Roadtrips. Ok. I kinda limited myself by not including in any band stories. They are too easy and too long. "24" is on in a few hours and it's the sub one. You will end up reading them later anyways in the "underground" series, anyways. So I lost a lot of ideas there. I had two other stories involving trips but they were also on the road with a band. Well, hell. This is not looking good for me. Wait! I have a story!

I was just getting off a tour and catching up on sleep. Well, by now mein readers, you have to have figured out I had a drug problem. So I didn't sleep. It had been five days since I had slept. Masturbating for five hours in a bed covered in sweat just trying to cum doesn't count as sleep. Getting out of bed, I walked to the deck. We didn't have a fridge. We kept beer out on the deck. It was cooler then the inside. My mind was still racing. Maybe one more beer will help. Maybe two. Sit down on the sofa. Scrape the bag. One last line. Crap. I think I am having a breakdown. Wow is that her on the phone? A friend from another city. Eight hours away. Asking us if we want to come down for some college thing that happens every year. A lot of beer and alot of drugs. The singer of the band I was in was on the phone with her and saying something like "We can come if we don't have to play and if you have drugs." Words were exchanged and I washed all the sweat off of me in the shower. Put on clothes and I was in the car.

How far? Eight hours. Fuck! Didn't we just end this? Why are we doing this again? My body was falling apart. More drugs down there. Call up the girl at a pay phone and asked her if she could hook up dope. Vomit and move to the liquor store. Grab another tall boy Budweiser and slam it back. Vomit. Call her again. She found speed. Good god she came thru. Everyone in the car was detoxing off some sort of drug. Everyone was nursing a beer back trying to get comfy. I was coming down hard. We had just got off a big tour and all of us were filled with our drugs of choice the whole time. But the shows had ended. The fans had left. Backstage was closed. The drugs were gone. I resolved to deep six myself in the back of the car. I slugged back vodka and Mountain Dew. Keeping some shots down, some coming us. The driver looking back at me with his head trembling. Drugs will be there. I reassured him. We were going to be ok.

About six hours in, we were losing it. Another phone call was made. She has the dope. Were gonna be set up at an old mansion. Bands were gonna play. We didn't have to do anything. Ok. This is looking better. Back in the car. Reassuring everyone that we were hooked up. Stereo turned loud and we were on the road again. Just trying to pass the time. Just to get there. In truth, I never really told anyone what type of drugs she was getting. I told her speed. I told them she was getting drugs. I really don't think that it mattered that much to anyone what drugs they were but I knew there were some personal preferences. Meh. As long as I get my way, I'm happy. And I want speed.

We rolled into town about 8 in the night. Did the familiar "Christ, my back hurts" stretch and went to find the house. A band was playing and beer was flowing. I passed everyone by and went to find that girl. The one with the drugs. She came running downstairs and hugged me. I asked where the dope was and she asked me to open my hands. Well, this is weird. Ok. I did and she dumped about 20 mini-thins in my palm and smiled like she just got a Gold Medal in the "I Can't Find Speed Cause I'm So Fucking Lame Olympics."

Well, fuck. This is no good. I'm coming down hard. I won't lie to you. I popped them. But, within 15 minutes, my head was spinning. Not from the drugs. From the lack of drugs. I needed sleep. I was falling asleep on a couch. Bagged out with people searching me for cigarettes. That fucked up kind of sleep where you can't get too deep into it.

I woke up totally exhaused and just wanting to go home. The other people I had came with had found their drug cocktails and kept the party going. I couldn't think. I wanted home. This was too much. I fucked up coming here. But I'm here. So I better make the best of it. I lit a smoke and went over to the TV. They were playing video games. Some people were anyways. I didn't know them. Shook my head and slammed a beer. I started playing what was the best video game ever.

EA Hockey!

Man, that game was bulit for come downs. Fights! Screaming fans!Yelling between friends about who started the fight! Beer drinking! Crossing the crease to sneak in a goal! Cause that's all you really had to do if you had the goalie on auto. Cross the crease and shoot the puck in. The goalie wasn't fast enough. You need to turn that auto goalie off and when some son of a bitch tried to cross the crease you chase that fucker down and stick him! Another fight! Oh, this game ruled. This was liked a little orgasm of stupitidy on the screen. Attacking goalies on TV? Beer cups being thrown in the living room? Cigarette burns on the table? Detoxing and eating bad food for two days?

EA Sports, fun be thy name.

Cause in the end you all know.

It's in the game. - T

Michele is up next.

Road trip!

Back in the early 80's, I took two kinds of road trips. One was the random, spur of the moment kind that ended up with me being 200 miles from home, not quite sure of my first name, peeing in a stranger’s backyard and wondering if we finally lost the State Troopers.

The other kind of trip was the hockey trip.

This was the glory days of the New York Islanders. The dynasty years. Four years in a row, Stanley Cup Champions. Hell, it was the glory days for the NHL as far as I’m concerned. No helmets. Only 16 teams in the playoffs. Bench clearing brawls. Old time hockey! Eddie Shore! Damn, I miss the Patrick Division.

Anyhow, we had season tickets for the Isles, but that wasn’t enough. We wanted to see them on the road, too. We went to Philly, Toronto, Montreal, Pittsburgh, Boston, Hartford...

