I lived in Florida. That was the place I ran to at twenty one when I wanted to escape Minnesota. Florida is flat, the coast is flat, sure, but it had the ocean, and the ocean is so far removed from boring that it just cannot in any shape or form fall into the category of “flat boring lands” as Minnesota does. This is all purely based on opinion, of course. It is also based on nostalgia, security, and the heart of what is home and what is not. I loved the beach, I did. When I lived in Florida, the ocean was what kept from feeling lonely and homeless. The ocean was this manifestation of something so far greater than my own being, and just being on the shore of this massive god-like impersonation kept me feeling as if I was most definitely, most infinitely not alone in the universe.
I’ve been to many places, Reader. I’ve lived here and there, and I’ve seen landscapes of all sorts. I try to figure out why Minnesota’s flatlands are so unsatisfactory, but they are. I try to figure out why it’s so empty of anything that should make me feel like I’m standing in the kingdom of God, but it is. Sometimes I feel that this is where God abandoned me, and looking out across the empty plains of long grass and hay fields and bareness is nothing but a bitter reminder that I am indeed, alone. I won’t deny that the vastness of the Minnesota sky, a horizon that stretches from one end of the earth to other, undisturbed by mountains or hills or sloping valleys, has a remarkable resemblance to the vastness, the infinite majesty and manifestation of God that the ocean had offered me so long ago. There are times I watch the sun set here behind the trees in our backyard and I think, “I know this place. I know it.” And for a brief moment of rejuvenated positivity, I feel nostalgic, secure, and home.
It’s the driving that depresses me, Reader. When I have someplace to go it takes a long time to get there. And it doesn’t matter where I go, the path is so painfully, reliably mundane and void of aesthetic scenery. It pours this vat of extinguishing serum of boringness all over my senses, and I’m sucked into watching mini-mall after mini-mall after mini-mall, all looking nearly identical, pass me by on every left and right turn I take. The same chain restaurants and stores are placed almost strategically in exactly the same places as the last town I passed through. Brand new neighborhoods with cookie-cutter houses and no trees are filling up the empty spaces between the mini-malls, and it’s surprising how lost you can get in a land that is so flat the streets are nearly grid-laid in perfect squares. You get lost because every right and left turn you make looks exactly like the last left or right turn you took. It’s not only infuriating, it’s soul sucking. For me it is, at least. There’s something lifeless about a place that is too new to have had any significant history.
Maybe this isn’t so fair to say.
Minnesota isn’t that much younger than the east, and it was founded by great people. Laura Ingles Wilder for example. But that’s just it. If you’ve ever read “Little House on the Prairie”, the hardships of locust plagues and winters that killed their livestock is enough to say, “Why the hell did you stay here!”
Flat – boring - lands. I have a love/hate relationship with them. As I said, sometimes the vastness reminds me of the ocean and I feel comforted by it. But sometimes the vastness reminds me of emptiness, a place that hasn’t survived the same evolutions and the same histories as other places in the country that I have fallen in love with. Even when I’ve been in states that I’m simply passing through, I notice that they have the elements of age that remind me of New York. I see trees, ancient and steadfast, hanging over old stone walls through a neighborhood that has hosted families dating back to the eighteenth century. There are sidewalks, broken ones with upturned squares from the roots of a defiant earth, the sort I used to skip down when my elementary school class would walk to Sugget Park. They may not be the same sidewalks, but it’s nice to know that other places have them too. But not Minnesota. I’m sure in some of the older neighborhoods they do, Reader; please don’t take me too literally. My point is, the “boring” part of the flat lands is entirely derived from the lack of character, the lack of familiar east coast architecture of homes that have survived two hundred years, the familiar stone walls that have been around long enough to suffer decay beneath the moss, the familiar beauty of hills changing from gold, to orange, to ruby red in the autumn, like a ripple of a wave that comes across the mountains from some unseen goddess. I don’t see any of these things here, and it gives me a sense of loss. Even after all these years, the environment, the architecture, the roads, the lefts and rights that seem like nothing but turns in a snow globe, break my heart and make me homesick. I think I’ll always be sick for home, for New York. Think about it, Reader: wouldn’t you? If you’re a Minnesotan, imagine having to move to New York in the middle of high school, and then finding yourself there yet again in your adulthood due to circumstances beyond your control…
Put yourself in my shoes.
This is home to you. If you had to live in New York, you’d hate it. And not because New York is a bad place, but because it’s a bad place for you. You wouldn’t fit in. It wouldn’t be home. You’d miss the things that you love about your own hometown, about Minnesota. No matter how long you live someplace else, you’d miss those flat prairies, you’d miss the water parks and the lakes, you’d miss the people that you had grown up with, the family that was always there for holidays, the church you grew up in, and everything else attached to your identity from the place you know as home. As true as it is that most people can’t wait to leave their hometown for bigger dreams and successes and new adventures, it is always, always true to say that there is no place anywhere in the world that can compare to the place that you knew yourself the best, the place in which you were most connected to your truest identity. There is, Reader, no place like home. And for those of us who’ve had to let go of it, this is to you:
Try to adapt. Don’t let go of who you are, don’t sacrifice or compromise your deepest most honest sense of self. However, change is okay. Attitude is everything. Embracing the new is vital, and bettering the environment that you’ve distasted can change everything for your soul. I am desperately trying to change my distasteful environment by hanging on to the things that matter most about it.
The sky here is beautiful. They sky, from one horizon to the next, one vast ocean of many changing lives from sun up until night fall, is my connection to the greater value of my environment. It is my connection to something that feels like home. It is, I can say, in the same category of grandness and majesty as the eastern hills and the southern ocean shore. The land may be flat and boring, but looking to the heavens isn’t such a bad alternative.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Moving...On.
It’s strange, Reader…
Minnesota has always been synonymous with oppression. Minnesota has always been the place that I don’t belong. The people are too far removed from what I’ve always been familiar with, and it’s left me in a complicated state of loneliness. But that complicated state of loneliness, I have discovered, is nobody’s fault but my own.
Bare with me, Reader. This is not some pubescent sob story of a pathetic little girl with an identity crisis. It is a confession. Well, the beginning to one at least.
Whether by paranoia or by connecting the right dots intuitively, I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t matter where I’ve ever lived or been, I’ve always had a difficult time coping with people. My mother said to me today, “relationships are hard” and I responded with, “I think that’s why I avoid them…”. And I do. I have my own internal compatibility meter, and when I’m with people I don’t connect with it’s impossible for me to get that meter to swing its needle spuriously. I try to do the “professional” or the “polite” thing by overdriving this meter with forced “how do you do”s and other means of pointless small talk, but the truth of it is, if someone makes me uncomfortable I avoid them at all cost. I am not a pursuer of friendships. Ninety nine per cent of my new, adult life friends have been made because someone made the effort to tear down my wall and get to know me. This brings on a great deal of guilt, realizing that I am one of those people that makes others work very hard to get into my life. However, once you’re in, I’m committed and I’m yours. I’ve got your back. I’ll sacrifice whatever I need to as to keep you, knowing that I owe you. This has always been my pattern: Wall --> Pursuing Stranger Breaks Wall --> I now owe them for all the work it took to get in. And I try to make it worth it. I’ve had some damaging friendships in my past, ones that have made my wall twice as thick, so when true friends come along and work the magic of getting me to trust them, I want to do whatever it takes to keep them.
A relative of mine and I had discussed the possibility of me moving in with her come spring. She lives in New York, not far from where I grew up. The temptation in the moment was overwhelming, and the two of us talked and fantasized about how wonderful it would be for me to move back “home”, planning out our weekend bus trips into The City, imagining ourselves ordering Pudgies Pizza, taking a trip to my hometown and ordering a burger and fries at my old friendly neighborhood’s A&W, all simply in the name of nostalgia, in the name of re-living a simpler time of our youth when life was so much easier. The dream was right there, in front of my face. This was the opportunity to get New York back into my life. This was the avenue that had been lost in a grid of streets of so many wrong turns, the avenue that you turn onto and say, “Hey! I know where I am, now!” I found it. I was homeward bound, for sure.
It wasn’t long after our phone call that the reality of this opportunity began to set itself in. During a weekly coffee “date” with a good friend of mine, I discovered in full that moving back to New York was in truth not what I wanted. To begin with, my reasons for moving were not legit. My friend had also said something to me that made me realize that leaving all of my relationships here, leaving all of the people who had worked so hard to tear down my wall and love me, would be so, so selfish. She didn’t say this outright, but her wisdom was understood. I understood. And she was right. My friends, my true ones anyhow, would have supported any decision for my life that I would make, and I would have no worries losing any of the friendships I’ve made simply because I packed up my bags and moved. But it’s just not the right path for me. Shockingly, returning to New York is not the right path for me. At least, not yet.
Another interesting detail came into play with my decision as well. A friend I had gone to school with back in New York has been living out here in Minnesota for several years. Her and I found each other on a social network not but three years ago, and had finally made definite plans to meet up. It had been fifteen years since we last saw each other…
It was a surreal experience for me, seeing her again. I had a piece of my New York life, one in which I remember very vividly, here in Minnesota. Someone who lived here, in Minnesota, knew the people I grew up with, knows the same streets and buildings and pizza joints that made up our little hometown, and knows, or at least can somewhat remember, the old, old Jessica from so long ago. It was surreal. It was refreshing. Familiarity! She too could relate to the difficulty of a New Yorker trying to adapt to a Midwestern culture, and that was comforting to me.
Now. I understand, Reader, that it was fifteen years ago that my family moved out to Minnesota, and that within several of those years I was living abroad in other cities and states, and I’m perfectly aware that Minnesotans reading this are gritting their teeth and saying, “Get over it already!” But this is what you need to understand: this blog was not designed to keep myself hating Minnesota. This blog was designed to help me, well…. Get over it, like I’m sure you want me to. I’m simply telling the story as the story happens. I’ve only been to four places of my twelve, and there’s still things and people and aspects of Minnesota that I still struggle with, but I’m trying. It takes years to develop a new life, and in my past experiences I haven’t stayed put long enough in one place to lay down those roots. This is the first time in my entire life that I’ve been open to embracing Minnesota as my home, the place I’ve chosen to stay in for at least another few years. The only thing that may or may not take me away from here is my career as a writer, but other than that? This is where Fate has said, “Stay”. So, I’ll stay. But I need to figure out how to put aside my negativity and embrace my life for what it is.
On October 26 of this year I had a dream. I used to be very diligent in writing down my dreams, keeping a dream journal, but haven’t been in the constant habit of it in a very long time. But every once and awhile I’ll have a dream that will shake all of my senses and rattle me down to the very essence of my soul. This one, though seemingly plain and boring to you, Reader, rattled me to the core.
I dreamt of my old home in New York which is usually the setting for most of my dreams, but this one was significant. This is what I wrote in my journal when I woke up:
…The setting overall is hard to explain, but we were definitely in my old New York house. The living room and the kitchen, as they were when I was just a child. Another security in the dream: Home. But I couldn’t have any of it. I couldn’t have him, and I couldn’t have this. There was an attached house to ours and I went through the door and couldn’t get back again… However, something else was happening in the dream. I was handing a manuscript to some literary agent that for some reason was going out of his way to pick it up at my house. Someone had asked, No… it was the agent. He asked me, No! It was someone else… No. It was the agent. He asked me, “Why do you write about your life?”
And I said, “I write about my life because it’s beautiful.” And then I woke up. The dream haunted me all day. The touch from a good man I couldn’t have, the dimly lit, warm comfort of my New York home that I wanted so very much to be real. And then, the actual confession that I believe my life is beautiful and worth writing about. I can’t have it all. Some people can. Most people can’t. But if there’s anything I can have at all, it’s my writing. It’s my beautiful life. And for some reason still unknown to me, I’m meant to share it. So. Wake up, Purpose. No more dreams.
You can believe I dreamt it or not… I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. It seems too fitting and organized, and if I were you I would think I was a fabricating story-teller. But I swear on the graves of all of those I’ve loved and have lost, that I had this dream. It was provoked by things that were said to me by a dear friend of mine. She had just had a baby, and as I was over at her house visiting we were talking about futures. She uplifted me with some kind words, overall telling me that I had opportunities and I shouldn’t keep myself from them. Her words meant so much to me. And then I had the dream. And the dream taught me that I am not stuck. I am not in a bad place. Minnesota has always been synonymous with oppression, but not anymore. I have friends that love me for who I am, who have knocked down my walls and reminded me that home is synonymous with heart, with purpose, with life. My life is here. My life is beautiful after all. And without it, I wouldn’t have this story to share.
So. Is this the end to my blog? Is this my conclusion? She doesn’t hate Minnesota anymore! No. The transition is not yet quite through. I still feel awkward and away from myself living here. I’m still trying to come to terms with all the negative things I associate with my Minnesota life, and those things don’t necessarily have anything to do with Minnesota. It has to do with my family. It has to do with abusive friendships that changed me. It has to do with bullies, poison ivy, racism and a lost love. It has to do with things that could’ve happened anywhere on the map, but happened here. Here, is where I’m always reminded of these things and I have to figure out how to move on from them and become new.
Minnesota has always been synonymous with oppression. Minnesota has always been the place that I don’t belong. The people are too far removed from what I’ve always been familiar with, and it’s left me in a complicated state of loneliness. But that complicated state of loneliness, I have discovered, is nobody’s fault but my own.
Bare with me, Reader. This is not some pubescent sob story of a pathetic little girl with an identity crisis. It is a confession. Well, the beginning to one at least.
Whether by paranoia or by connecting the right dots intuitively, I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t matter where I’ve ever lived or been, I’ve always had a difficult time coping with people. My mother said to me today, “relationships are hard” and I responded with, “I think that’s why I avoid them…”. And I do. I have my own internal compatibility meter, and when I’m with people I don’t connect with it’s impossible for me to get that meter to swing its needle spuriously. I try to do the “professional” or the “polite” thing by overdriving this meter with forced “how do you do”s and other means of pointless small talk, but the truth of it is, if someone makes me uncomfortable I avoid them at all cost. I am not a pursuer of friendships. Ninety nine per cent of my new, adult life friends have been made because someone made the effort to tear down my wall and get to know me. This brings on a great deal of guilt, realizing that I am one of those people that makes others work very hard to get into my life. However, once you’re in, I’m committed and I’m yours. I’ve got your back. I’ll sacrifice whatever I need to as to keep you, knowing that I owe you. This has always been my pattern: Wall --> Pursuing Stranger Breaks Wall --> I now owe them for all the work it took to get in. And I try to make it worth it. I’ve had some damaging friendships in my past, ones that have made my wall twice as thick, so when true friends come along and work the magic of getting me to trust them, I want to do whatever it takes to keep them.
A relative of mine and I had discussed the possibility of me moving in with her come spring. She lives in New York, not far from where I grew up. The temptation in the moment was overwhelming, and the two of us talked and fantasized about how wonderful it would be for me to move back “home”, planning out our weekend bus trips into The City, imagining ourselves ordering Pudgies Pizza, taking a trip to my hometown and ordering a burger and fries at my old friendly neighborhood’s A&W, all simply in the name of nostalgia, in the name of re-living a simpler time of our youth when life was so much easier. The dream was right there, in front of my face. This was the opportunity to get New York back into my life. This was the avenue that had been lost in a grid of streets of so many wrong turns, the avenue that you turn onto and say, “Hey! I know where I am, now!” I found it. I was homeward bound, for sure.
It wasn’t long after our phone call that the reality of this opportunity began to set itself in. During a weekly coffee “date” with a good friend of mine, I discovered in full that moving back to New York was in truth not what I wanted. To begin with, my reasons for moving were not legit. My friend had also said something to me that made me realize that leaving all of my relationships here, leaving all of the people who had worked so hard to tear down my wall and love me, would be so, so selfish. She didn’t say this outright, but her wisdom was understood. I understood. And she was right. My friends, my true ones anyhow, would have supported any decision for my life that I would make, and I would have no worries losing any of the friendships I’ve made simply because I packed up my bags and moved. But it’s just not the right path for me. Shockingly, returning to New York is not the right path for me. At least, not yet.
Another interesting detail came into play with my decision as well. A friend I had gone to school with back in New York has been living out here in Minnesota for several years. Her and I found each other on a social network not but three years ago, and had finally made definite plans to meet up. It had been fifteen years since we last saw each other…
It was a surreal experience for me, seeing her again. I had a piece of my New York life, one in which I remember very vividly, here in Minnesota. Someone who lived here, in Minnesota, knew the people I grew up with, knows the same streets and buildings and pizza joints that made up our little hometown, and knows, or at least can somewhat remember, the old, old Jessica from so long ago. It was surreal. It was refreshing. Familiarity! She too could relate to the difficulty of a New Yorker trying to adapt to a Midwestern culture, and that was comforting to me.
Now. I understand, Reader, that it was fifteen years ago that my family moved out to Minnesota, and that within several of those years I was living abroad in other cities and states, and I’m perfectly aware that Minnesotans reading this are gritting their teeth and saying, “Get over it already!” But this is what you need to understand: this blog was not designed to keep myself hating Minnesota. This blog was designed to help me, well…. Get over it, like I’m sure you want me to. I’m simply telling the story as the story happens. I’ve only been to four places of my twelve, and there’s still things and people and aspects of Minnesota that I still struggle with, but I’m trying. It takes years to develop a new life, and in my past experiences I haven’t stayed put long enough in one place to lay down those roots. This is the first time in my entire life that I’ve been open to embracing Minnesota as my home, the place I’ve chosen to stay in for at least another few years. The only thing that may or may not take me away from here is my career as a writer, but other than that? This is where Fate has said, “Stay”. So, I’ll stay. But I need to figure out how to put aside my negativity and embrace my life for what it is.
On October 26 of this year I had a dream. I used to be very diligent in writing down my dreams, keeping a dream journal, but haven’t been in the constant habit of it in a very long time. But every once and awhile I’ll have a dream that will shake all of my senses and rattle me down to the very essence of my soul. This one, though seemingly plain and boring to you, Reader, rattled me to the core.
I dreamt of my old home in New York which is usually the setting for most of my dreams, but this one was significant. This is what I wrote in my journal when I woke up:
…The setting overall is hard to explain, but we were definitely in my old New York house. The living room and the kitchen, as they were when I was just a child. Another security in the dream: Home. But I couldn’t have any of it. I couldn’t have him, and I couldn’t have this. There was an attached house to ours and I went through the door and couldn’t get back again… However, something else was happening in the dream. I was handing a manuscript to some literary agent that for some reason was going out of his way to pick it up at my house. Someone had asked, No… it was the agent. He asked me, No! It was someone else… No. It was the agent. He asked me, “Why do you write about your life?”
And I said, “I write about my life because it’s beautiful.” And then I woke up. The dream haunted me all day. The touch from a good man I couldn’t have, the dimly lit, warm comfort of my New York home that I wanted so very much to be real. And then, the actual confession that I believe my life is beautiful and worth writing about. I can’t have it all. Some people can. Most people can’t. But if there’s anything I can have at all, it’s my writing. It’s my beautiful life. And for some reason still unknown to me, I’m meant to share it. So. Wake up, Purpose. No more dreams.
You can believe I dreamt it or not… I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. It seems too fitting and organized, and if I were you I would think I was a fabricating story-teller. But I swear on the graves of all of those I’ve loved and have lost, that I had this dream. It was provoked by things that were said to me by a dear friend of mine. She had just had a baby, and as I was over at her house visiting we were talking about futures. She uplifted me with some kind words, overall telling me that I had opportunities and I shouldn’t keep myself from them. Her words meant so much to me. And then I had the dream. And the dream taught me that I am not stuck. I am not in a bad place. Minnesota has always been synonymous with oppression, but not anymore. I have friends that love me for who I am, who have knocked down my walls and reminded me that home is synonymous with heart, with purpose, with life. My life is here. My life is beautiful after all. And without it, I wouldn’t have this story to share.
