Extremely Swag & Incredibly Close

“Welp, that got out of hand. No one saw that coming.”

Swag began the first Sunday of his 31st year with a blatant lie—albeit one saturated with sarcasm. He knew everyone else could obviously see what was coming two weeks before that, when we got the Facebook event invite for his birthday party. You don’t put “Swag,” “Saturday,” “birthday,” and “McFadden’s” into the same calendar entry and come away with something sensible and understated, in much the same way that you don’t put Justin Bieber, a microphone, an auto-tune machine, and peppermint schnapps into the same room and expect to get good music.

When I got to his place just before 7 p.m. that night, I was stunned. He had told me to come over anytime between 2 and 7; surely, I assumed, getting there at the tail end of that window could only mean finding the man of honor in a rapidly worsening, blindingly drunk state. Instead he was calm and alert, as though the Miller Lite in his hand was secretly a Fresca in an elaborate disguise. I guess not starting your day with Four Loko has a positive endgame. Ah, maturity.

Also on hand: TD, Skeets, Tony, Bobbo, MoPaddle, and Mr. MoPaddle. JL showed up not long after I did. We all BS’d on the deck for another hour or so, empty beer cans falling everywhere like bullet casings in a Rambo movie. By 8 we were grabbing roadies and heading out the door to catch the T. Swag, JL, and Bobbo took a few swigs from a Fireball Whiskey bottle before they got past the dining room, and squinted as they emerged into the cooling August twilight. Upon reaching the T station, Swag admitted, “That shot of Fireball was probably a bad idea.”

When we stepped off the train, we were on the North Shore, which at this point feels like home. Weatherman was waiting for us at McFaddens when we walked in. T.C. and Gaelic Gangsta stopped by after leaving the Stealers preseason game not much later. If Swag remembers any of them being there, I’d be amazed.

We found a table out on the patio, and set up shop with the Pittsburgh skyline behind us. Most of our party ordered beers; JL, though, decided gin & tonics for himself and Swag were the best course of action; I sensed the beginning of the end.

But if his ship’s already sinking, why not send Swag off in style? I voyaged inside to the bar to get him a shot of Crown. Along the way, I (literally) ran into a fella named Adam. Being cool people, he laughed off the accident. Since he had been on the way to buy a shot of his own, he asked if I wanted one too. It’s not my birthday, but…ok. Have you ever felt booze change your odds? Like, you feel as though you have an 80% chance of making it home alive that night, and then you pour a specific cup of alcohol down your throat, and that number plummets to 40%? Yeah, welcome to my world.

I thanked Adam for the shot, collected the drinks I’d ordered for Swag and I, and headed back to our base. The pride I felt over spilling the bare minimum of alcohol on my way back was quickly subdued by having to drink the shot I hadn’t spilled. Hadn’t counted on that…

An hour or so later, I was due for another trip to the bar. Noticing Swag was near the bottom of his beer, I asked, “Want another one?”

Swag: “Yeah, I’ll take a shot.”
Me: *blinks*

Inside at the bar, I flagged down the bartender and ordered two shots and two beers. Weatherman appeared a little further down the rail, and noticed me as he was about to place his own order. “You want a shot?”

Me: “I’m buying shots for Swag and me.”
Weatherman: *beat* “…so do you want a shot?”
Me: *beat* “Yeah, sure.”

It’s not like I expected this night to go any differently.

It wasn’t much later that, while laughing with everyone on the patio, I turned to find an ominous sight: Three bouncers were lined up outside the railing, waiting for Swag to fall into their grasp. “He’s too drunk to be here,” one of them called out. JL, Bobbo, and I formed a human wall between Swag and the vultures, and held it while Skeets got him cups of water and he worked to reestablish himself in the human race. Once he was well enough to walk under his own power, JL and Skeets took Swag back to the T station. It wasn’t even midnight yet.

With the man of honor heading home on a train, the rest of the party quickly dissolved. Tony and I switched venues to Rivers, and in doing so caught up with Special K and Shelly, who were out for K’s niece’s birthday. A short time later he and I found ourselves at the casino’s central bar, Levels, talking to a couple of girls who were the Tim Tebows of interesting conversation; they probably got a lot of false praise from critics with ulterior motives while they were in college, but they had no business being on a field with pros. After one had droned on for a solid five minutes about some pointless story, Tony just laughed and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this bored before!”

They were not amused. There was a lot of squawking that I immediately tuned out, focusing instead on my beer. Tony laughed uncontrollably at himself as they stormed off. Apparently they headed for the ladies’ room, where Shelly happened to be; she said that they were still denouncing our respective lineages when they got there. We must’ve really won their hearts.

It’s probably worth noting that I have no clue what either of those two women looks like. And that’s not even due to the two weeks that have passed since that night. *shrug* Thank god they didn’t ambush us outside the casino. I never would have been able to identify them in a police lineup.

