Dolomite's Ranting
sept 2000

 

     My fellow readers of The Hold, I know that lately I have been telling tales form my own experience. However, this Ranting deals with my brother. I say this because this is a tale of one of his first drunken exploits. I first heard this tale a few weeks ago around a campfire, surrounded by a bunch of drunken guys, all friends of my brother. So this one goes out to my brother, a man that believes that drinking to excess is for the patient, but drinking to unconsciousness is a worthy cause.

     It all happened about three or four years ago. My brother and his friend Tim had just broken up with their respective girlfriends and both were in a horrible mood. It was the Fourth of July, a day known for loud noises and bright pyrotechnics, and both boys were two of the most depressed high school graduates I had ever seen. Anyway, their friend Hutch called them up and invited them to an "office party." I write that in quotations because Hutch worked at a fireworks warehouse on the border, and this was more of an orgy of drinking than a mere party. Like any depressed men, both Tim and my brother agreed whole-heartedly. The fireworks depot was on the border of the state. I mention this only because of the odd fact that only one state legalized the sale of many of the fireworks sold there, but only the other one permitted that usage of said fireworks. I find that humorous, but on to the story.
     When Tim and my brother arrived to the warehouse, Hutch came out and unlocked the fence along the outside of the building. Hutch was buzzed and staggered back to the building. As he opened the door, a menagerie of drunken fools were strewn out before them. Amazingly, they were smoking cigarettes while leaning against crates of fireworks. This did not bother Tim or Steve (my brother). It should have.
     Now, I must admit a few things. One, I was not there to witness any of this. I heard this from a bunch of drunken guys eager to make everyone else laugh. Two, these boys were fresh out of high school and had not built up their tolerances to the respectable fraternity/lawyer levels that most males wish to achieve. Finally, my family has been well known to do stupid things while drunk. My Uncle Willard shot himself in the foot while hunting in a drunken stupor. Normally this would not be a stupid thing, except for the fact that he was lying belly down in the woods at the time.
     As I somewhat hinted toward, the boys quickly drank themselves drunk, as was the fashion of this party. Also, as I hinted, Steve (my brother) drank himself into a stupor much greater than those surrounding him. He started out on beer, but quickly graduated to a bottle of whiskey. After chugging half the bottle, he jumped on a nearby table. The odd thing wasn't that he jumped on the table, but that he made it without falling or spilling. Since he recently had seen That Thing You Do, he yells out to the surrounding crowd, "I am Spartacus! I have lead you here! I am Spartacus!" Then he fell right on his ass, pissed his pants, and passed out. Tim and Hutch, seeing no other way, dragged him to a nearby empty room. It was the janitor's closet. They laid him out and tried to pry the bottle from his hand. It was the attempt to take his liquor that woke Steve. He flailed his arms, got up, and had an odd look on his face. He motioned toward his stomach, then the sink, and finally his mouth. Tim, starting to sober up since Steve had been hogging the bottle, and lead him to the sink. Steve stared down, smiled, and pissed his pants again. Then he fell back and was out cold again.
     The next few hours are unknown to me. I was never told these because the guys were telling stories of my brother, who had passed out much earlier that evening around the fire. But back to the story. Later, Steve woke up. He staggered out to the party, found Hutch and Tim, then found his bottle of whiskey. A few minutes before this, someone mentioned the idea of celebrating the date by lighting a few fireworks. General consensus agreed that everyone could light one firework. When Steve found out, he grabbed the biggest thing he could find. It was about the size and shape of a barrel. He took it out to where everyone else was, and watched the pretty colors in the sky.
     It took a few minutes, but eventually he remembered that he had one to light as well. He grabbed the nearest lighter, lit the fuse, and moved back to watch it go. The fuse ran down, the whole barrel started to shake violently, and a bright streak of light headed for the sky. "That's it?" my brother asked in disgust to no one in particular. He kicked the thing just as the third streak of light headed for the sky. The barrel fell on its side and continued to fire streaks of hot light out of its top, which was now its side. Those streaks of light headed right toward the other fireworks. Suddenly all hell broke loose. Steve, always a calm and rational person, shoved three people down in front of him and yelled out, "Run, the fireworks have turned against their masters. Unless you people have death wishes, run for your lives!"
     Somehow, beyond any drunk's idea of reason, the cops managed to show up. How they figured the loud noise and unscheduled fireworks could have been coming from the fireworks warehouse is beyond me. Thankfully, the fence was locked and they could not get in. Most people had seen the cops, but my brother decided to make sure by yelling out the classic and never forgotten, "Hide the hooch and run, it's the pigs." He then ran. However, while everyone was running away from the locked out cops, Steve ran toward them. He eventually smacked into the fence in front of the cops. He then tried to climb the fence. He had made one step onto the fence when he fell off of it. He did not realize that he had fallen off the fence and was still climbing, on his back and on the dirt, when Tim and Hutch yelled for him to get his ass out of the front yard. He then crawled, army style, back to his friends. Though the details were never told to me, somehow the three amigos managed to get out of Dodge and got back to Hutch's place without another incident from the law.
     This story was humorous in many ways. One, I was drunk and hearing one of Steve's drunken exploits while someone was shoving miniature bars of soap up his ass. Another reason was that Steve remembers none of this (both the story and the bars of soap, he shit those out while sleeping). Finally, well, read the damn story and find out! That's all for now. Next month will be a Ranting like the normal kind. Its just too far into the summer to give you people a decent story that don't embarrass the great Dolomite too much. Let me get back to college first.

Dolomite

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