Your Championship Game Hoodoo Thread

Well folks, here we stand, on the precipice once again, a few steps shy of cresting the peak and putting number 17 in the Tuscaloosa trophy case. It all seems surreal: another chance to repeat as National Champion under Nick Saban after once before accomplishing the feat in the 2011-2012 seasons. And for the second consecutive year, they’ve done it with a new starting quarterback, to boot!

As shocking as the achievements may seem to the outside world, they’ve become commonplace at Alabama…the norm, if you will. Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnesses to a run of college football excellence the likes of which the sporting world has never seen, and likely won’t see again in our days on this little blue marble we call Earth. Enjoy it, soak it in, for these are heady times we now enjoy, heady times indeed. Explain to your children how lucky they are to be a part of this particular time in Alabama football history, as it is a special era indeed.

After our beloved Crimson Tide defeated the Washington Huskies on New Year’s Eve, I struggled a bit with a Hoodoo tale suitable for a championship game. “Why, has OWB’s deep and wide Hoodoo well finally run dry after all these years of spillin’ forth ridiculous stories?” 

Oh, ye of little faith, to you I say “Nay, NAY!” (But that is just my horse impression, please allow me to regain the proper level of decorum and seriousness…there, now we can move forward with our little narrative, I apologize for the interruption.) To ye of little faith, I say “NAY!”, for if there are truths that can be taken for granted in this cruel, cold world, among them are that death and taxes are constants, the Tide will roll, and OWB will muster a yarn from the well-stocked foot-closet of his yesterdays with which to spin a tapestry of ribaldry and tomfoolery for you.

But as you well know, though I delight from the enjoyment you fine folk take in these unsavory tales I offer up each week, the ultimate goal is one of single-minded focus: namely, to appease the wanton hunger of our pigskin patron, Football Loki, so that he may bestow his Tide-turning favor on the men in crimson. Loki is fair, but eternally needy, so we must continue to fuel his favor with stories worthy of shame and ridicule, if we expect him to push our beloved Crimson Tide to victory against so worthy an opponent as the puke-hued Clemson Tigers we face on Monday night. Can I get an amen? (And the choir said, “Roll Tide.”)

So as the Tide ticked off the final seconds of that clock in the first round, I wondered, “What story do I possess untold that can measure the magnitude of test the Tide will face in the Championship Game?” At first, I was truly and duly stumped. I could not cypher the answer. I’d think of a suitable tale, only to consult ye old Hoodoo ledger and find, “Nope, I told that story in prelude to number 16.” or “Nope, that’s the tale that beat LSU in 2014.” Several times I walked through this process before desperation began to haunt my mind. Would I not be able to comply with the simple request of Football Loki to feed his desires for embarrassing ditties? Would I fail my beloved Crimson Tide, a Hoodoo version of Lane Kiffin? (Too soon?) 

I prayed and hoped the answer would come to me in the coming days. In the meantime, I watched Auburn versus Oklahoma on January 2, for once actually hoping the GusBus would run slap over the brigade of assholes that is the Oklahoma Sooners. But as in all things, Auburn proved themselves incapable of excellence and unworthy of my good will, and they took an ass whuppin’ in the game.

In the dwindling moments of that game, I thought to myself, “Good gawd, Auburn sucks…” And then, like Saul stricken from his mount while on the road to Damascus, I saw the light! “Auburn sucks…Auburn sucks…sucks…sucks…AH-HAH! To the Batcave, Robin, for we must Hoodoo!” (Robin is my pet name for my physical endowment, by the way…which is appropriate on many, many levels. I shall leave your minds to wander for a moment…okay, that’s enough now, focus.)

Yes, Auburn sucked. Like a brass-plated bilge pump. But it was not the Institution of Bovine Book-Learning that had registered a remnant of a memory in my mind, no. Rather, it was the word “sucked” that rang the resonant bell (rust covered as it may be) of recollection in my sour-mash-imbibed brain parts. (Bear with me, for it will all make sense soon enough.)

Now first, before I tear off headlong into this tale of woe, allow me to provide a little character development, if you will, for one of the central players in this here Hoodoo get-down. As a younger man, just after college but before starting a family, I kept to myself in large part. I had a circle of drinkin’ buddies of course, and I had dalliances with ladies I fancied from time to time just to keep my needs met. But the primary companion with whom I sought refuge and comfort from the trials and troubles of the day was a beautiful girl named Esmerelda, or Ezzie, as I called her for the sake of brevity (and if you know one thing about OWB, it’s that he cherishes the whole brevity thing.)

She was gorgeous, crafted by the hand of the Maker with elegant lines and a warm disposition. She was always in the mood to visit and engage in whatever foolishness I happened to have up my sleeve on a given day. Somedays, we’d pile in my old ’78 Cutlass and head for Dauphin Island to soak up sun, surf fish, and splash about in the waves in each other’s company. Some days, we’d walk to the park with a backpack and break out a picnic lunch by the lake. There were times when neither one of us wanted to do anything but cruise around west of Mobile in the hinterlands with a full tank of gas, a couple tightly-rolled spliffs, and my cassette collection. Other times, we’d just stay in bed and watch television for hours on end.

It may be important to note a critical fact here that will aid in this particular character study. For you see, Esmerelda was not a lady…well, not in the sense that I may have led you to believe. She was, in truth, an 80-pound albino pitbull.

From the moment I put my two eyes on her, I was in love with her. I still remember how she came into my life. My brother B-Rad was working in the restaurant business, and he had made some rather questionable friends along the way. As anyone who works in the business knows, it literally takes all kinds to keep your local Chili’s or Applebee’s afloat. One such feller B-Rad met shared a common hobby with my brother: specifically, smoking copious amount of hydroponic weed. Let’s call this ole boy J.

Now after knowing J a short time, B-Rad discovered that ole fella lived just around the corner from us, back in the far end of Beau Terra, in a rat-basket house strewn with empty Miller Lite cans, spent bags of Doritos, and ash trays full of bones, butts, and ash. One day at work, J asked B-Rad if he would come by after work, because he wanted his help with something. After arriving home, B-Rad mentioned it to me, and asked if I wanted to ride along. 

“Sure,” I said. Maybe J had some of that fire, and was willing to share. 

We arrived at J’s house, which was an overall shambles, both inside and out. He greeted us at the door, and began immediately walking us around back, where we could see there was an emptied swimming pool. He began to explain.

“So here’s what happened. A couple days before I moved here, I stole this dog….” (That’s never a promising start to a story, amirite?) “I was livin’ in a trailer park, and the guy next door was into fightin’ dogs. I’d see him throw smaller dogs into their pen, and they’d just tear ‘em up, for practice or whatever. It made me sick, ya know? So I seen he had this one younger dog, pretty as she could be, in a cage, and figured she was gonna get the same treatment. For a day or two I fed her treats through the fence, made friends with her. And after that, I just couldn’t see her get tore up and treated that way, so I stole her.”

(Now, I’m not ever a proponent of theft, especially not if it involves a dog. Hell, despite what the Great State of Alabama has to say about it legally, that ain’t theft, it’s kidnapping. A dog is a member of the family, not a commodity that can be replaced. But in this particular case, one can argue there is truly honor among thieves, as J saved Ezzie from what would have been a short life of pain and suffering. God bless the ole toker for that good deed.)

“Anyway,” J continued, “I got her and we moved here, but now I got my girl knocked up, and can’t afford a dog. And my ole lady is scared about havin’ a pit around a baby, you know…gotta find a home for her, remembered you sayin’ you liked pits…”

About the time, we reached the edge of the pool, and I could see her: a snow white, perfectly proportioned American Staffordshire Terrier. Totally white, with a pink nose and eye lids, not a speck of pigment on her anywhere save for the one brown eye that paired up with the crystal blue one. Beautiful dog, lots of life in her eyes despite what she’d undoubtedly seen in her roughly year of life.