Sooner or later the homie and I made our way back to Swag’s via taxi. I initially fell asleep on a recliner in the living room. After a short time there, though, I remembered that Mitch Canada was out of state, and his bed was wide open. I went upstairs and passed out. I next awoke around 8 a.m.; I was back on the recliner, and Tony was upstairs in Mitch’s bed. The “hows” and “whys” of that game of musical chairs will never be settled.

When I awoke in the living room that second time, an episode of The Golden Girls was playing on the TV. I fell back asleep for another hour and a half; when I awoke again, The Golden Girls was still playing on the TV. Just when I thought I was going crazy, Swag—who had come downstairs feeling brand new—asked, “Why is Golden Girls still on?”

“you're a pal and a confidant.
And if you threw a party,
Invited everyone you knew,
You would see the biggest gift would be from me,
And the card attached would say thank you for being a friend…”

Tony headed home. Swag, JL, and I tried to piece together the previous 24 hours. Skeets came downstairs for a brief appearance, aided our efforts, and then went back upstairs. Swag anxiously awaited an 11 o’clock readout on the cable box, which would signal that Fiori’s had opened for the day. After some pizza and a few more episodes of Golden Girls, I made the move towards my car. The sunlight blinded my eyes, and my head thumped with every breath of fresh air.

I most certainly saw that coming.

Slash and Burn

“So, were you at Chesney?” The ER nurse didn’t even look up from her paperwork while saying it.

And, in fairness, I really didn’t have to answer. My bloody cargo shorts, body smelling of sweated alcohol, and 10:30 p.m. visit to UPMC Mercy spoke for me. It was more of a rhetorical question, anyways. Kind of like when you stumble while walking with someone, and they ask, “Walk much?” Sarcasm is the one luxury afforded to those who must suffer the fools.

*********************************************************************************************

It was a little after 11 a.m. when I parked in front of Jay Swag’s house, but I instantly—and, hindsight being 20/20, prematurely—chalked the day in the “Win” category. Four beautiful 20-somethings with tight, revealing tops and even tighter, even more revealing shorts were gathered on his porch. One—tall, mixed, and of King Magazine cover proportions—I quickly recognized as Liz, a friend of Swag’s that I had met once or twice. The other three were faces I wasn’t acquainted with, though none were making it easy to maintain eye contact long enough to know for sure.

Swag: “Sup dude.”
Me: *In my head, while beaming like a kid who had just walked through the doors of Toys ‘R’ Us* “…Wow.”

This, of course, was the one thing I had been consistently hit over the head with each and every time friends tried, in years past, to convince me to go to the Kenny Chesney concert: You’ve never seen as many hot, nearly naked women as you will at this tailgate. Last year, that stream of relentless hyperbole was finally validated when I attended my first Chesney tailgate. I walked through parking lots so chock full of tanned, toned female flesh that you could’ve mistaken the entire scene for a Michael Bay remake of Bikini Beach. You literally could create a “Chesney Concert Girls” Tumblr page and stock it with a year’s worth of material from just that one day every June.

Liz and her friends—a slender stunner with dark eyes and hair; a smoldering redhead with great curves and girl-next-door beauty; and an energetic, Italian brunette who looked like she belonged in party pictures from the Playboy Mansion—had begun dipping into their cooler bag, which was filled with cans of Bud Light Lime. Swag invited me to grab myself a beer from the fridge. I returned to the porch with two stacked Miller Lites in my right hand and confessed, “I got two.”

After some discussion between Swag and I about auto body repair, and between the girls about anal suction (ask Liz, not me), we all headed for the T. The train was already nearing capacity when we stepped on board, and we still had to pass through five more stops teeming with guys and gals giddy on the one day a year they wear their cowboy hats. We were crammed together, and surrounded by overgrown frat bros who alternated between repeatedly trying—and repeatedly failing—to get “Let’s go Bucs!” chants going, and not-so-subtly nodding and making reference to Liz and her girls (…and their “girls”). Oh well, at least there was cold beer from the cooler bag.

In the year since my last Chesney tailgate, I’ve become a regular on Pittsburgh’s North Shore. Every morning, Monday through Friday, I park in a garage down the street from PNC Park, walk over to North Side Station, and take the escalator down into the city’s underground. And every evening, on my way home, I drag myself in the opposite direction up the towering incline, towards daylight. But arriving at the top of that escalator on Chesney Saturday bore no resemblance to any other time I’ve done it over the past seven months. It’s like your attention span is a Marine standing on a WWII landing craft as the gate comes down. Suddenly sensory impulses are flying at you from every angle: music, noise, skin, pickup trucks, cowboy hats, heat, smells of food, smells of booze, bikini tops, and frenetic bustle covers every square foot of concrete as far as the eye can see. Making it to the beach Gold Lot 2 is a victory in itself.

