American Thighs (8 page)

Kyle was still blathering away about whatever it was—even though I had interrupted him fairly early in his monologue with the Important News that Angie had just hooked something big, but it didn't slow him down a bit. It must have been something he thought would really be of interest to me to continue in such a fashion. Shows how wrong he can be.

When I saw Angie's lips form the word
net,
I somewhat forcefully interjected, “Where's the net?” But he evidently thought whatever it was he was going on about was more important because he did not immediately respond to my urgent query about the location of the net. I found this irritating to the extreme and followed up with a much more forceful and considerably louder “THE NET! THE NET! WHERE'S THE FUCKIN' NET?!”

I didn't actually wait for his answer since I had just recalled where I had last seen the net and, flinging the phone—with Kyle on the other end—to the ground, I loped off in that direction. As I loped, I bellowed at Laura—in total violation of about a half dozen Laura Fest Regulations having to do with the at-all-cost avoidance of disturbing the peace of Laura during Laura
Fest—to get over here quick and bring her camera, Angie had hooked something big.

Loping back, net in hand, I could see Laura had loped herownself over with the camera and was watching, wide-eyed, as the line continued to strip off Angie's reel. What the fuck had she caught? Something big.

Kyle—and, as it turned out, our friends Allen and Jeffrey—were hanging on the phone line in New York, in total thrall regarding the little drama that was playing out on our seawall. We could hear them shouting but we had no time or inclination to respond, being in a pretty big thrall ourownselves.

Finally, the fish began to tire—but not much—that fish was not nearly as tired as, say, Angie. Her arms were about to break just from trying to keep the monster from yanking the rod, with her attached, into the lake after him. Gradually she worked him closer and closer to the bank. At this point, he still had not broken the surface—we had no idea what it was—or how big it was.

Finally, we could tell from the line that he was close—I was ready with the net, Laura was standing by with the Kodak on auto-focus. Angie had braced herself a few feet back from the edge of the seawall, fighting the fish. Laura was beside her and I was right on the edge with the net, peering into the water, straining for the first sight of Moby.

Suddenly, there he was—well, part of him. He was twisting and turning and his midsection broke the surface. What I saw
was about a foot wide and about three feet long—and I knew there was plenty more fish on either end of what I saw. He was HUGE and I was broadcasting that fact loudly and with great excitement to the girls on the bank, the boys on the phone, and the world at large within the sound of my voice—which I figger was a good five-mile radius, easy.

The fish broke again and I saw that the hook was in the big fin on his back—he hadn't swallowed it at all—and so he wasn't coming up headfirst but kinda sideways. I knew he wasn't about to fit in that net sideways and I was gonna have to get down under one end of him to land him which I did and made the on-the-spot observation that there was no way in hell I could pick the sonofabitch up by myself, especially at that angle, without joining him in the water.

Laura was squealing—hell, we were all three squealing like big ole girls—and the boys in New York were pretty shrill their-ownselves, truth be told. Laura flung the camera down by the phone and grabbed the rim of the net. Between the two of us, using all our strength, we managed to get him up out of the water, but he was too big and too unwieldy, we couldn't hold him, and we—me, Laura, and Orca—fell back in the grass.

We sat up and surveyed our quarry, with many “Holy shit's” accompanying. Laura recovered herself sufficiently to crawl out from under the leviathan and over to the camera. We could hear the boys yelling, “WHAT IS IT? WHAT IS IT? HOW
MUCH DOES IT WEIGH?” But we were too agog to answer them.

Our dog, Sostie, was right there with us—she loves it when we catch fish and she always races over the second she hears anybody's line tense up with a fish. Even Sostie was agog at this creature and she crept in for a close look. Now, Sostie weighs about fifty-five to sixty pounds—not exactly huge for a dog—but pretty outstanding for a fish. The photos show Sostie lying on the bank beside our Most Dangerous Catch—and the fish is bigger around than she is. The photos also show the fish lying next to my own extended legs—which are normally several hundred times longer than any fish we bring in. This guy was almost as long as my legs. You know I'm six-feet one, right?

