Fubar

by Ron Carpol

  “And have him arrested, too,” Christianson added. “For hit and run.”

  “But his car never actually touched the bike.”

  “That’s how they got me for hit and run once,” No-Wood piped up. “Matched paint transfers from my fender to the guy’s car I hit.”

  “Maybe you could find the guy’s car and you can scrape your fender against his bumper,” I suggested like a real chip-off-the-old-block. “Bet he was drinking too,” I also suggested helpfully.

  The guy sighed. “Yeah. Must’ve been. But who the hell is he?”

  We were more than happy to give him all the information he needed to find Dean O’Neill and the car. And because O’Neill ate shit, we agreed to be witnesses to smelling alcohol on O’Neill’s breath when him and Buckskin were here immediately before the accident.

  “Why don’t you go to the emergency hospital to document the injuries?” Grossberg asked.

  “Yeah,” Dung piped up. “Say your back and neck are sore. Called soft tissue injuries. Can’t disprove that with X-rays.”

  “That’s true,” Grossberg said firmly.

  “How do you know?” Castle asked.

  “Got a family of Jewish lawyers.”

  _____

  10:30 P.M.

  The terrorist bombers who blasted the basement of the World Trade Center and Timothy McVeigh who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building were great free endorsements for Ryder Truck Rentals. A yellow, fifteen-foot, enclosed truck pulled in the far corner of the Ralphs Market where me and the other sixteen pledges were gathered, milling around our cars drinking beer hidden in paper bags.

  Bones Kingsley, the most ferocious hazer in the fraternity was driving the truck, balancing a can of Bud on the open windowsill. Thank God Adams was riding shotgun; hopefully to contain Bones.

  As they approached us, Bones held two unopened beer cans while Adams struggled to hold a case of Bud before dropping it on the ground at the rear of the truck. As soon as both guys started talking, it became obvious that neither one could pass a drunk driving test if the cops stopped them. The alcohol smell was so strong that if you put a wick in their mouths and lit it, they’d burn for a week.

  “The beer is for you guys to drink during the great ride over the mountains,” Bones slurred before he undid the rear truck latch and yanked open both doors. “Leave your cars here and get in the truck and get your costumes on.”

  Adams was drunker than Bones. His light eyes were completely bloodshot and starting to run while his speech was barely at half speed.

  “Stafford,” Adams asked slowly and deliberately. “You do what I said? You pissed in one Corona bottle and squashed some dog shit in a dark Modelo bottle before carefully recapping them?”

  “Yeah.”

  A silly smile formed on his lips. “Good. Be sure to bring it with the other beer.”

  Adams collected everybody’s watch and cell phones before we jumped into the truck with Rawlings hoisting the beer onto the truck’s bed.

  Adams turned to Bones and said thickly, “Leave me alone with the pledges for a minute. OK?”

  Bones nodded and staggered around toward the front of the truck.

  “Listen up you guys,” Adams said in a voice that almost sounded like it was computer generated. “I want every guy here to know I want him as a fraternity brother. But that’s impossible. The Rule of Eleven is never violated so that at least six of you guys are going to be history. And traditionally on the first night of Hell Week, more than one guy quits the first few minutes.”

  Then he slammed the doors shut, throwing us into darkness.

  _____

  For the next hour, through Venice and onto Pacific Coast Highway, past the Santa Monica Pier, and finally into Malibu, Bones drove the truck like a lunatic; flooring the gas, whipping us backward before jamming on the brakes and banging us forward; all the time throwing us around helplessly like rag dolls. For variety, Bones swerved excessively during turns and somehow even found some speed bumps to bounce over, making us all immediate customers for a chiropractor.

  And the beer that we drank got re-channeled into yellow streams against the back doors, stinking up the truck. I felt like a human pinball being knocked around by springy flippers. My elbows and knees hurt, my palms were slivered from trying to steady myself on the goddamn wooden floor and I banged my head against Castle’s head. Everybody else was complaining too, especially since it was so hard to dress in the dark.

  On that painful ride, it seemed like hours later until the truck came almost to a complete stop before Bones shifted into low gear and we started uphill. Then the truck slowed down before taking a sharp right turn, taking the curve on the right two tires!

