02/07/2005 - 3:40 p.m. | how we got the gays

This might all be rendered obselete in a little while, since we filmed pretty much the whole evening, but where would we be if I didn't make my little observations.

Pretty much the whole day was a waste right up until 11:30 or so. I've been trying to make a mental list of highlights, and all I've gotten is, "Watched Ultimate Fighting Heavyweight Championship." Time well spent. Anyway, Dan flaked out on us on the strip club. Said he was "sick" or something, but he seemed well enough at bingo the next night. Perhaps the idea of being trapped in a car with a bunch of complete strangers (whose only defining characteristic, as far as he knows, is our proclivity for swearing) - in order to attend the white trashiest place on earth to see some horrible acne-scarred breasts and mangled vaginas - didn't appeal to him. But who are we kidding? Anyway, our plans suddenly shot (because what fun is it going to a strip club without a gay man to bring along?), we tried to think of something to do. Out of nowhere (or maybe not, says Freud), I say, "Well, there's this little town on the way to Shelbyville called 'Gays.' And outside of this town, there is a sign that says, 'GAYS - 300.'" That's all it took.

They started drinking, and I ate one of Kyle's awful, awful Banquet dinners, for we would all need our energy. Kyle did about 7 shots in 15 minutes. As this is normally the amount he drinks in an entire evening, you could tell good things were on their way. We set out on the road in my car (as it was the only one with room for all five of us - I mean, badass enough), promptly forgetting the tools we had meant to bring. Oops. We hit the gas station for NoDoz (and cigars!), and Kyle got quite possibly the largest container of Mt. Dew I have ever seen in my lifetime. This inevitably led to a discussion of comp sci majors and their horrible boasts regarding consumption ("Man, I had like 7 Dews last night! I am so extreme hardcore!"), somehow leading to the mysterious character known as Dew Man, a mythical being we may have invented. You only see him when you drink so much Dew. I have such an odd mental picture of him in my head, and we did not shut up about him all night. When we started to wind down a little, Kyle's like, "I still got the Dew Man in my peripheral vision, but we gotta get him back to the forefront."

Anyway, a car full of people spiked with caffeine and cheap vodka makes for quite a ball of noise, and we got the whole thing on tape. For the purposes of anonymity, we all wore terrible makeshift disguises and assigned one another fake names. These were almost constantly forgotten and replaced with either "Flavor Flav" or "Allen Wittman" at any given moment. I was Flex Master Swole in a black bandana. Kyle was Boumi with accompanying fez and StealingSpecs (Wraparound, baby! He couldn't see shit!) Tebben in cat hat and possibly cat bandana (Ooh, a theme!) was T-Bone. Shanks, hidden behind the camera and pretty much every article of clothing the University of Illinois offers, was S-Man. Smacko (because clearly he needs a nickname - his infamy preceeds him) was... maybe the original Flavor Flav, and he was garbed in the horrible braided Avril wig. As we drove, Kyle and I had what was essentially a shouting match about the merits of D&D 2nd Edition vs. Everything Else. Kyle, as always, was articulate as hell while drunk, but the shit never fails to surprise me anyway, yelling about the inverse linear system that is (was) THACO. We stopped to piss four in a row in a cornfield and then to flee to a gas station when the crippling set in on me.

As we got closer to Mattoon (where we would be turning off to reach Gays), Shanks called Jackson from IMSA because he lives in the area. Finding he wasn't there, we made a detour to his house (More like his mansion, actually - The shit was huge as hell!) such that Smacko and Shanks could piss on it. Then, finding that Jackson was, in fact, at a high school party, we zoomed off in his direction, for who better to get some high school chicks than a bunch of drunken vandal nerds? In disguises. Yeah, we wore that shit in. We had to, man! We had the camera rolling the whole time, and we weren't about to blow cover.