Before B-Rad even said anything, I blurted out, “I’ll take her.”

I climbed down in the pool that had been her make-shift kennel and tucked her under my arm. She licked my face, as dogs are more than willing to do, and we made our way to my Cutty.

We bonded instantly. I took her everywhere I went, whether it was up to the grocery store, over to visit with friends, or to the park. At night, after I’d come in a long day of landscaping labor, she’d be waiting to spend time with me and only me, the only girl I’ve ever known who loved me so unconditionally as to embrace who I was as a person and relish it. I’d sit outside in my makeshift outdoor boxing gym at night, intermittently hitting the bag, smokin’, and drinking beers. Keep in mind, this was in a rather rough neighborhood most of you wouldn’t drive through after sunset, even if you were packing. Once as I sat there, lost in a chemical haze and listening to some Floyd beneath the beaming moonlight, I remember seeing Ezzie’s ears perk, that inquisitive look of awareness rising across her face. Then, without so much as twitch of warning, she leapt up, past me, onto the top rail of the chain link fence with a snarl. 

Now, as an OG, no one would ever get the drop on me under most circumstances, as I had high situational awareness and a quick draw. But on this night, I was completely loaded, and it was that dog that saved me, as her sentinelship alerted me to a fellow about to enter my yard who had just robbed the local grocery a street over, who was fleeing on foot through our neighborhood. He was about to jump my fence (and try to do God-know-what) when Ezzie caught wind, giving me enough forewarning to snatch my H&K from its holster in a cinderblock end table and put it in his face. That, and the ill-tempered pit bull coming over the fence, sent the poor fella careening back into the ditch from which he came. 

Excellent dog, Ezzie was. Even better friend and confidant. I’ll have you know, she never, ever, uttered one of the secrets I offered her in confidence…no sir, not a single one. She was as true a friend to me as her coat was white. 

But enough character development, on to our tale…

So, on one particular Saturday in the spring, I had the hankerin’ for a swim. Ezzie, being the accommodating sort, was always up for a dip, as she loved the water. Now, I had a hot date later on that evening with the woman who would one day become Mrs. OWB. We had been out a few times, done a few things of an intimate nature, but I was quickly working my way past the appetizers to the main course, if you know what I mean (and I think you do.) That night would be a slam dunk, as it was a stay-at-home night, complete with a pair of ribeyes (her favorite cut), wine, and a homemade cheesecake I had chillin’ in the icebox. I felt as though my chances were pretty good in regard to scoring some of that sweet lovin’, and a nice, refreshing midday swim was just the thing to cool the searing embers contained within my loins.

With that engagement on the books, I figured there wasn’t time for an island jaunt. Big Creek Lake was overrun with rednecks, probably not very relaxing. Any of the rivers on the south end of the county were too dirty to swim in. Then I remembered a swimmin’ hole we used to hit when I was a boy, no more than a mile walk from the house in a piece of terrain we called “the Gullies.”

Now these Gullies, you see, were created in prehistoric times (not really, it was like 1955) when the Alabama Department of Transportation got the go-ahead to widen and extend a strip of Moffatt Road, otherwise known as Hwy. 98 (or Bloody 98, as the locals would morbidly call it). These Gullies were the source of all of the fill dirt used to erect the road base of that highway project…acres upon acres of ravines, cliffs, and valleys carved from every shade of clay one finds beneath the Alabama topsoil. It was an awesome place, not only because it offered us coastal flatlanders some sense of elevation (with its 50-foot cliffs carved through the clay by the running waters following Mobile’s trademark torrential downpours), but because it appeared as though it had been painted over in watercolor hues of pastel orange, pink, red, yellow, and chalky white. Stands of pine grew throughout it, but by in large, it was a Tatooine-ish landscape that revealed what Alabama looked like underneath when the dark Delta flesh was peeled back. 

On the backside of the Gullies was a solid stand of trees, and through this expansive thicket ran a stream that slid with quickness through the vicinity. It flowed under Shelton Beach Road before moving through an open area with a small beach, then into the woods. Long ago, we had found the remnants of what was referred to by folks as “The Pumping Station.” The Pumping Station (a tongue-in-cheek descriptor to say the least) was nothing but an old bricked-in cellar which at some point had held a pump that moved water for the nearby water works. It was a 12x20 underground room in essence, and tucked back out of sight in the woods, it became a common location for get-downs from all the tail-chasin’ teenage kids in the neighborhood. There was never a time that I visited the Pumping Station that there were not numerous pairs of panties scattered about, along with various items of drug paraphernalia and old Jim Beam bottles.

But it wasn’t the Pumping Station that interested me on this day, but rather that cool stream that flowed adjacent to it. In the past, I had gone there a few times with the neighborhood kids to that spot in the clearing, since the bottom was pretty sandy and there wasn’t a lot of slimy, half-decayed leaf litter there, unlike the more wooded stretch. Sure, it wasn’t as private, being snugged up against the roadway, but that was okay. I was just going to be swimming with my dog anyway, nothing to hide there.

I made bologna and cheese sandwiches for me and Ez and packed them, along with a pair of towels (one for me, one for Ezzie), a radio, a six pack of High Life tucked in an insulated lunchbox, and a dry set of clothes. We set off on foot, since fording the Gullies to get to the swimmin’ spot was half the fun, and being spring, the temperature was still mild.

We made our way into the Gullies and began crossing over. Ezzie was a natural athlete…like many pitbulls, she was an accomplished climber. She could climb trees in pursuit of squirrels, and she had no trouble navigating the cliffs and valleys we crossed over. Not to mention, she was absolutely fearless (another pit trait), and when she saw me preparing, with a running start, to leap from one clay cliff into a sandy bed some 20 feet below (I’d done it before successfully), she tagged right along at full speed without questioning it. Granted, she had no idea how high the jump was, and she was terrified when she saw how far she was falling, but like a trooper, she tucked and rolled her way out of it like a cotdang ninja.

We found our spot, a little sandy beach in the bend of the creek just about half-a-hundred yards shy of the Shelton Beach bridge. Those bologna sammitches were already on my mind, so I figured we’d eat those, drink a deer, then get in the water. 

After wolfing down lunch, I stripped down to my skivvies, and we went on in. Hell with that 30 minutes foolishness, we had swimmin’ to do. The water was cold, tea-colored from the ever-present tannin in south Alabama creeks caused by decaying leaf matter upstream. I waded out into the deepest part of it, which was only about six feet, Ezzie right behind me, flexing her muscle and dog-paddlin’ in place against the current as if working out on an aquatic treadmill. I’d pick her up and toss her downstream a piece just to watch her battle the current to get back to me. It was great, and she took to water like a Labrador, especially this cool, steady stream that didn’t offer the annoying crash of waves that befuddled her on trips to the coast. 

Cars whipped by on Shelton Beach Road, travelers heading from Mobile into Prichard or Saraland to the north (and vice-versa, of course). I noticed the craned necks of passers-by who watched the stark white shirtless man and his stark white dog splashing around in the tributary like children in a backyard sprinkler. I wondered what they thought…as most folks would have considered it unsafe A) to swim in a creek on the fringe of Prichard, B) to swim alone, C) to swim in such a remote location not marked for swimming, or D) to swim alone in a location not marked for swimming in a creek on the fringe of Prichard. 

