by Mike Stangle
The game ended, and I forcefully corralled the gang. It was at this point that the guys finally filled me in about my night from their perspective. Apparently, around midnight I had met a nice gal and we seemed to hit it off. I do remember that part. For well over an hour, this gal proceeded to very publicly seduce me (their words, not mine). I remember that, too. She was like a snake charmer! She played her little flute and out peeked its head from the basket, ready to dance for her. I was told that she and I had a very public make-out and that I wouldn’t stop telling anyone who would listen that I was “smitten.” I don’t quite remember that part. Sometime shortly after, she asked me to taste of some of the molly she had hidden deep within her bosom. I was helpless. Fucking snake charmer, you guys. My friends were also careful to note two things:
1. That the molly she was offering (seducing me with, really) didn’t look like any molly they’d ever seen before.
2. That I did not care whatsoever what she was giving me, I was in. They said she put a few of these little chunks of stuff in my hand and I popped them into my mouth as I asked, “What are these things? Do you want to dance?”
1:30–2 a.m.: The walk home with Frank was rough. I had to clear my head and figure out what happened. I stopped to get some froyo, which helped as always.
What the fuck did this girl feed me? Also, did she have a live peacock in her pocketbook? Was it some sort of sexy costume? Where the fuck is my phone? I need that! Dammit. All I could pull together was that I ate some weird substance that was most likely not the substance I was told it was, and BOOM, lights out. Roofies? Do they actually exist? What the hell? Back at my apartment, I did some research. As I got comfortable among the peacock feathers, I fired up the Google machine. Let’s get to the bottom of this.
2:30– . . . All right, that’s it—I will find out what’s going on here, and I don’t care how much it costs me. After some consideration and a weird amount of pot, I decided it was time for results. Hello, Emergency Room. How long could this take, anyway?
9–10:30—Clearly the good people of Beth Israel Medical Center did not deem my medical emergency an actual “medical emergency.” I’m not saying that my situation should have taken priority over some of the gore you see in a New York City ER, but I was so hungover that I at least looked like I needed emergency attention. That was what convinced me to go to the ER in the first place. I’ll put nearly anything in my body, but I’ve got to know what it is. It took so long, that ER visit. I shouldn’t have written down on the form that I was visiting the ER because I believe I was roofied and a peacock stole my iPhone. Six and a half hours later, I got to see the friendly little Asian doctor. I twisted my story around a bit to make it seem like more of a medical emergency with real-world consequences, rather than my quest to find out who or what was in my apartment the night before and maybe, upon answering that question, find out where the hell my phone was. This guy straight up did not believe me. But if at first you don’t succeed, make up more shit until you get your way. Dr. Woo finally (reluctantly) took some tests. The toxicology report? Roofalin. The peacock spiked my punch. Well, that explains the complete black hole in the space my memories used to occupy. Next step, peacock feathers.
Two to three weeks later: After the toxicology report came back, my friends never let me hear the end of it. They couldn’t believe a girl seduced me, then roofied me. And no one could let the peacock feathers go. Soon my friend Howard suggested I send them to a lab downtown to find out if they were real. It would cost $499, and he convinced every single person on our email chain to kick in a portion. I had a deep moment of introspection when I sent off a check for $499 and an envelope of feathers in order to determine if I was robbed by a bird. In the meantime, I replaced my iPhone. This was my seventh iPhone of 2012. By the way, did you know that the iPhone insurance people stop insuring you after your sixth iPhone? I am iPhone uninsurable. They said I had to go at least eight months without losing or breaking one before I could reapply for coverage. What bullshit.
It was a Monday when the email came through and I gathered up a few friends on speakerphone to hear the results. The lab tech was very formal in informing me that the feathers in question had been analyzed. She proceeded to explain that before she could say any more, I’d have to contact the NYPD directly with a reference number she gave me. Okay. Uh, what?
