The Duality of Laughter
I'm sorry for taking so long to write my next entry, but I've had a lot of school work as of late. I'll still keep trying to update my blog at least twice a week, but I know I'll break that promise sooner rather than later.
Also, I'm excited to see this. Why? An Anime Academy serialized comic would be cool as hell. The idea has great potential, and it's been put into practice rather well in this thread. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but I feel very enthusiastic for this project, and I hope it becomes realized. There's more than plenty of steam from the staff and students for this.
And I hope you enjoy this entry. I sure did. ;)
Written October 16th, 2004
After one particular incident, I learned that laughter expresses two aspects of the human mind: amusement caused by something or someone and the release of tension.
It was a late July or early August 2004, and Matt Wilson’s ex-girlfriend Karen and her family went away for a vacation somewhere (I forget where exactly, but the where isn’t particularly necessary). Karen had told Matt that he was allowed to have some friends over at her house because he had agreed to watch her dogs. An exchange of services for privileges, if you will.
As with all good stories, some backstory knowledge is required to fully gain appreciation and understanding for the entire comedy of errors which will transpire. Matt and Karen had been going out for more than two years when they broke up in early July 2004. Now, Matt’s friends (Brandon and I) had been pressuring him to dump her since the previous summer; we had been doing this not because we were bad friends but because we were good friends. Karen was an extremely negative influence upon him. For example, she had dared him numerous times to break up with her (I witnessed one firsthand and had only heard phone messages before), made him spend a large portion of his paychecks on her, and was usually found yelling at him over stupid bullshit (like how he forgot something, was late, didn’t see her everyday, etc.). In short, it was a relationship gone sour, and the fact that Brandon and I had a mutual hate for her or that Matt had noted on quite a few occasions that she/he wasn’t the same person anymore didn’t help matters. So after two years of fucking (but no sucking – striking), dating, yelling, and screaming, Matt decided to break up. Following the break up, it didn’t help matters that Matt and Karen were still “together” (not officially, but they fucked around a bit, called each other, and hung out some), but this incident tore them apart permanently all thanks to Matt, Brandon, Lance, and myself.
So quick reminder: while Karen’s family was away, they asked Matt to watch the dogs and said he could have friends over. Now, the part we all liked was the last portion. Basically, we had ourselves a home away from home for a week, and we didn’t care at all if we trashed the place (but we refrained from doing so). Now, to four college guys who didn’t like Karen or her family (Matt was borderline at this point), this is paradise; get a bunch of strippers, add lots of alcohol and illicit substances, and you’ve got a small slice of heaven. Even without the strippers, you’re talking loads of fun. End of backstory.
If I remember correctly, we showed up on a Wednesday evening at Karen’s house with a bottle of E&J Cask & Cream Brandy and a case of Guinness Stout, and we intended to make our cheap version of Irish Carbombs. The very first thing I did was terrorize the dogs simply because they were Karen’s. One was an okay mop (stick a broomstick up their asses and they would look like mops) while the other was just flat out scared of us. After chasing them all around the backyard and pool, I went inside the house… to find that the family had turned off all of the air-conditioning. Now, it was about 7:00pm and it had already begun cooling down outside, but the inside of the house had just gotten done being baked by the hot August sun (I’m more sure now that that was the month). The first thing we did was throw our alcohol into the refrigerator, and then we proceed to turn on everything that would make the house cooler (note: it was blazing in there for the rest of the night and we were sweating like pigs). So what was the first thing we did? Carbombs! Unfortunately, E&J’s tastes like straight brandy, but fortunately, Karen’s mom and step-father just happened to be alcoholics. Upon exploring the refrigerator, we found at least 7 bottles of wine poorly hidden behind some food and, to our surprise, a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream sitting right on the door. So what did we do? For the time being, we just used the Baileys, and just so I don’t have to remember to mention it later, we killed the Baileys and filled the bottle with the cheap E&J (remember kids: just because the label is similar does not mean that it tastes the same).
So after we all had a few Carbombs, Brandon broke out the weed. Now, I don’t smoke weed anymore nor did I at the time that this story took place, but that didn’t stop Brandon, Lance, and Matt from blazing a few bowls. And while they were getting all set up, we grabbed a television, a VCR, multiple extension cords, and put all this together by the pool. I found a copy of Heat and decided that we should watch it, but I didn’t watch more than 10 minutes of it (Brandon, Matt, and Lance watched it in full the next day and they loved it). Anyways, we swam a bit in the pool while watching Heat, and Brandon used the pool as part of his Gravity Bong. With Carbombs and some weed in them, Brandon, Matt, and Lance were pretty much gone for the night.
