.com]

Me too :-)

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Excellent. :)

Why do these stories always seem to involve bodily functions? The guy at the party who just drops his pants and takes a dump on the floor of the lounge, among all the sleeping revellers; the guy who... well, why don't I tell you my tale?

It was a live roleplaying event, about 12 years ago. I was one of the three or four people still awake. We'd been drinking a lot of rum (pirates, savvy?) and watching people make fools of themselves. One youngish bloke, who during the day had been portraying the role of an anthropomorphic tiger (let's call him Tiger Boy to preserve what passes for his modesty) had drunk rather too much during the night and crawled into his small one-man tent. He was a tall skinny chap and the tent was literally only just big enough for him.

Before he went into the tent, he had vomited down his front. Every so often we heard the sound of more vomiting from inside the tent (we were kind, and listened out for any sounds of choking-on-own-vomit from inside the tent). At around dawn, Tiger Boy's tent began to shake, and TB crawled out of it. He was still wearing his Tiger Boy make-up, his leather jeans, and a great deal of vomit, along with a confused expression.

Confusion became animalistic determination, as he stood up, facing us, fumbling at the fly of his leather jeans, and roaring. He was unable to speak English any more, but he was capable of tiger-style roars. He was incapable of finding his penis, and after several minutes of fumbling, he either decided that it wasn't all that important, or that he had already found it, and began pissing anyway, inside his leather jeans. His face relaxed visibly, and I think he might have purred slightly.

Next he began to advance purposefully on another, larger, tent -- a 1970s style family tent. Every so often he looked round at those of us who were still awake. In amused & drunken rapture, we looked back at him. He did a "Schwing" style pelvic thrust towards the tent. I called over to him, "You're not going to try to shag that tent, are you?!?"

He mounted the corner of the tent and began vigorously dry-humping it, until a loud snapping sound heralded the collapse inwards of the tent, and the emergence of a large and angry hippie, who shouted at Tiger Boy and pointed him back in the direction of his own tent, then inspected the damage, and the vomit, and the piss, on the side of the family tent.

As it happened, I'd been made King of the land at that event, so I was careful to give Tiger Boy a knighthood the following day, for drunkenness above and beyond the call of duty.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

That's seriously impressive.

[sharkskitten.livejournal.com]

Oh, my!