The Senior Bowl Drank-Down

Hooo-lawd! Now THAT’S what I call Hoodoo-in’ to a standard, y’all.

Now, I know…we can’t take all the credit for Bama’s curb-stompin’ of the hapless Aggi last weekend in the friendly confines of ole Bryant Denny, but dayum. I mean DAYUM. That, my friends, was a beat-down the likes of which this ole boy just didn’t see coming.

It’s no co-inky-dink that I returned to my Hoodoo roots with a story of drunkenness last week, and you all followed suit with your various tales of self-soiling and chemical imbalances of your own. A long-time Hoodoo-er, our beloved Fitty, said last week that he was a’feard the Hoodoo way of life was dying. For a moment, I may have agreed with this tin-foil-hatted sage of the Georgia pines, but alas, following the spark that lit BDS aflame last Saturday, I am here to proclaim to you that our Hoodoo is alive and well.

For certainly, such a dramatic turn of character can only be attributed to the supernatural, right? I mean, Bama shape-shifted from an ant-eater in its games against Ole Miss and Arkansas to a pure-dee pack-ee-derm stampede in that match-up with those God-forsaken Texicans. So surely, surely there must be something to this Hoodoo after all.

While I may try in my elder years to remain a Child of Light, sometimes, one simply has to call on the Dark Arts for support in this temporal plane. Thais here Hoodoo will be the fuel that burns like coal in the Crimson Tide’s engines moving forward, so please, by all means, fellow travelers…keep on shovelin’.

Based on the return to my former ways and the aforementioned dramatic results, this week I will spin for you a tale that harkens from a bygone era: the narrative of a journey, if you will, into the very heart of darkness itself (read- Georgia.) For you see, I have not often left this particular piece of Terra Firma with which I have become so familiar in my four decades of living. I’m Bama through and through. Born here. Raised here. Educated here. Lost my virginity here. Just about every pivotal event in this ole boy’s fertile life has come on this little section of earth we call Alabama. I just love this state enough to have rarely left its boundaries.

Sure, I’ve traveled a little. Went to Canada once, Nova Scotia to be particular, to see the homeland and birthplace of my grandfather, a man who fell to MS seven years before my tiny pink feet first laid flesh to the Alabama clay. I’ve been to Baton Rouge, but that’s about as far west of the Mississip’ as I’ve ever found myself. Been to Tennessee, and saw enough to affirm my previously-uninformed suppositions about the toothless-but-breasty nature of the Hill-Philistines who inhabit that craggy snag of Appalachia. Tennessee is one of those places that would be beautiful if not for the people who crawl about all over it like the inbred hill-people that they are. Tennessee rivals only Britain in terms of dental lack: it is most definitely anti-dentite from stem to stern if the filthy mouth-holes of its native inhabitants serve as any proof or evidence. Just dirty, y’all, dirty. Some of y’all live there, and I truly feel pain in the depths of my soul regarding your exile (whether self-imposed or otherwise) from the Great State. (Com’on home, y’all, ya hear? Just no reason to do that to yourselves, the soul can only take so much soiling before becoming indelibly marked. And nobody wants a puke-orange soul…clashes with everything.)

Now I’ve well accounted for my deep, deep hatred of the butt-chuggin’ barbarians at the northern gates, those who count Krispy Kremes and Krystals as two of the five major food groups. Those hound-dog-sodomizin’, meth-lab buildin’, big rock-paintin’, cousin-lovin’ rock trolls rank number one on my personal Official and Approved Ledger of Hatred (Abridged edition…it also comes in braille because blind people hate too, y’all.) A lot of you hate the Boogs chiefly, some have developed a distaste for Corndogs so strong it turns the stomach. But for me, it’s those cotdang Vile rock-creatures to the north that sully the otherwise sterling reputation of the SEC member nations. I’d tolerate two Boogs, a passel of Corndogs and dadgum Razorhawg before I’d even give stern consideration to giving safe passage to a UT fan. Now I understand, this level of hatred is not rational, I’ll agree with that. It is guttural, inbred (but not like the Tennessee variety of inbred), intuitive. I didn’t have to be taught to hate Tennessee (though my mama figured she ought to teach me anyway to make sure the genetic predisposition took.)

Therefore, I’m about to lay down a Hoodoo tale full of mystery and intrigue, a strand woven with intricate fibers full of Hoodoo goodness. If Hoodoo was counted in apples, this here tree’d be loaded up by the bushel basket. So without further deliberation, sit a spell and let me unwind this tale for you and, of course, Football Loki. May the gods be appeased (and you be entertained) by this, my humble offering.

In my post-college days, I did a little bit of diddy-boppin’ professionally speaking. (Sure that’s a professional term, a technical term, even. Means I just kind of drifted purposelessly for a while before setting my sights on my career target.) After graduating with high marks from an institution of high-repute, I elected instead to follow my familial roots back into the soil. I went into horticulture for a while, serving as a master gardener at a local cemetery, and later operating my own landscape design company. I loved the work, as I am an outdoors type of cat in the first place. Working with plants was always easy for me, because they do what you tell them to do and they don’t talk back, which means they can neither judge nor argue. In retrospect, I probably should have just married a nice live oak or indica azalea.

But that, of course, is a dissertation for another day. During this care-free time frame, I spent many, many, many nights partying with my friend Mook and his girl, a couple whom I’ve spoken about in these parts many times before. We were very close, despite the third-wheel nature of our arrangement.

Now I have an uncle, my mother’s only brother and my grandmother’s youngest child, who was always the cat’s meow with us kids. He was, and still is, a double-naught hell-raiser. Let’s call him Uncle R for the purposes of this story. Uncle R was, and still is, the most fun-lovin’ person with whom I’ve had the pleasure to spend any meaningful time. The man just knows how to get down, that’s all there is to it. Money was never an object, as he made millions working for Picker (selling hospital equipment) and playing the stock market. He later obtained his doctorate from Florida State, and then settled in with Georgia Southern’s business department. The man is not only fun, but he’s a genius. Very intelligent, very driven.

That said, again, he knew how to have fun. He took me and B-Rad to our first Senior Bowl, showed us how to tailgate, how to eat a rib sandwich. He even showed us how to be badasses, tossing a full beer in the face of a fellow game-watcher after the cat kept spilling beer on our heads from the bleacher bench behind us. It was so col, the guy just stood there drippin’, knowing that to raise a hand would ultimately result in his prompt ass-kickin’ in front of a bevy of friends and family members.

Uncle R took me to my first college football game, which in a Hoodoo aside, was not a Bama game. For my birthday, he took me to the ’89 Sugar Bowl which featured his FSU Noles and the cotdang Aubs. Of course, Deion Sanders intercepted Reggie Slack’s game-winning touchdown in the end zone, and Uncle R introduced me to my lifelong love of taunting the fans of fallen opponents.

So when Uncle R announced that he was getting remarried at his home in Statesboro to a lil’ anesthesiologist 20 years his junior whom he’d met in some River Street bar in Savannah, we were overjoyed. Not only would we be seeing our favored uncle proceed into the halls of wedded bliss, but we knew there’d be a party the likes of which that poor country burg had never known. And since partying was our M.O., we three musketeers (Mook, his girl and I) were ready to roll out on the eight hour journey into the heart of the Georgia hard-pan.

Now bear in mind, this wedding was to occur in July. I’ll go on the record as saying that no outdoor activity – not sports, not weddings, not lawn parties, not croquet tournaments…nothing - should ever be planned in July if it is to take place south of the Mason-Dixon line. It’s just too damn hot. The gates of Hell themselves are chilly compared to the exterior climate of the Deep South in the summer. And Statesboro is routinely hotter than the Devil’s cod-sack, I tell you what…just unpleasant to say the least.

We arrived in Statesboro and immediately found it to be as hot as the surface of the cotdang sun. It was ridiculous, you literally couldn’t stand within 20 feet of the stainless steel smoker upon which the whole hog was roasting for fear of bursting into flames spontaneously.

Being of sound financial standing, Uncle R’s son B-Ri and his college compadres had a lake house in which they lived.  This was to be the site of the pre-party, the party before the wedding, which was also followed by a party (I told y’all these folks like to party.) It would also be where we’d sleep, i.e. rid ourselves of the alcohol demons we had so willingly allowed into our pie-holes the night before.

So the pre-party went well, lotsa beer, lotsa girls in my wheelhouse, plenty of dope to be smoked. My cousin B-Ri’s friends were all cool, more aligned with me and Mook in terms of debauchery than my usual conservative and toned-down cousin-kin. B-Ri was the straight-laced one of our bloodline, always the gentleman, a quiet cat who all the old folk just loved.

Enough genealogy. On with the tale. Now let me say, Mook’s girl was mousey at first glance, a pre-med student who made good grades and held down a job while in school, a hard worker. But once the alcohol and weed came out, that girl went crazy. You have to watch the mousey ones, as they’re always the life of the party once the liquor begins to flow. Now by my tastes, she was uglier than a mud fence with a gate made out of dicks (as y’all well know, I prefer the more fluffy females amongst our population, and this poor child was as slight as a red wasp’s waist.) But she knew how to have a good time, and was good company that kept our usual outings from becoming absolute sausage festivals. For the purpose of this story, I’ma call her J-Thin.

