09062014 Hoodoo Tale: The ABORTABORTABORT Hummer

So…you people didn’t take the Hoodoo seriously last week, can we all agree on that?

Ladies and gentlemen, our collective game last week was…well…weak. We definitely didn’t do enough of whatever the hell it is we need to do Hoodoo-wise to ensure that our beloved Tide tramples and pound-ationalizes its way to victory in 2014.

Football gods are not pleased, people. After the struggles against West Virginny, it has become apparent to me that we are apparently not Hoodoo-ing to a standard. We’re not treating every Hoodoo like it has a life of its own.  We’ve gotten complacent…entitled, even. GETCHER COTDANG MIND RIGHT, A’IGHT?

I’ll admit it, though I brought some game last week for the opening battle of the current campaign, I had truthfully planned to use one of my weaker tales of youth and debauchery on these lowly FAU Fightin’ Hooters. Despite their gloriously-arrayed institutional initials, I just never gave the Owls a second thought, figured Hoodoo of a lesser magnitude would be in order for such an unlikely underdog.

But after watching our defense grope in the dark like a pack of blind 13 year old boys in a titty factory (btw, y’all remember Ronnie Milsaps, dontcha? I saw him on a riding lawn mower in his yard outside of Nashville once, no shit…), I have decided to play a selection from a different album, one that draws from a gentler time, a time when your humble narrator was more concerned with getting drunk and getting laid than almost anything else in the world. Unlike previous tales which involved violence or threats of violence alongside prodigious drug use and chemical recklessness, this tale ventures down another, more carnal, shadowy lane of my yesteryear…another closeted (but unclothed) skeleton, if you will.

Enough mully-grubbing…a Hoodoo I have come to put down, and it is a fine Hoodoo I intend to bestow upon you in honor of Ye Olde Football Gods. As I told you simple folk last week, THE FOOTBALL GODS WILL NOT BE TAUNTED!

As many of you know, my brother B-Rad and I were raised by our dear mother, and as was the case with many young men reared in similar fashion, we have always carried the utmost respect for the fairer sex. Wait, that statement is probably not accurate, please let me clarify. By “we,” I mean “I.” B-Rad doesn’t give two shits what anybody thinks or “feels,” female or male. At least we can say that he doesn’t discriminate, he will unleash a flurry of curse words and hate speech on anyone, of any gender, creed or affiliation, at any time, without warning.

Case in point: When he was married to his first wife (notice I said “first”), he selected the Thanksgiving table at my Heisman grandmother’s house as the perfect venue for a detailed accounting of said wife’s naughty parts, including texture, color and timbre (she was a ginger, after all…inquiring minds, amirite?) He said over the Thanksgiving bird (and in front of Grandma-ma and the collected assemblage of our white middle-class family), and I quote, “Yeah, she’s got a lil’ pecker down there, too…a little three inch one, just hangin’ out down there like a lil’ feller standin’ in an upside-down canoe…don’t worry though, it don’t get hard or anything like ‘at, don’t make me gay or nothin’…”

Let me let you assemble the components of that scene in your head for a moment, unmolested…need another second or two? Go ahead, I don’t mind… Okay, ready? Cool, I just don’t want you to gloss over any of that. Important to the ongoing character development of B-Rad.

He accompanied this virtuoso monologue with a veritable arsenal of hand motions and gesticulations that are simply not conducive for replication in the written word, especially not on a site of high moral character such as this one. Jaws dropped around the table, eyes widened as one would imagine. You’d think they wouldn’t even be shocked by the verbal effluent that flows forth from that boy’s mouth on a regular basis...kinda like somebody just left the filth valve standing wide-ass open.

But that ain’t my Hoodoo, y’all. Just an entertaining interlude that serves as an interesting segue into my own tale of shame and embarrassment. I may risk my man card by admitting this here, in mixed company…but I’m doing it because my team, my defense, needs my help. So shame be damned…here it goes, y’all. Be gentle.

I once turned down a hummer. Not the offer of one…but an actual one. In progress. Not the Hummer, the vehicle. The other kind. From a girl.

 “Why that just cinches it, certainly this OWB must play for the other team (NTTAWWT)!” “Who does that? RUDE!” “Wha?...why?...I mean…why?” 

