Life Lessons I've Learned From Buck Hunter

People here in Ketchum don’t fuck around when they shoot their simulated wildlife.  These are no small-time Buck Hunter virgins.  Nope.  They hold national, if not international records for shooting animated elk, sheep, goats, deer, moose, antelope, caribou and assorted smaller wildlife.

Now I’m no novice to Buck Hunter.  I’ve been shooting video game wildlife since high school, when we used to sneak into the dive-bar cop hangout Cork N’ Bottle and drink cheap beer and shoot mountain goats.  And for years now I’ve wanted to dress up as the Buck Hunter chicks for Halloween. 

One time, while nursing an overpriced martini at a trendy bar where men wear designer jeans and women where, well, pretty much nothing, I complained, “I’d rather be drinking PBR and playing Buck Hunter right now.  In fact, I’d take PBR and Buck Hunter any day over this crap.”  And besides being a kick-ass drinking game, Buck Hunter teaches from valuable life lessons with its hot hunter chicks and plastic guns.

Don’t shoot the cows.  If you shoot the bitches your tour is over.  And to make it worse, the game informs not just you, but the entire gathered bar crowd of your inferiority and mediocrity at shooting simulated wildlife.  It scream, in big, bold letters, “YOU SHOT A COW!”  In other words, you dumb fuck.  Way to suck at this game.  Moral of the story, don’t fuck with women.  If you fuck with a woman, your tour is over.  And then the whole bar knows that you suck at the game.

If It’s Tourist Season Then Why Can’t We Shoot ‘Em?  Anyone who has lived in a resort town for more than one season has asked this question at least once.  There is nothing like the onslaught of white-tennis-shoe-wearing, khaki-short-sporting, camera-clicking, direction-asking, fanny-pack-donning, get-the-fuck-outta my bar/coffee shop/restaurant/ski slope/river section/wave break tourists to make one contemplate this question.  And a tourist in designer jeans with a wallet full of quarters who thinks that he is entitled, even allowed, to engage in this game, our game - don’t even get me started.  Which is why Sarah brought this up the other night.  She decided, “There should be a tourist shooting level.  And it should take place in Sun Valley.  And all the tourists should be wearing fanny packs.”  And we raised our glasses and toasted to that.

Drinking Is Key To Life.  I mean key to Buck Hunter.  Well, anyway.  Now I’m no expert.  And I don’t claim that this holds true for everyone.  But I’ve found that sober Buck Hunter is a lot more difficult than tipsy Buck Hunter.  And that tipsy Buck Hunter is a lot less fun and rowdy than drunk Buck Hunter.  And blackout Buck Hunter.  There are no words.

Don’t Think Just Shoot.  To really kick this game’s ass, you can’t think too hard.  You just have to pull the trigger and shoot some shit.  Oh, yeah, and don’t forget not to shoot the bitches.  Lesson learned here?  Go with your gut and don’t think too hard.  Important life advice.

Anger Is A Good Thing.  In moderation at least.  Think about it.  How are you supposed to blow holes in simulated wildlife if you’re sitting there gingerly clutching the gun and cringing each time a poor, little bucky-wucky goes down?  You’re not.  You have to get pissed.  You have to want to GET IT DONE. Some of my best games have happened when I was really ready to fuck some shit up.  And thankfully, animated wildlife served as a great outlet for this sentiment (Sarah – Bad Billys last summer).  But this is where moderation comes in.  You can’t get so pissed that, upon eliminating a cow and ending the tour, you slam the gun through the screen, pour your beer on that hot blond chick who turned you down and punch a hole through the bathroom door.  That’s no good.  And now the game is steaming and smoking and ruined for everyone.  Moderation is key.  Just like in life.

So there you have it.  The benefits of playing a game of Buck Hunter while drinking cheap beer.  There are life lessons are learned from this pursuit of happiness (and drunkenness).  What life lessons have you ever learned drinking a $300 bottle of champagne and sitting at a too-hip-to-handle, overpriced martini bar engaged in a pointless conversation about some pointless celebrity with a pointless man who has nothing better to do than stare at your tits and talk about himself in between checking his Crackberry for emails (or more likely for Facebook updates about himself)?  None.  But Buck Hunter.  Well Buck Hunter might just be the Socrates of our generation.

Single In Sun Valley

I have been single in Sun Valley (See also: Single In Sun Valley) for thirty-six hours and have already had a complete stranger kiss (or rather lick) my face, been wordlessly hit on by a recently single man on the bounce-back who spoke a cumulative total of fifteen words to me and scored a date with a tall, dark and handsome man whose name I don’t know, who will be in town for one whole week and who may or may not have a girlfriend.  The latter being an apt microcosm of mountain town life at it’s debaucherous finest.  Welcome to single life in Sun Valley.  Or any mountain at that. 

Contrary to what Jim Carey might have said, Aspen, and its mountain town brethren, are not places where the women flock like the salmon of Capistrano.  And while the beer does flow like wine, the women are few and far between.  Sausage fest is the name of the game.  And, as I was so aptly informed today, if a woman is looking to “get fucked” (direct quote) she should cruise on into a mountain town where, the reality is, the men flock like the salmon of Capistrano.  Or bucks in rut.  Or like bugs to a light at night.  And this is how I ended up with two guys, who may or may not have girlfriends and only one definitive name that I know.

I guess this is what being single in Sun Valley means (Sun Valley serving as a convenient microcosm for any mountain hamlet populated by rich, upper middle class white kids with too much money, lots of time to kill and an overabundance of whiskey).  I’ve been here for forty-eight hours and I already know who’s sleeping with whom, who was sleeping with whom, who wants to be sleeping with whom, who I can’t sleep with because they were sleeping with whom, who will be pissed at me if I sleep with whom and who I want to sleep with.  This is a recipe for chaos if I’ve ever heard one.  As a Whiskey Jacques bartender so appropriately put it, “This town’s a boiling pot.”

