three a.m.

Some of you know I went to Texas and
Mexico over Spring Break with cohorts: Morris, Jane, Stephanie.
There are rumors about what happened.  The truth, however, is
like the ocean — big and complicated.  And salty.

We left State College Friday, March 3rd at Midnight to drive to
Baltimore.  Looked for Denny’s.  Couldn’t find Denny’s.
Looked for anything.  Couldn’t find it either.  Nothing
open at 5 am except convenient store with Middle Eastern Man who
wouldn’t tell me how to get to a Denny’s — he tried to sell me a
soggy sub.  I wasn’t buying.  I wanted pancakes.  More
importantly, Jane wanted pancakes.  Jane always wants pancakes,
for the record.

Went to airport.  Parked and waited for
shuttle with drunken Jersey frat boys who were en route to Acapulco.
Stephanie looked uncomfortable.  Perhaps because a frat boy had
his penis in her ear.  It was so cold outside, and I didn’t have
a jacket.  I made Morris stand up so that I could lick the metal
bench where he was sitting, so I could absorb some of the leftover
warmth from where his butt had been.  Morris has a skinny ass,
though, so my tongue froze to the bench.  Luckily, a frat boy
was there to piss on my tongue and unfreeze me.  I guess he was
drunk, because even after I was unstuck, he kept peeing on
me.

Inside the airport, a muffin cost 3 dollars.  I ate
Jane’s crackers instead.  My mouth still tasted like pee, so I
broke down and bought a muffin.  It made my mouth taste like
lemon. 

Jane has an endless supply of little packages of
crackers, for the record. 

On the airplane, Morris took
some pills that said "Eat me to grow small."  He got
smaller, and stretched out on his seat.  It’s like flying first
class, he said.

When we landed in Austin, we realized
Stephanie was no longer with us.  Turns out, she flew to Houston
with the Frat boy who had his penis in her ear.  Why’d you do
that?  we asked.  That guy was a jerk.
She said yeah,
but he was so tall.

We waited all day for Stephanie.
While we were waiting, Morris produced a large bottle of Nicaraguan
rum from a tiny pocket.  Don’t ask how I did that, he said, or
the rum will disappear.

You want to try this? Morris asked
Jane.  Jane took the bottle of rum. 

Can I have
some? I asked.

No, pissmouth! they cried.

For the
record, don’t ever loan Jane a bottle of Nicaraguan Rum.  She
gets nasty.

Stephanie showed up at ten pm.  We drove
drunk to San Antonio.  I ran over something small, maybe an
armadillo or a cat.  Whatever it was, it yelled at us in Spanish
when I slowed down.

In San Antonio, we stayed in a scary
motel with people smoking crack outside.  There were also hookers
there.  There were stains on the sheets shaped like little Elvis’s.
There were also stains that looked like exactly what they were.
Morris licked them all for 25 cents.  Then we fell immediately
asleep. 

Except I wasn’t really asleep.  I was
just pretending.  When everyone else was asleep, I went and fell into
the arms of a fat hooker named Lucia.  She let me do coke off her
ass.  Then I went back to the room wide awake and pretended to sleep.
A few minutes later, Morris snuck out to see a hooker.  Then
Stephanie.  Then Jane.  Then Morris again.  I pretended to snore all
night long.

The next day, we went to the Alamo,
where we took off our hats and looked at all the flags.  Nobody from
Delaware fought in the Alamo.  Jane was visibly upset.  She had been
drinking Nicaraugan rum all morning.  She yelled, Forget the Alamo!
It never happened – it was all a hoax! 

We had to drive as fast as we could to
Mexico, a citizen’s cavalry hot on our tails.  Jane kept taunting
them over her shoulder: Davy Crockett was a New York Jew!

For the record, you could fit
approximately 108 Delawares in Texas.  Is it any wonder people from
Delaware don’t get along from Texans?

We tried to get Jane to eat some
crackers and sober up.  She said, No.  I want pancakes.

We crossed the border into Nuevo Laredo
and bought some tortillas.  These are Mexican pancakes, Morris
explained. 

Jane eyed him dubiously, be she ate
them all the same.

I’m going to buy the biggest sombrero
in Mexico, Stephanie said. 

For the record, I did not see one
Mexican napping in a hammock with a sombrero tipped over his face.  I
felt so cheated.

We walked around all day looking at
sombreros.  We all bought one, but Stephanie’s was definitely the
biggest.

A little kid in the street approached
us with valium and viagra and xanax for sale.  Morris and I bought
some valiums.

A man with a shotgun saw us and yelled:
Hey Gringos, I like your style. Then he blew the sombrero off of
Stephanie’s head.  He laughed heartily. 

Stephanie said, I can’t hear anything
out of my left ear.

We didn’t tell her that she didn’t have
a left ear anymore.

The next day, we went to Padre island.
A long, flat flat flat drive.  It was boring, so we got drunk in the
car. 

Let’s sing a song! Jane said.

What? Stephanie said.

We sang The Yellow Rose of Texas. 

None of us knew the song, so we just
made stuff up about Texas and sang it to the tune of “Home on the
Range.”  When that got old, we made up songs about all the animals
I ran over with the car.

We got to Padre Island and ordered Pina
Coladas on the beach.  We were supposed to watch the sun go down over
the ocean, but you can’t watch the sun set over the ocean in Texas.
You can only do that on the West Coast.

We were really beat that night, so
Morris and I went back to the hotel and took a bunch of valium.

After thirty minutes, it became
apparent that the kid had not sold us valium.  He had sold us viagra,
to our growing dissatisfaction.  We became fidgety, uncomfortable. 

What a conundrum, Morris said.  Where
are the girls?

We could not find the girls.  We would
later learn that they had been tied up to the beds in the room next
door by a guy named Murph, who was having his way with them.  But
Morris and I did not know this at the time.  How could we have known?
We had our own problems to worry about.

For the record, Morris and I no longer
look each other in the eye.

The next day, Jane and Stephanie caught
Tuberculosis from a drunk vet named Rodney who played the spoons on
the table in front of the swimming pool at our hotel.  They caught
Tuberculosis because they drank after him when he passed his bottle
of Nicaraguan rum around the table, while Morris and I just faked it.

I said to them: Rodney told us he had
TB – why did you drink after him?

It was good rum! Jane said.

What? Stephanie said.

Jane proceeded to do cartwheels on the
beach.  Then she coughed up some blood.  Then she did some more
cartwheels.

Whooooweee!  I am drunk, she said.
Where’s Murph?

The next day, we drove to Austin, to this stupid writing conference.  We
challenged the writers from Emerson to a Duel.  They’ve got Texas dirt on their heads now.

The End.

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