roughing it in the bush

One of the great and ill traditions of my life has been the May 24. It's pronounced 2,4, not the 24th. It's a camping trip.

The 2 4 is a reference to the flat of WILDCAT or DUDE or MOLSON XXX that one purchases. Then one goes into a forest and furiously, psychotically drinks these beers. There might be other people around. There might be fires. But mostly there's the sound of you cracking your toxic can and guzzing, guzzling, chugging, swilling, pouring that stuff inside of you. Then there's a few mutterings, and grumbled asides, and the occasional cackle. It's great fun. The rain pours down the cedars and down your neck.

The idea, I think, is to create a little post-apocalyptic version/vision of hell. Let's call it Hadesburg. Hadesburg has about 25 people in it. Someone is always puking. There's a chant, a chant that I actually wrote. Every five minutes, when the inane, drunken babble dies down, and the crushing despair starts settling in, one person only needs to hum the faint melody of this chant, and all the motley camp jumps up, moshing around the fire in Rabelasian abandon, all yelling the Thoroughgood-esque mantra:

"Drinking, na-na-na-na,
Smoking, na-na-na-na,
fucking, na-na-na-na,
...It's camping!"

Over and over again, all chanting and drinking and fucking and puking. It's camping.



I am poor. I will always be poor. By this I mean that the stench of poverty oozes off of me. I can never be rid of it, so in order to feel not suicidal, I've embraced it. I'm "poor guy", but poor guy who can tell a joke or whatever. At least that's what I tell myself when I show up to a camping trip with a rice cracker and one can of Mike's Hard lemonade. Like: I better be fucking funny this weekend or I won't even be able to secretly cop a buzz.

One of the 2 4 traditions is to immediately set up a command station, a central nervous system called "The General's Table". This is a great feat: a gigantic old-growth stump is dragged out of the brush. Its crown is painstakingly leveled. All of the company's many twixxers (26 ounce bottles of hard booze) are ceremoniously placed upon this stump. They gleam with the pomp and shine of a round table of historical generals, the amber haze suggesting golden epaulettes, and the many golden bottle-caps all hinting at the grand splendour of Caesar himself. Great bottles the size of small dogs dogs are dragged up to the General's table.

One year a texas mickey of Canadian Club was brought to the table. A texas mickey is so large that it needs a pump.

Canadian Club is a drink made for and sold to razor-slashing psychotics from the flatlands, people who smell like carburetors and despise their teeth. It's a rusty and corrosive drink. I initiated a ritualistic throwing of the cap-of-the-bottle into the bush, thus insuring that the texas mickey would be consumed immediately or not at all. So brazen, I was.



Anyways: this one year of frugality and restraint, everyone started looking at me, to see what I would place on the stump. I could hear that harsh, many-tongued robe of rumour scurrying about the camp. I heard so many damning and judgmental comments winging about the scene: "Only one CAN..." and "He only brought..." and "I bet he won't even offer me a sip from his can" and so on.

I said something like "I'm going for a walk to the creek". I had to get out of that pressure cooker, or my mooching secret would surely be laid bare.

So after a refreshing head-cool in the icy rush of a spring stream, I nonchalantly whistled my way back into camp, heading with great feigned purpose to the General's Table, my intention being to take a dip in one of the bottles that I had surely and evidently brought, this fact evinced by my cocky and confidant stroll to the table.

And as I whistled my way up to the table I saw a damning, scarring piece of evidence: my one can of Mike's Hard, emptied, violated, shot-gunned to death.

This was as much an indictment as a tarring and feathering: "we know what you brought and we know what you are up to and we are NOT going to let you get away with it."

My heart raced, and my hand quivered over the bottle of Vodka I was reaching for. I was deprived of my mojo. My top lip was icy. I was hundreds of miles away from the nearest liquor store, and I was outed, and I would surely have to spend the whole weekend sober, nodding half-heartedly along to the umpteen performances of my chant, whilst the stars overhead mocked my fate.

And then came the flood of righteous anger:
"Who drank my can?"
"I was going to enjoy that, I was going to nurse that all weekend."
"Just because I only brought one can doesn't mean anything."
"Those classist bastards."