He also pontificated the two rules of Sun Valley, “Don’t get jealous and don’t talk.”  In other words, whomever you are sleeping with has probably slept with your best friend.  Or will. As my best friend's boyfriend delicately informed me upon my arrival, "You don't lose your girlfriend, you lose your turn."   So don’t get your panties in a bunch about it.  And unless you want to become the town whore and simultaneously piss of said best friend whom your current lover was (or will be) sleeping with, keep your fucking mouth shut for God’s sake.  Again we see Exhibit A of mountain town singledome, everyone ultimately sleeps with everyone, and everyone knows everyone’s business.  Because, when you put a bunch of never-say-no adrenaline junkies in a small town and give them a limited amount of time to eat, drink and be merry before entering the real world, chaos is sure to ensue.  Plato himself, bastion of Western masculinity that he is, once noted that no town can live peacefully, no matter what its laws, when its inhabitants do nothing but feast, drink and tire themselves out in the pursuit of love. Or sex.  

And so we return to me at the bar.  With one man attempting seduction sans words because he is too afraid to grow a pair and actually engage in a conversation with me, and another growing too big of a pair and asking me on a date to the burger joint even though I don’t know his name.  And here we learn what it means to be single in Sun Valley.  From a girl’s perspective.  It means that a plethora of men will engage you in semi-meaningless conversation in an attempt to meet you at The Cellar, buy you a shot of Crown and, if all goes according to plan, take you home.  And because I believe in the brevity of human existence, and the subsequent need to take life by the balls, I find this alright.  Why not give it a shot.  Who knows.  Maybe that moment will make all the difference. This is not necessarily the escapist hedonism that it seems.  For many it is a necessary, even lifesaving, escape from their harsh reality.  It is a means of holding onto the only thing that feel real when everything else is flaking into rhetoric or falling down in shambles around you.  So let’s do this – welcome to being single in Sun Valley.

Hiking, Fellatio and My Mom. Oh Yeah...

Have you ever walked in on a guy getting head? 

How about while you were out hiking with your mom? 

How about twice in one day?

Yeah, I know, awkward.

And there we were, ambling, rambling, absolutely jambling, along a very well-traveled path along a very well-traveled stretch of highway leading out of a very well-traveled town.  The Grottos and Devil’s Punchbowl, just several hundred yards from Highway 82 leading up the tourist trap that is Independence Pass outside of Aspen. 

Trying to show dear old mom a pleasant afternoon I opted for this simple trail.  And as we are chatting what do we almost trip over a gray head of hair in the lap of another gray head of hair.  Head number one is bobbing up and down with total enthusiasm and remains entirely oblivious to the peanut gallery that has stumbled upon them.  Heads cocked (pun very much intended) to the side, my mother and I took in the scene, turned awkwardly on our heals and left.  Regressed.  Digressed. 

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen, I just witnessed a full-blown (again, pun intended) fellatio-tastic experience, on a well-travelled trail, with my 57 year-old mother.  So much for trying to convince her that Aspen is nothing more than a quaint, mountain town, rather than the swelling, writhing sauna of sin and depravity that she hoped it wasn’t.  And it’s really not.  I swear.

And it gets better.  Oh yes it does. 

I almost read-ended the Range Rover in front of me as I curled around Aspen’s S-curve.  I was distracted you see.  When we passed the airport the Subaru behind me contained two passengers.  A young woman and a young man.  And then there was one.  Head that is.  And her head did not reappear until we got to the S-curve.  I would know.  I kept checking while trying to maintain a conversation that resembled normal with my mother.  We talked about hiking Highlands bowl.  I checked the rearview mirror.  We talked about working at Pitkin County Dry Goods.  I checked the rearview mirror.  We talked about climbing Pyramid.  I checked the rearview mirror.  We talked about, something, I don’t remember what.  I checked the rearview mirror.  I almost rear-ended the Range Rover.  My mother did a reverse Mom-arm that all mothers seem pre-programmed to do to prevent their progeny from flying through the windshield upon breaking hard at an unexpected red light.  She screamed something along the lines of, “What the hell!  Watch where you are going.”

And then I was forced to explain the second incident of head that was headed our way.  And then I explained to my mom that, well, seven minutes ago there were two heads, and then there was one, and now there are two again.  And I couldn’t stop wondering what was going on in that little red, Subaru behind me.  Welcome to Aspen, Mom.

And that is the story of how I witnessed two incidents of fellatio, with my Mom, in very populated areas.  I feel like there should be a moral to this story.  I can’t think of one.  If you can think of one let me know.  

An Open Letter To The Male Race

Dear Sir,

Dear Liar,

Dear Peter Pan,

Dear Mama’s Boy,

Dear Popped Collar Frat Boy,

To Whom It May Concern,

I have a bone to pick with everyone who deemed me unimportant enough to warrant a return to my phone call, text message, email, letter, carrier pigeon message or smoke signal.  With everyone who decided that I was unworthy of friendship, dinner companionship, phone callership or beer drinking comradeship because I felt no compulsion to be within a five-foot radius of their penis. With everyone who ever fed me a line of bullshit.  With everyone who brought my feelings into play and then threw them in the trash like a used up copy of Us Weekly.  You’re rude.  Fuck you. 

To the Peter Pan’s, so easily identified by their Ohio State Buckeyes T-shirt, two-day stubble and shot glass of tequila raised in salute to eternal adolescence.   Grow up and learn some manners.  Please realize that not returning a phone call, a text message, an email, a dinner invitation or a request to get together is rude. If I call you, call me back.  It’s very simple.  If you don’t want to see me just say so.  Or lie.  Lying is excusable.  Rudeness is not.  And while you’re at it try a real relationship on for size.  By no means am I encouraging, or even condoning, the social propaganda known fondly as the institution of marriage, but that doesn’t mean that your closet relationship should be with your bottle on Don Julio or that your longest relationship should be fail to weather all four seasons.

To the liar’s and the insensitive ones.  Please realize that when you involve emotions you are fucking with someone’s life.   If I tell you that we can just keep in casual, I mean that.  There is no need to add my soul to your conquest roster.  My ass will do thank you very much.  So don’t tell me you love me, and will be there fore me.  Don’t beg me to let my guard down and don’t wonder, with big, honest, scared eyes, if I will pull the rug out from under you.  If you want to have meaningless sex, at least have the decency to tell me that, and only that.  Don’t promise me the world just to leave me with nothing.