Yes, I know. I sympathize with your state of discombobulation (by the way, isn’t Mississippi officially known as The State of Discombobulation? Seems like I heard that somewhere, but I digress…). How does any red-blooded heterosexual American (Southern, at that) manly man ever, ever, ever turn down something so wonderful and generally appreciated amongst my brothers from coast to coast?

Trust me guys and gals, I get it. Foreign a concept it is that your narrator would rudely refuse such a generous and well-meaning offer. True, something about the refusal felt wrong, as if it clashed sharply with my genteel upbringing that required one never turn down an offer made by a friend in good faith.

At the conclusion of this tale, maybe you will understand, maybe you won’t. Some of you will question my manhood, but such is the price I am willing to pay to satiate the football gods, who, if last Saturday was any indication, are still really, really pissed with us, you guys.

Wander with me if you will down Memory Lane (I know it’s foggy….lots of malted hops and bong resin, but bear with me. Don’t be scared, what you’re feeling is just a contact-high). It was 1997, the year I graduated from college and set out into the world a man. Part of being a man involved getting out of my mother’s house, where I had resided during my college years. Now I tell you what, THAT made for some uncomfortable moments: sneaking joints in the backyard behind the shed only to come in reeking like Cheech, leaving a half-ounce on the kitchen counter for moms to find after a particularly memorable (or not) night of intoxication, smuggling countless honeys in and out of my mother’s house at all hours of the day and night, doing all types of unheavenly things with other men’s daughters under my mom’s own roof.

To this day, the only way I reconcile my actions with my current self is through the belief that the walls of my old bedroom were sound-proof. And mom was just asleep. Or something. I don’t know, Good Lord, it all just sounds so skeevy, even today.

So needless to say, to feel better about the state of my domicile and my financial constraints, I spent a lot of time with my friends who had an apartment. They were a couple, and I was the third wheel. However, I didn’t care, I needed a place to stay and get my fun on…even if it meant putting up with their hipster entourage and animal sex noises from the other side of the bedroom (and bathroom…and kitchen) wall.  

I spent so much time there that the neighbors just assumed I lived there as well. One set of neighbors had a similar set-up, only the third wheel was a female. Specifically, an ostrich-lookin’ Olive Oyl doppelganger with platinum blonde hair and semi-albino coloration. Now y’all know I don’t like skinny girls, anyway. But this poor, unfortunately-molded young lady looked like a washed out version of the Muppets character Beaker (meepmeepmeep). Just not my type at all, and there was no physical, intellectual or emotional foundation for attraction on my part. Nothin’. Nada. No fire in the ole crotch-furnace, if you know what I mean. For the purposes of this tale, I’ll just refer to her as “Skeeter,” for reasons which may be a little clearer later on.

We’d hang out every once in a while. The six of us would share a bong, drink a little, play some Playstation. As the folks became more familiar, they’d just drop by when they saw we were home. That was fine…at first. Started getting old. I mean, they never put in on the buzz, and when they did, they brought some high-school-ass Old Milwaukee’s Best over to “share.” (No thanks, bitches. If I wanted to gargle bull piss, I’d have gone to Auburn...you can major in Bull-Piss Gargling there, you know. Best Bull-Piss Gargling team in the nation. Very competitive.)

After a while, we took to cutting off the lights when we heard their car pull up. We’d hear them arguing on the other side of the adjacent apartment wall, and we’d all shush down and cut the tv volume. The amount of energy we put into dodging those folks could have supplied Mozambique’s power needs for an entire month. Would have been easier, and possibly more humane, to tell them to just get bent and leave us alone, but…you know…that just ain’t Southern.

Though we limited our time with these folks, Skeeter had developed quite the affinity for your boy OWB. (I mean, after all, she was only female.) One evening as I arrived at the apartment, she greeted me on the steps to the upstairs, waiting for me like a baby bird anxiously awaits its mama, mouth agape. She slipped me a couple hits of some primo acid on the down low. Smiled. Tried to grab my hand. Said she kinda liked me, wanted to hang out. I was like, “Thanks.” Then I unceremoniously broke away from her (in true asshole form) and went about my business unlocking the door. After all, had a boxing match to watch and shit, couldn’t be triflin’ with no pancake-booty emu on the outside stoop. Just wouldn’t be very becoming.

