Shirts and Skins

Fifty-four days ago...

McDougal and I are out raccoon hunting. I have no idea why. He says it will be good practice for the next six months. He's been saying things like this since we started this road trip a few days ago. By his body language, he seems to be indicating that these statements are fraught with meaning, but it all just sounds like Nostradamus-like open-ended prophesy to me.

We are each carrying a double-barreled shotgun and have one of those flashlights on and elastic band strapped to our heads. We look like deranged coal miners. We are somewhere in the vicinity of Mount Storm, West Virginia, which only adds to the effect. There should be a sign outside town that says "The Original Home of the Deranged Coal Miner." McDougal loves West Virginia because it is easy to score meth. The only way it could possibly be any easier here is if they had it in the gumball machine in the lobby of the Wal-Mart.

My thoughts are distracting me from the instructions McDougal is giving me as he empties another bucket of bait (catfish guts) upwind of our firing position. The smell is atrocious.

"Now, if you're taking your 'coon skins up the hill to sell them, you have to leave one paw on. Because one time, some people sold them a bunch of cats."

He says this with the air of an expert, despite the fact that earlier in the evening he told me he hadn't ever been to Mount Storm before. I wonder if he was lying then, or now. I guess it doesn't matter.

McDougal suddenly goes silent and turns back towards where he parked his truck. After a minute or two I hear what got his attention. Tires on the gravel road. Goddamn, his hearing is sharp...

"Come on," he says, "let's check it out."

McDougal's truck is camouflaged, which is really more effective for blending in on the main street of any West Virginia town than it is for blending into the woods. But the driver of the red Mustang that sat a few hundred yards down the gravel road, windows just beginning to steam, still must not have seen it. Otherwise he would have picked a different place to stop. After all, the woods are full of rednecks and perverts.

Says the raccoon hunter who is sneaking up to his car...

"How the hell did they get all the way up here?" McDougal whispers.

He has a point. We had to use four wheel drive to get up the hilly road, covered with treacherous loose gravel.

"Come on," McDougal says, "let's fuck with them a bit."

McDougal creeps softly up to the car. The big man is part Cherokee, so he can be unbelievably light on his feet when he wants to be. Not a single twig snaps, not a single dry leaf crackles. He peers down into the window, then turns and looks back at me, scrunching his face up in a silent "ooooo!" It is somewhat reminiscent of Bill Cosby, but more... unsettling. He also makes the gesture of a thumb and forefinger loop being repeatedly penetrated by the index finger of the opposite hand. This is generally regarded as an international gesture for vaginal intercourse.

I decide to go up and take a look for myself.

As soon as I arrive at the side of the car, McDougal flips on his coon hunting light. The girl shrieks and I watch the guy's face change from alarm, to shame, to anger all in the span of about two seconds. He reaches out for the latch on the glove box. McDougal taps his shotgun on the window and says, "oh, no you don't."

I was expecting teenagers, but the couple inside are a bit older than that. I would guess early twenties. The girl has a great body on her. She has a promising career ahead of her at the local strip joint. At least until the douchebag with the Mustang knocks her up, since a condom in nowhere in evidence. Maybe she's on the pill, but I doubt it. She doesn't strike me as the kind of girl who thinks that far ahead.

McDougal looks the girl up and down, long and hard. He turns to me, raises his eyebrows and then looks at the guy.

"Hey," McDougal purrs, "maybe we can work out an... understanding here."

Both the guy and the girl turn as white as ghosts.

Absentmindedly pointing the shotgun at the guy, McDougal opens the door and slowly reaches into the car. He reaches down, in between the girls legs. He leans further and further down into the car. The girl shudders as McDougal's hand brushes her inner thigh. He slowly closes his hand around the unopened bottle of Wild Turkey lying on the floorboard.

Then he stands bolt upright, thanks the guy and runs off into the woods, whooping like an indian. I have no choice but to follow.

Goddamn... Sometimes that McDougal scares the hell out of me.

How do you like your eggs... scrambled or fertilized?