But shame on us for ordering pizza from Papa John’s. Why order pizza when you have a kitchen filled with food? Hey, we might have dug into some of what treasures the kitchen provided (like the Texas Garlic Toast), but we didn’t dive into the kitchen with too much confidence because we weren’t at home yet with the whole concept of this place being ours for a week. So we ordered pizza, David Gattens (a friend of Lance’s, and now that David transferred to Penn State, Brandon’s friend) came over for a bit, and we proceeded to eat lots of unhealthy food. Loads of fun, believe me, but Brandon and I left at midnight because we had work at 4:00am and 7:00am, respectively. For a first night, it couldn’t have gotten much better.
The next day, I got out of work by 3:00pm or thereabout, but I didn’t come over to Karen’s house until 8-9:00pm. I forget exactly what I was doing, but I imagine I was watching anime, writing a review, talking on IRC, or something of the sort. So while I wasn’t there, Brandon, Matt, and Lance had been at Karen’s house for the entire afternoon eating, barbequing Hatfield pork products, smoking weed, and shooting BB guns (the latter I heard about later on, but I could never positively confirm it).
So I finally came over about 8-9:00pm, and I immediately began drinking one of the remaining Guinness Stouts. And then I started exploring the refrigerator more daringly. In a few minutes time, I had already found a 2-liter bottle of flat Dr. Pepper about a quarter filled, 4 to 6 small plastic baskets filled with moldy blueberries (and I don’t mean peach fuzz; I mean the shit had a full-grown beard), and numerous other foodstuffs that had gone bad long before our arrival the previous day. So I decided to help out Karen’s family by pitching it all. Then we decided to help the family a bit more by doing a little summer cleaning with the refrigerator and freezer; hey, it wasn’t our food, so we had no qualms about eating any of it. We ended up cleaning out the rest of the Texas Garlic Toast (yes, heart attack-inducing bread, but it was so delectable), made a huge plate of scrambled eggs out of a dozen eggs and various edible (read: not rotten) meats and cheeses, killed off the English muffins and had them with the eggs, and proceeded to bake an entire bag of French fries (at this point, we were stuffed, and the only reason why I wanted to make the fries was to waste them; a scorched earth tactic, per say).
Also, I cannot forget to mention that Lance found a small butane torch in a cabinet. I ended up torching some stuff (like the eggs) and melting other things (like the dog bowl outside, but I was trying to make the water in it boil). It was a fun little tool that I must play with another time.
Anyways, Brandon, Lance, and myself were having fun eating good food and chatting while Matt was sleeping on the couch in the living room while really high (if I remember, he had the television on with Aaron Brown airing). I walked from the counter we were eating at to the oven to check the French fries when I suddenly saw car lights out the kitchen window. Thinking that it was a car driving on the road (even though I couldn’t see the road because of the angle the window was facing), I blew it off, checked the fries, put them back into the oven, and walked back to the counter.
Two minutes later, a rather tall man walked into the house, and I had never seen him before. The three of us at the counter stared at him and he stared right back, a fragile silence filling the air between everyone during this rather surreal moment. The first thought that ran through my mind was that it was probably an uncle of Karen’s who was staying the night and leaving in the morning for his hunting camp or whatnot; I mean, who else shows up at a house after 11:00pm?
He made the first move. He lumbered his way over to the living room, spotted Matt on the couch, and bellowed, “Matt, you’ve got some explaining to do”. Upon hearing this, we were immediately on edge, and at this point, I would have rather been eating molten steel in the Sahara Desert than here. Warning klaxons were going off in my mind, and I didn’t know why I should be worrying; the house wasn’t wrecked, the air-conditioning was on (and it felt very good), Karen’s family was scheduled to be away on vacation for at least another 5 days, and the dogs were still alive. The only thing I should have been worrying about was getting home in the next hour so I could get plenty of sleep.
While all of this was running through my mind, Matt awoke in a high-as-the-moon stupor, and we began cleaning up trash and dirty dishes (which wasn’t much). Again, the man asked Matt, “Do you mind explaining this?” Matt’s eyes were half-shut and he was as mute as a tree. The man walked out onto the back porch and began staring at what I can only imagine were the melted remains of the dog bowl and the scorch mark surrounding it.
Spotting an opportunity, I leaned over to Matt, who was scrubbing some dishes, and asked him, “Who the fuck is that?”
“That’s Karen’s step-father.”
All of my stories need these earth-shattering plot twists, but then I know that I wouldn’t be able to take it all. One doesn’t go through life truly wishing for it to be too interesting.
Anyways, we threw away the tray of half-baked French fries and whatever garbage was lying around. Once again, the step-father walked back in, asked Matt, “Just what is going on here”, received only silence in response, and walked out onto the porch to make a phone call (presumably to the rest of the family).