I told my cousin Mook about it, and he turned instantly into a teenage girl. “Oh really man, really? You gonna do that shit, man? I would, I mean what the hell, right? What can you lose, huh?”

“Uh, pride…dignity…sense of self-worth…” Shooting him the skunk-eye of suspicion, I noticed that he seemed overly anxious about the proposition.

“She wants it though, dude, I can tell it.”

“Yeah, but she looks like she belongs in the Mos Eisley cantina, yo.” I have standards (admittedly low standards, but standards nonetheless). “I can’t make with anyone who resembles any species of bird, let alone a big flightless one.”

When his girl got home, he dropped the knowledge on her. She lit up like a cotdang Halloween jack-o-lantern.

“So, I’ve been thinking…you should do it! Me and Mook will go out on a date and just let y’all have the place, you can just chill here. I’ll even get y’all a bottle of wine!” she said. Then she giggled. That was all I needed to know… time to push the “AWHELLNAH” button on this crazy train, Ozzy.

“Nah, I don’t like her, don’t want to like her, don’t want to hang out with her on the solo.” I was an asshole by nature. And at the time, I was preoccupied with things that didn’t involve skinny silver-haired white girls (though I always had a hankerin’ for some of that Sophia from the Golden Girls…fine…but I digress). I told them that their plan sucked, and that they needed to quit. “Seriously, fkn drop it.”

Later, I threatened Mook with the possibility of waking up in his trunk as part of a game I invented called “Chloroform Fun,” and he started stooling out the truth, begrudgingly. Seems Skeeter had a private convo with the couple in advance, and she had expressed her undying love for me as well as her misplaced (albeit well-founded) lust for my personal flesh-pieces.

“Uhhh, hell nah.” I told him to squelch that shit immediately, once again reminding him of the time I landed my right hook on his chin in a sparring match and sent him careening into a well-seasoned pile of dog refuse (does employing the Hoodoo of others give me bonus points with the football gods?...point to ponder, talk among yourselves…let’s continue).

Couple weeks went by. Things had apparently settled. I played nice, was cordial even. My mistake.

So one evening, I called Mook to see what was up for the night. “What’s crackin’ mane?”

“Nun much, jus’ finishing up here at work.” Mook cut meat for a living, thankless work for sure. His girl was working overnight at a local hospital, so it was going to be a fellers night. “Wanna drink a couple when I get off?”

That was a silly question. “You know it, wampus-cat.”

“Cool, meet me at the apartment about 9. If you beat me there, I left you the key under the mat.”

I rolled up a little later. Checked the stairwell before getting out of the car…the coast was all clear. I figured I’d better slip into the apartment undetected, or else we may have unexpected and unwanted company for the remainder of the evening.

I went on in, and did so without being noticed. Or so I thought.

I was in the apartment maybe five minutes, just long enough to crack a beer and pack a bowl. A knock at the door…

Figuring it was Mook (on a side note, in retrospect, why would someone knock on the door of their own apartment, right?...the weed be lettin’ me know), I just threw the door open while continuing to search for the remote in the futon. To my disgust, in walked the ostrich.

“Hey, whatchu doin’ in here, handsome?”

“Uhhh, huntin’ the remote…whatcha need?”

That was a bad question, as it soon became apparent what she wanted. She lifted her spindly wicket of an arm and inserted her bony hand in the warm embrace of my groin. “You wanna hang out?”

I had “been” with girls since I was 15, but generally I was the pursuer. Now, however, I had apparently become the pursued. I have to say, I was a little flustered by the forward nature of this young flightless bird’s advance.

“Uhh, nah, uhhh, me and Mook were gonna…uhhh…go somewhere…uhh…soon. He should be here any minute.”

I instantly pulled away from her, broke from her Crypt Keeper-like grip and plumped on the ole couch (not you, Glen…different old couch). I figured the danger of Mook’s sudden appearance would be enough to stifle her amorous behavior any moment now, but unbeknownst to me…she had a ringer.