I had pulled myself out of the comforting current of the cold water long enough to retrieve another beer from my backpack. When I did, I decided to check my phone, and I saw that I had a missed call from B-Rad. I dialed him back.

“’Ay, whats’up?” I said.

“Aw nothin’, just doin’ it up here with Mike-Mike and Big Leebert, tryin’ to find somethin’ to do.”

“Word, word. I’m just down here by the Pumping Station with Ez, figured I’d come on down here and get me a swim in while the weather was nice, drink a few beers.”

“Cool, we might ride down there,” he said. He hollered away from the phone to his counterparts, asking them if they were game. Then he returned to the phone. “Yeah, we goan ride down there, prolly just park on the side of Shelton Beach by the bridge. I ain’t climbin’ no mountains and shit.”

“A’ight, I’ll be here.” It wouldn’t take them long to get there, as I knew they were probably gonna stop by and pick up some drank on the way if they didn’t have it already. Leebert was a big ole dude, but he had an affinity for Boone’s Farm wine, the fruity kind flavored to taste like poor impersonations of famous cocktails like Mai Thai or Strawberry Daquiri. Dude would suck down six or eight of them in a sitting.

I cracked open a col’beer and watched Ez swim upstream to a large slab of half-submerged concrete that jutted up from the middle of the stream a few dozen yards from where I had plopped down on the beach. Good gawd that dog was a determined thing, it took her forever to battle that flow, but she did it, climbed up on that slab and stood there like King of the Mountain, wriggling peals of water from her coat with violent twists and warming herself in the sunshine. 

I let her have her moment of conquest, but was uncomfortable with how far she had strayed away from me. I waded back into the stream and called her back. Smiling, she immediately leapt-from the pea-gravel impregnated slab into the brown water with a splash and hurriedly paddled towards me, covering the 60 or so yards with speed and ease. I beckoned, calling her to me, “Com’on girl, you can do it, com’on!”

As she drew closer, I noticed there was some black hanging from her cheek. At first, I figured it was a piece of floating debris that had affixed to her, and the dark color on her white coat made it stand out. But the closer she got to me, the more puzzled I was, as it seemed to glisten and shine in an unfamiliar way, looked kind of like wet gummy candy.

When she was within a dozen yards of me, I noticed not only did she have whatever-it-was on her cheek, but I could see something similar on the underside of her neck when her head bobbed up with each paddle. Then I noticed the same thing in the middle of her back. She couldn’t get to me fast enough, as I had a creeping sense of revolt that fell over me.

“Hurry up, girl, com’on.”

Finally, she reached me, swimming up into my arms where I could get to the bottom of this rapidly-developing mystery. I ran my finger over the black spot on her back, hoping it would just flick away like any other floating detritus one is liable to find in a creek in south Alabama. But when I touched it, I recoiled…you see, it was slimy. Yuck. 

I brushed over it again, but it wouldn’t budge. It was stuck. So was the one on her face. Likewise, the one on her neck was affixed. I pulled on the one on her neck, and after a little tug, it came loose. I held it up in the sunlight to examine it, and it wriggled. I held it only long enough to see the mouth of it and deduce that it was, in fact, a leech. A LEECH!

I wasn’t sure what to do, but I snatched them all off as quickly as I could and tossed them into the grass on the close-by bank. Didn’t want those damn things in the water with me! I could see the trickle of blood pouring forth from the spots where I’d removed those hateful critters, the hirudin in their saliva acting as an anti-coagulant that kept the flow running wide open, staining the pristine purity of her white fur. 

I was in full panic mode. What was I to do? I’d never had a run-in with leeches in all my days of swimming creeks and ponds in this part of the world. I didn’t have any alcohol, but I did have High Life…that has alcohol in it, right? So I poured it liberally over her wounds from the one I had open in my hand, hoping that the malted hops would somehow carry an antisepctic property that would save my dog’s life from these vampiric demons.

All the while, Ezzie looked at me, perplexed, her head cocked sideways in the pittie fashion, not understanding the look of panic that had erupted upon her best friend’s face. She licked the beer that was dripping from her jowls.

Then, all of a sudden, it dawned on me, your humble (and sometimes dim-witted) narrator. If Ezzie got leeches on her from swimming in this water, then….

I immediately panicked, began itching psychosomatically, it was like fire was racing through my body. I couldn’t get those things off (if they were indeed on me) fast enough. I dropped Ez to fend for herself in the current and let my eyes race over my person. None on my arms, none on my neck. I couldn’t really see my back, but as far as I could reach and feel, there was nothing attached to me back there either. But then again, those parts had not been under water most of the time, so I could not rest easy yet. 

I began to wade out of the creek onto the bank so that I could check my lower extremities. I was still ankle deep when I saw one of the bloodsuckers, a tiny one, attached to my leg right above the knee. I snatched it off and the blood streamed out in a little red rivulet. Another one had attached to the lower calf of my other leg. I ripped it off as well and hurled it into the grass. I didn’t see any more, but there was one more place to check, a sacred place beyond common eyeshot…

I didn’t want to look there, as the thought of such a horrific thing was surely an image better suited for some Eli Roth horror-porn film or other. But the thought of leaving something there, if it was indeed there, for even a second longer was appalling. I had to act.

With one eye pinched shut, I pulled the elastic waistband of my boxers away from my body, and with my one open eye, I peeped down upon my naughty parts. There, attached to me ole tool, was a leech just a coonus-hair smaller than a triple-A battery, just a-gettin’ his jollies at the expense of ole Robin. There was another, much smaller one, lodged in the tucked area between me thigh and coinpurse…had a mouth of raisin-wrinkly skin, he did. Truly terrifying stuff, people.

I did what any red-blooded male would do in such a circumstance…I instinctively snatched my britches off and screamed like a schoolgirl. 

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,” the sound echoed over the hills, off the cliff walls, and down through the valleys. Wildlife turned away from grazing at the sound, flocks of birds arose from their perches in flight, terrified. Even the trees seemed to gently bow at my horror in the light breeze. 

I ran out of breath, screamed myself dry, took a deep breath, then hollered again, “AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

I stood there, buck-nekkid as the day I was born, swattin’ and flickin’ at my man-parts in hopes that these blood-suckers would somehow get the message that they were unwanted and drop off. After all, the only thing worse than having a leech attached to one’s hammer is having to pull one off of one’s hammer, then watch the aftermath of it all. OH, THE HUMANITY!

But these unkind creatures of the creek refused to cooperate, despite my persistent, uptempo flicking. (I shudder to think what it may have looked like to passers-by from a distance: me, nekkid and flicking my junk while my dog looked on...like some East German internet porno or something.)

Ezzie, well, if she was confused before, she was confused + horrified now. She backed into the tall grass, ass-first, and laid flat on her belly with her chin on her front paws, the way she did when she had done something wrong. She didn’t know what the hell was going on, and frankly, neither did I. I had a leech attached to my pecker. The world no longer made sense.

I decided that I was going to have to do the unthinkable and pluck this demon spawn from my naughty bits. There I was, still naked mind you, trying to pinch this critter off of me beneath the basking glow of the Alabama sun. I elected to do the little one, the groin-rider, first. I ripped it off, and sure enough, there was a trickle of blood in the wake.

Now, it’s worth noting that when I awoke that morning, I had no idea that before the sunset, I’d be faced with the prospect of a bleeding pelinus. I mean, that just wasn’t on my list for the day, really didn’t see things going down in such a fashion. So please, understand my reluctance to witness such a thing – ever – let alone on the very day that I expected to cross the final bridge of intimacy with the woman I was courting. Who gets busy with a unit that has a worm-induced hole in it the size of a bullet wound? Certainly not the germaphobic, critterphobic future Mrs. OWB. Kinda hard to explain that whole dynamic…just no savory way to justify that one.