We found Bill’s annual tailgate party, and got down to business. Swag and I handed over our cover fees and grabbed drinks. The girls had another party they wanted to stop by, so they asked us to wait there for them and headed off. I sipped from my cup of alcoholic lemonade (there was a whole Gatorade cooler of it there; Bill is apparently a fellow student of Ron White), while surveying the landscape in and beyond the party. The scene may be the closest to the definition of “bacchanalia” that any non-swinger will ever know. When Swag mentioned that his girlfriend, Skeets, would be joining us later that afternoon, I expressed pity for him—and I like Skeets. But a Chesney tailgate is no place to endure the limitations of monogamy.

During a brief lull in conversation, Swag suddenly pivoted and headed off towards the port-o-johns. I didn’t think much about it, other than to note that the need to urinate would have to be particularly strong to convince anyone to wait in the lines that stretched around the block. I continued schmoozing with Bill and other guests (including one friend who carried with him a Mason jar filled with a much stronger lemonade mix). Our host expressed gratitude for the visual delights that I had brought to the party, even if they had only been there briefly. Sadly though, his girlfriend, too, was due to arrive soon—and I like Janna. When Swag finally returned to the party, he succinctly explained to me why he had left so suddenly: “Thought I sharted. Had to go deal with it.”

We were far from the only members of our crew who were roaming the wilds of the North Shore Thunderdome that afternoon. Alex, Shannon, and others were a half mile away, camped out closer to PNC Park (Alex had tweeted—while I was still on the train—that she was on her way to being “looped”; she would be in bed by 6 p.m.). LRG, to my amazement, was also tweeting from some unidentified parking lot near us; all attempts at coordinating a meeting with him failed. Entertainer seemed to be the nearest to our position: He was over by the Clark Building, drinking shirtless—that part was a guess, but a pretty odds-on one.

The girls returned, as I worked on my second—third?—third cup of alcoholmonade. We journeyed off with them in search of one of their friends’ parties. All Liz knew was that the party was “by the Clark Building.” This superior field intelligence resulted in the six of us trekking through every foot of parking lot around the building. While walking through the tailgate tent city that stood under the overpass, I couldn’t help but note the feel of a rowdy refugee camp in the air. The air was thicker; the tone was darker, tenser. Dark Eyes grabbed me a Bud Light Lime from the bag; I gulped it down as a coping mechanism as we soldiered on towards brighter terrain. In a small lot located at the base of a cliff, we found both Entertainer’s and Liz’s friends’ parties. And Entertainer was shirtless. I suddenly wished I’d bet someone on that.

While Entertainer was called away by some minor event, Swag and I grabbed beers from his cooler and took cover in the shade at the foot of the cliff. As we stood there bullshitting, I casually turned and looked up the steep hillside…to find a girl halfway up it with her pants around her knees, hovering on a small ledge, pissing. I turned back around and took another sip. Chesney, man.

Down at our altitude, two cute girls—a blonde and an Asian girl—were nervously circling the area. Finally they explained their problem: They had to pee, but didn’t want people watching them as they did. Prudes. I told them to squat behind one of the cars parked in the spots at the base of the hill, and that we would turn around while they did. Out of better options, they dipped down behind a Nissan to our right. After a few minutes, I noticed the blonde walking back out into the parking lot, alone. I turned to find the Asian girl still squatting, looking frustrated.

Me: “You’re still pissing?!”
Asian Girl: “I have a shy bladder!”

Swag and I headed back to Bill’s party to meet up with Skeets, who was finally arriving. Shortly after we got back, Janna passed out Jell-O shots to go with our alcholmonade. Yeah, I could feel all of this going to a good place. We decided to investigate some of the parties that stretched out closer to Heinz Field, in search of…someone. By this point in the day, I’m more amazed that I was standing than disappointed in my recordkeeping. I know we found Rushel Shell for the second time (Swag had spotted him walking past during our first stop at Bill’s party), who informed us that he was trying to return to Pitt. [That, of course, was a failed venture, as would be announced a couple of days later.]

From there, my next clear memory, after walking through various North Shore tailgate parties, is the three of us being on the South Side. For those unfamiliar with Pittsburgh and its geography, at a minimum that transition is typically a solid cab ride spanning two different rivers. And I have no idea how it all happened, and if a cab was even involved. Damn alcoholmonade.

What I’ve since learned from Skeets, however, is that before we ever left the North Shore, we walked over to Rivers to eat dinner. Swag even found photographic evidence on his iPhone; the three of us are gathered at a table full of food in Wheelhouse. To this day I have absolutely zero recollection of this, though I clearly remember the events that followed it in the South Side. …Chesney alcoholmonade.

