Your Weekly Hoodoo Thread: Hate Auburn edition

It’s that dreaded week again, the week that, to Bama fans, is not unlike when your mother makes your 16-year-old ass drive your little sister and her friends to the mall. It’s time to babysit the cattle inseminators from yonder way ‘cross the state yet again. Auburn fancies the Tide a “rival,” which is…cute. For most Bama faithful, the Auburnite is a mere afterthought, a lesser incarnation at a traditionless (save for sophomoric ritual of hurling tissue paper into the shrubbery) cow college of an institution of “higher learning.” 

Truthfully, when we Bama folk think of the cow-pokers across the state, we recognize as them as a carbuncle on the hind parts of the SEC conference, a backwards, backwoods, delusional conglomeration of “fambly” members who are more akin to an apple-sauce-and-lortab-cocktail-consuming cult than a legitimate football fan base. In Auburnland, the sun always shines on the Tigers, and when it doesn’t, it’s because of some nefarious plot on the part of the Bammers and the SEC office to deny the Auburnite their God-given birth right. 

The feelings many of us have for our poor Barner brethren do not seethe with the white-hot embers of hate many of us harbour for our meth-addicted, Creamsicle-hued rivals to the north. Many look at the Tigers with an “awwww…” mindset, though sympathy for the devil is probably too liberal a phrase to use to describe the perception of those orange and blue clad nose-jerky consumers from across the state. There is a certain “bless your heart” sadness we feel when we see our fellow humans desecrate themselves with the colors of delusion (which, by the way, are indeed orange and blue), and I personally no longer take an elevated degree of joy in seeing their asses stomped into the ground mightily, and with regularity, by the Crimson Tide.

So I don’t have to tell you people what this week’s Hoodoo means…I don’t need to tell you what rides on this particular contest. It’s not about the rivalry, per se. The stakes are much, much higher for the Tide, as they are playing for something much bigger than the paltry bragging rights over a state that they’ve owned for much of the Nick Saban tenure, if we’re taking a “real talk” approach to the topic. And bragging rights are of limited usefulness when deployed against an enemy that can concoct fictional narratives of Wellsian persuasion to divert responsibility from their boys in the wake of a loss. If (when) Alabama wins, it will be because the refs favored the Tide, or because there were missed holding calls against Alabama, or because Gus Malzahn had the dropsy, or whatever other ramshackle tall-tale their feeble minds can conjure.

Yet and still, the need for sacrifice remains (Loki is a hangry sumbitch), and in this week, when the stakes are at their highest, it is time to deploy some Defcon 4 Hoodoo. Leave no cards on the table, leave no Hoodoo stone unturned. Bring your best and brightest, for tomorrow, we will slake out thirst on the fragile egos of those who would elevate themselves so much as to consider their boys true rivals of our beloved Crimson Tide.

In keeping with the theme of the week, I’ll spin a tale from my teenage years, when I was more motivated by the fondling of breasticles and canoodling with tender young ladies in my newly acquired Chevy Nova than anything else shy of Tide football. And because of the particular persuasion of my cohort in this particular story, it will be apropos for the occasion, in more ways than one.

For you see, as I have recounted to you fine people in Auburn Hate Week Hoodoos of yore, I did the unthinkable as a high school senior. You see, I fell into a trap that sometimes snares even the most noble-minded, stout-hearted men of crimson repute during the hormonally-tempestuous stretch between 14 and 18. If you haven’t guessed it before, or your memories of Hoodoos past have been erased by ever so many malted hops and hookah-hits of the kush, I…well, I…dated an Auburn girl.

Now this was no casual affair, you see. I mean, after all, what’s the harm in a one-night-stand with any fetching young lady of a willing attidude, regardless of her football affiliation? I could admit to many such trysts with women of an Aubie persuasion, but those were mere drops in a gulf of intimate experiences, seconds on the digital clock of my corporeal life. 

But this…this was something different. I was in it deep for this girl, this Aubie-cat. It was more than a fling, it was the real deal (or as much a real deal as teenagers can commit themselves to). We met as members of the band, and after summer band camp of her sophomore year, we were winding ourselves tightly together, so much so that I put a mutual friend up to getting some concrete feelers on the situation. When she returned with promising intel (namely, that this Aubie-cat was likewaise diggin’ on your narrator), I leapt at the chance, asked her out, and it was official. We were an item.