Finally, I bit down on the proverbial bullet. I closed my eyes, pinched that nasty bastard, and pulled it off. He didn’t wanna let go, either, bastard had staked his claim and all. I didn’t want to look down after that, but my eyes involuntarily forced it upon me. I mean, I couldn’t not look…kinda had to know what I was workin’ with down there.

Sure enough, there was blood…everywhere. It was horrible. I will never forget it.

Now keep in mind, I was standing on the creek bank, nude as a shucked oyster, with a bloody man-part in my hand. Not really my finest moment as a person, and it looked even worse than it was.

It was at that point that I realized I had an audience. The first hint was the eruption of guffaws coming from the roadway. You guessed it: B-Rad, Mike-Mike, and Leebert. There were also cars that were slowing on the roadway to see the unusual scene, though they dared not stop and find themselves entangled in whatever in the hell had happened to render such a nightmare. (“No sire’ee, just a keep on drivin’, but…what the hell?”)

Knowing there was no real way to circumnavigate the truth, and no real reason to with these assholes, I shouted at the peanut gallery, “HEY, SHUT THE FK UP, I HAD LEECHES ON MY PECKER!”

Their laughter stopped. Immediately. In fact, I could see them all making their way back to B-Rad’s Bronco. They got in, and B-Rad barked his tires down, cutting a Julio back onto the roadway and speeding off. Didn’t anybody want any of that action…shit ain’t so funny now, is it?

I wasn’t mad. After all, tending to leech bites on one’s unit is something best done in privacy. I poured some beer on it, wrapped ole Robin up in a paper towel, found my dry britches, and got dressed. Ezzie seemed relieved that we were apparently leaving, and she finally crept out of her hiding place and took her usual posture.

Needless to say, there wasn’t any love-makin’ to be had that night, not by the decision of the future Mrs. OWB, but by my own doing. After all, how would that convo go down? “Uhhh yeah, that hole, it’s uhhh, an old war injury…yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket.” Or maybe “Nah, don’t mind that hole, it’s just a flesh wound, all good.” Definitely not (especially for the exceedingly squeamish Mrs. OWB), “Yea, I was swimming in a creek today and got leeches on me Johnson, no big whup…” 

Our relationship survived, nonetheless. But to this day, I live with the horror of what happened on that fateful sojourn into the Alabama semi-wilderness. Never again have I swum in uncharted waters. It has been a worthy sacrifice, as you never wanna look into yo’ draws and see something attached to your manhood (with the obvious exclusions being applicable). The physical wounds, well…they healed within a week’s time. But the mental and emotional scars…they, my friends, remain.

There is my tale of shame and horror. Football Loki, please take this offering and commit it to your eternal favor, as a rematch with those god-awful orange heathens from “Auburn with a Lake” was not my desire, so vociferous were they in our last meeting. Please give our beloved Crimson Tide strength supernatural. Let Jalen Hurts fall on the Tiger defense with the fury of Thor’s hammer Mjolnir. Let Jonathan Allen repeatedly smite Deshaun Watson and send him to Valhalla. Let the Bama defense stand as rigid as Heimdahl the Impenetrable at the Bifrost bridge to Asgard. Let Bo Scarbrough bring upon the Clemsonites their own gridiron Ragnarok. I ask these things of you, in Saban’s name, amen.

You get it, Loki…Roll Tide.

Your Weekly Hoodoo Thread: SEC Championship edition

Here we are, right smack-dab on the precipice of greatness once again. As loyal Hoodoo’ers, I don’t have to impart upon you people just how important the events that will unfold tomorrow night are to our beloved Crimson Tide and our hopes for the fifth national title of the Nick Saban era of Alabama football.

Sure, as some idiot reporter intimated to Our Dark Lord this past week, Alabama could likely lose to Florida and still get into the College Football Playoffs. But this Alabama team ain’t the losin’ type. No sir, they are on the brink of doing what only one other Saban-coached championship team has done before…win a national championship following an undefeated season. That right there is ’92 type of elite, and appropriately enough, the Bama defense of 2016 may go down in history as a peer of Gene Stallings’ ridiculous 1992 defense.

Truth be told, I was hoping for another Bama-Florida match-up in the high stakes SEC Championship Game this season. At the beginning of the year, I predicted that Florida would be the last man standing in the East to get to the SECCG, and as high as those odds appeared at times this season, the Gators made it. There’s just something about seeing those crimson jerseys juxtaposed against that Gator orange and blue that makes your narrator nostalgic for the days of his youth, when the two teams were regular combatants for SEC supremacy. 

In the first ever match-up for all the marbles, Stallings’ gritty Tide team gutted out a win over Steve Spurrier’s seemingly unbeatable Florida Gators. If memory serves, it was an Antonio Langham interception that sealed the deal, as the unbreakable Bama defense became the trademark of that team.

Flash-forward to the current era. Nick Saban has put together a string of dominance that will likely go unmatched in modern sports by the time it’s all said and done. Alabama simply couldn’t be more dominant, as is evidence by the hot coals of hatred that are heaped constantly on the heads of Tide players, coaches, and fans by the media and members of rival fan bases nationwide. 

Coach Jim McElwain has done a fine job at Florida of helping the Gators rise back to the top of the perpetually downtrodden SEC East, but his Gators remain a work in progress. Apparently, Coach Mac needs a Hoodoo battalion of his own after a second straight year of debilitating, excoriating injuries have shredded his roster, forcing him to play the last half of his schedule with a patchwork amalgam of second- and third-stringers and a healthy complement of freshmen.

Be that as it may, we know the Hoodoo winds of whim are fickle, as is the favor of our feared patron Football Loki. Quite simply, Loki must eat, and his hunger for our shame is ravenous. We’ve done an adequate job of appeasing him this season evidently, as his patronage has pushed our boys forth to great heights. But we must soldier on, as the stakes get increasingly higher from this game through the last game, which we hope will be the National Championship Game. Loki needs more Hoodoo, and it is more Hoodoo that we shall provide. 

So I implore you, do not hang on to that cherished Hoodoo recounting for a playoff game or natty. For surely, surely, in the month between now and the first round of the College Football Playoffs, you can find some way to further corrupt your reputation or tarnish your eternal soul in order to meet future Hoodoo needs. Now is the moment to act, and act we must!

This is a tale I spin for you from the yarn of my college years, a narrative rife with shame and a call from moral grace. You see, back in those days, your narrator was a studious sort, an English major who was just as happy with his nose in some William Faulkner work as he was chasing tail on the campus of his small Catholic institution of higher learning. I tried to live according to the code that had been instilled in me by my single mother and the assortment of role players she assembled to bring me and my brother B-Rad from boys to me. I was taught to respect everyone, to try to live in peace with my fellow man, and to always view my actions through the lens of a Christian perspective. But despite this proper home-trainin’ (as was the case in so much of the literature I avidly consumed), I found within myself a duality, a breaking schism of the good from some darker undercurrent of my personality.

Though I was generally a good kid and leader amongst my peers, I had dabbled in tomfoolery as a high school student, collecting for a local pot dealer who was slight of frame and soft of speech. Because of his usually laid-back demeanor, he was willing to front his herb to people in his circle (“to front” means to loan drugs to others in good faith, for those of you unfamiliar with narco-slang), and as a result, because of his relative kindness, the said same took advantage and skated on their respective debts. After a casual conversation with this weed-slangin’ chillster in which he expressed a need to recoup his friendly investments, we brokered terms of a contractor-client relationship in which he would keep me in some spending money in return for my brawn and willingness to enforce the terms of his oustanding debts. In other words, he'd tell me who needed smashin’, and I’d go smash ‘em for McDonald’s money. Simple economics…see a need and fill it.

