Leah Kayajanian – The Knee Choppers of Whore Island, OR I Pay Tribute to the Crazy People Who Inspire All the Stories

 

“Scott, drink five,” I say, throwing down the five of diamonds.

“Goddamnit,” Scott says.

“Scott,” Taylor says, “drink five.” She tosses the five of clubs on the table.

Amber can barely wait to throw down her card. “Drink five, Scott!”

Scott turns to his only man-friend who’s still awake, Steve. “See what I mean, Steve? This is why we gotta stick together when we visit Whore Island.”

Steve shrugs.

“That’s fifteen drinks,” Amber says.

Scott chugs his 300^th beer before turning over the next card. He drops the eight of clubs on the pile. “Leah, drink eight.”

Taylor tosses an eight out on the table. “Steve, drink eight.”

“What the hell did I do?” Steve asks.

Scott goes to turn over the next card, but I stop him and drop another eight on the pile. “Scott. You. Drink.”

“Damnit, Leah! How’s the view from the mountain on top of Whore Island?” He chugs his beer. “Steve, I thought you had my back!”

Steve shrugs.

Scott’s been stuck on the phrase “Whore Island” for the past few hours.

“You know what they’ll do, Steve?” Scott says. “They’ll chop your knees off! That’s right, they’ll chop your knees off when you’re not paying attention.”

“Really?” Steve says. “My knees?”

“It’s a nightmare down there! You gotta fight the Knee Choppers of Whore Island!”

The Knee Choppers of Whore Island. Yeah, that pretty much sums up our day. It’s a Friday in March, and I’m in Kansas City at Jenny and Scott’s house. My college friends and I are getting together for one of our Epic Marathon Drinking weekends, and we’re reaching the final death throes of Day One. It’s only nine, but we’ve been drinking all day.

Literally, all day.

Scott had picked me up from the airport at 8:30 this morning, and I walked into the house to see all my friends awake, gathered around the breakfast table. Before I even sat down, Jenny handed me a plate of food and a mimosa. Rockey handed me a loaded bowl.

A few minutes later, someone pulled out a Tupperware container full of mushrooms. I looked at my watch. 8:50 a.m. Before nine in the morning on a Friday, and a bunch of otherwise responsible 30-year-olds with real jobs, mortgages, and even PhDs in Clinical Psychology were about to be tripping balls.

So it makes sense that Day One ends here, at 9 p.m., the final five of us who are still awake sitting around a table playing a generic drinking game, listening to Scott drone on and on about the downfalls of Whore Island. This is actually a welcome change to Scott’s earlier drunk obsession: walking around in the backyard naked from the waist down.

Scott turns another card over. “Four. Ha! I have two of those. Leah, drink four. Amber, drink four. Serves you right, taking your vacation on Whore Island.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask. “We live here.”

“Yeah,” Taylor says. “We own this island. In fact, you need to leave.”

“What?” Scott yells. The veins in his neck get more pronounced. “You can’t just take Whore Island. I invented it!”

“We can,” Taylor says. “And we did.”

“Scott,” I say. “We beat you in the Battle of Whore Island. Deal with it.”

And this goes on for another half hour, watching Scott try to stop his head from exploding while Taylor, Amber, and I conquer and claim his beloved Whore Island.

***

“So I can’t sleep with that married guy, right?” I ask. We’re standing on the upper level of a child’s slide that Jenny and Scott have in their backyard even though they don’t want kids.

“Uh, no,” Rockey says. “Unless you want to be a filthy slut.”

“Damn.” I say. “I know. It’s just been awhile.”

I slide down the slide and land in the dewy grass. John slides down headfirst and lands a pretty gnarly face-plant at my feet.

It’s the end of Day Two of Epic Drinking Weekend, and I had somehow enticed a married man to follow me back to Jenny’s house from the bar. I don’t know what drew him in – I just know it was easy. I got very drunk and did nothing. Didn’t touch him. Definitely didn’t say anything intelligent. Didn’t even really hang out with him much. Nothing. It’s actually disturbing how easy it was.

Currently, Married Man is inside by himself, and I’m out in the backyard with John and Rockey, playing on a swingset.

This whole “enticing a married man” thing is a pretty regular occurrence for me. Over the course of the last two years of single-ness, roughly 90% of the people that have expressed any interest in me have been either married or in a serious relationship with someone else. No kidding.

I’m not telling you this because I’m proud. Quite the opposite, in fact. Due to the alarming rate and frequency of this happening, I’m starting to think it’s somehow me, that I wear the Scarlet Letter of adultery branded onto my goddamn forehead. As far as I know, I do nothing to encourage this kind of attention, but my justice-seeking soul believes maybe it’s my due punishment for that one time when I did sleep with a man who had a girlfriend.

But it was okay because I loved him. At least that’s what I keep telling myself, like a mantra I have to repeat over and over, “I do not live on Whore Island. I do not live on Whore Island. I do not live on Whore Island…”

***

It’s May 1, 2010, a beautiful spring afternoon in Oklahoma City, and I come out of a blackout drunk to find myself standing next to the Bricktown Canal, staring into the disgusting green water. I’d say around 200 or so drunk people are surrounding the area. They’re chanting at me: “Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump!”