  “The fucker’s going to kill us!” Rickshaw Boy screamed in a cracked voice just as the whirring sound of helicopter blades revved overhead before buzzing away.

  The truck bounced along the hairpin turns on the chewed-up pavement, with its vile stink suffocating its seventeen-man human cargo before it suddenly came to a screeching halt. The metal-against-metal rubbing of the truck latch slid open and both back doors spread apart. Suddenly nighttime light and fresh air poured inside.

  “Out!” Bones growled as we awkwardly climbed down, gulping the fresh air like lifesaving oxygen. “Get in line, single file! Now!”

  15

  PLAYING PERVERTED GAMES

  “FIRST GAME IS BETWEEN TWO TEAMS, CORNHOLERS versus RECTUM REAMERS!” Rick Janus screamed like a carnival barker to the dozens of drunken actives circling us in the dark patio of a vacant house somewhere on a mountain top, lit up by millions of twinkling stars. The inevitable smell of pot floated like a cloud over the patio.

  “What about their supplies?” Derek Wayne yelled out.

  Janus, big and husky from taking steroids that he always tried to sell everybody, smiled sadistically. “Yeah, I almost forgot.” He reached into a brown bag on the ground and pulled out a box of disposable latex gloves and a carton of KY lubricant. “Grossberg,” he ordered, “pass them out.”

  As soon as each pledge was wearing one glove, Janus scratched the left side of his dark, military haircut and smiled again, revealing too many teeth in his small mouth. “I’m giving you assholes fair warning: if you use all the KY for the first game, you’re not going to have anything left for the other games.”

  “I’m supervising Stafford!” Parker yelled out laughing.

  I didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what the KY and the glove was for. The only question was, who was it going to be used on and under what circumstances? Well I knew it wasn’t going to be used on me! Fuck that shit!

  The boozed-up audience laughed, clapped, and cheered at whatever they were expecting.

  “Do the costume parade first,” Christianson ordered. “Let’s get rid of some pledges immediately. Then the KY games will weed out some more.”

  Janus shrugged his shoulders. “OK.” He suddenly started laughing, looking around at us. “It’s parade time!” he yelled, picking up the tempo. “When the light shines in your face, announce your costume and do it fast! A pledge will be gone in the next few minutes.”

  My stomach was getting queasy again, wondering who was the first guy to go and how the actives were going to do it. I sucked on a Rolaid even though I was repelled by its constant bitter taste.

  Somebody shined a giant flashlight in Grossberg’s face. “One-at-a-time,” Janus barked. “Start! And be quick about it!”

  “Grossberg, the Rabbi,” he answered evenly. “Wearing my black hat, long black coat and sideburn curls.”

  “Rickshaw Boy, gook villager.” A rubber band around his head made his eyes slit a little. He touched the top of his pointed straw hat.

  “Stafford, a pussy Marine!” Parker ordered me to say.

  Janus’ voice barked over the laughter. “Next!”

  “I’m Dung, Bedpan Man,” he said, proudly pointing to a silver, metal bedpan duct-taped to the front of his chest.

  Rainey was next
, standing there with a triangular-shaped, black, fur pillow covering his face, held up with white elastic circling his head. He slid the pillow off his mouth.

  “I’m Muff Diving Melvin the Methodical Muncher.”

  Rawlings, who was wearing a cardinal and gold USC sweatshirt and matching cap, mumbled, “I’m Tommy Trojan.”

  Batman and G-Spot shared flashlight beams. Both guys wore tennis shoes.

  “Right out of Victoria’s Secret catalogue,” Jesse Stahl yelled laughing.

  “I’m Batman, wearing a Batman mask and cape, gray bra, matching panties, garter belt and stockings.”

  “I’m Robin,” G-Spot said, “wearing a yellow cape, red bra, green panties, garter belt and stockings.”

  “I’m a cholo,” Vysel muttered, with his hair slicked straight back, wearing a wife-beater and asshole-high, baggy pants held up by thin, blue suspenders.

  “I’m Mr. Hard-on,” No-Wood announced faintly.