The problem was, I probably would have done it for free, so much did I enjoy the feeling of faces compressing beneath my knuckles. Imposing my physical will on others was empowering though brutal, and served a sort of therapy for me as I worked through the angst of my teenage years after having been largely abandoned by my father and stricken with relative poverty. The rush was addictive, especially when one could watch the blood drain from the faces of those who knew why you were there, and what would follow if they couldn’t produce the required funds. 

In pursuit of my line of side work, I developed an affinity for body blows, which when landed on the rib cage in the vicinity of the liver, made a most glorious thud-crunch sound generated by the blunt trauma to the hollow thoracic cavity combined with the crunching of rib bones beneath the force of a well-thrown, quickly-cranked right hook. I wasn’t big on blood, and generally would only let loose on someone’s face when absolutely necessary. Sometimes it was appropriate in the course of business to open up an eyebrow to make a visual statement to others, or crack a jaw to send someone careening rubber-kneed to the ground where he would remain until jostling into consciousness while I cleaned out his wallet or snatched the dope-equivalent value of possessions from his car or backpack. I didn’t steal, but rather took what was owed, a purveyor of narco-karma who balanced the scales and kept the underground economy in flow. It was an art, one I enjoyed immensely even though everything I had learned from my moral teachers had taught me that a man should take no pleasure in hurting others.

When I went to college, I decided to grow up, to leave that part of my life behind, to be the better man my family expected me to be. I wanted to focus on my academics and stay away from the crowd that had become a part of my previous life. It wasn’t that I was super-impressionable to the influence of others, but more the fact that most people who knew me, folks I called friends, knew what I was about. So whenever the opportunity presented itself, and even when it didn’t, they would create situations that would end in blood being spilled for some unfortunate soul at the end of my fists. Every time I went out with those folks, they’d get me into a fight. As much as I enjoyed fisticuffs, it was tiresome. Sometimes ya boy just wanted to relax and chill.  

B-Rad was the worst. That boy would run his mouth all reckless like, talmbout what would happen if some ne’er-do-well or other ever tangled with his big brother. His incessant chest-poking kept me in action, even with people I had never even met. B-Rad would run that mouth, then after building up the pressure, he would introduce the said victim to me, at which point they’d decide to underestimate the bookish guy with glasses and skater hair. Words would be said, hands would be raised, and before you knew it, folks would be laid out, furniture would be broken, blood would be splattered over eggshell walls like a cotdang Jackson Pollack work…and B-Rad would be standin’ over the unfortunate soul, goin’ on ‘bout some “YOU GOT KNOCKED THE FK OUT.”

Needless to say, I couldn’t avoid my family members, but I cut away a large portion of non-blood relations who were responsible for instigating past beat downs. When I’d go out drinkin’ in college, I’d generally go with my classmates, friends who were from a different world, who had never even seen a real fight, let alone been one of the combatants. There were no fights, there was no real drama. I enjoyed the easy-going, stress-free nature of these outings…nothing like the dog-fightin’ ring my buddies always wanted to create for their entertainment that always involved me and some other poor soul. 

But like a reformed Sith who evermore feels the tug of the Dark Side upon his soul, I still had a hunger, a bloodlust, that I felt the need to chase. My reformed, clean-cut life simply couldn’t fulfill that need, and I could only run from it for so long. I missed fighting, the exhilaration of pounding someone into submission, the adrenaline rush spurred by our built-in human fight-or-flight response. That’s how I got involved in boxing, as I sought out a safe way to put my talents to use and to continue to be able to hit people in their soft spots in a more legalized setting.

I kept this boxing something of a secret from most of the people around me. For one, Momz could never know. No sir, that right there was what we call a “non-starter.” She wouldn’t have let it happen, and would have used every guilt fulcrum in her arsenal to get me to stop. I couldn’t let B-Rad know, because that would have defeated the purpose…he’d be a ringside takin’ bets and shit and spurrin’ others to take me on. For a similar reason, I didn’t want many friends to know, as I figured they’d then want to carry me around as a bodyguard, which was exactly what I was trying to avoid. Finally, my goodie-two-shoes friends at school definitely couldn’t know, as they’d never understand and think me thuggish. I had a reputation to maintain, after all.

I became pretty skilled as a boxer, actually pushed to a 13-0 amateur record before moving into the more lucrative bare-knuckled boxing that occurs in back rooms at bars and dives across the Gulf Coast. The latter is generally not advertised (and is technically illegal), and if it is, it’s generally called something like a “Tough Man Competition.” They were loosely-regulated affairs, usually conducted in a tournament format. You never knew who you’d be fighting very far in advance, and you were liable to run up against any type of person in that dimly lit ring.

Ah, but enough backstory. On to our tale…

So I’ve established with you fine folks that I enjoyed fighting, and was quite good at it despite my academic inclinations. That said, I also sought to move away from it, to court the better, more refined angels of my nature as a rising academician and respected member of society. But as with any Dark Side practitioner, it is difficult to circumscribe and constrain such indulgences of the black arts without slipping into their heavy spell, and hand-to-hand combat was certainly one of those practices. Darkness can be all consuming, can become an obsession, if you will. Though I tried to rebuff my urges for battle, tried to keep them in the somewhat-structured confines of boxing or ring-fighting, my desire for primal fisticuffs grew exponentially the more I indulged in it.

This time also paralleled the age at which I became fully-vested as an alcoholic-in-training, an apprenticeship I took quite seriously as I slogged my way through every variety of hard liquor and beer one can find on the Alabama Gulf Coast. I’d replaced that one dark part of my person with a possibly more destructive one fueled by grain-liquor and sour mash. I’d drink at home, I’d drink at clubs, I drink between home and the club. It didn’t matter where the party was, I was down. It was my one remaining vice (at the moment at least…before I went back to the sweet leaf). 

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on one’s point of view), I had a posse of folks who were always more than willing to indulge in this debauchery alongside of me. Of course, B-Rad was down for whatever. That sumbitch would drink enough Southpaw to float JFK’s PT-109. And then there was my buddy Mook and his girl J-Thin, constant companions on my journey into the alcoholic heart of darkness. Mook was from a white-bread background, but I’ll be damned if that feller wasn’t constantly trying to drown some fires in his own soul with all of the drinking he’d do. One night, we jointly began a liter of Bacardi Limon, taking alternating shots. A mere 15 minutes later, the bottle was empty, and we were locked and loaded. The things that transpired were…let’s just call them “less than legal.” Hoodoo for another time…

I also had another buddy, an owlish wallflower through much of high school who became a deranged maniac after returning from Marine Corps boot…let’s call him Flow (not flow, like water flows, but Flow, as in FL+ the word ow.) He wouldn’t have done anything more mischievous in high school than steal the stapler off the desk of a particularly irritating substitute teacher we had following the death of our civics teacher senior year. But the Corps…boy, it did something to that joker, sent him straight over into the “Unhinged” column with a vengeance. 

He had taken up drankin’ as most Devil Dogs are prone to do in times of peace, but that wasn’t all. He became a fiend for fights and women who would lust after women who were out of his league from across the bar for hours before finally garnering the courage tp make withering, unwanted advances to them (which were universally rebuffed…homeboy looked like a jarheaded version of the Tootsie Pop Owl). He was generally a willing partner in anything that involved drinkin’, the potential for female companionship (or more often, bird-dogging), and loud music, especially if the emphasis was on “scopin’ out the trim,” as this poet of Alpine Hills would put it.