Rockey’s standing next to me, pulling his wallet and cell phone out of his pockets, taking off his shoes and placing them on the concrete next to the canal. “Take your shit out of your pockets,” he says.

I look up at the upper level balcony surrounding the canal and see our friends. They’re leaning over the railing looking down at us. I scan their unconcerned faces until my eyes land on my fiancé, who’s waving his arms trying to get my attention. “Leah!” he screams. “Don’t jump!”

“You’re gonna get in trouble,” Rockey sings. “Hey, that reminds me. Take off your engagement ring.”

“Oh yeah.” I’ve only been engaged for about a week now. I keep forgetting. I slip the ring off my finger and place it in the toe of my shoe.

We’re here because we’re participating in the Bricktown Pub Crawl for Cancer, a charity event in which 150 teams of 15 people are released into the tourist-y area of Oklahoma City on a Saturday afternoon to drink ridiculous amounts of beer. My friends and I make up one of these rowdy drunk groups, the Brew Tang Clan. The events preceding my appearance next to the canal are blurry. I have no idea how I got here.

“Leah!” my man yells again. “Don’t jump! You’re gonna get arrested!”

Next to him, the rest of my friends pump their fists, yelling, “Jump! Jump! Jump!”

“All right,” Rockey says. “We doing this?”

I nod.

My fiancé takes off running toward me. He runs across a bridge to my side of the canal and starts scrambling down the stairwell.

“We ain’t got a whole lot of time,” Rockey says. Then he holds his nose and jumps into the water. A loud cheer erupts from the bystanders.

“Don’t jump!” My man, he’s closing the gap between us. He’s down the stairwell. Just before he reaches me, I scream, “Fuck cancer!”

Then I jump.

Now, I don’t know whether or not jumping into the Bricktown Canal is illegal, but I do know that it’s highly frowned upon. I also know that, according to an online article from the Daily Oklahoman, it’s one of the cited reasons that the Bricktown Board officially banned the Pub Crawl for Cancer from ever taking place there again.

I break off my engagement about a month later, after painful consideration, guilt, and a lot of “trying to figure things out” sessions with Rockey. But I should’ve known on that day, May 1, 2010, the day my friends and I got the pub crawl banned from Bricktown, that I wasn’t supposed to marry that man.

Because he’s cautious and thoughtful and responsible, the kind of person you can always rely on to do the right thing.

And I’m the kind of person who jumps.

***

Scott and I are at a bar near his house “searching” the dance floor for John and Rockey. Really, we’ve ordered a couple of whiskeys, and we’re just standing by the bar hoping the other two will eventually cross our line of vision.

And they do. “Hey,” Rockey says as he and John walk by, followed by one of the bouncers. “John got us kicked out.”

Scott and I finish our drinks and follow them outside. They’re standing ten feet from the door, smoking cigarettes.

“What’d you guys do?”

Rockey elbows John. “It was him. But honestly, I have no idea.”

“I didn’t do anything,” John says. “Why did they kick me out?” He walks back toward the bar.

Rockey points at me. “Your turn.”

I run after John.

The doorman recognizes him immediately. “You can’t be in here.”

“Why not?” John asks.

“Just please leave the area.”

“Did you kick me out?” he asks.

“Yes.” I can see the growing agitation on the doorman’s face, and I try to pull John away by gripping his elbow. John ignores me.

“I think you can do better than that,” John says.

“Sir,” the doorman says, “please leave.”

“Kick me out better,” John says.

“John,” I say. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“No.” He turns to me. “I want this guy to kick me out better.”

He pulls his arm out of my grip and walks back into the bar. One of the bouncers stops him before he hits the dance floor.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” the bouncer says.

“Kick me out then,” John says. “Yell in my face. You know, tell me to get the fuck out of here like they do in the movies. Toss me out on my ass!”

“Sir, if you don’t leave right now, I’m going to call the police.”

“All right,” I say. “Time to go.” I link my arm in John’s and start walking him out into the street.

***

At the next bar, a restaurant-slash-sports-bar, Scott and I park on a couple of bar stools and order two “Beer-garitas.”

A few minutes later, John and Rockey appear. “We got cut off,” Rockey says.

“Already?” I ask. “You just walked in.”

“I know,” Rockey says. “They took one look at this tore-up twink, and they were like, ‘We can’t serve you guys.’”

John looks around like a baby taking in the world for the first time. “I want a drink.”

“Uh, too bad,” Rockey says. “You can’t get one ‘cause you can’t act right.”

“What did I do?”

Rockey sighs.

John looks at me. “I’m gonna yell.”

“Don’t—”

“AAAAHHHHHH! AAAAAAHHHHHH! AAAAAAAAHHHH!”

None of us try to shut him up because we know that if we do, he’s just gonna yell louder. Undeterred, John yells for a very uncomfortable thirty seconds while all the other bar patrons, mostly middle-aged couples trying to watch a basketball game, glare at us.

It takes the manager a few minutes before he makes his way over to kick John and Rockey out of the second bar.