As I sat, I saw her positioning herself in the traditional stance for amorous activities involving one party’s cake-eater and another’s male parts…I knew what kind of attempt was soon to follow. “Don’t worry about Mook, he said he wouldn’t be home until 10 tonight, said he was gonna try to give us some time…”

“What the F, Mook? I thought we were boys?” I thought.

I was freakin’ out, man, never been put in that position. Things were unzipped, other things were bared, laid out plain before my eyes. It all happened in slow-motion, the way those last few seconds before an auto accident slide by at a creeper’s pace, details logged and time drawn out thick like molasses. I was not at all comfortable with the situation, definitely not interested in her advances but not sure how to bring the sitch to an immediate end without damaging the fragile being’s eternal psyche.

“What should I do?” I thought, running through the gamut of potential trap doors that could free me from this harpy’s embrace…”Umm, I have ebola,” or “Oh that? That’s not functional, it’s just for decoration…” or “AHHHHH FIIIIRRREEE!”

But my most valuable sexual organ, my brain, had failed me in the moment of truth. The deed was being committed, the time for action had come.

“Stop!”

She just looked up at me and smiled, and went about with her dastardly deed.

Now I don’t want to damage fragile sensibilities here, so please know, I’m being as delicate as possible. As she went in for the kill, the only potential life-saver that I could muster was…well…to swat her on the back of her head. Seriously. Just whacked her on the back of her head like I was killing a bug.

That got her attention. Mine too, as it represented the first and only time I’ve ever hit a girl (well, at least it’s the only time I ever hit a girl who wasn’t wearing black leather and a gimp mask…but I digress, Hoodoo for another time).

She immediately rose up and looked at me with eyes of absolute puzzlement. I’m quite sure that was the first time she had experienced that particular set of circumstances while attempting to “make nice” with a desirable young man such as myself.

I had to say something. So this is what I, the man of words and letters, angrily blurted out in the poor young woman’s face: “NO! DON’T WOANT NUN! GIT!” All monosyllabic like, there was possibly even some slobber involved on my part. It was like I had transformed into a cotdang sexless Solomon Grundy for Christ sake.

Stunned, she rose…tears welled, then began to spill, like heavy drops of condensation on a cool window on a steamy south Alabama afternoon. She darted from the apartment, leaving the door ajar. I felt like the absolute heel that I was, but I also felt victimized, to a degree. Why had she put me in that position? I had made it clear I wasn’t interested…and why the hell did Mook set this up in the first place?

A few minutes later, Mook arrived home. After I let him up off the floor and he dusted himself off, he told me what had happened. His girl thought it would be “fun” if we could double-date. Skeeter looked like the low-hanging fruit, and both women pushed him to help make it happen. When I rebuffed the first approach, the girls resorted to more, shall we say…aggressive negotiations.

And apparently, Mook had invested in the maiden THIS sage advice (speaking on behalf of Manhood United, of course), “Hey I tell you what you do… give him a hummer, even if he says no…he’s a man, and there’s no man who can say no to a hummer.”

I told him the gory details of the preceding 30 minutes, and despite the rising grape-colored shiner on his right cheek-bone, he began to cackle as I unraveled the yarn of this particular incident.

“So, let me understand this, you turned down a hummer? You just slapped her on the back of the head while she was tryin’ to bob and weave? Like you were slappin’ a fkn mosquito? That’s hilarious!”

“Yeah, real funny.” I failed to see the humor. My physical manhood had been assaulted and this young girl’s crystalline hopes of attaining the unattainable lay shattered like Swarovski dropped onto concrete from the second story. So sad…there were truly no winners that day.

Unless you consider the birth of a golden nickname a win. If so, you’ll be happy to know that nickname “Skeeter” stuck like fly-paper. Still, people in these parts call that girl Skeeter to this day, and most of them have no idea why.

Anyway, I am ashamed to share with you fine, God-fearing folk this tale of embarrassment for unholy and unnatural behavior, and I will endure your barbs and arrows in trade for a victory against FAU (I just love sayin’ those letters).

(And Football Gods…ISWYDT with DeAndrew White last week, point taken…think we can get out of this one with no injuries? I feel confident we’ll do our part, OKthanks2Ubyebye)

Roll Tide, y’all.