Cyber Hobo

That’s right, the time has come for me to write about all of the funny, strange, dangerous things my friends and I got up to when we were younger. It’s gonna be a long one. Oh, also, after reading this, you might find yourself wondering why we’re still alive, don’t worry, we ask ourselves that all the time.

The Fire Pit.
Lots of stories revolve around this fire pit that I dug in my old back garden. It took me a while, the ground was as hard as rock and I’ve never been the most fit person in the world. In case you’ve ever asked yourself how difficult it is to dig a hole in the ground, the answer is VERY. Anyway, back in the day, when we were still in school, a lot of our time was spent around this fire pit, we made fires in it, usually huge bonfire like things with huge masses of wood. We got drunk around that fire pit, we smoked pot around that fire pit, we had birthday parties and parties in general around that fire pit. We sat around that fire pit and talked shit until the sun actually came up. It was good times. We had plastic chairs and a hammock, that was about it, but man, good stories. See, Richard and I were going through a pyromaniac phase just then, so any time we found something even remotely flammable, into the fire it went. Sometimes it had less than exciting results, other times… it was like Armageddon.

We put everything into that damn fire. Petrol, cans of deodorant, methylated spirits, turpentine, most provided a nice big rush of flames, but the time that comes to mind in particular was when we found a bottle of some hair product my mother had lying around. It wasn’t a pressurised bottle. just an unassuming little plastic bottle with a twist off top. It didn’t say that it was flammable, but when we threw it onto the fire, this huge black mushroom cloud erupted, I shit you not, the flames were twenty feet high, more than high enough to set the tree above the fire pit ablaze. Should have thought about the time of year before experimenting like that. Massive Flames + Dry Leaves = Flaming Tree. We put it out, of course. That tree was important to us too, after all.

What else can I think of that happened around the fire pit? Oh, one time we had about twenty people over and sat around it listening to someone tell a story about Bluegum gum in an apricot jam bottle. It was fucking hilarious. Of course, it’s not funny if you’re sober, but when you’re high or drunk, man, what a story.

Another one was hearing a lot of very drunk voices raised in unison, or as close to unison as you can get when most of said voices are one drink away from alcohol poisoning. The song? What shall we do with a drunken sailor. I’ve never felt more like a pirate in all my life.

I had my first puff of really, really expensive weed around that fire pit.

The Tree
Ah, the tree. It was next to the fire pit. If that tree could talk it would probably sound like a crazy person. Some of the things that tree saw probably scarred it for life. We did a lot of things in that tree, from getting dressed in camo and scouting out the neighborhood for good houses to prank, hiding from irate residents we HAD pranked and the most memorable incident involving the tree (Apart from the fire incident) is the night Richard got stinking drunk and decided that he was going to climb right to the top. Of course, the rest of us being equally drunk, didn’t really pay much attention to him, we just went on drinking. Until we heard a drunken shout and the sound of a seven foot something man falling and hitting every branch on the way down. Not only that, but when he got close to the bottom, he hit our wall, fell off of that, and hit the yellow plastic water meter cover on the pavement outside. He was very angry when none of us rushed to his aid, but peered over the wall and laughed our arses off instead.

The Garage
The garage in my house at the time was a very poorly constructed affair. It was old, the plaster AND the bricks were crumbly and honestly, I’m surprised it never collapsed on anyone. Well, for one of my birthdays, it may have been my seventeenth or my eighteenth I’m not sure, we were given permission to spraypaint the walls with whatever we wanted as it was being repainted soon after.  So we did. Symbols, many of them highly offensive and crude, words, likewise highly offensive and crude and little crappy drawings. We did a passable job of making it look like a crack house. That party was… unbelievable. We got a keg, a big fucking one and set it up in the garage, then ensued a long night of drinking and debauchery. Someone had sex in my bed and it wasn’t me. I spent most of the later part of the evening firmly attached to a toilet. It went really well, everyone enjoyed themselves, of course, we found out the next morning that someone had enjoyed themself a little TOO much and had left the tap on the keg running, flooding the place with beer. It was terrible, what a bloody waste. For about six months after that incident the garage smelled like a brewery. Stale beer and crumbling, soggy bricks, not a good mixture.

