Piss-Capades: Urine for a Big Surprise

That fire water frolic in Brussels, marked the start of a little side quest I went on, allowing me to leave my mark all over the world… literally. The next few get-togethers we had were a little more tame. Torbin and Brock never came to the others due to the distance they had to travel, but Necro Boy (Tiggy’s mortician friend mentioned in the Stolen Horses story) came to one, and it was VERY hard for me not to roast him. I fired off a few shots across the bow once I had a drink or three, but I was afraid Tiggy would go full Viking on me after the look he gave me when I made a comment about the guy having “stiffs for stiffs.” I don’t know why Tiggy took him under his wing, but he did. Anyway, we were all a bit tipsy as the night went on, and we walked around the city. We ended up at Steen Castle, a small keep or fortress on the edge of the Scheldt River that empties into the sea. We walked up to the portcullis and were talking about random nonsense, and I needed to pee… so I walked over and peed on one of the donjons. Someone said, “Whoa, did you just piss on the castle?” and then it all became crystal clear… well, crystal with a bit of a yellow hue. As we took these train trips to different countries across Europe, and I eventually traveled the world, I made a list and made it a point to urinate off many famous structures in my path.

We had three close friends, Sebastian, Atipik, and Teboz, who were all from Paris and invited us to visit them. So Lieve, Freddy, and I took a train over. I had never been to ol’ Gay Paris before, and it wasn’t as bad as the bum rap they always get. So, they all knew about the stolen horse incident in Brussels. I tried to tell the story, but Lieve and Freddy hijacked it and told it in the third person, which I thought was funnier than if I told it myself. They made it clear that they had no influence with the police and told me not to do anything too crazy there. And that’s when I broke out… The Piss List. So many escarpments, so little time, but the top two were already crossed off: Manneken Pis and Steen Castle. But high up on the list was the Eiffel Tower. 8Pik (how I pronounced Atipik’s name- it’s actually pronounced Ah Te Peek) said the Eiffel Tower has so many people up and down it that it would be hard to pull off. But Sebastian said it closes at midnight, and we could go up about 30 minutes before closing and make sure we were the last ones to leave. So we all got coffee drinks and went up, just hanging out and chatting. You’d be surprised how windy it was up there. Despite it being summertime, as the sun went down, the wind had a bit of a chilly bite to it, so most of the remaining people had migrated to the other side where the wind wasn’t blowing in their faces- which was exactly where I needed to be. There’s an old country song by Jerry Jeff Walker called “Pissing in the Wind,” and its blowing on all my friends,” and we were trying to avoid that. So the last people, of course, stood around yapping, and I had already purposefully held in my pee for the last few hours to ensure I had a good stream. Now, drinking this grande Americano, I was about to bust! Finally, they left, and I walked over to the edge and unzipped. Everyone stood behind me watching… and I got pee-shy! What… the… FUCK! It just wouldn’t come out, and I had to go really bad too. So I’m thinking of waterfalls and streams, and finally, I got relaxed and… Pshhhhhhhhhhhhh! OMG, it was one of those that makes goosebumps pop up on your arms! And that’s when I heard a voice I didn’t recognize speaking French and my French compadres trying to distract him as he made a beeline for me. The thing is, I was so full of drinks that I couldn’t have turned the water off if I had to. The security guard walked up like he was expecting me to flip it off like a switch, but it just kept going… and going… and going. I was laughing so hard at the hilarity of it all, as were everyone else because of the sheer duration of the “piss” that even the security guard couldn’t help but laugh. Finally, I finished, and the guard didn’t speak English, but 8Pik was pleading my case like an attorney and told me to show him The Piss List. So I pulled out my wallet and unfolded it. The guard began to laugh and just pointed to the stairs. 8Pik told him I was like a dog, marking the world as my territory, and that analogy was like chicken soup for the soul for me. Now, if the guy had been a dick, he would have called for the police and I would have received a UIP Citation (urinating in public), but I wasn’t going to be there for more than another day or two, so a citation wouldn’t have mattered anyway. But it is one of my funnier piss-capades that happened.

