I'm writing a book about all the stories from my life, and since I am INSANELY close to being done, I thought I would share a chapter on my blog. I gotta gauge the recation of anybody who may want to purchase and/or read the book right!?
The book is called Burying the Past, when you read the whole thing, you'll get the gist. The story below is about our dear friend Jorge. I hope you enjoy and I really hope you like the book.
* everyone's names, besides mine, have been changed in the book unless I got permission, for legal purposes yada yada yada, enjoy!
Jorge
I was going to do a comical take on writing about Jorge. I was going to do a big write up as if he
were real and then at the very end reveal that Jorge was in fact a beer bong,
before going into his funeral…yes you read that right. But writing it that way would be in awful
taste, just like the kind of taste that came out of Jorge and into us.
Jorge came about one night by Beast and Murphy, who wanted to
make a beer bong for all to enjoy. He
was named after a brachiosaurus toy that grows in the water, that they had as a
pet. Those are not meant to be pets as
they are not real, living beings so it got a bit…disgusting. So, this was the next best thing.
You would never think that a beer bong would mean so much to
so many. Having literally a wife,
Brooke, with two stepchildren in Young Boy and BV. The day Jorge debuted is well documented,
which was rare during late 2003 because there wasn’t Facebook. There were no smart phones. No Instagram.
It was incredible looking back on it.
What we did have was a digital camera.
Then after you took the pictures, you had to manually put them on a
computer, then either put on a zip drive or CD and give to friends. So barbaric!
That night is the second night I had ever blacked out. The first being my 21st birthday. I had no idea the power a beer bong had,
because I was really stupid, I believe I had 10 beer bongs that night. The pictures are great, showing a bunch of
young people having a good time with Jorge, living our best life. From that point forward Jorge was a part of
our family for more than a year. Here
are some amazing stories about Jorge during his all too brief time with
us.
We went to Sioux Falls, SD for an interesting night. Our friend Bro Bro was at a party at his
brother’s house, so he asked us to come up, so we brought Jorge and got at
it. We all got really drunk, but my
friend Ben wanted to leave because there were no girls there, so the most sober
had to drive…that was me. The reason I
drove you may ask? Murphy and Ben fell
asleep in the car smoking a cigarette, Murphy woke up to the cigarette burning
his pants. It was time to go.
This was one of the most terrifying moments of my life, as I
drove from Sioux Falls to Vermillion, which is roughly an hour. On my drive there was not one single car the
entire time. It was the luckiest I had
ever been…or so I thought. I had made it
home and went to sleep, while we were gone there was a party at my house,
common theme. I was awakened at 8 AM by
Cowriter running in to my room. “Where
the hell is Jorge!?!?!”. Oh my god, we
had left him in Sioux Falls at the party.
I frantically called Bro Bro to make sure Jorge was okay, but it was so
early he wasn’t going to answer.
LUCKILY, he was awake.
As he was driving to his hometown cross state. In his hungover daze he responded, “Don’t
worry, Jorge is with me. He’s
okay!”. Thank. God.
Jorge was safely delivered back a week later.
Jorge had an amazing run for a beer bong. Honestly, he was part of the family. When we moved houses, he came with. The next year of his life was at a house
called the Double Barrel. This house,
and I’ll allude more to this later, was at the time the biggest party house on
campus. There was a party every night of
the week, sometimes Sundays were taken off, more often than not they
weren’t. One brutal spring night, I was
in my room making a mix CD for the party…that is actually something I did…and
Cowriter and Bro Bro ran to my room (what is with Cowriter and Jorge?!). Someone had stepped on Jorge. He was dead.
I was FURIOUS. I found the person
who stepped on him and approached him.
“You fucking killed him!?”.
Clearly this college kid was very confused what I was talking about, as
his only response was, “What?”. Well,
that riled me up even more and I kicked him out of my house. He was gone.
We tried to figure out if we could save him, but it was
impossible. The dipshit stepped right on
the base of the funnel and cracked it.
So we did what any normal college kids would do, we threw a
funeral.
This is, out of all the stories I have, one of the funniest
and one of the most bizarre. So that
week was interesting, trying to figure out the best way to honor Jorge and his
memory. So Murphy made a casket for
Jorge, our roommate Stone embalmed him with Icehouse. The casket was expertly crafted, and when Murphy’s
dad walked in on him making the casket, he told his dad that it was a cabinet
for his shoes. I don’t think he bought
it, but he didn’t ask any questions.
Literally the same week we were put on noise probation because
we had over 200 people at our house.
Beast was back from Europe, which ironically is the reason I started
journaling all of our stories. Our other
friend, Bodyguard, had just joined the Navy, so we had a going away/welcome
back party of massive proportions. We
had to do this funeral but be really sneaky about it and have a small gathering
of people, or this time we’d get in deep shit.
That week we made funeral preparations. Skeet would be the priest and give a
sermon. We had speakers set up for
speeches about what Jorge meant to us.
And we had a gigantic backyard, so we decided to bury him in the back
next to a rock that was randomly in the middle of the yard.
The morning of the funeral, we ran in to some issues, because
who wouldn’t? Stone was having
reservations about Skeet’s sermon. We
had started to dig the hole next to the rock, but we noticed it just kept
going, and going, and going. This rock
went into the depths of the earth, but it was too late so we dug out a little
further to fit a casket. It fit. Now we decided to have service at 4 PM that
day. The reason for that?
We lived next door to a fucking church. And this was a Saturday. So, we thought the funeral would be done
relatively quick, then we’d have a procession through town, go back and bury
him, then show our respects. We had 6
pallbearers; I was one of them. It’s a very
weird photo to see as an adult, that’s for sure.
As the funeral began, church goers next door were starting to
show up. They showed up EARLY. As Skeet finished his abbreviated sermon, it
was time for Murphy to do a speech. As
he was giving his respects to Jorge, the beer bong, Murphy saw his parents
walking into church. His speech was cut
short. It was time for the
procession.
The funeral procession was one of the most insane moments of
my life. Muzzle drove a Bravada, a large
black vehicle that fit himself and the pallbearers. Because I’m short and skinny, I always sat
“bitch” which was in the middle back of each vehicle. Or in weird circumstances like this, I would
sit in the VERY back of a vehicle, and there I was, sitting right next to Jorge
in his casket.
We started driving in a 4-5 car procession around town and I
started to tear up. I don’t know what
happened, but the emotion overcame me when I looked in the car behind us. It was Skeet driving, with Bear shotgun,
dressed up. I looked down at Jorge’s
casket and it was just a very surreal moment for me. We did a loop through town and, I shit you
not, two cars joined in on our procession.
One was an old lady who probably had no idea what was happening. I swear to this day she did the sign of the
cross while we drove. You and me both
lady. I actually, no joke, started to tear
up in the back.
The other car that joined I have no clue who it was, but as we
got back to our home, we put Jorge down.
I threw in a letter and some pictures, and we buried him back in the
ground. He is still there to this
day. Skeet bought the house we lived at,
so some day, we will get Jorge out of the ground. The day was also turned in to a college movie
that was directed by Stone. This
situation can show you how insanely creative my group of friends are AND how
motivated we can all be if we truly want to get something done. Thanks Jorge.
For everything.
Beer bongs were still had afterward. A sibling was made for Jorge, and we went
through the ringer trying to name it. We
settled on the name of Ol’ Boot, who was a fine lad, it just wasn’t the same. It’s never been the same honestly. RIP Jorge.