The girl whose house the party was at yelled, "What the fuck?!" at Jackson as soon as we all lurched in. She continually told us to quiet down during our time there, but were we going to be held down by the suburban Man? I think fucking not. The reason for the party, this huge beast with grotesquely large breasts and severe acne, was turning 18 that evening, so Kyle was immediately instructed to give her ass a lapdance. He obliged. While the rest of tried to explain who we were - without giving our names, of course (Jackson to me: "Hey, man! I remember you from last night!" You do? "Yeah, you were talking beating up women. Keep those bitches in line!" I was?) - Kyle grabbed the camera and tried his very hardest to get some underaged boobies on camera. Unfortunately, in his gear he looked like some insane 80's Muslim Terminator, and his "line" (it can be called that) was none too effective. "I work for 'Girls Gone Wild,'" etc. He tried this on four different girls, repeating the first one again because he'd forgotten he'd already tried. Smacko, in an effort to start a bandwagon, lifted up his shirt (wearing the Avril wig still), leading to the instant creation of dragqueentitties.biz. Meanwhile, rumor had it that some people were having sex in the room down the hall, so we tried to send Kyle in there after them, but they wisely locked the door after the first such slip-up. Eventually, Buzz (That is what we call him) and the girl came out (After none too long, some guy who decided I was his friend intimated to me. Heh heh heh - he has orgasms quickly), followed by this other girl like five minutes later. She goes, "Wait! You guys were fucking while I was sleeping in there!? That's sick!" Buzz took Kyle aside, however, and made him turn off the camera before admitting that he had been doing both the chicks in that other room. This immediately piqued Kyle's interest and got him focused on the other girl. Her name was Sarah, and she had big brown eyes (In both senses of the phrase - depending on if you ask Missy or a sane person, "big brown eyes" either means "big brown eyes" or "big ass boobies." She had both). Anyway, we pretty much terrified the party to its core, so that most people started to leave, so we got ready ourselves. But not before Smacko showed off his balls first, of course!

Despite having seen this place only once (Seven months ago! But I cackled then and put it in memory for the long haul), I found my way to the sign pretty easily. Somehow this had already taken us three hours, and we still didn't have any tools. So! Back to Mattoon and its Wal-mart (not before casing the nearby McDonald's Ronald McDonald statue - It would have been impossible, though. Very well-guarded) for a couple of cresent wrenches. We were all ill from the caffeine by then. Then, another ten minutes back out to Gays to park by the side of the road. Let the struggle begin.

Having no physical strength to speak of (and a strange talent for spotting things in spite of my terrible vision), I sat in the car, ready to signal if ever I saw a car. Everyone would pile in then, and we'd zoom off around a few blocks until the coast was clear. Everyone else tackled the task at hand, taking turns to film. Tebben did the brunt of the effort, but the bolts they use on the signs have these stupid ends on them that are nearly impossible to get the nut off of (Guess how many gay jokes we made this night!). He got the lower one undone, but the upper one was too tall for him to reach and unscrew with any strength. Alternate plans were formed, such that when I glanced over once, I happened to see the four of them playing Chicken, Smacko and Tebben on the shoulders of Shanks and Kyle. Nevertheless daunted, we had to pull the station wagon back into the sign, close enough so that Tebben could stand on the roof (Oh dear God) to get some leverage. I sat in the car, nervously drumming and alternately whispering, "Come on, guys. Get it. You can do it, guys. Just be fast." and "Please don't collpase my roof. Please don't collapse my roof." Kyle, meanwhile, paranoid with the caffeine, thought he heard someone using scissors over and over again across the street.

Finally, after several trips to the sign and from, and after coating pretty much every inch of my car (top and bottom) with mud, they got the sign down and dumped it into the car. We took off at top speed (What, like, 63?) yelling, "FLAVOR FLAV!" at the top of our lungs. Dangerously low on gas, we stopped to clean up the car a little bit while Kyle went on about Sarah and her wonderful boobs and how we needed them on video. So, Shanks called Jackson and got her number, and then Kyle called her, offering her $200 to show them to us. She goes, "Is this the fireman?" to which Kyle replies, "Yeah, baby. I've got some hose for you." He seemed so surprised his charisma didn't work. Undaunted, we called Jackson back and found they were all at Steak 'n' Shake, so we stalked them in there, sans disguises. We figured since they already saw us with the disguises, they couldn't possibly guess who we were without. We were wrong, for as soon as we walked in, Birthday Beast was like, "Oh no." We were tame, though, and I don't think Sarah was nearly as pretty as Kyle remembered, so we took off not long after.

Another hour back home in a twitchy daze, discussing the canon of Scientology (Lord Zenu blowing up volcanoes with people tied around them in order to create thetons or some shit), and our mission was finally complete. Five hours later. You've seen the pictures. It was worth it in every aspect possible. Another hour up to celebrate at home (and to try and get a decent picture - apparently posing with the most reflective surface in the world makes for photographic troubles), and then time for bed. And only like four hours 'til I have to be up for work.