My Sixteenth With Suzie
Ah yes, my sixteenth birthday, that one was a doozy. Now, apart from the usual suspects, my mother had this wonderful idea to invite some of her friends to the house. Her boss came, he’s filthy rich, he brought a metric fuckton of booze with him.  So, after getting thoroughly wasted, we were all sitting in a circle talking shit when the boss and his girlfriend (*Shudders* The things I imagined doing with her.) said they had gotten me a present. They whipped it out and watched me unwrap it. I held, in my very drunk hands, a blowup doll, for practice they said. Of course, I was far too drunk to be embarrassed at that point so I eagerly held aloft the gift and happily proclaimed that she was my bitch. They then decided to name her suzie and much laughter was had by all.

Now fast forward a few hours and a whole bottle of some purple booze that I can’t quite remember the name of right now and we find Nicholas, with his cock in one hand and Suzie in the other, trying to take a piss. I believe I asked Vito’s sister if she would like to give me head since my pants were down already. Then, with Richard laughing his arse off behind me, I proceeded to climb over my wall, still pissing, Suzie still under my arm and then ran down the street, my pants down and Suzie flapping in the wind, proclaimed for all the neighbors to hear, that Suzie was, in fact, my bitch and that I was going to fuck her. I woke up with Suzie next to me in the morning, to this day, I don’t remember if anything happened between the two of us, but breakfast was very awkward. I got a Playstation 2 aswell, good times. Suzie eventually ended up nailed to my wall, and it’s really not what you think, Richard and I actually nailed her to my wall, with a hammer, and nails. I was asked to take her down a few months later when my grandparents were coming for a visit.

Oh right, before the half naked run around the block, I also had the good sense to stand up and inform my mother that I smoked cigarettes, Hubbly, and pot too. Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I remember the ringing silence that flowed out around me as I said that. It still makes me facepalm.

The Video
Okay, so Jackass was really, really big when we were in highschool, so naturally, we decided to make our own video. It was really all that bad, but there was some very memorable moments in it. I let Richard throw darts into my legs, several times, he missed one time and it hit my stomach, embedding itself quite deeply, not that the ones in my leg weren’t equally as deep, but I digress. We also playing with fire, using so much Ego Deodorant that my dining room was all but engulfed in a massive, barely visible fireball. I also whacked one of our friends in the testicles with a branch from our bottle bush. (The succulent aloe we used to hide all our booze bottles in.) We also have the delightful image of me sucking milk up into my nose and squirting it out of my eye. Gross, stupid, but so much fun at the time.

Random Events In My House
Yes, there are a lot of random events that don’t really fit into a larger grouping.

Like the time a bunch of us watched two of our friends hooking up on the grass outside of my mother’s bedroom window. It was hilarious from that position, watching that naked arse going up and down while we all tried to stifle our giggles and stop ourselves from shouting out advice and critique from the darkness of the window above.

Another fond memory was sitting in my room late into the night playing Tony Hawk’s Proskater (Yes, the very first one.) with Richard, smoking like chimneys and stupidly thinking that my mother wouldn’t realise that we were, even though it was actually hard to see through the fog wafting around the room. We did that a lot Skelm Smoking around corners, before heading out to paintball in the mornings. Thinking back on it now, it’s blatantly obvious to me how thick we really were. Anyone with half a brain could figure out that we were smoking, fortunately, my mother pretended that she didn’t know.

Breaking into my mother’s liquor cabinet when she wasn’t home. And by breaking in, I don’t mean finding the key and unlocking it, I mean literally breaking boards on the back of the drawer and sneaking out the booze that way.

Sitting around the diningroom table smoking hubbly. I once watched Richard blow 64 smoke rings in a row from one hubbly hit, it would have been much cooler if he’d gotten another five.

Sitting around the same table, getting two underclassmen so stinking drunk on cheep brandy that one’s mother thought he was high and sent him to rehab.

Watching Vito throw up in my garden and fart at the same time, something he still catches flak about.