Laughing fit to kill, we (Angie) unhooked the big galoot and we (all three of us) heaved him off the bank and back into the lake. It sounded like we'd all just done a simultaneous cannonball when he hit the water—the boys on the phone thought we'd been dragged to our deaths for sure.

I'm talking big fucking fish here. We couldn't pick him up to weigh him—and even if we could, our little scale is made for weighing your regulation-size bream and bass—its manufacturer was not really allowing for the possibility of snagging Nessie and wanting to weigh her.

We showed the photos to the lake manager the next day. He said he was pretty sure—if we had only been able to document
it—we had the state record GRASS CARP. Bwahahahaha! We'da never caught the thing if Angie hadn't accidentally hooked his fin—they eat plants and are totally disinterested in bait of any kind.

Trolling report: Close as I ever got—or want to get—to a “three-way,” but I'll share a big'un like that with Angie and Laura again any ole time!

Highly Personal Foul

Perhaps it's been a bit too long since I actually went to a stadium to watch a football game—the lure of comfy seating, a fully stocked bar, food at my fingertips, high-def screens, and handy (not to mention clean) restrooms have somehow triumphed over backless bleachers, warm beer, stale popcorn, and long lines for nasty ladies' rooms. Never been quite sure how the name “ladies' room” stuck—sure never looks like many “ladies” have been up in 'em—looks more like a gang of spotted-ass apes had been housed in there until their zoo quarters were made ready for 'em, right before game time.

And the high-definition thing—how is it possible to make stuff look BETTER on teevee than it actually does in person? So anyway, it's gotten pretty cushy to forgo the live experience at the stadium and so I suppose it's possible, likely even, that I have grown out of touch with the whole football experience.

This was never more clear to me than after the rehash of a Typical Game Weekend my daughter, Bailey, shared with me, during the course of which I have no doubt many salient points were glossed over, somehow omitted, or out-and-out lied about—but what was freely admitted to shocked me to my shoes.

My daughter is a junior at the University of Mississippi—Ole Miss—which is officially the #2 Party School in the EN-tire US of A. I have no earthly idea which one could be #1 and what all creates the distinction between the top slots. However, partying aside, she has made straight As since day 1 and she is on a full academic scholarship and I am pret-ty proud of her. Her father, whose enthusiasm at times is rivaled only by that of Eeyore, was inexplicably berating ME for some behavior he imagined SHE was engaging in, and in the course of his rant, he was also denigrating her academic accomplishment in a rare telephone conversation he and I were having about her. (It's not that it's rare that we talk about her—it's rare that we talk, period.) Basically, he was of the opinion that she was just fucking off and I was of the opinion that she was a straight-A student, and when I pointed that out to him, in her defense, he said, snidely, “Straight A's in PUBLIC school.” That remark and tone, of course, just jumped all over my own personal snide button and I fired right back with a snappy “Well, it's the PUBLIC school YOU were kicked OUT of, buckwheat!” which did have the desired effect of shutting him the hell up. Tra-la-la!

People do have such incredibly SHORT memories, don't they, when it comes to judging the actions of their children as compared to crap they were doing when THEY were that age? I am amazed all the time, talking to my friends, my LIFELONG friends—people about whom I know MANY, MANY incriminating things—and they will be just UP in ARMS over some dinky-ass little infraction their teenager committed—stuff that did not even involve armed law enforcement or drug dogs or ANYTHING. And they are looking ME in the eye—right in the eye, without the decency of flinching or even looking the slightest bit sheepish, which they OUGHT to be doing, me knowing what all I know and all—and they are just going OFF in a big ole fit of indignation that, knowing what all I know and all, could hardly be called “righteous” by anybody's definition—about catching their teenager drinking a beer.

I don't think we're doing our children a service by holding them to a standard to which we ourselves never even aspired, let alone reached. And by that I certainly do not mean condoning bad or dangerous behaviors. What I do mean is that it is probably more valuable to our children to know that we are actual humans who have somehow managed to survive our MISTAKES—as opposed to holding ourselves up as the Standard of Perfection to Which They Should Aspire. They would probably listen to you more if you were honest about how bad you screwed up on occasions and what the consequences were—or could have been had you been as unfortunate as
THEY have just been to GET CAUGHT—which, truth be told now, is often the ONLY difference between them and you.

