Fire in the (Ass)Hole

5/11/06


I want to talk to you about fire. I love fire. Fire, and all of its many incarnations, is to the male what shoes are to the female; we love it beyond all measure of ability for the opposite sex to understand. Only, instead of wearing it (or shoving it into a closet already terminally contaminated with footwear only to pull it out seven months later, tags still intact, and goggle at is as if never seen before) our particular obsession tends to physically damage things. Namely, ourselves.

I once set my hand on fire to impress a female. I was twenty years old and drunk; two states in which it is dramatically dangerous to find oneself, at least as far as self-preservation goes. In my alcohol-addled state, I thought it radically dramatic and sexy to pour a liberal amount of Zippo lighter fluid over my hand then light it on FUCKING FIRE. My male friend with me at the time wholeheartedly agreed that this was not only a totally awesome thing to do, but would powerfully induce panties to drop all around us. Why the sight of a seemingly fully-functional human being lighting their hand on fire on purpose should be sexually attractive to anyone other than Lucifer escapes me at the moment.

In my defense, I figured I had at least a few seconds of the fuel burning off before it really started to singe the tender skin beneath and I put it out. I was right, save the fact that it's incredibly difficult to put out lighter fluid once it has decided to burn. All things told it went out very quickly (I think I poured a drink on it) and I suffered no worse than a slightly red, warm hand. The fact that I did get laid that night fueled an insidious form of negative-reinforcement, by the way. Ladies, only when our behavior begins to keep you from fucking us do we ever even think about changing it.

The second and definitely most memorable time involving fire and yours truly would come when I was maybe 24, and wiser by the most infinitesimally minute amounts. I don't recall how this particular breed of madness started, but what we eventually ended up with was a bet. My roommate Aaron and I concocted this wager straight out of the pit of Hades in which he would splash a "reasonable amount" (?) of gasoline on my back, light me on fire, and I would then have to remain upright for a count of 5-Mississippi before I could stop, drop and roll. The reward for such a Herculean feat, I shall relate in a moment.

Picture, if you will, three grown, drunk men and one drunken woman (the chick Aaron was then plowing) out in the backyard at 3 in the morning, giggling like shy, Japanese school girls at the recipe for a skin graft cooking up in front of them. Now, my mother didn't raise any fool, mind you, so I had taken the safety precaution of putting on two pairs of pants and two shirts. Yep; apparently the well-known flame-retardant qualities of dry cotton were going to protect my body from flaming petroleum. They're both short-sleeve shirts, by the way. Not need to get all sweaty out there while waiting to be ignited.

Aaron splashes a bit of gasoline from a jug and, not having measured it out first, right away I can tell its far too much gasoline. Do I say anything? Not me! I'm no pussy! Bring on the fiery demise, please! Aaron sparks up a match and I hear a noise not unlike an industrial air conditioner suddenly jumping into life as flames surge from my ankles to my shoulder blades. I also hear the heretofore silent voice of prehistoric self-preservation yawn and say, "What's going on, did I miss anything?" before he feels the fact that the hair on the back of my head is sizzling just a little and he starts shrieking like an air-raid siren. Very helpful.

I don't quite feel the heat yet, but I duck my head and sort of stumble forward, counting to 5-Mississippi in record time. As has been drilled into my brain since I was three years old, I calmly stop, drop and start to roll to put out the flames. At least, that's what happened in my head. According to bystanders I just sort of collapsed as if my legs had suddenly been rendered boneless, fell onto my back and kind of rocked there like a drunken, overturned turtle. I remember feeling a touch warm then, as flames were still dancing up and down my left leg, where most of the excess gallon or so of gasoline Aaron used had run. I think my words were, "Uhm...help me..."

Aaron came over and helped me pat out the flames and aside from some of the hair on my left leg being singed off and smelling like gasoline and burnt dog for the next 24 hours, I was none the worse for wear. Thanks to my other roommate Caleb emotionally detaching himself from the situation and using this opportunity to snap five or six photos, we have proof of my lunacy. Steadfastly coiled ten feet away on the house lay the garden hose which not a one of us had the foresight to uncurl, much less turn on.

What was the prize for this trip down Insanity Lane? A cool twenty bucks. Thats right; I engaged in an activity where death was a very likely outcome for a double sawbuck. I'm not proud of this story, but let it never be said I dont have balls. Stupid, stupid, self-endangering brass balls.