We went to Mario’s South Side to catch up with TD at Jenn’s bachelorette party. And, as an unforeseen consequence, that resulted in me having to see and speak to BIO for the first time since August. [Guilty of whore crimes, all personal and public record of her was subsequently napalmed. And yet, that persistent, hot ass fought its way through the debris to get in my face, quite literally. Fun.] We moved on to Rumshakers; and then, sometime later…

We were heading elsewhere when Swag, who had decided he wanted a tattoo, broke loose. Skeets spoke the words that were already in my head: “Go get him!” I took off down the sidewalk of Carson St. in pursuit. And then I crumpled to the ground. And strangers on the sidewalk around me had recoiled in disgust. Fun fact: Fire hose fittings protruding from the sides of buildings are impervious to human flesh. Who knew? A girl walking past with her boyfriend was Johnny-on-the-spot with a rag to apply pressure. Though I’m grateful to her for her kindness, concern, and assistance [Seriously, if you’re reading this, Miss, I owe you and your man each a drink; click on my profile name below to contact me by email.] she kept overreacting by saying that the cut was so deep that my bone was showing. It was not. But I was going to need stitches, at a minimum.

As I sat on the ground talking to Skeets and the strangers about my next move, Swag randomly came jogging back past, headed in the opposite direction. When I yelled at him, he strolled back over and said, incredulously, “What? What happened?” Thankfully, our buddy Jay—a bartender at Rumshakers—also happened past, his shift just having ended. He ran and got his car, we hopped in, and he zipped us to Mercy.

I never wanted to watch S.W.A.T., but I caught the bulk of it while laid up in the emergency room. Skeets and a remorseful Swag waited patiently for me in the waiting room while a doctor stapled me together, and I freaked out people on Facebook with a picture of the open wound. As bad as it looked, though, I never really felt much pain. Thank you, alcoholmonade. After my leg had been bandaged up and I was released, I rejoined my friends, and we joked around on the sidewalk outside the hospital as we awaited our cab at 2 a.m.

Me: “Call Liz.”
Swag: “Why?”
Me: “I want one of her friends to come be my private nurse tonight.”

Dark Country

The muffled bars of Childish Gambino’s “Lights Turned On” broke me from the blackness of unfiltered sleep, and into the bright, balmy late-morning air that filled my bedroom last Saturday.

“Swag…
2:30 and we still makin’ progress,
Talkin’ on Twitter to see where to go next…”

My phone vibrated near my outstretched right hand. I picked it up and forced my eyes to focus on the screen. I didn’t recognize the number, so I hit ignore. I glanced over at the clock. 11:02 a.m. My phone buzzed with a new message; it was a text from the same number that had just called. “Hey are you down here for the tailgate?”

“Wait…” I said, picking my head up off the pillow. “I’m supposed to be at a country music tailgate right now…”

A little over a week before that, my friend Bill was once again attempting to persuade me to come to the tailgate party he and his boys throw each year for the Kenny Chesney concert. The show is a huge event in Pittsburgh every summer, and it brings in country music fans from as far away as western New York and Michigan. Bill, Steph, and others had petitioned me for years to come to the party. I flatly refused each and every time, usually countering by naming another activity I’d rather do than sit through a country music concert. Like…solder my tongue to a bus.

As we sat in Bossa Nova at a friend’s birthday party [Note: Their caipirinhas are still magical.] that Friday night, Bill finally won me over with a simple clarification. When I reminded him that I love nothing less than country music, he laughed it off. “I hate it too! I don’t actually go into the concert; I just go to McFadden’s once everyone else goes to the show.” Now he had my ear. And so, when he then reminded me—for the 5,309th time—that the tailgate is always packed with scantily-clad tail, I finally saw the wisdom in exploring this local tradition. You know, for the blog. Yup. *sips drink*

As the week had went on, Dupa and Jay Swag were convinced to join me. Armo decided to have a pool party that same Saturday, and the forecast of temps in the mid-90s indicated that making our way to his place to end the day would be in our best interest. I made preliminary plans to meet up with Dupa and Swag on Mt. Washington around 11 a.m…

…Well, that part was going to have to be amended. I climbed out of bed, exchanging texts with each of them as I looked for my phone charger. My Droid's battery was at less than 20%; which, for a smartphone, means it was running on fumes. When my charger wasn’t in its usual place, I remembered having put it in the gym bag I’d taken with me the night before—I had gone to Dupa’s to pregame by his pool before catching “Ted” on its opening night [absolutely hilarious film, by the way]. And my bag, more than likely, was still in the trunk of my car. I grabbed my keys and stumbled out to my garage, hitting the trunk button along the way. When I didn’t hear the normal sound of the trunk unlocking, I looked up: My garage was empty. What…the…fuuuuuuccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkk?…

11:21 a.m. text to Swag and Dupa: “Ok, got a whole new problem. My car is missing.”

Part of me felt I should call the police. Another, much more logical part of me felt that my propensity for drunken foolishness may be a more likely culprit than a thief. I threw on a shirt and some sneakers, grabbed a bottle of Gatorade, and trudged up the sidewalk. I could only guess that maybe I had, for whatever reason, parked on the street instead the night before. Then, about halfway up my block, a memory jolted awake inside of me: On my way home from Dupa’s place, I had met up with Pakistanimal at Shady Grove. And I had parked near the bar. It seemed probable, then, that I had never moved my car from that spot. The fact that I had no clue if I had, indeed, left my car at the bar—and barely remembered being at the bar at all—made me all the more thankful that this scenario was the most likely one. I found my Bavarian chariot exactly where I had parked it the night before, now with a fresh parking ticket tucked under one of the wipers.