To the rich boys.  Stop with the wine and the jewelry, the exotic vacations and the fancy clothes.  Those who don’t want to be friends first and lovers second (or never) need not apply.  Your black Amex, fancy Porsche and ability to mispronounce the fancy bottle of champagne you are ordering, does not impress me.  It makes me want to vomit.

To God’s gift to all women.  Please realize that just because I show interest, or even kiss you, does not mean that I will fuck you.  Contrary to what you may think of the twenty-something, free spirit, who abhors children, shutters at the thought of marriage, is vehemently independent and is more likely to run away to climb the Andes with an Ecuadorian named Diego than settle in the burbs with a Clevelander named Stan, I have morals.  I even (gasp of horror and disbelief) call myself a Christian and possess a shiny set of good, wholesome as wheat bread, Midwestern, Christian values.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve worked very hard at having a one-night.  Just one.  I’ve tried.  And to this day I’ve never successfully had a one-night stand.   I just can’t do it in good conscience.  And the dozens upon dozens of men who have promptly ceased all contact with me as soon as they learned that I wouldn’t sleep with them is staggering.  And depressing.  And extremely lonely.   It not-so-blatantly, or blatantly perhaps, says that I have no worth as a person outside of my ability serve as a life-sized, talking sex toy.

Will you all stop trying to marry me, fuck me, make me your girlfriend, take my clothes off or some combination thereof?  I just want a friend.  So badly I can almost taste it (what does a friend taste like anyway?).  And I’m a really good friend.  I’m kind of crazy, a little eccentric and highly neurotic.  But rock as a wingwoman.  I get guys laid all the time.  Just not by me.  Give it some thought.  Ad while you’re at it go ahead and grow up.  Stop behaving like a two-year old who is either throwing a tantrum, impulsively (or perhaps compulsively) sticking his finger in the light socket, hitting the girl he likes on the playground or playing with his junk just because it’s hanging between his legs. 

Yours sincerely,

K

Author's Note:  I didn't want to publish another letter so quickly but after my conversation with Judy, Elyssa and Angela the other night, I had to.  Cheers ladies!

In Defense of a Little Place Called Aspen

“Aspen is a place for people who can’t make it to San Francisco and who have enough money to fail gracefully.” ~Hunter S. Thompson

Give me a Peeber and a porch or give me death.  I think that’s what some famous colonial once said.  Well not really.  But some drunk Ohioan, erroneously citing an old, dead white guy whom he believed to be a famous colonial definitely said that.  That’s PBR by the way – Pabst Blue Ribbon – for those of you who missed the reference.  It might have won a blue ribbon at the 1893 World’s Fair (it’s unclear) and it’s of decent, Midwestern stock.  So it’s got my vote – blue ribbon or not.

I’d gladly get rid of the too-trendy-to-function martini bars for the rest of my life if God would promise me that I could drink cold beer and watch the sun drop over Shadow Mountain forever (Palmer 2009).  And there you go rolling your eyes at me  “Yeah right,” you’re saying, “Look at this poor, little rich girl.  Thinks she’s slummin’ it because she drinks PBR.  She lives in Aspen.  Who’s she kidding?” Or maybe you just think I’m channeling my inner hipster by ironically imbibing with the beer of farmers and steel workers in the town of investment bankers and trophy wives.  But just because I competently play the part of a martini bar whore doesn’t mean I am one. And Aspen allowed me to be me.  Just me.  Jeans and a T-shirt and never a stiletto in sight.

And most people roll their eyes at me and chuckle, “Ohhhhh you live in Aspen.”  Or they pull out dated movie lines circa 1996, “A little place called Asssssssspen.”  And last but not least,  “Where the women flock like the salmon of Capistrano and the beer flows like wine.”  Congratul-fucking-lations, you’ve seen Dumb and Dumber.  And please know that quoting it is the furthest thing from original.  If I had a nickel – well actually a quarter, this is Aspen after all – for every drunk tourist who stumbled down the street quoting Dumb and Dumber at top volume, I’d have a house on Red Mountain.

God bless the tourists for keeping us all in beer and pot.  But unfortunately they show up, go big and go home.  They leave loaded down with fancy and piled high with stories of Aspen as the American Nightmare.  A veritable Sodom and Gomorra – nothing more than a hedonistic playground for Goldman Sachs execs and a fantasyland for their lost and pot-smoking offspring.  My friends in Cleveland, good Midwestern souls that they are, love to inform me that I am delusional in thinking that I live in the real world. And this really pisses me off.  First, it implies that Aspen is populated entirely by rich people swinging from the rafters of their Sotheby’s acquired homes and resting on the laurels of the Italian leather seats of their Gulfstream V.  False.  Second, it implies that people who possess said Gulfstream V, make more than $500,000 a year (lowball) or have more than one home are not, in fact, real people.  False again.

Despite a healthy base of cash money bling-bling in the Land of Milk and Honey, there are normal people.  Now I am not claiming that I live in Hough or Watts or in some backwoods, West Virginia rural ghetto.  I know that we are the lucky ones up here in Aspentown, and that most of us have never worried about feeding our children with food stamps, gun fights in schools or foreclosures in the suburbs.  Nonetheless we work hard to support this life we’ve chosen.  We swig PBR (yes, I’m really hooked on PBR right now.  I’m missing luke-warm PBR’s and softball at the moment.  It’s the withdrawal talking), make thirteen-bucks an hour, wear Carharts, support families and otherwise bust ass to try and “live the dream” as Aspen virgins are so fond of claiming until they realize that the dream is really just life.  And without those people – the bartenders, the maids, the ski patrollers, the APD, the nurses, the firefighters, the waiters, the lifties, the raft guides, the clerks and the baristas – there would be no Aspen.  And those are my friends.  And we drink Peebers.  And watch the sun set.  And play beer league softball.  And get our kids to school.  Just like you there in Des Moines, IA.