  Strapped to No-Wood’s waist was an eight-inch, red dildo. In his right hand was a white, powdered donut that he slowly slid up and down the dildo.

  Watson had about half a dozen white, paper, toilet seat covers around his neck with his head sticking out of the hole in the center. He said, “I’m the groom at a Mexican wedding.”

  “I’m Mr. Listerine Man,” Zoom said, visibly shaking as he held a pint bottle of Listerine. His teeth started chattering.

  “Wash your face with it!” Janus ordered.

  While Zoom was rubbing that green shit on his face, Froggy was next, wearing a snorkel and face mask with swim fins. “I’m Froggy.”

  The low hum of an airplane or maybe a helicopter was approaching in the distance, with its engine getting increasingly louder as it neared the house before the sound slowly disappeared.

  “I’m Sherlock Holmes,” Holmes announced, wearing the inevitable tan, plaid, Sherlock Holmes cape, a two-billed cap, and carrying a large magnifying glass.

  Lyman was wearing one swim fin and one webbed glove. “I’m half a flipper,” he mumbled, sounding resentful of his lame Filipino heritage.

  Wide-Load was the last pledge before some perverted game would start. “I’m Mr. Slumlord Man,” he said. He was wearing a dark, three-piece suit with a gold watch chain across his stomach and a thick, false, black mustache that hung down the sides of his mouth making him look like the mean banker who fore-closed the mortgages of widows and orphans in the silent movies.

  From behind the drunken, screaming mob that circled us, somebody threw a black, plastic wastebasket into the center.

  “Wide-Load! Get your shoes and socks off and roll up your pant legs and stand in the wastebasket!” Janus ordered.

  As Wide-Load nervously followed Janus’ directions as slow as possible, the unruly, boozed-up actives yelled and cheered, pushing past us, wanting a better look at what was happening. With Wide-Load standing barefoot inside the wastebasket, Janus sprayed Wide-Load’s feet with liquid cheese from a yellow, plastic squeeze-bottle.

  “What’s the big deal?” Rainey whispered to me.

  “Beats me.”

  Then Mike Thurley, wearing a purple and yellow satin Lakers jacket, held a tan shoebox over the wastebasket. “You stay inside until we count to ten or you’re out of here,” Thurley instructed Wide-Load. The crowd roared their approval as Thurley dramatically opened the lid of the shoe box, dropping a rat inside the wastebasket!

  “One…” was as far as the actives counted, before Wide-Load’s piercing screams rang out, followed by panic and hysteria, causing him to fall over onto the brick deck trying to climb out of the goddamn wastebasket that seemed to stick to the soles of his feet. But even while on the ground, the rat kept snapping at his cheese-covered, kicking feet trying to gnaw them.

  His continued, terrified, wailing suddenly was drown out by the rumbling engine of a black and white helicopter that became increasingly louder until its humming vibration was almost directly overhead and the beam of its bright searchlight shined directly down on us!

  Almost at the same time some sheriffs came running in the yard through the side gates shining their black, five-celled flashlights in our faces!

  Actually there weren’t that many cops there. I’m sure there were more at presidential assassinations. The cops, dressed in their tan and olive uniforms, stared at each of us, one-at-a-time, pointing and laughing like we were Martians. Then they started walking around the yard, searching and sniffing, no doubt for the source of the heavy, pungent pot smoke still hanging in the air like a giant umbrella. Meanwhile two other deputies were standing in front of each of the open side pathways preventing anybody from leaving. They probably thought we were scoring the biggest dope deal since The French Connection.

  Janus must’ve had nothing better to do tonight than screw around with us. He quickly pulled out a black wallet revealing a gold sheriff’s badge, flashing it to the cops. “I’m a reserve!” he yelled. Then he rushed over to the red-headed sergeant with the shiny brass name tag that said McCALL. “What the fuck you doing here, Mack?”

  “What the fuck you doing here Janus? Thought you already graduated from college.”

  “I did. Last year.”

  “So why you here?”

  “Having a little fun. That’s all. Helping my old college fraternity razz these guys a little.”

  “Who lives here?”