Naturally I hung up the phone immediately, told my friends to leave, lowered the blinds, and locked the door. I closed the book on the whole shebang right then and there. Wouldn’t you? I’m not bringing the NYPD into this! I walked away and took a very important lesson with me: Don’t take pills if you don’t know what they are. Even if a pretty girl plucks them from her bosom. Especially then. Were you looking for a neat ending to this story, perhaps an odd but ultimately satisfactory answer to the peacock mystery? So was I! But this is what happens when you do drugs.
* * *
1 The Button Hookers were a coed two-hand touch football team my friend Tim ran for the better part of a dozen seasons in NYC. We were quite possibly the most unathletic and unsuccessful franchise in league history. I was arguably the most unathletic player on the Button Hookers, despite appearing brawny and active as well as having a larger wingspan than almost anyone in the entire league. After 6 seasons on the Button Hookers I retired with 4 total receptions, 0 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, 24 dropped passes, and 7 ejections by the referee (one of whom was a good friend of mine).
(Too Much) Grass
(Dave)
Sometimes when you eat too much of ordinary foods with extraordinary ingredients, shit gets a little animated. I would never recommend getting to this Toon Town level of high. Grass is so fun, but it’s for relaxing, not for hallucinating. The last time I got to animation-level high was with Mike, naturally. Mike and I had a big weekend planned. It was Memorial Day, so we wanted to make some memories. Being the upstate freshwater guys we are, we rented an island on Lake George. An entire island! The parks commission in Lake George rents out individual sites on all the islands on Lake George, but they didn’t foresee two psychopaths renting out every available site on one island so they could be lunatics without being disturbed. We had a real motley crew on board for Stangle Island, too. Quack, Frank the Dog, Nick Waldrip from the South, Slime Dog, you name it. And of course, not a single female in sight. Would you, as a woman, go to an island alone with that crew? Me neither.
The problem with this particular Memorial Day weekend was that the forecast was basically calling for a monsoon. You can tell shit is going to hit the fan when all the meteorologists have their jackets and ties off, sleeves rolled up. Al Roker told everyone a monsoon was coming, so everyone bailed. Everyone but Mike and me. And Frank. Oh and Slime Dog, too. Slime Dog never bails. We were determined to party on Dave Island, despite the ensuing monsoon. In the absolutely sideways rain, the three of us drove up to Lake George in the middle of the night, launched The Entertainer in the pitch black, and set out for Stangle Island. We made it about thirty-five feet into the bay before bailing. What the fuck were we thinking? No, literally, that was what the cop asked us when we were struggling to get The Entertainer back on the trailer in 60 mph winds. We got it on, though, then we ditched it in the parking lot of the Howard Johnson’s we’d be staying in for the night. As we were ditching The Entertainer in the parking lot, a large black woman standing in the lobby didn’t seem to care at all. We came in from the wilderness, creatures void of form. “Come in,” she said. “I’ll give ya shelter from the storm.” So we went in.
Inside our luxurious HoJo room, we immediately took inventory of our supplies. We had four handles of bottom-shelf bourbon, three liters of ginger ale (diet, obviously), access to an ice machine, 6 gummy bears dipped in acid (for a special occasion), well over an ounce of grass, 3 cigarillos, 5 Ambien, 0 dry clothes, 6 pot brownies whose seller claimed they would “put down a pregnant rhino,” and Frank the Bulldog. We decided that after such a long night, we should have some “feel-good” time. For th
e next several hours, the scene in that HoJo room remained relatively constant. While their wet clothes hung in the bathroom, three grown males wearing nothing but hand towels crushed down Shitty Daves (ice, heavy pour of bourbon, splash of diet ginger, a little poured out for dead homies) like it was some sort of competition. We wanted some grass, but had too much respect for Mr. HoJo to smoke in his room. Wait a tick, we don’t need to smoke! Edibles, here we come! On top of those, at around 11:30 p.m. we each took an Ambien, figuring they would knock us out until the storm had passed. Then we really ran into trouble. Who Framed Roger Rabbit came on HBO Kids (’cause you know HoJo has the baller cable package) and we had no choice but to fight the drug, so we could stay up to watch it. Have you ever fought off Ambien successfully? When combined with a ton of grass and booze? Welcome to Toon Town, my friends. An hour and a half later, we were on the moon, and we weren’t going to waste such a unique buzz wasting away in a HoJo while there was an entire world out there just waiting to be frightened by our general appearance. We put on our wet clothes, and Frank the Bulldog insisted on driving us into town. He executed a textbook parallel park on the strip, and we walked toward the bar scene.