While he was out on the back porch, I decided that it’s time for a prison break (and this was coming from a guy who never usually plays leader with his friends). In a loud whisper, I said, “Guys, let’s get the fuck out of here now.” Auspiciously, no one disagreed.
Now, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, Brandon, Matt, and Lance are still really high. Second, the step-father parked on the side of the house, not the front or driveway, and he was walking in and out of the back door (the same one that led to the back porch, backyard, and swimming pool), so we had a clear shot through the front door to our cars. Lastly, Lance had been driven over by Brandon, so his truck wasn’t around.
So we made our break for freedom. Matt grabbed some stuff and a garbage bag on the way out while the rest of us are bolted for the cars. I reached mine on the curb first, didn’t see Lance behind me, and began waiting. Brandon got into his car on the curb and sped off, and Matt wasn’t far behind him; he hopped into his jeep on the driveway and got out pretty quickly. In the meantime, I began freaking out and getting very pissed off to the point that I start screaming obscenities at my steering wheel; Lance still hadn’t come out of the house. Now, I might not be on the best of terms with my brother (now and at the time that all of this transpired), but I’ll be damned if I was going to let some dumbfuck alcoholic beast corner my brother. Suffice to say, in the time that Lance wasn’t outside and I was waiting for him, I was seriously coming up with a contingency plan that involved the step-father’s jugular vein being neatly sliced and his remains being found a decade later.
A mere 30 seconds later, Lance walked out the front door and got into my car. What was his excuse? “I was looking for my beach towel”. Yes, that was just one more reason why I don’t smoke pot anymore: because I don’t want to be high, be put into a hectic situation, and do something that fucking stupid.
Following our desperate exodus from a house we once called paradise (or just making a poor attempt at referencing an old Green Day song), we met up in front of my house and proceeded to laugh and talk all about what had happened. This was when I began learning how laughing sheds tension remarkably well. After a good 15 minutes of venting our stress, we told Matt (who was still really high and almost non-responsive) to contact Karen somehow; it would’ve been best had she heard it from Matt first than from the step-father. Fortunately, it wasn’t destined to happen; Karen had left her cell phone at home because she couldn’t find the charger before she left for her vacation and the hotel phone number the family had given Matt was a wrong number. Shit happens.
However, the story and the shit didn’t end there. Not by a long shot. The next day, I called Matt from work and he told me that he’d received a series of three phone calls on his cell phone.
The first was from the step-father. He promptly told Matt that he had missed his business flight to Chicago (side question: why spend less than two days on vacation? That sounds like a waste of time; if I had been him, I would’ve just stayed home) because he spent the entire night cleaning up our "mess"; I don’t know what mess he was referring to because the house was trashed when we first got there and we probably made it cleaner. Also, he demanded that Matt put the house key into their mailbox and never come there ever again (later that day, Matt waited for the step-father to leave and then wisely used the opportunity to grab his and Lance’s stuff that they had forgotten).
The second phone call was from Tim, Karen’s older brother. You have to understand something: Tim is a part-timer at life (part-time electrician, part-time Hersheypark Catering blue tag, and part-time National Guardsman), so that should tell you right away that he’s a few lamb chops short of a mixed grill or otherwise he would have a full-time job. In the phone conversation, Tim basically yelled at Matt, telling him all about how the family was going to be home soon, how they were going to have a long talk with him, and how he wasn’t going to “weasel his way out of this one”. Judging by the major points of Tim’s phone call, he wasn’t happy with Matt nor was he going to give him any leeway.
The last phone call was from Karen herself, and she proceeded to cry her little heart dry or something melodramatic like that. From what I came to understand, she was acting like we had filleted her mutts, left their flesh out on the clothesline to bleach in the sun, fed the organs to the crows, dinned on the succulent ribs and legs, and bathed in their blood. Or something else overblown and disgusting like that that I’m merely using to illustrate a point. Yeah, Karen was and is a few trash bags short of a dumpster, too.
I strongly believe that their knee-jerk reaction was partially our fault (we hadn’t said a damn word to the step-father), but the reaction also lacked a certain something that wasn’t prevalent in their family: logic. I’ll give them this but nothing else: they probably didn’t want us (except Matt) in their house. However, they even said that Matt was allowed to have friends over and no restrictions or implied limits were made. What about the food? What we ate could’ve been covered by $10. Any other costs incurred? Perhaps the bottle of Baileys, but we filled it back up; sure, it might have been a cheaper brand, but it was cream liqueur nevertheless. What of the melted dog bowl and scored portion of the porch? The dog bowl was some cheap, piece of shit whipped cream container that was easily replaceable, and the wood porch itself… oh well. My bad. That was stupid on my part, and I wasn’t even drunk, so I have no excuse. Regardless, the step-father overreacted and didn’t even try to play it cool at all, and the rest of the family went overboard as well. I half-expected them to sue us, but nothing of the sort ever came to be.