So. Is this the end to my blog? Is this my conclusion? She doesn’t hate Minnesota anymore! No. The transition is not yet quite through. I still feel awkward and away from myself living here. I’m still trying to come to terms with all the negative things I associate with my Minnesota life, and those things don’t necessarily have anything to do with Minnesota. It has to do with my family. It has to do with abusive friendships that changed me. It has to do with bullies, poison ivy, racism and a lost love. It has to do with things that could’ve happened anywhere on the map, but happened here. Here, is where I’m always reminded of these things and I have to figure out how to move on from them and become new.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
THE ENDING of the Renaissance Era
Okay, Folks. I know this is long overdue, and you’re most likely going to judge me for what I’m about to announce, but here it is: I’m not writing any more about the Renaissance Festival (sort of). It ends here. I make a pretty poor journalist after all!
Why am I ending it?
Because I don’t feel like finishing it.
It was too long ago that I went, and my ADD is saying, “I’M BORED!”. So, I’m going to sum things up super, duper fast and move on from this. And let’s be honest, people: the Renaissance Festival doesn’t necessarily have anything at all to do with Minnesota anyway, especially since all the people in it are from all over the country and do a festival in almost every single state. So… Here’s the ending:
I rode an elephant. Anyone who knows me and my ethics is going to be appalled by this statement. I rode an elephant. I’m not against riding elephants in general, just ones that are trained and forced to walk in a teeny tiny circle hundreds of times each day. I think it’s cruel and a bit of an abomination to nature to use majestic creatures like elephants as slaves to our unforgivable, greed-monger human habits. I rode the elephant because I had a desperate desire to know what their skin felt like. I wanted to know what it felt like to sit on one in comparison to a horse. These are stupid reasons to ride an elephant. I succumbed to the temptation. I shall never do it again, I promise.
So… We shot some arrows for three bucks. We threw some knives at a wall for two bucks. And we watched a pretty good knife throwing show with some very talented entertainers who were, indeed, funny and very, very gifted at what they do. It was quite impressive, and it ended our lovely day rather well. Kudos to entertainers who actually practice and work hard at their craft. Kudos!
And so, The End.
I want to move on now because I have other things I need to write and share.
Why am I ending it?
Because I don’t feel like finishing it.
It was too long ago that I went, and my ADD is saying, “I’M BORED!”. So, I’m going to sum things up super, duper fast and move on from this. And let’s be honest, people: the Renaissance Festival doesn’t necessarily have anything at all to do with Minnesota anyway, especially since all the people in it are from all over the country and do a festival in almost every single state. So… Here’s the ending:
I rode an elephant. Anyone who knows me and my ethics is going to be appalled by this statement. I rode an elephant. I’m not against riding elephants in general, just ones that are trained and forced to walk in a teeny tiny circle hundreds of times each day. I think it’s cruel and a bit of an abomination to nature to use majestic creatures like elephants as slaves to our unforgivable, greed-monger human habits. I rode the elephant because I had a desperate desire to know what their skin felt like. I wanted to know what it felt like to sit on one in comparison to a horse. These are stupid reasons to ride an elephant. I succumbed to the temptation. I shall never do it again, I promise.
So… We shot some arrows for three bucks. We threw some knives at a wall for two bucks. And we watched a pretty good knife throwing show with some very talented entertainers who were, indeed, funny and very, very gifted at what they do. It was quite impressive, and it ended our lovely day rather well. Kudos to entertainers who actually practice and work hard at their craft. Kudos!
And so, The End.
I want to move on now because I have other things I need to write and share.
Friday, November 5, 2010
PART TWO: The Renaissance Festival
Deep fried medieval turkey legs…
Succulent poultry of an extremely oversized American bird, cooked in a vat of hot oil and flavored with what seemed to be some secret, perfected, passed down through the ages recipe from a town peasant who lived hundreds of years ago – that, is what I tasted. It was six dollars for one scrumptious leg, so my friend and I split the cost. No. Actually I think I made a contribution of two dollars just to have a few bites. I soon after wished I had purchased a whole one for myself.
My first pull of the leg involved a mass peeling of oil dripping, crispy skin that took way too long to chew. I managed to peel off the juicy meat from the skin, and savored it like a delicacy. The meat was so tender and full of flavor, it practically melted over my tongue and slipped down my throat. Had I been eating from a silver plate garnished with vegetables and fruit from a royal garden, I could’ve easily convinced myself that I was a queen dining in my castle. I was two seconds away from ordering that hot dude dressed like a court jester over there to juggle some apples for me. I had other ideas of what to order him to do for me, too... All thoughts grew both creative and dirty, and then I had to order myself to stop pretending to be a queen because clearly I would make a very bad one...
My two dollars well spent, I was cured from my stupid little experience with my beer purchase. Moving on, we found our way to a little magic show being held in the middle of the grounds. We stopped to watch, but it wasn’t much to see. Joker number one was lying on a bed of nails while Joker number two smashed a plate on number one’s chest with a ball. Maybe it’s just me, but I was under the impression that everyone and their mother knew the secret to the bed of nails trick, and that it’s just not as impressive as it probably was a hundred years ago. Do you know the secret to the trick? Maybe I shouldn’t ruin it for you…
Moving on, we found a large crowd sitting in rows of benches waiting for a show to begin. This seemed interesting, so we found some seats. The man introducing the show was going on about the not-interesting-at-all topic of drinking beer… The audience was actually responding. People laughed. He talked about beer, like, “Hey! I have a beer! You have a beer!” And the people would laugh. He would raise his cup and talk about getting wasted, and people would raise their cup and laugh. Don’t get me wrong. I like my beer. Getting wasted is fun. But it’s really not that… comedic, topically. So I figured this was just a time-killer before the actual show started. I looked left, then right, looking for a sign to tell me when the show would start and what it was supposed to be about, but I couldn’t find anything.
Ten minutes in he was asking the audience to bring him their drinks. People were coming up to him with their cups. He was pounding them like a nineteen year old in a dorm room party. He would finish, quite untheatrically might I add...I mean, a little pounding on the chest, or the crushing of a cup with one hand would've been at least SOMETHING that would justify the audience going nuts. But no. He just drank their drink. That was it. And people thought this was good comedy. They were laughing. And cheering. I looked at my friends, twenty minutes in now with no new material, and said, “Has the show even started yet?” Unsurprisingly, they shrugged and looked just as bewildered from our so-called entertainment as I was. What the hell was this? I know I might sound like a total snob, but Reader? You have to believe me when I say that this was the worst entertainment(if that’s what you want to even call it) I’ve ever experienced in my life. I would’ve felt better about the situation if the guy was tanking with the audience, but the truth of it was, the audience was laughing and responding like he was some sort of god.
And this pissed me off.
Get ready for it, Folks. I’m about to rant like usual. And, Reader? If you’re sick of me being pissed off all the time? Too bad. Get used to it. This is my style, my stage, my cynical, dark edge, the mood that actually brings out my better writing.
So. Stupid, fat, ugly guy talking about nothing but beer and having strangers bring him their own cup of germs, and having people actually find this laugh out loud funny, fucking pissed me off. It did. And hey. I'll even tell you WHY. I had thought to myself: if this was some stupid, fat, ugly woman trying to pull off these “jokes”, she’d totally be tanking. My point? People expect comedy from men, even when the comedy is horrible, and especially when the guy is fat and ugly and unclean and stupid. If a man is attempting to be funny (and I stress, attempting), people laugh because they think they should. Comedy is often revered as a masculine trait, and as an extremely funny woman as myself (she says so humbly…), I resent this. I also resent it because all of my WOMEN friends are equally hilarious, some of them more so. Put us on stage. We’ll give you a show… And no. No poles. We'll do it without poles, if you can possibly fathom it.
I don’t think privileged white men have any idea how privileged and white they really are. Even when you’re unclean, uncouth, ugly and fat, people adore you. Ha! You don’t even have to be talented to make up for it! You’re a walking cartoon character and because nobody has oppressed you with stereotypes or prejudices or racism, you can do whatever you want.
Maybe that’s not all fair…
I’m certain I just pissed off a bunch of people…
Allow me a slight redemption by continuing with THIS:
I understand that fat men undergo a certain amount of oppression from their peers just like fat women. And being a cartoon character can't be all that flattering deep down...
However…
Women don’t tend to leave their husbands when they get fat, but when vice versa it's a different story. When you hear the words “carbs” and “diet” and “nutri-system”, do you picture a fat man at the gym? or a skinny, large breasted woman in a bathing suit on the cover of a magazine... (Men have to diet too but nobody puts them under magazine headlines about weight loss). When you see a fat man on stage do you automatically assume he’s going to be hilarious? When a woman steps out on stage, do you expect her to tank? Fat men are expected to be funny. Fat women are expected to hit the gym. Fat men can get drunk, be crass and loud, shake their disgusting, shirtless gut, and everyone thinks he’s a hero. Fat women are told to keep hidden.
My ultimate point to this stupid rant? Allow me to reiterate: I don’t think privileged white men, even the fat ones, have any idea how privileged and white they really are. The audience I sat with has clearly proven thus.
Enough about that, though. I could talk about fat people, comedy, and sexism forever. But I'm tired now, and don't care anymore. But I will later, so stay tuned for a random chapter solely devoted to this clearly not-fully-developed-yet rant topic.
So. Back to my story:
We got up and left because I wasn’t the only one that was thinking, “THIS SUCKS.” We found another show. This one, was… whoa. Opposite comedy. It was an elderly gentleman making great attempts at intellectual, obscure puns about the renaissance era that nobody would understand unless they were reincarnated from King Arthur's court. My heart went out to this guy… He had clearly put effort into his bit. You know, actually wrote up his jokes and practiced in a mirror. But he didn’t have a microphone, so it was extremely difficult to hear him. His jokes needed that quiet, mellow voice of his, but the poor guy needed a microphone, BADLY. Feeling sad for him, we moved on…
We found a wand and broomstick shop, which was more exciting for us than it should’ve been considering that we’re all grown ups, but because we’re a group of diehard Harry Potter fans this was an extra special treat. Well. It was for me, at least.
What’s that, Reader? You were mumbling, I couldn’t hear you…
I’m a “hippo-nautical tork?” That sounds very scientifically geeky… Say it again for me, will you?
Oh. You said, “hypocritical dork”. Hypocritical? Maybe. Turns out I’m just as weirdly obsessed with the sub-culture of the Potter craze as people are about the renaissance era. But, dork? No. Come on. There’s no shame in being a fan of classic literature. Maybe you should pick up a book. I recommend Harry Potter.
Anyway. The wand shop was super dope. The brooms were beautifully crafted, and even if you’re not a fan of famous wizards like Harry, you can’t help appreciate the craftsmanship and the beauty of a flying broomstick. Yes, they fly. If you raid Peter Pan’s cupboard, they do. However, you have to believe in fairies to do that… Which? I’m pretty sure most of the people that were at the fair, DO.
After coming really close to actually buying a really pretty green wand, we moved on.
As the fair panned out around the bend, there were all sorts of interesting, man-powered rides, like giant rocking Viking boat swings that the kiddies could enjoy. They also had a lot of real life animal rides, something I have been morally against since I was a small child. This, Reader, is where I’m about to talk about animal rights, how I violated my own ethic code, and how I’m not sure I can ever forgive myself for doing so.
Succulent poultry of an extremely oversized American bird, cooked in a vat of hot oil and flavored with what seemed to be some secret, perfected, passed down through the ages recipe from a town peasant who lived hundreds of years ago – that, is what I tasted. It was six dollars for one scrumptious leg, so my friend and I split the cost. No. Actually I think I made a contribution of two dollars just to have a few bites. I soon after wished I had purchased a whole one for myself.
My first pull of the leg involved a mass peeling of oil dripping, crispy skin that took way too long to chew. I managed to peel off the juicy meat from the skin, and savored it like a delicacy. The meat was so tender and full of flavor, it practically melted over my tongue and slipped down my throat. Had I been eating from a silver plate garnished with vegetables and fruit from a royal garden, I could’ve easily convinced myself that I was a queen dining in my castle. I was two seconds away from ordering that hot dude dressed like a court jester over there to juggle some apples for me. I had other ideas of what to order him to do for me, too... All thoughts grew both creative and dirty, and then I had to order myself to stop pretending to be a queen because clearly I would make a very bad one...
My two dollars well spent, I was cured from my stupid little experience with my beer purchase. Moving on, we found our way to a little magic show being held in the middle of the grounds. We stopped to watch, but it wasn’t much to see. Joker number one was lying on a bed of nails while Joker number two smashed a plate on number one’s chest with a ball. Maybe it’s just me, but I was under the impression that everyone and their mother knew the secret to the bed of nails trick, and that it’s just not as impressive as it probably was a hundred years ago. Do you know the secret to the trick? Maybe I shouldn’t ruin it for you…
Moving on, we found a large crowd sitting in rows of benches waiting for a show to begin. This seemed interesting, so we found some seats. The man introducing the show was going on about the not-interesting-at-all topic of drinking beer… The audience was actually responding. People laughed. He talked about beer, like, “Hey! I have a beer! You have a beer!” And the people would laugh. He would raise his cup and talk about getting wasted, and people would raise their cup and laugh. Don’t get me wrong. I like my beer. Getting wasted is fun. But it’s really not that… comedic, topically. So I figured this was just a time-killer before the actual show started. I looked left, then right, looking for a sign to tell me when the show would start and what it was supposed to be about, but I couldn’t find anything.
Ten minutes in he was asking the audience to bring him their drinks. People were coming up to him with their cups. He was pounding them like a nineteen year old in a dorm room party. He would finish, quite untheatrically might I add...I mean, a little pounding on the chest, or the crushing of a cup with one hand would've been at least SOMETHING that would justify the audience going nuts. But no. He just drank their drink. That was it. And people thought this was good comedy. They were laughing. And cheering. I looked at my friends, twenty minutes in now with no new material, and said, “Has the show even started yet?” Unsurprisingly, they shrugged and looked just as bewildered from our so-called entertainment as I was. What the hell was this? I know I might sound like a total snob, but Reader? You have to believe me when I say that this was the worst entertainment(if that’s what you want to even call it) I’ve ever experienced in my life. I would’ve felt better about the situation if the guy was tanking with the audience, but the truth of it was, the audience was laughing and responding like he was some sort of god.
And this pissed me off.
Get ready for it, Folks. I’m about to rant like usual. And, Reader? If you’re sick of me being pissed off all the time? Too bad. Get used to it. This is my style, my stage, my cynical, dark edge, the mood that actually brings out my better writing.
So. Stupid, fat, ugly guy talking about nothing but beer and having strangers bring him their own cup of germs, and having people actually find this laugh out loud funny, fucking pissed me off. It did. And hey. I'll even tell you WHY. I had thought to myself: if this was some stupid, fat, ugly woman trying to pull off these “jokes”, she’d totally be tanking. My point? People expect comedy from men, even when the comedy is horrible, and especially when the guy is fat and ugly and unclean and stupid. If a man is attempting to be funny (and I stress, attempting), people laugh because they think they should. Comedy is often revered as a masculine trait, and as an extremely funny woman as myself (she says so humbly…), I resent this. I also resent it because all of my WOMEN friends are equally hilarious, some of them more so. Put us on stage. We’ll give you a show… And no. No poles. We'll do it without poles, if you can possibly fathom it.
I don’t think privileged white men have any idea how privileged and white they really are. Even when you’re unclean, uncouth, ugly and fat, people adore you. Ha! You don’t even have to be talented to make up for it! You’re a walking cartoon character and because nobody has oppressed you with stereotypes or prejudices or racism, you can do whatever you want.
Maybe that’s not all fair…
I’m certain I just pissed off a bunch of people…
Allow me a slight redemption by continuing with THIS:
I understand that fat men undergo a certain amount of oppression from their peers just like fat women. And being a cartoon character can't be all that flattering deep down...
However…
Women don’t tend to leave their husbands when they get fat, but when vice versa it's a different story. When you hear the words “carbs” and “diet” and “nutri-system”, do you picture a fat man at the gym? or a skinny, large breasted woman in a bathing suit on the cover of a magazine... (Men have to diet too but nobody puts them under magazine headlines about weight loss). When you see a fat man on stage do you automatically assume he’s going to be hilarious? When a woman steps out on stage, do you expect her to tank? Fat men are expected to be funny. Fat women are expected to hit the gym. Fat men can get drunk, be crass and loud, shake their disgusting, shirtless gut, and everyone thinks he’s a hero. Fat women are told to keep hidden.
My ultimate point to this stupid rant? Allow me to reiterate: I don’t think privileged white men, even the fat ones, have any idea how privileged and white they really are. The audience I sat with has clearly proven thus.
Enough about that, though. I could talk about fat people, comedy, and sexism forever. But I'm tired now, and don't care anymore. But I will later, so stay tuned for a random chapter solely devoted to this clearly not-fully-developed-yet rant topic.
So. Back to my story:
We got up and left because I wasn’t the only one that was thinking, “THIS SUCKS.” We found another show. This one, was… whoa. Opposite comedy. It was an elderly gentleman making great attempts at intellectual, obscure puns about the renaissance era that nobody would understand unless they were reincarnated from King Arthur's court. My heart went out to this guy… He had clearly put effort into his bit. You know, actually wrote up his jokes and practiced in a mirror. But he didn’t have a microphone, so it was extremely difficult to hear him. His jokes needed that quiet, mellow voice of his, but the poor guy needed a microphone, BADLY. Feeling sad for him, we moved on…
We found a wand and broomstick shop, which was more exciting for us than it should’ve been considering that we’re all grown ups, but because we’re a group of diehard Harry Potter fans this was an extra special treat. Well. It was for me, at least.
What’s that, Reader? You were mumbling, I couldn’t hear you…
I’m a “hippo-nautical tork?” That sounds very scientifically geeky… Say it again for me, will you?
Oh. You said, “hypocritical dork”. Hypocritical? Maybe. Turns out I’m just as weirdly obsessed with the sub-culture of the Potter craze as people are about the renaissance era. But, dork? No. Come on. There’s no shame in being a fan of classic literature. Maybe you should pick up a book. I recommend Harry Potter.
Anyway. The wand shop was super dope. The brooms were beautifully crafted, and even if you’re not a fan of famous wizards like Harry, you can’t help appreciate the craftsmanship and the beauty of a flying broomstick. Yes, they fly. If you raid Peter Pan’s cupboard, they do. However, you have to believe in fairies to do that… Which? I’m pretty sure most of the people that were at the fair, DO.
After coming really close to actually buying a really pretty green wand, we moved on.
As the fair panned out around the bend, there were all sorts of interesting, man-powered rides, like giant rocking Viking boat swings that the kiddies could enjoy. They also had a lot of real life animal rides, something I have been morally against since I was a small child. This, Reader, is where I’m about to talk about animal rights, how I violated my own ethic code, and how I’m not sure I can ever forgive myself for doing so.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
PART ONE: The Renaissance Festival
Shakopee, Minnesota, close to Canterbury Park, is where this massive shin dig takes place every year between the end of August and beginning of October. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Renaissance Festival circuit, it’s pretty much a medieval circus that tours around the country like a modern wagon train. Not all cast members and participants are part of the traveling band, and most entertainers are volunteers that depend greatly on tips from their audience. It’s an extravagant hobby, a sort of sub-culture of people who really, really wish that they had been born in a different era. I’m all for the theatrics, I am, and I’m a little fruity myself, truth be told. But as much as the renaissance era is particularly intriguing to artsy freaks like myself, it is definitely an era that I am grateful to have not been born in. I speak solely on behalf of all women abroad who, when you educate yourself on the time period, are sure to agree that unless you were royalty, the renaissance era was not as fairy tale-ish as most would like to believe. This proved true when at the ticket booth a sign proclaiming methods of payment listed “lady” as one of the means to pay. Now, now, Reader. I get it. It’s supposed to be “in character”, and it’s supposed to be funny. I get it. I’m not that uptight to take it too seriously. But it was this sign and me telling myself, “Don’t be so uptight” that surfaces later in the story.
I was prepared for the costumes, and quite frankly looking forward to them. Unfortunately, I made the idiotic mistake of not remembering to charge my camera’s battery before I went. It’s moments like these when I have a particular hatred for my absent mindedness. I took two pictures, and the damn thing died on me. This, was a grave disappointment. This was the sort of event one would want to take pictures of and report back to an audience. The photo opportunities were endless as we (me and my friend and her husband: the same couple I went with to Apple River Hideaway) walked into a sea of costume clad weirdoes from all walks of life.