We wrapped up that glorious first night of partying with a good night’s sleep, knowing what was in store on the following day. I over-consumed, of course, but was not in bad shape as I shook the dew from my head the next morning. Mook and his girl were sharing a bed in the same room in which I was sleeping on the couch, which originally seemed harmless enough. After all, I stayed at their apartment more than I did at home, so such sleeping arrangements were common and all boundaries were always properly observed (literary device alert…this one begins with an “F” and rhymes with “moreshadowing.”)

We dressed and attended the wedding the next day, a lovely little affair in a quiet bed and breakfast in Statesboro (if you’ve never been, the town is something akin to a metropolitan Mayberry, very quiet for a college town…also, from the worthless trivia file, it is the home of Zaxby’s…carry on) The food was wonderful, the drink ample, the women beautiful. Despite the nicety of the event, we young’uns were ready to shed the conservative clothes and get back to the lakehouse, where we could rip-roar out from beneath the watchful eye of our elders. Not that they would have cared, but you know, there’s just something unnatural about partying balls-out in front of your grandmother…just not appealing to all but the most deviant among us.

As soon as we could, we split for the cabin (which had been named “The Stabbin’ Cabin” by this point because it was the geographical location upon which we all hoped to engage in carnal pleasure throughout that last night in Georgia.) Many of B-Ri’s roommates already had girls, and those girls brought a few more girls for the single outliers like yours truly. The plan was to head back to the cabin, change, grab enough liquor to float a battleship and take a midnight ride on the pontoon-based houseboat owned by one of the roommate’s father. Pure heaven, I thought.

This particular houseboat was rather bare of things like furniture, lighting and other such amenities. In fact, I think it was just a pontoon boat upon which someone had built a closed-in cabin. The proprietor was an ornery cuss, a man who despite his stage four renal failure, refused to give up the love of his life…grain liquor. His son, like my cousin B-Ri, was a little more straight-laced. Seems something about having an ape-shit crazy father makes one introverted, as if the progeny must perpetually hide from the shame dished out by his paternal kin.

But this ole cracker daddy, let’s call him Big Will, kept that dadgum boat stocked with liquor. Mostly Absolut vodka, which was fine by me. We lit into it early and often as we trolled about that 20 acre lake, making round after round, screaming at this couple making out on a dock each time we passed. I’m sure it was quite irritating, but we were blissfully ignorant in our alcohol-induced collective stupor. Only thing that mattered was drankin’ that drank, feelin’ the gentle, humid wind beating my face and feelin’ the press of some girl’s thick bare thighs alongside mine. I hadn’t known her before, but we paired off pretty early, had made mouthy-mouth, let my fingers do a little walkin’ when we’d drift into a darker portion of the lake’s cypress-encrusted banks.

After a while, I noticed whispering amongst B-Ri and his friends, the kind of whispering that belies a plan being hatched and/ or confirmed. Whispering and laughs. The whisper train moved down the track to Mook and his girl, and he blurted out a laugh while nodding in drunken agreement as the pontoons gently cleft through the subtle ripples on the water’s surface. B-Ri went back to the helm, and Mook approached me and this girl, who will remain nameless.

“’Ay, B-Ri says we should go swimmin’ up here at Lil’ Will’s house, he has a pool.”

“Uh, well, I don’t have on my bathin’ suit, cat-daddy. I reckon I can…”

“Naaaahhh,” said Mook, issuing forth a trailing spittle of drool as he spoke (dude was D-R-U-N-K).

“You don’t need it.” Then he laughed like a mad man, which even for an intoxicated Mook, was somewhat unnerving.

Apparently my accompanying young lady had some idea what was to follow, as when I asked her if she wanted to go swimming, she laughed and said “I’ve been wanting to swim with you since I met you at the party yesterday!”

“Oooo…kay?” I was confused. These Georgicans were a little too enthused about swimming for my liking. I mean, being a child of the Alabama Gulf Coast, I too was fond of watersports (and candid photography, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.) But being drunk and horny, the absolute last thing on my mind was swimming.

The pontoon motored on, and from my spot on the stern, wedged between an auxiliary gas canister and this femme fatale next to me, I could tell that we had set our course for a light atop a high bluff. As we got closer, the light took on the greenish-blue glow of a mercury vapor light: it seemed to be a beacon of some impending danger or another, like a lighthouse warning sailors off of a rocky shore.

Too drunk to care, and with my hand firmly wedged between the ample upper thighs of this beautiful young woman, we arrived at the meager dock arrayed at the bottom of the bluff. It was barely a pylon to which one tied a boat, not the type of robust pier I was accustomed to frequenting my part of the country.

Because of my proximity to the gas fumes and the emissions of this elderly outboard motor which was pushing our party skiff, I decided the admirable thing to do would be to get a puke in before continuing the night’s activities to pre-purge. After all, the expected vigorous events to follow would certainly cause a boiling in my belly, all of the in-out, in-out and such, you get the picture. I told yon lass to go on up and fetch ahead with the others to the swimming pool, that I would be with her after making us a couple of drinks. In reality, I was indeed going to make drinks, but I wanted to privately puke myself dry before proceeding. Pre-emptive puking: the sign of a true alcoholic.

It was at that point that another cousin who had been privy to the previous conversations came back to talk to me. Now this cousin was a different kind a cat…very different. He had struggled with mental demons for many years, but bless his heart, he is a wonderful person who just drew a bad hand from the Maker when he stepped into this plane.

He, like me, enjoyed partaking of the toke. He unfurled a tightly rolled joint and lit it before passing it to me…once I wiped the puke from my mouth and went about the task of preparing drinks.

“You know, they ain’t really gonna be swimmin’ up there, don’t ya?” this cousin, who I’ll call Virgil, said to me.

I was perplexed, didn’t understand the words that were tumblin’ out of his mouth. Was this some sort of ambush set up to snare your faithful narrator? I was taken aback, and asked for further illumination.

“Man, they are plannin’ on skinny dippin’ and they figured if they told you, you wouldn’t go.”

“Are you fkn kiddin’ me man?” I, indeed, did not want to engage in said activities with members of my blood family and these backwoods Georgican heathens. Yes, sure, I’d had a dream about skinny dippin’ with the lot of their women the previous night before, but that was the soma-induced delusion of a young man plied with far too much liquor and other exotic intoxicants. NO, no this would not stand!

(On a side note, I think it an opportune time to remind everyone that every summer, Mark Richt gives his players a “Swim Day” as a respite from the grind of practice. Draw from this your own conclusion…carry on.)

Virgil and I finished the joint, and I thanked him for the intel. We were the only two on the boat, and being the vengeful sort that I am, I decided I would steal the craft and elope back to my quarters in the lakehouse to spend the night in solitude. However, my wily cousin B-Ri Had secured the keys on (or about…since I don’t reckon he was wearin’ garments in the commission of said swimmin’ excursion) his person.

“Dammit!” What was I to do? I couldn’t spend what would surely be hours alone on a pontoon boat while the remainder of my party engaged in pleasures of the flesh. Virgil said he was going to go on up and see what was going on, and tell them that I wasn’t coming up. That Virgil, I could count on him.

He climbed the stairs of the bluff and disappeared from beneath the bluish halo of the mercury light. About 20 minute elapsed before I saw him coming back down the hill, and by this time, I had discovered Big Will’s Absolut stash and was well on my way into the heart of it.

“They said come on up…that girl you was attached to said she wanted you up there, too.”

I was tempted, but remained steadfast. You see, no amount of feminine magnetism can overcome my ardent desire to never see any of my cousins, particularly my male ones, unclothed. Just ain’t right, just so many reasons why that’s not right. I had skinny-dipped with this girl or that, even did it in a group once in the dark swimming hole off of Highpoint Blvd. in Mobile. But none of those people were my cousins, and I had lived a rather full life up until that point without ever having viewed familial nutsack, not even a glance.

“Nope, fuck them and fuck her. I ain’t goin’ up there.” Despite my protests, being of a writer’s mind, I wanted more details. “I mean, what’s it look like up there Virg?”

“Worse than you can imagine, OWB. Some of ‘em are down in the pool, but those are mostly the girls, so you can’t see much tit. The girls got all their good parts covered. But there’s just coinpurse all over the place up there, dudes just straddin’ coolers with their nuts out, just peckers layin’ all over everything. Just not a good scene, man, not good at all.”

That was exactly what I had feared. I was sickened and drunk, drunk and sickened. And for once, the two were not interrelated.

I punched the aluminum siding of the boat’s cabin, and yelled a bunch of profanity up the hill, cast around the terms “nasty mffkrs” a good bit. For you see, copious amounts of Absolut have a mysterious way of limiting one’s vocabulary, as if by some quirk of Norse black magic (big ups, Loki.)