So, the next place I went to was La Bella Italia, aka Italy, aka Wopland… one of my favorite countries on Earth, and Roma La Grande was first up on the list. You already know what my first mission was: that colossal arena where the blood of many a gladiator was spilled, where the blood of Christians, criminals, and slaves cries out from the dirt under your feet – I give you… The Roman Colosseum! This was not long after 9/11 happened, and security was pretty tight, but you can’t keep a good schlong down – heh… see what I did there? I had to think of a way to dupe the system and break away, and then the plan came to me. I went in first and had Freddy and Lieve get into a different group, and they yelled “Mishka!” and waved their arms for my attention. I told the tour guide I was in the wrong group, and the lady said, “Ok”… worked like a charm! I took the scenic route, found a good corner, and quickly hosed it down. Nowhere near the volume of the Eiffel Tower, but still a respectable stream. I zipped up and trotted along my merry way, so happy I was almost skipping as I went. I had just pissed on one of the Seven Wonders of the World! I marked it as if it were my territory, and yes, it gave me a feeling of complete dominance, making the world my bitch… one structure at a time.

Next up was that Bellissimo City of Canals and Venetian splendor… the floating city of Venice, and the Rialto Bridge was in my crosshairs. The whole city is truly breathtaking, and I don’t just mean beautiful. Those romantic canals that women get all starry-eyed over are actually raw sewage… yes, when you flush the toilet there…that’s where it goes. In the summer months, when the water level recedes, the stench is more breathtaking than the view. But aside from that, the city is mindbogglingly amazing! So, as the sun went down, so did the stench, and I had been drinking Nastro Azzurro all evening. As the night fell, I stood at the peak of the bridge, just taking in the moment; here I am in the city that the locals call “La Serenissima”… The Most Serene…and I was about to mark it as my own, and I wondered, is this how Alexander the Great felt as he conquered the world as well? I stood in blissful silence, held my beer up to the light, swirled it, watching the mini-tornado behind the green glass of the bottle, and poured the remainder down my gullet. The witching hour was upon us… it was time. I pulled out the jammy, took a long sigh, and began to mark the bridge and then add my own splash into the canal. Suddenly, I heard, “Hey!” I looked to my left, and a gondola emerged from under the bridge behind me, with a couple sitting in it, trying to have a romantic moment as the Italian gondolier poled the boat along. The couple just so happened to be American, or at least the guy was, and he said, “Real couth there buddy… real couth!” I shot back, “Are you staring at my dick?” and he said, “Fuck you!” and I chuckled, “I wasn’t talking to you!” and I looked at his woman. I started laughing my ass off! I think they were on their honeymoon or something, but man, how angry that dude got just hit my funny bone, when I drew him offsides like that. What I would give to have been 20 yards to the left and to have christened them both with my holy water. Kind of crazy running into an American douchebag so far from home, but there ya go!

We had a friend in Berlin who invited us to this huge rave that was going to be kicking off soon, so all of us in the Belgium group made plans to go. Yuri had a cousin named Finn who wanted to go with us. He lived in Frankfurt and asked if we could come there and stay a day before heading to Berlin, so we did… which brings me to the Eiserner Steg Bridge. It surely does look amazing because all along the iron railings on the sides are thousands upon thousands of padlocks with lovers’ names etched into them. Now… I am a diehard romantic, and I can say that I refrained from hosing down the love locks, but I did mark my territory on the railing and over the edge. Mission accomplished with no casualties, nothing further to report.