Now, some Renaissance Fairs are strictly set in particular time periods, such as the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First or Henry the Eighth (hello, Herman’s Hermits). Some fairs broaden the timeline between the Vikings and eighteenth century pirates. The Minnesota Renaissance Festival celebrates all time periods and everything in between. Fantasy is also included in this era, witches, wizards, elves, wood fairies and bizarro mythical creatures galore. My favorite, however, was the seemingly confused fat, fifty year old man wearing a fully decked out, genuine Captain America costume that shown bold and brightly of new colors (red, white and blue) freshly pulled out of the packaging box from whence they came. His plastic shield and blue socks made everything come together perfectly. However, I’m pretty sure Captain America was post-renaissance...like, post post. Like, way post. It was at this moment that I realized that the Renaissance Festival is not only for people who wished they had been born peasants, wenches and village idiots, but also for people who desperately need more than one, scary holiday a year to have an excuse to dress up. This was Halloween come early. This was, “I’m a full grown person that is not ashamed to dress up in a costume and eat giant turkey legs in public.” Kudos to you all, you costume clad weirdoes. I wish I was as nutty as you. As for Captain America, I’m afraid you have an identity crisis to deal with, but hey. Don’t we all.
Coming into the grounds, not only are you surrounded by fake, synthetic medieval costumes worn by a lot of overweight people, but there’s plenty of things to peruse. The Minnesota festival boasts of over one hundred artisan booths. Some of them are exquisitely impressive. If you’re one of those lucky people that has a fat wallet, bring your dough and spend it. There are some very talented artists that set up camp here to make a buck, and to, you know, put a roof over their head.
One of the first booths we wandered into was full of chain-mail merchandise. The necklaces and bracelets were interesting, and there were a few styles that I would definitely wear in public. There were some interesting head dresses, too, that were funky and fantasy worthy, but not practical for a person who doesn’t want to walk in public streets without being accused of wearing a costume. There were also more erotic pieces, like chain-mail bikini type tops and chain-mail panties. A group of particularly good looking guys were picking up the panties and making jokes about it, using somewhat dirty yet somewhat funny puns about it. One guy said, “Now that would be hard to penetrate…”. I sort of giggled at his stupid joke and tried to make eye-contact. Pathetic. My giggling behavior was a direct result of the guy who said it being unbelievably beautiful. Good grief, Girl. Hormones weaken us all. The joke is a little lame, let’s be frank.
The smell of fair food was soon filling our nostrils, telling us it was definitely time to splurge on a giant turkey leg. My friend’s husband wanted a beer, and I thought to myself, “That sounds perfect…”. I was picturing myself walking away with a giant wooden pint sized mug of frothy brew, and the image inspired me to join him on this quest.
Now. I need to preface this upcoming story with the description of my attire, and the attire of the women costumes around me. The women in costume were wearing leather-laced bodices that squished nearly all of their breasts out of the tops of them. Wench. They were going for the wench look. To each their own, I say. Me, on the other hand, was wearing a long-sleeved thermal with a T-shirt over it that says, “Reading is Sexy”. I was fully clothed. I was not going for wench. But wench, I was treated as.
I barely make it up to the counter of the beer booth when the little, pale blonde man (if you want to call him a man…) behind it says in a ridiculous, over-eager, “I think I’m so clever and funny!” voice, “Hey! I read lots of books! I read lots and lots of books! I looooove reading!” (All in reference to my “Reading is Sexy” shirt, remember…) The tongue lolling around out of his mouth gave him the distinct personification of a drooling wolf. I gave him a courtesy chuckle and nodded my head, followed by a tight lipped smile that was intended to say, “Don’t go any further with this, Idiot…” But further he went. And so did his tall, gangly side-kick, Bigger Idiot.
As I’m trying to ignore Idiot’s panting, and trying to decide on what beer I want, he says, “Put your shoulders back, hunny! I can’t read your shirt!” Bigger Idiot laughs and adds something twice as juvenile to this eighth-grade joke. I give him another tight lipped look and shake my head and look down at my wallet. I say nothing. In my head, I’m thinking, “They’re just being stupid and in character in their stupid, fluffy, feathery Henry the Eighth I Am, I Am hats.” I ignore them. But my emotions are flooding my brain. I can’t think because they continue to jaunt and pant and jeer. I’m flipping through the dollar bills in my wallet. They say something else, something just as stupid as the comment before, in attempts to get me to show off my chest. My shoulders are pointedly forward, and I’m not making eye contact on purpose. Idiot then says, “Aww. Come on. You had to know where you were comin’ to today…” He could tell that I was pissed. Good boy, Idiot. Good boy. You just proved that you know that I’m not okay with your jokes. But when he said this? I thought to myself, “He’s right…Come on… don’t be so uptight…” I actually said that to myself. Looking back, I’ve never been more ashamed.
Idiot finally showed that he was done with the joking and said, “What can I get for ya…” I made my order, thinking, “They’re just stupid. They’re just teasing. Let it go.” But then Bigger Idiot said something to a guy behind me waiting in line about how he and Idiot are staring at my chest. Or, checking out my chest. Or, what was it? I can’t remember the exact words, I can only remember how I felt, and how it was at that moment hearing the customer behind me say something just as wolfish about it, laughing like a man with the need to compensate for something, that I was feeling indefinitely violated. It was easier to brush them off when I could say, “They’re just being crass in spirit of the stupid festival” but when they brought in a third party of a stranger, a customer behind me, I felt ganged up on. I was surrounded. My brain was completely fuzzed with the shock of it. They saw that I wasn’t laughing. They saw that I was agitated. And it continued anyway. This, girls of all ages, is called sexual harassment. If you ever feel like you’re standing naked in a group of men laughing at your sexual being-ness, then it is not okay. You have a right to stand up for yourself. You always have a right to stand up for yourself. Don’t ever do what I do every time this happens to me. Don’t tell yourself to blow it off or ignore them. Say something. Do something. I know... easier said than done. Trust me, I know. Me, the woman of words, the woman who stands boldly for women’s rights, is always caught speechless in these situations. And I hate it.
This is how it should’ve gone down…or how I would’ve liked it to have gone down…
Here are a few scenarios I could’ve walked away from, happy. I should’ve said this, I should’ve said that…
HERE:
Idiot: “Hey! I read lots of books! I read lots and lots of books! I looooove reading!”
Me: “Read what? Self help books like, ‘Help! I’m a Grown Up That Dresses Like a Village Idiot in Tights and Sells Beer for a Living’?”
OR
Idiot: “Put your shoulders back, hunny! I can’t read your shirt!”
Me: “You mean like this?” And haul back a fist, and then throw it into his face knocking off his stupid, fluffy, gold and white feathery Henry the Eighth I Am, I Am hat.
OR
Bigger Idiot: “Come on! We just wanna read your shirt!” HAR HAR HAR, they laugh like fools.
Me: “Can I borrow your tights, first? Oh wait. Only little girls where yellow tights…”
Oooo, that was a good one…
OR
Back to:
Idiot: “Put your shoulders back, hunny! I can’t read your shirt!”
Me: “WHOA! Wow! Oh my god... Did we just? No… It can’t be... Did we seriously just time travel back to the eighth grade? Where’re you hiding the DeLorean!” Queue pretending to look behind a billboard…
OR…
What I really should’ve done? All joking aside? I should’ve left the beer on the counter, put my four dollars back into my wallet, and said with the grace and strength of a woman who respects her body, “I’ll take my business elsewhere, now.” And walked away. That, is what I should’ve done. That would’ve had an empowering effect. I would’ve left them groveling for my business. I would’ve made them feel stupid in the smartest way I could’ve possibly managed. But did I think to do that at that moment? No. So simple… It’s almost impossible to process a solution quick enough when people are making you feel vulnerable and cornered. You have no idea how badly I wish I had taken back that power, how badly I wish I had been quick thinking and non self-doubting of my own feelings. I walked over to my friend who was ready to purchase a giant turkey leg, told her what happened, we made a few jokes about the immaturity of the “hold your shoulders back” joke, and found our way to the turkey counter. I began drinking my beer (in a plastic cup) with a sort of angry relish, trying to imagine it as a giant wooden, pint sized mug instead, standing amidst hobbits and wizards, Strider smoking a pipe over there by the fat lady in a leather laced up bodice, just to amuse and distract myself. It worked enough. The turkey leg worked better, though.
Have you ever had a giant, deep-fried medieval turkey leg? You should. If you haven’t, you really should put that on your list of things to do before you die. And here is where I tell you why…
I was prepared for the costumes, and quite frankly looking forward to them. Unfortunately, I made the idiotic mistake of not remembering to charge my camera’s battery before I went. It’s moments like these when I have a particular hatred for my absent mindedness. I took two pictures, and the damn thing died on me. This, was a grave disappointment. This was the sort of event one would want to take pictures of and report back to an audience. The photo opportunities were endless as we (me and my friend and her husband: the same couple I went with to Apple River Hideaway) walked into a sea of costume clad weirdoes from all walks of life.
Now, some Renaissance Fairs are strictly set in particular time periods, such as the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First or Henry the Eighth (hello, Herman’s Hermits). Some fairs broaden the timeline between the Vikings and eighteenth century pirates. The Minnesota Renaissance Festival celebrates all time periods and everything in between. Fantasy is also included in this era, witches, wizards, elves, wood fairies and bizarro mythical creatures galore. My favorite, however, was the seemingly confused fat, fifty year old man wearing a fully decked out, genuine Captain America costume that shown bold and brightly of new colors (red, white and blue) freshly pulled out of the packaging box from whence they came. His plastic shield and blue socks made everything come together perfectly. However, I’m pretty sure Captain America was post-renaissance...like, post post. Like, way post. It was at this moment that I realized that the Renaissance Festival is not only for people who wished they had been born peasants, wenches and village idiots, but also for people who desperately need more than one, scary holiday a year to have an excuse to dress up. This was Halloween come early. This was, “I’m a full grown person that is not ashamed to dress up in a costume and eat giant turkey legs in public.” Kudos to you all, you costume clad weirdoes. I wish I was as nutty as you. As for Captain America, I’m afraid you have an identity crisis to deal with, but hey. Don’t we all.
Coming into the grounds, not only are you surrounded by fake, synthetic medieval costumes worn by a lot of overweight people, but there’s plenty of things to peruse. The Minnesota festival boasts of over one hundred artisan booths. Some of them are exquisitely impressive. If you’re one of those lucky people that has a fat wallet, bring your dough and spend it. There are some very talented artists that set up camp here to make a buck, and to, you know, put a roof over their head.
One of the first booths we wandered into was full of chain-mail merchandise. The necklaces and bracelets were interesting, and there were a few styles that I would definitely wear in public. There were some interesting head dresses, too, that were funky and fantasy worthy, but not practical for a person who doesn’t want to walk in public streets without being accused of wearing a costume. There were also more erotic pieces, like chain-mail bikini type tops and chain-mail panties. A group of particularly good looking guys were picking up the panties and making jokes about it, using somewhat dirty yet somewhat funny puns about it. One guy said, “Now that would be hard to penetrate…”. I sort of giggled at his stupid joke and tried to make eye-contact. Pathetic. My giggling behavior was a direct result of the guy who said it being unbelievably beautiful. Good grief, Girl. Hormones weaken us all. The joke is a little lame, let’s be frank.
The smell of fair food was soon filling our nostrils, telling us it was definitely time to splurge on a giant turkey leg. My friend’s husband wanted a beer, and I thought to myself, “That sounds perfect…”. I was picturing myself walking away with a giant wooden pint sized mug of frothy brew, and the image inspired me to join him on this quest.
Now. I need to preface this upcoming story with the description of my attire, and the attire of the women costumes around me. The women in costume were wearing leather-laced bodices that squished nearly all of their breasts out of the tops of them. Wench. They were going for the wench look. To each their own, I say. Me, on the other hand, was wearing a long-sleeved thermal with a T-shirt over it that says, “Reading is Sexy”. I was fully clothed. I was not going for wench. But wench, I was treated as.
I barely make it up to the counter of the beer booth when the little, pale blonde man (if you want to call him a man…) behind it says in a ridiculous, over-eager, “I think I’m so clever and funny!” voice, “Hey! I read lots of books! I read lots and lots of books! I looooove reading!” (All in reference to my “Reading is Sexy” shirt, remember…) The tongue lolling around out of his mouth gave him the distinct personification of a drooling wolf. I gave him a courtesy chuckle and nodded my head, followed by a tight lipped smile that was intended to say, “Don’t go any further with this, Idiot…” But further he went. And so did his tall, gangly side-kick, Bigger Idiot.
As I’m trying to ignore Idiot’s panting, and trying to decide on what beer I want, he says, “Put your shoulders back, hunny! I can’t read your shirt!” Bigger Idiot laughs and adds something twice as juvenile to this eighth-grade joke. I give him another tight lipped look and shake my head and look down at my wallet. I say nothing. In my head, I’m thinking, “They’re just being stupid and in character in their stupid, fluffy, feathery Henry the Eighth I Am, I Am hats.” I ignore them. But my emotions are flooding my brain. I can’t think because they continue to jaunt and pant and jeer. I’m flipping through the dollar bills in my wallet. They say something else, something just as stupid as the comment before, in attempts to get me to show off my chest. My shoulders are pointedly forward, and I’m not making eye contact on purpose. Idiot then says, “Aww. Come on. You had to know where you were comin’ to today…” He could tell that I was pissed. Good boy, Idiot. Good boy. You just proved that you know that I’m not okay with your jokes. But when he said this? I thought to myself, “He’s right…Come on… don’t be so uptight…” I actually said that to myself. Looking back, I’ve never been more ashamed.
Idiot finally showed that he was done with the joking and said, “What can I get for ya…” I made my order, thinking, “They’re just stupid. They’re just teasing. Let it go.” But then Bigger Idiot said something to a guy behind me waiting in line about how he and Idiot are staring at my chest. Or, checking out my chest. Or, what was it? I can’t remember the exact words, I can only remember how I felt, and how it was at that moment hearing the customer behind me say something just as wolfish about it, laughing like a man with the need to compensate for something, that I was feeling indefinitely violated. It was easier to brush them off when I could say, “They’re just being crass in spirit of the stupid festival” but when they brought in a third party of a stranger, a customer behind me, I felt ganged up on. I was surrounded. My brain was completely fuzzed with the shock of it. They saw that I wasn’t laughing. They saw that I was agitated. And it continued anyway. This, girls of all ages, is called sexual harassment. If you ever feel like you’re standing naked in a group of men laughing at your sexual being-ness, then it is not okay. You have a right to stand up for yourself. You always have a right to stand up for yourself. Don’t ever do what I do every time this happens to me. Don’t tell yourself to blow it off or ignore them. Say something. Do something. I know... easier said than done. Trust me, I know. Me, the woman of words, the woman who stands boldly for women’s rights, is always caught speechless in these situations. And I hate it.
This is how it should’ve gone down…or how I would’ve liked it to have gone down…
Here are a few scenarios I could’ve walked away from, happy. I should’ve said this, I should’ve said that…
HERE:
Idiot: “Hey! I read lots of books! I read lots and lots of books! I looooove reading!”
Me: “Read what? Self help books like, ‘Help! I’m a Grown Up That Dresses Like a Village Idiot in Tights and Sells Beer for a Living’?”
OR
Idiot: “Put your shoulders back, hunny! I can’t read your shirt!”
Me: “You mean like this?” And haul back a fist, and then throw it into his face knocking off his stupid, fluffy, gold and white feathery Henry the Eighth I Am, I Am hat.
OR
Bigger Idiot: “Come on! We just wanna read your shirt!” HAR HAR HAR, they laugh like fools.
Me: “Can I borrow your tights, first? Oh wait. Only little girls where yellow tights…”
Oooo, that was a good one…
OR
Back to:
Idiot: “Put your shoulders back, hunny! I can’t read your shirt!”
Me: “WHOA! Wow! Oh my god... Did we just? No… It can’t be... Did we seriously just time travel back to the eighth grade? Where’re you hiding the DeLorean!” Queue pretending to look behind a billboard…
OR…
What I really should’ve done? All joking aside? I should’ve left the beer on the counter, put my four dollars back into my wallet, and said with the grace and strength of a woman who respects her body, “I’ll take my business elsewhere, now.” And walked away. That, is what I should’ve done. That would’ve had an empowering effect. I would’ve left them groveling for my business. I would’ve made them feel stupid in the smartest way I could’ve possibly managed. But did I think to do that at that moment? No. So simple… It’s almost impossible to process a solution quick enough when people are making you feel vulnerable and cornered. You have no idea how badly I wish I had taken back that power, how badly I wish I had been quick thinking and non self-doubting of my own feelings. I walked over to my friend who was ready to purchase a giant turkey leg, told her what happened, we made a few jokes about the immaturity of the “hold your shoulders back” joke, and found our way to the turkey counter. I began drinking my beer (in a plastic cup) with a sort of angry relish, trying to imagine it as a giant wooden, pint sized mug instead, standing amidst hobbits and wizards, Strider smoking a pipe over there by the fat lady in a leather laced up bodice, just to amuse and distract myself. It worked enough. The turkey leg worked better, though.
Have you ever had a giant, deep-fried medieval turkey leg? You should. If you haven’t, you really should put that on your list of things to do before you die. And here is where I tell you why…
Monday, September 27, 2010
Box Elder Bugs and the Honey Crisp
Every year, right on time, they come out from their nests with a vengeance. Hundreds, thousands, swarms and swarms of beady, red little eyes and poking, prodding, peeking antennae, up over porches, plastering across the window panes, lining every door and crevice of every house across the entire state of Minnesota, they fly, perch, crawl, creep, zoom slowly and ominously around you as you try to make your way out of the house. Their red and black wings spread straight out, their bodies vertical much like a lightning bug, and they hover and circle and dip and dive, and when they land they scuttle and scuttle and scuttle. They’re everywhere. You can’t escape them. The lawn is blanketed with their babies, little red dots with six, tiny legs. They like buildings to hibernate in, so they flock to the sides of them, and they wait for the opportune moment when an innocent human comes walking out of their door to then take flight and find their way into your home. That is of course after they’ve landed in your hair, on your shoulder, on both your arms, on your face, and all over your body first. I HATE BOX ELDER BUGS.
It wasn’t always this way. I’d find one in “my room” at work, and I would safely pick it up and set it free outside. I’ve always been a bit of nature freak when it comes to respecting life of all shapes and forms and sizes. For example, I have a hard time killing ants because I know all too well how useful they are to our environment, and to me an infestation of ants is nothing but nature’s efficient clean up crew. Spiders, the same thing. They creep me out, oh sure, but I respect their existence. It is very rare to see me squish a bug, an insect, arachnid, a life of any kind. My only exceptions to this rule in the past have been mosquitoes, flies, and ticks. And, well, for good reason. I still haven’t figured out the purpose to any of their existences. But my list ended there.
The box elders didn’t always used to be this…abundant. It started only a few years ago, and to this day I can’t scientifically explain why their nests just keep getting bigger and bigger every year since, or, how it even started in the first place. All I know is that every year, autumn sets herself in, and the box elders suddenly emerge by the millions. Having a bedroom in the basement doesn’t help, let me tell you. I’m swatting at box elders all the way through Christmas and Valentine’s. Yes, swatting. Box elders are now on my “TO DIE” list. After getting attacked by hundreds of them every time I open the back porch door, I think I can safely assume that their chance of species survival is pretty damn good, and killing about fifty of them a day won’t be that detrimental to the environment. There’s still millions of them covering the pool shed out back.
Food. They must be food for the birds before the winter, right? That’s got to be their purpose…. But it’s not. No. You may not be familiar with the term “box elder bug”, but are you familiar with the term “stink bug”? Oh yes. These are stink bugs by the thousands, millions. Kill one with your bare hands? Your finger will stink for three days. This is also a reason they are not eaten.