Though she was younger than me, she was very mature for her age…both emotionally and physically. Emotionally, she was driven, a girl who knew what she wanted and was willing to work to get it. Physically, she was sporting a tremendous set of D-cup Babylons that were mesmerizing to a devotee of the Temple of Tittay. As an adult male who tries to walk the straight and narrow, I now make sure not to let my eyes stray to the chests of women who are likewise endowed, trying rather to focus on their eyes or whatever words may be spilling from their mouths. But as a young man, I had no such respect for the women with whom I came in contact. I was hypnotized by boobs, and if I’m being honest, it was this facet of the Aubie-cat’s personage that attracted me more than any other quality. (Yes, I was a pig, but at least I recognize that fact and have done my best to alter this trait.)

We’d sit on the back of the bus on long band trips, planning out our wedding, talking about names for our children, etc. It was sickening, really. Much more so when I consider in retrospect that had any of those well-laid plans had come to fruition, my crimson bloodline would have been stricken with the stain of Aubie blood. Thank God for small miracles.

One of the other things I had been planning for some time was how in the world I was ever going to get into this Aubie-seed’s skimpies. For you see, guarding the gates of her virginal womanhood was a veritable Hutt from the wilderness of Winston County, a pee-stank grandmatron of this Aubie gene pool, Aubie-cat’s grandmama. She was a tee-totaler in every possible sense of the world. Liquor never passed her pristine (and often blueberry muffin-stained) lips…seriously, the woman had an unnatural fixation on blueberry muffins. In her approximation, smoking was a pasttime for ill-bred roadwhores, not ladies of Southern upbringing. 

As opposed as she was to these other typical vices coveted by poorly-behaved high school hellions, neither mustered as much venom from the old woman as the thought of girls who fell into the trap of loose morals, handing out that hoo-hah (or as they referred to it, the “snookie”) wholesale to any Tom, Dick or Harry who bought a lady a Supersized Number 4 combo at the McDonald’s. No, this old Hutt would have preferred any of her granddaughters (whom she had vowed to guide into womanhood, given the perpetual whoredom of their birth mother, the Hutt’s daughter) sample alcohol and burn a stogie if it meant they would keep the legs together and fight off the hormonally-charged advances of grimy, sex-crazed teenaged boys.

Sometimes, I’d tag along with them on short trips, after earning a shred of trust in the mind of the Hutt. After all, I was the band captain, a leader, a shining knight in white armor with a 4.0 grade point average. Surely, surely, I would never attempt to deflower her eldest granddaughter…she had never even seen me attempt to hold hands with her, after all. I played the role of an innocent eunuch in the eyes of this Hutt, as doing so eliminated any suspicion that I was indeed in this relationship for the jiggly-jugglin’.

Being in the Hutt’s good graces, I was allowed to travel with them on local junkets from time to time. I went to the beach with them for Spring Break. I hit up the infamous Elberta Sausage Festival (it’s a real thing) with them, as it was one of their bi-annual rituals. I had made a trip to Auburn (the heart of fking darkness) in her Chevy conversion van for an honor band event. Watched a game with this clan of Auburnites, though I refused to sport those god-awful colors that reek of inbreeding and shame. I’d do whatever I had to do to spend additional time with my Tiger-lovin’ honey-pot, a man whipped by the prospect of carnal desire fulfilled.

One such honor band-bound trip had us traveling back from Auburn down I-85, then I-65, during the Blizzard of ’93 (if you were anywhere in central Alabama in March of that year, you’ll remember it. Auburn and Montgomery had 5-6 inches on the ground, with accumulation as far south as Atmore and Mobile.) As a result, we were allowed to sit in the back of the van, together, with a blanket covering us from the neck down. Seeing the perfect chance at some undercover naughty-business, I put that blanket to good use as cover, first to hold hands, without the Hutt spying us. When I saw that those shadowy movements went undetected, I decided to…up the ante, so to speak. For the sake of modesty, I won’t tell all my secrets to you, my faithful readers, but will rather let your minds wander as to what went on in the back bench of that van beneath the cover of quiltery.

