A couple years ago, I went to Network Associates Coliseum for Opening Day between the A's and the Mariners. My firm and a group of us inside the firm have four seats right behind the visitor's dugout. Luckily, I was the only person in the office that didn't have something keeping them in the office late that day, so all four tickets were mine. Knowing how close I would be to Ichiro as he came in from right field after the bottom of every inning, I made a sign that I hoped he could read. It was flourescent green and the size of your normal school-project posterboard. It read:
CONFUCIUS SAY: I FIND YOU IN POCKING ROT!!
I know, I know, Confucius was Chinese and Ichiro is Japanese. That's why it's funny...well that and the whole "pocking rot" thing, but I digress.
Unfortunately, the ushers saw the size of my sign and my seat location and confiscated my artwork. I think someone took a picture of me with it in the parking lot before the game, but I'm not sure. Seeing brilliant, periodic flashes of white light out of the corner of your eye is not an uncommon occurrence when you are drunk. Really drunk. By 5:30. On a Tuesday.
You've got to understand something about me though (no, not degenerative alcoholism, fucker). I love opening day. It's like my Christmas. I spend the week leading up to it dreaming about the game, planning what I'm going to wear, what I'm going to eat in the parking lot, how the skipper should set the lineup, who they should bring out of the pen against which hitters, how cool it would be if the A's went 81-0 at home. You know, shit like that. Over the course of that week, I develop an impenetrable sense of invincibility--I am overcome by a sense of destiny that results in a goofy-looking perma-grin and a quick trigger when someone says the A's are going to lose.
Understanding this mania, it should then be no surprise that the 3 and a half hours in the parking lot prior to the game was the scene of unseemly alcohol consumption. 3/4 of a 750 of Jack Daniels to be exact...BY MYSELF. To be sure, when I left the office that afternoon, I had no intention of assaulting my liver in such a reckless fashion. For that, I have my buddy RedMan and his hard-drinking tendencies to thank. Not so coincidentally, he and Jack Daniels are both from Tennessee--Volunteer State my ass. It's days like that when I want to throw both of them head first off their goddamn Rocky Top. On the brighter side, though, it could have been a lot worse. I made a two-gallon Igloo jug of Death Mix earlier in the day that I dropped off the tailgate of my truck not more than 20 minutes after parking at the stadium. Clumsiness I dub thee Providence.
Inside, I sat with 3 buddies of mine--all die-hards, all heavy drinkers. Not one of them can sit still. They're like fucking toddlers, I swear to god. By the 6th inning I think each one had been up and down at least 4 times. We had seats 4-7. The occupants of seats 1-3, needless to say, did not like us. They were middle aged white guys in full A's gear, transistor radios to listen to the play-by-play, and scorer's books. EACH OF THEM. By looking at them, you got the unsettling sense that they carpooled to every game together and rotated whose mother's basement they would meet at.
The 7th inning rolled around and the A's were still shutting out the Mariners. Naturally, I was drunker and louder than is proper for an event attended by children and the eldery (while the restlessness of my toddler-friends is annoying upon initial consideration, the fact that it always results in another round of paid-for drinks compels me to issues them an endless stream of Get Out of Jail Free cards). For only the first game of the season, my heckling and shit-talking was in mid-season form. I was cursing the families of the members of the entire Seattle Mariners franchise. More specifically, I was ON Ichiro. I think internment and Hiroshima came up but I can't be too sure. Wait. That's a lie. I am very sure. If that isn't bad enough, rookie manager Bob Melvin has the audacity to get Shigatoshi Hasegawa up in the bullpen just a couple section away from me and then, inexplicably, call him into the game! Did Melvin not understand what he was subjecting his pitcher to? Hasegawa, necessarily, received the full brunt of my ire. I applied many of the same slanderous remarks made toward Ichiro directly to Hasegawa. I think I added something about playing a game of Hide-The-Spring Roll to kill time on the drive to the internment camps, but that is not something for which I am ready, even now, to take responsibility.
With one out in the bottom of the 7th I realized I had to take a leak. Not just a little wee-wee, but a Yosemite Falls the spring after record snowfall type piss. I got up from my seat and the three guys in seats 1-3 wouldn't budge. They'd had enough of the up and down and were staging a sit-in. Mind you, I hadn't moved from my seat ALL game except for one trip to the bar during which I entered and exited from the other side because it was empty in the first two innings. Even though I understood their frustration, I got mad almost immediately. I tried to take the scorer's book from the guy closest to me but he was too quick and I was too drunk. I asked him as nicely as I could (I think I only used one or two curse words but my buddy Dan insists that several pointed remarks regarding their obvious latent homosexual tendencies were made) to let me by, assuring them this would be the last time, but they steadfastly refused. I was honestly dumbfounded. I explained to the guys exactly how bad I needed to piss and that it's in EVERYONE'S best interest that they let me by. People behind us and in front of us were even getting on these guys (I guess I entertained them more than I offended their sensibilities over the previous 6 inning) but they had made up there minds.