Christie’s On The Water. CLOSED. King Neptune’s. CLOSED. Legends Bar & Grill. CLOSED. Moose Tooth Grill. NO DOGS ALLOWED. Duffy’s Tavern. LIFETIME BAN. We were striking out left and right. Defeated, we took shelter under the awning of what we thought was a closed and possibly haunted gift shop. As we puffed away at a one-hitter (because someone decided we weren’t high enough yet?) the door swung open and the sweet sound of AC/DC poured out into the street. The haunted gift shop wasn’t a haunted gift shop at all, but an actual bar—a secret bar for the locals, called Judd’s Tavern. Considering we looked like we just escaped from a mental institution, we looked exactly like Lake George locals. Naturally, we went inside and carved out a spot. We sat in a triangle at a booth, all facing in toward one another, as Frank settled in underneath for a nap. It was 3 a.m., after all, plus, all he does is sleep. We had also put this tiny little rain jacket and Hawaiian shirt on him. They weren’t dog clothes; they were for a kid. We know this because some family with a roomful of kids next to ours had hung them out to dry. Don’t you know you’re supposed to hang clothes to dry in the bathroom, or else they are fair game?
It was a good thing Frank was looking sharp, because Judd’s Tavern wasn’t the friendliest scene. It seemed like everyone was giving us the stink eye. At first I thought it must have been in our heads, paranoia due to the wild mixture of chemicals in our blood. Still, we minded our own business. Two nights earlier, Mike had enjoyed a wild drunken night, during which an old flame located and tracked him down and brought him home for a slumber party. As he tells it, she stripped from the waist up and fell asleep on top of him. Not like in a sexy kind of on top of him, but more like the passed-out-cold on top of him. She then began peeing in her sleep. He tried to roll her off him when he felt the pee, but he became trapped between her sleeping body and the wall. He proceeded to use her body as a gymnastics-style vaulting horse and executed a textbook front handspring away to safety. That safety proved only momentary, as Mike’s acrobatics had awoken the beast. She came to consciousness in a drunken rage and started chasing Mike, pee pants and all.
Trapped, confused, and scared, he did the only thing that made sense to him at the time. He grabbed his iPhone and snapped several pictures as he was running away, trying to escape from her. The pictures were absolutely priceless. A drunk, drooling topless chick with pee all over her white jeans (it was before Labor Day) chasing Mike from her lair. Mike’s POV photo sequence made her look remarkably like what I can only describe as a really hot, angry zombie. Arms out, the weird stagger. Everything. Every time he swiped to the next photo in the twenty-plus sequence he took, we laughed harder and harder. Mike would pull up a picture, burst out laughing, then explain what was happening in it before he held it up for Slime Dog to look, then me. It was a sequence that got funnier each time. After about fifteen minutes of what I can only describe as hyena-type laughter every time we were shown a photo, our table was approached by a couple of local girlies. Actually they weren’t girlies at all; they were full-blown women. Local women. The lead woman, well, she was a real bitch. There was no “hello,” no “y’all from ’round here?,” no “why do you have a dog in the bar?” Instantly, right away, the first thing she did was grab at Mike’s phone and demand to know why we were taking pictures of her and her friends. Her friends stood behind her, confident and pissed-off, with their hands on their hips. Having no idea where she was coming from, we simply told her the truth. We weren’t taking pictures of her at all. We hadn’t even noticed her, or her friends. Slime Dog went so far as to tell her he wouldn’t have noticed her if he walked by her in a desolate western town. That probably wasn’t the right thing to say. Soon we were in a full-blown argument. The lead bitch thought we were taking pictures of her and laughing at them as we passed Mike’s iPhone around the table. We assured her that wasn’t the case. It didn’t matter. We were in a pickle: of course we weren’t taking pictures of this woman and her friends. But could we prove it? We were not about to show her the pictures we’d actually been looking at. She’d freak! Soon we were in a full-on argument. Phone exchanges were being demanded, tensions were high, Frank was barking.