It’s a known fact that neither the Franklins in someone’s wallet, nor the cost of their phallus on chrome, matters much to me.  However, neither does it give me right, or reason, to claim that they are less worthy of respect just because they possess these toys of capitalistic gluttony.  Rather, I judge people (harshly) on their ability to treat others with the basic respect and decency that all human beings deserve.   And in my experience, the ability to treat someone like the shit on your toilet paper is by no means directly proportional to the size of one’s stock portfolio.  An upturned nose directed at a man with money simply because he has more green than you not only speaks volumes about your lack of class, but also of your ignorance.  Because without these people to spend the money, and buy the Prada and drink the Veuve Cliquot, Aspen as we know it would be long gone.  We’d all be shit out of luck and shit out of work.  Sent packing on the first plane back to Cleveland.

And I’m not ready to see Aspen kick the bucket.  When I found this odd little snow globe, I quit my big-girl job three days later, packed a duffel bag and never looked back.  Now I understand that my falling-down, former meth lab of a ski bum mansion is valued at $2.5 million.  Not just expensive for what it is, but stupid expensive.  And I understand that life in Aspen is costly (Well really only real estate.  Groceries for example, are cheaper in Aspen than in Cleveland.  But that’s an argument for a different day). I also understand that by employing my frontal lobe capacity – made strong through four Ranger Rovers worth of education – I’ll figure out how to make it rain…er…snow.  I’ll keep life small enough to fit into the back of my Subaru.  I’ll crash in a ramshackle ski bum pad with five roommates to cut down on rent.  I’ll give up on the house in the burbs with the manicured lawn (not that I ever had that Steppfordian hallucination, but anyway you get the point).  I’ll get rid of the TV.  I won’t have kids.  And then I’ll maintain my freedom to head of the Kathmandu or Quito at a moment’s notice.  So call me naïve and delusional, most people do, but this is where I want to grow old and die.

If I had another quarter for every time someone bemoaned the crippling boredom and unending uniformity of their paltry existence in cubical hell, I’d have a surfing compound in Fiji too.  They say, “Man I wish I could live your life,” or, “I would totally live your life if only I didn’t have [Insert Half-Assed Excuse Here] holding me back.”  And I think, “Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you attached that ball and chain to your ankle.  Or maybe, the ball and chain isn’t as onerous as you think it is.  Cut it off.  Head on out there into that too vast world and get you one of them lives you’ve always dreamed about.”  Why not?

And that’s why Aspen is magical.  It’s a sociological study in what happens when you put a bunch of death-sport seeking, adrenaline junkies in one mountain town and cut them loose.  My guess is that Aspen is really the psychological study of some vast and secretive government agency, funded entirely by Paepke investment and tasked with studying human behavior in a post-consumer, post-capitalist world.  Put simply, we’re a study in what happens to the most risk-taking people when they are given everything they want.  What happens is one degree from total anarchy – in the best possible sense of the word.  We always ask, “Why not?” instead of, “Why would you do something that crazy?”  We will climb any mountain, ski any run, raft and river, visit any country, drink any whiskey and huck any cliff.  And we will change the world someday because we’re bold enough to think outside the box.  The people inhabiting this little place called Aspen are genuine, certified, grade-A real people.  Sorry to disappoint.  I know it would have made ye-of-outside-the-snow globe feel better about your lives to think that Aspenites weren’t actually real, or were at least a bunch of rich assholes who spent their days counting and recounting their pile of money.

Come out a see for yourself.  Just go ahead and quit your job, pack your bag and never look back.  It’s not as crazy as it sounds.  Would you rather the unknown possibility of a chance or unchanging security of destined certainty?  

Ski Co is always hiring lifties.

A little place called Aspen

Our $2.5 million ski bum palace

The view from said palace

The Quitter Who Laughs Last

This is not a fairy tale.  But it does end happily ever after.  I think.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I lived in cubical hell.  And then I quit my perfectly logical, very reasonable, well-enough paying job, packed a duffel bag and hopped on a plane to Aspen.  And I’m not going back.

I have a history of quitting.  And of making quick decisions once I make up my mind.  I just pack my bags and go.  My father likes to be melodramatic about these things and worry that I will never amount to anything and end up barefoot and pregnant every time I quit something.  Herein lies a brief history of my quitting.

First I quit college.  Four times.

I spent approximately one month of my freshman year at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.  It just didn’t feel right.  And for the first time I trusted my gut.  And it felt good.  And then I quit two more schools just for good measure.  And then I graduated.

Then I got into Oxford.  So I went.  Because it was Oxford.  And if you get into Oxford you go.  I guess.  But it just wasn’t for me.  I like freedom, and mountains and madness.  Not seven hundred year-old stiflingly damp tradition in a flat, damp land.  So I quit.

Then I went a got me one of those high-paying jobs.  At a reliable company.  With reliable pay increases.  Doing reliable work.  With reliable people.  It was a great company.  Just not for me.  The problem was that I hate reliability.  I like remarkable.  And really the opposite of remarkable is very good.  And McMaster was very good.  But not remarkable.  I was seeking something.

I was seeking myself.  I still am.  Hopefully I still will be on the day I hit the pearly gates with a six-pack and a slew of stories.  I was seeking that madness that feels like its going to explode out of you like an orgasm of lunacy.  I was seeking people who inspire me to be just a little more insane every day.  People who ask, “Why not?” instead of, “Why bother?”  I needed to find my fellow dreamers and sinners – my desperados and free birds, my rolling stones and high-flying birds.  I like crazy people with a gleam in their eye.  I like the kind of people who might walk out the door and never come back because the world was calling and they had to go.  These people have broken my heart and destroyed me.  They’ve left me lying naked on the floor asking, “What the hell just happened?” 

But they challenged me, and pissed me off and made me question my reality, my morals, my dreams and my soul.  And I have stories and laughs and tears.  But never a dull moment.  And I’d rather have that remarkable life than a life of safe reliability, a stable marriage and a good paycheck.  Because I guess I am just fucking nuts.  And each day I get a little bit closer to the authentic me.  My own crazy devil without a cause.

