Bullet In My Head

Skatopia is like the Parthenon or the Great Pyramids, one of those places with a geniuinely mythical quality to them. The kind of place you hear stories and tall tales about, but never expect to see in person. Like everyone else, I'd seen the gnarly pictures in the magazines and heard the stories. Rob had been there the previous summer and described it as simultaneously the best time and the worst time of his life. So, when our band, The Daggers, were invited to play one of their annual uber-parties, I was super-stoked, what could go wrong, right?

For those who don't know about it, Skatopia is an 88 acre backwoods skateboarding compound built and overseen by vert stud Brewce Martin in Rutland, Ohio, near the Ohio/West Virginia border. As you enter the immense compound off the dirt road there is a huge billboard that reads "NO LAW ENFORCEMENT PAST THIS POINT!", citing the constitution, but you'd have to be fucking Robocop to take this place on. It's all about freedom at Skatopia. You wanna pack a .45 in your waistband and pop off a few rounds to accentuate something you've just said? Great! You wanna blow up some strangers car with a bomb you made? Go for it! It's like Kurtz's camp from Apocalypse Now. Only with skateboards.

So, we hit the road to Cincinnati, where we met up with our friend Don and skated a ghetto junkpark during the day and rampaged through town that night. Shit had gotten ugly the night before, and when I wandered out onto the front porch for a smoke with my morning (noon) coffee, I found Dan sound asleep on the front sidewalk. In what is a recurring theme with Dan, he at some point or another had lost his pants and ended up here on the sidewalk, with people stepping over him, clad only in bikini briefs and a Motorhead T-shirt. Dude, it was fucking NOON! In downtown Cincinnati! If I saw some half-naked tattooed maniac asleep on the sidewalk in front of my house for THIRTY SECONDS I'd call the cops! Gratefully amazed by the locals' acceptance of our drunken escapades, we bade Cincinnati and Don farewell and continued east towards Rutland.

The directions we'd gotten were sketchy to say the least. The last three or so roads before you hit Skatopia didn't even have names-shit like 'county road 22'. We wanted to be at Skatopia before dark, but the sun started to fall as we continued to sail down country roads.

We estimated that we were about an hour out of Skatopia when we noticed that it seemed like our headlights had started to dim. Initially, we wrote it off to the fact that we were so far in the boondocks, away from any extraneous light, that it just LOOKED darker. But, soon it became apparent that this was not the case, and we were going to break down. Rob stood on the accelerator and wetore down the dirt road, straining to see while we tried to get as close as possible before we finally crapped out. We rooted him on desperately and pulled our two flashlights we'd brought out of the back, then me and Dan hung out the windows and shone them on the road in front of us. Soon enough, we were driving by flashlight only, and after a few minutes of this the car coughed and died, rolling to a stop in front of the only house we'd seen for miles.

The house was dark but we knocked on the door anyway and not surprisingly, nobody answered. Christian tried to call Brewce on his cell, but couldn’t get any service out this far. So we sat on the side of the road and waited for a car to go by.

After about 45 minutes a minivan approached and we flagged it down. It was a nice couple who turned out to be friends of Brewce’s and said they’d drive us up there. Me and Christian left Rob and Dan with the broken down station wagon and hopped in.

As we drove up the front road, past the ‘no law enforcement’ billboard, Christian and I stared out the window in amazement. There were cars and atv’s and people tearing around everywhere, fireworks going off, and live rock and roll screaming out of one of the buildings. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen.

They dropped us off and we found the ramp, and found Brewce right away, amazing considering the masses of people everywhere. We told him the situation and he turned to the dude sitting next to him on the platform and said, “Are you skating right now?” The dude said that he was not. “Then go fucking get them!” he yelled. Brewce fucking rules.

