Time for another episode of Aesop’s Soup’s Fables
(I’ll try to keep it short)
It was the summer of my fifteenth year and we were a particularly obnoxious group of a-holes. my homies had spent most of the early summer partying and getting into trouble. I attended summer school driver ed so that I could get my license early and I had some serious catching up to do.
My friends had caught wind of a kegger out at Shadow Lake and all we needed was a ride. None of us were fussy about who we rode with, just as long as it didn’t cost anything because we had already spent what little pocket change we had on LSD and cheap wine. My buddy Mike got us a ride with the Perino Brothers. I never liked the bros – even from my JD background I thought that they were dumbass crooks. Always hustling or thieving. But a ride is a ride.
We got out to Shadow Lake (sounds like a Bob Seger tune, doesn’t it?!) and the party was just getting going. My pals and I partook of our treats and milled around like the idiots we were. It wasn’t long before there was a good sized crowd, all laughing and drinking and having a good time. Someone set up a bonfire and it was going pretty good.
My inebriation almost prevented me from seeing (or better, understanding) what came next.
In small groups the couples and single girls all faded away into the night. It was so casual that I didn’t catch it at first. In very short order the tone of the remaining guys took a decidedly dark tone. It turned out that the Perino Brothers, the same Perino Brothers that we had caught a ride with, had stolen something from one of these guys and the kegger was a ruse to lure them out to this remote spot for a bit of revenge.
One minute we’re joking around and passing the vino back & forth and the next moment a gang of guys is confronting the bros. They toyed with them for a bit and then set to beating the snot out of them. One of my pals tried to interpose himself between them and I remember this one menacing guy asking if he wanted some too. The highpoint of the festivities was dragging the bros through the bonfire – great fun. We were so F’d up that all we could do was flee for our own lives. It was a mile and a half walk down an unlit dirt road back to the highway and then about another hour before we hitched a ride back to town. More than once we hid in the woods as the guys roared up and down the dirt road looking for us.
I can still recall the horror of the moment and the feeling of sotted helplessness. That was the conclusion of my drug experimentation phase. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment and vulnerable to stupid choices.
Don’t be that guy.
