Archive for the ‘Ren Faire Memories’ Category
It Aint So Good to be The King
(For the past two decades of my life, I’ve participated, with varying levels of commitment, at both the Arizona and Southern/Northern California Renaissance Faires. Every now and again, I’ll chronicle some of the stories here. It’ll be sort of like Get in the Van but lamer. Please note: the names have been changed to protect all parties.)
A quick note before the piece. I wrote this piece for a writing class I was in last summer, during the creative non-fiction unit. So it’s a little more…creative non-fictiony than other postings here. Anyway, I really like it and I hope you do too.
It Aint So Good to be the King
“If you shoot at a king you must kill him.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
We were two cases of beer into our evening when we decided to go see the new joust arena at the other end of the faire. My friend Pablo – an authentic Englishman in an otherwise inauthentic renaissance faire – said to me, “C’mon Krol. It’ll be fun.” I told him I didn’t feel like walking anywhere. He said not to worry and pointed over a short, pasty white guy with kinky and frizzy hair. “Harry’s going to drive.”
I shrugged. “Sounds good to me,” I said. Acquiescing to Pablo is easier than fighting sometimes.
Harry got into the front cab of his run down generic late model Toyota truck and me, Pablo, and this gangly silent fuck named Zeke got into the back. Harry started the truck and red brake lights lit up our desert camp, bathing everything in an angry red light. I heard an incredulous voice behind me.
“Bryan…are you sure about this?”
I craned my neck to see Cassandra, my girlfriend, behind me. She was standing in the brake light’s crimson glow, arms crossed, with one eyebrow raised slightly and a borderline scowl on her face. Cassandra led the dance team I was part of at the Arizona Renaissance Festival. Before that, she was into stage combat and fighting. She was short, powerfully built, and intimidating. She had half band neck tattoo and facial piercings back in 1991, a time when an NBA star dying his hair green was considered out of control.
“Probably not,” I said, half-smiling.
Cassandra slowly nodded, taking in my words.
“He’ll be fine Cassandra!” Pablo said. “Let the boy live a little!”
“Boy! I see no boy here!” I said. Feigning masculinity was my second hobby in those days.
“Come on, let’s go!” Harry leaned out the driver’s side window and slammed his hand against the door.
“Gotta go,” I said to Cassandra. She looked at me with tired and sad eyes and smiled weakly.
“I’ll see you back at the tent,” she turned and walked back towards the camp where the other members of her dance team congregated.
Harry tore off into the desert.
Back in the mid-90s, the faire felt more remote. The housing boom hadn’t happened, which would push tasteless cookie-cutter tract homes outward from Mesa into Apache Junction and up the slopes of the Superstition Mountains, polluting the night with orange glow from high-pressure sodium lights. Back then, after the faire closed and when the campfires were out, you could look up and see long bands of star clusters, millions of tiny pinprick lights set in the blackness. One night I saw satellites moving across the sky – it was that clear and dark. Now when you’re out there at night, when everything is still and serene, you look and you see an orb or orange light cast from the Phoenix metro area, obscuring all the tiny lights and details. It looks like a wall of fire is coming towards you.
As Harry sped through the dark on the makeshift roads behind the faire, I thought of Cassandra. I first saw her at a faire workshop. She wore a white shirt, purple velvet breeches, and black leather fighting gloves. She was 8 years my senior and carried herself like the world was her playground. She was dating Gerald at the time. Gerald was older than her and worked hard to redefine the word arrogance every chance he got.
Driving on the dirt road kicked up rocks and dust. The tires on the gravel sounded like a blender chopping nuts and the air was chilly. Other pleasant memories came to me as Harry drove fast to the arena. Me joining her dance team; our aborted attempt to see Rocket from the Crypt on their famous Free Charity tour; her buying bourbon for me and my friends at Christmas; sitting by my parents pool, drinking wine; our first kiss. None of these memories were recent.
We arrived at the new joust arena and jumped out of the truck. Zeke and Harry were making noise until Pablo, the alpha male, quieted them. There were roving security guards on the site at night and we wanted to avoid them.
The arena was huge, almost the size of a high school football stadium. The stands were constructed out of wood, metal and concrete. They looked sturdy and powerful, unlike the past arena, which was rented stadium seating. This arena had staying power. There was also a viewing box for the Royal Court to sit above the plebes in the stands.
