Ahh...Just Some Boys Having Fun

HONNNNNNNNNNNNNKKKK! HONNNNNNNNNNNNNK! This is how a certain local friend “knocks on my door” to get me to go outside, by leaning on the horn. I see the pick up, recognize the business logo on it and think, “Shit...will ya give me a minute?” I guess I can't come outside fast enough for him. I finally make it outside and it's M. I go over to talk to him and I see his right index finger is all bandaged up. I ask why and I get an odd story about fixing the air brake canisters on those big ass 18 wheeler trucks. I can't explain it entirely but for some reason, another mechanic was helping and pressurized the canister far too much and a component in it shot forward like a bullet, blowing the tip of that finger off.

“Here, look at the pics on my phone M.” tells me.

I look at the pics and I see this gross, mangled finger that's now a bit shorter than it should be.

“Couldn't they stitch the rest back on? I ask.

“The rest on? The rest was spewed all over the work bench! Hamburger!”

He then asks if I would go down the street to his brothers to “have a beer.” This means, “have 5 beers and 4 shots of Crown Royal.” I had just come out of work and was tired and all I wanted to do was sit and vegetate but you know how it goes, you get these pleas, pressures and cajoling to do it. I caved.

While over his brother's place, we brought up old stories and they reminded me of one I totally forgot about.

Dat Pempsey, a kid in our crew from long ago held a party in 1983 at his house when Dad was away and everybody showed up. M. and I showed up about two hours later as it was in full swing.

When we arrived, the entire front lawn, garden and garden wall was destroyed. It had been destroyed by a kid we nicknamed “China.” He had drove the car onto the front lawn and did about three or four “donuts” on it. The last one causing the car to slide too wide and slammed a raised garden wall, busting that all over the driveway. That with the flowers, dirt and such.

When M and I walked into the kitchen, the inside of the house was wrecked. Beer puddles on the kitchen floor, the living room furniture overturned and food splattered around. We found the keg and started drinking up quick to catch up to the rest of them.

About 20 minutes later, a pizza delivery guy shows up and he's swarmed by all the revelers and they yank the pizza boxes out of his arms and steal slices of pizza as fast as they could. The guy then says “It's $14” and my friend M. (who now has a shorter finger) grabs him and shoves him out of the house and into the driveway.

“$14! Hit the Road! Beat it! Go on...get the fuck outa here!” The others around him and me start laughing at his nerve. But the party was out of control long before we got there and it infected us. No Rules! No Laws!

The poor pizza delivery kid made a quick getaway while he could.

We then return to the house and as we enter the kitchen, M.F, another crew member, is tearing the door off of the refrigerator. He finally gets it to pop and then walks around the house with it over his head shouting and yelling quotes from Conan the Barbarian (Ok, yeah, if you're too young to get the movie reference, think of The Hulk on speed. That don't work? Think of a gorilla on speed then). He finally then walks out the front and throws the fridge door into the rock pile that once was the garden. He probably might have beat his chest after that.

Meanwhile upstairs, Tammy E. was vomiting all over Pempsey's Dad's bed. The boys had convinced her to do funnel shots. They put a regular funnel in her mouth, with her head tilted back and then dumped a red cup full of keg beer in. She does it and it all came back up quick. They convince her to do it again, three times in a row in fact, till she passed out on the dry side of the bed.

We then head downstairs and hear another loud THUMP and some kid we don't know is walking around with a toilet seat around his neck. He had ripped that off the toilet, wore it and in his drunken stupor went around saying, “Hey..I'm Shit Face! Lookit me! Mr. Shit Faced!”

When it was all over, the house was, as you can imagine, a fuckin' mess. A day or two later, we hear the police had investigated one date rape accusation. The kid accused had one of the local girls upstairs, trying his best to work her locks but she wouldn't budge. The date rape accusal was a ruse apparently to calm her folks down when she came home at 4 AM drunk, makeup smeared and looking like shit. Her Dad was livid that his 15 year old daughter was partying with the worst boys he knew about. So the girl had to think fast to divert any blame as fast as she could. The detectives on the case finally got the real story out of her two friends who were with her that night. There was no date rape at all. Her “fake news” didn't fly with the cops nor her Dad.

A few days later, Pempsey's Dad comes home, finds his yard and house wrecked beyond belief and tells his son, “Get the FUCK out of my house! Don't COME BACK!” Dat Pempsey then starts his life on his own by first moving into a friend's house. I hear he's a bartender down by the South County beaches now. I wonder if he remembers that night backin '83?

**

I had completely forgotten about that party. That memory of it started to come back to me as the others around the table were recounting their stories of it. By the way, I'm not making any of it up, I have corroborating witnesses. We then sort of look at one another when T says:

“God, we were BAD as teens. We didn't give a shit about anything, if it was fun, we did it!”

“Yeahhh...” we all admitted, sheepishly and with a sort of guilt pang added.

“How the hell did we get away with all that we did then? We ran Slater Park as a pharmacy. We wrecked how many cars? We were picking up those white trash skanks in Central Falls, Newport ave....” another asks.

I tell them, “Look, the laws were different then...any of us trying this now would be brought up on charges today.” I then also kinda admit I really don't know how we manage to avoid all sorts of legal matters, most of them anyway, about what we were doing then. Probably a long run of good luck to tell the truth.

Today..as adults..and while we were reminiscing, the phones started going off. Wives were calling. “When are you going to come home?” was the question. Finally, one by one, we all started leaving as they had work the next day. Things to do. Kids to get ready for school.

If you put us guys up against a wall, we, who were around the table last night and looked at us, you'd never figure in a thousand years we were like that at one time. Then again, put a bunch of any 48-55 year old guys up against the wall and we all sort of look like a bunch of harmless Andy Gumps whose social life revolves around the church, work and BBQs.

In truth....that's what we are now...but there was a time...