After a few minutes, Mook came down wearing boxers only, along with his ever present flip-flops (the official footwear of South Alabama.)

“Doooood, you gotta come up heeeere, man!” He proclaimed. Virg rolled his eyes behind Mook’s back. “Man, those hot chicks all got their titties out and shit, man, it’s awesome! Com’on!”

“Fk you and those bitches’ titties,” I said. “Y’all shoulda told me what you had planned, I’da jumped off the boat and swam home. Y’all are nasty. I love lookin’ at titties, but not if I gotta hack through a jungle of cock-and-balls to see ‘em.”

Disgruntled, Mook trudged back up the hill. If there was anything he’d learned in his time around me, it was that if OWB was pissed, then he was going to make life miserable for everyone else. I continued yelling, added some “whores and pimps” into the diatribe, swore off alcohol, threatened to take pictures and hand them out on the local campus if they didn’t hurry up. In the meantime, I had caught quite the buzz, not just from the vodka, but from the ever-present gasoline fumes I had been inhaling for well-more than an hour by this time. I was beginning to get the “wah-wah’s,” which for those of you who are not inhalant fiends, means you have huffed plenty o’ gas.

The party began its descent from the bluff, with more than a few of the females noticeably absent. Apparently, they heard my verbal barrage and were so ashamed that they could no longer face me, so they stayed at Lil’ Will’s place with the pool. My girl was among them, which all but insured me of a sexless final evening in Statesboro, GA.

The only girl left on the boat was J-Thin, but she was full blast. The Southern demureness that had shamed these Georgican girls was lost on J-Thin. Not that she wasn’t demure and proper in her own right when sober, but right now, she was as drunk and debaucherous as your average frat boy in the midst of a rush-week bender. She was hollerin’ from the back of the boat, daring Mook to pinch her titty, just all kinds of outlandish stuff was going on. I attempted to shame them, but she was not having any of it.

“You just stick’n mud z’all, you don’t know ‘bout fun.” She told me. Then she flashed her smallish (but admittedly well-sculpted) breasts at me along with the infamous call of the party girl, “WOOOOO!”

Effin'-A. What had happened here? I’d just seen the hangers of my best friend’s girl, and I was not excited about it. I had lost all respect for B-Ri, he of public nutsack. And any shred of dignity that I believed Mook and his woman had harbored within their souls was cast like a dry leaf on the breeze, sentenced to float directionless in exile from the finer regions of my morality.

We made it back to the lake house, and I silently collected my things, along with what remained of the vodka, and trudged off to the sleeping quarters, which were in a framed-in area between the pylons upon which the house was built. I could hear the hootin’ upstairs: loud, drunken country-type revelry. Bocephus on the stereo, smoke everywhere. I finished the vodka, put the pillow over my head, and tried to drown it out.

Not long after, I heard stirring in the room. It was J-Thin. The couch upon which I was sleeping was near the bathroom, so I figured she’d come down to use the facilities. However, I felt her hand on my leg.

“Hey, why don’tcha come on upstairs, we’re gonna get in the hot tub?”

I pulled the pillow away from my head to find her standing there. Topless.

“I want you to come…WE want you to come.”

I recoiled in horror. She giggled. I yelled and flailed and she left.

I went back to sleep. After what seemed like a short time, I heard motion in the room again. This time, it was Mook.

“’Ay, check ‘is out.” I pulled the covers away from my head, only to find the screen of a digital camera in my grill. Upon it was a pic of the boys sitting nekkid, balls out, on the edge of the hot tub, along with J-Thin, still topless.”

“WHAT THE F IS WRONG WITH Y’ALL!” I was irate, kicked him in the ribs real nice, right in the sweet spot. I was sleepin’ amongst freaks and deviants…deviants who SHARED MY EVER-LOVIN’ BLOODLINE!

I left violated. I felt something akin to Burt Reynolds’ character in Deliverance. I was a stranger in a strange land, and I had no route of escape, no recourse short of taking a boat oar to the heads of all parties involved.

With the prospect of a Georgia murder charge deemed unsavory at best, I elected to try to sleep. And for whatever reason, they left me alone. Now, there was rather loud, aggressive copulation that transpired in that room once Mook and J-Thin decided to turn in for the night, but some earbuds and a Fishbone tape drowned that out rather nicely.

When one engages in such nefarious acts, the worst chapter of the dissertation is always the next morning. Once the liquor wears off and the events of the preceding evening sink in, the cloak of shame is impossible to escape as it drapes around one’s shoulders. I didn’t want to look at those people, but alas, such was my fate.

For you see, what awaited that morning was the most uncomfortable eight hour car trip of my live-long life. I don’t know that I said a word, and it must have been appreciated because no one else said a word either. To this day, I can’t look either one of them in the eye without thinking about this horrible atrocity from my past. We have never again spoken of the events of that evening. None of us.

Moral of the story: Beware of boat rides to nowhere. Also, never, ever, ever gaze directly into a familial nutsack, as to do so will result in your flesh being converted to granite or some shit.

Hate the Vols. Hate Orange. F Tennessee. Roll Tide Roll.

The Senior Bowl De-Bock-le

A’ight then, y’all…we made it through another week.

That one was close…scary close. Between the tenacity of those dadgum Razorhawgs and the mishaps of our own beloved Tide, we were lucky to leave that rain-slogged backwater with a W. And I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout the presidential type neither, I’m referring to the victory that keeps our hopes of redemption alive…not matter how decrepit we may have look at times in that there football game.

Now I know Our Dark Lord has shown his displeasure at those of us who found fault in the Tide’s come-from-behind win of Arkansas. He even went so far as to get miffed this week during media sessions, which, granted, he is oft liable to do. But cotdangit, fans of the Tide can’t help but wonder what has gone astray this year, amirite?

We can blame the offensive line, or the fumbles. We can blame poor pass defense, or a drop-off at the quarterback position. But me, I tend to become more introverted during periods of travail such as this one. I ask myself, “Am I Hoodoo-in’ to a standard? What about my previous week’s performance could have contributed to the karmic ass-whuppin’ Football Loki has done dropped upon our heads?”

I’ll take the blame for the Ole Miss loss. Too many typos in my Hoodoo, I wasn’t focused completely, didn‘t treat each sentence as though it had a life of its own. That one is on me. But honestly, folks, I just can’t figure out what could have gone astray in my Arky Hoodoo to put us in such a precarious position. I’d ask each of you to look within and ask whether or not you’ve given this Hoodoo thing your 100 percent.

In the course of my thoughtful self-analysis, I realized that in general, the Tide is propelled to football greatness on those occasions upon which I spin tales of debauchery. I presume Football Loki is a Dark Sider, as he appears to enjoy vice and ill-gained pleasure. Therefore, for this week, I’m going back to my roots, y’all. We ‘bout to get crunk up in here.

This week’s story evolves from the era of my coming of age, a time when I was on the brink of pushing out of the sweet nest of college to take flight on wings of my own (feeble as they may have been, to follow the metaphor.) I must admit, this story carries with it a great deal of personal shame to which I have only recently come to grips through persistent meditation (which, notably, auto-corrected to medication…Ah spellcheck, you bastard, you know me so well…) and prayerful consideration of the responsibilities each man must take upon himself as he tows the barge of time through this little thing we here in this dimension call “life.”

But as a man and disciple of ODL, I must take accountability for mine actions and cast this embarrassing tale of drunken revelry down upon the Hoodoo ledger to satiate the ever-growing hunger of the football gods (heathens though they may be) and help propel my beloved Crimson Tide to football victory. So, here goes…

I, your humble narrator, am the eldest of my generation on both my mother’s and father’s side of the family. You first-borners out there know the weight such a placement puts upon one’s shoulders. 

Always the caretaker of the little ones when the adults needed time alone, always counted on to make responsible decisions rather than lead our younger siblings and cousins into danger. I filled this role to the letter, standing by like a crossing guard when we kids would walk to the corner store for penny candy. My grandparents on my father’s side had a swimming pool, and I was often times left to serve as lifeguard for the kids while the adults engaged in “adult” activities, if you know what I mean. If you know what I mean, you’ll also understand that in that particular Catholic side of the family, the flock of sheep with which I was charged was rather large, and keeping them all safe from Death’s icy grip was a Herculean task, at best. Hell, I’d have rather arm-wrassled Hercules himself than carried this responsibility.

At home, with a working mother and father in absentia for reasons pertaining to his lack of phallic control, I was often left to watch over B-Rad. This paradigm played out as we grew older, as I felt a responsibility to look out after my little brother. So much so, that he didn’t even know that I had indulged in any illicit narcotics until well until my college years, when we ultimately discovered our mutual interest and began partaking together.