By 1:10 p.m. I was at the Wendy’s drive-thru, picking up some spicy chicken fortitude and receiving confirmation from Dupa that my sunglasses weren’t at his place, which meant I had, indeed, lost them the night before. The very same sunglasses that I’d bought less than two weeks before, to replace the pair I’d ruined at the Furry Safari. Which were purchased in March to replace a pair Dupa stole from me the day after the Super Bowl…

There’s a reason I buy my shades at Target.

I met up with Dupa at his place, parked my car in his apartment building’s garage for safekeeping (I wasn’t going to risk losing it again), and rode with him to Swag’s house. Once Swag had made some quick modifications to his facial hair (see right) and we’d done a shot of Dr. McGillicuddy’s Mentholmint, the three of us set off for the nearby T station. Dupa had brought half a case of Miller Lite with him, but by the time we were boarding the train there were only three cans left. And since Swag is continuing to obey the open container laws while on probation, that damage was done entirely by Dupa and me.

Once we reached the North Shore’s parking lots, where container laws don’t apply, Swag joined us in killing the remaining beers. We waded through thick 95 degree air and thicker swarms of people, many in cowboy hats and little other clothing. The attire for this tailgate has always been described to me as “slutty casual”, and those reports came in years where Pittsburgh wasn’t suffering through a record heat wave. With the sun burning away any fucks that people might otherwise have given, nary a Chesney fan in this land—male or female—hid behind stitched modesty. While surveying this landscape, we walked right into Bill’s party, completely by accident. Even the drunken squirrel finds a nut. They had cornered a large section of Gold Lot 2; here we found music pumping (mostly hip-hop, I believe), kegs tapped, a buffet of food set up, and red plastic cups a-tippin’.

We stopped only briefly, as we each needed to hit an ATM, and had other people we wanted to catch up with first. We walked along the river, taking in the sight of hundreds of boats docked with people partying and dancing everywhere, many of those people being young, tanned women in bikinis. I mentioned I was doing all of this strictly for the blog, right?

Swag broke off to catch up with Belle and her posse, while Dupa and I found Shannon and her girls crowded under a 5’-by-5’ blue canvas tent, tucked in amongst a hundred others like it, a broad ocean of asphalt, sweat, and beer away from Gold Lot 2. They fed us cans of Labatt Blue while we hung out, and we appreciated the cold sustenance and familiar faces.

Occasionally I looked around to find an inquisitive eye staring at me from a pickup truck or tent in the wilds beyond Shannon’s plot of land. Let’s face it, a Kenny Chesney concert tailgate isn’t the well-trodden domain of my people; when I did happen upon a fellow person “of color”, we gave each other knowing nods, as if to say, “The world done changed, homie.” Yet, what struck me more than how many people stared at me, was how many people didn’t stare at me. The overwhelming majority of revelers seemed indifferent to the fact that a 6’6” half-Black man was walking amongst them at a country music concert. The world done changed, homie.

Dupa and I journeyed off to Bill’s party once more. Upon arriving we found Swag, Belle, and the other gals, including Stacks and “AIDS”. [Note: This nickname is real, though it is hardly based in reality. The story, in a nutshell: Upon meeting this cute blonde friend of Belle’s for the first time some years ago, Swag thought it would be charming and/or clever to tell her that she looked like she had AIDS. Needless to say, it didn’t win her heart.] While her girls wore shorts and little t-shirts, AIDS went all-in with a little pink cowgirl hat, a tiny blue bikini, and cowgirl boots. “I told you,” she reminded us, “I don’t really like wearing clothes.”

By around 6 p.m. Dupa, Swag, and I were ready to switch things up, since everyone else (save for Bill and a few of his boys) was heading into the concert. The three of us flagged down a cab, and headed for Diamond Market Bar & Grill in Market Square. I know I ate while we were there, but all I really remember consuming was Moscow Mules. Swag disappeared mid-meal, and was gone a long while. Just when we had begun formulating plans for moving on without him (and eventually exacting revenge upon him for ditching us), he reappeared with a look of pure glee on his face. He had gone outside to smoke a cigarette; while out there, he ran into the ex-WWF wrestler Virgil. Twenty minutes of conversation and an autograph later, Swag was like a kid that had just met Mickey Mouse. He was so giddy, in fact, that he volunteered to pay the bill. All plans for revenge were scrapped.

