Jason Rodriguez - The Moose in the Closet: Keep on Writing and The Outdoorsmen

Michael got the not-guilty verdict. I hope Saddam Hussein’s trial gets half the media attention since, you know, he’s a million times more evil and is costing us billions of dollars and thousands of lives. Oh. Never mind. Katie Holmes is converting to Scientology. We’re all going to hell; I just hope I can get a comic or two out first.

Speaking of which, still trying to find that perfect artist for my baseball project I started cowriting a new project with Joshua Hale Fialkov. I’ll talk more about it as we settle down on the plot. For now I’ll say it’s sort of Natural Born Killers meets Ocean’s 11 in 1950s sci-fi stylized space with a nice touch of comedy.

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Pocono PEAK was probably the best thing about Junior High School. I don’t remember what PEAK stands for but the trip was designed to be this three day, two night nature trip of sorts. I have a shit-load of fond memories of this trip, none of them involve learning about nature. I’m just going to go through the highlights.

We formed teams that had to compete in several events. My team was the Trojans. After the first day of competition we ran through the woods yelling “Trojans Rule”, got back to our cabin and used somebody’s spray-on deodorant to write “Trojans” all over the walls. We had to clean that up before we were allowed on the bus home, our classmates pissed because they had to sit on the bus for two hours and wait for us.

The first night there we had a cookout and talent show. My boy Dwayne and I did L.L. Cool J’s “Momma Said Knock You Out” in front of a roaring bonfire and a bunch of cheering eighth graders. We followed it up with Special Ed’s “The Mission”. We won, obviously.

We filled a bath tub with about a hundred water balloons for the evening raid of the girls' cabin. While we were out eating dinner, our cabin-mate Luis “fell” in the tub and busted all of the balloons. I put “fell” in quotes because to this day I still believe he just wanted to know what it would feel like to jump into a tub full of water balloons. We got housed that night with no ammunition to defend ourselves.

The second night, however, we invaded this cabin filled with girls randomly visiting from Australia. My friend Alfred broke through their bathroom window while one of the girls where in the shower, started throwing sticks at her while saying “G’day mate”. Ah, Junior High. When you storm in on a naked foreign chick in the shower and throw sticks at her.

We ended up eventually raiding our girls' cabin. We put itching powder all over their clothes and used a Sharpie to write "Itchy Bitchy" all over the place.

Luis, the kid that “fell” into the tub full of water balloons, also fell into the smelliest stream imaginable. He freaked out when a frog pissed on his hand.

A bunch of us snuck over to the girls cabin and saw this chick Leticia naked. She had the hairiest bush imaginable. Being that maybe 50% of us hit puberty at this point, it was pretty impressive.

And then there was the waterfall. We took a hike through the woods and ended up at this waterfall that we were allowed to swim in. The water was deep enough to dive into and the waterfall was about twenty feet high and was dive-offable if you jumped to the right spot. It was so much goddamn fun.

Coming back, on the other hand, was a little sketchy. A couple of us fell behind and got lost. Brooklyn kids are not made to hike through the woods, when we get lost we freak out. So we just start walking. It’s getting darker and we’re making no progress. I tell the guys we’re going the wrong way but no-one believes me.

So, after learning nothing from the Friday the 13th movies combined with no survival skills or sense of direction I do the absolute stupidest thing imaginable.

I go my own way.

And get lost in the woods for about two hours.

Until I pop out. On a highway.

I kind of had this moment. Junior High sucked. I really hated it, we all did. It just wasn’t a fun experience. A lot of people complain about Junior High or High School and they go off about jocks and preppies. Junior High, for us, was a fucking racial warzone. I’ve had guns pulled on me, knives, bats. I’ve been mugged for hats, sneakers, bookbags and Jansport strings. My old neighborhood friends (B and Nick) that were supposed to have my back used me to garner their own cred. Why the fuck would I want to go back to PEAK?

Here was this moment. Like in the movies, hitch a ride and just disappear. And I actually thought about it for a while. I eventually decided to go back. There was only one year of school left and then it was on to bigger and better things.

I walk along the highway for about a half hour before seeing a sign for PEAK. Someone offers me a ride and I instinctively run away from him as fast as I can.

Get to PEAK about a half hour later. Tired, dirty and depressed.

My friends that I split up with? Yeah, they got back to PEAK about ten minutes after I left. Looking back now I doubt I had the stones to actually run away. Running away was one thing I never put any serious thought into. And it’s for the better, obviously. Otherwise I’d be in the Appalachians right now, making moonshine and beating my five kids.

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Keep on Writing and The Outdoorsmen

Monday, June 13, 2005

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