One afternoon, with evil on our minds, we posse’d up at Mook’s house, which was just up the hill from the University of South Alabama, which is also adjacent to one of Mobile’s few affluent neighborhoods, specifically Spring Hill (which these days fancies itself even more tony than ever, as denizens of this neighbourhood have taken to calling themselves a “village,” as in “The Village of Spring Hill.” Pretentious much?) 

We had started this particular party on this particular day at a particularly early time (11 a.m. to be exact). The deal was that Mook needed help moving something heavy (he always needed help moving something heavy), so he bribed us to help him and J-Thin with promises of free drinks. When we got there, homeboy pointed us towards a suitcase of Icehouse in the refrigerator, which Flow, B-Rad and I considered an affront to the original offer of drinks and assault on our collective manhood. First of all, a suitcase of beer is enough to get a puppy drunk, but not three strappin’ beer-drankers and hell-raisers. Secondly, we took it to mean that some actual liquor would be involved, so we pressed the issue.

“Well, y’all, I don’t have anything like that but about half a pint of Montezuma Gold.”

Not naw, but hell naw. Hell to the mfkn naw, know what I’m sayin’? If you’ve ever had the misfortune of letting that travesty to the noble glory that is good tequila pass your lips, then you know what I’m talkin’ about. That cactus-infused swill water would turn the belly of an iron-gulleted boar hog, so nasty is its taste. Once, I was tricked into doing a shot of that shit, and I literally projectile-vomited it the second it hit my tongue…didn’t even swallow it, just puked it right back on out of my mouth in an oral “NOPE.” It tastes of burnt hair, with notes of kerosene and plasma (don’t ask me how I know that.)

“Dude, you said there would be dranks, so you need to come up with some dranks.” The natives, and by natives I meant the two hood rats and the Marine, were getting restless. That’s when good ole J-Thin spoke up.

“Hey, isn’t it happy hour up at Solomon’s? Half-priced Long Islands?”

This girl, an aspiring med student, was in this particular moment, a straight up Einstein-level genius (jee-nee-yuss.) Solomon’s was an alcoholic and narcotic landmark that had catered to all the needs of Mobile’s college scene in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. Mobilians of that era surely know it, as the garish yellow and red metal warehouse-style building was little more than a lunch counter up front and an expansive bar and pool hall in the rear. In the good ole days, one could order fabulous steamed sandwiches, or if the day’s events skewered towards the debaucherous, the best pitcher of Long Island Ice Tea this side of the Mason-Dixon line.

When confronted with the suggestion, I was all “YASSSS!” But there was a caveat…as Solomon’s and I had a bit of a history. You see, I had been asked to leave the premises not once…not twice…but a record 11 times. Generally, the cause of expulsion was some brand of physical violence, whether waged against some person or piece of furniture or décor. But I was a changed man, a kinder, gentler sort, and would certainly avoid such malevolent behaviour as an avowed renaissance man of letters.

“Only thing is, OWB, you gotta promise not to get in a fight.” J-Thin was the scary type, not much for bloodshed and watching dudes beat themselves to a pulp. 

“Aw, now, you know that’s all behind me. I’m just a good ole boy now, love Jesus and all that. No fightin’ out of me…no sir.” 

I could tell by the look on her face she thought I was being sarcastic.

“Really though, I won’t. I’m in chill mode, for realz.”

“Okay…let’s go get drinky, I love Long Islands!”

Now normally, Long Islands weren’t my kind of thing. Too much going on in that glass, just always seemed to send me on a trip, a journey of a negative nature, you see. I always used to say that a pitcher of Long Islands should come with a handcuff key and bail money, as that sumbitch would undoubtedly rile me up and get me involved in some kind of physical tomfoolery before a given night was over. It was like a Jekyl and Hyde formula for me, converting me from the White Knight English major into Darth-fking-Vader on mushrooms. It was like a demonstration of the yin and yang poured into a tall Tom Collins glass, a serum that allowed the darkness inside me to emerge and conquer. Not the best combination for one wishing to remain placid and calm, as I’d previously taken and oath to that effect. However, I trusted my will to persevere and do the right thing. 

On this particular day, I had convinced myself that no, Long Island Ice Tea was a perfectly reasonable choice of libation, especially if I was drinkin’ it by the pitcher. Nothing could go wrong there, seemed like a good plan. My compadres offered their consent as well.

“Yeah dude, it’s early, you won’t get drunk if you start drinkin’ this early,” came the sage wisdom of B-Rad. “We’ll be good.”

“And, we’ll play some pool, so that will keep you focused, you can concentrate and shit,” offered Mook.

I was down. Figured it be good to go ahead and pre-party though, so we slugged through that suitcase and once the ole taste buds were good and numb, we slurped down the Montezuma (a feat which I to this day feel is single-handedly responsible for a raging case of IBS I contracted at the time.)

We piled into Flow’s Jetta and scooted down the hill. We didn’t even make it to the targeted dive bar before the shit popped off. We were sittin’ at a light at University and Old Shell, waiting to turn, when I hear the chainsaw rip of my brother’s voice.

“WHAT THE FK ARE YOU LOOKIN’ AT?”

I turned my attention to the newish Tahoe next to us. In it were a couple of SpringHillians who looked as though they had borrowed daddy’s truck to go out and tool around on a Saturday afternoon. Apparently this googly-eyed sumbitch in the back seat who bore all the traits of Old Mobile blue-blood inbreeding had committed the sin of not averting his eyes at B-Rad, which drew the stern rebuke. However, the fella in the front seat made a cardinal error in practice, as he flipped B-Rad off in response.

“I SAID, WHAT THE FK ARE YOU LOOKIN AT MFFKR? YOU WANT SOME?”

Well, that was that. Before I knew it, B-Rad was out of the car, beating on the window of the Tahoe. Of course, he was my brother, so I had to get out too and back his play. I tried to open the driver’s door of the SUV, but the terrified driver repeatedly hit the lock button, yelling through the window at me “We don’t want any trouble! We don’t want any trouble!” A second later, the Tahoe crew was gone, speeding off through the still-red light after kickin’ gravel, with Flow hollering for B-Rad and I to get back in the car. 

We did so (because he asked politely), and now that we were riled up, we wanted to pour some of that sweet tea nectar down our pie holes. Once inside the smokey, grimy, puke-stank environment that was Solomon’s, we found a table and made ourselves at home. Mook showed up moments later with two pitchers of tea. Couldn’t beat it really, $7 bucks a pitcher…we were going to be there for a while.

Now let me set the scene a bit for you fine folks, if I may. Inside the back end of this joint was a literal melting pot of Mobilianism, south Alabama’s own version of the Mos Eisley cantina. The patrons of that establishment at any given time represented a cross-section of society in the M-O-B. You had Fratboy Front-Bar, where backwards-hat-wearing, Croakies-around-the-neck-sporting fratsters guzzled draft beer and played songs like “Brown-Eyed Girl” and “Brickhouse” on the jukebox at all hours of the day. There was the Cowboy Corner, where interlopers from Mobile’s rural western outskirts made their way “to town” from Wilmer to drink well whiskey (Old Granddad or Evan Williams) and flaunt their large dinner-platter buckles and leather belts embossed with phrases like “Country Boy Can Survive” or “Alabama Man – Roll Tide.” There were black folks who had rolled over a few blocks from the Mobile Terrace neighborhood (where the streets didn't have names, but rather were assigned only numbers...pro tip: if you ever find yourself in an area where the street names are all numbers and you're not in New York City, RUN, RUN AWAY NOW!) They'd drink gin in the corner, puff on Black and Milds and play Al Green and Rick James songs while singin' along or slow-jam dancing with their lady-friends.

