Saturday 8/11, around 11am, the FDR northbound...
The weekend is finally happening. It took only 3 billion emails to coordinate everyone's schedules and make this a reality. The plan has evolved somewhat; Alex's mom fell and broke her ankle a couple weeks ago, and this makes her understandably reluctant to sign up for cooking for approximately ten people- more if you consider that both Ed and Tom eat a lot more than you would believe an individual person weighing less than an African bull elephant could eat. If Tom dies this weekend I will recommend an autopsy, simply so that I can see them pull out of his gut the longest tapeworm ever seen.
About 15 minutes into the trip, I almost get my chance to make that recommendation, as it becomes painfully clear that no one has ever explained to Tom what those white dashed lines on the highway mean, or for that matter, what the solid white line on the side means. We are caravaning- I am driving a rental with Keiko and Ed, and Tom is driving his car with Michael and Carrie. Keiko, Ed and I visibly wince as we watch Tom & co. nearly die in a fiery wreck. Although I privately figured that what with guns and skydiving, somebody's going to die this weekend, I wasn't expecting it to happen 30 seconds out of Manhattan.
For the rest of our 80-mile trip to the Liberty Paintball range, which is our first stop, every time I look in my rearview mirror, Tom is drifting out of his lane and into someone else's. He desperately needs driving tutoring. But we make it to the range, which is in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York. As we start up a winding dirt road that looks like it has previously functioned as an artillery range (which, given the nature of this place, is possible), I notice a sign advising us to keep our windows rolled up past this point. Nice. We're apparently driving through a field with stray paintballs flying around it. And livestock. There is livestock grazing in this field. Only it's circus-freak livestock, including something that must have resulted from a llama raping a toy poodle.
Suddenly, in my mirror I see Tom's car suddenly lurch to a stop, and see Tom come flying out of the driver's seat and head for a tree. We are 300 yards from the parking lot and the bathroom, but apparently Tom has to go NOW. If, when Derek Jeter hit home runs, he rounded third base, and about 1 foot from home stopped, unzipped, and peed right there on the field because he just couldn't wait until he got to the dugout, he'd be just like Tom. Only about 3 billion times more athletic and with a propensity for dating supermodels.
Tom & co. rejoin us in the parking lot, and as we group together, I notice the following things:
1) There are a LOT of people here. I have never been paintballing before, so I imagined that it would more or less just be us and maybe a few other random people running around the woods somewhere cheerfully squeezing off a few rounds. Instead, small armies are massing. If all of us are going to be playing together, there's going to be a lot of ammo flying around.
2) We congregate around our trunks to get out everything we brought with us. Which is to say, we get out sneakers to wear instead of our flip-flops. Similarly, the occupants of the other cars that are arriving are congregating around their trunks and pulling out what they brought with them- combat fatigues, combat boots, fancy helmets with visors, Batman-style utility belts with numerous canisters of paintsballs in them, and finally, guns. THESE PEOPLE HAVE BROUGHT THEIR OWN GUNS. And they are large, high-tech looking guns. We of course are renting all our equipment from Liberty paintball. I say a silent prayer that they are going to rent us large, high-tech looking guns.
Minutes later, I file my prayer for "Large, High-Tech Looking Guns" in my mental file of Unanswered Prayers, right between "Laetitia Casta" and "Large, Talented Offensive Linemen for the 2007 Rams". The guns we are given looks like props from The Untouchables. Our helmets are perfect, if we're going to be given lances and horses and are going to joust with the enemy. And my fatigues are quite possibly the ones Marlon Brando was wearing in 'Apocalpypse Now'.
Our guns come with about 20 paintballs in them, which is probably not going to be enough for an entire afternoon of this, so MK ponies up $70 for a case of paintballs, which means 2000 paintballs. We fill up all our guns, and still have hundreds of them left. Somehow the sight of my fully loaded weapon, combined with all the excess ammo, makes me feel a little better that we are not going to be slaughtered like cattle.
We are assigned to the Red team, along with about 25 other people, and marched to the first battleground, which is a field with several small buildings on it, presumably to simulate urban combat. Our team is congregating in the woods across the path from the battlefield. One of the guys ahead of me, as he passes a wooden obstacle, decides to test fire his gun at close range:
RATATATATATATATAT... green paint is exploding everywhere!
I haven't fired my gun yet, so I flip the safety off ol' Betsy (my brother, in Special Forces with the Marines in Iraq, says it's vitally important to name your gun, preferably after a woman) and fire at the nearest obstacle:
spit............... after a long slow arc, a single paintball makes a soft plop on the wood.
uh oh.
The guy ahead of me's friend also tries out his gun:
RATATATATATATATATATATATATATATAT!
Maybe I was doing it wrong. I point my gun at the wood and hold down the trigger:
spit................................ plop.
oh god.
