Every spring I get together with some of the local characters and head south to get in some golf, catch some rays and drink way more beers than would be considered healthy. This year our destination was Myrtle Beach,SC. It rained like a mother all week and put kind of a kink in our golfing hose. We still got in 8 rounds of golf, but some of them were wet… VERY wet.
The first day set the tone for the week. We arrived at the golf course an hour before our tee time. Very few of us (we had 8 guys) had actually played yet this year. We’d hoped to hit a few on the driving range before the round. When we arrived in the parking lot, rain was pouring down. I mean it was really raining hard. The people with tee times ahead of us had either cancelled their tee times or were waiting in the clubhouse for some easing in the raindrops. The forecast for the entire week was off and on rain. I said, and yes, I’m always the jackass that says these things, “It’s going to rain all week. We’re going to get wet or not play. There’s no way around it. Fuck it, let’s go play!” For some reason everybody always does what I want. I’m no force of nature. I’m not a natural born salesman. They all just shrug their shoulders and say “Joe says…”. So we loaded up the clubs and waltzed off into the rain. We had a couple of first timers with us this year. One of them we’ll call Ray. Ray stands on the first tee and takes a practice swing, steps up to the ball and strikes his first shot of the year. The ball goes off into the rain and he asks if anybody saw where it went. Nobody has seen the ball because we were all watching his club which slipped out of his wet hands and helicoptered its way into the pond behind him. Brand new driver, first time he’d ever swung it, in the pond. After some futile attempts to retrieve it, his group squishes their way forward down the first hole. In the meantime, we watch as his driver floats farther and farther away. The grip of the club and has a closed tip sealing air in the shaft and the head is a bulbous thing filled with styrofoam, so the club is actually floating. The wind is taking it farther and farther out into the water. It is eventually blown across the water to the far shore where a ranger picks it out it and returns it to it’s grateful owner. It only rains hard for a couple holes before the rain turns to drizzle and eventually subsides altogether. But we get good and wet in the meantime and it’s probably my fault but they hold no ill will.
Next day, on another course, Ray again, stands in front of a greenside bunker, wedge in hand. The play is a high soft lob over the bunker. Ray skulls it and the ball takes off like a rocket, two feet off the ground, catches Max, who was foolish enough to turn his back on Ray, right in the wallet. I mean it sounded like a fastball striking a cather’s mitt. I, who never turns my back on any of these crazy bastards, get to look into the eyes of Max as the ball smacks him in the left glute. It all happened to fast for me to warn him. Ray started to yell “Look out!” just about the time the ball made impact. I did ask Max if he was Ok, but must admit I laughed my ass off first. Fortunately it really did hit him in the wallet so it didn’t even leave a bruise. But goddam, I would have liked to have had a video of his face as it hit him.
Oh, it rained that day too. It rained alot. But we played and ate and drank and carried on.
It was a full week of the same nonsense. Most of us have travelled on these things before. We know how we all behave and what we like to eat and drink and sort of have a pattern we fall into when we travel together. The condo we were staying in was on a now defunct golf course. The course is gone but the cart path for the course remains and I used it a couple mornings and evenings to get in a few runs. I didn’t kill myself but did get some exercise.
In spite of the week of mostly rain we all had a good time. And like all vacations, the week ends and we packed it up and headed home. Most of the time these trips back are uneventful. This was not one of those trips.
Saturday we played at Prestwick Country Club. An excellent Pete Dye design which pretty much kicked everybody’s ass, even mine at times. Coming up the 9th fairway, I had this sudden and terriblly intense urge to urinate. I had not been drinking that morning. I’d had a 12 ounce soda with breakfast and was working on a 20 ounce bottle on the golf course. I made it to the men’s room in time but was literally on the verge pissing myself. I’m not kidding. It was a close call.