We caught another cab; Swag, being averse to all things swimming pool, had us drop him off at his second home, Rumshakers. Dupa and I continued to his car on Mt. Washington, and then found our way to Armo’s. My Polish homie was soon snoring from an inflatable raft as the breeze gently pushed it to every corner of the pool. I occupied the rest of my night swimming, eating burgers from the grill, and kicking it with TJ and other party guests. I awoke the next morning to Armo poking my arm, for no other reason than his sheer desire to not be the only one awake. For a solid five minutes I puzzled my mind around how I had even gotten there. A short time later, as Armo drank a Bloody Mary to kick off his Sunday Funday and Dupa moaned like an orgasm-faking porn star from the kitchen for no reason whatsoever, a thought popped into my mind.

“Wait...I was at a country music tailgate yesterday…”

Grand Opening

I caught the T—Pittsburgh’s light rail system—from Mt. Washington to the North Shore with Jay Swag, Mitch Canada, and a train full of baseball fans at a little after 9 on the morning of the Pirates’ 2012 Home Opener. When a crazy old man pulling a cart loaded with baglady-like possessions sat down by us and started conversing with at Swag about any number of random topics, we all suddenly wished we were a little further along in the day’s drinking. I slid on my sunglasses and looked at the ceiling; in doing so, I snuck a peek at Canada, who had put his head down with his hands over his eyes in the world’s most prolonged and awkward game of peek-a-boo. Swag was left to entertain the ramblings of the vagrant alone. As we passed under the Allegheny River, the man jovially proclaimed that a leak would lead to all of our watery deaths.

In my head: “Why in the hell did I leave my flask at home?”

After leaving the T station on the North Shore, our first stop was at Tilted Kilt to use the ATM. We each decided to have a beer (Bud Light pounders, for the record), and to catch up with our favorite set of booze-hocking boobs, Mary. And Kilt’s employee dress code suited her particular skillset quite well (see right). While we talked, Swag suddenly focused off in the distance and asked, “Why does the girl with the fantastic rump not have to wear a uniform?” Mary explained that the rump belonged to the manager, and stopped it her as it she came walking past.

After being introduced to the three of us, the manager explained how much she loved Mary: “I told her; I want my boyfriend to impregnate her!”

We finally made it to Mudd’s tailgate party, and started hitting the hooch with workman-like precision. As per usual, we were surrounded by a formidable force of familiar faces: TD, Boy Toy, Dupa, TJ, Sloku, Beard, Stef, our boy Garrett, our girls “Cool Boobs” and “Bring It On” (BIO), Chad and his homie, and a sunny concrete sea of other drunken characters. As usual, Mudd had the party hooked up with everything we needed. Tub of iced-down cans of beer? Check. Grill cooking up burgers and hot dogs? Check. Cupcakes, pretzels, chips, pasta salad? Check, check, check, check. Gummy worms that had been soaked in vodka for a week? Yessir...

Unlike in past years, the party was actually a conglomeration of two or three total parties, stretching across two rows of Gold Lot 1, creating a solid territory of six or seven parking spots. The Piss Box was located on the other side of this expanse, between two trucks belonging to affiliates of Mudd that my crew doesn’t know. Mudd assured us, though, that it was there for use by everyone in his party. But when I led TD, Cool Boobs, and BIO over for a quick pit stop (I was going to block bystanders’ view from one side of the “alleyway” between the trucks), the owner of one of the trucks got agitated. “Piss Grinch” bitched about the girls opening the doors to his truck [they planned to use them as an added privacy measure—a practice we had seen others employ] and chased them off. When this was reported to Mudd, he escorted TD over and talked out the situation with Piss Grinch while she took care of business. The whole confrontation had made TD nervous, though; so much so, in fact, that when she felt as though she was taking too long to finish the job, she pulled up her pants abruptly. This resulted in a noticeable wet spot on the back of her jeans. Initially embarrassed, TD—who was already twisted like Janet’s “Poetic Justice” braids when I got to the party—was soon dancing around and telling everyone that she had pissed her pants. *sigh* She’s like the little sister I never had.

The animosity imparted by Piss Grinch had stuck with Cool Boobs and BIO, though, and near the end of our parking lot time the girls were eager to exact some kind of revenge. First, they thought of pouring the contents of the Piss Box onto Grinch’s Escalade. I vehemently advised against that—murder sentences have been lightened for less. As an alternative, the ladies resolved to sit the very full box o’urine on his hood. Again, a bad idea, and I disavowed myself from any involvement. When the two wannabe pranksters ran over to carry out the deed, however, they were shocked to find Grinch relaxed in the Escalade’s driver seat, asleep. They halted their operation and returned to base. “You know what would be great?” I offered. “If someone were to drag the box over to the driver’s side door, so that he’d step in it as he got out of the truck…” The ladies’ faces lit up like watchtower lights, and they ran back to carry out my idea. After they had scurried back, we all decided it was time to head inside. Dupa needed to urinate before doing so, though; a minute later he returned from the Piss Box. “Yeah, he’s definitely awake,” he reported. “I looked over while I was pissing and [Piss Grinch] was staring back at me. I nodded like, ‘What up?’”