So I quit that life and I hit the road.  And I’m still going.  Everyone likes to call it a phase.  And rattle of trite clichés about “growing up” and “settling down” and “changing my mind” and “getting it out of my system.”  I think they truly believe that one day you reach a magic age when you must get serious and settle down into the mendacity of a 9-5 job.  This life supposedly offers the steady security that your life will never falter and will never be scary, but will never be crazy nuts either.  I promised myself never to go back there lest I go back to the dark corner of hell where I was wallowing.  Go ahead.  Roll your eyes at my youthful naïveté all you want.  I’ll add you to my list of people to call in ten years and say, “I told you so.”  And yes, there really is such a list.

And I know it’s going to end happily ever after.  And I will find people to share my ride with.  And every night before I fall asleep I pray (even heathens can believe in God).  I thank God for having the strength to change the way I was.  And I ask for peace of mind, and a gentle hand, and a miracle to heal my broken soul.  And I pray – don’t let us get sick, or old, just let us be together tonight.  

I Have The Bartender's Clothes But No Bartender

Stuck in Denver with no place to go (Please See Exhibit A and Exhibit B for further explanation) and out of luck for the moment I opt for comfort food.  I come from Aspen, the love child that was born when Sodom and Gomorra went out drinking with the Land of Milk and Honey and just happened to have an unprotected good time.  In other words, because I spend my life in a  hedonistic winter playground for adults, my comfort food is anything that is not celebrated by Bon Appetite or Food and Wine, is not frequented by Paris Hilton or Kate Hudson and is decidedly not creative or progressive.  Comfort food is mainstream America at its finest.  I can order $2.95 tasters and cheap wine in Cherry Creek (an upscale enclave in Denver populated by hipster yuppies, desperate housewives and grey flannel suite wearing execs – all with crunchy-hippie yearnings), just as easily as I can in Cleveland.

I belly up to the bar and order a satisfyingly cheap glass of Zig Zag Zin and a basil, tomato and goat cheese pizza.  And then it commences.  My obsessive compulsive, psychoanalysis of my fellow Brio patrons.  There are the requisite business travelers.  A 30-something woman in a power suit who looks like she over-compensates for being a woman in Corporate America by being a raging bitch.  There’s a member of the grey flannel mafia hunched over a scotch on the rocks and studying the melting ice cubes in his highball glass.  There’s the brassy-haired blond behind the bar who probably escaped from St. Louis as soon as she got the chance.  And then there’s the bar clown.  Every bar has one.  He was the loveable funny guy in high school and has never really grown up.  His apartment likely has Chili Peppers posters and remote control cars strewn around despite the fact that he’s old enough to have a big-boy job and an apartment that is more Pottery Barn than Kappa Sig; or at least responsibilities greater than showing up to the bar in time for his 4 PM shift.  I’m intrigued by him though and throw him a wry smile.

He and the brassy blond and debating who gets to leave early on account of the snow.  They decide to Rock Paper Scissors for it.

“I can beat anyone in this bar in Rock Paper Scissors,” the clown puffs out his chest.

“That’s a bold statement.”   This seems to offend him.

“Well then let’s go kiddo.”

I throw paper.  I always throw paper first.  It’s easy.  Just a flat hand stretched out in front.  My paper covers his rock.

“All right it was just luck.  Let’s go best two out of three.”

My scissors beat his paper.  Sweet victory.

Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Rock-Paper-Scissor’s clothes would be in my car.  Alone.  Without their rightful owner.  How did he get away with no clothes you might ask?  Well the night didn’t end up like that.   What kind of girl do you take me for?  So how did I end up with three brand new shirts from Brooks Brother, a Nordstrom bag full of socks and two news ties of unknown designer origin?  Some things in life are just a mystery.

I returned said bag to the hostess stand with a polite note reading, “So sorry I had to leave quickly last night.  Thanks for a great evening!  Good luck in all future endeavors.  (970) 319-4810.  Kate.”   Four hours later I was almost back to Aspen and my phone rang.  Little did I know I had recruited a stage five clinger.  He would proceed to call me daily for the next three weeks.  He didn't stop until i threatened a restraining order.  Well actually that's not true.  But it would have been funny if it was, huh?

My Roommate Is A 400-Pound Fat Bitch...And She's Hungry

Bears suck as roommates.  They eat all the food.  Especially the really yummy junk food.  They leave the refrigerator door open.  And they never pay rent. 

The first time it happened I blamed it on the dog.  I thought Maverick had gotten into the trash. Hamburger buns were awry.  Peaches were akimbo.  Sugar was askew. 

“I think there was a bear in the house last night.”  Trent is from Texas.  And nothing against Texans, but they tend to exaggerate.  Everything’s bigger in Texas.  Including the stories.  I decided leave the mess for Maverick’s mom Sarah.

The next night I woke up to Sarah pounding on our connecting wall.  Rolling over to check my phone – it was just past 3 AM - I did the I’m-drunk-from-sleep stumble over to her room. 

“Are you crazy?  Shut the door.  The bear is upstairs.”

Maverick, guard dog that he is, seemed oblivious to the fact that a 400-pound bear was making short work of our food upstairs in the kitchen.

“I called the police.  They are sending a game warden.”

Shotgun-toting Kevin the game warden showed up. He was everything I’d ever hoped a game warden would be.  He looked like the Brawny man before he got old and started wearing flannel.  He was all broad shoulders, rippling pecs and mountain man swagger. Bear season was probably the most exciting part of working for the Aspen Police Department.  Unless Charlie Sheen shows up for a good, old-fashioned domestic dispute, things are pretty quiet. Kevin seemed stoked to be dealing with something besides drunk Argentineans at Eric’s stealing bottles of vodka from behind the bar.

“Damn bear got away.”  He seemed genuinely disappointed not to have gotten a round of rubber bullets off.  “It was a mom and two cubs though.”  Bear 1.  Kevin 0.

This is bad shit.  Never fuck with a mother bear and her cubs.  The world knows no fury like a pissed of mom.  Kevin gave us his card and told us to lock our doors.  This would be great advice if our doors had locks. Unfortunately, our pad was a refurbed meth house that was built by a bunch of stoned out ski patrollers from Aspen Mountain.  It was straight out of How To Be A Ski Bum 101.  Step 1: procure ramshackle house of questionable structural stability with no locks.  If the Big Bad Wolf huffed and puffed our house would be toast.   Besides, no in Aspen locks their doors.