The Royal Court included “King Henry.” King Henry was played by this bodybuilder and artist named Jerry. Jerry was a celebrity around the faire because he came from Minnesota (where most of the upper echelon management came from) and played the King. His costume lent him some kind of authority that other people obeyed and loved. It was like the role he played became real because of the clothes he wore. The renaissance faire is like the Stanford Prison Experiment in that regard.
Jerry was also a guy that called me a “stupid asshole” once backstage.
“I want to check out the King’s balcony,” I said.
No one knew how to get up there, but since it was on the second story we looked for stairs. Finding them took an embarrassing length of time.
“So what’s up with you and Cassandra?” Pablo asked.
I shrugged. “You know how she is.”
“Yes I do, that’s why we’re not dating anymore, Bry.”
Harry found the stairs and he and Zeke started up them, giggling like lunatics on nitrous oxide. Pablo and I followed.
Pablo kept talking as we walked up the stairs. “You’ve been down lately man. I don’t like seeing it.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that. We’re going through some tough times now. It’s no big deal.”
“I don’t know about that. You haven’t been yourself lately.” Pablo said.
“I know. But there’s nothing I can do. It’s all on her and how she feels about things.”
We got to the top of the stairs and Pablo gave me a sympathetic smile. “Just be good to yourself, mate.”
The viewing booth was nondescript. Just a wooden box set over the arena with a few pieces of decorative finery. There were also two thrones up on a small dais at the end of the booth. One was clearly for the king. I went over and examined where Jerry was going to sit during the next day’s jousts.
Cassandra got along great with the Royal Court. The Mayor’s court too. Both groups considered me an obnoxious jerk. I considered them humorless dickheads that had unjustifiably high self-esteem for a bunch of former SCA fucks.
Harry and Zeke stood towards the edge of the balcony. Pablo stood next to me and regarded the thrones with me.
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s just – she has all the power here. If she wants to dump me, she will. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
Pablo nodded.
“It’s hard being out here,” I said. “Unless people want to fuck you, you got no power. You’re nothing.”
“Cassandra wants you,” Pablo said.
“For the time being.”
Staring at the King’s throne, I thought back to a few years before, to me and Jerry’s exchange backstage.
I was talking about an altercation between my friend and two hack performers from Minnesota. One of them, a singing executioner, got in her face about how she was attracting an audience for our stage acts. That was our job. We were supposed to get an audience to come see the shows at the stage we were assigned to. It’s called hawking. In this instance, one of the Singing Executioners, whose act was about as funny as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, didn’t like what she was doing and got in her face about it. She was a strong girl, but an adult giving her a hard time for doing her job shook her up a little. After it happened, I was backstage telling my friend Hansen about it. Jerry butted in, and said: “Well, maybe if you weren’t such a stupid asshole, these things wouldn’t happen.”
My face felt like something white hot was burning it. Scowling, I pictured Jerry. His skin was a dark tan from all the sun and his beard was still a dusky brown. Then I pictured his smug smile and his fawning admirers. My friend Eddy, who was in the Royal Court a couple of years prior, told me how funny Jerry was, and how charming he was. Cassandra told me that too. She was always pointing out the positive qualities in people that thought I was contemptible and hideous.
I felt my upper lip start to tremble into a sneer.
Then an idea came to me that was so sophisticated, so urbane, so sublime I was dumbfounded.
“I’m going to piss on the King’s throne,” I said.
“What?” Pablo said. Harry perked up and laughed. Zeke looked at me with dull eyes and sort of smiled.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding my head with added determination. I turned to Pablo and smiled. “I’m going to piss on the King’s throne.”
I stepped up to the dais and prepared to hose down the throne. I undid my pants and noticed that there was a foam cushion on the seat. Good. The urine will soak in and smell. While I peed, Harry cheered. And as my stinking yellow piss drained all over the throne, I imagined Jerry’s face scrunched up as he sat there the next day, wondering where that smell came from. A strong feeling rose in my chest and I stood up a bit straighter. I felt the kind of satisfaction that only comes with seeing your adversary trampled down by rabid bulls running in the streets.
“Who’s next?” I asked, zipping up.
Harry was next. He giggled and said, “This is awesome!” as he urinated.
“Pablo?” I said.
“All right Bry. I’ll do it.” Pablo paid tribute to the King and afterwards Zeke did. At least I think he did. That guy was like a big lump of tofu carved into a human body. The Easy Bake Oven generated more candlepower than Zeke’s brain on his best day.