Wait. Every time I talk about the Hartford Whalers, this pops into my head:

Breakfasts come and go, Rene, but Hartford, "the Whale," they only beat Vancouver once, maybe twice in a lifetime

Ok, just had to get that out of the way.

So we took all these road trips. Sometimes we hopped in the car and went. Me, my two sisters and my mom. Hockey junkies, all of us. Those were fun road trips, even if they ended up with us getting into fights, especially in Philly. Jesus, my mom could curse someone out.

Sometimes we went by bus. Ok, I belonged to the Islanders Fan Club. But, it was just for these trips. I didn’t go to the meetings or anything. First, because the president of the fan club was such a fucking jackass that I wanted to stab him in the face every time he opened his mouth. Second, the rest of the fan club were a bunch of dorks. Seriously, this was like the hockey equivalent of the AV club at school. But they had cool road trips. So we joined.

One of these trips was to Boston. Me and my youngest sister. I’m thinking this had to be the 81-82 season. I think. Don’t hold me to it. But it was either that or the 80-81. Either way, the Islanders were the current Stanley Cup champions. Boston was not.

The trip there was pretty uneventful. A crowded bus half filled with sweaty, mouth breathing nerds and half filled with hockey groupies straight out of Slap Shot. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep most of the way. Seth. I knew it would come to me. The dude’s name was Seth. I still have leftover loathing for that guy. I mean, you are president of a hockey team’s fan club. Stop taking yourself so seriously. He walked back and forth on the bus as if he were King Fucking Tut and we were supposed to pay homage to him. Mostly, we pelted him with ice. He said I had no respect for him. I told him if had any respect for himself he wouldn’t be wearing pants with an elastic waist and hand-knitted-by- grandma Islanders yarmulke. He left me alone the rest of the trip.

So we roll into Boston. Pull up right in front of Boston Garden and make our way to our seats. We’re all wearing Islanders jerseys (#9, Clark Gillies. Holy shit, I just realized I can still remember the number of every player on that year’s team) or jackets or hats. We get looks. This is Boston. They don’t like us very much to begin with. And here we come marching into their arena flaunting our team’s Stanley Cup. This bad blood goes beyond hockey. It’s a baseball thing, too. So you can just feel the hatred as we settle into our seats.

We try to behave. Really. We know how it feels when groups of other fans come into the Coliseum and start shit, so we vow to be on our best behavior and just enjoy the game. But it’s hard. I hear the taunts. I know they are baiting us. They start cursing at us in that obnoxious Boston accent. Guys. Cursing in that accent is almost funny. I mean, it’s hard to sound all pretentious and refined when you are calling someone a motherfucking cunt. Especially when you are directing that insult at someone’s grandmother. Seriously. That's what they were doing.

So me being me, I turn around and tell them something. I don’t remember what. I just know that I said it with a New York accent and it might have been threatening and, well, threatening in a NY accent works much better than threatening in a Cape Cod accent. I had a lot more guts in those days. And a lot less fear. So I said what I had to, something about not talking to a grandmother that way or the hard end of my Doc Marten would connect with a place on their body that would cause them to scream in pain. Something like that. I turn around again, concentrate on the game.

Third period starts. The Boston goons start in on us again. I say nothing, but I feel the stares on the back of my head. Feel the daggers directed at me. Feel the..........ice? Soda? What the fuck? I turn around and see it coming. A downpour of soda and beer cups headed right for us. I duck quick but still get pelted. Seth's grandma gets knocked in the head with two plastic cups. My little sister is drenched in beer. I’m about to grab her and get her the hell out of there when she stands up - I think she was all of 13 years old here - and says to the guy sitting behind us “You realize you just wasted four bucks by throwing that beer at me? You people aren’t that smart, are you?” And then the ice rained down. And we started throwing back. It was like a winter storm watch in our section for about ten minutes until the security guards finally got there. They started grabbing onto anyone with an Islander jersey on and hauling us out of our seats.

Seth tried to take control. He was shouting something about “they started it first” to the guards, but really. What did he think was gonna happen? They were Boston. We were New York. Strangers in a foreign land. Just grab your stuff and get the fuck out, guy. So Seth starts screaming to everyone that we’re gonna leave, we need to get on the bus, which was waiting outside. Fuck the game. We all grab our stuff and go. No one wants to miss this bus ride home and be stuck in Boston wearing a New York Islanders jersey.

As we are leaving, they are still throwing shit at us. I have to get one last word in. I have to. I’m an ass that way. I push my sister ahead and she starts walking with the rest of the group. I turn around as a security guard is pushing me away. I hold up both middle fingers and say “Bucky Fucking Dent!”

If you know what that means, you know I didn’t say a very good thing. The security guard whispers in my ear, “Girl, you better run as if your life depends on it.” And I did.

Got out to the bus and Seth was doing a head count, making sure we were all accounted for. As we got on the bus, a group of Boston fans from our section were right behind us. They were throwing rocks at the bus. I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. They were throwing rocks at us? Shit. It’s hockey. Rocks? I laughed. What a trip.

(Of all the places we went to, only Philly and Boston were ever hostile to us. One day I’ll write about Toronto. Nothing all that interesting happened there, except that I fell in love with that city. ) - M

So in the end the basic principles of FTTW still stand. Have any ideas? We will do them. We hope you guys have fun reading these cause we have fun writing them. See you next time.

Fu Manchu - King of the Road
Hanson Brothers - Sudden Death
Hanson Brothers - Hockey Song