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London Zoo: Embarrassing Stories of Life

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      CommentAuthorVornaskotti
    • CommentTimeApr 24th 2011 edited
     (9780.21)
    I think I have a couple that might be fit to publish on the internet. The first one being a more or less a dumbass teenagers not thinking about consequences but lucking out, and the second one is just embarrassing. Both of these take place in a summer job I had in the early 90's in this fishing / camping site close to the Russian border. I was 16 or 17 at the time. This place wasn't just a run of the mill "pitch a tent and fish some mud tasting salmon from a pond" thing, but this actually quite a high quality fishing resort where we got some minister level guests when I was there. My stepdad was the boss of that place and that's how I got the job, and managed to draft my pal also.

    This pal used to be a bit of a junior scientist, tinkering with electronics and you guessed it, a whole lot of home chemistry that went "boom". He also had very little sense of what would be safe or smart to do, and was quite easy to get to do stupid shit.

    He had mixed some "homemade gunpowder" which we had to immediately try. We decided to build a rocket out of it, and our stroke of genius was to use these empty nitrous oxide cylinders they use in whipped cream bottles and such in a restaurant. You know, these nice little things that just about fit in your fist, and that would make nice hand grenades. Anyhow, we filled one of these with the remnants of his "gunpowder", went to the forest line, and after I insisted, placed the thing behind two large boulders, aimed at the forest, and lit the gunpowder trail that lead to it. What resulted was this big damn cloud of purple smoke straight from the 60's Batman, the whoosh a firework makes, a thump, then a sound of something hitting a tree far in the forest. We jumped over the boulders and into the smoke, and found out that our little rocket had shot through half a meter thick earth embankment, snapped a finger thick pine root, shot out and vanished somewhere in the forest. Then we both started coughing, violently. The guy went "oh, I forgot to say, if you mix this stuff with water it becomes sulphuric acid". We proceeded to cough and taste blood the rest of the day.

    That was the recipe number one. The recipe number two was actually a common and simple chemical, but if you imbue a paper towel with it, let it dry out and light it, it produces a hell of a lot of dark pungent smoke. You need just a couple of centimeters of twisted, dry paper to fill a room. This worked well, except we averted a huge catastrophe with a very slim margin. Without asking me this friend used the restaurant microwaves to dry out the paper towels, because he was too impatient to wait. Some of them had started to char a little bit - if one of them had gone up, the kitchen would've been out of order for several days.

    The actual money shot of stupidity was the recipe number three, or rocket fuel mk 2, if you will. My pal drafted up a list of chemical he needs and got my step-dad to buy them from the small town pharmacy, where he got asked "are you building a bomb". We did some high tech chemistry by crushing and mixing stuff with stuff like folded papers and rocks, and there we had it. By this time some of the local kids had drifted in and they wanted to take part, and they were even more irresponsible with this stuff than my pal, or me.

    Well, mixed the stuff, filled one of these canisters with it, and tried to launch it - but no lift off. The mixing ratio was wrong and when the stuff burned, it left this really hard ceramic like residue that clogged the nozzle. Mind you, it was a beautiful summer night and we were doing this essentially in a middle of a crowded campsite. "Okay, no can do" I went, but one of these local kids had a bright idea: let's build a fire and drop the thing there. I tried to object, citing the reason that what we had was essentially a fucking hand grenade, but got shouted down - so I just went with it.

    There was this barbeque stand in middle of the resort complex, used for flame grilling fish. It surrounded by a fish smoking shop, the actual resort building (with wide panorama glass windows) and some fishing pools. The guys lit the fire, we plopped the malfunctioning rocket in there, and we had enough sense to run behind the fish smoking shop. When we were there, I suddenly realized that there was an another entryway to the yard, and technically at any moment anyone could walk through there to see why there was fire in that BBQ stand in the morning hours. I ran around the shop and when I went around the corner, the rocket went off and I was the only one who saw what happened.

    It went off like a hand grenade. There were burning embers shooting everywhere, even through cracks in the fish grilling stand roof. I swear I saw the windows of the resort wobble. The bang was incredibly loud in middle of a summer night.

    We rushed into the stand, which was intact. No shrapnel damage or burning embers, which was pretty remarkable considering the fact that we had a nice fire going on in there, with a couple of big logs -the only thing left of the fire was literally a few glowing embers under a heavy duty grille. After that we pretty much slunk away to bed.