We headed into Tilted Kilt. While Swag, Canada, and I ordered ourselves a round of beers from Mary, Dupa ordered a round of shots at the bar. Why walk through the gates of Hell, when you can sprint? As we talked after doing the shots, I quickly learned that not only had Dupa bought shots, but he’d bought a round of Captain & Cokes. Oh…my…gawd. We had polished off four or five cases of beer in the parking lot alone. I could only hope to land softly, wherever and whenever that may be.

A short while later, my Polish homie was standing in front of me with an unknown female friend.

Dupa: “This is [seemingly random girl’s name]. She lives in West Mifflin.”
Me: “Oh really? What part?”
Girl: *pause* “I live next door to your mother.”
Me: “Huh? How so? [‘L.’] lives next door to my mom.”
Girl: “I am ‘[L.]’…”
Me: *pause* “[L.]!”

Did I mention I’d been drinking? Not only have I known L. from being my mother’s neighbor for the past few years, but I’ve actually known her for the majority of my life. When we were kids, I hung out with her brother all of the time. Alcohol’s a hell of a drug.

Also making an appearance at Kilt was my homie B-Rush. B grew up in Pittsburgh, but moved to Vegas in 2004. Family matters had him back in his hometown for the week, and a free afternoon meant I could get him day drunk, as thanks for getting my boys and me hammered during Dupa’s dirty-thirty trip to Vegas. Within seconds of arriving, B had a Captain & Coke in his hand. The poor bastard never saw what hit him.

We moved to Dirty Harry’s, a dive bar in Station Square. Looking back on it now, I remember lots of us hanging out with (lots of) beer, games of darts, and laughter. But I don’t remember one intelligible conversation. In my head, the scene resembles a foreign film with no subtitles. Everyone in it knows what’s going on, but the audience watching at home is completely lost. And there really was no recovering from that point on. The end of the night found B, Swag, Canada, L., some others, and I at Rumshakers, capping the night with still more beer (and a minor case of heartburn for me, most likely from skipping dinner).

The next afternoon, as I nursed from a Gatorade bottle, I got a text from B. “I’m hungover. It’s all ur fault”.

Me: “Haha. It’s what we do.”
B: “Whatever n***a. I’m hungover as shit.”

Crazy Legs

One Friday night a few months ago, I decided to take a break from the heavy drinking. Even though some of my friends—including TJ, Jay Swag, and others—were supposed to be starting the weekend off with a happy hour on the North Shore, I chose to stay on the sidelines. I went to Rivers instead to play cards and work on inflating my bankroll. The night went well enough that I clocked out early; not long after midnight I found myself at home, lying on my couch and watching Chappelle’s “Killin’ Them Softly” as I slowly drifted asleep.

When my phone rang around twenty after one, I expected it to be one of my drunken friends busting my balls for not being out boozing with the rest of them. That, or Jamie Chung was in town and wanted me to come visit her in her hotel suite.

…so yeah, it was probably the drunk-friend-harassment thing.

The name that appeared on my screen was that of Mitch Canada. Now, understand that Mitch rarely calls me. I could probably count on one hand the number of phone calls I had received from him before that night, and there haven’t been any since. Mitch calling me after 1 a.m. on a Friday night wasn’t just unusual, it was downright alarming. And when I picked up, the tone of his voice didn’t offer any reassurance.

In exasperated, slightly impatient words, Mitch laid out the situation for me: Jay Swag had been arrested on a DUI charge. Yayy… The police had him in a holding cell in the West End; if no one picked him up before 2 a.m., they’d be sending him over to county, where he—and his suddenly vulnerable anal virginity—would have to stay until at least Monday morning. Mitch and “Courtney” (a female friend of theirs that had been out with the boys that night) were, of course, eager to get Swag home before the deadline. But everyone they knew was either out of town, asleep, or too drunk to drive down there. Everyone, that is, but one guy. Yayy…

I got the station address and information from Mitch, and assured him I could be there before 2. A thought came over me, though: It was technically Saturday morning by then, but…that Friday had been April 1st.

Me: “Mitch, if this is some kind of stupid April Fools’ prank, I swear to god…”
Mitch: “I promise you, man, it’s not a prank. This is real. [Swag] is really in jail.”

I arrived at the station around a quarter to 2. I thought about waiting outside for another ten minutes, just to make Swag sweat it out a little more, but my benevolent side prevailed. As I signed the paperwork, I heard his voice from the other side of the secured door, as an officer gave him a final admonishment. When they opened the door, a blinking, still-drunk Swag shuffled out. The officer unlocked his cuffs, and Swag looked at me like a child who knows he’s screwed up but really just wants a hug to be reassured that his dad still loves him.