In my junior year of college, I turned 21. As the eldest of my generation, that mean that I became the designated purchaser of alcohol for all of my underage cousins and relatives, including B-Rad. Fault me if you must, faithful readers, as I am not proud of this at all. No sir, not one bit. Whilst this aspect of the tale is not my Hoodoo, it is shameful in and of itself and I have a feeling that St. Peter will order me smited across the peepee with a yard stick by some nun or other before granting me entry to those Pearly  Gates to which we all aspire.

But alas, as I said, this is not my Hoodoo, as horrible as it may be. For you see, this story will take a much darker turn as it winds through the dusky wilderness of my past. Maybe this confession will serve the dual purpose of fulfilling the football gods’ need for fresh Hoodoo while also absolving me of some of the ever-present guilt I feel weighing about the neck like a leaded albatross. If not, I reckon at least the baring of my jugular will win me favor. Be gentle, Loki.

Allow me to set the scene. My home and lifelong geographical location is Mobile, AL, as many of you know. A little bit bayou, a little bit rock and roll, Mobile is one of those Southern cities that, much like New Orleans, Charleston and Savannah, breaks sharply with the traditions and cultural practices of our more inland-based fellow citizens. Yeah, Mobile is in Alabama, but it’s nothing like the remaining population centers in the state. It’s a port city…THE Port City, if you trust the Mobile Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau. Many of you uplanders look on with horror and puzzlement at our cuisine and our practices. Things like gumbo, Mardi Gras, oyster stew, the Delta…these are things that are not just clipart on travel brochures to those of us who call Mobile home. They are the threads with which our lives are strung together, tightly bound like the salt-crusted wires of an old crab trap.

Another part of Mobile culture (at least for the last fifty some odd years) is Mobile’s annual football event…The Senior Bowl. Many of you may have viewed this all-star spectacle on television, as it many times provides fans of college football with the final glimpses of their gridiron heroes before they graduate to the big leagues. During Senior Bowl Week in the end of January, Mobile becomes the center of the football universe. NFL and college luminaries abound: they eat oysters at Wintzell’s, the players visit childrens’ hospitals and perform for the public and scouts during open practices. Our own ODL is a regular during that time, as he usual finds some recruit or another to visit while he’s in town for the big show.

For Mobilians, it’s a great chance to see the guys we’ve been watching on television for the last four years. It also provides Mobilians with yet another reason to have a throw-down. Some uplander from the Birmingham area who was cleaning out my sewer pipes once asked me, “You’re from down here…how do you people get anything done? You want to party for four months of the year.” After getting over the seeming insult, I decided that I didn’t not disagree with what he had said. We begin weekly parties when football season starts. Before we know it, it’s Thanksgiving. Then there’s Christmas, of course, and New Year’s. That much is pretty standard for much of the state, I’ll agree. 

But in January, Mobile begins ramping up to its annual Carnivale celebration, known here alternately as Mardi Gras or “da Boom-Boom.” (Think bass drums, y’all. We are a colorful people, no?)

Now that Mardi Gras celebration lasts the better part of a month, stretches right up against the Senior Bowl. Tailgating the likes of which is rarely seen in these part then breaks out. Many of us are familiar with tailgating at Bama games, with a maximum of two fanbases concurrently celebrating. Imagine tailgating next to Boogs on one side, Corndogs to the other and Tennerseeyans behind you (btw, pro tip, never let a Tennerseeyan get your six…bad things man, bad things…moving on.) The shit-talking is endless, to say the least.

Now back to our tale, one year, I received four passes to the Senior Bowl in a radio contest. Now I rarely win anything, but this was about as good a small prize as I’d ever won in my life. I figured it was a no-brainer, with four tickets I could carry B-Rad, my boy Mook (you may remember him from previous tales) and one other lucky person.

That one other person proved to be my younger cousin, who we’ll call Bock for the purposes of this story. Bock was a tough kid who’d had a hard life. His daddy was an alcoholic and substance abuser of the tallest order, and his mama was my daddy’s youngest sister. Apparently, God only designates a bulk commodity of “smarts” to each family, and let’s just say that by the time this particular aunt was born, the smarts bucket had run plumb dry. Dumb as a box of staplers.

So you see, this poor cousin of mine had little chance in this world. My grandparents contributed to his upbringing the best they could, but what evolved was something akin to the worship accorded to one baby Jesus. Bock could do no wrong, no matter what happened. He was a good kid all in all, and when I was a boxer, he’d train alongside me: partly to help build his body into what was required of a 6A HS wide receiver, and partially for the paternal, errr, wisdom I could bestow upon him.

Sometimes we’d run, sometimes we ride. Sometimes we’d just line up and run plays in the large backyard of my grandparents’ Cottage Hill residence. Knowing that he was a bird pushed out of the nest in many ways, I decided to mentor him, help give him the ethics he would need to avoid the genetic trap bequeathed to him by his addict father and Irish-stock mother. He was clean-cut, and had decided as a sophomore that he wanted to enter the service after graduating. I felt as though my influence had helped mold him into someone who was strong enough to avoid life’s pitfalls and kick them square in the ass when contested.

Now, the fact that I’m spending time telling you about him makes it obvious that he was selected as the fourth member of my entourage. Y’all already know about the wanton ways of my sibling and my substance-abusing friend Mook. But Bock was only 16 at the time, a youngster, impressionable. You know what I mean.

As always, there was a pre-game shopping trip to get, you know, essentials. B-Rad and Mook accompanied me to pick out the liquor.

“You know, we need to get something light for Bock to sip on…so he doesn’t feel left out.” I said to my fellow travelers. “We have to teach him how to drink properly…you know, we are like his role models and shit.”

I kept in mind the inexperienced nature of our party’s youngest member. Whilst B-Rad, Mook and I filled our shopping cart with cases of Southpaw beer (Southpaw, now defunct as far as I know, is owed my eternal gratitude…for you see, when B-Rad elected to give up crack, he did so cold-turkey over the course of one weekend with only a roll of Skoal and a case of Southpaw to detox him) and a plethora of mixers with which to blend our weapon of choice of the era, Bacardi Limon. I remembered that poor Bock would certainly feel left out if we neglected to array him with at least some form of libation with which to wash away the problems and troubles of the day. Being the kind-hearted and sensitive gent that you all have come to know on these here Hoodoo pages, I selected for him a beautiful vintage of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, which is apparently the training-wheels alcohol upon which many young alcoholics begin their descent into addiction. I added to the equation a lovely Bartles and James sampler pack, just to give him a little more experience with the lay of the shit-liquor land.

With our rattling paper bags abounding with alcohol, we made a stop by the local Popeye’s Fried Chickenry. After all, if we were going to be instructing young Bock in the ways of the Force, we would need to teach him that the experienced alcoholic knows it is but folly to consume liquor on a) an empty stomach and b) while dehydrated. I mean, I was charged with raising this kid right, after all.

Chicken and liquor in tow, we swooped by and picked up Bock, who was as excited as a butt-sniffer at a bicycle seat convention. It would be his first Senior Bowl, in addition to his first drinking experience. It had not occurred to me that it was somewhat irresponsible to introduce a young man to the very substance which had proven so poisonous and destructive to his gene pool and ancestry, and such is the source of my shame. For you see, as time wore on, alcohol addiction put its icy grip around Bock’s throat, his genetic predisposition overruling reason and logic. He succumbed, and continues to succumb, to its draw, to the point of causing him great personal harm. I’ve always felt guilty about leading him down this path, and one day the Lord will call me to atone for this wrong. I apologize for this unintended moment of seriousness, but this is one of the most shameful episodes in a life full of shameful episodes, only in this one I find no humor.

But enough of the melodrama. Being the big cousin, the elder of the group, I felt it incumbent upon me to show Bock how this whole Senior Bowl drunk get-down was ‘sposed to unfold. Mobilians will understand this, but for those of you who hail from points far and wide, the site of the Senior Bowl (Ladd Peebles Stadium) has no parking. I mean, like, none. Sure, you can fit a few hundred tailgaters in the parking lot on gameday, but by in large, one must find a yard to park in, pay the owner of said yard upwards of $20, and hoof it on to the game.

We were traveling in my chariot at the time, an ’85 Chevy Nova, which was a small sedan that was easy to park in tight quarters. We found an appropriate place to park after much searching, and immediately sprung the trunk and set up our modest tailgate. We ate like horses and gulped liquor the way deserted desert travelers slog down oasis water. Bock timidly approached the Boone’s Farm, sniffing it the way a dog sniffs a treat offered from an unknown hand.

“Aw just drank it, mane, it tastes like Kool-Aid,” B-Rad told him. B-Rad, after all, was a Boone’s Farm sommelier, having a great deal of experience with all colors and hues of this esteemed beginner libation.

Bock sipped it…sipped some more…took a longer drag off of it. 

“Dayum, y’all right, this shit IS good.”

Satisfied with his initiation into the Cult of Malts, we began to pass him other things to sip. Gave him a Southpaw. He didn’t like it (hell none of us LIKED it, but it was cheap and effective), but he drank it. He worked his way up to a shot of our beloved elixir, the Limon. He slurped down a shot like a raw oyster on the half shell, to the cheers of his elders. Bock liked it, which is unusual for someone who has only just been introduced to the bouquet of hard liquor.