Does the story stop there? Oh no, we’ve got a little ways to go just yet.
Karen and the rest of her family came home a few days later (or maybe the next weekend; I’m not 100% sure on that part) and told Matt to come over so they could talk it out (read: bitch him out because they knew he would take it without defending himself too much; Matt is a nice guy, but he doesn’t exactly stick up for himself all the time). Brandon, Meghan, and Lance went with Matt over to Karen’s house, and in the meantime, I was at home watching anime or something of the sort (just so I don’t give the wrong impression, I wasn’t at home watching anime all the time, but I just happened to be in the middle of watching Planetes a second time).
In short, I missed quite a bit of fun. In long, Brandon, Meghan, Matt, and Lance came back to my house about an hour after they left with quite a story. However, this next part is all what I’ve been told, so having not experienced it, I cannot remember everything as well as I should nor do I recall all of the details relayed to me, but I’ll try my best.
Brandon, Meghan, Matt, and Lance showed up at Karen’s house in Brandon’s car and proceeded to speak to the family in a rational manner. The entire family (I haven't mentioned the youngest brother, Mike, because he never really comes into play with any of this, but he was here at this event) except Tim was there to greet my boys. From the beginning, it was apparent that the step-father was drunk because his speech was mildly slurred and actions greatly exaggerated.
The first thing the step-father did was place blame on my boys for shooting BB guns and endangering the lives of the family next door (of the two neighbors, one was an old family while the other was a younger family with a baby nary several months old; he was talking about the younger family). So what did my boys do? They went next door and proceeded to speak to the man of the house. Holding his infant child, he came outside to answer any questions. Upon being asked if my boys had endangered the lives of his family, the man said that he had no idea what we were talking about; he knew that we had been next door, but he never once felt threatened by our presence.
In essence, the step-father was caught in a lie.
Trapped in a war of words, the step-father proceeded to tell Matt all about how he was a lazy slacker and a good-for-nothing boyfriend. What did Matt do? He told him that he’s a horrible step-father.
Matt’s response set off the step-father, and what was once a war of words became a war of fists.
The step-father didn’t hesitate to start strangling Matt with his bare hands on his lawn in front of neighbors and family. Now, Matt might know quite a lot of Russian martial arts, but he wasn’t in the right state of mind to be physically fighting anyone. As soon as Matt was suddenly attacked, two things immediately happened: first, Karen and her mother began crying and wailing for them to stop, and second, Brandon ran up behind the step-father and put him into a choke hold while yelling, “Let go of him” multiple times. Brandon is a big guy (at least 6’2”), but while the step-father had a few inches on him, there was no contest. In seconds, the step-father got weak in the knees and began falling to the ground while releasing his grip on Matt’s throat. Not wanting to kill the old guy, Brandon let him out of the choke hold only to find the step-father turning as he fell. He reached out for Brandon’s legs, but he only grasped air as Brandon began taking steps back to prevent the step-father from even touching him.
If I remember correctly, this was when Lance finally decided that he shouldn’t use his cell phone camera to take a few pictures of the unfolding situation and he actually got involved. He grabbed the step-father’s legs and pulled him back, not by much, but enough to turn his drunken attention away from Brandon. So the step-father returned his attention to Matt, and while still on his knees, he once again tried strangling Matt. At this point, Matt was sort of in a fighting state of mind, and he wisely deflected the man’s hands, signaling the poor bastard’s defeat and the end of the Jerry Springer-like fight.
As the victorious party began walking back to Brandon’s car, Karen, still crying her eyes red, came running up to Brandon and began slapping/clawing at his chest. While she screamed out random obscenities and how much she hated him, Brandon only stood in place and laughed at her futile actions. Less than a minute later, Brandon, Meghan, Matt, and Lance were on the road, leaving Karen in their wake to cry.
With regards to this last part, I wish I had been there to see it all transpire; that would at least allow me to tell a more accurate story. However, had I been there, I fear I would’ve gotten involved in the fight, and had that happened, I might’ve gone berserk on the step-father. Seeing his dead, crumpled body wouldn’t have been out of a realm of possibility had I been there, so I’m not that terribly disappointed by missing out on seeing it firsthand.
Overall, I see this as a dramatic and fitting end to Matt and Karen’s relationship. This sequence of events permanently burned whatever bridge Matt had to Karen, and that’s a good thing. When Brandon, Meghan, Matt, and Lance came back to my house to tell me of their fun, I could hear that certain tone in their laughter, a tone of tension being released. Sure, they were laughing at the sequence of comedy that they’d experienced, but with that sudden pressure taken away and being in a secure place (my house), the tension was free to be released. I laughed with them, but mine was a different laughter; I hadn’t just experienced a deeply stressful situation like they had. And while I had read about it before, I never fully understood the duality of laughter until then.