As we walked to the car, Swag thanked me with every drop of gratitude in him. I told him it was ok; I knew he would’ve done the same for me in a heartbeat. I asked what exactly had happened; he sank into the passenger seat of my car and gave me the entire story from the top…

He had begun the night with the North Shore happy hour, as planned. When drinks returned to their normal prices, he, Mitch, and Courtney decided to relocate their shit show to Rumshakers in the South Side, Swag’s second home. Shots and drinks were ordered, and shots and drinks were drunk, over and over and over. By around 12, the three of them decided they were sufficiently sloppy, and that they should return to Mitch and Swag’s Mt. Washington home.

Here’s where it got dicey. Swag had been the driver earlier in the night, chauffeuring the other two around in the shiny ‘08 Mercedes C-Class that he had just purchased only two weeks earlier. Swag doesn’t come from money, and prior to that car he had been driving a 20 year old Pontiac that seemed to be begging to be put out of its misery. Taking chances with such a valuable new possession was not something he was up for. He decided a taxi was the way to go.

While Mitch and Courtney waited in the bar, Swag walked outside and tried to flag down a passing cab…for all of five minutes. Then, his patience thinned by alcohol much as his blood was, he began reexamining his situation. The drive to their place was short—barely five minutes. Catching a cab on Carson St. some Friday nights is a frustration only understood by Cubs fans and Sarah Palin’s fact-checkers. And there was a chance he might be able to get something going with Courtney that night. And he was driving a Mercedes…

Swag made his way to his car, several blocks away. He got in, started it up, looked up and down the street, and carefully pulled out of his parking spot. Five seconds later, as he neared a stop sign, police lights began flashing in his rearview. The typical response in this situation is to pull over to the side of the road and resign yourself to beating the rap. But this is Jay Swag; he’s anything but “typical” when he’s drunk. Two thoughts popped into his head:

1. If charged, this would be his second DUI (he received one while in college), which meant “bye-bye license”;
2. In high school he was an all-star on the track team.

Swag gunned it, speeding around the corner and to the next stop sign before the cop could react. He slammed on the brakes, screeching to a stop along the curb. He then hopped out of the car and bolted on foot into a series of townhouse complexes like a white, middle-class reenactment of “Juice”.

Kids, don’t try this at home.

In what might arguably be the craziest piece of this tale, though, his plan actually worked. He soon shook the officer chasing him. Eventually, Swag found himself lying on the ground amid the thick shrubbery that adorned one of the townhouses, listening to police as they swarmed the area. Squad cars came and went, the voices of officers and police radios grew nearer and then more distant; but no one knew where he was.

His impatience, however, was about to once again get the best of him. Swag had been lying in hiding for all of ten minutes when he decided that things had quieted down enough for him to make it to his car again undetected. [Now, obviously, this was a ridiculous idea. Every member of our crew, when hearing the story for the first time, asked why he didn’t think to escape on foot and report the car stolen. The question is an unintentional riddle though; the answer is that he simply wasn’t thinking.] He had gotten less than a block from his hiding spot when police spotted him and converged, drawing their weapons and yelling, “BLUE SWEATSHIRT—FREEZE!!”

Now, anyone who has ever had a run-in with the Pittsburgh Police will tell you, 75% of them are dickheads. The prototypical cocky, tough-behind-a-badge-but-a-pussy-otherwise jerks that would sooner tase and beat a civilian than acknowledge his civil rights. Despite the misfortune—deserved though it may have been—of getting arrested, Swag was still incredibly lucky, in that he got arrested by one of the 25% of the force who are actually decent human beings. In fact, this officer was so cool that he decided to look the other way on the “Avoiding Apprehension” charge, which is a felony. He also let Swag in on a little detail: He had only tried to pull him over because Swag didn’t have his headlights on. Having only had the Benz for two weeks, Swag was still unfamiliar with some of the controls; when he got into the car, he had only turned on the parking lights, not the full low beams. “If you had just pulled over, I was going to tell you to flip your lights on,” the cop said. “If you’d done that, I would’ve let you go. But then you ran… Why did you run?!”

When I echoed those sentiments, Swag responded, “I knew I could outrun him. No one’s going to catch me in a footrace.” I mentioned he was still drunk at that point, right?

In fact, he was still nearly blacked out. At the station he had blown a .23, almost three times the legal limit. When we got back to his house, he walked straight into his kitchen. I heard the refrigerator open and close, and he returned to the living room, cracking open a can of Four Loko along the way. Then he plopped himself down on a recliner and recounted the tale for Courtney, who had been asleep on the couch when we arrived. And then, even though it was well after 3 a.m., he started calling up a few friends that had gotten DUIs in the past to tell them about his night.

The next morning TJ came by and took him down to the South Side so he could try to locate his car. They found it just where he’d ditched it—with a freshly slashed tire, compliments of the Pittsburgh PD. As he and TJ set about putting on the spare, a voice called out from a few doors down the street.

“[Swag]? What’s up?” It was one of his buddies, standing in front of his home. Swag could have simply run and hid there the night before.