By the time our two-block walk to the stadium came, we were all full to the livers with nectar. We stumbled and staggered our way to the stadium, a band of ragged travelers who appeared to be locked in the depths of some surreal dementia, wandering to and fro, yellin’ out random slurred song lyrics, offerin’ unwarranted commentary on the shutter color of nearby shotgun houses, laughin’ like the idiots we were. Hell, I’m surprised we made it to the stadium at all, let alone got passed the guards to enter the game. Truly a miracle and a product of God’s favor, I tell you what.

I can’t tell you a thing about that game. By this point, locked firmly in the grip of the intoxicants, I was driven to find more. Before halftime, I clutched in my fist four 16 ounce Red Dogs (another exquisite product of the Plank Road Brewery), all of which I consumed in a display of alcoholic athleticism to the delight of my fellow travelers. If this was to be Bock’s first entrance into the kingdom of debauchery, then I was bound and determined to be its cotdang King Arthur.

In a state of Bacchanalian stupor, we elected to leave the game and return to the tailgate, where the beer didn’t cost $5 a pop. Again, it is only through the miracle of some innate GPS location-rendering mechanism that I was able to guide us back to our home base. But in the meantime, we took more than a few meanderings onto side streets, following the whiffs of rib smoke and burger grease that abound in the locale on gameday. We were so hungry, pangs were clawing at the inside of my gullet as if I’d swallowed a dang ole badger.

Unable to find suitable nourishment, and still looking for the spot in which we’d lashed mine chariot, we stumbled upon the siren’s call of a liquor stand. For you see, on Senior Bowl day, everyone with a yard near the stadium has something for sale. May be rib samitches complete with potato salad right on the white bread. May be bottles of water for the un-alcoholed (or overly alcholed). This particular gentleman offered an ice chest full of Olde English and Old Milwaukee’s Best. Sitting upon a table with his change drawer was something that caught my eye…a bottle whose irregular exterior glinted and refracted the sunlight.

You see, though I‘m from the hood, I was not overly familiar with gin. My mother and her boyfriend of the time had kept Seagram’s gin in the liquor cabinet, but no one ever drank it. The Scotch went so quickly one could posit the bottle was leaking. The brandy would get used in cooking. The vodka ended up in froo-froo drinks when momz hosted girls’ night. But that damn gin was ever-present, and I’d always wondered why.

So the sight of that Seagram’s bottle called me like the siren’s song. B-Rad pointed to the cooler, “How much?”

“Dolla.”

“Whatchoo doin’ wit dat?” I pointed to the gin bottle.

“Sellin’ it, whatchoo thank I’m doin’ with it?...Dolla a shot.”

Now I looked over at the “shot glass,” which was really no shot glass at all. Rather it was a child’s juice glass, the kind I remembered using when B-Rad and I attended day care (or on the rare occasion we heathens were allowed into Sunday school.) Now your typical shot glass is what?...an ounce and a half, maybe two ounces? Well, this one was four ounces if it was one. Four ounces of gin for a dollar sure sounded like a bargain…(I’m going to let y’all figure this one out.)

Mook turned up his nose. “I ain’t drinkin’ that shit, I hate gin.”

Bock smelled the clear liquid and decided it wasn’t his cup of tea either. It was up to me and B-Rad to show Bock how the intrepid explorer of alcohol is oftentimes rewarded.

B-Rad was game. Boy’d drank anything that didn’t run away from him.

So that left us, B-Rad and your humble narrator, to exhibit our manliness by consuming what would prove to be the most vile liquid I’ve let pass twixt these lips and over these here teeth (‘cept for that cotdang green MadDog…good Lord have mercy.)

“Set ‘em up, dog,” I told the purveyor.

I sucked down a four ounce gulp of that pine-scented shit and though I’d swallowed turpentine. It was awful, beyond awful. My face must have betrayed me, as the fellers started chuckling.

“Damn, white boy!” said our salesman.

Feeling the challenge, I said “Fk it, set up ‘nother…an gimme one dem OE’s…” For those of you unfamiliar with this little gem of urban drinking culture, Olde English tastes like horse piss with a slight bouquet of rusted nails and hemoglobin. I near ‘bout puked on the spot (what do we call this literary device again children?...anyone?...anyone?...Bueller?)

Before it was over, I drank four of them thar “shot glasses” full of gin, just to prove a point. That point being that sometimes a man’s gotta just cowboy the fk up and do things he doesn’t want to do for fear of being called a p@#$y. B-Rad tapped out at three. Wisely so, please note.

I felt like I’d caught a dadgum Evander Holyfield right hook as we continued our trek back to the car. My memory fogs over from there. By the time we found the Nova, I was in no state to walk, let alone drive. I surrendered the keys to Mook, who was the most able of the bunch at that point, which ain’t sayin’ much. I was too drunk to ride in the front seat. (Ever been THAT drunk? So drunk that riding in the front seat of a slow moving vehicle felt something akin to ridin’ a Tilt-A-Whirl at the fair after competing in a pizza eating contest?) I took the rear seat (of my own car too, how humiliating), while B-Rad took the shotgun seat.

At some point or another, we got cut off in traffic. For the record, Mobile is home to the worst drivers on the planet. If in Mobile, never, never-ever-ever-ever assume that just because your traffic signal turned green that it is okay to proceed into the intersection. To do so will most likely result in one’s death. Abide the five second rule in Mobile people…when in Rome.

So we got cut-off, and B-Rad went ballistic. Punched my front windshield, cracking it in the process. I sat up long enough to realize what had happened and chastised him…kinda.

“COTDANGIT B-RAD Why you mumble-mumble-glurgle-glurg GONNA NEED ME a new shizzlefus dackledang a’morrow.” I was so stewed y’all, it wasn’t even funny. Well, it was kinda funny.

We made our way back to WeMo (West Mobile, for you outsiders), though I puked at every gas station on the route. We decided food would be appropriate to balance out the drunk, so we hit Domino’s. Huge mistake. When one is intoxicated, particularly upon the above-mentioned spirit, the mere smell of a hot, loaded Xtravaganza pie will make the stomach turn and rebel. I vomited profusely on the sidewalk outside of Domino’s. I just couldn’t stop, it was absolutely horrible.

What was worse was that the gin had also settled in on B-Rad, and he was feelin’ its hallucinatory effects. He was spinnin’ out of control. I didn’t know what we were going to do, but I knew what we couldn’t do: namely, take a drunk B-Rad back to my mother’s abode. Especially when I, the responsible one, was stricken with alcohol Ebola himself. So we did the only thing we could do.

“Mook, take him to Jo-Di’s house.” Jo-Di was a portly kid from the neighborhood who owed his life to B-Rad. Now a pastor, this rotund character from our past had been accosted in middle school by a young man who had rather savagely stabbed a sharpened pencil into his protruding belly during a disagreement about Alabama football (Jo-Di, of course, was defending Alabama’s honor against a cotdang Aub.) Witnessing the attack, B-Rad leapt into action, promptly whuppin’ the ass of said attacker. On a side note, the next day, B-Rad called me from Scarborough Middle School to tell me that he needed me to escort him from the premises. The attacker’s father, a grown ass man, had stationed himself near the school and threatened to beat B-Rad down. That, my friends, was the first time I whipped a grown man’s ass, as I outweighed him by half a buck. It was the stuff of legend.

At any rate, I, much like Vincent Vega toting an overdosed Mrs. Mia Wallace, decided Jo-Di couldn’t refuse to help us. He just had to let us crash for a while. After a tiny little threat involving the theft of his mother’s underwear, Jo-Di allowed us in. B-Rad crashed on the couch, where he wallowed in his own sick for what was about two hours. I continued to hemorrhage from both ends as the gin worked its way out of my system. We were still drunk, but we were at least walkin’ drunk.

I thought surely we’d escaped the fury of an angry mother and averted disaster. We made our way home, the entire crew still in tow, to prove we were all alive and accounted for. As we arrived, momz was working in the yard. Shit, wouldn’t be able to slip passed her. She immediately noticed the cracked front windshield on what had previously been her car before bequeathing it to me as a graduation gift.

“What the hell happened to the window?”

In my drunken state, I had not developed an appropriate pre-lie. I usually prepare for these sorts of things, but I was lucky I had remember the coordinates to my home, let alone come up with the fictitious accounting which would satisfactorily explain the broken glass. My brain scurried to catch up, struggling through the webbing tangle of juniper berries and malted hops that clogged my synapses. The spark plugs just weren’t firing, and all the while, the weight of my mother’s glare was bearing down upon me.

That’s when Bock broke. Under the stress of the moment, and himself still riding the Boone’s Farm roller coaster, he projectile vomited directly at, and upon, mine dear old mother. She shrieked. He held his hand over his mouth, as if trying to put the vomit back in. However, Pandora’s Vomit Box had been opened. Flustered, he began to profusely apologize, spitting out random words.