And so the next night rolled around.  I heard some shuffling upstairs and decided that the cooking of drunk food had commenced.  And then there was the crash.  Knives this time I think.  Bolt upright and very alert now I started shaking the boyfriend in the bed next to me.

“Get up.  Get up.  Get up.  Get up.  There’s a bear in the house.”

I had explained the previous night already but I’m not sure he really believed me.  He believed me now.  We set off the car alarms, set the dog to barking and started shouting at the bear to go away.  Get the fuck out. 

We stacked the porch furniture, living room furniture, old furniture we found in the storage space and the terracotta planters in the front of the door is discourage further bear entry.  Or at least, we hoped, the crashing of said furniture would alert us to the bear’s impending entry and allow us ample time to remove the bear from the kitchen before she and her greedy, fat-kid cubs ate the rest of our Ben and Jerrys Cherry Garcia. 

It didn’t work.  How a 400-pound, hungry, fat bitch had the patience or dexterity to maneuver around the furniture maze without knocking down a single item continues to baffle me to this day. 

The casualties continued to mount in this war against Hungry Fat Bitch.  She and her snot-faced cubs visited twice a night for four nights. That’s eight times, five hundred dollars worth of food, one destroyed dog door, and a gnarly scratch on the wall. It was cute for awhile.  Then it stopped being cute.  To this day we find souvenirs.  While icing an ACL injury with a bag of frozen corn, my roommate picked bear drool and black hairs off of the bag six months later.  There is a muddy bear print that hangs out on the back of our sofa.  Grocery store exchanges for the next four months went something like this.

“Do we have hamburger buns?”

“Well we did.  But I think the bear ate ‘em.”  

Next summer Trent is bringing his big guns back from Texas.  Loaded down with rubber bullets to, “Fuck some bear’s shit up.”  Watch out bear.  The world knows no fury like a pissed off Texan with big guns.

Words of wisdom living on our refrigerator...

Dive Bars Defined: Hey Sweet Tits Can I Buy You A Drink?

Since I mentioned seedy, hole-in-the-wall dive bars previously I feel compelled to further define said establishments.  Once upon a time, someone is Aspen defined the eatery Little Annies as a dive bar.  I laughed in their face.  Literally.  If you are not familiar with the establishment please look it up.  It may not be Spago, but it certainly is not a dive bar. 

A dive bar must be a place that you would never, under any circumstances, feel comfortable taking your children.  The floor must be so sticky with spilled beer, human fluids and decades-old dirt that no toddler should crawl upon it.  The booths must be so unstable that one dare not place a car seat atop it.  The bathroom graffiti must be so vulgar that you would be ashamed to allow you seven year-old to read it. 

A dive bar must be a place so libertarian (at least) and anarchical (at best) that all rules of decorum, religion and government are flagrantly ignored.  Cussing like a sailor in the presence of the elderly is permitted (but not in front of the kids because remember, there are none).  Spitting inside is tolerated.  Drinking on the Lord’s Day is admired (Sunday Funday).  Smoking is allowed despite, or perhaps in spite of, laws against it. 

A dive bar must have cheap drink specials.  These may include but are by no means limited to Ladies Night, Margarita Madness, $2 drafts, $2 shots, all-you-can-drink pitchers, Insert Favorite Sports Team Here Fans Drink When Insert Start Player Here Scores and my personal favorite – Dollar Night. This may be $1 well drinks, $1 beers, $1 shots or $1 anything.  But the concept is simple. For $20 I should be able to kill myself with booze.

A dive bar must have at least one full-fledged bar fight a week.  And by bar fight I mean fists flying, bottles breaking, stools overturning and windows shattering.  Extra dive bar points are awarded if the cops come, if chicks are involved and if Chuck Norris mysteriously shows up to roundhouse kick his way through the door.

A dive bar must have at least three down-and-outs bellied up to the bar at any given moment.  Depending on the demographic composition of the region and the geographic area of the country, these might be laid off steel workers, black lung infected coal miners, downtrodden cotton farmers, off-season cowboys or illegal immigrants.  Also depending on demographic composition and geographic region, said patrons must be hunched over a bottle of Jim, Jack, Johnnie or Jose, a shot class and a can of Bud, PBR, Coors, Natty or Modelo. 

A dive bar must have at least one questionable character who addresses any good looking woman (and by good looking I mean she has tits the hang above her belly button, a ass that stays above her knees and all her teeth) as, “Hey sweets tits can I buy you a drink?"

Hey Life...I Win

Nothing liked getting kicked when you’re down.  I mean really shoved face down in the muddy roadside ditch of life.  Curb stomped when you’re already on your knees.  And then kicked in the ribs one more time, just for good measure.

Well I was there.  And I lived to tell about.

I am an overeducated, rich, upper middle class white girl; blogging on my Mac Book Pro and 1 AM, drinking cheap red wine and living the dream in Aspen because I don’t have to get a job in the midst of the so-called Great Recession.  I am yuppie spawn.  Full of the appropriate proportions of self-loathing, self-righteousness, narcissism, and trite clichés about my existential angst and metaphysical confusion.  My kind seems to love nothing more than to whine about how hard our lives are and how much pressure we feel from our yuppie parents to succeed.

Still, being considered a failure unless you are a high school and college valedictorian, Phi Beta Kappa, Rhodes Scholar, J.D, PhD, M.D., MBA, M.A. and Supreme Court Justice is a rough road to drive down.  And after twenty-three years of it, I cracked.

I quite my high(ish)-paying big-girl job, packed up a duffel bag and got on a plane to Aspen.  I didn’t tell my parents about any of this until I was in DIA, lest they dissuade me from throwing away my life and undermining my potential.

And for the time being this Band-aid worked.  I was able to pretend that I was the pot-smoking, drop-out ski bum that the rich people I served in Aspen thought I was.  I thought I had it all.  And then Prince Charming skied down the mountain one day in the form of a ski-patrolling, fire-fighting, river-guiding mountain man.  And then I really did have it all – the glam local, the fun job, the cool friends and the ruggedly handsome mountain man.  He was everything that I thought I needed to complete my mountain picture.  I actually let down my guard for the first time ever.  People who know me know what a big deal that is.