I gave them one more chance, assuring them that if they didn't move I was going to piss right where I stood and they sat. They sat there stalk still--like protestors at a Montgomery lunch counter. I was left with no choice. I see your world-class stubbornness and raise you a gallon of man-urine. I unzipped, found the hole in my boxers, and started pissing. A LOT.
The ground beneath these seats is metal and the April air was crisp, so the fire hose stream of urine landing at the feet of the guy in seat 3 made a low-pitched pinging sound and produced an aromatic cloud of pee-steam into. After the initial shock, my friends started cracking up. Everyone else was quiet. I can only assume they were horrified. But maybe they were silently applauding my efforts and urging me on. I doubt that though.
I'd been pissing for like 4 seconds when the guy in seat 2 leaned over and, inexplicably, tried to grab my penis. Naturally, I jerked back in shock...and awe...and proceeded to spray the blanket and scorer's book of the guy in seat 3. At this point phrases like "Jesus Christ" and "Oh my god" and "what are you doing" were getting bandied about by the people around us. I guess the rising tide of discomfort was enough to convince my friends to pull me out of there, because Dan grabbed my jacket and yelled at me to "PUT IT AWAY SPARKY. WE'RE OUT!" as he pulled me the other way.
We got out of the section and up the walkway to the main concourse with little fanfare. I was still a very unhappy customer however, as I had at least 30 seconds worth of urine left to expel. I informed my friends of this fact with a loud, expletive-laden soliloquy on the need for them to sack up and/or see a doctor about getting their testicles surgically descended from their stomachs. RedMan told me to shut the fuck up and let me know that we were being tracked by a gaggle of ushers and security guards. This got my attention and we beat a hasty retreat to the nearest exit.
As we lurched through the main gate we got stopped by Oakland Police. I was SURE we were toast. I slumped my shoulders in defeat...again. I waited for him to ask me some smartass cop question to which I could never conceivably have the right answer. Instead I heard, "Hey. Don't I know you? Yeah, I know I do. It's me, Andrew."
"From high school?"
"Scrotum cheeks!?"
It clicks! Andrew Trevino! In high school, this kid was rail thin but had the biggest cheeks of anyone you'd ever seen. If you ever saw him in silhouette his head would look like the number 8. His partner was busting a gut. We exchanged pleasantries as quickly as possible because I needed to finish my piss and avoid getting arrested.
Just then his partner says, "Hey, we've got a problem." When will it ever get easy!? I swear to fucking god. "You can't take those out of the stadium." I was confused. I looked around and saw that Redman and Dan were each holding beers. Andrew's partner was telling them to toss their beers or finish them inside the stadium.. Redman, bless his redneck heart, got the bright idea to offer the beers to the cops instead of the Alameda County Department of Sanitation. They were nearly full as it was and plenty cold. They both said 'no' and something about being against regulations. RedMan, of course, was not convinced. He asserted that it wasn't like they would be, and I quote, "doing anything important tonight besides bothering black people." Somehow this was a decision-swaying rebuttal to Andrew and his partner. They relented and took the beers with a shrug that said 'Hey. Why not?'
I was, by this point, totally baffled. That sensation was, of course, immediately crushed by the excruciating discomfort that comes with holding a quart of urine in your bladder and urethra for more than 15 seconds after you've initially broken the seal. Finally, we got to my car so I could take a piss in relative peace. I started fishing for my keys so I could unlock the car and open the driver's side door in order to create some privacy. Uh-oh. Not there. I had locked the keys in the car along with the rest of the beer and my cellphone--which I would need to call the tow truck. Dan and RedMan start laughing like drunk hyenas. I wasn't listening, however, because I was watching my urine bounce off the asphalt. In the middle of this RedMan taps me on the shoulder:
"Hey you have insurance right?"
I nodded
"Full coverage"
I nodded again. Not 5 seconds later, I hear the sound of shattering glass. RedMan just DESTROYED my passenger side window. I could do nothing but stare at him in wonder and disbelief.
"I'm cold. I want to go home. NOW."
--But dude, you just broke my window.
"Dude, don't trip. Just call your insurance company and blame it on a black person."
I guess that reasoning made sense because Dan grabbed the keys from the center console, shoved me face first into the backseat, hopped behind the wheel and drove me home. I woke up the following morning in front of my house sprawled out on my backseat with a moldy painters tarp under my head as a pillow and the auto-glass repairman tapping me on the shoulder. He wanted to know what happened so he could fill out his invoice. I shrugged and, while laying my head back down, slammed my forehead against the interior doorhandle.
"Okay, I'm up! I'm up!"
Posted by nils at 8:55 PM