Of course, those of you out there who were and are, in fact, Perfect are in an entirely different position and I really cannot speak to your child-rearing dilemma. I am sure you are even more mystified than the rest of us that YOU have somehow managed to produce such a…TYPICAL child with such…NORMAL…ewww, dare we say it? FLAWS. My imperfect heart bleeds for you in an untidy manner.

Anyway, I was intending to talk about the fashionization of football at Ole Miss and I hijacked myself—what a surprise. Okay, for most of my life prior to the time that I actually had my own house with comfy furniture, big-ass TVs, a kitchen I could trash at will, and a refrigerator full of beer that I could legally purchase for myself, I did thoroughly enjoy going to football games in big stadiums.

I loved the whole deal of being outside with tens of thousands of people. I loved the communal hollering. I loved devising new and trickier ways to conceal large quantities of alcoholic beverages on my person. My seester, Judy, and I once carried a sack full of vodka-infused oranges into an LSU game and a Good Time WAS, in fact, Had By All. We even shared with a convivial old guy sitting next to us until he made the fatal mistake of cheering for the opposing team, after which we summarily cut him off, from both our stimulating conversation and our intoxicating groceries.

I particularly loved LSU games and also any game involving the SWAC—the Southwestern Athletic Conference, made up of the historically black universities in the South. Some of the best football players—as in Jerry Rice, Steve McNair, and, oh, what was his name again…Walter Payton—and CLEARLY, the best halftime entertainment ever in the history of anything anywhere. One problem posed by SWAC games, however, is that they are notoriously LONG. This is because, at a SWAC game, everybody is performing, including the referees.

The only time anybody notices a ref is when a flag is thrown—so there are LOTS AND LOTS of penalties in SWAC games. This tends to make the game drag out a bit, which is not a problem EXCEPT it means attendees have to plan accordingly for their game-related alcohol needs.

My friend Carlos and I set out for Memorial Stadium in Jackson, Mississippi, one fine Sunday afternoon to watch us a very fine football game. Carlos actually prefers
futbol
over football, but there weren't any soccer games happening that day so I won. We got nearly to the stadium before we realized we had no booze and no place to buy any. My friend Adrienne's house was right on the way so we whipped off the interstate and ran by her house and borrowed the only full bottle of liquor she had on hand, which happened to be a fifth of gin.

There were so many penalty flags thrown and so many vehement protests to them that, well, the game dragged a bit and
we made the shocking discovery at
halftime
that we had already consumed our entire allotment of alcohol.

However, this is not a story about drinking but about fashion. Back in the Day, as they say, when I was going to the games outside instead of having them come to me inside, the attendees all dressed in what most normal people would consider to be appropriate attire for the event, which entailed going to a big concrete outdoor stadium to jump up and down and holler and eat crap and drink.

As you consider attending such an event, what types of clothing come readily to mind? If you're a NORMAL, RIGHT-THINKING ADULT—such as myself—you will no doubt think of comfy pants and comfy shoes—perhaps an assortment of just-in-case accessories, like a cap and jacket or some type of rain gear, no?

Would it EVER occur to you to leave your house, knowing that your destination was ostensibly to watch a football game—outside, in a football stadium—dressed in a chiffon spaghetti-strapped minidress and four-inch heels? Well, I am here to tell you that on any Saturday afternoon in September you can drive by Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Mississippi, and that is precisely what you will see on every female student in attendance. The ones not in attendance are at home sobbing because they didn't have a dress to wear that had not PREVIOUSLY BEEN WORN and thus SEEN by all the other female
students, who have photographic fashion memories and are immediately collectively aware and scornful of any hapless female who dares to show up on game day in a NOT new dress—and the shame and degradation of such a potentiality is so great, they cannot bear up under it and thus they remain closeted at home with only their false pride—and a giant bag of malted-milk balls—to keep them warm.