There were the dopesters, the burnouts, the tweakers who called Solomon’s a home away from home because it was open at all hours of the night and was a notorious smorgasbord where an addict could find whatever poison would kill his or her urges. Then you had the Springhillites who would meander over from the east to indulge their wild sides, living vicariously through those they considered lower than them on the social totem pole in Mobile’s post-antebellum caste system. For them, it was a precursor to reality television, where they could see things they never encountered on their side of he tracks. It was social voyeurism in its purest form. They spent money on the more fetching of the common girls in the bar, “slumming it” to boost their egos and possibly score easy lovin’ from the impressionable cigarette Cinderellas who hoped some moneyed Prince Charming would give them a better life than the one they were destined to live.

There were girls…girls of all sorts. College girls who wanted to shoot pool and drink beer. Redneck women who were there to raise hell with their male counterparts while swiggin’ Bourbon sours and gringo margaritas. Alt narcolette girls who hung in the shadows, dark circles corralling their eyes, indicative of some level of highness or another on a sliding scale depending on the hour.

It was one of Mobile’s premier venues for people watching, and there was a draw for all of these groups, whether they were looking for steamed deli fare, Long Island Ice Tea, loud live music, a dance floor, or pool tables. The observant patron could gather a lifetime’s worth of personalities in a few sittings, as I was apt to do as an aspiring author and student of human behavior.

  

But back to our tale. My compadres and I got on the teas, and we got on them hard. After four pitchers collectively, J-Thin proposed a game of pool to avoid the intoxicated boredom that often led my group to start shit. We played a couple racks and continued on those teas, eschewing the sage alcoholic advice to always consume plenty of water, and to never drink hard liquor without eating first. Before long, we were loud and rowdy, poppin’ quarters in the juke box (you young people know what a juke box it? Something like a big iPod that you drop quarters in while it plays music…), dancin’, and actin’ a straight-fool. I started feeling the hallucinogenic effects that LIIT typically had on me…walls were swayin’, people were becoming blurs, lights pierced like lasers into my eye holes. But it wasn’t bad, and I hadn’t been provoked, so it appeared I would keep my promise to remain docile. Yay me.

Fortunately on this day that was rapidly turning to night, working the door was one of our dogs, a big dude named Glen who we knew from the hood, used to buy pills off of me from time to time when they were “in season.” Glen wouldn’t bother us so long as we didn’t hurt anybody, so we were in for the long haul. We could raise hell and be loud and enjoy ourselves, let our freak flags fly. Tea was flowin’ like a mountain spring.

Fast-forward another couple of pitchers, another couple of racks of pool, and we were pretty well loaded. Flow and I, who were always on the hunt for some female attention, had previously spotted a fetching pair of young ladies (at least through the tea-goggles, they appeared fetching) shooting pool a table over from us, sippin’ on their fruity drinks and Bud Lights, leaning over the table provocatively and smiling to let us know that maybe there was some interest there. One of them was wearin’ boots, best I could tell…other one had on some kind of fringed leather jacket, some kinda Choctaw-chic or something. I later discovered that both were notorious skeezers who were regular prowlers of the Soloman’s savanna, but with the effects of the teas distorting my vision, I felt like they were prime suspects for a little sweet-lovin’.

That said, being raised to respect women by my mother, I’d never have intruded upon their quiet night out. But they seemed to be casually inviting us, and the vibe was good, so Flow and I were planning our vector of attack.

As we did, we noticed two cracker sumbitches making their way over to the young ladies in question. One was a redneck Super Mario lookin’ mffkr: short, greasy brown hair tucked up under an Auburn cap, sumbitch had the fashion sense of a cotdang color-blind hermit crab. His runnin’ buddy (or wingman or whatever you kids call him these days) was even more sartorially-challenged: a pencil-thin, wraithly with a weasely mustasche and rust-patina’d ancient Wranglers beneath a flannel shirt and bolo tie with a turquoise skull-and-crossbones in the center. Ever listen to much David Allen Coe…particularly the song “Green Teeth?” Well, this sumbitch was the spittin’ image of the so-named. 

I could tell by the body language of the girls that they were most definitely not feelin’ these fellas, but as my mama would expect, I let them sort out their own affairs. Woman doesn’t always need a knight in shining armor to ride in and save the day….gotta leave the latitude for them to handle those issues themselves. It’s empowering and shit.

Time went by, and the dipshit duo seemingly failed to receive the message the girls were sending. In fact, they had injected themselves into the girls’ game of pool, picking up sticks and trying to skeev up behind these chicks to help them with “their form.”

“Look at these mffkrs,” Flow said through gritted teeth. “What the fk? I want to mash on those mffkrs, ugly-ass hillbilly bastards.” 

I was trying my best to keep the inner demon in me, the one who loves the body blows, in check. Flow’s diatribe wasn’t helping much, but I was determined that I would not act a complete and utter damn fool on that day. The Sith Lord within had to find his chill and slow his role. After all, I had promised to behave, and owed it to myself to retain my gentility. Such debauchery was unbecoming an English major, after all.

“I’m gonna stab ‘em,” said Flow. “I got my Ka-Bar in the car. Seriously, won’t anybody miss them…just two quick shanks between the vertebra, won’t feel a thing.” The Marine Corps, ladies and gentlemen. Turned a Chihuahua into a cotdang Cane Corso.

At about this time, one of the girls crept up to the bar to reload their pitcher. While she was waiting for the bartender to pour her refill, she leaned over to me and spoke in a hushed-yet-husky tone with heavy liquor-scented breath.

“Hey, would you guys do us a favor? These assholes won’t leave us alone. We told them our boyfriends were coming to meet us, thinking they’d leave. But they didn’t. Keep pushin’ up on us, tryin’ to grab on our asses. So you fellas mind bein’ our boyfriends for the night? May be somethin’ in it for ya if you do…”

Alrightalrightalright…now this had become interesting…interesting, indeed. 

“Why, yes ma’am, we’d love to join you,” I said. “Flow, please help this young lady with her pitcher, we will be playing the role of their dates for the foreseeable future.”

We followed this girl, who we call Melanda, back to her table. Her suitors had adjourned to the restroom, likely to do another bump of country coke, otherwise known as meth. Melanda introduced us to her mate Sassy, and we were all fast friends. I put a fresh rack on the table and we picked up sticks. We played, and they talked and giggled and touched us on our arms and did everything women generally do to show you that they have some sort of interest. We had every reason to believe that things were going places, and that by night’s end, we’d be totin’ these girls to some dark spot or other.

Ten minutes must have passed, and things were going well. We had paired off, Melanda and I taking on Flow and Sassy in a game of billiards. We smoked ‘em, as that damn Melanda could shoot pool like Minnesota Fats…had some thick forearms on her, which I attributed to that resonate power she was puttin’ into those strokes of hers. She wasn’t wholly unattractive (in my stupor, she looked somewhat nice), but there was something peculiar about her gait (a little hitch when she prowled around the table), something different about her curves somewhere around the hips. But like I said, I was drunk, so what the fk did I care. Not to mention, she was alredy getting fresh with me, as my grandma-ma would say, swatting me on the ass with a “You go boy!” after I sunk a particularly difficult bank shot on the 8-ball to clinch a game.  

Then, Mario and Green Teeth came back into the hall. You should have seen the look on those fellers faces when they came out of the restroom…it was glorious. Mario, he was the most pissed…I thought it was probably because that arrogant little woodchuck-lookin’ mffkr thought he had a chance. Ole Green Teeth just looked dejected, as he’d probably been down a similar road many times in his life, and expected no better for himself any-damn-way. Mario approached Melanda, who was apparently his favorite.