We proceded to the back nine. 3 holes later I was in the same condition. This course had no big bushes for me to step behind and houses lined the course on the sides of every hole. There was a restroom at the 15th hole and I just made it there in time. For the previous 2 holes all my thoughts had been on trying to keep from pissing my pants. I actually have no recollection of what those holes looked like, only that I was in agony. Crisis averted. 2 holes later, same thing. Now I have to wait until we’re finished and it seems to take an eternity. I putt out on 18 and immediately dash for the men’s locker room again. It was fucking awful! We pack up the clubs and stop at a Wendy’s for a sandwich before we hit the road. Our ultimate destination was to be Ashville,NC, about 250 miles down the road. I start out driving one of the vehicles after the food break, and after having relieved myself once again at Wendy’s. 45 minutes later I feel this overwhelming urge come over me again and I HAVE got to get off the road. I tell one of the guys in our vehicle to radio the other vehicle to tell them I’m pulling into the next sevice station. I just make it to the urinal in time. I mean… any more delay and I’d have had to change my pants. I shake my head and apologize to the guys and off we go again. This time I’m feeling alright, well, for a couple hours. Then suddenly, without warning, it’s on me again. I pull it over to the side of the interstate, bolt for the privacy of a bridge support and breathe a sigh of relief. I’ve absolutely never experienced anything like this. I am getting older and it’s possible my prostate is larger than it used to be. However, that had meant, until Saturday, that I had to take a piss after 3 or 4 beers instead after the 6 or 8 of my youth. Saturday was a different story. I’d taken in a total of 40 ounces all day and was just fuckin’ dying. I mean I had some real problem and I was freaked. After that we stopped about every hour just as preventive maintenance, just to make sure my cup was not about to overfloweth. We arrived in Ashville and I immeadiately took care of business in the men’s room in the motel lobby. This time there was none of the urgency of the times before. I was just doing it to make sure there was no urgency. We settled in for the night. I grabbed a coke out of a vending machine to wash down a couple snacks with, watched Kansas pound the snot out of the Tarheels and turned in about 11, after one last blast in the batthroom. I’ll be honest, I was deathly afraid I’d have some dream about a river or a waterfall and piss the bed. I was afraid to go to sleep. I did however go to sleep.
That night I dreamt I was at a racetrack. I was leaving the track through the participant’s gate and the driver of a Hummer limo entering the racetrack stopped the vehicle he was driving and came over to my car. He told me the boss would like to see me. I got out of my car, the sunroof of the Hummer opened and the boss stood up to talk to me from the open sunroof.
He looked like the guy who directs the Girls Gone Wild videos, but his hair was styled like the little gay guys from the fashion designer reality show who says “fierce” all the time. He asked me how I liked my new job. I told him I liked it just fine and thanked him for the opportunity. He then asked me how I was liking Berlin. I told hime I’d been enjoying it very much and then went on some babbling ass-sucking diatribe which seemed to bring him great joy. It was at this time I noticed the boss had either blonde or white highlights. I’m not sure which because the dream was in black and white. At this point my assistant, a small woman with an ear to ear grin, appeared out of nowhere. I suddenly realized that I was a hairstylist. I reached up to shake the boss’s hand and the hand I saw take the bosses hand, was the hand of a black man. I was a black hair stylist. Suddenly, I awoke. It was 5:30 am. I’d slept through the night and not pissed the bed. Thank god!
We still had a 9 or 10 hour drive back to Champaign though so I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I had a danish and a couple pieces of toast for breakfast and washed it down with a small cup of orange juice. My intent was to take in no more liquid than absolutlely necessary until I’d reached home and the friendly confines of my own bathroom. We started out through the hills and tunnels of North Carolina and western Tennessee. We got to within half an hour of Knoxville and we stopped for me to do some preventive maintenance. I was forcing myself to take a leak just to avoid possible accidents. The trip went smoothly with pit stops every 90 minutes until somewhere in northern Tennessee where the van we were riding in started doing some herky jerky things. It felt like the injection system was kind of bogging down. The acceleration up the hills was brutal. Fortunately, if we could just make it across the Ohio river into Indiana, the road would flatten out and it would be smooth sailing. We crossed into Indiana, stopped for lunch, where I lived dangerously, having a large soda and a large glass of water with my meal. We continued onward towards Indianapolis. The road was flat. The van had the occasional hiccup but not nearly as severely as before. Once we got to Indy we would have 2 more hours to home. I had no uncontrollable impulses to pee and life was good.
But then…10 miles south of Indy, the transmission left the van. So there we were, 2 hours from home, stranded without a mode of transportation or a bathroom. Tim, the owner of the van had onced lived in the area and began calling people on his cell phone to see about alternate modes of transport. Approximately 60 minutes later a tow truck showed up to haul off his van. We sat alongside the highway against a farmer’s fence waiting for our rescuers. While basking in the early April sun, the boys began to serenade me with “Happy Birthday”. Yes, today I turned 47. I thanked them and proclaimed that I’m 47 years old, that I’ve got the body of a 25 year old and the bladder of a 95 year old. They laughed and tried to reassure me that I probably just have a bladder infection and the doctor will probably give me some drugs that will clear it right up. I’m not so positive about that but thanked them for the encouragement anyway. 45 minutes after the tow truck left, Tim’s dad and brother showed up from the north side of town to carpool us til we could be handed off a little further down the road. Another of the guys wives met us halfway back with their van and took us the rest of the way home. I never did feel the urgency the rest of the way back and never had to milk the elk til I got back to my house, a full 8 hours after we’d had lunch. I couldn’t understand it. Anyway, I sit here in the last hour of my birthday, happy to be back home safe and without the intense urge. It was a strange birthday but I’ll always remember it ended happily.