Afterwards we climbed back into Harry’s truck. I had a broad smirk on my face. Pablo saw it and slapped my back. “That’s more like it, Bry.”
When I arrived back at camp everyone was asleep. I walked to the tent Cassandra and I shared and went inside.
As I laid down on our bed of blankets and foam she said to me: “How was your trip?”
“Good,” I said, closing my eyes. “We pissed on the Kings throne.”
“Well that’s mature.”
“I’ve never felt better in my life.”
Ren Faire Memories: Showering You with Affection
(For the past two decades of my life, I’ve participated, with varying levels of commitment, at both the Arizona and Southern/Northern California Renaissance Faires. I’m going to start chronicling some of the stories here. It’ll be sort of like Get in the Van, but lamer. Please note, the names have been changed to protect all parties.)
This is a slight deviation from my last two Ren Faire Memories posts. Here I’ll be discussing a facet of life as a ren faire performer and not a specific event. The topic for this installment are the showers participants have to use out at the faires.
Huzzah!
Here’s the thing about the showers at the Ren Faire: after a day working in the hot sun, you need a good shower. Men can sometimes get away with going a day or so without one, but that varies from person to person, and what costume that man is wearing. Men’s costumes, generally, are lighter and less restrictive. Especially men’s peasant costumes; those usually consist of a shirt, a vest thing, short pants and stockings. If those items are made out of light natural fibers, you can stay cool throughout the day, and you’ll be less disgusting when the day’s over. So, depending on how “outdoorsy” you are, it may not matter at all. However, as you get up towards the top of the food chain, the costumes get heavier and more restrictive. That causes much more sweat and grime to accumulate.
Women’s costumes have the same problem as the royal costumes. Women’s costumes are so layered and restrictive even if they’re made out of natural fibers, they still cause sweat and misery. The run of the mill women’s ren faire costume consists of a tight bodice (a corset like thing) and multiple long skirts. And that’s just the basic costume. Like with the men, it gets worse as you go towards the upper classes. The women’s royal costumes are even more restrictive and painful to wear. Seriously, you have never seen relief until you’ve seen the faces of some of these ladies when they get to loosen their bodices. Probably the only thing that’s comparable to that feeling is being told that the biopsy was negative and the tumor is benign.
Anyway, back to the showers. Each faire has its own management, so the facilities are unique to each faire.
For instance, at that Southern California fair when I would attend there (between the years 1998-1999) they used to bring out shower trailers. These were purpose built trailers with three shower stalls in them, and they weren’t bad. Yes, pools of water would form on the floor, grass and dirt would be smeared on the walls, and occasionally single-sex showers would turn co-ed in the middle of the afternoon, but overall they weren’t bad. You didn’t feel completely violated going into them.
The best shower facilities at any faire I’ve ever worked had to be at the Santa Barbara Ren Faire in 2000. That was the first year that faire was open and it was a small affair. The site itself was on a live oak camp and already had some good infrastructure there.
The showers were made out of concrete and wood. The stalls themselves were built out of wooden slats that sat high above the drains so water never pooled at your feet. There were nice plastic shower curtains, so you never had to shower in front of everyone else. Which is cool cause I don’t want to be sitting on a bench while some dude’s ass is right there in front of me. And I’m sure they feel the same about my rear as well. So it was a win-win.
But, as good as having clean stalls, plentiful hot water, and shower curtains was, that wasn’t the best part. The best part was there wasn’t a ceiling. Seriously, I know that sounds weird, but it was great. It was fantastic taking a nice warm shower in a clean stall underneath a beautiful deep blue sky with a light cool breeze going over me. Normally at a faire event the facilities are so nasty it’s a get in, get out scenario. At this faire I took two showers a day. It was wonderful.
The current fair at the Northern California faire doesn’t currently have any shower facilities. That, my friends, gets nasty.
But what’s worse than no shower facilities are the old shower facilities at the Arizona Ren Faire. I started working there in 1990, the second year the fair was open. I have a friend that is still doing fair out there and he says the showers are in the same building as when I worked out there. I don’t think they’ve gotten better with age.
It's not this bad, but it aint much better.
The shower facilities in Arizona are in one building with a side dedicated to each sex, i.e., men on one side, women on the other. Originally, there were four stalls made out of cheap plastic. My second year there, they took out the fourth stall and put in a flush toilet that was always clogged. The bottoms of the plastic stalls started breaking, so pools of stagnant water would form in large cracks by your feet. Stagnant water that drained off the bodies of people with questionable hygiene.