I love autumn. I do. But these harmless little vermin are killjoys for the great equinox that so desperately wants to be celebrated. I can’t celebrate you, Autumn. Not when you send us millions of stupid little bugs that stink and zoom at you like little air raids from nature’s hell pit. Seriously. I’m wanting to crawl into a giant tripod ship with an exterminating gun and pulverize the crap out of their existence. Now, coming from a nature lover such as myself, this is truly saying something.
But as my mother wisely said to me as I was having a ridiculous fit about seeing twenty of them on the inside of the screen porch door, “They’re just bugs…”. This is true, I say to myself. They are just bugs. And they’re harmless. They don’t bite. They don’t eat your house. They can kill trees, though, but other than that they prove no real threat. They’re the most unprotected, easy-to-kill bug I’ve ever squashed, oozing guts with one, feeble swat. This is a positive thing. They’re not like ticks where you have to literally rip all their legs off and use your nail to tear their thick, invincible skin apart, and then, to be safe, flush them down a toilet. They’re not like mosquitoes where even though they fly ever so slowly they seem to have this annoying knack of always escaping your seemingly quick hand. No. Box elders are wimps. They’re soft, slow, unafraid of people, and really easy to kill. And all I want to do is KILL, KILL, KILL.
This new violent nature frightens me slightly. I have decided that I need to counteract this malicious behavior and attitude by trying to find a more positive thing about Minnesota autumns. I was recently informed that the honey crisp apple is Minnesota’s state fruit. Have you ever eaten a honey crisp apple? They are, literally, to die for. And here’s the kicker, Folks: I hate fruit. I’ll eat an apple maybe once a year. I’ve forced myself to eat bananas when I’m having digestive issues. Every five years or so I’ll get a fluke craving for a slice of orange, but that’s usually from a weird body chemical imbalance thing because usually oranges make me gag. Grapes? I haven’t eaten a grape in six years. Plums I can handle on occasion. Peaches, pears, pineapple, any kind of berry (unless it’s blueberries in muffin form), mango, cantaloupe, grapefruit, all of it makes me want to gag when I put it in my mouth. I’ve always hated this about my taste buds, too, because fruit is so pretty, colorful, alluring, natural, and nothing makes me think Garden of Eden more than fruit trees and berry bushes. I love to write about fruit, write about characters eating it, because it’s such a universally enjoyed pleasure, a healthy indulgence, a communion with our planet, our roots, our existence as we know it. I envy the fruit lovers. I envy the communion with earth that I feel I am sorely missing out on.
But alas, Reader. Alas! Minnesota has come to offer something I never thought possible. I have discovered a fruit that I love to eat, a fruit that I can indulge in, a fruit that grows from a tree in an orchard of fire-blazing heavenly golden leaves a flutter, all an ode to an Eden that no longer exists. I, Reader, have fallen in love with the honey crisp apple. Even the name of it sounds luscious! It’s the perfect apple. It’s sweet, with just a slight hint of apple tartness. It’s juicy. It’s not soft like the Cortland apple. Yes, the Cortland apple. My hometown’s apple. My New York hometown’s apple. I hate the Cortland apple. You can buy Cortland apples in just about every state of the country, and they all come from an orchard in the upstate New York hills that I have been to many times in my childhood. It was the same, cheap field trip every year. We got to watch cider being made. This was not as fascinating to me as it was to others. Squished up apples in a giant press looks like vomit to me. The smell was always nice, but the squished up apples was revolting. I never liked the taste of cider, either. The smell, I’ll say again, is nice. Nostalgic. The cliché but ever comforting smell of autumn. After the cider tasting on this annual field trip, we would buy a few Cortland apples with the money our mothers gave us to spend, and I would never eat them. They’re small, soft, and tart. No thanks.
But the honey crisp! It is not soft. It is, as it proclaims in its name, crisp. So crisp! Juicy…sweet…a communion with our planet that I can now fully enjoy. Stink bugs be damned. I’ve got myself an apple to eat.
It wasn’t always this way. I’d find one in “my room” at work, and I would safely pick it up and set it free outside. I’ve always been a bit of nature freak when it comes to respecting life of all shapes and forms and sizes. For example, I have a hard time killing ants because I know all too well how useful they are to our environment, and to me an infestation of ants is nothing but nature’s efficient clean up crew. Spiders, the same thing. They creep me out, oh sure, but I respect their existence. It is very rare to see me squish a bug, an insect, arachnid, a life of any kind. My only exceptions to this rule in the past have been mosquitoes, flies, and ticks. And, well, for good reason. I still haven’t figured out the purpose to any of their existences. But my list ended there.
The box elders didn’t always used to be this…abundant. It started only a few years ago, and to this day I can’t scientifically explain why their nests just keep getting bigger and bigger every year since, or, how it even started in the first place. All I know is that every year, autumn sets herself in, and the box elders suddenly emerge by the millions. Having a bedroom in the basement doesn’t help, let me tell you. I’m swatting at box elders all the way through Christmas and Valentine’s. Yes, swatting. Box elders are now on my “TO DIE” list. After getting attacked by hundreds of them every time I open the back porch door, I think I can safely assume that their chance of species survival is pretty damn good, and killing about fifty of them a day won’t be that detrimental to the environment. There’s still millions of them covering the pool shed out back.
Food. They must be food for the birds before the winter, right? That’s got to be their purpose…. But it’s not. No. You may not be familiar with the term “box elder bug”, but are you familiar with the term “stink bug”? Oh yes. These are stink bugs by the thousands, millions. Kill one with your bare hands? Your finger will stink for three days. This is also a reason they are not eaten.
I love autumn. I do. But these harmless little vermin are killjoys for the great equinox that so desperately wants to be celebrated. I can’t celebrate you, Autumn. Not when you send us millions of stupid little bugs that stink and zoom at you like little air raids from nature’s hell pit. Seriously. I’m wanting to crawl into a giant tripod ship with an exterminating gun and pulverize the crap out of their existence. Now, coming from a nature lover such as myself, this is truly saying something.
But as my mother wisely said to me as I was having a ridiculous fit about seeing twenty of them on the inside of the screen porch door, “They’re just bugs…”. This is true, I say to myself. They are just bugs. And they’re harmless. They don’t bite. They don’t eat your house. They can kill trees, though, but other than that they prove no real threat. They’re the most unprotected, easy-to-kill bug I’ve ever squashed, oozing guts with one, feeble swat. This is a positive thing. They’re not like ticks where you have to literally rip all their legs off and use your nail to tear their thick, invincible skin apart, and then, to be safe, flush them down a toilet. They’re not like mosquitoes where even though they fly ever so slowly they seem to have this annoying knack of always escaping your seemingly quick hand. No. Box elders are wimps. They’re soft, slow, unafraid of people, and really easy to kill. And all I want to do is KILL, KILL, KILL.
This new violent nature frightens me slightly. I have decided that I need to counteract this malicious behavior and attitude by trying to find a more positive thing about Minnesota autumns. I was recently informed that the honey crisp apple is Minnesota’s state fruit. Have you ever eaten a honey crisp apple? They are, literally, to die for. And here’s the kicker, Folks: I hate fruit. I’ll eat an apple maybe once a year. I’ve forced myself to eat bananas when I’m having digestive issues. Every five years or so I’ll get a fluke craving for a slice of orange, but that’s usually from a weird body chemical imbalance thing because usually oranges make me gag. Grapes? I haven’t eaten a grape in six years. Plums I can handle on occasion. Peaches, pears, pineapple, any kind of berry (unless it’s blueberries in muffin form), mango, cantaloupe, grapefruit, all of it makes me want to gag when I put it in my mouth. I’ve always hated this about my taste buds, too, because fruit is so pretty, colorful, alluring, natural, and nothing makes me think Garden of Eden more than fruit trees and berry bushes. I love to write about fruit, write about characters eating it, because it’s such a universally enjoyed pleasure, a healthy indulgence, a communion with our planet, our roots, our existence as we know it. I envy the fruit lovers. I envy the communion with earth that I feel I am sorely missing out on.
But alas, Reader. Alas! Minnesota has come to offer something I never thought possible. I have discovered a fruit that I love to eat, a fruit that I can indulge in, a fruit that grows from a tree in an orchard of fire-blazing heavenly golden leaves a flutter, all an ode to an Eden that no longer exists. I, Reader, have fallen in love with the honey crisp apple. Even the name of it sounds luscious! It’s the perfect apple. It’s sweet, with just a slight hint of apple tartness. It’s juicy. It’s not soft like the Cortland apple. Yes, the Cortland apple. My hometown’s apple. My New York hometown’s apple. I hate the Cortland apple. You can buy Cortland apples in just about every state of the country, and they all come from an orchard in the upstate New York hills that I have been to many times in my childhood. It was the same, cheap field trip every year. We got to watch cider being made. This was not as fascinating to me as it was to others. Squished up apples in a giant press looks like vomit to me. The smell was always nice, but the squished up apples was revolting. I never liked the taste of cider, either. The smell, I’ll say again, is nice. Nostalgic. The cliché but ever comforting smell of autumn. After the cider tasting on this annual field trip, we would buy a few Cortland apples with the money our mothers gave us to spend, and I would never eat them. They’re small, soft, and tart. No thanks.
But the honey crisp! It is not soft. It is, as it proclaims in its name, crisp. So crisp! Juicy…sweet…a communion with our planet that I can now fully enjoy. Stink bugs be damned. I’ve got myself an apple to eat.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
PART FIVE of: "Gomorrah", Wisconsin
I feel like I need to make up for PART FOUR. PART THREE was a bit of a hit. PART FOUR was rushed and wound up like a sloppy cross-stitch. Or a half done pancake. Or? Like a wedding dress made without a pattern… No. Here it is: It was more like an anti-climatic, run-on to nowhere sequence of things that were not properly described. I let you down, Reader. I left you on the edge of your seat in PART THREE, and I completely failed to satisfy in the following post. Believe me, I realized this the moment I posted it. It was late at night. My judgment was based on this factor alone: “I’m too lazy to fix this.” But my laziness was temporary, and I’ve come through with a full recovery, and I promise that the tale I’m telling has a great ending. Not a good ending. A great ending. I recklessly guarantee your satisfaction. PART FIVE is going to make up for my previous bout of “I’m too tired to write or care about writing” spell. This is the part of the story I’ve been waiting to tell you. It's going to get a little bit tricky because in the first half of it I have to tell it third person. Or is it second person? Definitely not first person. I was curled up in my stupid car trying to sleep when the real excitement began. The first half of this post was recounted to me by my friend, and now I’m going to try to do her story telling justice by relaying it in my own words to you. So, if some of it comes off a little first person, I apologize for it. If some of my embellishments seem dishonest, I’m sorry. My imagination can put myself directly into a story that I wasn’t even a part of, and who knows what’s going to come from that… But I promise, Reader, that this part of the tale definitely makes your loyalty to read my adventures all worth it.
It seemed to be that by 4am the baboons finally passed out. It was quiet for a total of thirty minutes before a staggering, lose headed baboon suddenly made his presence known to the cold, early, dark morning air. His voice rang out with a, “Who the F is in my mother F-ing tent!” (Now here I can say that I will be censoring the language, but I’m sure you’ll get the picture...)
My friend attested to the fact that she could hear his voice right next to our campsite and could safely assume it was most definitely one of our primate neighbors. Through listening only, these were some facts that were picked up from the Lose-Headed baboon and his friends that were trying to get him to shut up and go to bed:
They had apparently been bar hoping, had been drinking and driving for quite some time before realizing that there was a shuttle service to the campsite. The Lose-Headed baboon’s name was being said as, “Riser”. One of his friend’s was “Sievert” and the other, “Digger”. I am not making this up. Riser, Sievert and Digger. Obviously, last names (though "Digger" is questionable...). But come on… Riser? Digger? It’s just too perfect.
Riser continued to obsess about the fact that his bag was sitting outside of his tent. To be fair, it had stormed, so it was most likely waterlogged to the hilt, and even being sober that would tick anyone off. But the truth of the matter was this: no one heard him open the tent and even look inside of it, so there was no real proof that anyone was in there, no one to have taken his bag out of the tent and put it in the rain. His rant went on like this:
“Is this my F-ing bag?" (He's not even sure it's his?) "Who put my F-ing bag outside my tent! Get out of my F-ing tent!” He said these phrases over and over and over and over again, at the top of his lungs mind you, in a I’m-so-drunk-I-can’t-think-past-the-phrases-I’ve-already-said-so-I-keep-saying-them-like-a-broken-record sort of way. Those of you who’ve partied with some heavy drinkers (or have alcoholics in your family), you know exactly what I’m talking about. There is something about alcoholic brain damage that sets your brain on “repeat”, and listening to someone suffering through this tragic phase of wastedness is, well, kind of annoying. Even when I’ve been drinking myself these sort of drunks annoy me. I’m glad I wasn’t there for it, truth be told, because I’ve had my fair share of experiences with the drunk stuck on “repeat”, thank you very much.
And then, the ultimate moment of climactic hilarity. My friend attests to this being “the quote of the night”:
“On a scale of one to ten, I am so F-ing angry I’m going to start cutting off people’s head with an F-ing machete!”
My friend says to her husband, “That must be a fifteen.” And her quote makes the joke complete.
Sievert was in another tent laughing at his friend and suggesting every once and awhile, “Dude, you probably just didn’t put your bag in your tent.” This outraged Riser and gave need to put his friend in his place with: “Sievert? You are so F-ing stupid that you left your F-ing bag in your F-ing Acura in F-ing Bloomington!”
Sievert shut up for awhile.
Raging Riser finally decided that he was going to go to jail.
“Someone take me to jail! Because I’m gonna start cutting off people’s heads with a machete! I’m going to jail! I’m going to kill people!”
(As funny as all of this was, let’s face it, this would’ve been the opportune time to call the cops…)
Riser suddenly realizes that Sievert’s keys are in his pocket. Victory! He very triumphantly exclaims, “So! When I go to jail you’re [Sievert] going to be so F-ing screwed because I have your F-ing keys!” I imagine a bulbous headed villian with short little legs cackling with a "Muhahahaaa!" while violently and passionatly dangling the keys with evil triumphant mirth...
I’m not sure if it was Digger or if Sievert decided to gain courage to keep at it, but for story-telling sake I’ll just make the executive decision by saying it was Digger (give him a little stage time) who said, “Just to go to bed, Dude…just go to bed!”
“No!” cries Raging Riser. “I can’t go to bed because there’s F-ing people in my tent!” He then proceeds onto, “When I find out who put my F-ing bag outside my F-ing tent I’m going to cut off their F-ing head with an F-ing machete!”
My friend said, “He kept to the machete theme all night. He never cut loose from it.” (No pun intended).
This all eventually dwindled and ended. No one knows if Riser ever made it into his own tent or not, or if there were people inside of it at all. Sunrise eventually dawned. The birds came out ( I think…). My friend woke up to the sound of civil, sober voices having a descent, normal conversation about sports. She listened for a time before coming to the conclusion that, “maybe they’re not the jerks we thought they were now that they’re sober…”. She came out of the tent with great hopes to find that the civil, sober voices talking about sports were not the baboons at all, but our two other friends that came with us.
“My hopes for their [baboons] lives were diminished,” she said.
And then she ended the story with a slow joking nod and said:
“So. I guess the real question is – Who did put Riser’s bag outside of his tent?”
I woke up to the boom-booming of the bass around 9am. Honestly, I was grateful that I had been able to sleep in until 9am. I was okay with the boom-booming, but was wondering what would happen now when we gathered at our picnic table that was (thanks a lot to the ridiculous before mentioned campsite set up) directly next to the baboons’ picnic table. Would they have breakfast there? Their breakfast turned out to be more vodka. This wouldn’t have been a big deal if they hadn’t then packed up all of their stuff and drove off after having that breakfast.
The night was definitely a blessing in disguise, Fate throwing me a bone. I remember telling my friend through the whole trip, “I can’t wait to write about this…”. However, I’m now going to have to do a very ugly deed before wrapping this up entirely with a more deep studded, glimpse-into-my-personal-life ending. I am now going to share my nitty-gritty complaints of the Apple River Hideaway, and it’s going to feel good. And from there, I’m going to post my complaints on every forum and travel review site I can get my teeny little hands on, and I’m going to sabotage this business wickedly with my finger tips, keyboard, and my faith in the power of the written word.
Why? You ask. It wasn’t that bad… I mean, come on. So what? Bad service. People don’t go there for the service. They go there to party. I completely understand this. However… the safety of myself as well as my company was compromised and I’m not okay about it.
Let’s begin with the bad service (just to give extra support to my case):
1) We were asked if we wanted a campsite around people or away from people, and when asked politely to be away from people, we were put next to the volleyball court smack dab in the middle of Main Street, Sin City.
II) When politely denying the need to spend an extra $5 on a cooler tube, we were told quite rudely that we were boring people. This is not satisfactory, and I’m not afraid to say it.
C) After clearly explaining a disturbance to a group of four Staff who were drinking on the job, they blew us off and never came to deal with the situation. They had disappeared entirely. After two phone calls later, one of which was rewarded with nothing but blatant insolence, they still did not come to rectify a situation that could have become far worse had any of us chosen to take any sort of matter into our own hands. Apple River Hideaway is lucky to have had this happen to five people who were sober enough to try to do the right thing.
This is my problem:
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what I say about it, the argument will forever be, “Hey, if you knew it was Gomorrah, you shouldn’t have walked through the city gates.” There is truth to this. There is. But allow me to remind everyone that this was not a private party we walked into. This was not someone’s house we crashed. This was not a concert filled with security guards turning the other way at the light-up of a joint. This was a public place, a business that here in America should be following the rules that all other businesses have to follow to keep people safe. Your staff should not be drinking on the job, especially when you know that 99% of your customers are partying like it’s a free-for-all. Here’s an interesting story I’m going to use to make my point that much more clear:
A friend of mine went to a concert/festival, a similar (identical) environment, and was almost forced off the premises because she tried to climb a fence (rather intoxicated) and fell off of it (yes, this is funny). She wasn’t hurting anyone, she wasn’t harassing anyone or causing a disturbance, but a security guard (who was not drinking on the job) had told her that if she didn’t go back to her tent she would be made to leave. So explain to me: is it really too much to ask that if you’re going to foster an environment of hard core partying, you should at least have a semi tight clasp on the security? I’m not asking for much. Really. I’m not. I’d just like to know that if I’m going to pay money for a service, to enjoy a night of camping and a day of tubing down a river, that, can I just say twice: THAT I PAID FOR, to be able to count on the employees running the joint to come to my rescue when some goat-headed, under-aged drinking, pit-brained imbeciles are ruining my paid-for experience with disturbance and harassment. The fact that we were not treated as paying customers enrages me. Should I throw out the "D" word? Discrimination? That should get someone's attention, right? Maybe I’m being a little over the top. Maybe I should just let it go. But I can’t. And here’s the ultimate reason why:
What if I was in a more dangerous situation? What about that random guy that tapped on my window? I could’ve been some naïve, ignorant, under-aged woman that thought he was being nice and took him up on his offer only to be hauled off and raped. What if I was being sexually harassed by the baboons? Technically, with the name-calling and the things they were saying after F’s husband and I headed off to talk to the moronic drinking staff, we had been sexually harassed. If I wanted to go an extra leg with this, I can safely say it would’ve been permissible in the court of law. Especially, let’s not forget, the obviousness of the baboons being under-aged. We should have called the cops… We truly should have. Then it would’ve been on record that the staff was drinking, and that the Apple River Hideaway would’ve been responsible for having under-aged drinkers on their property who were causing a disturbance and were never dealt with by the staff, who, let me mention it again: were DRINKING ALCOHOL ON THE JOB. It also would’ve been on record that paying customers made an attempt to rectify this disturbance and nobody did anything to help us because they were, again, DRINKING ON THE JOB. It would’ve been a more satisfying means of justice. I’m all about the justice (in case you hadn’t picked up on that….). And apparently I like to repeat things too (sober no less), to you know, make a point of course...
So, this is the best I can do for justice: I’ve copied and pasted a few excerpts from the Apple River Valley Hideaway website to show you that I’m not so wrong in having the expectations I demand.
(If you go to the website, click on the CAMPING tab, and page down a long way before getting to the rules)
• Quiet time is 10 p.m. Please turn off your music and keep noise to a minimum at this time.
• WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO MODIFY THE RULES
AT ANY TIME WITHOUT NOTICE!
WE DO NOT RECOMMEND BRINGING CHILDERN ON WEEKENDS, BUT THEY ARE WELCOME WEEKDAYS.
Kegs, beer bongs, glass containers containing alcohol and fireworks are not allowed; they will be confiscated.
No speakers outside of cars, PA systems or DJs are allowed - you will be asked to leave.
So. Turns out I was wrong about quiet time being 11pm. It’s actually earlier. And they ask people to turn off their music… And if you’re not allowed to bring speakers and PA systems and DJ’s, and will be asked to leave, is it really okay to be blasting club music at 2:30 in the morning from your vehicle? They’ve reserved the right to modify the rules at any time… Does this mean that if any of these rules are broken and their moronic, drinking-on-the-job staffers aren’t responsible for anything that happens on the property because, Hey. We get to change the rules to cover our asses. HOW VERY EFFING CONVENIENT.
Okay. Wrap this up, Miss Dawn… Wrap it up.
When the calm of Sunday came as the cars packed up and drove away, we were left at our picnic table with a much needed solitude. My friend’s husband said, “I really don’t want to go tubing again…” I was so unbelievably relieved! I promptly said, “Me neither.” And neither did anyone else. It was time for us to pack ourselves up and go home.
As I was rolling up my little pup tent that I never got to sleep in, the folks next to us were playing early 1900’s bluegrass on a portable stereo, or as us Generation Xers like to call a “boom box”. I sighed looking over at their parked, refurbished Model T and thought, “Now this, is nice.” Call me “old fashioned”. Call me “old”. Call me “grandma” for all I care, but in this moment I was thinking, “This, is nice.” And I smiled.
As I was watching my friends pack up their own stuff, I was psycho-analyzing myself and my reaction to the baboon in the SUV. I was psycho-analyzing myself about everything, really, like my Anger Management that I felt I clearly needed, but I was most concerned with the rage I felt toward Blue Bandana. It felt, personal. I really had it in for him specifically. And then? I remembered… I remembered things that I have tried to shove into the Black Cave of my memory. I knew there was something very familiar about the whole scene, about waking up in the middle of the night to booming music and having to deal with someone who was so drunk it made you want to hurt them for it…
It is a chief reason I had to move back to Minnesota in the first place, three years ago. I was stuck in a bad situation, living with a loved one who was a raging alcoholic. On top of this misery, someone I loved had died of brain cancer, I was working three jobs I hated, was poorer than I’ve ever been in my adult life, and was fed up with trying to move forward in any direction at all. But the person I lived with was my greatest cause of depression that year, and didn't fully realize how much until 25 pounds of weight gain later... Not to mention the fact that I abhored my life.
Those eyes I saw in Blue Bandana were the same eyes I’d seen a thousand times before. 'Waking up every single night to the sound of a stereo system shaking the house to pieces because he-who-shall-not-be-named would pass out in front of his television, so drunk that not even the blaring of his own stereo system directly into his face would wake him up. Every night. For months and months and months. Fights ensued over the matter. Things were thrown. Things were shouted. Nothing ever changed. This was only one of the torments from my roommate, one of the more stupid ones, and to spare him a little I won’t tell you everything (he is, in fact, getting his life together for the time being…), but this was definitely a deep rooted, unearthed grave of emotion that literally came back from the dead to torture me, to make me realize that in truth, I’m still angry. I still cannot tolerate it. 'Not even from stupid strangers. Those eyes… so selfish, blank, and possessed by some dark force in the form of nothing more than a shelf full of empty bottles. Addicts destroy families. Don’t be one, okay? That’s my advice for the day. Pass it on. Ga med den. Kwenda na ni. Andare con esso. Ale avek li. Aller avec elle. GO WITH IT. It means, go with it.
On the way home we crossed the river into the little town of Stillwater, Minnesota. I remember thinking on the way in (before our crazy adventure), “I’d love to check out this cute, little town!” Little did I know, my company in their car ahead of me was saying the same thing. So, on the way back I decided to grab a few snapshots of Stillwater saying to myself, “This would’ve been nice for my blog, too… We should’ve just stopped here instead.” But then I gave that idea a second thought and said, “Nah. Let’s be honest. I have a helluva story to tell when I get back home.”
The End
It seemed to be that by 4am the baboons finally passed out. It was quiet for a total of thirty minutes before a staggering, lose headed baboon suddenly made his presence known to the cold, early, dark morning air. His voice rang out with a, “Who the F is in my mother F-ing tent!” (Now here I can say that I will be censoring the language, but I’m sure you’ll get the picture...)
My friend attested to the fact that she could hear his voice right next to our campsite and could safely assume it was most definitely one of our primate neighbors. Through listening only, these were some facts that were picked up from the Lose-Headed baboon and his friends that were trying to get him to shut up and go to bed:
They had apparently been bar hoping, had been drinking and driving for quite some time before realizing that there was a shuttle service to the campsite. The Lose-Headed baboon’s name was being said as, “Riser”. One of his friend’s was “Sievert” and the other, “Digger”. I am not making this up. Riser, Sievert and Digger. Obviously, last names (though "Digger" is questionable...). But come on… Riser? Digger? It’s just too perfect.
Riser continued to obsess about the fact that his bag was sitting outside of his tent. To be fair, it had stormed, so it was most likely waterlogged to the hilt, and even being sober that would tick anyone off. But the truth of the matter was this: no one heard him open the tent and even look inside of it, so there was no real proof that anyone was in there, no one to have taken his bag out of the tent and put it in the rain. His rant went on like this:
“Is this my F-ing bag?" (He's not even sure it's his?) "Who put my F-ing bag outside my tent! Get out of my F-ing tent!” He said these phrases over and over and over and over again, at the top of his lungs mind you, in a I’m-so-drunk-I-can’t-think-past-the-phrases-I’ve-already-said-so-I-keep-saying-them-like-a-broken-record sort of way. Those of you who’ve partied with some heavy drinkers (or have alcoholics in your family), you know exactly what I’m talking about. There is something about alcoholic brain damage that sets your brain on “repeat”, and listening to someone suffering through this tragic phase of wastedness is, well, kind of annoying. Even when I’ve been drinking myself these sort of drunks annoy me. I’m glad I wasn’t there for it, truth be told, because I’ve had my fair share of experiences with the drunk stuck on “repeat”, thank you very much.
And then, the ultimate moment of climactic hilarity. My friend attests to this being “the quote of the night”:
“On a scale of one to ten, I am so F-ing angry I’m going to start cutting off people’s head with an F-ing machete!”
My friend says to her husband, “That must be a fifteen.” And her quote makes the joke complete.
Sievert was in another tent laughing at his friend and suggesting every once and awhile, “Dude, you probably just didn’t put your bag in your tent.” This outraged Riser and gave need to put his friend in his place with: “Sievert? You are so F-ing stupid that you left your F-ing bag in your F-ing Acura in F-ing Bloomington!”
Sievert shut up for awhile.
Raging Riser finally decided that he was going to go to jail.
“Someone take me to jail! Because I’m gonna start cutting off people’s heads with a machete! I’m going to jail! I’m going to kill people!”
(As funny as all of this was, let’s face it, this would’ve been the opportune time to call the cops…)
Riser suddenly realizes that Sievert’s keys are in his pocket. Victory! He very triumphantly exclaims, “So! When I go to jail you’re [Sievert] going to be so F-ing screwed because I have your F-ing keys!” I imagine a bulbous headed villian with short little legs cackling with a "Muhahahaaa!" while violently and passionatly dangling the keys with evil triumphant mirth...
I’m not sure if it was Digger or if Sievert decided to gain courage to keep at it, but for story-telling sake I’ll just make the executive decision by saying it was Digger (give him a little stage time) who said, “Just to go to bed, Dude…just go to bed!”
“No!” cries Raging Riser. “I can’t go to bed because there’s F-ing people in my tent!” He then proceeds onto, “When I find out who put my F-ing bag outside my F-ing tent I’m going to cut off their F-ing head with an F-ing machete!”
My friend said, “He kept to the machete theme all night. He never cut loose from it.” (No pun intended).
This all eventually dwindled and ended. No one knows if Riser ever made it into his own tent or not, or if there were people inside of it at all. Sunrise eventually dawned. The birds came out ( I think…). My friend woke up to the sound of civil, sober voices having a descent, normal conversation about sports. She listened for a time before coming to the conclusion that, “maybe they’re not the jerks we thought they were now that they’re sober…”. She came out of the tent with great hopes to find that the civil, sober voices talking about sports were not the baboons at all, but our two other friends that came with us.
“My hopes for their [baboons] lives were diminished,” she said.
And then she ended the story with a slow joking nod and said:
“So. I guess the real question is – Who did put Riser’s bag outside of his tent?”
I woke up to the boom-booming of the bass around 9am. Honestly, I was grateful that I had been able to sleep in until 9am. I was okay with the boom-booming, but was wondering what would happen now when we gathered at our picnic table that was (thanks a lot to the ridiculous before mentioned campsite set up) directly next to the baboons’ picnic table. Would they have breakfast there? Their breakfast turned out to be more vodka. This wouldn’t have been a big deal if they hadn’t then packed up all of their stuff and drove off after having that breakfast.
The night was definitely a blessing in disguise, Fate throwing me a bone. I remember telling my friend through the whole trip, “I can’t wait to write about this…”. However, I’m now going to have to do a very ugly deed before wrapping this up entirely with a more deep studded, glimpse-into-my-personal-life ending. I am now going to share my nitty-gritty complaints of the Apple River Hideaway, and it’s going to feel good. And from there, I’m going to post my complaints on every forum and travel review site I can get my teeny little hands on, and I’m going to sabotage this business wickedly with my finger tips, keyboard, and my faith in the power of the written word.
Why? You ask. It wasn’t that bad… I mean, come on. So what? Bad service. People don’t go there for the service. They go there to party. I completely understand this. However… the safety of myself as well as my company was compromised and I’m not okay about it.
Let’s begin with the bad service (just to give extra support to my case):
1) We were asked if we wanted a campsite around people or away from people, and when asked politely to be away from people, we were put next to the volleyball court smack dab in the middle of Main Street, Sin City.
II) When politely denying the need to spend an extra $5 on a cooler tube, we were told quite rudely that we were boring people. This is not satisfactory, and I’m not afraid to say it.
C) After clearly explaining a disturbance to a group of four Staff who were drinking on the job, they blew us off and never came to deal with the situation. They had disappeared entirely. After two phone calls later, one of which was rewarded with nothing but blatant insolence, they still did not come to rectify a situation that could have become far worse had any of us chosen to take any sort of matter into our own hands. Apple River Hideaway is lucky to have had this happen to five people who were sober enough to try to do the right thing.
This is my problem:
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what I say about it, the argument will forever be, “Hey, if you knew it was Gomorrah, you shouldn’t have walked through the city gates.” There is truth to this. There is. But allow me to remind everyone that this was not a private party we walked into. This was not someone’s house we crashed. This was not a concert filled with security guards turning the other way at the light-up of a joint. This was a public place, a business that here in America should be following the rules that all other businesses have to follow to keep people safe. Your staff should not be drinking on the job, especially when you know that 99% of your customers are partying like it’s a free-for-all. Here’s an interesting story I’m going to use to make my point that much more clear:
A friend of mine went to a concert/festival, a similar (identical) environment, and was almost forced off the premises because she tried to climb a fence (rather intoxicated) and fell off of it (yes, this is funny). She wasn’t hurting anyone, she wasn’t harassing anyone or causing a disturbance, but a security guard (who was not drinking on the job) had told her that if she didn’t go back to her tent she would be made to leave. So explain to me: is it really too much to ask that if you’re going to foster an environment of hard core partying, you should at least have a semi tight clasp on the security? I’m not asking for much. Really. I’m not. I’d just like to know that if I’m going to pay money for a service, to enjoy a night of camping and a day of tubing down a river, that, can I just say twice: THAT I PAID FOR, to be able to count on the employees running the joint to come to my rescue when some goat-headed, under-aged drinking, pit-brained imbeciles are ruining my paid-for experience with disturbance and harassment. The fact that we were not treated as paying customers enrages me. Should I throw out the "D" word? Discrimination? That should get someone's attention, right? Maybe I’m being a little over the top. Maybe I should just let it go. But I can’t. And here’s the ultimate reason why:
What if I was in a more dangerous situation? What about that random guy that tapped on my window? I could’ve been some naïve, ignorant, under-aged woman that thought he was being nice and took him up on his offer only to be hauled off and raped. What if I was being sexually harassed by the baboons? Technically, with the name-calling and the things they were saying after F’s husband and I headed off to talk to the moronic drinking staff, we had been sexually harassed. If I wanted to go an extra leg with this, I can safely say it would’ve been permissible in the court of law. Especially, let’s not forget, the obviousness of the baboons being under-aged. We should have called the cops… We truly should have. Then it would’ve been on record that the staff was drinking, and that the Apple River Hideaway would’ve been responsible for having under-aged drinkers on their property who were causing a disturbance and were never dealt with by the staff, who, let me mention it again: were DRINKING ALCOHOL ON THE JOB. It also would’ve been on record that paying customers made an attempt to rectify this disturbance and nobody did anything to help us because they were, again, DRINKING ON THE JOB. It would’ve been a more satisfying means of justice. I’m all about the justice (in case you hadn’t picked up on that….). And apparently I like to repeat things too (sober no less), to you know, make a point of course...
So, this is the best I can do for justice: I’ve copied and pasted a few excerpts from the Apple River Valley Hideaway website to show you that I’m not so wrong in having the expectations I demand.
(If you go to the website, click on the CAMPING tab, and page down a long way before getting to the rules)
• Quiet time is 10 p.m. Please turn off your music and keep noise to a minimum at this time.
• WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO MODIFY THE RULES
AT ANY TIME WITHOUT NOTICE!
WE DO NOT RECOMMEND BRINGING CHILDERN ON WEEKENDS, BUT THEY ARE WELCOME WEEKDAYS.
Kegs, beer bongs, glass containers containing alcohol and fireworks are not allowed; they will be confiscated.
No speakers outside of cars, PA systems or DJs are allowed - you will be asked to leave.
So. Turns out I was wrong about quiet time being 11pm. It’s actually earlier. And they ask people to turn off their music… And if you’re not allowed to bring speakers and PA systems and DJ’s, and will be asked to leave, is it really okay to be blasting club music at 2:30 in the morning from your vehicle? They’ve reserved the right to modify the rules at any time… Does this mean that if any of these rules are broken and their moronic, drinking-on-the-job staffers aren’t responsible for anything that happens on the property because, Hey. We get to change the rules to cover our asses. HOW VERY EFFING CONVENIENT.
Okay. Wrap this up, Miss Dawn… Wrap it up.
When the calm of Sunday came as the cars packed up and drove away, we were left at our picnic table with a much needed solitude. My friend’s husband said, “I really don’t want to go tubing again…” I was so unbelievably relieved! I promptly said, “Me neither.” And neither did anyone else. It was time for us to pack ourselves up and go home.
As I was rolling up my little pup tent that I never got to sleep in, the folks next to us were playing early 1900’s bluegrass on a portable stereo, or as us Generation Xers like to call a “boom box”. I sighed looking over at their parked, refurbished Model T and thought, “Now this, is nice.” Call me “old fashioned”. Call me “old”. Call me “grandma” for all I care, but in this moment I was thinking, “This, is nice.” And I smiled.
As I was watching my friends pack up their own stuff, I was psycho-analyzing myself and my reaction to the baboon in the SUV. I was psycho-analyzing myself about everything, really, like my Anger Management that I felt I clearly needed, but I was most concerned with the rage I felt toward Blue Bandana. It felt, personal. I really had it in for him specifically. And then? I remembered… I remembered things that I have tried to shove into the Black Cave of my memory. I knew there was something very familiar about the whole scene, about waking up in the middle of the night to booming music and having to deal with someone who was so drunk it made you want to hurt them for it…
It is a chief reason I had to move back to Minnesota in the first place, three years ago. I was stuck in a bad situation, living with a loved one who was a raging alcoholic. On top of this misery, someone I loved had died of brain cancer, I was working three jobs I hated, was poorer than I’ve ever been in my adult life, and was fed up with trying to move forward in any direction at all. But the person I lived with was my greatest cause of depression that year, and didn't fully realize how much until 25 pounds of weight gain later... Not to mention the fact that I abhored my life.
Those eyes I saw in Blue Bandana were the same eyes I’d seen a thousand times before. 'Waking up every single night to the sound of a stereo system shaking the house to pieces because he-who-shall-not-be-named would pass out in front of his television, so drunk that not even the blaring of his own stereo system directly into his face would wake him up. Every night. For months and months and months. Fights ensued over the matter. Things were thrown. Things were shouted. Nothing ever changed. This was only one of the torments from my roommate, one of the more stupid ones, and to spare him a little I won’t tell you everything (he is, in fact, getting his life together for the time being…), but this was definitely a deep rooted, unearthed grave of emotion that literally came back from the dead to torture me, to make me realize that in truth, I’m still angry. I still cannot tolerate it. 'Not even from stupid strangers. Those eyes… so selfish, blank, and possessed by some dark force in the form of nothing more than a shelf full of empty bottles. Addicts destroy families. Don’t be one, okay? That’s my advice for the day. Pass it on. Ga med den. Kwenda na ni. Andare con esso. Ale avek li. Aller avec elle. GO WITH IT. It means, go with it.
On the way home we crossed the river into the little town of Stillwater, Minnesota. I remember thinking on the way in (before our crazy adventure), “I’d love to check out this cute, little town!” Little did I know, my company in their car ahead of me was saying the same thing. So, on the way back I decided to grab a few snapshots of Stillwater saying to myself, “This would’ve been nice for my blog, too… We should’ve just stopped here instead.” But then I gave that idea a second thought and said, “Nah. Let’s be honest. I have a helluva story to tell when I get back home.”
The End
Monday, September 6, 2010
PART FOUR of "Gomorrah", Wisconsin - Apple River Hideaway
Now. This is the part of the tale that’s a little bit fuzzy to me. I remember everything, but I don’t remember the order of events very clearly. I think that had to do with both my medication and the amount of adrenaline pumping through my veins. This is what I do remember:
I remember feeling relieved that we had told the Apple River Hideaway staff, but wasn’t naïve enough to expect much from them. I remember coming back from the bathroom… And here is where I don’t remember the order of events very clearly. Maybe I will as I write them out…
My friend was out of the tent. She reported that she had dialed 411 to be connected to the Apple River Hideaway directly. Now, before I tell you how the conversation went I need to tell you about what happened after me and F’s husband went to the bathroom. My friend didn’t know that we had walked off, and was still in the tent listening. She heard the baboons calling her husband all sorts of names, such as “faggot” et cetera. She was in a right rage about it, justifiably, and came out of the tent to find that we weren’t there for the harassment. This was the moment she chose to make the phone call.
“Yeah, hi. Can you do something about these a-holes next to our campsite? They won’t turn their fricken music down and-”
Note: I’m not censoring her swear words. These were her words, exactly. But she wasn’t able to get to the “faggot” part because the woman on the other end cut her off and said in a very holier than thou, snotty attitude, “Do you think you can talk to me without using all the swear words?”
This is irony in it’s most fittest form. My God-fearing friend who even in her utmost rage is doing everything she can to avoid using profanity to the owner of a campsite who invites just about all the seven deadly sins to manifest themselves upon her river’s shore. This phone call proved futile.
F’s husband then made a phone call… And here is where I don’t remember the order of things… I’m not sure who made the phone calls first… It’s not that important, but I like to keep to the facts best I can. I think he made his call second to hers… Regardless, this one was just as futile. He was connected (I think….) to one of the four staff guys that we had talked to up by the bathrooms. This is what the Drunk Staff Moron said:
“Oh, that volley ball court? I thought you meant the other one…”
To paint you a picture, Reader? The other volley ball court was so far down the shoreline that you couldn’t even see it in daylight. Not to mention the fact that it was in the complete opposite direction of our campsite, of the place we had emerged from in full view under the lights of the registration area. Also, let’s not forget the important fact that we had pointed directly to the area to which we came from. Oh, and let’s not forget the most important fact: you could HEAR the damn, cliché club music pounding through the air only a few strides away. Really? Really. ‘Paying homage to a little Arrested Development: COME ON!