We piled into the dude’s old International Harvester Scout and tore out of there. He flew down the road, chugging beers and scaring the shit out of me. But after a few minutes of seeing how that Scout stuck to the road like a fucking Indy car, I felt fine. This dude was completely in control, drunk or not. We found the guys and loaded up the back of the Scout with the guitars and drums. We left behind our bags, skates, amps, and tent with the hopes that we could somehow find our way back to get them later.

The stage area was somehow even more chaotic than the rest of the place. After lugging the equipment up some crazy steep, unlit, handrail-free staircase we found the guy who’d booked the show. Turned out there was no band order, it was as much of a snake session as the one going on next to the stage in the bowl.

I went over to the bowl and took in some of the greatest skateboarding I’ve ever seen in my life. Brewce would drop into the shallow end of the 13 foot kidney and rip that fucker so hard it SHOOK THE BUILDING, no shit! The barn would creak and sway slightly as Brewce powered through 20 tile grinds at a hundred miles an hour, pounding down frontside airs so hard it was louder than the gunshots occasionally popping off outside. Then Science Fair would roll in and do a twenty wall run without doing the same trick twice. Multitudes of other rippers took their turns abusing the pool. Bonelesses off the benches along the platform were done by some while others ground the pool coping so fast they flew into the crowd like a race car flipping over the fence into scattering spectators.

There was a really weird vibe with most of the bands and none of them would let us borrow any equipment, so the booker guy rounded us up some odds and ends. It was the sorriest gear I’d ever seen. The ‘guitar amp’ I got was a practice amp that would’ve been adequate were the show in a rest stop bathroom, and Rob and Dan’s were no better. We set up and tuned up, cranking up these tiny amps as loud all the way and still getting no oomph from them at all. This was gonna suck.

We started our first song, “Independent Trucks” and it was dug by the sizable crowd, despite sounding like quiet shit. That was a relief, it sounded like shit and they didn’t care. Cool. About two bars into the second song, there was a tremendous explosion outside and everyone rushed to the windows. We stopped and looked outside. Someone had blown a car up and it was engulfed in flames about a hundred yards away. Naturally, the crowd poured out of the room to watch the fun and in a matter of seconds we were playing only to Science Fair who doffed his clothes and skated naked while we finished our set, stopping to cheer us on and catch his breathe before dropping into another two-minute run. We stopped after about six more songs and trudged outside, depressed, tired, thirsty, and cold. None of us had a change of clothes, and as the temperature was dropping our wet clothes chilled us to the bone.

There was a group of folks from North Carolina who we buddied up to and sat by their fire and the other guys drank their beer while we recounted our story for everyone. They were sympathetic and said they’d help us in the morning. Meanwhile, I wandered around with Rob to observe the chaos and keep my mind off the gnawing in my gut.

Fires were burning, trucks and three-wheelers tore through the clearing between the buildings and seemingly everyone (including us) were packing heat. Every group of people we came upon had at least a couple dudes with pistols in their belts and I even saw a couple guys with rifles strung on their shoulders. But I had bigger problems.

I was really getting thirsty. The hunger I could deal with, but I hadn’t drank anything for about 12 hours by then, it had been balls hot, AND we’d played a show. Clearly, with no running water on the premises, the situation was gonna get worse before it got better. At every ad-hoc campsite there was a cooler or two, so I set out on a commando mission. I went campsite to campsite where I’d sidle up to the cooler, and as casually as if I’d put them there, rooted through the endless beer bottles for just one bottle of water. I checked at least ten coolers and not one contained anything except beer. Fuck.

Eventually I flopped down at our pathetic “campsite” which was really just a spot on the grass where our wet t-shirts were laid out to dry, and curled up to get warm. The sun was coming up, I hadn’t eaten or slept for 24 hours and I was so thirsty my tongue hurt. I had no warm clothes, or sleeping bag, or tent, or bug spray, or long pants, or a jacket. Dan, of course, was having the time of his life, drinking and hollering with the locals and popping off the occasional round with the .44 bulldog he’d brought along.