    In the morning my step-dad came to ask what the hell did we do last night. Nobody caught any fish, because the bang had startled all of them to the bottom of the river (did I mention it wasn't a cheap place to fish in...). The local police chief had been fishing at the time, and but luckily he was pretty used to country boys' antics, he just laughed the thing off. Now, thinking about it later, I shudder at the stupidity of essentially setting off a small hand grenade in middle of a crowded holiday resort.

    Well, it was kind of cool.
    •  
      CommentAuthorVornaskotti
    • CommentTimeApr 24th 2011 edited
     (9780.22)
    The second story is from that resort also, don't remember if it was the same year or not, and it involves some booze. Essentially there was an evening when many members of the staff got drunk too, me and the aforementioned pal stayed sober for the first half of the night, because we had to drive the car to the other side of the river to warm up a sauna and handle some other business.

    Well, the evening started with one of the staff members getting this annoying case of aggro drunk. They had thought someone had stolen the car we were using, and he more or less threatened to kick our asses, proceeded to be obnoxiously boasty throughout the night, and end it by jumping into the river, which was whitewater rapids at that point, to swim. Me and the pal tracked him at least 50 downriver, he was swimming furiously but being of course swept downstream.

    Then, finally, it was our turn to start drinking, and I got "puke out of the car door" hammered. Nothing untoward happened, but when I tried to go to bed, I ran into a little snag: I was sleeping in the resort kitchen back room, my pal was sleeping in a trailer. Of course the hotel was locked for the night and everybody was already sleeping. I started walking to the toilet/shower complex thinking what to do, when I just happened to run to my step-dad, who was laughing at my drunken ass and gave me a key to another trailer. I took it, but I had this "must sleep in my own bed" idea fixated in my stupid drunken head, so I went back to the resort and... hey, what's that, the men's room window is slightly ajar!

    With a fuckton of trouble I managed to drag my ass through this small hatch of a window that was high above my head, and crashed on my own bed happy with my mad ninja skills.

    I came to, in a horrible hangover, to some kind of commotion in the restaurant. Feeling superbly miserable I didn't pay much attention to it, before my stepdad came to my room looking really pissed off, and asked if I had climbed in through the window in the night. I told him that I had, and he just left, looking even more pissed off. When I staggered out, it turned out that the whole staff had spent the morning hours doing a furious inventory of the restaurant, since someone had apparently broken in through the mens' room window - I had probably left the window wide open and all kinds of scuffle marks on the wall.

    I kept getting this kind of good natured stinkeye from them for a few days, not the least from my stepdad.
  3.  (9780.23)
    So I'm in Chicago, I'm about 21 or 22, hard to remember exactly like late 2001 or early 2002 , and I'm dating this gorgeous dominatrix chick for a few months, and she decides to throw a party. There's a couple bands playing, one punk band and one industrial type band or something I think. Also, for the first time, I get to meet the other dommes that my girlfriend works with at her dungeon. We'd been dating a few months, and she had told her co-workers about my somewhat legendary tolerance for pain, and they were looking forward to playing with me.

    Let me preface with this by saying this isn't going to be a play by play of bondage or anything, but I do recommend that anyone interested in that lifestyle be much more safe and sane than we were. There was a lot of alcohol involved, and what I didn't drink was poured on me and lit on fire a few times. Not the smartest thing ever.

    So anyway, this industrial band is playing in the living room, and I'm hanging from some wrist restraints in the kitchen doorway with three or four scantily (and leather/pvc) clad beautiful women with instruments of pain doing their best to wound me. I'm fairly drunk, but just really into whatever these girls wanted to do (I'm a simple man, and I have my weaknesses). Well, I end up kinda bloody, with the words "SLUT" and "PIG" carved into my chest and back (not sure which was on which side, not that it matters) and eventually playtime is over. One of the roommates, who named himself "Arrogant Gay Black Man" as his superhero alter-ego, approached me as I'm coming down from sub-space, and informs me that Industrial Band Lead Singer over there has been saying really rude shit to me while I was unaware, and that he might be a problem. I ignore it and go get a drink in the kitchen.

    I don't notice Industrial Band Lead Singer is on the other side of the kitchen window, on the porch, and I mention to someone that I heard he's been talking shit, and I don't want any trouble. He leans down and says some rude things through the window, and I ask him to back off, and I close the window. He opens the window and says rude things again, and I repeat my warning for him to leave us alone, and I close the window. He opens the window a third time, an says something rude again, and I pretend to ignore him. As he straightens back up, I swing through the open window and punch him in the stomach.