Also, I'm excited to see this. Why? An Anime Academy serialized comic would be cool as hell. The idea has great potential, and it's been put into practice rather well in this thread. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but I feel very enthusiastic for this project, and I hope it becomes realized. There's more than plenty of steam from the staff and students for this.
And I hope you enjoy this entry. I sure did. ;)
Written October 16th, 2004
After one particular incident, I learned that laughter expresses two aspects of the human mind: amusement caused by something or someone and the release of tension.
It was a late July or early August 2004, and Matt Wilson’s ex-girlfriend Karen and her family went away for a vacation somewhere (I forget where exactly, but the where isn’t particularly necessary). Karen had told Matt that he was allowed to have some friends over at her house because he had agreed to watch her dogs. An exchange of services for privileges, if you will.
As with all good stories, some backstory knowledge is required to fully gain appreciation and understanding for the entire comedy of errors which will transpire. Matt and Karen had been going out for more than two years when they broke up in early July 2004. Now, Matt’s friends (Brandon and I) had been pressuring him to dump her since the previous summer; we had been doing this not because we were bad friends but because we were good friends. Karen was an extremely negative influence upon him. For example, she had dared him numerous times to break up with her (I witnessed one firsthand and had only heard phone messages before), made him spend a large portion of his paychecks on her, and was usually found yelling at him over stupid bullshit (like how he forgot something, was late, didn’t see her everyday, etc.). In short, it was a relationship gone sour, and the fact that Brandon and I had a mutual hate for her or that Matt had noted on quite a few occasions that she/he wasn’t the same person anymore didn’t help matters. So after two years of fucking (but no sucking – striking), dating, yelling, and screaming, Matt decided to break up. Following the break up, it didn’t help matters that Matt and Karen were still “together” (not officially, but they fucked around a bit, called each other, and hung out some), but this incident tore them apart permanently all thanks to Matt, Brandon, Lance, and myself.
So quick reminder: while Karen’s family was away, they asked Matt to watch the dogs and said he could have friends over. Now, the part we all liked was the last portion. Basically, we had ourselves a home away from home for a week, and we didn’t care at all if we trashed the place (but we refrained from doing so). Now, to four college guys who didn’t like Karen or her family (Matt was borderline at this point), this is paradise; get a bunch of strippers, add lots of alcohol and illicit substances, and you’ve got a small slice of heaven. Even without the strippers, you’re talking loads of fun. End of backstory.
If I remember correctly, we showed up on a Wednesday evening at Karen’s house with a bottle of E&J Cask & Cream Brandy and a case of Guinness Stout, and we intended to make our cheap version of Irish Carbombs. The very first thing I did was terrorize the dogs simply because they were Karen’s. One was an okay mop (stick a broomstick up their asses and they would look like mops) while the other was just flat out scared of us. After chasing them all around the backyard and pool, I went inside the house… to find that the family had turned off all of the air-conditioning. Now, it was about 7:00pm and it had already begun cooling down outside, but the inside of the house had just gotten done being baked by the hot August sun (I’m more sure now that that was the month). The first thing we did was throw our alcohol into the refrigerator, and then we proceed to turn on everything that would make the house cooler (note: it was blazing in there for the rest of the night and we were sweating like pigs). So what was the first thing we did? Carbombs! Unfortunately, E&J’s tastes like straight brandy, but fortunately, Karen’s mom and step-father just happened to be alcoholics. Upon exploring the refrigerator, we found at least 7 bottles of wine poorly hidden behind some food and, to our surprise, a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream sitting right on the door. So what did we do? For the time being, we just used the Baileys, and just so I don’t have to remember to mention it later, we killed the Baileys and filled the bottle with the cheap E&J (remember kids: just because the label is similar does not mean that it tastes the same).
So after we all had a few Carbombs, Brandon broke out the weed. Now, I don’t smoke weed anymore nor did I at the time that this story took place, but that didn’t stop Brandon, Lance, and Matt from blazing a few bowls. And while they were getting all set up, we grabbed a television, a VCR, multiple extension cords, and put all this together by the pool. I found a copy of Heat and decided that we should watch it, but I didn’t watch more than 10 minutes of it (Brandon, Matt, and Lance watched it in full the next day and they loved it). Anyways, we swam a bit in the pool while watching Heat, and Brandon used the pool as part of his Gravity Bong. With Carbombs and some weed in them, Brandon, Matt, and Lance were pretty much gone for the night.