“Sorry Aint Momz…dint mean to…strawberry, is red…said I shoulda ate.”

“What, son? What are you talking about,” said Momz, still trying to make sense of what had happened.

B-Rad, btw, had relapsed. He was trying to free himself from the clutch of the front seat’s grip, and had opened the passenger side door. But gravity betrayed him, and he just kind of spilled out and onto the grass head first, his ass still inexplicably glued to the seat. It was like dumpin’ a body out of the trunk, all limp and shit (wait, y’all have never had to dump a body?...oh, umm…neither have I, I mean…nevermind then, carry on.)

As if exposed to the torturous tactics of the CIA’s finest Gitmo interrogation operative, Bock found his coherence and started spittin’ truth bombs like the cotdang Enola Gay. That sumbitch squealed and squalled like he was witnessing the second coming of Jesus Christ Himself in the Flesh, testifying about how his elder cousin had plied him with the vile venom of liquor and how he’d led the whole lot of them down the road to depravity and the desolation of morals.

I, meanwhile, just laid my head down on the cool comforting embrace of the front lawn, the green blades cushioning me. When I say I laid down, what I mean is that I fell down. I just figured if I stayed there with my eyes closed, my mother, much like a bear upon finding a motionless human, would simply go about her business and pay me no mind.

I then felt the clasp of her pinch on my ear as she pulled me to my feet and yelled words in my face. Loud words. Talked some shit about responsibility and self-pride and corruption of the youth. Hell, I don’t know, y’all, I was drunk. Rude, though. I tell you what, if I had had any semblance of balance or equilibrium, I certainly would have offered some retort. Instead, I could muster only “BOONE’S FARM WINE MOMZ!” With indignation, too, as though those words provided some obvious explanation for the deeds that had just been recounted. I don’t remember her exact reply, but it was coupled with an eye roll.

The next morning, when I finally awoke from my substance-induced slumber, I couldn’t find my car keys. After all, I’d lost consciousness about 15 times the previous day…such things were to be expected. I searched high and low before remembering I had not been driving, that Mook had been at the wheel. Figuring he may have left them in the ignition, I walked out to the car.

No keys. Instead, there was a note on the dash informing that my driving privileges had been revoked. I also discovered with joy that about half the pukes I thought I had cast upon some piece of pavement or other were actually cast into the floorboard of the back seat. Like a little vomit souvenir of the previous day’s events. Yay me.

Ever find day-old gin and chicken puke in your floorboards? Not pleasant. I burned a cord’s worth of incense sticks in there to obscure that putrid smell. But such is the price one pays for being a big shot, like I am.

Moral of the story: Alcohol is a hell of a drug. And gin is bad, y’all, mmmm-kaaaaay?

Roll Tide.

The piss throne

Well, well, well…we’ve crossed the Tiber, folks. Our boys, under the field marshalship of the most unlikely of quarterback phenoms, have made it past the first test of the season, and descended through the first layer of Hell that is the SEC schedule (Dante would be so proud.)

If you good folk will remember low before the bye week (I know, dear reader, it is difficult to recall such bygone days of yesterweek, but try if you might to reconstitute the fog of memory into its once-coagulated state. Your faithful narrator was a wee bit worried about facing off with those nasty reptilian foes of days gone by, the Florida Gators. After all, our two armies have marched on the battlefields of SEC Championship combat more than any other two teams in the history of the championship game, and I figured, they’d be ready to prove themselves against the Once and Future King of college football.

And though they have been wounded by the indignities of the past year, this here progeny of the pristine Mobile Delta knows enough about their cagey namesake to understand that a wounded gator is to be feared more than a gator cruising along, minding his own business…no matter how hungry you may fancy he appears. You can call me skeered, you can call me yella. Hell, I’ll even let you call me ‘fraidy-cat, but just don’t call me Nancy. Never liked that name at all, I simply will not abide.

But alas, I digress, as I am oft prone to do. Nonetheless, our crimson-clad heroes turned those Gators inside out, despite early struggles to the contrary. While I feared a less-than-favorable outcome for a moment, I kept alive my dream of seeing the Gators skinned and strung into a nice pair of loafers. In the early going, it appeared I’d never get to see my lime-green daydream bloom into full fruition. However, the Crimson Tide, and in particular Blake Sims and Amari Cooper, came through in the clutch, and when all was said and done, they most certainly didn’t leave a pretty hide.

So this week, some of you may want to mock this ole boy’s continued consternation. Some of you may feel the need to go ahead and let the ole Gump flag fly…but I would warn the wise among you against such tomfoolery. For you see, it is true that the Crimson Tide appears to be hitting its stride. I will concur that the defense looked drastically improved from week 1 (with the caveat that Florida’s offense appeared as useless as a set of pendulous teats on a boar-hog.) And yes, Blake Sims. Blake Mffkn Sims. Amen and hallelujah. I have seen the light, and the light is Blake Sims. There has been little about Sims’ performance throughout the opening stanza of this here college football season that anyone with eyes and at least a passing knowledge of football could reasonably criticize.

But for some reason, I do have an inkling , not of fear, per se, but an inkling of anxiety about this Ole Miss squad. Maybe it’s because Ole Miss looks fearsome through four games. Maybe it’s because this Bama team is beginning to look like it could indeed be a player in this inaugural college football playoff race.

I don’t know y’all, but as this week grows long in the tooth, I feel my concern level ballooning. We need some serious hoodoo, y’all…serious hoodoo. Do not let me down.

But I didn’t come here to prosthelitize on this yon Hoodoo ledger about my pre-season apprehension, nor my trepidation in approaching our tangling with the swamp lizards. No, I came here to do that magical hoodoo that we do, to put down something that will sure enough put piss in the Corn Flakes of these upstart Rebel Black Bear Akbars. Because you see, we are going to need it this week, y’all. Yeah we’re super-duper-triple-bestest and all ‘at shit, but this here game will mean a lot…as will almost every one that follows it.

So you better bring your cotdang Hoodoo A -game, you see, because this here ain’t no High School Prom, this ain’t no Princess Tea. This here ain’t for the weak of heart nor constitution, as from here on out, the Tide will have to cleave through the tangled jungle of SEC competitors for its rightful place back atop college football. You best well get yo damn mind right, people, because from here on out, every hoodoo really does have a life (and death) of its own.

Now this yarn I’m fixin’ to spin you is one that again harkens back to my wet-behind-the-ears years of nubile post-adolescence, when I was near about a man but still too stupid to take the exam for my Man Card. Many of you, my devoted readers, have heard tell of a past girlfriend of the Aub persuasion, one who I dated because of her buxom silhouette and willingness to allow your boy OWB to explore those verdant peaks and valleys with aplomb. I am the dang ole Lewis and Clark of the female body, and I take my explorations ever so seriously.

Now I don’t want to veer off into the blue gutter from which last week’s tale sprung, as this simply isn’t that type of get-down. No, this week, I tell a story of embarrassment, the kind you just can’t wash off, no matter how hard you scrub with that dang ole boar’s hair boat brush (I shouldn’t have to keep pointin’ this out, y’all, but that there is foreshadowing again. It’d be nice if you’d do your homework so you could follow along. But this once more, I’ll keep you pointed in the proper direction…after all, I’ll do anything for the hoodoo.)

This one here is one of those type of narratives that may give one pause as to the inclinations of your narrator. But hear me out, and remember if you can the days of your hormone-addled youth, when you’d f$#% a snake if it’d lay straight long enough. I was a rising senior, the band captain. That may not sound that impressive to you non-bandies (that’s not really what we called you, we called you non-bandies “the cool people” back then.) But the position of Band Captain can make one dizzy with power, as save for the drum majors and the adult band director himself, no one could overrule my actions.

I willfully embraced this island of power, as other than running the streets of my old neighborhood, I’d never been in a position of authority. There was the safety patrol back in elementary school, but let’s be honest, I was just in it for the cool vest and the cane pole that the crossing guards used to block lanes during carpool. No, after a tough freshman campaign as the only male clarinet player in the band (no, that’s not my hoodoo…rude), I had switched over to the much cooler and overtly-much-more-masculine saxophone. I also played bass, so I transitioned to the upright for concert band.

Now I was a big, strappin’, talented badass. A tough kid with an artistic streak. But that didn’t fly so well with the ladies in my high school, at least not the ones I seemed to want to chase. Girls…beautiful, smart, witty, wonderfully-symbiotic girls, would throw themselves at me. But I was too much of a dumbass to notice it. Or in some cases, to care. I would rather chase something I couldn’t have than take what was at my fingertips. The proverbial dog chasing his own tail, if you will. Looking back, I could have had a lot more fun in high school had it not been for my own self-imposed imbecilism.

But that is not the nature of this hoodoo, rather only a plot point, a shard of character development for that ass. From my position of Band Captain, I drew from a well of confidence that had eluded me in my previous encounters with the ladies. I began to grow into my own, to become who you have come to know as OWB. One of my first, critical steps was to use my position of power as an aphrodisiac. 