    He storms into the kitchen to "face off" and threatens me to a fight. I stand in front of him, shirtless, blood still dripping down my front and back, carved and whipped and beaten and I calmly explain a few things to him, like about if there's anything he can do to me that I could possibly still feel this evening. I offer him a fair swing, and he declines, saying he has to load up his van. I offer to help, and start loading band equipment into the van.

    Once all the equipment is loaded, we're standing on the street in front of the apartment. I'm like, "We're all done here, we're good to go buddy, let's do this," and he takes off, obviously confused and more than a little creeped out. My girlfriend comes out and asks me if the next time I want to challenge someone to a fight, can I not do it in the middle of the street, with my shirt off, covered in blood.

    So anyway, I head into the backyard, and go to take a piss in the bushes. It was a pretty big backyard, and there had been people partying back there, too. So I go all the way in the back, and I'm standing there, peeing, when all of a sudden, I can see my silhouette in front of me. I keep pissing, and I hear a female voice say, "Excuse me, Sir?"

    I finish and zip up, and turn around and I'm facing a female police officer holding a flashlight at me. Again, I'm standing there, shirtless and bloody, carved up, bruised and whipped, and now I'm facing a cop. I glance around briefly, and I can see the backyard had cleaned out fast. None of the partygoers anywhere to be seen. Second glance, and I can see upstairs in the apartment, everyone is on the back porch looking out the windows at me. Somehow, I'm able to stay somewhat calm and ask the cop what the problem is.

    She tells me there have been noise complaints from the neighbors. I sincerely apologize, stressing that we thought we had informed our neighbors of the party, and had asked them to call us if there were any complaints. I explained that the party was winding down, and there shouldn't be any more problems. Several times she asks me if I'm alright, and I tell her I'm fine, and act a bit confused why she was asking. She just stands there staring at me, thinking god knows what, but apparently I was convincing enough for her, so she and her partner leave.

    I get back to my girlfriend and the rest of the party and my girlfriend says I must be the only person that could stand there talking to the police looking like I did, and actually get the police to leave, and not break up the party.
  4.  (9780.24)
    I stand in front of him, shirtless, blood still dripping down my front and back, carved and whipped and beaten and I calmly explain a few things to him, like about if there's anything he can do to me that I could possibly still feel this evening. I offer him a fair swing, and he declines, saying he has to load up his van. I offer to help, and start loading band equipment into the van.

    Once all the equipment is loaded, we're standing on the street in front of the apartment. I'm like, "We're all done here, we're good to go buddy, let's do this,"

    Best moment of the thread right there.
    •  
      CommentAuthorD.J.
    • CommentTimeApr 25th 2011
     (9780.25)
    My girlfriend comes out and asks me if the next time I want to challenge someone to a fight, can I not do it in the middle of the street, with my shirt off, covered in blood.

    Wait, what other way is there to challenge someone to a fight?
    •  
      CommentAuthorMorac
    • CommentTimeApr 26th 2011
     (9780.26)
    Wait, what other way is there to challenge someone to a fight?

    Well, there's always Fight Club. I hear that is what the kids are in to these days.
  7.  (9780.27)
    We don't talk about Fight Club.
  8.  (9780.28)
    Don't know if this really counts as embarrassing - more like terrifying and confusing - but I've been enjoying other people's stories so much that I wanted to contribute. So behold - The Hideous Adventures of Denys in the Lair of the Glossolalia Gang, my account of a prolonged run in with Charismatic Catholics back in the late 90s, presented in glorious and extremely pretentious third person!

    Share and enjoy! (or not... whatever...)
    • CommentAuthorGordon
    • CommentTimeApr 29th 2011
     (9780.29)
    This is quickly becoming my favourite thread! Let's see if I can add something:

    I will tell you of the time I drunkenly tempted fate and could've been shot on Russian soil. A short film I wrote was part of the official selection for a film festival in Italy. The director (a good friend) and myself were invited over and were put up in a hotel right next to the Russian embassy. It was patrolled day and night by very serious and mean-looking guards with automatic weaponry.

    Let's add alcohol into the mix. Let's add a lot of alcohol. It was the last night of the festival and the closing party, with free drink, led to me getting drunk beyond belief. I was less a travelling companion, more a loose-limbed bit of luggage as my friend tried his best to get me back to the hotel. Upon spying the gun-toting guards, I had the best idea in the world: let's get a photo of me with the guards! They might even let me hold a gun!