A fat guy ambled up.

“Ya’ll might wanna take cover, they’s gotta bomb they gonna blow.” He said to us, fanning himself with a filthy straw hat. He turned to go, then turned back to us.

“Hey, have ya’ll got any DOUGHNUTS?” he asked. Doughnuts??? We don’t even have a campsite, jackass! We’re sleeping on the fucking GRASS here!

To add to my good times, something set him off so Dan screamed and emptied the Bulldog into the air, right next to my head. Each of the five shots brought stars to my eyes and I was deaf for hours. I watched Dan silently shout apologies at me, then wandered off to the ramp/stage area to try and get some sleep on the stage. We still had a car to fix and a twelve hour drive home in a few hours. I wasn’t the only person with that idea, as I found Christian among the ten or so people scattered about the stage, sleeping. I found an empty spot and curled up under a smelly leather jacket I found at the back of the stage, hid my eyes from the harsh early morning sun under my filthy-ass shirt, and slept fitfully.

I awoke at about eleven and the jacket I was sleeping under was nowhere to be seen. I guess the rightful owner claimed it. I wandered outside and found Christian, who told me that earlier that morning Brewce’s 12 year old son, who had renamed himself “Hell-Skull”, had tried to mug him for his t-shirt at gunpoint. Well, BB gunpoint. But, nonetheless…

I had a horrible migraine from dehydration so I went to our campsite and looked into the Carolinian’s cooler. What I saw was gnarly. I mean, it was REALLY GNARLY, but I had no other option. It’s a matter of survival, I said aloud, and lifted the cooler to my lips and stared down all the scum floating on top of the tepid water. I picked the big bugs and leaves and sticks and paper out, then gulped down mouthful after mouthful with my eyes closed.

We found the North Carolina folks, packed up our shit and headed into town. Christian had been able to get a hold of a tow truck driver who would meet us and tow us to an auto parts store in Rutland. I was still dehydrated and starving, but at least we’d procured a tow truck. We set out towards the car with a bleary optimism.

They dropped us off and headed back east, and we repacked the car and waited. I knocked on the door of the house again hoping to get some water, but again no answer. Dan and I looked all around the house for a spigot, but none existed. Upon further review, there weren’t even wires of any kind going to this house. No phone lines, no power lines, nothing. Talk about isolated.

We’d been waiting an hour when we started to get worried about the tow truck. We’d done our best to explain where we broke down, but had no idea where we were so we started to worry that we’d given bad directions to the tow truck guy. Christian ran frantically from hilltop to hilltop to try and get a cell signal to no avail. I lay down in the shade of the car, beside myself with misery.

“Please, Dan. A bullet. Put a bullet in my head…” I pleaded, only half-joking.

Soon Dan began to run around in the road, screaming and shedding his clothes.

“We’re gonna DIE!!” he screamed, laughing, “Woo-HOO!! We’re fucking, DEAD, Matt! DEAD!!”

He collapsed and laid down in the middle of the road, clad now only in his bikinis and was still laying there, when, like a rickety messiah, the tow truck appeared. The guy stopped in front of us, eyeing Dan up and down. He hooked us up quietly, making no excuse for taking three hours to show up. He said he had room to take to of us into town in the cab with him, “Not him.” He said gesturing at Dan with his thumb, so me and Rob leapt into that truck and off we went. Tow guy had a buddy he called to go pick up the other two and said he’d take ‘em into town for a couple bucks. We all met at the Autozone in Rutland, where the nicest auto parts dudes in the world helped us put a new alternator on the car and pointed us in the direction of a Subway where we ate like a pack of crazed wolves.

The drive home was like a journey back from war. Silent, contemplative, happy to have survived.

We stopped at a rest stop and as I waited for my shitty machine mocha, Dan turned to me and said, “Hey, isn’t today your birthday?” I looked down at my digital watch, and he was right. It was my birthday.