“Heeey, who are these sumbitches, why you talkin’ to them?”

“I told you we were meeting our new boyfriends, and you didn’t want to hear it,” Melanda retorted.

“Boyfriends my ass, I seen these assholes over there playin’ pool all night, get over here bitch.”

By this time, B-Rad’s belligerence sensor must have been firin’ off, because he eased up behind Mario.

“Boy, you don’t need to talk to the lady like that, best just get on your way…”

I’ll say this about Mario…I don’t know if he was Super or not, but he sure as hell musta thought he was (methamphetamine is a hell of a drug). Dude chest-bumped B-Rad despite giving up probably seven inches in height to my brother. Wasn’t really a chest bump…more like a tiny-chest-to-solar-plexus bump.

B-Rad stiff-armed him back joltingly.

“Boy, you don’t want this.”

Melanda stepped between them, seemingly overjoyed by the scene she was causing. "Boys, boys, boys, you don't have to fight over lil' ole meeee..."

 

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see ole Green Teeth, that creepy sumbitch, sneakin’ up behind B-Rad with a pool cue. Following my instinct, I started to cut him off, and he reared back to pop B-Rad just as I rounded the corner of the table between the two of us. Dammit, I had tried to keep my promise and do the right thing, but I’d be damned if it wasn’t about to go down.

I didn’t hesitate as I landed a vicious body blow on ole Green Teeth that damn near broke him in half. I heard that snap-crackle-pop and knew I sank that hook true, felt his ribs give under my fist. He folded up like a cheap lawn chair, went straight to the ground and stayed there. It was on. B-Rad and I had one rule when we went out: if he hit someone, I was supposed to hit everyone else, and vice-versa. That way, we covered all the bases (that's some tactical shit right there.)

B-Rad dropped a forearm shiver on Mario, then scooped him up and chucked him a good six feet onto a table seated by several frat boys, who watched in horror as their pitchers spilled forth their sweet syrupy contents all over their cargo shorts, Confederate flag t-shirts, and sockless deck shoes.

“You owe us a pitch…!” Sumbitch didn’t even get a word out before Flow went Private Pyle on their asses, throwing brachial stuns and cuttin’ a swath through Fratboy Front-Bar. Before we knew it, this had evolved into a full-scale Blues Brothers-style brawl: people laid out, glasses flyin’, pool sticks splinterin’, bouncers hollerin’…and me and B-Rad were in the middle of it still slingin’ fists. 

Didn’t know what the hell had happened to Mook and J-Thin, but apparently they wisely abandoned ship when the shit went down. Mook wasn’t much good in a fight anyway, just be a liability is all.

My bouncer buddy Glen waded through the crowd and talked right into my ear…”YOU NEED TO GO…COPS COMING…BACK DOOR.”

That was all I needed to hear. I wasn’t going to jail for no tiny crackers nor their attempted courtees. I was out like the trash on a Thursday, B-Rad and Flow hot behind me. Police were already in the front parking lot, so we slogged through the ditch and snarled through the thick pine stand criss-crossed with dirt bike trails that stood behind Mook’s house at the time. Somewhere en route, probably while fording the half-full ditch, I lost a shoe… and didn’t even realize it until a good bit later. Left Flow’s car in the Solomon’s parking lot for the time, knowing we could reclaim it once the smoke cleared.

After killing a few hours and sobering up somewhat, we walked back down the hill to get Flow’s Jetta (which was a lot of fun with a single shoe). The Solomon’s parking lot was empty save for a few rides, and I happened to see Glen standing off in the parking lot a piece with the rear door propped open, dragging on a square. I knew he wouldn’t hold my previous tomfoolery against me, so I gave him a holla.

“So what happened after we left?”

Glen chuckled. 

“You boys got plaaaaayed,” Glen relayed. “Those girls used yo big dumb asses to clear the countertop.” 

“Do what?”

“Yuuuup, those weren’t some random dudes that were hittin’ on them, they was their old men. Police told me that one girl said the Mario lookin’ mofo was her boyfriend…she caught wind he was steppin’ out on her so she decided to get bring him out and his ass whupped for him, payback you know. Figured you big ole strappin’ boys would take care of it if she played the damsel-in-distress and suckered you jackasses in. Like I said…you got played like yo name was Fisher Price or Mattel, boy.” 

Well…dayum. That thought had never crossed my mind. Touche, redneck woman, touche.

"Well, wish I would have at least gotten those digits after all of that...may have been worth it," I said.

“Dude, what? I didn't know you were into that kinda shit."

That was a puzzling response that required further clarification.

"What do you mean? You know I like drakin' beer and taggin' does, dontcha?"

Realization washed over his face, followed by a Chessie-cat grin.

"Oh this is good. This is toooo good. You mean you didn't know...you didn't know?" He bellowed the way only a feller of rotund form can. I, by this point, was getting quite nervous regarding the oming revelation. "Neither one of them was girls…they are, how do you put it, female impersonators…they come in all the time startin' shit, the tall one breaks a glass every-damn-time they come in here. I thought you knew, figured maybe all that college had made you open-minded or some shit.”

My mind began to assemble calculations and images as soon as he uttered those words as I mentally raced back through the events of the evening, a slideshow of clues that alone, were insignificant, but when assembled together in a collage of deception revealed the true nature of what had occurred…the hitched gait, the straightness of the figure, the husky tone of the voice…could it be? Could it really be? Had I really been so skunked that my radar had been totally disabled? Surely, I had misunderstood Glen, I thought, but somewhere inside, I knew what he had said rang true. I had to have confirmation nonetheless. Flow beat me to it.

“Say what?”

“Yeah, both of ‘em were cross-dressers. That’s the best part, ain’t it? You got played by a couple of shemales! Dude, I can’t wait to tell everybody, this is the best thing ever.” Glen dropped his cigarette butt and smashed it out in a small storm of cinders, cackling like a jackal, which is unbecoming for a man of his girth. “Oh, by the way, owner says you can’t come back, if he sees you again he’s callin’ the po-po on the spot, sorry bro.”

Crestfallen, we got into Flow's car. He had barely closed the door when he "went there."

"Dude, what the fk? How did this happen? I thought they were girls...thought we were gonna... Does this make me gay now...am I gay? How am I gonna 'splain this to my parents?"

"Man, I don't even know. Them Long Islands be lettin' you know, boy."

"We can't tell nobody about this. Nobody, you hear me?"

Agreed. I'd catch up with Glen later and limit that damage, because his big ass was scared of me and better not say a damn word. If anybody else brought it up, I'd just go to the trusty body blow and end that shit, nip it in the bud as Pulitzer Prize winning sonnet writer Barney Fife once put it.

As a result of these unfortunate consequences, I have permanently sworn off of Long Island Ice Tea. Like forever. Haven't had one since that day, don't plan on drinking one anytime soon. Like I said before, that shit should come with bail money, and apparently, an Adam's apple detector. 

So in the aftermath, I was full of shame. I lost my shoe. I was permanently banned from Solomon’s. I broke my word and back-slid into my violent ways. In addition to falling back into drunken barbarism, I had been manipulated into such dastardly behavior by a man masquerading as a redneck bar strumpet. And I didn’t even know any better. Least I didn’t sleep with her. Or him. Or whatever, fk it all.

Football Loki, hear my cries. Let us emerge healthy and emboldened as we begin our march to number 17. Satisfy your hunger on this humble offering, and let my shame slake your ever-growing thirst. Roll Tide.