Jersey Representin’

Here’s another little Tennessee story for you. There’s more, I just needed to take a little break from them…

My friends and I like to take fun vacations. Which I’m sure you’ve already figured out from reading the previous Tennessee blogs. Prior to that trip, we had all spent a week together in Puerto Rico back in the spring. It was a great time and there are plenty of good stories I should write about for you. While there, we discovered that Rincon, PR is some sort of winter hideaway for Jersey slackers. There are hordes of young people that spend their winters in PR surfing and bartending, then, come spring time, they head home to do the same thing back in Jersey. Really not such a bad idea…

Anyway, I figured this trip to Tennessee wouldn’t involve bumping into people from Jersey. I was right…for the most part. We were Jersey free until the night we went to the strip club. We actually met up with them on the way home…in the car.

Yes, I said in the car. We were on our way home from The Mouse’s Ear (I know, I know…it’s ridiculous, but I didn’t name it.) when we discover that we’re a bit lost. But, I suppose that’s what you get when you ask a stripper for directions. Shame on us. So we’re tooling around downtown Knoxville, I think A might have been driving. Or was it G? Of course I have no idea, because I was drunk, in the back seat of my own car staring out the window and reliving the rafter humping in Technicolor.

We wind up stopped at a light in what seemed to be the middle of the U of Tennessee campus, and I’m snapped out of my drunken day dream by some guy frantically waving his hands at me from the car next to us. I roll down the window and with my head still in a fog, he starts rattling off questions about where someplace is. Everyone else in the car is now asking me what he wants. There’s something familiar about this guy, but I couldn't quite place it. I was a little too drunk to notice that he didn’t have a southern accent. In fact, he sounded a lot like me. And he was very animated, talking real fast and waving his hands.

I finally respond to him…

B: Sorry man, we’re from Jersey. And we’re lost. I have no frigin idea what you’re looking for.

Guy: Hey…we’re from Jersey too. Newark. We’re looking for blah blah blah (I can’t remember what he said.)

B: Oh well…good luck.

G: Yeah, well we can’t find it…so you guys wanna buy some ecstasy?

B: Nah man…we’re all wasted. We want to go home and go to bed.

G: Ok. Take it easy.

We all start laughing…of course the guy from Newark that we run into in Tennessee wants to sell us drugs…who wouldn’t this happen to!? And sure enough, as the light changes and we pull away, I look over and see his license plates. I love the Jersey camaraderie though. Just because we’re from the same state and he can’t find the “clients” he’s looking for, we’re automatically ok to offer drugs to. How the hell did he know we didn’t all work together in the DEA or something? I guess we looked delinquent enough…which is a definite possibility after our night.

Perhaps people like that are why the rest of the country hates our entire state. Oh well…fuck ‘em. It’s the greatest place in the world.