After the futile phone calls and deciding to take advantage of the currently quiet air, we tried to go back to sleep. The minute I found myself in my sleeping bag again, the music was cranked back up. I can’t remember why it was down in the first place (maybe they were just switching CD’s), but I was beyond my head at this point. At first, I had intentions of doing something completely rash. I was going to do something violent to their baby-makers and it wasn’t going to be pretty. Little did they know that they had just messed with a little New York Sicilian, and I was going to make them regret it with horrible consequences. I was going to do it. I was. I had it all planned out. It was definitely pre-meditated. I don’t care what people say: you can still pre-meditate your actions when you’re temporarily insane. I? Had it all planned out.
But I thought about what might happen if I were do such a thing. So, maybe I wasn’t as temporarily insane as I believed… I thought, “I would be getting my friends into trouble too if I did this, and none of us know how many there are in their whole group anyway… Cops will get called… It would get ugly…”. But the music was making me go mad. I had to escape it. So I started to throw my things together, to pull on my socks, grumbling to myself, “I wish I had a crowbar…. Or even better, a magic wand… Then I could leviosa their asses right into the river…”. I practically ripped my tent as I whipped my zipper up and over. My friend heard the “zrrrrrip!” of my tent and very affectionately demanded I get back into it. I told her I wasn’t going to do anything, I was just going to go sleep in my car. Except, I think I may have shouted it at her… I think I may have said it loud and angry… I didn’t mean to. I was pissed off at the baboons. Definitely not her. But that’s what I said, and that’s what I did.
I threw my stuff into my car, my blanket that was beneath my sleeping bag, my sweatshirt pillow, my sack-purse that held all my stomach, anxiety, and poison ivy medication, and I slammed my door shut. I tried to sleep in the driver’s seat for like two seconds before realizing that position was just stupid. So I crawled over the seat into the back. I was cold. It was damp. I threw my blanket off of me, dug into my purse to find my keys (which was a challenge with all the pill bottles and tubes of ointment), turned on my car and blasted the heat. I could still hear the music, but it was far less irritating. However, when I put my head down onto my sweatshirt pillow I could feel the beat-beating of the bass. This, does not do me well. My senses are so damn sensitive. Even when I’m not trying to sleep, too much bass has a tendency to increase my anxiety and make me very uncomfortable.
I am NOT a freak… how dare you!
It’s not that abnormal for bass beats to make a person anxious. In fact, it’s rather common for people who have anxiety. I learned this while watching an educational science show on cable one time. I remember jumping to the edge of my seat and saying to the television, “No way! I’m not the only one!” Because, let’s face it, before I knew that others get anxiety from bass, I, too, thought I was a freak.
So, there I was, desperately trying to think of something else, anything else, to distract me from the bass. But when you’re trying to think, you’re not falling asleep.
I heard a tap-tapping on my window. I sat up, slightly alarmed and slightly out of it. I saw a man outside my window. I stared. It took me a minute to be one hundred per cent sure that I didn’t know him. I leaned into my driver’s side seat. I let the window come down just a crack enough to hear what he wanted to say, and just enough for me to say anything to him should I have to.
“Hey, do you not have a place to stay tonight? You need somewhere to sleep other than your car?”
Oh. It’s this guy. The guy that thinks he’s suave and clever but is completely transparent. My eyelids dropped half-way to express, “You made me sit up, for this?” I said, “Nope. I’m fine.” And pointedly closed the window. What did he think I was going to do? Bat my eye lashes, hop out of the car, and go to bed with him? On the other hand… With all the little Chipmunks in the park, I couldn’t blame him for expecting it.
The music had eventually gone away. Did the Hideaway Staff finally come to our rescue? I didn’t know. My car had eventually heated up, and it heated up enough to relax me completely. I finally fell asleep. But little did I know, I was missing out on some things, things that would be laughed about later, but for the time being were completely obnoxious…
I remember feeling relieved that we had told the Apple River Hideaway staff, but wasn’t naïve enough to expect much from them. I remember coming back from the bathroom… And here is where I don’t remember the order of events very clearly. Maybe I will as I write them out…
My friend was out of the tent. She reported that she had dialed 411 to be connected to the Apple River Hideaway directly. Now, before I tell you how the conversation went I need to tell you about what happened after me and F’s husband went to the bathroom. My friend didn’t know that we had walked off, and was still in the tent listening. She heard the baboons calling her husband all sorts of names, such as “faggot” et cetera. She was in a right rage about it, justifiably, and came out of the tent to find that we weren’t there for the harassment. This was the moment she chose to make the phone call.
“Yeah, hi. Can you do something about these a-holes next to our campsite? They won’t turn their fricken music down and-”
Note: I’m not censoring her swear words. These were her words, exactly. But she wasn’t able to get to the “faggot” part because the woman on the other end cut her off and said in a very holier than thou, snotty attitude, “Do you think you can talk to me without using all the swear words?”
This is irony in it’s most fittest form. My God-fearing friend who even in her utmost rage is doing everything she can to avoid using profanity to the owner of a campsite who invites just about all the seven deadly sins to manifest themselves upon her river’s shore. This phone call proved futile.
F’s husband then made a phone call… And here is where I don’t remember the order of things… I’m not sure who made the phone calls first… It’s not that important, but I like to keep to the facts best I can. I think he made his call second to hers… Regardless, this one was just as futile. He was connected (I think….) to one of the four staff guys that we had talked to up by the bathrooms. This is what the Drunk Staff Moron said:
“Oh, that volley ball court? I thought you meant the other one…”
To paint you a picture, Reader? The other volley ball court was so far down the shoreline that you couldn’t even see it in daylight. Not to mention the fact that it was in the complete opposite direction of our campsite, of the place we had emerged from in full view under the lights of the registration area. Also, let’s not forget the important fact that we had pointed directly to the area to which we came from. Oh, and let’s not forget the most important fact: you could HEAR the damn, cliché club music pounding through the air only a few strides away. Really? Really. ‘Paying homage to a little Arrested Development: COME ON!
After the futile phone calls and deciding to take advantage of the currently quiet air, we tried to go back to sleep. The minute I found myself in my sleeping bag again, the music was cranked back up. I can’t remember why it was down in the first place (maybe they were just switching CD’s), but I was beyond my head at this point. At first, I had intentions of doing something completely rash. I was going to do something violent to their baby-makers and it wasn’t going to be pretty. Little did they know that they had just messed with a little New York Sicilian, and I was going to make them regret it with horrible consequences. I was going to do it. I was. I had it all planned out. It was definitely pre-meditated. I don’t care what people say: you can still pre-meditate your actions when you’re temporarily insane. I? Had it all planned out.
But I thought about what might happen if I were do such a thing. So, maybe I wasn’t as temporarily insane as I believed… I thought, “I would be getting my friends into trouble too if I did this, and none of us know how many there are in their whole group anyway… Cops will get called… It would get ugly…”. But the music was making me go mad. I had to escape it. So I started to throw my things together, to pull on my socks, grumbling to myself, “I wish I had a crowbar…. Or even better, a magic wand… Then I could leviosa their asses right into the river…”. I practically ripped my tent as I whipped my zipper up and over. My friend heard the “zrrrrrip!” of my tent and very affectionately demanded I get back into it. I told her I wasn’t going to do anything, I was just going to go sleep in my car. Except, I think I may have shouted it at her… I think I may have said it loud and angry… I didn’t mean to. I was pissed off at the baboons. Definitely not her. But that’s what I said, and that’s what I did.
I threw my stuff into my car, my blanket that was beneath my sleeping bag, my sweatshirt pillow, my sack-purse that held all my stomach, anxiety, and poison ivy medication, and I slammed my door shut. I tried to sleep in the driver’s seat for like two seconds before realizing that position was just stupid. So I crawled over the seat into the back. I was cold. It was damp. I threw my blanket off of me, dug into my purse to find my keys (which was a challenge with all the pill bottles and tubes of ointment), turned on my car and blasted the heat. I could still hear the music, but it was far less irritating. However, when I put my head down onto my sweatshirt pillow I could feel the beat-beating of the bass. This, does not do me well. My senses are so damn sensitive. Even when I’m not trying to sleep, too much bass has a tendency to increase my anxiety and make me very uncomfortable.
I am NOT a freak… how dare you!
It’s not that abnormal for bass beats to make a person anxious. In fact, it’s rather common for people who have anxiety. I learned this while watching an educational science show on cable one time. I remember jumping to the edge of my seat and saying to the television, “No way! I’m not the only one!” Because, let’s face it, before I knew that others get anxiety from bass, I, too, thought I was a freak.
So, there I was, desperately trying to think of something else, anything else, to distract me from the bass. But when you’re trying to think, you’re not falling asleep.
I heard a tap-tapping on my window. I sat up, slightly alarmed and slightly out of it. I saw a man outside my window. I stared. It took me a minute to be one hundred per cent sure that I didn’t know him. I leaned into my driver’s side seat. I let the window come down just a crack enough to hear what he wanted to say, and just enough for me to say anything to him should I have to.
“Hey, do you not have a place to stay tonight? You need somewhere to sleep other than your car?”
Oh. It’s this guy. The guy that thinks he’s suave and clever but is completely transparent. My eyelids dropped half-way to express, “You made me sit up, for this?” I said, “Nope. I’m fine.” And pointedly closed the window. What did he think I was going to do? Bat my eye lashes, hop out of the car, and go to bed with him? On the other hand… With all the little Chipmunks in the park, I couldn’t blame him for expecting it.
The music had eventually gone away. Did the Hideaway Staff finally come to our rescue? I didn’t know. My car had eventually heated up, and it heated up enough to relax me completely. I finally fell asleep. But little did I know, I was missing out on some things, things that would be laughed about later, but for the time being were completely obnoxious…
Thursday, September 2, 2010
PART THREE: "Gomorrah", Wisconsin - Apple River Hideaway
*I should've been putting Gomorrah in quotes, like this: "Gomorrah". For the Biblically illiterate, this was a Sin City that God destroyed in the Old Testament. There's no such thing as Gomorrah, Wisconsin. Happy reading!
Let’s see… where did I leave off…. Oh yes. The baboons next door were putting on a show. What I’m about to describe is both disturbing and side-splitting hilarious. It was a toss up between: Do I laugh at their primitiveness? Or should I be repulsed by it? We laughed, but with eyes wide open in horror at the same time.
I didn’t actually take a head count, but I believe there were four of them. They were playing your everyday, club- mix clichés. They already lost originality points for that one… It was also rather obvious that none of them were old enough to drink. In fact, I would place a bet that at least two of them were only seventeen or eighteen. But then again, people that act like apes are hard to gauge in terms of where they’re at in their maturity. But judging solely on the way they were dressed and the amount of hair they still had on their heads and the baby face pretty boys that they were, I think it’s safe to guess that they were under-aged. This fact (or fiction) point is only being made because this is relevant to a later part of the story. I’ve drank with under-aged people before (I won’t name names…). I’m not here to judge on the matter. But this was the leverage we should’ve used when we thought about calling the cops…
Anyway. I promised a graphic plus hilarious description of what they were doing while we were playing Mad Gab. Their tunes were pounding loud through their clearly expensive sound system (which is a waste when you don’t play proper music on it, can I just say?). The doors of the SUV were wide open. They perched themselves, feet on the bottom of the doorframe and hands gripping the top. Already, they were in monkey position. You know, when a baboon is up in a tree and his long arms and hands are gripped to the branch above him and his feet are gripped to the branch he’s standing on, and he shakes both the branches and screeches for what most of us believe to be for no reason other than to say, “I AM MALE. I WANT MATE.” This is what happened. But even worse. They were shaking the vehicle in their positions, up and down went the SUV. They were hooting and hollering. And here it is: they were humping the air as they did this. Like, graphically having imaginary sex and being really, really excited about it. Their lips were pursed in “oot” positions as they looked at each other side to side, humped the air, and “oot ooted” like apes. At least, that’s what my eyes saw. In truth, they were just yelling, “Wooooo!” and then really going at it with the humping. It became, like, the thing to do. They were all very proud of themselves. It was the most ludicrous, barbaric thing I’ve ever seen. What was humorous about it was the fact they clearly thought they were cool by doing this. I mean it. They thought they were the clever hit of the party. Kudos, boys. Kudos. How so very original and witty you are. You were definitely a hit. But not quite in the way you wanted to be. To me, you were the clear evidence that just maybe, not necessarily all of us, but clearly some forms of humans truly did evolve from apes. Your ancestors would be proud. Especially when a woman would walk by that you were attracted to, and you would refer to her as a “Vagina”. “Check out that Vagina!” And many more offensive variations of this vulgar, sexist, repulsive-to-the-core act of babooness. You want to get back on to the SUV again and have imaginary sex? Let me take a picture… If only I had. They had hopped off when I finally dug around for my camera. I would’ve posted it. I think it’s safe to say that their illiterate, un-evolved, passing as an evolved human just because they wear a stupid blue bandana around their head and shave their face, prime-time dysfunctional qualities that make good MTV reality entertainment, less-than-capable of being able to pick up a piece of reading material that doesn’t have boobs on the cover, raunchy, mindless, wasted breathing beings and shells without souls, their stupidity to not understand the word “asinine”, and their being the epitome of having a most ridiculous existence that nobody on the planet could possibly care about because they have nothing to offer to it other than being a delightfully fun description for a run-on-sentence addicted writer make it undeniably certain that they will never, ever in their lifetime read this or have any idea that it exists. So. In short, I think it would’ve been safe to post their pictures because there’s no way they would ever see them.
Now. That was a lot of hate compacted into just some stupid idiots humping the air listening to club music. My anger and vindictiveness derives from what happened later on that night.
Now, me and my company had a swell game of cards going on in the “master tent” that lasted until about midnight. It was good times, and it was really, honestly the best part of the evening. (It was NOT boring). Eleven o’ clock was when the Hideaway campsite requested “quiet time” begin. It didn’t settle down completely until about twelve thirty. No big deal. We expected that. I mean, come on. Party it up and have fun. That’s the way it is. In fact, I was a little impressed that the noise didn’t last longer. I had been worried that it would, that it wouldn't be quiet enough for me to sleep...
Here’s another embarrassing fun fact about me that I’m about to throw out to the public in the name of story telling: I’m pathetically a high maintenance sleeper. I don’t know when this happened to me, but it has happened. I used to be able to sleep on anything, anywhere, as long as I was warm enough. When I lived in Pittsburgh in my early twenties, I didn’t have a bed and slept on a make-shift pad of blankets on the floor for an entire year. I’ve fallen asleep on all sorts of lumpy, smelly, crooked, “what stain is that?” sort of couches in all sorts of environments, and I’ve slept under towels and on top of crusty, hard carpets of bachelor pads. I grew up falling asleep to the sound of bulldozers moving and beep-beeping from the lumber yard behind our house. I’ve lived in the city, I’ve endured the noises and the life of late night civilians. But a few years ago, insomnia became a growing problem. I’ve always had a bout of it now and again, but nothing as severe to what I’ve been dealing with in the last couple years. I now have a ridiculous ritual that I have to abide by to keep my body happy enough to sleep properly.
1) I have to stay out of my bedroom until about an hour before sleepy time. This tells my body that it’s now time to sleep.
2) I have to turn on my fan for the noise and the feeling of a breeze on my face (even in the winter under a giant pile of blankets).
3) I have to either watch an hour of TV, a movie, or read a book for an hour lying down until I get sleepy.
4) I have to turn on my “lullaby” music.
5) Then, here’s where it gets even more ridiculous: I have to lie on my back for awhile until that position is uncomfortable, and then I turn to my side to doze off. If I skip the lying on my back stage, I’m awake for hours. I’m not exaggerating. It might sound like I am. But I am not.
So.
Camping is completely out of my comfort zone. It never used to be, though, I can assure you. I grew up camping. I went camping a few times in my early twenties, and loved it just as much. I loved the smell of the tent. I loved listening to the crackling of the fire and the soft voices of the people who were still up. I loved curling up in my sleeping bag and feeling like a bear in a burrow. But now? It was going to be a challenge for me to fall asleep. However, at this moment in the still quiet air, my iPod at my side for soft music, I was feeling positive and hopeful. I had brought my own, cute little pup tent that I bought five years ago when I had recklessly planned on doing a back-packing trip that never happened. I had never slept in it and was so excited to. Sounds stupid, but I was really excited to sleep in it. I was hoping for that “bear in a burrow” feeling again that I used to be able to enjoy.
To aid my sleeping needs, I took two of my anti-anxiety pills. I usually only need a half to knock me out cold. Two puts me near into a coma. That’s what I wanted. So, I curled up in my state of the line expensive sleeping bag (that I had also bought for my back-packing trip that I never went on), had my nifty head lamplight (another smart purchase for the trip I never went on) strapped around my head, and began to jot down notes and random observations in my “Hating Minnesota” notebook. I didn’t write very much. The pills kicked in faster than anticipated. I also wasn’t quite in the mood to write. My tent was damp from the storm that had just passed through. I was impressed with its waterproof-ness, but my sleeping bag felt dewy, and I wasn’t quite comfortable. So I packed up the notebook that contains a jotted note in it that says, “Not a camper camper.” That’s all it says. Line two: “Not a camper camper”. I have absolutely no idea why I wrote this. Following this was a bunch of boring facts about prices and “registering took forever”. It wasn’t very detailed. I finally decided it was time to try to sleep. I had forgotten my pillow at home but said to myself, “You are the queen of make-shift and do-without luxury…or, at least you used to be…”. So, I folded up a spare sweatshirt, and it sufficed. Sort of. I couldn’t get warm. I was chilled from the dampness of the tent. My sleeping bag is supposed to be able to keep me alive in -20 degree weather. I was doubting that at this moment. I decided to watch the movie “Millions” on my iPod until I passed out. It sort of worked. It took about two hours of switching positions, wrapping myself up tighter here, tucking in this part there, and closing up this draft hole here before finally at 2:30am I was warm, comfortable, and was starting to drift off into dream. I was in that place where you’re technically still aware of your surroundings, but your thoughts are crossing over into dream… when It, happened. Out in the still, quiet air that had comforted me with hope in sleeping came the rupturing noise of booming club music, vibrating the earth with obnoxious bass, announcing to the world that the baboons had returned. My eyes flung open with alarm. Then, the rage pulsed. I was a dragon that had been wakened. I heard in the tent next to me my friend crying out, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” She was just as ticked off as I was.
It took me two seconds to decide what to do. I knew there was no way this music was going to end any time soon. I am not a person who hesitates to address a conflict. Not to mention the fact that I was in a right rage for having just found my sleep spot and was right on the verge of dozing off when this monstrosity decided to erupt at this most unfortunate cinematic moment. I sat up, adrenaline pumping. I whipped up that zipper on my teeny tiny door and crawled hands and knees out of my wee little pup tent, managed to slip on my flip flops and march over to that damn SUV. I walked right up to the window. The baboons were sitting in the two front seats. Blue Bandana guy was in the driver seat, the window to which I was now pounding on. He didn’t even look over. Granted, he was completely piss-drunk wasted. But dude. You seriously don’t see movement right next to your face? I pounded harder. Had I a crowbar in hand, it would not have been a pretty sight. Finally, he opened the door. I took it and swung it open. Blue Bandana didn’t even look at me. I had to scream at the top of my lungs to get them to hear me over the music. I said something to effect of, “Can you turn that down, please? People are trying to sleep. Show a little courtesy?” In a “Come on, Man!” sort of tone. Passenger Seat guy said, “Oh sure. No problem. Yeah, we’ll turn it down.” And because he was drunk I couldn’t tell if he was being genuine or if he was mocking me. He did turn it down, though. But I knew what was going to happen next. Apes are predictable. Scenarios such as these, are predictable. This is something that would go straight into a script. Or, in my case, straight into a blog.
