Booze and Religion Don’t Mix OR The Float Trip From Hell ( Hell can be used in a literal or figurative sense, depending on your own very special and personal views of the afterlife)

Sorry I haven’t updated this thing in a while. I know you’ve probably been sitting at your computer for the last two months refreshing my page every few seconds, living on the dust in between the computer keys, but your time has come, so straighten up, wipe that drool off that dirty mug of yours and get ready to have your mind blown read my thing.

You might be wondering what I’ve been doing lately. Two words: bath salts. Spent about a month in Reno with a man named Jesus. Not Jesús, mind you, Jesus. He claimed to be my spirit guide, wore women’s jewelry and drank Boone’s Farm constantly. We spent the nights getting high and picking fights. During the day we slept in his mother’s van and hunted for scrap metal in the junkyards. After Jesus got arrested for loitering, I hitched back to St. Louis with a nice lady named Chan- juan. She bought me a Pepsi and a properly fitting bra. My boyfriend didn’t seem to notice my absence. When I walked through the front door, he was playing Xbox in the same clothes I left him in. Without glancing up at me he asked me to pass the ashtray, and my life has continued on as normal.

But what this post is really about is this float trip I went on. One day in late May, when I was young and naïve, I decided that I wanted to be a part of nature and to enjoy the company of good friends. When I look back on that stupid idealistic dribble, I want to punch myself in the thigh. This is hard for me to talk about, but it’s a lesson everyone should learn: your friends are just enemies in disguise and nature is a cold-hearted bitch.
The float trip was June 17th. I remember it like it was yesterday.

It started out fine. We drove about 3 hours south, listening to campy country music and singing along. Yay! We were gonna have fun!! We were happier than CGI penguins.

There were closer places to float and camp but I picked this one because it was the cheapest. Trying to find a place to set up camp was hard. The campgrounds were swimming with bare-chested teenage drunks and flattened Miller Lite cans. The sounds of Aerosmith and Lynyrd Skynyrd wafted throughout the area like a long, loose fart. We got the car stuck in a stream but luckily some fellow campers helped us push it out.
We set up the tents with relative ease and drank 7 & 7s, as the friends with the beer hadn’t arrived yet. The guys wandered into the woods with an axe to get firewood. One of the fellows- I’ll call him Blondie (Full name Blondiforous Buttersfield III) refused bug spray, mistakenly believing the sheer amount of throbbing testosterone in his sweat would be more than enough to ward off any woodland insects.

When he reemerged from a copse of trees and bushes, he was wearing a sad face and a fine suit of ticks. This is not the bad part (for us anyway). We relaxed in our lawnchairs and said, “Oh Blondie!” while he disappeared into a tent with a pair of tweezers.

The next day was the float trip. We waited in line under the hot Missouri sun in an ocean of fleshy artwork—it was Comicon for bad back tattoos. We finally got our rafts, two of them; there were 7 of us all together.
It was a redneck mardi gras on the water- boobs and beads flying everywhere, waterguns filled with 151, classic rock blasting from old radios, the music growing and fading as we passed various rafts. Fat ladies in innertubes. Canoes tipping over. It was all right after a few beers, a kind of loose rhythm you could slip into, a drunken rhythm. We had fun the first half.

Here was the thing, if you finished the first seven miles by 2pm, you get another 7 for free. We were determined to take on that challenge.

And we did, successfully.

I forgot to mention that the only food we’d brought with us was a smushed bag of powdered donuts and some sort of meat substance- ham, salami? I don’t know. Also we’d forgotten the sunblock. We did have, however between 2 and 4 cases of Busch Light.

The second half marked the beginning of our demise. Somehow, someway, the topic of religion came up. I think I may be to blame for this, but I’m not sure. The whole thing is hazy. Someone threw a cigarette butt in the water and I fished it out drunkenly, saying it was a sin to litter. Then I think someone said, I thought you don’t believe I sins? And then I said something like, I don’t believe in [insert insult about organized religion] but I believe [insert self-righteous secular stance of morality].

More things were said. More beer was drunk. More brain cells died and mutated from the sun and the beer.
Someone said, “Jesus is a myth perpetuated by brain washed masses..” Someone told another someone they would pray for his soul. Screams were screamed. Yells were yelled. Beers were consumed.

I think someone said, “I believe Jesus is a prophet, nothing more.”
I think someone said, “I don’t think Jesus even existed.”
I think someone said, "Jesus is the son of God and He died for our sins."
I think someone said, “Jesus is nature. Jesus is Buddha.”
I think someone said, “Jesus is the guy I did bath salts with in Reno.”
I think someone said, “Religion is for people who can’t think for themselves.”
I think someone said, “God makes me feel bad when I touch myself.”
I think someone said, “I hate Jesus.”
I think everyone said, “Why are you judging me for what I believe?”
I think someone said, “Why the fuck am I friends with you?”
I think someone said, “Come on. Let’s get off this boat.”

I think some people left and marched onto a bank, behind some rocks. I think someone tried to get them to come back. I think someone was called an asshole. I think someone almost got slapped.
I think it was a bad idea.

That night, two of the friends left. The remaining five sat around like zombies, eating smores and hamburgers. We went to bed early. In the middle of the night, it started to thunder. Then it started to rain. Then pour. The walls of the tent rippled in the wind. Flashes of lightning illuminated the world for half-seconds at a time. The pillows were getting wet. The thunder clapped louder.

We made a mad dash to the car leaving everything outside to get drenched. The next day we woke early and heaved soaking wet blankets into trunk. The tents were full of moths. Clothes were scattered everywhere.

The ride home was sad.

But for those first few glorious hours, the float trip was everything I’d hoped for and more.

Happily we’ve all made up. It’s what Jesus would have wanted.