As Band Captain, I was Nero fiddlin’ on his dadgum  throne, as everyone was at the mercy of my beck and call. Someone angered me, I’d wait until I saw the individual step out of line and BOOM!...”DROP AND GIMME 20, BITCHES.” SOUND OFF LIKE YOU GOT A PAIR, FRESHMAN! (Sorry, don’t mind me, I was just enjoying a flashback. Happens more and more these days, all that acid is finally paying off…quite entertaining.)

So when summer band camp rolled around that year, I already knew I was going to have my pick of the young ladies. Who wouldn’t want some of this, after all? Females would wither in my presence, or so I supposed. But to my horror, many of these folks had already paired off in the summer. They all lived in the same neighborhood (Alpine Hills), and there was a neighborhood swim club (Is not the neighborhood swim club modern-day equivalent of the Roman brothel? All that bare, moistened, sometimes oily flesh on display, a sometimes-taut/ sometimes-jiggly feast for the eyes. I mean, you’re more guaranteed to get laid at the swim club than at a Chinese whorehouse.)

Once again, being a native of a less-centric neighborhood literally on the other side of the railroad tracks, I found myself with the leavin’s. But during freshman band camp, I laid mine eyes upon a beauty with an ample bosom for a 15 year old (solid C-cups, pushin’ the D… fist-bump) who had a twinkle in her eye and a wiggle in her walk.

Fortunately for me, a friend of mine who was a sophomore had buddied up to her, so my espionage array was already in full gear. At some point during band camp, I asked my friend Frodo (she was tiny-short, y’all, like a hobbit, for realz) if she could get the low-low on whether or not I could “get at that” (charm school, amirite?) Frodo agreed begrudgingly, even welled up with tears at the suggestion. You see, unbeknownst to me at the time (but later beknownst to me), Frodo had a thing for ya boy OWB. In reality, I did have a notion of that being the case, but not interested in that type of party with that particular young lady, I just avoided the topic and kept everything on the friendship tip. (Yeah ladies, we do that shit too. Sucks, doesn’t it?)

Please ignore the fact that I was asshole enough to ask I girl who I knew liked me (but that I didn’t like) to ask her best friend if she wanted to ge-ge-ge-ge-get-down. After all, that is also not my hoodoo. This smitten young kitten was so taken with her Sith Band Captain that she did my bidding, even as it shattered her fragile young heart. I think I played a role in turning her into a lesbian, but then again, I simply have no facts to prove that hypothesis. There are, however, several women who, on the record, have attributed their lesbianism to their affiliation with yours truly. I like to look at it as a positive, after all. After looking upon the glory that is good ole OWB, no other man could satisfy them. So they flipped sides. Sounds convincing, no?

Anyway, fast-forward a few weeks. It wasn’t long before this young babydoll with the ta-tas was manning the back seat of the bus with Your Highness, and we groped and petted our way from stadium to stadium. We were stuck together like static-filled socks: she became a fixture at my house, and I the same at hers.

But this is where this tale begins to take a bend toward the Southern Gothic. For you see, while my living arrangement was convoluted in its own right, the domicile for this fair young maiden (who for the purposes of this story I’ll refer to as Babydoll) was just plain effed up.

Her mother came from a class of females to whom my dear mother referred as “roadwhores.” I always assumed that was a perjorative, but something about it seems romantic, no? Like not just your average old, street-walkin’ prostitute, not your regular, skanky “lounge lizard” one finds at the rest stops. No, the title of roadwhore seems far more grandiose, a title worth earning for an aspiring participant in the world’s oldest profession. Everyone must have goals to propel them to bigger and better things, no?

I feel as though I have not adequately explained this, so please allow me to provide you with a few examples to provide the proper context. Can’t have you folks going off, half-cocked, inappropriately using words like roadwhores. As we’ve been told, words are weapons, sharper than knives and such as that. I submit for you the aforementioned samples of its usage:

OWB: “Mom, Ms. Lachlan at school said she thinks she knows you, thinks she went to school with you…”

Momz: “Yeah, she was the biggest roadwhore.”

Or…

OWB: “Mom, I’d like you to meet my girlfriend.”

Momz: “Good God child, you’re dressed like a damn roadwhore.”

And, finally…

OWB: “Big Evie (OWB’s step-mother) sure makes good spaghetti Mom, may even be better than yours…”

Momz: “Roadwhore.”

Now, I can assume that I have provided sufficient context for the terminology, so feel free to use it. Responsibly, please. We are in the South.

Regardless, Babydoll’s mama was a roadwhore. Card-carrying.  Spent more time in bars than the Budweiser vendor, and her tableau of sexual victims would surely rival that of Wilt Chamberlain. It was simply a wonder of nature and modern-day birth control that the woman was the mother of only two children, both girls, the eldest of whom was none other than mi amore.

Being unfit in the rearing of young ladies, said roadwhore had turned over custody and care of the children to her mother, who lived within a block of the high school. This woman had made her presence known early in my relationship with Babydoll, when, during the opening volley of our courtship, she instructed me that Babydoll was not to be seen holding hands with any boys in public.

I think I audibly laughed, assuming surely it was a joke. But her stone face bared down on me like an Easter Island monolith, intimidating from upon her throne as matriarch of this particular jacked-up-ass family tree. I soon came to understand that she was a prude of the highest order, a tee-totaller who was not only against the wilds of alcohol and other substances, but a shrewd, calculating enemy of fun of all sorts.

I remember how she read me the riot act for sitting in the same seat as Babydoll follower a match-up between my school and Theodore High School. You see, that was a long, dark bus trip…the best kind. But my feelings of studliness and man-swag evaporated soon thereafter. We stepped off the bus at our home base, and Col. Grandmama lit into me in the company of the entire assemblage of my band serfs, berating me about “appropriateness-this” and “ladylike-that.”

Now many young men would be frightened off by this sort of thing. But not one to cower in the face of adversity (nor the tremendous babylons that found home on that young girl’s chest), I took the challenge of winning not only this girl’s eternal heart, but the approval of her grandmother. (That’s foreshadowing, but not for this hoodoo…put that in your hoodoo memory banks, ya’hear?)

I worked my way in, spending time at Babydoll’s house, engaging in wholesome, Mormonic activities like separating clumps of lariope grass and doing our homework. Every day after school, I made it a point to stop by, if only for a few minutes. For some reason, these odd people had an even more odd tradition of each day having an afterschool snack that consisted solely of blueberry muffins. Now I love blueberry muffins, don’t get me wrong. But every damn day? And why after school, every day? Why not at, say, breakfast sometimes? (On a side tangent, one of the worst smells I’ve ever detected with my olfactory was the scent of burning blueberry muffins and fried oysters…ruminate on that for a minute but be careful not to conjure too hard. Shit’s nasty, y’all.)

This house was, in a word, horrifying. Clutter everywhere. A silver-fine layer of dust was layered over everything. Terrifying old porcelain clown curios, “World’s Best Grandma” mugs, yellowed water-color still-lifes of grapes and other tarnished produce. It was like taking a tour of cotdang Miss Havisham’s parlor, for crying out loud. Place always creeped me out, and aside from the ever-present lingering odor of blueberry muffins, there was always a stale-pee-stink that hung about in the sitting room where we’d often be called for visitation during my trips to this Gothic cathedral of the redneck and absurd.

Of course, there were times when the proximity of Babydoll’s abode played right into my ever-groping fingers. As I have mentioned, it was on the corner next to our high school, so when grandma wasn’t home, we would escape to this place to engage in carnal pleasures (despite the rather unsettling environs.) Like I’ve said many times before, a man of that particular age will go to great lengths to partake in the sheer glory of a voluptuous bosom.

Sometimes, when we had a break, we’d step to her house…especially when we knew the grandma wasn’t going to be at home. During the interlude between the final bell of the school day and the beginning of band practice, Babydoll and I broke away for a little fun. It was not an uncommon occurrence, as her grandma had to go pick Babydoll’s younger sister up from the middle school a few neighborhoods away, at just the right time of day to allow for an afternoon dalliance.

On this particular occasion, I decided to yank Babydoll’s chain. You see, her grandma (who I will heretofore refer to as “Jabba” given her considerable girth and the spillage of her belly over-top of her ever-present elastic-waisted knit grandma britches) had a throne, as I’ve mentioned before. It was a cornflower blue Lay-Z-Boy recliner in a plush fabric. To be honest, I don’t know how the poor chair had held up so long, considering its daily load of human tonnage. But it was old enough to show its substantial wear. 

On my prior visits to the home, I had been warned about the chair.

“No matter what you do, don’t ever sit in that chair,” I had been told by Babydoll in her ever-so-sensuous voice. I can hear it now, like music, even though she was a cotdang Aub. “Grandma will never let you back in here if she catches you in her chair.”