Bereft of witness, or clue, I gazed into the many-eyed ring of spectators and accusers. My crowd roared in laughter, my thoughts painted scarlet across my face. This could not have gone better for them. My essential nature was laid bare, both in passion to steal their booze, and passion to bring to justice that thief who had stolen mine.

A kind-eyed friend named Leif stepped forward and grabbed a bottle from the General's table. He grabbed one icy bottle of vodka, which I think I am known to enjoy. He patted me on the back. It all had the air of drama to it--the transgressor, the kind but stern interlocutor, and the ring of audience/accusers/jury.

Leif looked kindly into my eyes and unscrewed the cap. This was still clearly part of the play, some kind of twisted medieval Passion Play that I, due to my eternal thirst, would gladly play the villain in.

People started chanting "Shots!" "Shots!" "Shots!"

I got excited, which was odd and idiotic because I knew of course that this would not end well. Lief kept flashing me his kind eyes, like the cat in The Master and the Margarita. He poured a double-shot, and people started chanting a very classic line of "Pretend it's juice! Pretend it's juice!"

I drank and drank, and I felt my soul drown in the ugly twilight of a foul spring day, and I was dead before the darkness even arrived.

I woke up in sand. I was nude, but for my skivvies. Three people were sitting on me. I groaned, like "Where the fuck am I?"

I should have asked: 'What am I?'

The answer, had I asked, was a human log.

I rolled around like a possessed swine, a pig of Gadarene, throwing my captors into the ring of heat that emanated from the fire. I snorted and cursed and found my pants and crawled into the brush like the foul boar that I am.




In the morning, when the company woke up, there was a similar-smelling deposit of vomit in each and every person's tent. It smelled vaguely like Mike's Hard Lemonade.

Even though I had clearly not gotten even a drop of my chosen elixir, I was still blamed and cursed out.

"Well if you hadn't bought that Mike's Hard Lemonade then no one would have gotten so drunk anyways!"

"Awww, I feel Sick. It must have been from that fuckin' prick who brought that one can of hard lemonade."

"And where did you even go after you crawled off anyways? Probably to puke in our tents, you fucking bastard!"

"It'd be just like a guy that brings one can of Mike's Hard Lemonade to go and puke in everyone's tent!"

Of course, I wasn't able to answer any of these charges. I could only meekly reply, from the depths of my own hangover, "But I never even got to drink my Mike's Hard Lemonade."

Years later, _________ admitted to both the shotgunning and the vomiting.



After a few more days of incrimination and obliteration the camping trip came to a close and it was time to get in someone's car and drive home. Coincidentally enough, I hopped into Krug's van. We didn't really know each other then; in fact, I was probably known to him as, you know, that guy who brought that one can, and so on and so forth. He had a VW van that his grandpa had given him.

It was quite nice--I was in the back, lying in the bed. I was lying with one of the dogs that had come; this dog is called "Casey", and it has some bad habits like trying to bite children's faces off and eating shit. I am not a child, so my face was safe, and I was happy to share the bed with Casey.

Anyways, Krug and his girlfriend Jayna were in the front seat, yakking away, as he drove down the dirt logging roads that transport an entire company to Hadesburg. The spring heat beat down on the dusty road and all of that. I had my walkman on. I was escaping into sleep.

Every once in awhile I smelt the most violent reek, and shuddered and judged Krug, for what seemed like some serious gastro-intestinal disorder.

The reeks began to increase: the air was now brown, it was so thick one could grow a potato in it. I noticed that the van had stopped moving. I stopped my walkman and took off my headphones and turned around to view my chauffeurs. I had been looking out the back window.

"Umm...Carey? What's up, man? Is everything, umm, okay?"

"Yep. Okay. Just fine."

We looked at each other for a full minute without saying anything. There was a real weirdness. And wow: did it ever stink in there.

"Well, we just wanted to make sure that..."

And he looked so pained.

"That you never had an accident."

I had no idea, and then I had an idea, and I was ashamed that they'd think that about me and then I was doubly ashamed because I was thinking the same thing about him. I looked at the dog, because a dog can be a comfort.

And I saw the dog eating something that had clear and unmistakable stink lines coming off of it.

The dog had eaten bear shit, and then puked the bear shit up, and then it was licking the puked up bear shit.

I started wailing and crying. And that was the moment I decided to go to University.