Early the next morning, we hopped the train to Berlin to meet up with Hanna, who’s flat we were all staying. After unloading, the ladies wanted to go shopping, which was perfect because I had a date with the Victory Column, and I wasn’t about to miss it. It was early autumn, and the leaves were all different shades of reds, oranges, and yellows… heh… yellows like the splash I was about to make! The sun was going down, and traffic started to die down quite a bit, but there were still so many stragglers that I could only do it safely in the stair area – but it still counted… it’s part of the structure, plus we needed to go back to Hanna’s flat and get ready for the rave. This was an iconic moment for me, and I have never experienced anything like it before in my life. Soooo many people were there! And these guys at the entrance were shooting people in the eyes with water guns laced with acid for only a few euros. I ended up getting blasted in the eye by one…, and yea, I was soon tripping balls… which made this next part even cooler than it already was. The Prodigy had set up a stage and was putting on a free concert at the rave! The Prodigy was and always will be one of my favorite music groups, and I remember they had just come out with “Smack My Bitch Up,” and we had actually been listening to them during the train trip to Germany. It was… a very wild night in a Dr. Seuss kind of way thanks to the LSD. And since it wasn’t a “concert” type of concert and everyone there was inebriated in some form or fashion, it was easy for me to make it over to the stage area and hose down one of the speaker stands! I couldn’t believe it…I did it! I marked the equipment of one of my all-time favorite bands while on an acid trip, who else can say that? It was just….swanky! And I’ll say this… those Krauts really know how to party!

So eventually, I went back to the USA and stayed for a while. I brought gifts for my family, but things were so bad with my father that I didn’t stay long. I had been gone for three years, and it was good to see some of my old friends. I had taken so many photos during that time and was showing my friends the sights and telling the stories, and then I broke out… The Piss List! It just so happened that one of the closest ones on the list was the Grand Canyon. We all looked at each other and said, “Road trip!” There were nights when we would take off on a Friday after work and drive somewhere crazy… like to the swamps in Louisiana to see the alligators and eat crawfish, or drive into Mexico to buy steroids and get drunk in the cantinas and forget why we drove there to begin with, never even making it to the pharmacy. But the Grand Canyon was only a 12-hour drive, and just like clockwork, we seamlessly loaded up like old times and rolled into Tusayan at about 2-3 am and got a hotel. We all woke up around noon, put fresh ice in the coolers, and went grocery shopping. We got lots of beer and drinks, chips… there was a burn ban going on at the time, so we couldn’t use the grills there. We got fried chicken from the deli instead and set forth on the piss quest. It was fun but uneventful since we were in a secluded area, and as we all got drunk, I think everyone ended up pissing into the void, not just me – but my territory was marked, and that’s all that mattered! We drove home, and as relaxing as it was, I was glad that we were leaving.

Several weeks later, a few of us decided to go to Cancun Mexico, and I insisted that we visit the Teotihuacan Pyramids in Playa del Carmen, where they played soccer with human heads and stuff. Now, I didn’t get to piss off of it – that would have been next to impossible with the number of people – but I did piss on the base of it and it made me remember that movie Apocalypto, and all of the blood that had run down the area that I had just blasted with my aqua cannon, and I felt a small sense of justice in that maybe the restless spirits could breathe easy that night, after me giving it a power washing.

After a while, I went back to Europe and took a job from one of my friends in Ghent. I ended up going with a friend to Sevastopol because he knew a girl there, and I fell in love with the place. I had a date with a girl who I had hired to be the translator for another girl I had a date with… long story… anyway, we were in the park by the harbor, and there were these huge cannons that were used to protect the city during the First Crimean War. We were sitting on the cannons that night, talking and I told her to “hold that thought,” stood up on the cannon, and walked to the edge. I unzipped and christened the front of the cannon and then into the jagged rocks below. She was shocked and stuttered to find the words, only managing to say, “My God… Who does this?” I laughed so hard and then showed her the list in my wallet… actually, it was List 2.0, as the other one was torn on the edges of the folds and had to be remade. She just smiled and shook her head, saying, “You are so strange…”

After that, I went up to Kyiv and met so many amazing people. I think that is the most condensed area of beautiful women in the world… it’s mind-blowing, honestly – Ukrainian women are truly in a league of their own. I asked what famous structures they had there, and the Bridge of Love was mentioned, which was just like the Eiserner Steg in Frankfurt because it had love locks all over it. Once again, I marked the bridge but didn’t hose down anyone’s locks. There are, of course, many more structures and places that grow more and more insignificant as the list goes on, where things went off incident-free and are not worth mentioning. But it was recently mentioned that I should add a few, so I will in the following weeks. You may think that as the years pass, this desire to mark the world may have quelled… but it has not. I will travel again very soon and stake my claim to whatever lies ahead. But until then, “May your streams be swift and your aim be true!”