I figured this was yet another quirk the old lady harbored in her semi-agoraphobic old age. Kinda like another rule of the house, namely that one never flush (used) toilet paper down the toilet hole. I can still remember the dressing-down I received when, after emerging from the bathroom, Jabba asked me what I did with my teepee.

“Um, ma’am?” I wasn’t sure what I had been asked, as certainly my hearing had failed me. “What did I do with what?”

“The toilet paper, where is it?”

“The sewer, I guess…is that bad?”

She called Babydoll aside, and after a few heated remarks in an adjacent room, Babydoll had to inform me that when using the facilities at their home, one was asked to refrain from flushing said toiletry accouterments down the commode. Instead, it was to be placed (used, nasty) in a lined waste basket next to the potty. I was also informed that there would be follow-up investigations to verify my compliance with said house rules. (It was at that point that I decided that it was simpler to just run by McDonald’s on the way to Babydoll’s house if I felt Nature’s most urgent call.)

So far, for those non-mathletes out there, let’s make sure everyone has the same count. Thus far, the rules are:

1.       No hand-holding in public

2.       No sitting in the same seat on the bus

3.       Must enjoy blueberry muffins

4.       No flushy-flushy for the teepee

5.       Never, ever-ever-ever-ever sit on Jabba’s throne

Now back to our story. Babydoll had gone to the restroom, leaving me in the living room. I thought it would be humorous to have a go at her and thumb my rebellious nose at Jabba and her rules. I decided to violate her personal space in every (legal) way I could conjure, knowing that Babydoll would freak and scramble to right her misguided boyfriend’s many, many wrongs.

Quickly, I rearranged the dust-covered curios, switched the pictures around on the wall. Turned the god-awful Auburn blanket on the couch-back around so that the Aubie logo faced upsidedown. (I know, I know….couldn’t get to the toilet, as it was occupato.)

Then, as the tour-de-force, I decided to sit upon the matriarch’s throne. I relished in this violation, snuggling down into it, wiggling low into the substantial wallow created by Jabba’s oversized ass like Boba Fett in the belly of the Almighty Sarlacc. I wrapped myself in my rebellion, proud of my secret defiance and sure that it would draw the desired reaction from Babydoll. I even lifted the crocheted blanket from the chair’s seat and draped it over me damn head like a dang ole Kossack peasant woman.

As I nestled into the plush chair, I detected a plume of scent rising up…it wasn’t blueberry muffins nor oysters. No, it was unmistakable, it was definitely teetee. The pieces began to fall into place as I noticed the creeping dampness seeping through the back of my jeans. “What the hell?” It was at that time that my beloved emerged from the bathroom.

She didn’t notice the curios, the pictures nor the desecrated Aubie blanket. The look of panic on her face confused me, but to my astute mind, it belied a much greater sin against the sanctity of Jabba’s palace.

“GET UP!”

I was a little shocked she had yelled at me in such a harsh tone. After all, she was coming at me all wrong, that kind of reaction made me ask “why?” rather than acting.

She pulled at my arm, urging me up. “GET UP GET UP GET UP!”

I thought surely Babydoll couldn’t be THAT terrified of Jabba. After all, she wasn’t even home, would likely never know I committed said sins in her house.

But I had underestimated the true power of the Force, friends. As karma, is a cruel, cruel roadwhore.

“Why are you so upset, guh? She ain’t even here?”

“NO YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!” She was almost hyperventilating by this point. I followed her orders and rose, noticing that the trailing scent of piss wafted up behind me.

Our eyes met. I anticipated the words that were about to come out of her mouth, but the horror had not yet settled in.

“MY GRANDMA PEES IN THAT CHAIR FIVE OR SIX TIMES A DAY! SHE’S INCONTINENT! I TOLD YOU NOT TO SIT THERE, EVER, DUMBASS!

You see, I had no idea. Sure, I’d detected the smell of stale pee, but what old person’s house doesn’t smell like stale pee. Honest mistake, right?

I played back in my mind how terrible it must have been for the maiden to emerge from the restroom, after not flushing toilet paper presumably, to find her one and only sitting on a piss throne, wrapped in a piss rag of a blanket.

I instantly began to gag. I never threw up, as I had not yet had my daily allotment of blueberry muffins, so I was working with an empty stomach. Dry-heaved like a mofo though. My jeans were damp with the most recent irrigation of the recliner…and I still had an hour and a half of band practice before I could change skivvys.

I felt so violated. All I could think to do was get away from the horror as quickly as possible, which in its essence, meant getting out of my clothes. I stripped down in a lightning strike and jumped into the shower, where I curled into a fetal position and began sobbing. After all, I had not only played sponge to this old woman’s bodily fluids, but I had covered myself over with improvised maxi-pad of a blanket she had rested her liquidacious nether regions upon. The horror…THE HORROR!

My sulk didn’t last long, however, as I heard a frantic knock at the hollow bathroom door. The knock was followed by words I had not, in fact, anticipated, namely “hurry the f@#$ up, Grandma’s home!”

It was at this point that I realized my piss soaked clothing was still on the floor in the living room. I froze, not sure how I would make my way out of this one alive and/ or without killin’ an old lady. I decided my best course of action was to remain in said bathroom until the avenue for escape presented itself. Fortunately (and on account of some advanced, Darwinistic natural selection typa bullshit), ya boy OWB wasn’t datin’ no fool, despite her decidedly Auburnian inclinations. Babydoll leapt into action.

I heard clanging, then the unmistakable sound of the washing machine filling up from the other end of the house. I heard the rear door of the house open, followed by muffled chatting in the next room. At this point, I wasn’t sure what was going down, but I had not heard yelling, nor the sound of a round being racked into the tube of a scattergun.

A few moments later, a soft knock, followed by Jabba’s now-softened voice…”You okay in there hunny?”

“Uh, yes ma’am, I’m all good.”

“Well Babydoll tossed your clothes in the washer, we’ll dry ‘em and you’ll be good as new. I’m gonna go make you some blueberry muffins.”

“Hmmm,” I thought. I was puzzled. Why was I not dodging birdshot, or at the very least, the cacophony of old-lady-isms? Surely, something was afoot.

I awaited my clothing behind the door of the restroom as instructed. After all, at this point, I was just glad I hadn’t been flung into the Rancor pit with only some femur bone or other to protect myself. My toasty clothes were delivered, and I emerged to the increasing aroma of fake blueberries steaming off from the pseudo-batter.

Jabba was on her throne, and as I looked upon her, I saw for the first time a look of sympathy and compassion cast across her face. Before I could open my mouth, Babydoll put her arm in the crook of my elbow and walked me outside, a paper plate heavy with blueberry muffins in her hand.

Once at a safe distance, I had to have answers.

“Um, what just happened back there? Are we not in trouble?”

Babydoll smiled. “Nope, everything is fine.”

She had to know I needed further illumination, as the preceding events had been theater of the absurd on the highest order.

She volunteered the answers I sought.

“I told her you had the stop-sign pizza in the cafeteria at lunch today, and it gave you the trots,” she said, suppressing a giggle. “I told her we were on the way to band camp and you messed yourself, came here to clean up and wash your clothes so you didn’t miss band practice.”

Damn genius. I mean really, people, for an Aub, you gotta admit…that’s pretty fast thinking. Shit, most of those people can’t cipher to 10 without their fingers and toes, maybe an abacus. And most of them can’t spell abacus. I was duly impressed by the resourcefulness of the maiden…brains and big bazooms to boot…daddy like.

Now, never you mind that I had to play the perpetual role of a public shitter for the duration of the relationship. I once took a road trip with them to Auburn (it was for Honor Band, okay? Geez, people…) We ate at the Shoney’s Buffet on I-85 in the ‘Gum on the way back, and for the remaining four hours of the ride, there was a “booty check” every 30 minutes.

I’d hear, “Now OWB, theys a rest stop raht up here, if you need me to stop you just say the word, hunny.” Then she’d covertly whisper to Babydoll’s sister in the passenger seat, “He’s got what they call a nervous stomach, you see, what they call a nervous stomach. Gets the trots real easy.”

(Who came up with that god-awful terminology, by the way? The trots, really? That sounds like the name of some colitis-themed 50’s doo-wop (huh-huh-huh…he thed doo-wop) group, doesn’t it? “Hell yeah boy, I hear The Trots are playin’ at the casina this evenin’.”  I mean, what the f@#$ does it even mean? What are the origins? But I digress…)

So to recount, not only did I date an Aub, not only did I defile an old lady’s domicile and eldest grand-daughter, not only did I rearrange her curios and steep myself in her stale pee, but I also gained (and was forced, by circumstance, to embrace) the reputation of a serial public shitter.

But I reckon there are worse fates, right, people? I can imagine that watching Bama lose to Ole Piss (irony, no?) would be one of them. So by God Almighty, if this above multiplicity of hoodoo doesn’t get us a win versus those inbred (but quite literary) heathens, then I may as well just hang my hoodoo boots on the fence post.

Roll Tide, y’all.