Firstly, I should mention that my friend’s husband came out of their tent just as I was finished with my futile confrontation. He apologized for not getting out of their tent faster than me, and handling the situation. It was very chivalrous of him, and I was grateful. But I didn’t want him feeling like he had failed in that chivalry just because I beat him to the window. When I get angry, I move very quickly. ‘Surprising for a little tike my size, but adrenaline gives you super powers you never knew you had.
Now. What happened next as I was meeting my friend’s husband out in front of the tent? The music was turned back up, full blast. Of course it was. You knew this was coming, Reader. We all did. This time, my friend’s husband took the goat by the horns. He did the same as me. Pounded on the window. Nothing. This time, it took more effort. He had to open the door himself. Blue Bandana guy was ignoring us completely. The look on his face was nothing more to be described than soulless. I saw a spoiled rich frat brat who’s never had to fen for himself in his entire life. I saw a dumb little kid who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anybody in his life (even his own mother) other than himself. I saw a friendless, loveless, pathetic asshole who was so drunk that a puny little girl like myself could’ve beaten the crap out of him if I had wanted to take it to those measures. The look on that face… It was so dark. So mean. A bully throughout his whole life, no doubt. The kind of person that will never know that he’s on the bottom of the totem pole, not everyone else. Reader? I secretly hated him. I don’t know why my feelings were so vehement and full of such dark rage, but I hated him. I had not one cent of sympathy or compassion, or even pity! To spend on him. Rage was pumping those two pills right on out of my system. I wasn’t tired anymore.
Blue Bandana guy started to pull on the door, trying to slam it in my friend’s husband’s face, but he was too weak to do it. I think this was the moment I wanted to get violent. It was so rude. Even for someone who was as drunk as he was. It was so… RUDE. F’s husband finally let go of the door and it suddenly gave way, and it shut. It seemed to surprise Blue Bandana a little bit. He then attempted to lock the doors by starting with the back one. It took him a long time to do this, manually pushing down the locks. That, was a little bit funny. But I still hated him.
Now that I was up, I had to go to the bathroom. F’s husband offered to walk me there. Safety first! We saw a group of Apple River Hideaway staff in a group in front of the check-in area. We decided to tell them what was going on. Up close, we realized that they were drinking too. Swell. We told them our story. We pointed to the spot that we had just come from and said, “Over there by the volleyball court”. We pointed. Twice, if I’m remembering right. And, yo. They had to have seen where we came from… Right? How much of a moron do you have to be to not realize that that area over there to which I’m pointing to is where the disruptive idiots are. Am I right? I’m right.
It got worse, Reader. Everything got worse…
Let’s see… where did I leave off…. Oh yes. The baboons next door were putting on a show. What I’m about to describe is both disturbing and side-splitting hilarious. It was a toss up between: Do I laugh at their primitiveness? Or should I be repulsed by it? We laughed, but with eyes wide open in horror at the same time.
I didn’t actually take a head count, but I believe there were four of them. They were playing your everyday, club- mix clichés. They already lost originality points for that one… It was also rather obvious that none of them were old enough to drink. In fact, I would place a bet that at least two of them were only seventeen or eighteen. But then again, people that act like apes are hard to gauge in terms of where they’re at in their maturity. But judging solely on the way they were dressed and the amount of hair they still had on their heads and the baby face pretty boys that they were, I think it’s safe to guess that they were under-aged. This fact (or fiction) point is only being made because this is relevant to a later part of the story. I’ve drank with under-aged people before (I won’t name names…). I’m not here to judge on the matter. But this was the leverage we should’ve used when we thought about calling the cops…
Anyway. I promised a graphic plus hilarious description of what they were doing while we were playing Mad Gab. Their tunes were pounding loud through their clearly expensive sound system (which is a waste when you don’t play proper music on it, can I just say?). The doors of the SUV were wide open. They perched themselves, feet on the bottom of the doorframe and hands gripping the top. Already, they were in monkey position. You know, when a baboon is up in a tree and his long arms and hands are gripped to the branch above him and his feet are gripped to the branch he’s standing on, and he shakes both the branches and screeches for what most of us believe to be for no reason other than to say, “I AM MALE. I WANT MATE.” This is what happened. But even worse. They were shaking the vehicle in their positions, up and down went the SUV. They were hooting and hollering. And here it is: they were humping the air as they did this. Like, graphically having imaginary sex and being really, really excited about it. Their lips were pursed in “oot” positions as they looked at each other side to side, humped the air, and “oot ooted” like apes. At least, that’s what my eyes saw. In truth, they were just yelling, “Wooooo!” and then really going at it with the humping. It became, like, the thing to do. They were all very proud of themselves. It was the most ludicrous, barbaric thing I’ve ever seen. What was humorous about it was the fact they clearly thought they were cool by doing this. I mean it. They thought they were the clever hit of the party. Kudos, boys. Kudos. How so very original and witty you are. You were definitely a hit. But not quite in the way you wanted to be. To me, you were the clear evidence that just maybe, not necessarily all of us, but clearly some forms of humans truly did evolve from apes. Your ancestors would be proud. Especially when a woman would walk by that you were attracted to, and you would refer to her as a “Vagina”. “Check out that Vagina!” And many more offensive variations of this vulgar, sexist, repulsive-to-the-core act of babooness. You want to get back on to the SUV again and have imaginary sex? Let me take a picture… If only I had. They had hopped off when I finally dug around for my camera. I would’ve posted it. I think it’s safe to say that their illiterate, un-evolved, passing as an evolved human just because they wear a stupid blue bandana around their head and shave their face, prime-time dysfunctional qualities that make good MTV reality entertainment, less-than-capable of being able to pick up a piece of reading material that doesn’t have boobs on the cover, raunchy, mindless, wasted breathing beings and shells without souls, their stupidity to not understand the word “asinine”, and their being the epitome of having a most ridiculous existence that nobody on the planet could possibly care about because they have nothing to offer to it other than being a delightfully fun description for a run-on-sentence addicted writer make it undeniably certain that they will never, ever in their lifetime read this or have any idea that it exists. So. In short, I think it would’ve been safe to post their pictures because there’s no way they would ever see them.
Now. That was a lot of hate compacted into just some stupid idiots humping the air listening to club music. My anger and vindictiveness derives from what happened later on that night.
Now, me and my company had a swell game of cards going on in the “master tent” that lasted until about midnight. It was good times, and it was really, honestly the best part of the evening. (It was NOT boring). Eleven o’ clock was when the Hideaway campsite requested “quiet time” begin. It didn’t settle down completely until about twelve thirty. No big deal. We expected that. I mean, come on. Party it up and have fun. That’s the way it is. In fact, I was a little impressed that the noise didn’t last longer. I had been worried that it would, that it wouldn't be quiet enough for me to sleep...
Here’s another embarrassing fun fact about me that I’m about to throw out to the public in the name of story telling: I’m pathetically a high maintenance sleeper. I don’t know when this happened to me, but it has happened. I used to be able to sleep on anything, anywhere, as long as I was warm enough. When I lived in Pittsburgh in my early twenties, I didn’t have a bed and slept on a make-shift pad of blankets on the floor for an entire year. I’ve fallen asleep on all sorts of lumpy, smelly, crooked, “what stain is that?” sort of couches in all sorts of environments, and I’ve slept under towels and on top of crusty, hard carpets of bachelor pads. I grew up falling asleep to the sound of bulldozers moving and beep-beeping from the lumber yard behind our house. I’ve lived in the city, I’ve endured the noises and the life of late night civilians. But a few years ago, insomnia became a growing problem. I’ve always had a bout of it now and again, but nothing as severe to what I’ve been dealing with in the last couple years. I now have a ridiculous ritual that I have to abide by to keep my body happy enough to sleep properly.
1) I have to stay out of my bedroom until about an hour before sleepy time. This tells my body that it’s now time to sleep.
2) I have to turn on my fan for the noise and the feeling of a breeze on my face (even in the winter under a giant pile of blankets).
3) I have to either watch an hour of TV, a movie, or read a book for an hour lying down until I get sleepy.
4) I have to turn on my “lullaby” music.
5) Then, here’s where it gets even more ridiculous: I have to lie on my back for awhile until that position is uncomfortable, and then I turn to my side to doze off. If I skip the lying on my back stage, I’m awake for hours. I’m not exaggerating. It might sound like I am. But I am not.
So.
Camping is completely out of my comfort zone. It never used to be, though, I can assure you. I grew up camping. I went camping a few times in my early twenties, and loved it just as much. I loved the smell of the tent. I loved listening to the crackling of the fire and the soft voices of the people who were still up. I loved curling up in my sleeping bag and feeling like a bear in a burrow. But now? It was going to be a challenge for me to fall asleep. However, at this moment in the still quiet air, my iPod at my side for soft music, I was feeling positive and hopeful. I had brought my own, cute little pup tent that I bought five years ago when I had recklessly planned on doing a back-packing trip that never happened. I had never slept in it and was so excited to. Sounds stupid, but I was really excited to sleep in it. I was hoping for that “bear in a burrow” feeling again that I used to be able to enjoy.
To aid my sleeping needs, I took two of my anti-anxiety pills. I usually only need a half to knock me out cold. Two puts me near into a coma. That’s what I wanted. So, I curled up in my state of the line expensive sleeping bag (that I had also bought for my back-packing trip that I never went on), had my nifty head lamplight (another smart purchase for the trip I never went on) strapped around my head, and began to jot down notes and random observations in my “Hating Minnesota” notebook. I didn’t write very much. The pills kicked in faster than anticipated. I also wasn’t quite in the mood to write. My tent was damp from the storm that had just passed through. I was impressed with its waterproof-ness, but my sleeping bag felt dewy, and I wasn’t quite comfortable. So I packed up the notebook that contains a jotted note in it that says, “Not a camper camper.” That’s all it says. Line two: “Not a camper camper”. I have absolutely no idea why I wrote this. Following this was a bunch of boring facts about prices and “registering took forever”. It wasn’t very detailed. I finally decided it was time to try to sleep. I had forgotten my pillow at home but said to myself, “You are the queen of make-shift and do-without luxury…or, at least you used to be…”. So, I folded up a spare sweatshirt, and it sufficed. Sort of. I couldn’t get warm. I was chilled from the dampness of the tent. My sleeping bag is supposed to be able to keep me alive in -20 degree weather. I was doubting that at this moment. I decided to watch the movie “Millions” on my iPod until I passed out. It sort of worked. It took about two hours of switching positions, wrapping myself up tighter here, tucking in this part there, and closing up this draft hole here before finally at 2:30am I was warm, comfortable, and was starting to drift off into dream. I was in that place where you’re technically still aware of your surroundings, but your thoughts are crossing over into dream… when It, happened. Out in the still, quiet air that had comforted me with hope in sleeping came the rupturing noise of booming club music, vibrating the earth with obnoxious bass, announcing to the world that the baboons had returned. My eyes flung open with alarm. Then, the rage pulsed. I was a dragon that had been wakened. I heard in the tent next to me my friend crying out, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” She was just as ticked off as I was.
It took me two seconds to decide what to do. I knew there was no way this music was going to end any time soon. I am not a person who hesitates to address a conflict. Not to mention the fact that I was in a right rage for having just found my sleep spot and was right on the verge of dozing off when this monstrosity decided to erupt at this most unfortunate cinematic moment. I sat up, adrenaline pumping. I whipped up that zipper on my teeny tiny door and crawled hands and knees out of my wee little pup tent, managed to slip on my flip flops and march over to that damn SUV. I walked right up to the window. The baboons were sitting in the two front seats. Blue Bandana guy was in the driver seat, the window to which I was now pounding on. He didn’t even look over. Granted, he was completely piss-drunk wasted. But dude. You seriously don’t see movement right next to your face? I pounded harder. Had I a crowbar in hand, it would not have been a pretty sight. Finally, he opened the door. I took it and swung it open. Blue Bandana didn’t even look at me. I had to scream at the top of my lungs to get them to hear me over the music. I said something to effect of, “Can you turn that down, please? People are trying to sleep. Show a little courtesy?” In a “Come on, Man!” sort of tone. Passenger Seat guy said, “Oh sure. No problem. Yeah, we’ll turn it down.” And because he was drunk I couldn’t tell if he was being genuine or if he was mocking me. He did turn it down, though. But I knew what was going to happen next. Apes are predictable. Scenarios such as these, are predictable. This is something that would go straight into a script. Or, in my case, straight into a blog.
Firstly, I should mention that my friend’s husband came out of their tent just as I was finished with my futile confrontation. He apologized for not getting out of their tent faster than me, and handling the situation. It was very chivalrous of him, and I was grateful. But I didn’t want him feeling like he had failed in that chivalry just because I beat him to the window. When I get angry, I move very quickly. ‘Surprising for a little tike my size, but adrenaline gives you super powers you never knew you had.
Now. What happened next as I was meeting my friend’s husband out in front of the tent? The music was turned back up, full blast. Of course it was. You knew this was coming, Reader. We all did. This time, my friend’s husband took the goat by the horns. He did the same as me. Pounded on the window. Nothing. This time, it took more effort. He had to open the door himself. Blue Bandana guy was ignoring us completely. The look on his face was nothing more to be described than soulless. I saw a spoiled rich frat brat who’s never had to fen for himself in his entire life. I saw a dumb little kid who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anybody in his life (even his own mother) other than himself. I saw a friendless, loveless, pathetic asshole who was so drunk that a puny little girl like myself could’ve beaten the crap out of him if I had wanted to take it to those measures. The look on that face… It was so dark. So mean. A bully throughout his whole life, no doubt. The kind of person that will never know that he’s on the bottom of the totem pole, not everyone else. Reader? I secretly hated him. I don’t know why my feelings were so vehement and full of such dark rage, but I hated him. I had not one cent of sympathy or compassion, or even pity! To spend on him. Rage was pumping those two pills right on out of my system. I wasn’t tired anymore.
Blue Bandana guy started to pull on the door, trying to slam it in my friend’s husband’s face, but he was too weak to do it. I think this was the moment I wanted to get violent. It was so rude. Even for someone who was as drunk as he was. It was so… RUDE. F’s husband finally let go of the door and it suddenly gave way, and it shut. It seemed to surprise Blue Bandana a little bit. He then attempted to lock the doors by starting with the back one. It took him a long time to do this, manually pushing down the locks. That, was a little bit funny. But I still hated him.
Now that I was up, I had to go to the bathroom. F’s husband offered to walk me there. Safety first! We saw a group of Apple River Hideaway staff in a group in front of the check-in area. We decided to tell them what was going on. Up close, we realized that they were drinking too. Swell. We told them our story. We pointed to the spot that we had just come from and said, “Over there by the volleyball court”. We pointed. Twice, if I’m remembering right. And, yo. They had to have seen where we came from… Right? How much of a moron do you have to be to not realize that that area over there to which I’m pointing to is where the disruptive idiots are. Am I right? I’m right.
It got worse, Reader. Everything got worse…
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
PART TWO of: Gomorrah, Wisconsin - The Apple River Hideaway
Now, here was the part of the adventure that I was most nervous about: getting into the river. I have this pathological fear of dark, murky water. I don’t swim in lakes, ponds, or rivers. The ocean I can handle for some bizarre reason (despite the threat of sharks and undertows…go figure!), but inland water? I can’t even swim in a pool that hasn’t been cleaned in a few days. Algae wigs me out. Seaweed is worse. Slimy rocks, no thank you. I have actually had nightmares about pools with seaweed and water bugs and me being so close to the edge of falling into them that I wake up in a cold sweat. I am not exaggerating. But I’m also a stubborn person that believes in the power of mind over matter, and despite the anxiety I tell myself to just suck it up and “don’t be such a wimp about it”. So, this was the pep talk I was giving myself as I stepped into that awful, murky water as squishy, slimy, muddy grass on the riverbank squeezed unpleasantly between my toes. I got into my tube as quick as I could manage and the cold river water grabbed my senses by the fists and squeezed me around my submerged rear end. This was not a good feeling. And for those of you who don’t know, I’m very short. The tube hole was rather large. If I had allowed my body to completely relax in the tube, I would’ve folded up like a lawn chair and gone right through the hole.
So, here we were, all five tubes tied together and floating down the river. The river was crowded. People of all shapes, colors, sizes and formats were in great masses, tied together in these huge floating blobs. From the view of a bird it would’ve looked much like the floaty masses on the top of spoiled milk (I tried to think of a more poetic metaphor, but this was all that came to mind...).
Now, when you’re floating in a tube, especially when there’s five tied together, there’s very little way to steer and propel. Tree branches in the way? Too bad. People in front of you? Be prepared to get a little personal with them. Now, my friend (with a baby growing in her belly, mind you) was our steering savior. She was the bold hero who would flip over on her stomach (which gave me the heeby-jeebies every time she did it…River water! Scary!) and paddle her arms against the current to steer us out of harms way. I wanted to help her, but just having my rear end in the river water was too much for me. I didn’t think I could flip myself over, or submerge any other part of my body in the river to manage a paddling frenzy that would be of any use. So, here I am now giving praise and credit for her valor. I am eternally grateful, My Dear.
The rude pretty boy who called us boring had told us that it takes two and a half hours to float down the river without stopping. I believe we floated for maybe an hour and a half before coming to the part of the river that we had to exit. We had a few adventures on the way. We saw two turtles. One was normal looking. The other was big and weird looking. Snapping turtle, maybe? There’s snapping turtles in Minnesota rivers. In case you don’t know anything about them, they’re the size of small sea turtles and their chomp can be as severe as a shark’s. This, even being the dare-devil animal lover that I am, freaked me out a tad. More than a tad, actually. My heart actually started to race. I tried to hide my fear by staring up at the clouds and pretending to daydream. There, in the clouds, was a giant turtle. A cloud turtle. I took a picture of it to prove it to you, Reader (check out my slide show at the top). I looked up at that cloud and I thought, “Really? Is this a joke from God?” I was tempted to believe so.
We reached our exit point after going over a minnow equivalency of rapids (which were pretty fun, actually, because our speed increased). This was the part I was really dreading: the exit. I was going to have to get out of my tube and walk waist deep in the river. I did not like it, not one bit. I put my feet to the rocky floor. Slimy rocks! Great! And you couldn’t see them. I would take a step forward thinking there’d be floor when no, just kidding! A giant rock. You step on top of it only to slide down the other side of it only to hit the next one with your knee. I find things like these very annoying to my sensitive senses. Being extraordinarily observant is a gift when I can put it to use in my art and writing, but in regular living conditions it can be extremely overwhelming. It’s sensory overload for me. It’s a great cause of my anxiety. I’m learning to ignore things, to numb myself from overwhelming environments, but it’s sometimes challenging. Walking over boulders in a river that’s already wigging me out was challenging. I was doing everything I could not to come off whiny or wimpy. I kept my mouth shut best I could. But I was wanting to curse under my breath with every slip of my foot. My friend had noted, “Can you imagine doing this drunk? At least we’re sober.” And I said, “I think I’d rather be drunk…” But I said it thinking, “Then I wouldn’t care so much about the slimy rocks and the dirty water.” I wasn’t thinking about coordination…
We made it out alive. We then had to walk up a very gravelly pathway, barefoot. This was another over sensory activity for me. From having to wash my feet several times a day for weeks on end because of my poison ivy bout, my feet were as soft as babies’ skin. Walking on that gravel was making we really wish I was either drunk, or on a codeine drip. It hurt. A lot. And it was uphill. And I have teeny tiny feet and very large thighs. I was feeling very sorry for myself. I was feeling like a wuss. I was feeling unadventurous and very, very old. I thought, “Really? You’re supposed to be able to hack this sort of thing… What’s happened to you?” If I wasn’t so dedicated to my writing and the belief that you have to put yourself through uncomfortable situations just to have material to write about, I would keep myself locked up in my house and never come out. But my passion to write overdrives my fears, and I am thankful for it.
