Nurse the Hate: Hate Six Flags

We were driving in the van past Six Flags Amusement Park, woefully late to a show in Lexington KY.  I mentioned how many years prior I had gotten shockingly intoxicated in the Park and tossed an entire prize hut of stuffed animals into a pond by “The Beast” rollercoaster.  The soggy giant stuffed bears floated lazily across the pond, children pointing and yelling for some sort of explanation from their disgusted parents.  It was a terrible episode where I had lost all ability to function in polite society.  Parents shielded their eyes from the carnage. 

When Johnny, my compatriot, threw up after riding some horrible rollercoaster, we hadn’t even reached close to rock bottom.  We later burned every piece of plastic lawn furniture we came across in the campground we shared with other unlucky vacationers, black smoke rising like a toxic warning to all to stay away from the area.  The next day we were crippled by hangovers that would have killed normal men.  We collapsed in a parking area by the park and broasted in the sun like rotisserie chickens.  It was not my finest hour.

“I shit myself there.”

Excuse me?

“Yeah.  I shit myself there.” Leo said.

That’s the thing with having Leo around.  Whenever you think you have a really fucked up story, he just casually tosses out having shit himself.  Despite having driven around with him for a decade at that point, I had no idea the man had shit himself at this Family Fun Center.  Then again, I had never specifically asked him about “After Prom” in his senior year of High School.

Leo then told us about how he had traveled to King’s Island after prom, though I do not recall his going to Prom itself.  He and his friend Kevin, later christened “Dusty” for a sexual dry spell that lasted through most of his twenties, shared a discount hotel near the amusement park.  They spent the day at the park without much incident, but when they decided to make a visit to the liquor store to buy a fifth things got a little confusing.  So confusing that when Leo woke up in the morning, he was sleeping covered in his own excrement.  I like to think of that famous scene in the Godfather when the guy wakes up with the horse head in the bed.

While Dusty left the room to collect his thoughts, Leo went to the shower to try and regain some control over his world.  He recounted, with unflinching detail, having to pick out larger pieces of fecal matter that would not go down the drain, and then tossing them in the toilet.  It may not be rock bottom, but for an eighteen year old it had to be pretty damn close. 

Now this is where Leo really gets you.  While you sit back and try to visualize that horror, he then casually says, “The second time I shit myself was in Florida…” 

I beg your pardon.  The second time?  Another terrible story from the same period in his life unwinds.  He and his brother get into a drinking contest with a bottle of vodka.  He beats his brother in arm wrestling for the first time ever.  Celebration ensues.  The way the vodka flowed, it must have been like when the Russians took Berlin.  Once again he wakes up in a hotel room bed like the guy from the Godfather.  I like to think of it as a Motel 6, so that way whenever I hear that “We’ll leave the light on for ya” commercial, I think of a motel bed with so much shit on it you would think they kept goats in the room.  As I recall, this time he threw the sheets away in the dumpster, sort of like you would if you committed a terrible crime.  (Which he had in a way)

I don’t know if Leo ever shit himself again.  I’ll tell you this though.  I’m going to ask.