Nurse the Hate: The Couch Incident

This weekend the Whiskey Daredevils played a show at the Southgate House in Newport KY. Our usual deal is that when we play a show in the Cincinnati area with Rumble Club, one of the bands on the bill, we stay over at the lead guy Jack’s house. He’s got this great old place with a finished attic that is a perfect band flophouse. It’s also a great after party house due to location, and the two floor buffer between sleeping quarters and party room. Inevitably, when the after hours party slips into a new gear downstairs, I slink upstairs to go to sleep. I’m kind of a pussy like that.

I have never been a big fan of the 2a-6a drinking binge. I figure that whatever good is going to happen in a night has already happened by around 1 a.m. As many people wiser than me have put it, “Nothing good ever happens after 2 in the morning.” Things that happen after 2 in the morning: DUIs, greasy spoon breakfasts that include gravy, fights with girlfriends, robbery attempts, and tattoos on necks.

It comes as no surprise that Leo is always the last one to leave a party. If there is anyone to “party” with him, he’s up for it. (When people talk about “partying”, why does it usually mean three really fucked people talking shit on a couch at about 4:47 a.m.? This is not like the parties I have seen on the E! Network. Those parties have really cute and interesting girls dancing, and fabulous drinks. Most times I "party", I wind up on a scary couch where a guy tells me the same thing over and over. "Man...you don't understand. I really like your band." Then I say "Thanks. I really appreciate it." Wait three minutes. Repeat this process.)

This “partying” thing is really top of mind for me because Saturday night at about 5:30 a.m. I heard Leo animatedly screaming so loudly it was like he was right in the room with me. “Ohhhh!!!!! That’s really fucking funny!” (I think that he was using what elementary school teachers commonly refer to as his “outside voice”). I could hear a few guys in Rumble Club, some of their friends, and Gary really whooping it up. Considering how drunk a couple of those guys were when they got there, it’s amazing they kept it up that long. I think I heard the last of the people leave the house around 6:45 with the sun peaking through the drapes.

I woke up at 8:30 in the morning and couldn’t fall back asleep. I slunk downstairs into Jack’s kitchen with the intention of breaking into a box of Kroger mini donuts like some kind of raccoon. I was surprised when I ran into the new Rumble Club drummer entering from the opposite doorway. He didn’t look real good. I have seen that look before, and I knew what kind of day he was going to have ahead of him. Words like “couch” and “gatorade” came to mind. The key for him would be to not get a DUI at 8:30 in the morning in his ill advised attempt to go home. I would think that you would have plenty of explaining to do if you were caught weaving around town at 8:30 on a Sunday morning. I said, “Looks like you’re going to have a big day of sleeping ahead of you.”. He scratched his face, and muttered “yeah…see ya…” and abruptly went out the back door. It was at that moment that I thought I saw some discoloration on the back of his jeans from the belt line down to the kneecaps. Did what I think happen actually happen?

I walked into the first floor living room and saw the only couch. It still had blankets and a pillow on it like it had just been abandoned. I reached down and touched the middle of the couch. Yep. It was wet. The new Rumble Club drummer had wet Jack’s couch. There had been no attempt at a clean up. It was an “abandon ship” all the way. The dude didn’t even flip the cushions over in any attempt whatsoever to hide the evil deed. He must have woken up in the chilly urine soaked pants and blanket and thought, “This isn’t good. This is not good at all. I better get out of here.”

Now, I am not an expert in the manners and general rule of conduct of houseguests in Kentucky. Perhaps this is not considered unusual. I just don’t know. However, there were two things I did know.

1) That’s not how I would have handled it.

2) I was not going to clean it up.

Instead, I looked for a piece of paper to write down a note like it had come from their drummer. My plan was to scrawl “Sorry man. See you at practice” and leave it on the wet couch. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a pen. There was plenty of warm Miller High Life in bottles, but no pen. I then spotted Jack’s laptop sitting nearby. I decided the best thing to do was type out an email to him explaining how I happened upon the drummer while he was beating it out of there, investigated, and discovered his one couch was now drenched in a man’s urine. I figured we could get out of there around 10. Jack would wake up around 11, grab some coffee, and leisurely check his email. “Hmm…what’s this? An email from Greg? That’s strange…”

The plan worked perfectly. We hit the road, and got home around 2:30. I checked my email, and saw I got a response back from him at about 11:20 am along the lines of “What the fuck?”. I like to imagine him reading the email, looking directly at the couch/blankets, and saying to himself “Nah. There’s no way that someone would have pissed his pants/couch and just left, is there?”

So, if you are the guy that pissed the bed, where do you go from here? Phone call apology? Send a gift in the mail? Pretend it never happened? Admit yourself into Rehab and refer to the incident later as “some bad shit I went through”? Or do you pull a Nixon and deny, deny, deny? I don’t know, but I’ll tell you this. Nothing good happens after 2:00 in the morning.