  “My folks,” Janus answered. “But it’s for sale. You saw the sign outside.”

  The sergeant looked around at us. “We don’t care what’s happening unless somebody got hurt.” His eyes scanned the crowd. “Anybody injured?”

  Nobody spoke up.

  “Where they from?” he asked Janus.

  “College at the Sea in Santa Monica,” came Adams’ slurred answer.

  “How’d they get here?”

  “Yel-low truck outside,” Adams answered, his eyes glazed like a blind man’s.

  The sergeant spit lightly with each word he spoke. “You’re drunk.” He looked around at the rest of us again. “Anybody here think they can drive the truck back over the mountains?”

  “Me!” Rainey called out. “I’m sober.”

  The sergeant approached at Rainey. “What’re you dressed as?”

  “Muff Diving Melvin the Methodical Muncher,” he answered straight-faced as the sergeant sniffed the air from Rainey’s breath.

  “You seem OK to drive. Take everybody out of here who came in the truck.” Then he turned to the rest of the guys. “Everybody with a car, give us your keys. You can pick them up in the morning at the station.”

  The sergeant pointed to a stocky, blond deputy wearing yellow-lens sunglasses who looked unhappy about something. “Gabe, you find anything?”

  “Just two kegs and a couple of joints. They must’ve dumped the other shit in the ivy as we arrived.”

  “Any stash, bongs, baggies, owe-sheets, scales?”

  “No,” he answered disappointedly. “But almost everybody’s under age for drinking. We got them on that.”

  “Oh, come on,” Janus pleaded. “Big fucking deal. A little booze and a few roaches. “We’ll pour out the beer. OK?”

  “Fine, but nobody drives away except the Muff Diver guy.”

  “Thanks a lot, Mack,” Janus mumbled. “The other guys can sleep here tonight.”

  A short, skinny deputy with high cheekbones and hollow, deep-set eyes walked around collecting sets of car keys.

  “You guys going in the truck, get out of here now,” the sergeant ordered. “We’re going to follow you a little down the hill to make sure you’re driving OK.”

  Adams followed us outside to the truck. He seemed a little more sober all of a sudden. He looked around at each of us slowly, counting on his fingers. “Pledge count,” he said, rubbing his glassy eyes. “Grossberg, do a pledge count. Somebody’s missing.”

  Grossberg walked around and counted us three times. “Wide-Load’s missing,” he finally announced.

  Great news! That fat-ass bastard’s gone no
w, leaving just sixteen of us.

  Adams smiled, opening the back of the truck. “You guys got a reprieve tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll play the other games we didn’t get to tonight and some new ones too.” He paused for a second before adding, “And more importantly, to narrow down the pledge class some more.”

  PART 4

  PENIS &

  PENICILLIN

  16

  HER CLIT RING

  Tuesday, January 21

  3:15 P.M.

  “WANT TO SEE MY CLIT RING?” a throaty voice called out from inside the brightly-lit bathroom through the open door at the Venice Sober Living House.

  I flinched, mostly from surprise but partly from revulsion. With a face the size and shape of a coconut, she was hardly my choice to turn me on with a preview of a golden stream.

  Unashamedly, she stood up, wiped herself with toilet paper, flushed the toilet, and kicked her jeans off from around her ankles. I guess she forgot to wear panties.

  “Look,” she said pointing to the silver loop that seemed to go right through her clit. “Come on in. You can see it better.”

  “No thanks.”

  She twisted around and mooned me, facing the mirror over the sink and ran her left hand through her shoulder-length, brown hair that must’ve been brushed with a rake.

  “I’ll do all three inputs for some shit to get high on.”

  “Sorry. Don’t have anything.”

  I walked down the hall and into a front bedroom that Vysell and I were painting.

  Before I could tell him about this screwball, she walked in the room.

  “Hi, I’m Jackie D,” she said, lightly licking her tongue while staring at Vyell’s crotch. “Know why they call me that?”

  “No,” he answered, partly looking at her while still sliding the white paint roller up and down the chipped walls.

  “Because I’ve gripped the necks of Jack Daniel’s bottles more times than you guys have gripped your cocks.”