    So I went charging towards them, unable to see anything wrong with putting my arm around one of them, grabbing a gun and shouting in a slurred, heavily-accented Scottish brogue that I wanted a picture taken. Luckily for me, Russia was spared the cost of a bullet thanks to my friend grabbing me and dragging me to the hotel before I kicked off an international incident.
  10.  (9780.30)
    Alright, so I'm living in Chicago, like summer of '05, and I had just quit my job and was moving to Austin, TX. Before I left, some friends threw me a going away party. I went out with my roommate, her girlfriend's band was playing. We all got drunk, and later, the band offered to drive us all home. We got split up into two vehicles. Dunno exactly how it worked, but I guess I ended up in a van with total strangers. Since I lived in the barrio (if you know Chicago, Pilsen, aka 18th st & Ashland area), the driver suddenly did not feel comfortable and dropped me off at a main intersection. In the middle of the night. I'm stone drunk, mohawk, etc.

    So, I'm stumbling down the street, alone, singing at the top of my lungs, and I wander down some alleyway. Sticking out of a dumpster is the tattered remains of someone's porch umbrella. To me, it looked like a flag. So I pick it up, and start waving it around like I'm leading some invisible plague of the undead. Did I mention I was singing?

    So I get to my apartment, and in the fence, I lodge the umbrella securely. I open up the door, and there are a couple squatter kids I know, hanging out waiting up for me. I burst in, and grab a bottle of lighter fluid, and storm back outside. I quickly douse the umbrella in lighter fluid, and light it with my zippo.

    Seriously, within seconds, a car drives up over the curb on the empty lot next to us. A man and a woman jump out and identify themselves as police, and order me to put out the fire.

    The guy says "What are you, some kind of idiot?"

    "Yes," I announce proudly.

    The woman yells at me to put the fire out. I yell back "With what?"

    The man yells, "With your shoes!" I point at my barely-there chucks, and he tells me to figure it out or he'll arrest me for arson.

    I raise my hands in surrender, and start kicking at the burning umbrella. "Alright, alright, I'm puttin' it out, I'm puttin' it out!"

    As I kick at the fire, which for some unknown reason is working, and the female says, "What the Hell is wrong with you?"

    Without missing a beat, I say, "Didn't you hear the man? I'm an idiot."

    I finish putting the fire out, and I find out that earlier in the day, local gangs had firebombed two cars in the neighborhood, on my block, and across the street. My landlord who lived below me, saw a couple of the gang members, and had called 911 with their descriptions. These two plainclothes police officers had parked nearby to stakeout the neighborhood and lookout for firebombers. Then, my drunk-ass walks down the street and lights a fucking umbrella on fire. Awesome timing. The cops laugh at me, don't arrest me, and leave. Miraculous.

    So, the next day, I have a massive hangover, and my friend wakes me up to tell me the landlord is freaking out. I get up to ask him what's the matter. Tom tells me that since the gang members saw him use a phone before the cops came, and that they are out to get him. As proof of his theory, he shows me a burnt out black umbrella wedged into the fence on the front of the apartment. "See this?" He tells me, "This is a death threat. They put these in front of people's houses as warnings."

    "No, Tom, it was me."

    "What?"

    "I did that, Tom. I was a drunken idiot last night, and I stole that out of a dumpster and set it on fire. I'm sorry, Tom."

    "No... it was the gangs... I know it."

    "No, Tom, it was absolutely me. It was stupid, and had nothing to do with any gangs."

