If there is one person whose memory dominates the summer and fall of '02, it's Jim Bob. I don't really know where to start, so excuse me if I ramble or begin to take rabbit trails, but there's just so much to tell.
Jim Bob was born and raised up in the mountains, went to college nearby, and ran his own small business. He's part dirty old man, part southern belle. His tantilizing cooking is almost as amazing as his ability to paint a graphic verbal picture that can make the pottiest of potty mouths gawk. He is definitely a talented individual and a jack of all trades. Jim Bob stands about 6'3, and his frame is equally ample, but he's one of those people that you don't need to see to know that they are present. His laugh is loud, unbridled and unashamed; he tells stories with more vigor than a pianist plays Rachmaninoff.
Most of the boys and myself all worked for his business that summer, working in just about every aspect of it. If there was no 'work' work to be done, there was always home improvements and errands for us to run for him. Jim Bob had his shit together too, and he loved having us work for him. Mostly because (as gay as he was) having a bunch of young guys running around his house sweating was all it took to set him free. That's another thing about Jim Bob, he wasn't one of these wimpy, caricatures of homosexuality. He was a full-blooded gay man. He drove a bigass truck, but also had a closet of stylish evening gowns. He was just a real person. Aside from the periodic ass-slap or X-rated verbal advance, he wasn't too disimilar from us. He enjoyed a lot of the same stuff we did; partying, traveling, doing wild shit just to see if you could get a rise out of people. Jim Bob successfully slalomed two miles of construction barrels at highway speed one night...well, almost. He knocked a few of 'em, but he was pretty drunk by that point, so we'll consider those dead soldiers as his handicap.
Most times, the boys and I would show up for work in the morning and get any prep work done. Jim Bob would stumble in bleary-eyed and groggy, mumble something about how much cocaine and construction workers he'd done the night before, and we'd just kind of blink at eachother for a second, and return to whatever task was at hand. Usually we'd have a big project in the evening, and we’d work late into the night. We’d work our asses off all day long, and through the evening to the wee hours of the morning; all the while soaking up the free alcohol (Jim Bob was a great boss) like street drunks. When we'd finished, we just kept on drinking until it ran out or we were pooped.
One of the first nights I was over at Jim Bob's house Carl, Monkey Boy, Josh, and Joe were all in attendance. I believe we were drinking Grand Marnier, listening to Astrid, and sitting on the back deck enjoying the view. Well, I go upstairs to use the bathroom and as I pass Jim Bob's master suite, Monkey Boy pokes his head out the door with this 'Oh crap' look on his face and pulls me inside. 'Dude, I clogged up the toilet.'
I walk into the bathroom with him and sure enough, the bowl is filled almost to the lip. 'All I did was pee, dude, and it just clogged up. I didn't even put anything in there bro!' I give Monkey Boy a glance that expresses how retarded I think he is, and then turn back to the ornery commode. We were both pretty blizzled at this point, so the sheer panic that is about to transpire is elevated that much more. I poke the flush handle and let 'er rip. Like I said, your boy wasn't exactly thinking clearly at the time.
The toilet promptly began to overflow onto the black tile floor. Water, Monkey Boy's piss, and God knows what else begin to spread steadily across the grid. Monkey Boy and I spring into what can only be described as clumsy, disjointed action. As 'The Girl from Ipanema" began to waft through the upstairs windows from the porch below, Monkey Boy and I were stumbling about the bathroom ankle deep in filth grabbing towels, trying to stem the seemingly unending flow from the toilet. I think by now we were also swearing and giving each other directions in hushed whispers.
Then Monkey Boy stops and, holding out some plastic object says 'What'n the hells this thing bro?' I examine it and it looks like a clear applicator tip from the end of some kind of tube. We hear an odd tapping sound, and look to the toilet in time to hear another tap, and see two more of these applicator tips come skittering out of the toilet bowl. Well, at least now we know what was clogging up the toilet. Monkey Boy reexamines the object in his hand for a second, and promptly flips the fuck out. "Jesus man!" He throws the tip across the room like it had bitten him, I look up from my ineffective attempts at flood control and then he says "Those are KY applicators dude, they're fucking coming OUT of the TOILET, and were standing in a puddle of what I can only assume is MY urine and the horrible detritus that is associated with K-Y applicators used for buttsex!" The terror alert level in the bathroom is now a menacing red and the pace of our efforts has reached fever pitch. So there we are, Pandora's toilet is fucking spewing like Vesuvius, and instead of being blessed with a quick death by lava, we're bathing in gay.
We manage to pull it together and just do what we have to do. We sop up the...ughh....and throw the towels in a nearby hamper. Both of us slouch against the bathroom wall, heave two twin sighs of relief and swear each other to secrecy. Well, not iron-clad secrecy, because we acted the whole thing out for our friends later. It was one of those moments that's like something out of a sitcom. Only way too gross for network TV.
I don't recall whether or not we ever told Jim Bob what went down in his bathroom that night. I think Monkey Boy and I just walked back downstairs and put a few extra slugs of bourbon in our gullets to help soothe the trauma. One things for sure though, neither one of us ever used that damn toilet again.