And then he decided that he didn’t love me anymore.  And that maybe he never had.

Shit.

My plan at world domination was failing.  My mountain dream unraveled.  The glamorous little place called Aspen became just another town.  Skiing every day lost its charm.  The bar stopped being mountain-town cool and became just another dive bar.  If I was cracked before, now I was Humpty-fucking-Dumpty when all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t superglue his ass back together again.

Just for good measure, life kept on kicking my butt even though I was already curb stomped to the ground.  Every time I tried to get up onto my knees again, I fell back down.

On an airplane halfway between Denver and Quito, Ecuador I decided to get back up.  For real this time.  It took some doing but, much like straining and wasting energy trying to grab the next hold on a rock wall, I finally got it, even though it was ugly getting there.

Now, somewhere in the middle of BFE, in the South Dakota prairie I realize that I’m alive.  Really alive and living life on my own terms and by my own rules.  I actually look genuinely happy. 

I played a game with life called I Win.  And I won.

National Parks, Inc.

Visiting a national park in off-season is a lot like visiting Aspen in April, Seaside Heights, New Jersey after Labor Day or a Des Moines street carnival on Monday morning.  It’s as quiet as a college library on spring’s first sunny day; yet you can hear the faint creaking of chairlifts, or smell caramel apples, or see toothless carnies grinning.  It’s perhaps the most authentic time in these worlds built mostly on whimsy and fantasy.  It’s when you see them for what they are, cracks in the varnish and all.

There is no other time to visit one of America’s great National Parks but during these times.  I do this not only to fulfill my romantic yearnings for authenticity and realness, but also because of the decided lack of the species Homo touristicas.  Find this species in their natural habitat, usually the behind the wheel of the gas-guzzling, road-hogging RV, within the confines of the Shitty-Items-Made-In-China Gift Shop or at the I’m-A-Fat-American Fast Food Restaurant.  This species is identifiable by their really white sneakers with requisite white tube socks, neon green or magenta fanny packs and khaki shorts.  They can usually be seen carrying their young on a nylon leash, or dragging them by an arm as the young screams because they were not allowed to purchase a Shitty Gift at the Shitty-Items-Made-In-China Gift Shop.

Everything leading up to Glacier National Park is themed. It’s as if Walt Disney himself got a hold of the Great American Wilderness and created Wilderness Disneyland.  There is the Glacier View Inn, the Glacier Bar and Grill, the Glacier Bear Supermarket, Wild Indian Curios, Glacier Laundromat and the list goes on.  The so-called Glacier Park International (yes, international) airport is bigger than both the Aspen airport as well as the Akron-Canton airport.  Where is the wilderness I was looking for?

Inside it’s all park fees, park rules, paved park roads, fenced off park picnic areas and tourist shops in this supposed wilderness area.  At this time of year the park, like the Des Moines street fair, is blissfully devoid of Homo touristicas.  It’s just me and a Tacoma with a couple from Alaska, who probably came down south to this here beach for spring break.

I wake up and unfold myself from the backseat of my car, feeling good about life because I was not attacked by a hungry, pissed-off early spring grizzly, and am greeted by the most pristine excuse for a High Rockies lake that I have ever seen.  Alone, absolutely alone, I can’t think of anything better.  Except maybe a cup of coffee, but let’s not split hairs.  I don’t think it would feel the same if the morning silence was interrupted by a screaming rug rat, the growl of an RV engine or the smell of bacon frying on the portable Coleman.

The National Park system is quite the accomplishment.  It protects vast swaths of land and allows the city-bound American to get a taste, however small and brief, of true wilderness.  This is good.  Otherwise the Average American wouldn’t stand a chance against the call of potato chips, Pepsi and the six-hundred channels on their Direct TV. But are they really experiencing the wilderness or are they just touring around Wilderness Disneyland?  It’s just another one of the contradictions that makes America great.  Welcome to National Park, Inc.

Stuff People In Mountain Towns Like

Perhaps the fine publishers of Stuff White People Like would consider a spinoff – Stuff People From Mountain Towns Like.  Included on this list would be face shots, Patagonia, making fun of Vail, making fun of Aspen, being burlier than your friends, sleeping in teepees in the summer, PBR, Subaru, beards, REI, 14ers, not owning a TV and (the topic of today) sleeping in your car in National Parks.

And so I found myself sleeping in the back of a Subaru, in a snowstorm, in the Utah desert, in my Patagonia sleeping bag with a guy named Pete who I met ten days prior.  It just doesn’t get much more mountain cliché than that (he didn’t have a beard though, and we had box wine and Tecate, not PBR).  It was May and the desert should have been scalding hot.  Or at least warm.  Instead it was 30-degrees and snowing.  Screw setting up a tent.

The morning rolled in.  The sky was blue.  The birds were signing.  Children were laughing.  Park rangers were knocking on the window of said Subaru, “Mornin’ folks.  Mind stepping out of the car?”  Utah Forest Service Ranger.  So out we stepped.  Wrapped in sleeping bags.  Into the popsicle blueberry sky of the morning Utah dessert.  No worries though.  He let us go with just a warning. And now we are on the Most Wanted For Sleeping in a Car in an Inappropriate Location list of the United States Forest Service.

Driving I-70 (Also: Running The Colorado Winter Road Gauntlet)

For the second (or is it third) time this week I hucked my pack into my Red Rocket, an ’05 Subaru, and joined the jihad of Weekend Warriors to the ski resorts of central Colorado in their descent to Denver on the dreaded I-70 corridor.  I-70 is a daily battle between overly confident Coloradans, overly paranoid tourists and long haul truckers who could give a shit about anyone because they’re the biggest thing on 18 wheels.  The Coloradans, thinking nothing of doing 85 in a snowstorm, over 10,000-foot Vail Pass around the bends and twists of I-70, terrify the white-knuckle tourists whose license plates are routinely from Arizona, South Carolina or Texas (sorry T$, not you).  Woe is he who is caught in a swarm of Texans in a snowstorm.  A black Escalade in front, an 18-wheeler to the right and a Tahoe behind.   All bearing the blue star and cowboy on a horse that brand the loud-voiced, boot-wearing, big-haired virgins to snow driving.  Rather than maintain a logical distance between cars and pursue a consistent speed, the Texan muscles through in their outsize SUV and then slams on the brakes when they near the unsuspecting car in front of them.  For this reason, 30-car pileups are not uncommon along the I-70 gauntlet.