There is no more time to wonder how my minuteman rifle is going to hold up against the M-60s other people seem to have, as we have now all gathered in the woods. A horn has sounded! The game is on!! What do we do?? I turn to ask Ed but everyone is racing forward toward the battlefield like crazy people. OK, we run at the battlefield like crazy people then. I'm armed! I'm ready! Glory to our righteous cause!! I am running forward like a crazy person, past wooden obstacles and small buildings. OH SHIT! Several streams of green are headed right for me! I dive forward behind a small obstacle as it explodes in green paint. RATATATATATATATATATATAT!
I am still alive! The obstacle protected me! I look to my left and right, and see other Red team members. They are all firing! RATATATATATATATATATAT! I must contribute! Kill the enemy! I peer out from the right side of my haven and see some of the enemy firing from a house 20 yards away. I will kill them! I fire my gun:
spit.......................spit......................spit
This gun does not seem to fire remotely straight. I have harmlessly hit the building. They are now aware of me in there and fire back:
RATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATAT!
Again, I duck behind the wood as it explodes in a shower of green paint. I try peering around the left side of the wood. I see several of the enemy coming over a ridge 20 yards away. I fire at them:
spit.......................spit......................spit
Hmm, I have hit vegetation. I duck back behind the wood.
RATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATAT!
Green paint is exploding all around me. I look to the left and right again. Wait, where are all the other Red team members?? I can't even poke my head out from where I am since my obstacle is now under fire from both sides. I am pinned down! I need backup!! Dammit, how do I call in an airstrike???
Wait, what's that? A horn is sounding. The game is over! I am alive! I stand up from behind my obstacle and see that I am nearly surrounded by Blue team members. I take this as a poor sign about whether we won. This is confirmed moments later when I find out we were eliminated rather quickly, and that as a team we were almost completed wiped out. (The game is over when you capture the other team's flag and get it back to your end of the field). So, I am one of the few survivors, but it is difficult to be too excited about this as my only actual contribution to the team was to shoot the side of a house repeatedly, as well as a tree and a few shrubs.
I rejoin the team and we are marched back to the waiting area. Apparently most of the others were killed quickly. We agree, upon reflection, that we should probably have a better strategy than running forward in a chaotic, totally uncoordinated fashion. The 6 of us agree that we will work as team in the next game.
The next game is in the woods. We are grouped at one end of the range. There is a gully, rocky ledges, occasional abandoned shed looking things, and the other team's flag is apparently over a high ridge. I'm not a military genius, but I'm pretty sure you don't want to be the team trying to go uphill through the woods. But whatever, sometimes you're that army.
The horn has sounded! The game is on! We are veterans now! We quickly decide to make our way along the left side of the wooded area. We move forward for 15-20 seconds, and as we approach an abandoned shed, a hail of paintballs comes our way. WHERE are they? I can't see anything! We all hit the ground. I dive behind a short ridge of earth. I poke my rifle over the top of the ridge, and peek over it to try and see where the enemy is.
RATATATAT!
I duck back down as the ridge explodes in green paint. I can't tell where the shots are coming from! What's going on?? I'm pinned down again; if I try to retreat I'll have to move across a short open area that's clearly within range of the enemy. I poke my gun over the top again and am stung my a green paintball hitting my hand.
YOU'RE DEAD!! YOU'RE DEAD!! YOU'RE DEAD!!
Some crazy woman from the other team, hidden somewhere in the trees, is screaming at me. I KNOW I'M DEAD, YOU CRAZY BITCH!! I stand up, massaging my hand, and put my gun over my head in the agreed upon signal for being already dead, and therefore not eligible to be shot at anymore. I walk back to the outside of the field. Apparently I am one of the first to die. I got off about 3 shots, all of which I assume, though I could not conclusively verify, hit trees.
In short order I am joined one-by-one by the other members of our group. We are apparently being slaughtered on the left side of the field. From the steady stream of other Red Team members joining us, we are also being slaughtered on the right side. We have a pretty good view of the center area, and our flag, and in short order I watch our center get annihilated and our flag disappear. Not long after that the horn sounds again. We have lost. Our entire team has been wiped out except for a couple of guys pinned down in a pile of wood.
We march back to the staging area and agree on three important things: 1) we suck at this, 2) there are some crazy people on the other team, who from the way they talk are ex-military, and 3) we took too long and were too cautious coming around the left side, which allowed the other team too much time to cross midfield and set up to take us out.
Soon we are marched to the third game. It is on a field meant to resemble WWII: mostly an open field, with shells of tanks and machine gun nests scattered about. We survey the field, and agree that we will sprint down the right side and set up at a group of tanks just before midfield. From there we should be able to get some good trench warfare going.
We wait for the horn to sound. I think back to junior year high school English class, during which we watched the movie Gallipoli. In the final scene, as the main character comes out of the trench and starts charging the Turkish machine gun nests, he thinks back to training as a sprinter:
Jack: What are your legs?
Archy Hamilton: Springs. Steel springs.