But shame on us for ordering pizza from Papa John’s. Why order pizza when you have a kitchen filled with food? Hey, we might have dug into some of what treasures the kitchen provided (like the Texas Garlic Toast), but we didn’t dive into the kitchen with too much confidence because we weren’t at home yet with the whole concept of this place being ours for a week. So we ordered pizza, David Gattens (a friend of Lance’s, and now that David transferred to Penn State, Brandon’s friend) came over for a bit, and we proceeded to eat lots of unhealthy food. Loads of fun, believe me, but Brandon and I left at midnight because we had work at 4:00am and 7:00am, respectively. For a first night, it couldn’t have gotten much better.
The next day, I got out of work by 3:00pm or thereabout, but I didn’t come over to Karen’s house until 8-9:00pm. I forget exactly what I was doing, but I imagine I was watching anime, writing a review, talking on IRC, or something of the sort. So while I wasn’t there, Brandon, Matt, and Lance had been at Karen’s house for the entire afternoon eating, barbequing Hatfield pork products, smoking weed, and shooting BB guns (the latter I heard about later on, but I could never positively confirm it).
So I finally came over about 8-9:00pm, and I immediately began drinking one of the remaining Guinness Stouts. And then I started exploring the refrigerator more daringly. In a few minutes time, I had already found a 2-liter bottle of flat Dr. Pepper about a quarter filled, 4 to 6 small plastic baskets filled with moldy blueberries (and I don’t mean peach fuzz; I mean the shit had a full-grown beard), and numerous other foodstuffs that had gone bad long before our arrival the previous day. So I decided to help out Karen’s family by pitching it all. Then we decided to help the family a bit more by doing a little summer cleaning with the refrigerator and freezer; hey, it wasn’t our food, so we had no qualms about eating any of it. We ended up cleaning out the rest of the Texas Garlic Toast (yes, heart attack-inducing bread, but it was so delectable), made a huge plate of scrambled eggs out of a dozen eggs and various edible (read: not rotten) meats and cheeses, killed off the English muffins and had them with the eggs, and proceeded to bake an entire bag of French fries (at this point, we were stuffed, and the only reason why I wanted to make the fries was to waste them; a scorched earth tactic, per say).
Also, I cannot forget to mention that Lance found a small butane torch in a cabinet. I ended up torching some stuff (like the eggs) and melting other things (like the dog bowl outside, but I was trying to make the water in it boil). It was a fun little tool that I must play with another time.
Anyways, Brandon, Lance, and myself were having fun eating good food and chatting while Matt was sleeping on the couch in the living room while really high (if I remember, he had the television on with Aaron Brown airing). I walked from the counter we were eating at to the oven to check the French fries when I suddenly saw car lights out the kitchen window. Thinking that it was a car driving on the road (even though I couldn’t see the road because of the angle the window was facing), I blew it off, checked the fries, put them back into the oven, and walked back to the counter.
Two minutes later, a rather tall man walked into the house, and I had never seen him before. The three of us at the counter stared at him and he stared right back, a fragile silence filling the air between everyone during this rather surreal moment. The first thought that ran through my mind was that it was probably an uncle of Karen’s who was staying the night and leaving in the morning for his hunting camp or whatnot; I mean, who else shows up at a house after 11:00pm?
He made the first move. He lumbered his way over to the living room, spotted Matt on the couch, and bellowed, “Matt, you’ve got some explaining to do”. Upon hearing this, we were immediately on edge, and at this point, I would have rather been eating molten steel in the Sahara Desert than here. Warning klaxons were going off in my mind, and I didn’t know why I should be worrying; the house wasn’t wrecked, the air-conditioning was on (and it felt very good), Karen’s family was scheduled to be away on vacation for at least another 5 days, and the dogs were still alive. The only thing I should have been worrying about was getting home in the next hour so I could get plenty of sleep.
While all of this was running through my mind, Matt awoke in a high-as-the-moon stupor, and we began cleaning up trash and dirty dishes (which wasn’t much). Again, the man asked Matt, “Do you mind explaining this?” Matt’s eyes were half-shut and he was as mute as a tree. The man walked out onto the back porch and began staring at what I can only imagine were the melted remains of the dog bowl and the scorch mark surrounding it.
Spotting an opportunity, I leaned over to Matt, who was scrubbing some dishes, and asked him, “Who the fuck is that?”
“That’s Karen’s step-father.”
All of my stories need these earth-shattering plot twists, but then I know that I wouldn’t be able to take it all. One doesn’t go through life truly wishing for it to be too interesting.
Anyways, we threw away the tray of half-baked French fries and whatever garbage was lying around. Once again, the step-father walked back in, asked Matt, “Just what is going on here”, received only silence in response, and walked out onto the porch to make a phone call (presumably to the rest of the family).
While he was out on the back porch, I decided that it’s time for a prison break (and this was coming from a guy who never usually plays leader with his friends). In a loud whisper, I said, “Guys, let’s get the fuck out of here now.” Auspiciously, no one disagreed.