    This goes on for several minutes, and I still think he didn't believe me. Or, that I must have joined "the gangs." Months later, another friend of mine living in the same apartment spray-painted her chucks on the sidewalk in front of the house. Tom saw silhouettes of shoes and claimed Mayor Daley was having the Mafia put a hit on him. When my friend told him that she had sprayed her shoes there, he accused her of working for the Mayor and acted crazy until she found another place to live.
    • CommentAuthorDC
    • CommentTimeApr 29th 2011
     (9780.31)
    Elementary school, I’m 13 and starting to develop a habit of reading comics. mIRC is the Facebook of that time, everyone was there. There’s this girl that had her own chatroom which was always filled with people from different classes, she was in fact one of the most popular girls in school. We got introduced somehow and I start to talk with her through mIRC despite in real live I barely say anything to her. After several conversations, I gathered all the courage I had and asked her out to go to see LotR: The Two Towers since I had two tickets to that movie (yeah, I couldn’t have picked a nerdier movie but at the time I didn’t realized that). The day comes, we get to the cinema and when I deliver the tickets there seems to be something wrong with the tickets date. I go the ticket booth and they tell me they were for the previous day and couldn't replace the tickets!
    I got so embarrassed and nervous that I didn’t remember to buy other tickets. In my incredible naivety, I explained her what happened and we decided to postpone the date and we both call our parents to pick us up again. We are at the mall’s entrance waiting for our parents, awkward silence, my mom arrives first and in a hurry to get away from that embarrassing attempt of a date, I say goodbye to her without waiting with her for her ride to arrive. I found the experience so embarrassing I didn’t talk with her for a long while.
    Sometimes I think my life has moments straight out from some lame comedy show.
  12.  (9780.32)
    You need to write a book about your life, Mr. Gov. I'd buy it, or at least download it for free on the internet:)
    • CommentAuthorVerissimus
    • CommentTimeApr 29th 2011
     (9780.33)
    Or you can sell some of your life stories to people who are writing their autobiography but don't have the material, like Kramer did in the Real Peterman episode on Seinfeld.
  14.  (9780.34)
    Some time after I started working for the feds in Chicago, around 2003, I met a co-worker that I became very good friends with. When you work in the government, and you're really into punk rock, you just assume you're not going to have much in common with your co-workers. During training, someone asked me what music I liked, and I told them. They responded with "Oh yeah, we have one of those punk rock guys here..." And introduced me to Sosa (we go by last names on the job). New Jersey, tatted up, etc. and I'm clean cut looking (just got through the fed hiring process). He's like "yer a punk?" I tell him I am. "Yer my bruther," and gives me a "bro-hug." And just like that, we became friends. He later told me he'd worked at prisons all over the East Coast, state and Fed, including Riker's Island, tough places. I mean, the guy grew up in Newark for chrissakes. He'd been in some serious riots, been stabbed a couple times, jaw broken by a lead pipe. Serious shit. Anyway, he'd been all over the place, and only worked with one other punk. So he took it really seriously. I mean, I love punk rock, still do, don't really fly the flag much anymore, but at the time, I was 23 (Sosa was in his late 30's), and I still loved going to shows and getting pissed. Sosa was more into looking the part, going to concerts here and there, but guy was straight-edge and vegan, and I'm a meat-eating drunk. We ignored what made us different, and decided music was enough, especially since there weren't too many punks that could understand working law enforcement, or law enforcement that understood punk rock.

    So we hung out a bunch. One night, and man, I'd been single for way too long after the dominatrix dumped me (oh, and boy is that a story I'll have to get to later), Sosa wants to go out. For a straight-edge guy, he liked to hang out in bars. Dude had mastered picking up punk chicks on Myspace (remember, this is like 2003) but could not pick up a girl at a bar for shit. I have the gift of gab, and as an ex once explained, the charisma of the devil, and talking up girls in a bar was something I was really good at. Making it last past that was... not so much. So anyway, we meet up at Sosa's place, and head out to the bars. At some point, I got pretty drunk, and went to head out to the goth club, because I love drinking with the punk chicks, but man, did I have it bad for the goth girls. Sosa was burned out, and headed home.

    Next thing I know, I'm taking some red-headed yarn-haired goth girl home to my place in a taxi. Score one for govspy. When I wake up the next day, i realized my phone was off. When I turned it on, I had like seventeen messages from Sosa. Apparently, when we left his place, I had his apartment keys. So from around midnight that night, til... I dunno about noon? He'd been locked out of his place, and I wouldn't answer my phone. I immediately called him back, and told him I was on my way. But first I had to get rid of the girl. But I had blown my cash that night, and couldn't afford a cab. Plus the L train that ran in my neighborhood was closed during the weekend. So I fuckin put this girl on a bus. So I told this girl where the bus stop was, and kicked her ass out.

    I got changed and headed out. I catch a bus to the nearest L train, and realize, that fucking girl is sitting across from me. Awkward as Hell! I couldn't make eye contact. It was horrible. I get to Sosa's and get him the key. Sometime after the office opened in the morning, he got his landlord to let him in, but dude had spent all night locked out because I was getting laid. He didn't speak to me for weeks.