The shower curtains were stolen/trashed so water was flying everywhere and pooled on the shower house floor. The shower house floor that had no drain in it and a constantly clogged flush toilet. That water got ankle deep some days. Rumors of staph infection were rampant, but I don’t know how true they were. I know I never got it, that’s for sure.
Now, think about it. You work at the fair, it gets into the 90s/100s some days out there (it also gets down to the 40s and 50s and rainy, but that’s another issue), you’re hot, you’re tired, and all you want it is a shower. You trudge to this lean-to and open the door. You get hit in the face with smelly steam, stinky, overweight bodies hanging around, a clogged overflowing toilet and three inches of stagnant water, which may or may not be swimming with staph infection. You’re standing there, deciding whether or not risk possible infection and loss of limb, when some fat old bear screams at you to close the door. So I ask you, what would you do? Me, I just closed the door and decided to deal with my unique stink. But that’s just me: I’m a bold young man with a Devil May Care attitude! (Read: I just stank a lot).
For next time:
I’m still trying to decide which piece I’m going to work on next for this series. It’s down to two: 1) It Aint So Good to be the King, or 2) One Day Soon I’m Going to Tell the Moon about the Farting Game. I’m not sure which one to go with. Suggestions are always welcome in the comments.
Ren Faire Memories: B.Michael Gets the Finger
(For the past two decades of my life, I’ve participated, with varying levels of commitment, at both the Arizona and Southern/Northern California Renaissance Faires. I’m going to start chronicling some of the stories here. It’ll be sort of like Get in the Van, but lamer. Please note, the names have been changed to protect all parties.)
The last gig I had at the AZ Ren Faire was being a Morris dancer with an English folk dance team. This was a good gig for me since I liked to drink and Morris dancers love drinking. It was a match made in heaven.
One girl on the team — let’s call her Dana — did the entire team a favor by brewing up some grog every weekend. Grog was this potent mix of rum and fruit juices. Sometimes it was nasty because she either put too much rum in or too much fruit juice. The balance had to be just right, or else it would be too sugary or too rummy. And I hate rum. However, I also love free booze, so you can see my dilemma.
Dana's grog never looked this cool...
Anyway, one night we were sitting around camp and getting really wasted. Like spinning room wasted. Like shitting in your cooler wasted. Like I’m about to fuck Andy Dick wasted. As the night went on, one by one, the team members went to bed until it was just me, Dana, and some other dude who’s name I can’t remember, passing a jug of grog back and forth.
Dana and the dude started talking and I thought I saw a girl that I was interested in walking across the parking lot towards the Port a Johns by the showers. Being a nice guy, I decided to take the jug of grog over to her and chat her up.
I don’t recall if the person I met was the person I wanted to meet, but that’s not important. The important thing to know here is that I was standing a fair distance away from our camp, drinking Dana’s grog. Me and this unknown person were passing the jug back and forth, shooting the shit as they say. I then hear a girl’s voice cut through the calm desert night.
“B.Michael! YOU TOOK MY GROG!” Hearing my name, I looked up and I saw nothing but a large white light coming at me from the camp. The light was running towards me and kicking up dust as it went along. I started laughing. It was like the Tazmanian Devil from the Warner Brothers cartoon was coming at me with a very large flashlight. A Tazmanian Devil who was swearing and pissed off that I absconded with her alcohol. It was a real funny sight. Funny until the light went down on the hard desert floor.
Drunk people falling over isn’t uncommon anywhere, especially when they’re running over broken ground like the participant’s parking lot at the AZ Ren Faire. Normally someone trips, swears and gets back up. Not this time. Dana went down hard and didn’t get up for about 20 seconds or so. Worse still, she wasn’t making any noise. That’s what freaked me out the most. No swearing, no yelling, no moaning. And that desert floor is made up of hard, beat down dirt and rocks. A concussion was not out of the question.
I dropped the grog jug and ran over to her. She was just sitting up and when I got there and was in the beginning of a pretty good freak out. I picked up her flashlight and then I saw why.
When she fell, she had jammed her finger into the dirt and rocks. Her nail was bent back and broken, shredding the nail bed, and ripping the tender flesh below. Blood was coming down her finger’s mutilated tip and running onto her hand. It was gruesome, to say the least.
Seeing what happened to her turned my drunken stomach. I felt like I need to boot. Thankfully, I didn’t.