Having been emboldened by that sleight of hand (literally), this Aubie-cat and I began to take our relationship to another level…a decidedly physical one. By this time, I was able to borrow the family Nova on most nights, and so I was able to pick up my girl and tool around a little bit before returning her home in time for her ridiculously early “bed time.” We’d catch a movie sometimes, grab a bite to eat, hang out at my house where there were no prying parental eyes to regulate our behaviors. Our nights usually ended with a Slurpee from the local 7-11, and a tryst in some parking lot or other before I would drive her home.

Using a keen eye honed by a few years of seeking out non-descript areas for covert carnal subterfuge with one young lady or other, I had a literal catalog of locations we could visit to engage in heavy petting (and beyond) without fear of being disturbed. One was a school yard across the street from my childhood home, at the end of a long driveway concealed between two buildings. I think I’ve told y’all about that Steve McQueen-ish Great Escape in a Hoodoo tale of yesteryear, as after being discovered by a school security guard, I had to employ combat driving techniques to escape and evade capture. There was another time that we were accosted in a parking lot near Mobile’s Bel Air Mall by a security detail, as we necked while I listened to the Alabama-Mississippi State game during the 1992 championship campaign.

There were other close scrapes at other trusted locales, so many, in fact, that I had sought to cultivate additional locations for these nocturnal sessions of the flesh. I was running out of options. In a city the size of Mobile, finding a secluded spot that was not frequently passed by police officers or other authority-type busy-bodies was no simple task. One had to poke and prod and conduct surveillance before committing to a site, which was time-consuming to say the least (especially when doing so involved a female compatriot who had to be home by 9). Compounding the difficulty was the fact that not only did I have to feel confidence in the selected site, but my ever-skiddish counterpart had to likewise be convinced, for the consequences of being found out, for her, would have been catastrophic to her burgeoning social life. If the Hutt ever caught a clue that she was shucking skin in the back seat of the Nova with me, we’d both have to move to another state to be able to retain our respective hides.

One night, after much debate (and a particularly convincing sales job by ya boy), we settled on a makeshift location for our evening make-out session. We were running short of time, but teenage boys being teenage boys, I had needs that I felt just had to be met. I’m sure she could have gone on home without tasting the nectar of forbidden love on just that one night, but me, I didn’t think I could make it for even a day without some variety of sweet lovin’. Young men of that age get that way after tasting the tempting flavor of female companionship, with a single-minded drive to complete the task regardless of the obstacles put before them. I firmly believe that if the powers-that-be were serious about installing peace in the Middle East, they’d put the problem before a group of hormone-addled teenage boys with the promise of poonanny as a reward…they’d have that shit solved in no time.

In my case, I didn’t look at the dwindling location situation as a problem, but rather, an opportunity. An opportunity to plow new ground, to chart new territory. With the clock running on our potential nightly engagement, I suggested the unthinkable.

“Why don’t we just go to the park, cut the lights, and knock it out real quick?” (Romantic, I know. I’m sorry ladies, but this feller is taken.)

“What? We can’t just do it in the parking lot at the park, are you crazy?” She obviously lacked the imagination that propelled me forth. I guess that’s to be somewhat expected from an Aubie, however.

“Well, sure we can. It’s dark, so probably won’t be anybody else there. And, since it’s dark, nobody will see us. We’ll cut the lights, and knock it out. Be done just like that. So…whattya think?”

I could tell by the look on her face that she was hesitant. Some would say hesitant, others would say horrified. I didn’t think she was completely sold on the deal, maybe it was the fact that she continued to shake her head no as I spoke, like, the entire time.

Always the trooper, I figured my seniority would win the day. I just kept reassuring her that all would be well.

“Nah, man, see, nobody will see us…cuz it’s like, dark. And I promise, I won’t take too long, I’ll only need a minute.” (Again, I tell you people, this dude was a stone-cold Romeo in the cotdang flesh. You ladies know you want some, amirite? Silver-tongued sumbitch right there.)

“Well, okay, I guess, if you hurry.”

Boom, the words I wanted to hear. I whipped the Nova around and jetted back towards the park. The recreational space in question was Mobile’s Langan Park, a vast expanse of green grass and pine trees with a lake as the centrepiece. There was a large parking lot adjacent to the lake, and the water side of it was on the other side of little pitch, making any cars parked there hard to see from anyone north of the driveway. It was far from perfect, but it would work. 