The bus. We had to get onto a bus that would transport us to the top of the river and then we would have to float back down to our campsite. Dirty. “Germaphobe” came to my mind as I sat on the bus seat and looked around at all the people around me. I thought to myself, “I wonder how many people who’ve peed in the river have sat on this seat with their wet, contaminated swim suit… I wonder how many sweaty, nasty rear ends have been in this spot, and I wonder how long it’s been since these seats have been sanitized…” I’m not a germaphobe by any means, but after working in my field of work for twelve years (which requires a lot of sanitation to prevent illnesses) you become uncomfortably aware of all the different ways germs are spread. I decided to focus on the group of drunk girls sitting across from me. Blondie on the left was pretty drunk. She sat there, unable to have conversation with her other two friends, her head weaving left and right as the bus moved on. Her eyes were slow and glazed, and I got a kick out of watching her watch other people. Her head would turn ever so delicately to the people next to her. Expression would form so slowly on her face as she was trying to react to things she was watching. She would then gradually turn her head to gaze down at her beer can, stare at it for a few seconds, then finally take the energy to put it up to her mouth for a swig. It’s really fun to watch drunk people when you’re sober. It was convenient to wear my sunglasses, too, because nobody knew I was staring at them. Then again, I doubt they would’ve noticed much anyway seeing on how they could barely focus on the top of their beer can.
We got off the bus and got back into the river. At this point, I couldn’t wait to get to our campsite. I wanted nothing more than to be on dry land, sitting at the picnic table and eating chips. We rounded a bend where there on the shore was a giant mass of people all shouting and hooting and hollering as if we were the Titanic being welcomed into port (had the Titanic not sunk, that is….). People were waving their arms and screaming, and with all of them on the riverbank it looked as though it was a welcoming party for the people floating down the river toward them. This was odd, thought I. I didn’t understand what was happening. It turned out, nothing was happening. This was the spot on the journey where the Hideaway has a shop for beer and smokes. Someone in our group said, “People actually bring their wallet on the tube with them?” Good point. I’d be a wee nervous about dropping it in the water, especially if I was drunk. But anyway, here were these people gathered on the riverbank celebrating their newly bought merchandise. Nothing more than that. So we floated on by (or rather were propelled by my friend’s husband who diligently walked through the foot deep river to guide us the rest of the way) and eventually came to our campsite. This was sweet relief for me. I tried not to think about having to tube again the next day. I was seriously considering telling the group that I would stay behind, you know, “to write in my journal or something…” was going to be the excuse. I was dreading having to be such a party pooper about it… But I didn’t need to think about that right now. Now I needed to focus on putting my feet into that slimy, muddy riverbank grass again to get out.
Finally. Picnic table and chips, here I come. And that’s what I did. I kept my filthy swimsuit on because it was a hundred thousand degrees outside and I wasn’t ready to change yet. I wish I had not opted to do this. I developed a rash the next day between my upper thighs, a sort of rash you get from contaminated swim shorts. Like, a fungal rash. Or chiggers. I can’t honestly say which it was, but I hear chiggers are as bad as bug bites so maybe it wasn’t chiggers. All I know is, is that it was definitely from sitting in my swim suit too long. I remember watching all that horrible floating algae moving in around my middle in the water and thinking, “I’m going to have some sort of reaction from the algae I just know it…”. I’ve had enough itching, thanks. The poison ivy on my feet, meanwhile, was what I thought to be close to drying up. But with my feet sticking out in the sun for two hours on my tubing adventure, and my poison ivy medication thinning out my skin, my poison ivy sunburned. It burned rather severely actually, but I didn’t realize how badly until days after when my skin started to peel off. Like, severe skin peeling. Not normal sunburn peeling, but the sort of peeling that leaves bright pink, fresh skin that should be covered with another layer of skin, not open to the stinging air.
Anyway. I could feel my foot burning in the sun as I sat at the picnic table, but I ignored it. I tried to shade it with my other foot every once and awhile, but there was very little I could do. I continued to snack on my chips, talk with my friend, play twenty questions with everyone as the grill was heating up, and keep my mind off my burning foot. Dinner was finally ready and served, and I was starving. Now, normally I have a hard time eating in public. I have another pathological fear of getting food poisoning in public (only because I have in the past, and it’s not a pleasant experience). I usually get so anxious to eat in front of people, that I don’t eat. It’s stupid. You can say it. It is. Hence the “pathological” part of the fear. But at this moment I was feeling very comfortable in my company, and I was feeling liberated from surviving the river and proud of myself for sticking it out. So I dove into my burger with relish and enjoyed its very generous gifts of juicy deliciousness. Yum! But I was slightly dehydrated. I had been in the sun for a very long time with no water. I was suddenly feeling nauseous. I couldn’t swallow my last bite of burger. I spit it back out onto my plate and could feel my heart racing. I was starting to panic. I talked myself down and said, “It’s not food poisoning. You need water.” So I got some water and tried to relax. But I couldn’t. It was too late. My little anxiety attack gave me a sick stomach. So off to the disgusting, lockless bathroom stalls I went. I came back to my car, dug into my purse, and retrieved my anti-anxiety meds. I was feeling better just knowing that I had taken one, and finally talked myself down enough to return to my friends.
Sitting on my towel on the grass next to my friend, I listened as the group chatted. I began daydreaming and zoned out for a few minutes. But something was going on around us. It took me a moment to realize it. My friend was making signals and comments that she was offended and angry about something that was happening. I looked around and listened and then came to realize that a very large mass of tubes on the river was shouting out criminally hateful words toward a man on the riverbank next to us. You see, a group of men parked next to our campsite that were, to put it bluntly, clearly homosexual. At least, some of them were. The ignorant bigots in the river were scratching their monkey armpits and calling out words like “faggot” and adding things to that word that made my blood boil. It was verbal harassment like I’ve never known. That ticking bomb inside of me was so close to a ten second count down, I wasn’t sure I could keep it from going off. My heart was racing, my adrenaline pumping. I wanted to jump into the river and track down those revolting people and do hideously violent things to them. A hatred coursed through my body, a hatred I hadn’t felt since high school when I heard people use the word, “nigger”. But this, this was like nothing I’ve ever heard, and there they were, those cowardly apes safe in their stupid floating tubes moving down the river shouting out words that would haunt the poor man they were shouting at for the rest of his life. Words have a power that can be abused just as damagingly as anything else. A wife beater, or a molester, a murderer. A dictator. A communist trying to take over the world.
Someone once said to me that words are just words. To paraphrase, he said they can mean whatever you want them to mean. “Fag” is just a word. It means nothing unless you allow it to. But I disagree. Words have a breath of life that we, as humans, have breathed into them. They can be used in different ways, yes, and as an artist I have to agree that it’s possible to change the meaning of a word with a sort of crafty ingenuity, re-creating a new purpose for it and so forth. But this does not negate the power of language. If words were just words, then I’d be out of business. All writers would. If words were just words, then Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address would not have been bothered to be remembered and recited and taught as a part of our national history. Brainwashing Hitler would not have come so close to conquering the entire world. Martin Luther King Jr. would not have been able to lead a revolution if there was any truth to words being just words. If words were just words people’s emotions wouldn’t be manipulated by them so easily. What would be the point of communicating? Words have a value that is so understated, and in turn are so abused. And here, before me, the abuse was so overwhelming that I was seriously considering going home, sewing myself a costume, and beginning my vigilante career. My vigilante daydream was the only thing that saved me from getting into serious trouble, there on the riverbank. I was imagining my group of prisoners strapped to cold steel tables with cellophane (attention Dexter fans!), unable to move, surrounded by a bunch of frilly gay men holding curling irons and very feathery pirate costumes, giggling like nine year old girls ready to play with life sized Barbie dolls. Black homosexuals would be even better…
It took me quite a long time to calm down from this. Eventually the sun began to set, and we all enjoyed a good game of Mad Gab at the picnic table. The campsites around us began to fill up. The music began to pound through the earth from the next door rich kids’ SUV. The volleyball court was completely full of drunk people in their scummy bikinis and swimming trunks (I say scummy because the river is what it is: scummy), and they barely had time to play the game with all the yelling and arguing they were doing. It was like watching a bunch of ten year olds try to agree on fouls and fair game with no referee. It was funny.
Next to us was where the interesting things were truly going on. This was the foreshadowing of our late night climactic event. This is when the baboons started swinging and throwing their feces…
So, here we were, all five tubes tied together and floating down the river. The river was crowded. People of all shapes, colors, sizes and formats were in great masses, tied together in these huge floating blobs. From the view of a bird it would’ve looked much like the floaty masses on the top of spoiled milk (I tried to think of a more poetic metaphor, but this was all that came to mind...).
Now, when you’re floating in a tube, especially when there’s five tied together, there’s very little way to steer and propel. Tree branches in the way? Too bad. People in front of you? Be prepared to get a little personal with them. Now, my friend (with a baby growing in her belly, mind you) was our steering savior. She was the bold hero who would flip over on her stomach (which gave me the heeby-jeebies every time she did it…River water! Scary!) and paddle her arms against the current to steer us out of harms way. I wanted to help her, but just having my rear end in the river water was too much for me. I didn’t think I could flip myself over, or submerge any other part of my body in the river to manage a paddling frenzy that would be of any use. So, here I am now giving praise and credit for her valor. I am eternally grateful, My Dear.
The rude pretty boy who called us boring had told us that it takes two and a half hours to float down the river without stopping. I believe we floated for maybe an hour and a half before coming to the part of the river that we had to exit. We had a few adventures on the way. We saw two turtles. One was normal looking. The other was big and weird looking. Snapping turtle, maybe? There’s snapping turtles in Minnesota rivers. In case you don’t know anything about them, they’re the size of small sea turtles and their chomp can be as severe as a shark’s. This, even being the dare-devil animal lover that I am, freaked me out a tad. More than a tad, actually. My heart actually started to race. I tried to hide my fear by staring up at the clouds and pretending to daydream. There, in the clouds, was a giant turtle. A cloud turtle. I took a picture of it to prove it to you, Reader (check out my slide show at the top). I looked up at that cloud and I thought, “Really? Is this a joke from God?” I was tempted to believe so.
We reached our exit point after going over a minnow equivalency of rapids (which were pretty fun, actually, because our speed increased). This was the part I was really dreading: the exit. I was going to have to get out of my tube and walk waist deep in the river. I did not like it, not one bit. I put my feet to the rocky floor. Slimy rocks! Great! And you couldn’t see them. I would take a step forward thinking there’d be floor when no, just kidding! A giant rock. You step on top of it only to slide down the other side of it only to hit the next one with your knee. I find things like these very annoying to my sensitive senses. Being extraordinarily observant is a gift when I can put it to use in my art and writing, but in regular living conditions it can be extremely overwhelming. It’s sensory overload for me. It’s a great cause of my anxiety. I’m learning to ignore things, to numb myself from overwhelming environments, but it’s sometimes challenging. Walking over boulders in a river that’s already wigging me out was challenging. I was doing everything I could not to come off whiny or wimpy. I kept my mouth shut best I could. But I was wanting to curse under my breath with every slip of my foot. My friend had noted, “Can you imagine doing this drunk? At least we’re sober.” And I said, “I think I’d rather be drunk…” But I said it thinking, “Then I wouldn’t care so much about the slimy rocks and the dirty water.” I wasn’t thinking about coordination…
We made it out alive. We then had to walk up a very gravelly pathway, barefoot. This was another over sensory activity for me. From having to wash my feet several times a day for weeks on end because of my poison ivy bout, my feet were as soft as babies’ skin. Walking on that gravel was making we really wish I was either drunk, or on a codeine drip. It hurt. A lot. And it was uphill. And I have teeny tiny feet and very large thighs. I was feeling very sorry for myself. I was feeling like a wuss. I was feeling unadventurous and very, very old. I thought, “Really? You’re supposed to be able to hack this sort of thing… What’s happened to you?” If I wasn’t so dedicated to my writing and the belief that you have to put yourself through uncomfortable situations just to have material to write about, I would keep myself locked up in my house and never come out. But my passion to write overdrives my fears, and I am thankful for it.
The bus. We had to get onto a bus that would transport us to the top of the river and then we would have to float back down to our campsite. Dirty. “Germaphobe” came to my mind as I sat on the bus seat and looked around at all the people around me. I thought to myself, “I wonder how many people who’ve peed in the river have sat on this seat with their wet, contaminated swim suit… I wonder how many sweaty, nasty rear ends have been in this spot, and I wonder how long it’s been since these seats have been sanitized…” I’m not a germaphobe by any means, but after working in my field of work for twelve years (which requires a lot of sanitation to prevent illnesses) you become uncomfortably aware of all the different ways germs are spread. I decided to focus on the group of drunk girls sitting across from me. Blondie on the left was pretty drunk. She sat there, unable to have conversation with her other two friends, her head weaving left and right as the bus moved on. Her eyes were slow and glazed, and I got a kick out of watching her watch other people. Her head would turn ever so delicately to the people next to her. Expression would form so slowly on her face as she was trying to react to things she was watching. She would then gradually turn her head to gaze down at her beer can, stare at it for a few seconds, then finally take the energy to put it up to her mouth for a swig. It’s really fun to watch drunk people when you’re sober. It was convenient to wear my sunglasses, too, because nobody knew I was staring at them. Then again, I doubt they would’ve noticed much anyway seeing on how they could barely focus on the top of their beer can.
We got off the bus and got back into the river. At this point, I couldn’t wait to get to our campsite. I wanted nothing more than to be on dry land, sitting at the picnic table and eating chips. We rounded a bend where there on the shore was a giant mass of people all shouting and hooting and hollering as if we were the Titanic being welcomed into port (had the Titanic not sunk, that is….). People were waving their arms and screaming, and with all of them on the riverbank it looked as though it was a welcoming party for the people floating down the river toward them. This was odd, thought I. I didn’t understand what was happening. It turned out, nothing was happening. This was the spot on the journey where the Hideaway has a shop for beer and smokes. Someone in our group said, “People actually bring their wallet on the tube with them?” Good point. I’d be a wee nervous about dropping it in the water, especially if I was drunk. But anyway, here were these people gathered on the riverbank celebrating their newly bought merchandise. Nothing more than that. So we floated on by (or rather were propelled by my friend’s husband who diligently walked through the foot deep river to guide us the rest of the way) and eventually came to our campsite. This was sweet relief for me. I tried not to think about having to tube again the next day. I was seriously considering telling the group that I would stay behind, you know, “to write in my journal or something…” was going to be the excuse. I was dreading having to be such a party pooper about it… But I didn’t need to think about that right now. Now I needed to focus on putting my feet into that slimy, muddy riverbank grass again to get out.
Finally. Picnic table and chips, here I come. And that’s what I did. I kept my filthy swimsuit on because it was a hundred thousand degrees outside and I wasn’t ready to change yet. I wish I had not opted to do this. I developed a rash the next day between my upper thighs, a sort of rash you get from contaminated swim shorts. Like, a fungal rash. Or chiggers. I can’t honestly say which it was, but I hear chiggers are as bad as bug bites so maybe it wasn’t chiggers. All I know is, is that it was definitely from sitting in my swim suit too long. I remember watching all that horrible floating algae moving in around my middle in the water and thinking, “I’m going to have some sort of reaction from the algae I just know it…”. I’ve had enough itching, thanks. The poison ivy on my feet, meanwhile, was what I thought to be close to drying up. But with my feet sticking out in the sun for two hours on my tubing adventure, and my poison ivy medication thinning out my skin, my poison ivy sunburned. It burned rather severely actually, but I didn’t realize how badly until days after when my skin started to peel off. Like, severe skin peeling. Not normal sunburn peeling, but the sort of peeling that leaves bright pink, fresh skin that should be covered with another layer of skin, not open to the stinging air.
Anyway. I could feel my foot burning in the sun as I sat at the picnic table, but I ignored it. I tried to shade it with my other foot every once and awhile, but there was very little I could do. I continued to snack on my chips, talk with my friend, play twenty questions with everyone as the grill was heating up, and keep my mind off my burning foot. Dinner was finally ready and served, and I was starving. Now, normally I have a hard time eating in public. I have another pathological fear of getting food poisoning in public (only because I have in the past, and it’s not a pleasant experience). I usually get so anxious to eat in front of people, that I don’t eat. It’s stupid. You can say it. It is. Hence the “pathological” part of the fear. But at this moment I was feeling very comfortable in my company, and I was feeling liberated from surviving the river and proud of myself for sticking it out. So I dove into my burger with relish and enjoyed its very generous gifts of juicy deliciousness. Yum! But I was slightly dehydrated. I had been in the sun for a very long time with no water. I was suddenly feeling nauseous. I couldn’t swallow my last bite of burger. I spit it back out onto my plate and could feel my heart racing. I was starting to panic. I talked myself down and said, “It’s not food poisoning. You need water.” So I got some water and tried to relax. But I couldn’t. It was too late. My little anxiety attack gave me a sick stomach. So off to the disgusting, lockless bathroom stalls I went. I came back to my car, dug into my purse, and retrieved my anti-anxiety meds. I was feeling better just knowing that I had taken one, and finally talked myself down enough to return to my friends.
Sitting on my towel on the grass next to my friend, I listened as the group chatted. I began daydreaming and zoned out for a few minutes. But something was going on around us. It took me a moment to realize it. My friend was making signals and comments that she was offended and angry about something that was happening. I looked around and listened and then came to realize that a very large mass of tubes on the river was shouting out criminally hateful words toward a man on the riverbank next to us. You see, a group of men parked next to our campsite that were, to put it bluntly, clearly homosexual. At least, some of them were. The ignorant bigots in the river were scratching their monkey armpits and calling out words like “faggot” and adding things to that word that made my blood boil. It was verbal harassment like I’ve never known. That ticking bomb inside of me was so close to a ten second count down, I wasn’t sure I could keep it from going off. My heart was racing, my adrenaline pumping. I wanted to jump into the river and track down those revolting people and do hideously violent things to them. A hatred coursed through my body, a hatred I hadn’t felt since high school when I heard people use the word, “nigger”. But this, this was like nothing I’ve ever heard, and there they were, those cowardly apes safe in their stupid floating tubes moving down the river shouting out words that would haunt the poor man they were shouting at for the rest of his life. Words have a power that can be abused just as damagingly as anything else. A wife beater, or a molester, a murderer. A dictator. A communist trying to take over the world.
Someone once said to me that words are just words. To paraphrase, he said they can mean whatever you want them to mean. “Fag” is just a word. It means nothing unless you allow it to. But I disagree. Words have a breath of life that we, as humans, have breathed into them. They can be used in different ways, yes, and as an artist I have to agree that it’s possible to change the meaning of a word with a sort of crafty ingenuity, re-creating a new purpose for it and so forth. But this does not negate the power of language. If words were just words, then I’d be out of business. All writers would. If words were just words, then Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address would not have been bothered to be remembered and recited and taught as a part of our national history. Brainwashing Hitler would not have come so close to conquering the entire world. Martin Luther King Jr. would not have been able to lead a revolution if there was any truth to words being just words. If words were just words people’s emotions wouldn’t be manipulated by them so easily. What would be the point of communicating? Words have a value that is so understated, and in turn are so abused. And here, before me, the abuse was so overwhelming that I was seriously considering going home, sewing myself a costume, and beginning my vigilante career. My vigilante daydream was the only thing that saved me from getting into serious trouble, there on the riverbank. I was imagining my group of prisoners strapped to cold steel tables with cellophane (attention Dexter fans!), unable to move, surrounded by a bunch of frilly gay men holding curling irons and very feathery pirate costumes, giggling like nine year old girls ready to play with life sized Barbie dolls. Black homosexuals would be even better…
It took me quite a long time to calm down from this. Eventually the sun began to set, and we all enjoyed a good game of Mad Gab at the picnic table. The campsites around us began to fill up. The music began to pound through the earth from the next door rich kids’ SUV. The volleyball court was completely full of drunk people in their scummy bikinis and swimming trunks (I say scummy because the river is what it is: scummy), and they barely had time to play the game with all the yelling and arguing they were doing. It was like watching a bunch of ten year olds try to agree on fouls and fair game with no referee. It was funny.
Next to us was where the interesting things were truly going on. This was the foreshadowing of our late night climactic event. This is when the baboons started swinging and throwing their feces…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Merlin's Rest
My Minnesota in Winter
The Renaissance Festival
Stink Bugs and Apples
Poison Ivy
Skin damage from the poison ivy and the meds