Instead, I picked up Dana and supported her weight as I walked her towards the Faire site where our friends Alice and Andrew’s trailer was located.
Alice and Andrew are legendary. Both of them do night security at the California faires and are scary, paramilitary badasses. Like, they live on a compound paramilitary style and collect guns badasses. To be fair, the level of idiocy at the CA Faires is pretty high, and so being security requires a certain amount of badassery. One story I heard, and I never confirmed it, was one night, after hours, Andrew and/or Alice were responsible for throwing Wil Wheaton out of the CA Southern Faire when he was being an obnoxious underage drunk. The story goes Wesley Crusher was pissed about getting thrown out and asked repeatedly if “[they knew] who I am!”
They did and it didn’t help.
Anyway, Dana and I knew them both personally because Alice danced with our team at the AZ Ren Faire. Andrew did night security out at the AZ Faire, and thank God for that because there were a lot of nights out there I was a loud, drunken jackass, and had anyone else been doing Andrew’s job, I would’ve been kicked out.
As I was walking and supporting Dana, she was freaking out. But not like in a normal kind of freaking out where someone is hysterical. Dana was quiet, slurring her words, and very distressed about her finger. She was acting like Steve Carrell in the final bar scene of 40 Year Old Virgin and Kate Hudson when she overdosed in Almost Famous. She tried to stop me from taking her to Alice and Andrew’s trailer, claiming that she was fine and we didn’t need to bother them. I told her to cool it and that I was taking her to Alice and Andrew’s and that was final. They’d know what to do.
“But they’ll be mad,” she said.
“Are you fucking kidding? They live for shit like this.”
We arrive at the trailer and I knock on the door. I don’t remember what I said, but I’m pretty sure I told them who I was and that Dana was hurt. The door flew open and a topless Alice pulls Dana inside. Andrew was in the back of the trailer, getting dressed. Once he had his drawers on, he came into the narrow dining/lounge area of their trailer.
After Andrew arrived, it got serious. It was like a scene out of ER or something. Alice and Andrew were all business, speaking in short sentences. Almost barking at me. They grabbed Dana and examined her. She protested a bit, but as drunk as she was, her resistance was completely ineffectual. Alice turned to me and asked (read: demanded) to know what happened. Andrew was examining her finger as I told them the story. Dana started moaning and then I saw her eyes roll back into her head, exorcist style. Alice cut in front of me, shouting, “She’s going! She’s going!” They pulled her back towards the bathroom in the trailer and I fell backwards on my ass onto a bench.
My head was spinning, so I got up and announced that I was going outside to get some air. As I left, I heard Dana crying. This was too much.
After five minutes, I came back inside. Alice was supporting Dana and Andrew was standing in front of me. There was a weird vibe inside the trailer, like I had fucked up and now Mom and Dad were there, pissed off and disappointed at me. He looked me in the eyes and told me to take Dana to the hospital. “Now,” he said, sounding like how a prison guard talks to the newest inmate.
“Okay, we’ll get her to the hospital –”
“Tonight.”
“Sure, Andrew. But I’m drunk off my ass right now. I can’t drive her anywhere. So I’ll find someone who can drive.”
“Tonight,” he said.
“Tonight,” I repeated.
I took Dana out of the trailer and went back to camp. I think she was a little calmer now, but she was still hurt and very drunk. My memory is a little foggy here.
Once we made it back to camp, I knew who I had to wake up. Let’s call him Jethro.
Jethro was our resident stand-up guy. He’s a mixture between Owen Wilson and Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He’s smart, responsible, and, best of all, he went to bed early so he was reasonably sober. I knew he could probably drive Dana to the emergency room.
I went over to our tent (we were tent mates at the time), and I crawled inside and shook him awake. “Jethro. C’mon man, wake up. Dana’s hurt, you need to take her to the emergency room.”
Spitting Image...
He stirred a little, but wasn’t awake yet. “C’mon man, wake up. I’m too drunk to drive her.” He slowly woke up and I explained what happened. He finally got the message and woke up fully.
As he was putting on his shoes, he turned to me and said, “Are you coming?”
I snorted. “Are you high? No. I’m passing out.” He kind of laughed and left the tent to drive Dana away.
I fell backwards onto the rat’s nest pile of padding and blankets that was my bed. I then passed out.