Now, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, Brandon, Matt, and Lance are still really high. Second, the step-father parked on the side of the house, not the front or driveway, and he was walking in and out of the back door (the same one that led to the back porch, backyard, and swimming pool), so we had a clear shot through the front door to our cars. Lastly, Lance had been driven over by Brandon, so his truck wasn’t around.
So we made our break for freedom. Matt grabbed some stuff and a garbage bag on the way out while the rest of us are bolted for the cars. I reached mine on the curb first, didn’t see Lance behind me, and began waiting. Brandon got into his car on the curb and sped off, and Matt wasn’t far behind him; he hopped into his jeep on the driveway and got out pretty quickly. In the meantime, I began freaking out and getting very pissed off to the point that I start screaming obscenities at my steering wheel; Lance still hadn’t come out of the house. Now, I might not be on the best of terms with my brother (now and at the time that all of this transpired), but I’ll be damned if I was going to let some dumbfuck alcoholic beast corner my brother. Suffice to say, in the time that Lance wasn’t outside and I was waiting for him, I was seriously coming up with a contingency plan that involved the step-father’s jugular vein being neatly sliced and his remains being found a decade later.
A mere 30 seconds later, Lance walked out the front door and got into my car. What was his excuse? “I was looking for my beach towel”. Yes, that was just one more reason why I don’t smoke pot anymore: because I don’t want to be high, be put into a hectic situation, and do something that fucking stupid.
Following our desperate exodus from a house we once called paradise (or just making a poor attempt at referencing an old Green Day song), we met up in front of my house and proceeded to laugh and talk all about what had happened. This was when I began learning how laughing sheds tension remarkably well. After a good 15 minutes of venting our stress, we told Matt (who was still really high and almost non-responsive) to contact Karen somehow; it would’ve been best had she heard it from Matt first than from the step-father. Fortunately, it wasn’t destined to happen; Karen had left her cell phone at home because she couldn’t find the charger before she left for her vacation and the hotel phone number the family had given Matt was a wrong number. Shit happens.
However, the story and the shit didn’t end there. Not by a long shot. The next day, I called Matt from work and he told me that he’d received a series of three phone calls on his cell phone.
The first was from the step-father. He promptly told Matt that he had missed his business flight to Chicago (side question: why spend less than two days on vacation? That sounds like a waste of time; if I had been him, I would’ve just stayed home) because he spent the entire night cleaning up our "mess"; I don’t know what mess he was referring to because the house was trashed when we first got there and we probably made it cleaner. Also, he demanded that Matt put the house key into their mailbox and never come there ever again (later that day, Matt waited for the step-father to leave and then wisely used the opportunity to grab his and Lance’s stuff that they had forgotten).
The second phone call was from Tim, Karen’s older brother. You have to understand something: Tim is a part-timer at life (part-time electrician, part-time Hersheypark Catering blue tag, and part-time National Guardsman), so that should tell you right away that he’s a few lamb chops short of a mixed grill or otherwise he would have a full-time job. In the phone conversation, Tim basically yelled at Matt, telling him all about how the family was going to be home soon, how they were going to have a long talk with him, and how he wasn’t going to “weasel his way out of this one”. Judging by the major points of Tim’s phone call, he wasn’t happy with Matt nor was he going to give him any leeway.
The last phone call was from Karen herself, and she proceeded to cry her little heart dry or something melodramatic like that. From what I came to understand, she was acting like we had filleted her mutts, left their flesh out on the clothesline to bleach in the sun, fed the organs to the crows, dinned on the succulent ribs and legs, and bathed in their blood. Or something else overblown and disgusting like that that I’m merely using to illustrate a point. Yeah, Karen was and is a few trash bags short of a dumpster, too.
I strongly believe that their knee-jerk reaction was partially our fault (we hadn’t said a damn word to the step-father), but the reaction also lacked a certain something that wasn’t prevalent in their family: logic. I’ll give them this but nothing else: they probably didn’t want us (except Matt) in their house. However, they even said that Matt was allowed to have friends over and no restrictions or implied limits were made. What about the food? What we ate could’ve been covered by $10. Any other costs incurred? Perhaps the bottle of Baileys, but we filled it back up; sure, it might have been a cheaper brand, but it was cream liqueur nevertheless. What of the melted dog bowl and scored portion of the porch? The dog bowl was some cheap, piece of shit whipped cream container that was easily replaceable, and the wood porch itself… oh well. My bad. That was stupid on my part, and I wasn’t even drunk, so I have no excuse. Regardless, the step-father overreacted and didn’t even try to play it cool at all, and the rest of the family went overboard as well. I half-expected them to sue us, but nothing of the sort ever came to be.
Does the story stop there? Oh no, we’ve got a little ways to go just yet.