As we wheeled down the long driveway, I noticed that there was no one else in the park. Like no one at all. It’s worth noting at this point that there was a reason for the lack of patronage at this particular park during this particular era of Mobile history. It was in that year, 1993, that the car-jacking craze finally landed in my sleepy little town. Mobile has always been known for its disproportionate rate of violent crime, but car-jackings were a whole new deal: hyper-violent theft in which the victims often walked away seriously injured (or dead) in addition to having probably their second most-prized position stolen literally from beneath them. 

In fact, this very park had been the site of a recent car-jacking. The parks were still open to recreational users after sunset, and one student from the University of South Alabama had driven over to the park to use its extensive walking path to get in a little jog after classes. As he returned to his car, a nefariously-minded perpetrator emerged from some dark corner, shoving a pistol in his ribs and demanding his keys. The victim complied, but before the jacker left with his wheels, he pistol-whipped the student within an inch of his life. Ugly business indeed.

So I, in my infinite teenage wisdom (powered by unadulterated ‘mones) picked this site…this site… as the location of our get-down sesh on this particular evening. Good decision-making, no? I was a sharp sumbitch, to be sure.

I wheeled down and tucked the Nova into the corner of the parking lot, cut the lights, and escorted my Auburnic lady-friend to the backseat. Within a few minutes, I had unfastened the over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder, the twins were set free, jiggling and wiggling before my overjoyed eyes. We leapt right into the action with little foreplay, and before you know it, the windows were steamed and things were getting downright serious. 

About five minutes into the depths of this carnal cavortation, both our hearts skipped a beat as a light bounced off the fogged windows, illuminating the entire cabin of the trusty Nova like a tractor beam from a flying saucer. But this was no ordinary light…it was a police spotlight.

I sat up enough to smudge a little of the fog from the bottom corner of the backseat window and peered out. Just as I expected, there was a Mobile PD cruiser sitting 20 yards away at an idle. I was mostly blinded by the spotlight, but I could tell from movement in front of the headlights that the officer was out and heading towards the car.

At this point, I was unaware of the fact that following the aforementioned car-jacking incident, the City of Mobile had wisely elected to begin closing its parks at sunset to discourage ne’er-do-wells from taking advantage of late-night park patrons. By choosing the park, we were violating city ordinance, and violators like us were being policed out and ticketed with a vengeance to help instill the new policy. I guess it would have paid for me to listen to the news from time to time, as I could have used said intel to choose my location more wisely.

“OH SHEET!” I screeched at her through clinched teeth. “It’s tha po-po…get dressed, quick!” 

At this point, Aubie-cat was only half nekkid, thank Odin’s Cod-Piece. She slung her gauzy poet’s shirt back around her neck and poked her arms through with the quickness. But, the fact remained, we were stuck in the back seat…no way to get back to the front. And finding two sweaty teenagers in the backseat, any officer worth his salt would know exactly what was going on. Given the fact that Aubie-cat was a mere sophomore while I was a senior, we both knew phone calls, possibly police car rides, were likely to follow. That, friends, would have meant disaster…for the relationship, for my future, for Aubie-cat’s hopes of ever, ever leaving her house again once her Hutt-mama got a’holt to her.

“Think fast, man!” I had to come up with something, quickly. Our very lives (and my continued sampling of the poontang) depending upon it. 

I racked my brain, trying to think of some reason to explain away this damning situation. I couldn’t run, as the po-po had me dead to rights. Plus, there was one way in, and one way out…wouldn’t have been easy to give him the slip. Downright impossible. And attempting to do so could have resulted in some kinda law-enforcement APB or some shit, thus turning a mole hill of a violation into a mountain that would have had far-reaching consequences.

“Ohhh, what are we gonna do, what are we gonna do? Grandma is gonna kill me…I’LL NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN!”

Well, that just couldn’t happen. I had worked hard to cultivate my access to those world-class baby-feeders, and I wasn’t about to surrender those privileges so easily. 

Then, it came to me. A moment of divine inspiration, a saving grace.

“Move over, get up front!”

“Wha…?”

“Just do it woman!” She followed through, slipping between the two front seats, still braless.

I had the perfect plan. It was an unpleasant one, but desperate times and all that shit…

Just as the police officer was within steps of my Nova, I threw the passenger side rear door open. I knew I had a belly full of McNuggets, as I had annihilated a 20 piece not an hour before, along with Supersize fries and about a quart of Sprite. I had but one option, way I figured it. 