This is where the strength of edibles really shows its muscle. You know you’re not on a hard drug, so you’re not hallucinating, but the things happening around you are too absurd to be real. Within thirty seconds, Judd’s Tavern turned into the set of Judge Judy. Our party was gathered up on one side of the bar, Bitch Lady and her cronies were around the corner on the other side of the bar, and Judge Judd—the owner of the tavern—was presiding over the case. Everyone else in the bar had gathered around us. They either sat behind Slime Dog, Frank, Mike, and me or they sat behind the bitches. It was a pretty even split. The bitches started with their opening statement. It focused mostly around us being “city creeps” and “perverts” who came into a local establishment uninvited and clearly on drugs. Pretty spot-on, so far. I found it odd that she didn’t at all address the fact that we had a dog in the bar, dressed in human clothing.
She presented a strong case, and Judd, ever so wise in the ways of a barroom dispute, nodded his head in approval. We were in for an uphill battle, or so I thought, until Mike got up for his turn. I’m not sure why Mike was designated as our team leader, but now that I know what kind of performance he was about to deliver, I’m sure glad he was. It was magical. It was like he was preparing for this trial his entire life. He was like McConaughey in A Time to Kill combined with McConaughey from The Lincoln Lawyer. It was as if for his entire life he had defended his right to keep nude pictures of peeing women chasing him, and this was just a walk in the park. He tucked in his shirt. He spoke slowly and with a southern drawl. He asked the Honorable Judge Judd and the local jurors rhetorical questions that swayed them toward our side. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. How high was I? Is Mike suddenly and out of nowhere wearing a white suit? Where did he get that Bible he had clasped under his arm, as he slowly paced back and forth in front of Judd? Where did he learn to use words like acquiesce and repudiate? He was fucking brilliant. When he was done, Slime Dog, Frank, and I all stood up and erupted in applause. Slime Dog was crying. I couldn’t believe the rest of the bar didn’t join us.
By the time Mike “rested his case,” Judd had heard enough. He was ready to deliver his verdict. We all exchanged looks like people do right before they are about to receive an award. There were pats on the back all around. Judd started by stating that absolutely nothing Mike said made any sense at all, to anyone, and that Mike was to be immediately cut off from the bar for the rest of the night, although Slime Dog and I were welcome to finish our drinks so long as we behaved. Mike screamed “Objection!” right away, but Judd said he wasn’t finished. He turned to Patty-Anne (of course that was her name) and gave her a verbal lambasting like I’ve never heard. He told he
r he was sick of her shit, and no one in their right mind would ever take a picture of her because it would break their phone. One of his goons escorted Patty-Anne and her friends out as she gave us the double middle finger over her shoulder. The bar became quiet. Slime Dog sheepishly looked up at Judd and asked, “Did we . . . win?” His reply: What the hell are you guys on?
Dave clearly got into something this night. One-piece pajamas? Feet seem to be tar-and-feathered. Great butt, though.
Goofballs
(Mike)
I don’t know why we got to calling them “goofballs” instead of “hallucinogenic mushrooms,” but we did. And sometimes when you eat a coupla goofballs, shit gets weird. Dave and I eat goofballs once a year. It’s refreshing to get outside your own mind once in a while. What would become a Stangle boy tradition had its start one summer when I was living in Nantucket. It began with a simple “Want some?” and in response, “Sure.” What followed were eight of the most reflective, blissful, giggly, silly, confusing, clarifying hours either of us had in years. We started taking one day a year to get the fuck outa dodge, bury reality, eat some goofballs, and just see what happens.