    About a year later, I was involved in some weird rock'n'roll wedding between a bartender and a dominatrix (a different dominatrix, not my ex-girlfriend. Is it weird I have to make that distinction?) girl, and was one of the groomsmen. As I arrived, I went to hug the bride and congratulate her before the wedding. Over her shoulder, I see the "fire dancer" guy that they had invited to the wedding, as he walked in with his date. His date was some red-headed yarn-haired goth girl. "Oh shit," I said to the bride. "Can you tell me that girl's name? I never called her back!" The bride punched me several times for being a jerk. I deserved it.
  15.  (9780.35)
    One night, I go out solo. Usually me and Sosa would try and meet chicks together, or hang out with friends, or whatever. One night, I’m hanging out at a neighborhood bar, Jake’s Pub, on Clark. I knew the bartenders and the owner fairly well; it was kinda my Cheers. Somehow, I end up drinking with a couple girls. One’s very cute, around my age, and I really dig her. The other is a little older, pixyish with short red hair.

    I do my best to court the younger one, but then her boyfriend shows up. I didn’t know she had a boyfriend! Also, he was a douche. So, anyway, the friend gets a little drunk and asks me to take her to one of the “punk” clubs. I’m a little toasty too, so I hail a cab and take her to Exit. We have a few drinks there, and she starts giving me a lap dance to like Oi music, very odd. But she was cute, so what the fuck. All of the regulars at the bar look at me like I’m slumming it with this yuppie chick, but I’m too drunk to care. We hail a cab, and go to her place. I don’t remember much, but I do remember her stripping me and having some weird fixation with my feet. Hey, I got laid AND a foot massage? Awesome.

    I wake up, and the first thing I see is this look of regret on her face. Like immediately. She has to go to work, and she kicks my ass out. It’s fair. Well, I’m a scummy looking punk. My bihawk is all bent and crooked and looks like I slept on it, my clothes reek of cigarettes and beer, and I smell like pussy. I walk out of the apartment, and have no clue where I am. I stumble around the neighborhood trying to find the L train, and look like a scumbag.

    After some time, I find the train, and get on board. I shit you not, I sit down on the train car, and looky here, it’s drunk girl! And she totally won’t look at me. I can tell she’s embarrassed that she slept with me, so I decide to just make this as uncomfortable as possible. I start talking at her, thanking her for the wild night, the foot rub, etc. and she’s just blushing and wishing I would go away. Yeah, pretty immature of me, but I was 24, and man, was that a shitty way to wake up. Yeah, she never called me back, either.

    So I have to switch trains downtown, and to transfer to another train, I have to walk across the courtyard of the federal prison downtown. I pass by one of my co-workers, who barely recognizes me, and tells me I look like shit. But I felt fantastic!
    •  
      CommentAuthorAlan Tyson
    • CommentTimeMay 1st 2011
     (9780.36)
    So, how are you even able to take trains anymore, govspy?
  17.  (9780.37)
    I don't, not since I moved to Texas. They're not too fond of public transportation down here. But I'm not too sure what you mean... Do I just keep running into random one night stands? Nah, I've been with my lady for 3+ years now and I calmed down quite a bit on the drinking & screwing around since then too.
    •  
      CommentAuthorAlan Tyson
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2011 edited
     (9780.38)
    Okay, here's one.

    I'd taken some new friends of mine to Chicago for a weekend. They're both from out of town (I mean REALLY out of town - I'll refer to them as The Mad Bosnian and The Kazakh Beauty), and wanted to see a big American city - they'd seen New York, but only from the windows of LaGuardia. I told them I sorta knew my way around Chicago, and offered to show them around as their native guide. The fact that I (fairly obviously, since I choose to name her The Kazakh Beauty) had a rather large crush on The Kazakh Beauty probably had something to do with this offer.

    Anyway, we're all done with our trip, which culminated in all of us getting pretty damn drunk off our collected asses (first real hangover suffered that weekend - thank you, Long Island Ice Tea, never fucking AGAIN), getting lost in Boystown (which was actually a pretty damn cool experience), being offered sex by The Mad Bosnian (declined, despite the massive amount of beer and champagne we'd both indulged in, and how very, very pretty the man happened to be), and falling in love with Chicago all over again. Oh, and I lost my god damn wallet in a cab, along with the majority of the money I'd intended to use to get us all back home, my driver's license, my debit and insurance card, and plenty of other useful things. It was a fucking nice wallet, too, on top of everything else.