Karen and the rest of her family came home a few days later (or maybe the next weekend; I’m not 100% sure on that part) and told Matt to come over so they could talk it out (read: bitch him out because they knew he would take it without defending himself too much; Matt is a nice guy, but he doesn’t exactly stick up for himself all the time). Brandon, Meghan, and Lance went with Matt over to Karen’s house, and in the meantime, I was at home watching anime or something of the sort (just so I don’t give the wrong impression, I wasn’t at home watching anime all the time, but I just happened to be in the middle of watching Planetes a second time).
In short, I missed quite a bit of fun. In long, Brandon, Meghan, Matt, and Lance came back to my house about an hour after they left with quite a story. However, this next part is all what I’ve been told, so having not experienced it, I cannot remember everything as well as I should nor do I recall all of the details relayed to me, but I’ll try my best.
Brandon, Meghan, Matt, and Lance showed up at Karen’s house in Brandon’s car and proceeded to speak to the family in a rational manner. The entire family (I haven't mentioned the youngest brother, Mike, because he never really comes into play with any of this, but he was here at this event) except Tim was there to greet my boys. From the beginning, it was apparent that the step-father was drunk because his speech was mildly slurred and actions greatly exaggerated.
The first thing the step-father did was place blame on my boys for shooting BB guns and endangering the lives of the family next door (of the two neighbors, one was an old family while the other was a younger family with a baby nary several months old; he was talking about the younger family). So what did my boys do? They went next door and proceeded to speak to the man of the house. Holding his infant child, he came outside to answer any questions. Upon being asked if my boys had endangered the lives of his family, the man said that he had no idea what we were talking about; he knew that we had been next door, but he never once felt threatened by our presence.
In essence, the step-father was caught in a lie.
Trapped in a war of words, the step-father proceeded to tell Matt all about how he was a lazy slacker and a good-for-nothing boyfriend. What did Matt do? He told him that he’s a horrible step-father.
Matt’s response set off the step-father, and what was once a war of words became a war of fists.
The step-father didn’t hesitate to start strangling Matt with his bare hands on his lawn in front of neighbors and family. Now, Matt might know quite a lot of Russian martial arts, but he wasn’t in the right state of mind to be physically fighting anyone. As soon as Matt was suddenly attacked, two things immediately happened: first, Karen and her mother began crying and wailing for them to stop, and second, Brandon ran up behind the step-father and put him into a choke hold while yelling, “Let go of him” multiple times. Brandon is a big guy (at least 6’2”), but while the step-father had a few inches on him, there was no contest. In seconds, the step-father got weak in the knees and began falling to the ground while releasing his grip on Matt’s throat. Not wanting to kill the old guy, Brandon let him out of the choke hold only to find the step-father turning as he fell. He reached out for Brandon’s legs, but he only grasped air as Brandon began taking steps back to prevent the step-father from even touching him.
If I remember correctly, this was when Lance finally decided that he shouldn’t use his cell phone camera to take a few pictures of the unfolding situation and he actually got involved. He grabbed the step-father’s legs and pulled him back, not by much, but enough to turn his drunken attention away from Brandon. So the step-father returned his attention to Matt, and while still on his knees, he once again tried strangling Matt. At this point, Matt was sort of in a fighting state of mind, and he wisely deflected the man’s hands, signaling the poor bastard’s defeat and the end of the Jerry Springer-like fight.
As the victorious party began walking back to Brandon’s car, Karen, still crying her eyes red, came running up to Brandon and began slapping/clawing at his chest. While she screamed out random obscenities and how much she hated him, Brandon only stood in place and laughed at her futile actions. Less than a minute later, Brandon, Meghan, Matt, and Lance were on the road, leaving Karen in their wake to cry.
With regards to this last part, I wish I had been there to see it all transpire; that would at least allow me to tell a more accurate story. However, had I been there, I fear I would’ve gotten involved in the fight, and had that happened, I might’ve gone berserk on the step-father. Seeing his dead, crumpled body wouldn’t have been out of a realm of possibility had I been there, so I’m not that terribly disappointed by missing out on seeing it firsthand.
Overall, I see this as a dramatic and fitting end to Matt and Karen’s relationship. This sequence of events permanently burned whatever bridge Matt had to Karen, and that’s a good thing. When Brandon, Meghan, Matt, and Lance came back to my house to tell me of their fun, I could hear that certain tone in their laughter, a tone of tension being released. Sure, they were laughing at the sequence of comedy that they’d experienced, but with that sudden pressure taken away and being in a secure place (my house), the tension was free to be released. I laughed with them, but mine was a different laughter; I hadn’t just experienced a deeply stressful situation like they had. And while I had read about it before, I never fully understood the duality of laughter until then.
posted by Eric Joseph at 5:00 AM
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