MCDOUGAL CAMPAIGN TOUR - DAY 13

Campaign Manager's Journal 9/4/06 - somewhere in Georgia

Went out drinking with McDougal last night. He insisted that I was stressing out over the campaign too much and that if he got me laid it would lighten me up a bit. I had serious doubts about his ability to pick up women. At his best, McDougal is usually incoherent. At his worst... Well, imagine a cross between Hunter S. Thompson, a two-year-old child and a bear. You might be alright if you keep feeding it pills and sweets, but for the love of God... No sudden movements.

It was truly astounding to see the Big Man working his game. He can be unbelievably charismatic when the mood strikes him. Before I knew it we were sitting in a corner booth with two stunning South African stewardesses. These were no mere flight attendants. These girls were 100 percent leggy, blonde, stewardess eye candy.

McDougal decided we should assume fake identities to prevent the girls from tracking us down at a later date. I told my girl that I was tail-gunner on the Space Shuttle. McDougal told his stewardess that he was a park ranger at Devil's Toothbrush National Park. While I was whipping up a quick story about shooting one of the solar panels off of the Mir space station just to annoy the Ruskies, McDougal was leading his girl outside to show her a squirrel nest in a nearby tree. He told her that was where the squirrels went to lay their eggs. She asked McDougal if she could make him a squirrel egg omelet for breakfast in the morning. McDougal just laughed and said "you can't eat squirrel eggs honey, they've got fur on the outside!"

I woke up at about 3:30 this afternoon lying naked in the back of McDougal's bus. I had a used condom on my dick and a raging hangover. I had a speech scheduled for McDougal in Atlanta this morning. I have no idea if he gave it or not. And right now, honestly, I don't really care.

McDougal enrolled in one of my self-help seminars, stayed through the opening exercise, then abruptly left with three women with self-esteem issues.

Catty

You know how McDougal's got that thing where he's always eating cats, right?

Well a couple days ago, I was at the McDougals' place in the Hamptons and he was cooking up some cats on that 30-foot barbecue grill he's got. Then his neighbor, Paula Barbieri, comes over. She's wearing nothing but a six-inch grass skirt and a pair of old school Chuck Taylors. She says to McDougal, "You cookin' those cats again?"

McDougal doesn't even skip a beat. He puts his big mitt on Barbieri's right bosom and says to her, "Me and the boys are gonna be eatin' some pussy tonight. You can either join us, or go home and eat your own."

I'll tell you what ...

Nobody ate any cats that night. That's for damn sure.

McDougal may be a lunatic, but he's SMOOTH with the ladies.

Meeting Mr. McDougal

Ray: Did anyone see McDougal last night? He had a blonde on one arm, the state of Missouri on his cock, and he was yelling at cars something about tit-fucking Paris Hilton with a ship mast. Goddamned crazy McDougal.

Frank: I saw him. After he ditched the blonde, fucking McDougal erected a life-sized statue of Tony Blair out of pats of butter. Then he ate the whole damn thing with a loaf of white bread. Goddamned crazy McDougal.

Ray: that was him? I'll be damned. I thought for sure that couldn't be McDougal, because I saw him 30 minutes earlier eating most of the population of Ontario while listening to an old cassette tape of Jesus Christ Superstar. I didn't think there was any way in hell after all that he could eat the butter Tony, but God Damn that man.

Frank: You saw that, too?

Well you must not have heard about what he did at the office before he left.

Randy and Ted from Accounting were grabassing outside of Melba's cube, and fucking McDougal walks right up to Randy and sucker punches him in the sphincter. His fist went clean through him and came out the other side grasping Randy's abdomen and an unopened pack of chicklets.

He then gives the Chicklets to Melba, but doesn't say a word to her.

He just looks over at Ted, and says, "Unless you want a fistful of hymen and a boot full of lead, I'd hit the road, nippledick."

Of course Ted high-tails it out of there right then.

Then McDougal leans in to Melba and kisses her on the neck.

Of course, she melts like that Tony Blair statue on a hot day in Trafalgar Square.

So he just bends her over the desk and takes her from the rear.

The whole thing took about 8 seconds.

It was the most magical 8 seconds I've ever had the privelege to witness.