I gouged my index finger down my throat as I kicked the door opened. I gagged first, and then rammed the finger down me ole pie-hole again. That time did the trick, as I hurled forth a cascade of induced projectile vomit that shot out of the door and splattered on the asphalt outside with some velocity.

I could hear the police officer’s response, “WHOOOAA, YOU ALRIGHT?”

I composed myself and wiped the puke off of my lips as he poked his head around the front of the car, his Maglight shining directly into my ever-loving eyes. 

“Uh, yeah…yessir…think so…”

Seeing I was harmless (except for the projectile vomiting thing), he walked around to the passenger rear door. “You don’t look too alright to me…you been drinkin’ son?”

“No sir, I don’t drink. I ate at the McDonald’s up on Moffatt a little while ago, and got this far before I felt sick, pulled over in this parking lot to lean back and see if the nausea would pass, and then that happened.”

“Well, damn…I just ate there about 30 minutes ago. How long’d you say it’s been since you ate there?” At this point, due to the fog windows and Aubie-cat’s utter silence, the officer didn’t even know she was in the car. I kept up my fiction, as I could tell he had become concerned over his own health, afraid the same pukey fate would befall him mid-shift.

“Umm, prolly been 45 minutes…if you ate there, I’d say you got about 15 minutes…prolly ought to find a bathroom ‘less you want to ralph in the parking lot too.” His concern was palpable…not for me, but for himself.

“Aw shit…don’t tell me you had some McNuggets…”

“Yessir. 20-piece. They’re all right there on that asphalt I believe.”

That’s all he needed to hear. 

“Well, go ‘head and finish up and get outta here soon as you can. Park’s closed after dark now, so you can’t be down here. I know you had a circumstance, so I’ll let it slide…just hurry up and move along, park’s closed,” he said as he walked away, double-time. 

“Yessir, sure thing.”

As I saw him get back in his car and cut the spotlight, I slithered up into the front seat. Aubie-cat had her hand held over her mouth, partially out of shock at my resourcefulness in the moment, half to hold in the giggle I knew she wanted to let slip out. As soon as the copper pulled off, I cranked the trusty Nova, hit the lights, and squirted out the park’s one driveway and onto Zeigler Blvd. 

“I cannot believe you…you can puke on demand?” asked Aubie-cat.

It was one of my many talents. I was blessed with an extremely strong gag reflex. One time, in class, I literally worked up a puke simply because I swallowed a hair, one of my own, and it stuck in the back of my throat. I coughed and hacked, then gagged and had to swallow a vomit-comet rather than spill it on the classroom floor. For once, this gag reflex semi-blessing, semi-curse worked to my benefit. 

I pulled into her driveway in plenty of time to make the curfew the Hutt had imposed. Easy-peasy. I had missed my evening round of fondling with light felatio, but such was life. I was lucky to have escaped the scrape intact. I leaned in for a kiss without thinking, but Aubie-cat recoiled.

“Uhhh, not ‘til you brush those teeth.” 

“Oh yeah, my bad.” I guess even Aubies have standards.

One small epilogue…though we escaped the jack-booted press of anti-sexual authority in the moment, there was one small snag on the home front. As I pulled away from the driveway, I realized that Aubie-cat’s bra was left in my car seat…she had apparently sat upon it when she climbed back into the front seat, and forgot to grab it on the way out. 

Not good. Grandma would surely notice those unfettered sweater puppets swinging free and easy in the breeze. I circled back, but saw that Aubie-cat was already inside. It was a literal “hope for the best” sitch, to be sure. I prayed that the Force was with her.

After returning home, I called her up. She recounted how she realized her foible upon entering the back door. With a little quick thinking of her own, she was able to conjure a story about a spilled drink and my mother laundering said undergarment on her behalf. Fortunately, the Hutt deemed it too late in the evening for an investigatory call to my mother to be considered proper, so she let the sleeping dog lie.

Too much action for a night that produced very little action, if you know what I mean. Oh well…such is the life of a teenage male. 

Loki, please feast on this tale of shame and debauchery and let it satiate your rampant appetite for embarrassment. May our beloved Crimson Tide trounce those genetically-mottled chicken-cultivators from yonder in West Georgia, and let Alabama’s banner fly unblemished into the SEC Championship Game. May the battlefield be strewn with the bodies of our inferior foe, and the men in crimson once again claim victory over the heathen horde of infidels.