This is the story of how I became an honorary Mexican Gang member on New Year’s Eve. Here’s the stage: It is my best friends Messy, Head, Master Race, and yours truly. Messy’s name was Jesse, and he was a mess. Tony had a big fucking head, so we called him Head. Jody looked like an Aryan nation poster boy so we called him Master Race. This would turn out to be somewhat prophetic because a few years after that he was arrested for breaking into a veterinary clinic to steal ketamine and wound up joining the Aryan Nation while in prison. Last I heard, he got out and started cooking meth.

Messy

Head

Master Race

This Good Looking Motherfucker

Anyway, it was New Year’s Eve and four bright eyed 16 year olds were stoked about ringing in 1997 by going to a rave in Dallas, TX. This was back before raves had things like corporate sponsors, and permits. The way it worked was you got a flyer from some hippie kid. Then, on the night of the rave you called the secret phone number on the card to get an address. Then everyone shows up to a dilapidated warehouse vibrating with techno music and waits for the cops to show up. Head was the only one of us with a car, which sucked, because he drove like the Dukes of Hazard even while going through school zones, with a bus letting children out, and a funeral going by. His mom said, not only could we not make the hundred mile drive from bumfuck Paris Texas to Dallas on New Year’s for obvious reasons, but there was also a heavy fog alert. We were like, “Yeah, ok old lady, fog. Whatevs.” So we all lied about spending the night at Messy’s brother’s house and hit the highway.

Dear fucking god. Never in my life, before or after, have I seen fog that bad. It was straight up biblical. We couldn’t see jack shit the entire way to Dallas. Head just tailgated an eighteen wheeler so he could follow the guy’s tail lights hoping that guy could see the road because we sure the fuck couldn’t.

The normally two hour drive took closer to four so we were already showing up to the proverbial party fashionably late. Once we hit the city limits we stopped at a payphone (because those existed back then) and called the secret number. Normally you just got a recording with an address and directions from the nearest highway so we were surprised when a frantic sounding female answered the phone. She informed us the party was over and the place was crawling with cops because of a gang shooting. This was peculiar because the odds of gang members going to a rave at all, let alone shooting the place up are about the same as winning the lottery, twice, while being gang raped by the Care Bears. She told us about another party called “The Underground” and gave us directions that, as we all crowded around the syphilitic telephone receiver could see in each other’s eyes, not a damn one of us were going to remember the second the phone hung up. Which is exactly what happened.

We just said, “Fuck it” and headed to the club district aka Deep Ellum. The idea was to find a thirteen year old selling ecstasy and handing out rave flyers, which was standard practice. By the time we showed up at the spot, apparently everyone was already at the party, and it was somewhere else. We were in the party district on the biggest party night of the year, and Deep Ellum was a ghost town. We stopped into a head shop looking for leads on a new rave and Head bought some Herbal Ecstasy. While the shopkeeper went in the back for something I leaned over the counter and stole a few more packs of Herbal-X.

We wandered around munching on stolen fake drugs until we found a club that let minors in. The music was jamming and the guy at the door sold us some more fake ecstasy. It would have been a great time but there were only two other people there; one chick, and some guy passed out in the corner. They had a catwalk going across the dance floor and the lone female was doing a sexy ballerina dance with her long black silky hair draped over her face. We all jumped up in a line and started grooving even though not one of us had any idea how to dance. I watched in amazement as Messy, and then Master Race danced up to this woman and danced away. Pussies.

So I shook it like a saltshaker and a Polaroid picture and grooved up to the Betty. She kinda nudged up against me, fuelling my confidence. One problem, I was watching my feet intently since they had no idea what they were doing.

So as I played referee with two hooligan left feet I noticed her feet. They were kinda……. bumpy. (She had no shoes on)

That’s ok; I’m not fucking her feet.
My eyes roam north.

……She kinda got a pooch.
That’s ok; I can work past a little pooch.

North my hungry eyes traveled.
……Them titties kinda saggy.

This is no time to be judgmental.
North! North! The journey has ended!

…….Man this bitch looked like the evil fucking queen on Snow White when she turned herself into a hag.

So I dance the fuck off like Turbo on “Breakin” and find Messy and Master Race laughing at me. Luckily Head was last to climb that peak so we heckled him mercilessly for dancing with the Wicked Witch of the West.

So we’re trying to think of something else to do when the DJ screams, “Fuck this! I’m going to a party.” And we all get kicked out without being invited. It looked like the Wicked Witch might try to talk to us so we took off running.

We ambled around for a while and missed the countdown to New Years. So we decided to drive around and find the party that we had no idea how to get to.

During the course of our driving around Head, a shitty and dangerous driver at best tries to gun the car while making a hair pin U-turn around a median and hits a patch of water. He loses control of the car and winds up driving straight up the very steep side of an overpass. I’m in the back seat screaming like Chris Tucker while he calmly does a vertical U-turn on this concrete embankment, jumps a few medians, and we go on our way like nothing happened.

This is getting a little long so I’m going to break it into two parts. Stay tuned because the next part is where it starts getting weird.

Sources: 1, 2, 3