Despite being a Midwestern transplant to Colorado I crank up my Credence on my iPod and ignore the pending disaster around me.  After all, I learned to drive in Cleveland.  And the Cleveland driver thinks nothing of scraping a 4 by 4 holes in the ice on their windshield and hoping behind the wheel with the defrost cracked all the way up.  Who needs to actually see the road?  It’s all drive by feel in Cleveland.  The idiot factor on I-70 is the highest I’ve seen it all season.  There is no snow.  Literally, no snow.  Not a dusting.  Not the remnants of a snowstorm.  No snow.  Dry roads.  Yet, in preparation for the promised upslope storm (comes from the east), CDOT already has chain laws in effect for Vail Pass and truckers are diligently slinging 20 pound chains around their drive wheels.  Of course the Texans have to slow to a crawl to observe (or oversee perhaps) this activity.  Somehow one such driver finds a way to smash his SUV into a parked semi chaining up.  Like I said, the idiot factor is at an all-season high today thanks to increased Easter traffic.

Since it’s Colorado in the springtime, we think nothing of the fact that it was 72-degrees and sunny at 9 AM and that now, at 6 PM, husky snowflakes have begun to drip down on the city of Denver like Cinnabon frosting.  I have a smattering of friends, both old and new, to grab drinks with.  Crashing on one of these couches won’t be a problem.  I call Lauren.  We’ve been great friends since we were five years old and are supposed to grab dinner and drinks. 

“I’m stuck on the highway.” She’s pissed.

“36 hasn’t moved in the last 40 minutes.  I actually put my car in park and started reading my book.” 

“No worries.  Just call me when you make it back.”

I call Amber, my friend from the mountains.  She’s in the wine business and regularly runs the I-70 gauntlet.

“They closed I-70 at Eisenhower Tunnel.  I can’t stand this road.  And the moron factor is out of control today.  I think I might just die.  Right here.”  Amber tends to be theatrical.  That’s why I love her.  It keeps life interesting.

“No worries.  Just call me when you make it back.”  Déjà vu?

Lauren texts me.  I’m running out of gas.  My light came on 30 minutes ago.  Help?!  I tell here to drive in the emergency lane.  Sounds like an emergency to me right?  CDOT would be ticked if her dead car blocked a lane of the Boulder Highway.

I try Whitney.  She and Lauren and I are all native Clevelanders.  Transplants to Colorado.   We drove west on I-80 until we hit the mountains and decided to stop there.  Her phone’s off.  “Shit.”  She is still on the plane and the prospects for DIA actually staying open are not looking good.  The Frosty Flakes have laid down about 8 inches in two hours.

My phone beeps again.  Lauren.  I am in some random girl’s car.  Will probably sleep at B’s tonight.  So sorry.  Highway closed.

I’m not surprised.  Rather than deal with the idiot factor, CDOT usually elects to shut down entire highways to deal with snow removal.  Eisenhower Tunnel usually shuts down because of avalanche risk.  The roads around Denver and Boulder usually shut down because of idiot risk.

Which Way Is The Real World?

It’s all well and good to believe in happy endings. But, when someone just keeps screwing up, well, I guess eventually you just have to say, “fuck you.” Or something like that. I heard that today.

Aspen. The land of Happy Endings (both PG and NC-17). Aspen. The bastard child that was born when Sodom and Gomorra fucked the American Dream at the end of a weeklong bender. Aspen. A paradise found. Problem is, Aspen’s got no rules. And like the cliché says, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I spent the last four months waking up to dark coffee, the Times and two hour breakfasts. In was the trophy wide without the rich husband. I skied, I hiked, I did yoga, I repeated. I amused myself by figuring out which sap I could get to buy my overpriced meal and my fancy glass of wine. No one ever tells you to grow up. No one tells you that hanging out with Jim, Jack and Johnny seven nights a week is actually called alcoholism.

After an evening of average conversation with a nice guy I gave up on the Ridel wine glass and started swigging straight from the bottle of overpriced wine that was meant to impress me. I got just drunk enough to close my eyes and leave my body.  To settle for mediocre sex with a man who waxes poetic about how we were the fortunate few here in Aspentown. We didn’t have to deal with real life. We got to hide from it all in the Land of Milk and Honey. Bullshit.

The problem with Paradise Island is that none of its real. The only real things in life are those that happen by accident. You can’t force real. And you sure as shit can’t buy happiness. I hate it when clichés are true.

After a minute of living in paradise, shit got real. That’s the problem with life. Sometimes it’s real. And sometimes that’s hard. And I guess you just have to deal with it.

When shit got real, that’s when I got happy. There’s friends killing themselves, family members fighting, lovers turning their back on me, unplanned pregnancies, families dying, lovers lying, money getting flushed down the golden drain and you know what? I am happy. Hysterically, manically happy. Genuinely happy. All on accident. I am not happy despite these things. I am not happy because I live in Aspen and ski all day and party all night. I am happy because life is one huge, hot mess. Life is that drunk chick at the bar who is five sheets to the wind with mascara running down her face. She’s up on the bar singing Janis Joplin and drinking tequila from the bottle. And she’s loving every minute of it. Because it’s real.

I guess that’s life. It’s not the perfect mountain town fabricated with equal parts Dior, private jets and pristine ski slopes. It’s the little blond passed out in the bathroom at Su Casa. It’s that naked photo you wish wasn’t on Facebook. It’s the one night stand that became a baby. It’s the cancer that you weren’t expecting. It’s the lover who says they aren’t in love with you, and probably never were. It’s a dirty, cheating, lying bitch. And you gotta love it. Not because it’s perfect. But because it’s real. And because it’s one huge, messed up accident. No amount of planning could create that.

And on this sunny day in paradise hell, I’m sitting here wondering where it all went wrong. And this is my story.