“This isn’t fair,” Rockey protests. “Why do I keep getting kicked out with him?”

“We’re just gonna finish our drinks,” Scott says, “and we’ll meet you outside.”

Scott and I spend a few uneventful minutes at the bar before the manager makes his way back over to us.

“Uh, excuse me, guys, but we’re having a problem with your friend.”

“He left,” I say. “What’s the problem?”

“Well, uh, we think it might be best if you all leave,” the manager says.

“I understand,” Scott says. “We’re just gonna finish these drinks. He’s already outside…”

As Scott tries to appease the situation, I look over the manager’s shoulder and see my 30-year-old best friend John banging on a glass door and trying to get back in. Two employees from the bar are pulling the door handle shut while John tries to pull it open from the other side. John squeezes one arm through the opening, waving his hand in the bar like an octopus tentacle.

Rockey’s standing behind him, smoking a cigarette with one comically ineffective hand held out toward the situation.

I burst out laughing, right in the 22-year-old manager’s face.

“Leah!” Scott says.

“I’m sorry,” I say through chuckles. “It’s just so ridiculous.” I point at John. “How is that not funny?”

“I really think it’s best if you just go,” Manager says. “This is a family restaurant—”

As he continues on his manager schpiel, I notice two older women at the end of the bar glaring at John and talking in a horrified whisper, their hands clasped to their chests in shock. I feel a rage start to build up inside of me while I watch their stern faces decide that my best friend is a bad person based on this travesty. I stand up. “Fuck this place!”

Scott turns to me, his eyes wide. “Oh God, now you, too? What happened?”

“Nothing. I’m just done with this stupid bar.” I take one last gulp from my Beergarita. The other bar patrons can no longer pretend that they’re not watching us.

“These people are a bunch of judgmental fucks!” I announce. I exit dramatically, leaving a stunned Scott sitting at the bar alone.

***

I have an ongoing debate with a comic friend of mine about speeding. He never drives over the speed limit. I do it all the time.

“You’re so cautious,” I say.

“Not about everything,” he says. “Just about some things. And I’m like that for a reason.”

“Why? Did you used to speed?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I got about nine speeding tickets.”

“Hmm,” I say. “And then your insurance went up?”

“Yeah, and I just figured out that it wasn’t worth it to speed. And you know what? I haven’t gotten any tickets since then.” He nudges me, knowing I received my most recent speeding citation in February. “I learned from my experience.”

“Well, I’ve had at least 15 tickets,” I say. “And I got my license taken away for a month once.”

“See?” he says. “You never learn.”

“Oh, I learn,” I say. “I just love to drive fast. It’s worth the risk to me.”

***

I completely forget about Married Man until John and Rockey finally fall asleep, and it’s just the two of us staring at each other.

“Let me help you take your boots off,” he says.

I hold up my right leg, and he yanks the boot off my foot. Left leg, same thing. I stand there for a minute and then walk over to the empty living room couch, plopping down and covering up with a blanket.

He appears behind the back of the couch. Without saying anything, he reaches over and picks me up, cradled in his arms, and walks me down the hall.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” I say. “But I think I liked it.”

He laughs, puts me down on an air mattress set up in one of the guest bedrooms. I look up at him, but before he can lean down and kiss me, I blurt out, “I can’t do this.”

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I know you’re married.” Then I get up and walk out. Sure, I may have taken a trip or two to Whore Island in my day, but only when it was worth the risk.

“Hey,” Married Man says.

I turn back.

“Are you all right?” They always ask that, the men with wives and girlfriends, when I leave.

I laugh. “Uh, yeah, I think I’ll be okay.”

And suddenly, I figure out why I’ve been attracting so many men who are in serious relationships with other women. It’s simple, really.

They’re bored, and I’m not boring.

Whether or not I’m crazy, well, that’s arguable. I can’t turn down the prospect of an adventure, so I surround myself with people who are impulsive like me. I have loud, weird friends that I will fight for, even if they’re clearly being the assholes in the situation. On any given day, I might get a speeding ticket, jump into a canal, or announce to a bar full of people that they’re a bunch of judgmental fucks.

But on the flip side, I also have an open mind, I’m passionate, and I’ve never hesitated to take a chance when it came to something that was worth it to me.

When you’re an extreme person, it’s hard to find someone who can deal with that. It’s hard, but it’s possible. I know that when John, Rockey, and I take turns looking after each other. I know that when I watch Scott rolling around naked in his backyard in broad daylight, and then I see his wife Jenny, wearing a sombrero and a pink bathrobe, walk over to him not to admonish him, but to slap him in the ass as hard as she can before laughing and running away.

Not everyone gets married for love. Some people decide to get married because maybe there was no other option. Or maybe they felt obligated to “become an adult.” Or maybe it represented some kind of stability and consistency that appealed to them. Or maybe they chose the safe way, and they like me because I’m the opposite of that.

I am the risk.

I get it now. Anyone would be taking a risk if they picked me over the safety of a responsible and respectable woman without such an extreme personality. You’d have to be a little crazy to choose me.

You’d have to be the kind of person who jumps.