Okay, so, we’ve gone over the fact that Richard and I REALLY liked fire, well, once day we were playing with deodorant in my postbox, spraying it full and then tossing a lit piece of tissue into it to make it go boom. Well, through some poor communication, or poor planning, Richard’s head was directly in line with it when it went off. I was standing to the side, watching Richard in profile and saw this massive fireball blow out of the postbox and utterly engulf his head. It lasted no more than a split second and when it was over he was rolling on the ground, his hair and eyebrows all singed and curly. He was very angry at me for laughing at him, but it was damn funny.

Shooting at the icecream men with my paintball gun, both the ones on the bikes and the ones in the trucks, good times, until one pulled out a shotgun and started looking for us, not fun then, but damn funny now… alright, still a little scary, I did tell you that it was a wonder we’re still alive.

During an afternoon of heaving drinking, finding Richard in his underwear in a full bath, asleep. On the same day, a very drunk Craig and Nicholas ran down the street exposing both our posteriors and our genitalia to the maids that were walking home. Yes, we were flashers for a brief hour. Not my finest moment.

So, one night, after getting back to my house in the wee hours of the morning, tripping balls and drunk as fuck, a few of us talked and talked, then when the drugs wore of, three of us, Craig, Toffee and I, decided we wanted some more, so into Craig’s car we got and off we went, finally locating a drug dealer at H2O. This is where it gets interesting, Richard had left his wallet in the car, and in the wallet he had two fake two hundred rand notes, and not counterfeit, no, no, nothing like that, these had been fucking photocopied, one side was completely blank. Now, high and drunk as we were, we decided to use them instead of real money, knowing full well that this dude was Nigerian drug dealer. So, we asked for four pills, which came to four hundred rand, Craig handed over the phony money, the guy spreads them between thumb and forefinger, white flashes in the moonlight, and at that moment, I though, “This is it, we’re going to be shot, he’s going to kill us.” But amazingly, he flips it back and gives us our pills, letting us go on our merry way. See! Why are we still alive!?

Craig’s House
Okay, so, like my house, Craig’s house was usually the place to go for a party and many a party we had there, many memorable events took place there.

On his eighteenth birthday, I witnessed Craig stumble out of the back of a Hyundai truck, leaving a girl inside, walk outside and attempt to throw a used condom onto the roof. Of course, in his drunken state, he missed, it was thrown all over the place for a while, but eventually landed in the fire. To this day, Craig claims that he was raped in the back of that truck, he seemed pretty happy when he came out though, so I’m conflicted as to whether I believe him or not.

One time, two of us decided that we were drinking Jedi and proclaimed that Craig was our Padawan. We mixed drinks for him and “Instructed” Him in the art of booze. This went on for a long, long time, until finally we left him to sleep it off in a caravan. Sometime later, while the rest of us were sitting around the fire talking crap, we saw Craig stumble out of the caravan to take a piss. He rounded the corner then we hear this almighty crash that shakes the whole caravan and watch Craig topple bonelessly back around the corner, we rush over to him and it soon becomes clear that he had walked right into the open window of the caravan, cutting his head very deeply. We got him back into the thing and decided that no, he doesn’t need a doctor, he just needs some booze to sterilise the wound. So you think, Vodka, Gin, some clear liquid, right? Nope, not use, we pour Spiced Gold over his head, making him howl and slap his hand to his head. We left him like that and the next morning his hand was stuck to his head with blood.

Another time, we stayed up really late on a Sunday night, really, really late. Eventually were were sitting in his living room making up new shots, mostly with heated up spices. They were all truly foul. And singing a song about “The Ganga Man” It was like, two hours long, just going around the room with people adding their own verses whenever they thought of some. Eventually his mother came and chased us to bed. I think most of us got about two hours sleep. In the morning, Craig was curled around the toilet, his cousin James was still singing, and I was delusional, apparently thinking I was in the army and ordering everyone to get into the tank. I don’t remember that at all. Of course, by this time I had already been kicked out of school so I went home and slept, Craig was sick so he stayed home too, only Richard and Toffee actually went to school, the poor bastards.

There are many, many more stories, I’m just having trouble thinking of them now, so I’ll make another post when I remember some. That’s all for now, folks, much love, hope you enjoyed the read!