    Being understanding people, The Mad Bosnian and The Kazakh Beauty pay for our gas on the way back, which puts me in quite the state of embarrassment already - these guys only have so much money that they can use over here, and we weren't exactly frugal during our stay in Chicago. Also, I just don't like owing people money in general - it makes me feel extremely nervous, no matter the amount owed or how chill about it the person I owe may or may not be.

    So I already feel like I'm skating on thin ice while we're driving back to Iowa. The fact that I'm driving back without a license, through the part of Illinois most likely to be patrolled (It should be noted that this happened during 4th of July weekend), with two foreign nationals in my car and a great big crate of yet-to-be-drunk beer and liquor in my trunk... yeah, none of that exactly helps. My friends, however, seem to be taking things pretty well, and actually decide to kick back for a nap. Dear god, do I wish I could join them - I didn't sleep well at all the night before, and I'm as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs right now.

    So, to calm my nerves, I slip in an audio book, one of my favorites. Almost immediately, I relax, and let the words soothe me. It's about a five hour drive, so I get a good chunk into the story.

    And then the rather graphic sex scene that I'd COMPLETELY forgotten about starts up.

    I look over at my guests to see if they're still asleep. They are, thank god. I decide to, just for safety's sake, skip a few tracks, just in case they wake up.

    Naturally, this is when I hit a rather deep pothole.

    The Kazakh Beauty snaps awake, to the sight and sound of me fiddling with the car's audio controls, and the somewhat breathy narration of a threesome. Turns out I'd skipped right into the raunchiest part of the scene just as she woke up.

    The Kazakh Beauty gives me a very, very strange look. As might be inferred, English is not her first language, but she speaks and understands it pretty well, though I'm willing to bet there were words and phrases being used that she had never had reason to learn.

    I go "fuck it," and just hit the "off" switch, waiting for her to make some comment, trying to think of a joking, good-natured explanation. She does the worst thing possible: raises her eyebrow at me, sighs, and goes right back to sleep.

    It was an hour before we got back home. A very, very awkward hour, where I was terrified to turn on the radio, or indeed do much of anything except avoid crashing the car.

    We never spoke of the incident again. Which is probably all for the best.
    • CommentAuthorErisah
    • CommentTimeMay 3rd 2011
     (9780.39)
    Most of my best embarrassing stories aren't actually mine. Usually I'm playing a supporting role in the ongoing Soap Opera.

    This is one of the few times that I walked right into it:

    I was 17, and I'd never been kissed. This was for a number of reasons. The cliched ones were that I was the socially inept chick with the flat chest who happened to consistently top the year, to the point that some kids in my classes used how well I had done as a yardstick for how well they had done in a test, and I (told myself), I had standards- I didn't want any drunken hook-ups, and I didn't want to get with anyone I had to dumb down my speech for ("Speak English" was my least favourite phrase in highschool. One time it was because I used the word "subtle" in a sentence). More to the point, I didn't want any of my "firsts" to be with people I would later regret doing them with. The less cliched one was that I wanted desperately to leave my country home-town upon graduation and go to university, and so didn't want to have anything to tie me down, like a boyfriend, who might have wanted to stay. Also, I had just spent the entire year leading up to this moment secretly crushing on a girl who had then left town because her family moved due to her father's work. I never told her how I felt, because I saw how the lesbian couple who were outed at my school got treated. Ironically, I had already had the lesbian label applied, because my hair was shorter than at least half of the guys'.
    The funny one was that this was because I'd been labelled "frigid" since I was 12.

    This had to do with the fact that back in Year 7, I was the first girl to get a "boyfriend" in my circle. This meant that we were absolutely fascinating to the entirety of my year, who wanted to know what a relationship was like. I was "going out" with the guy because I liked him as a friend, and I thought it might be fun. Our romance lasted about three days, which was how long it took before I lost patience with the whole farce. About the point where a couple of girls in my class (who were bored- it was SRE, of course they were) were sitting behind me and lover boy and started trying to play dolls with us. "Put your hand on her knee" one of them suggested.
    Lover Boy complied, and sick of being treated like an animal at the zoo, I decided that this right here was the final straw.
    12yo me hissed at him in words that have been quoted back to me for years since; "THIS IS NOT AN EXHIBITION!"
    Needless to say, we broke up the next day. We're actually still friends, but for one reason or another we've never mentioned it since. :P

    That's actually not the story. That's just the background stuff.