The next morning (about six hours later) I found out the person I met at the Port a Johns ran off with the grog and spent the rest of the night wasted. Dana’s finger was fixed up (they had to take the nail off and clean out the wound) and I don’t think she danced that day. Everyone was concerned about her and no one said anything about me being clear headed and calm in a crisis. So really, who suffered the worst in this situation?
That’s right, Jethro. The poor bastard…
Ren Faire Memories: The Ballad of Mongo
(For the past two decades of my life, I’ve participated, with varying levels of commitment, at both the Arizona and Southern/Northern California Renaissance Faires. I’m going to start chronicling some of the stories here. It’ll be sort of like Get in the Van, but lamer. Please note, the names have been changed to protect all parties.)
You won't look at Cheetos the same way again...
Okay, so when I was 17 (it was a very good year), there was a flood of SCA types into the AZ Ren Faire. Most civilians don’t know this, but there’s a fair amount of animosity between the SCA and the Rennies. I have no idea why there’s a feud, but I’m sure the reason is stupid. I never really got it, but that didn’t stop me from joining in the hate. I just went with the crowd and fell in with my tribe. It was just like Munich in ’39, man!
Anyway, there was this guy who called himself Mongo. He probably told me his real name, but I forgot it. Besides the event that I’m going to tell you about, he really wasn’t memorable.
Mongo hung out with the front gate crew. That’s the crew that takes attendance and ticket stubs. They were really clique-y and hung out with each other in various trailers, including one which we used to call the Playboy mansion. More on that in a future installment.
As you might have guessed, the last weekend is usually the wildest. All sorts of substances are ingested, people hook up, and goodbyes are said. It’s sort of like a combination of Animal House and the last episode of M*A*S*H. Well, that year, the last Saturday night I was sleeping in my tent and Mongo and his crowd were sitting around a nearby campfire talking loudly.
I was in my tent, doing a slow burn, listening to Mongo and his crew become drunken idiots. Suddenly, I heard Mongo’s deep scratchy voice say, “Mongo like Southern Comfort and Cheetos.” This annoyed me. I was around that clown Mongo for the entire run of fair and I had enough of his nonsense.
I yelled an epithet at Mongo, insinuating that Mongo prefers the company of men, and told him to shut the fuck up. We yelled back and forth, exchanging insults. Mongo then came and rattled my tent.
Periodically during that run of faire, my friend Jerry would crash in my tent. Usually without letting me know about it ahead of time. I had no problem with that, since he is a good friend and all, but it was weird coming to my tent and finding a sleeping man in there. Anyway, that night was one of those nights.
When Mongo rattled my tent, it woke Jerry up. This pissed Jerry off to no end because I think he was either a) really tired, b) sleeping something off or c) both. Jerry, pissed off and grunting in anger, pulled himself out of my tent and the following exchange happened. I am not making this up.
Jerry: What the hell’s the matter with you? Can’t a person take a sleep around here?
Mongo: Your friends are fruit loops.
Jerry: I don’t care if they’re Frosted Flakes! Don’t mess with my tent when I’m sleeping.
Me: Your tent?
Jerry: Shut the fuck up!
Eventually, security came by and told them to shut up. All was well. I fell into a deep sleep.
Do I have to explain why this is here?
The next morning I woke up and got out of my tent. Across the way, I saw Mongo, wearing a white, fluffy Ren Faire pirate shirt and steadying himself over a trash can. There was a wide orange stain that started up at his collar and went all the way down his shirt. Upon seeing me he sneered and I started laughing. His crew were shaking their fists and swearing oaths at him. I could barely stand up I was laughing so hard.
But, seeing my enemy covered in orange puke wasn’t the best part. Oh no. As Mongo upchucked again, I saw some of his crew pulling out stained foam mattresses. Normally tan, these mattresses were now covered, stem to stern, in thick, goopy orange liquid.
Mongo eventually got control of himself and went to go take a shower and get cleaned up. While he was gone, I got ready and went over to his campsite to get the dirt. Apparently, around 2:00 AM, Mongo started projectile vomiting all over the trailer. This one guy, Carl I think, got the worst of it. He looked like Bill Murray in Ghostbusters after being slimed. I didn’t have the guts to look inside, but from what I was told, there was stuff all over the walls. And, to make matters worse, I also heard that Mongo might have had a double blow-out. But that was never confirmed. Mostly cause I wanted to drop the subject as soon as I heard about it.
That was Mongo’s first and last year at the Faire.
Ruminations, etc.. 