    No, the story is, that 17yo me, dateless me, and let's face it, extremely sexually frustrated me, got asked out by the Norwegian Exchange student.
    He wasn't particularly hot, but I didn't have to speak in small words for him to get what I was talking about. He was only going to be in Australia for another three months. He asked me out.
    I thought that accepting his offer to take me out would be a good way to signal to all and sundry "hey, I'm not actually asexual and would not be completely adverse to a bit of experimenting". Needless to say, that wasn't quite what happened.
    Norway (that was what my schoolmates originally nicknamed him), had asked me out whilst me and about three quarters of my yearmates were on a bus to an excursion, so it took about thirty seconds before the entire school knew about this. Remember this, this relates to the punchline.
    So anyway, the next day, I have all these random people asking me about what the date is going to be, what it's going to be like. I was a bit confused as to why I was being treated like a celebrity zoo animal. Again. So I ask this girl, and she's all "oh, it's just that none of us have been on real dates, you know? Just mostly hookups around the bonfires".
    At the time I took this at face value. It was G-town after all. In retrospect, this was the point that I definitely should have smelled a rat.
    So anyway, the date afternoon happens. I have my license, and he doesn't, so I'm the one driving. He comes over to my house after school. We chat a bit, and then we figure we'll go see a movie. All that's on is a shitty kid's flick that's going to be on in about three hours. "No worries," I think, "we'll just kill some time".
    The "killing time" turns out to involve me standing around in the shopping mall bored out of my brain while he buys himself some new shorts.
    We decide to eat something, so we pick up some snacks, then wander over to the river. It's sunset, it's pretty as hell. I'm bored.
    We talk for a bit. He decides to tell "Read the Communist Manifesto for fun"/"aggressive pacifist" me that he approves of nuclear armament. I'm underwhelmed.
    We watch the movie. It's shit. He tries to "casually" put his arm around me, and I move forward so I'm only barely sitting in my seat. There is a stroller three feet from us. I'm bored and uncomfortable.
    Movie ends, we go get dinner. He tells me the story of how he got kicked out of his first host-family's house for suspected animal cruelty. I'm really bored and uncomfortable.
    I drive him to where he's staying, which happens to be in the next village, a good half-hour's drive away. We get lost. He twigs that I'm driving him home. He's annoyed. I'm past wishing that this was over.
    I finally get him to the place he's staying, and dodge his attempt at a goodnight kiss. Awkward.
    I drive home, and decide that that was one of the most simultaneously boring and annoying and uncomfortable experiences in my life. I go to bed, and decide that I'll let him know there won't be a second date tomorrow.
    The next day at school, everyone wants to know how it went. My answer is "meh".
    It's about this point that someone decides to fill me in on why they were all interested.

    Random Chick:"So yeah, apparently Norway has a bet going that before he goes home he's going to fuck an Australian girl..."

    Fuckers.
  20.  (9780.40)
    First up, this isn't my story. I overheard it on the train a few weeks back and there's a good chance that it's not even true. But if it is true it's so good that it deserves sharing.

    The story was being told by a guy sitting opposite me to one of his mates. They were both obviously graffiti artists (for a certain value of 'artist' I guess) as they spent most of the journey spotting murals and tags out the windows and critiquing them. They then got on to talking about their various adventures in vandalism and the following tale emerged.

    (Just to clarify, I have no problem with people putting up a decently painted bit of street art, legally or illegally, but I despise mindless taggers. These guys sounded a lot more like taggers, hence my disdain.)

    So some years back the guy telling the story got together with a bunch of his mates and snuck into the big rail yards down in Kewdale. They spent a while tagging carriages on a freight train before a late-comer turned up with Mcdonalds for everyone. So the whole bunch of them climbed up on top of one of the carriages to eat and shoot the breeze.

    All was going well, until the train started up.

    The narrator jumped off the carriage and landed face first in the gravel by the track. He got up, and started running along the rails shouting for the others to jump, but they were either too scared, or having to good a time. He ran alongside the carriage until the train pulled away and then, with nothing else to do headed home.

    Six hours later he got a phone call. The train had headed out into the goldfields and hadn't stopped (or even slowed down) until it reached Kalgoorlie, a good 550km away. His mates were stranded out in the desert with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the contents of their pockets, which didn't include anywhere near enough cash to get a train, bus or taxi home on.

    So yeah, there's any number of reasons why that's probably not true, but it still makes for a good story.

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