Jack: What are they going to do?
Archy Hamilton: Hurl me down the track.
Jack: How fast can you run?
Archy Hamilton: As fast as a leopard.
Jack: How fast are you going to run?
Archy Hamilton: As fast as a leopard.
Jack: Then lets see you do it.
Then, in slow motion, he gets cut down by the machine guns, as did most of the Australian infantry that fought that day at Gallipoli. Like all movies we watched in high school English class, this movie is a serious, serious downer.
The horn sounds! The battle is on! I run at full sprint down the right side of the field. My legs are steel springs, hurling me like a leopard down the field! I am ahead of all the others, and as I approach two tanks about 1/3 of the way across the field, I notice that there are people in them. WAIT?? HOW CAN THEY BE...
RATATATATATATATATAT!!!
I am struck, at close range, by a barrage of fire from the two tanks. I am half spun around by the impacts. I am well within ten feet of both people who shot me, and the rules clearly state that you're not supposed to shoot people at that close a range, because you might hurt someone. And sure enough, at extremely close range those fucking paintballs HURT. I raise my gun over my head and stalk off the field.
Fortunately, my getting killed has alerted the others to the presence of the Blue Team. There is now a spirited firefight going on. This is of little comfort to me, as I am dead, and I didn't even fire so much as a single round. I am angry. I am an extremely sore loser. I am also armed, with a gun, and right now I have a deep, passionate desire to shoot someone with it. Gun control laws now make a much more visceral kind of sense.
We are getting annihilated again. More Red Team members are joining me on the side. An argument is springing up in the field between a Red Team guy and a Blue Team guy. Blue Team guy is a teenage boy in a bright yellow full body flak suit. He looks like he's on break from his job with the HAZMAT squad. Red Team guy is complaining that he shot Yellowjacket twice, and Yellowjacket kept playing. Yellowjacket is saying whatever, if he got shot in the chest or belt Red Team guy's gun he wouldn't be able to feel it, so it's not his fault. THAT'S CAUSE YOU'RE WEARING A GODDAMN SPACESUIT, YOU FUCKING CHEATER!!!!
I have officially begun hating the Blue Team.
For one thing, in order to move their team across 2/3 of the field AND set up inside the obstacles in the time it took me to merely run across 1/3 of the field, they must all have been running twice as fast as me, and that's bullshit. I run fast, and most of that team is clearly older than I am. Yellowjacket isn't, but he's not one of the ones who shot me. No wonder we're getting wiped out each time; Blue Team must be starting into the field ahead of the initial horn.
Although we hold out longer this time, this time our entire team actually is wiped out, and the game ends. We are 0-3, and as we march back to the staging area we are not in good moods. Carrie has to leave sometime within the hour, and there is a short debate about whether to quit and leave, or try to play one more game. We resolve to play one more time.
We are marched to the fourth field of the day. This one is another urban combat scenario. The fake buildings are heavily stacked toward the right side of the field. For the first time, almost the entire team gets together to discuss strategy. Most people decide to press forward through the buildings on the right, in the hopes of drawing the main part of their force that way. They are aggressive, and by now likely to be overconfident. A much smaller party, made up mostly of our little group, will sneak up through the woods on the far left of the field and hope to take their flank by surprise. Of course, this leaves almost no one in the center, and our flag is dead center, so Keiko and I resolve to run straight forward into a house about 20 yards into the center of the field which has a good view of a wide area, where we will try to hold the center as long as possible.
The horn sounds. Keiko and I make a mad dash for the house, and make it there safely. In seconds we are under heavy attack from the center-right. Keiko is on that side and is doing a great job of holding them back. Blue Team is again slightly uphill of our team, and so they can see the mass of our team advancing on the right, and so they bite and send most of their troops in that direction. I am on the center-left side of the house, and I have a clear view up a long grassy path through other fake buildings to the flank of the Blue Team's area, about 50 yards away. I can see a small group of them, including Yellowjacket, congregating and gesturing toward the right side of the field, where our small raiding party should by now be advancing. I cannot let them discover our raiding party!
By now I have gotten used to how my gun fires, so I position myself low around the corner of the house, aim high, and start firing. Because I'm so far away, the sound of my gun doesn't stand out from the background noise of firing that's going on, and so the group of Blue Teamers doesn't realize at first that they are under attack, and I hit 2 of them before they know what's happening. TAKE THAT, FUCKING BLUE TEAM CHEATERS!!! I pump my fist as I see the two of them lift their guns and walk off.
RATATATATATATAT!
The ground next to me and side of the house start exploding in green paint. Oh shit, counterattack!! I dive back behind the house and hunker down. From that point, I trade fire for a while with 2-3 Blue Teamers. They all have those fucking semiautomatics. I can't get off more than 1-2 shots before having to duck and cover as 300 paintballs of return fire come my way. At some point, I turn to look and see that Keiko is gone. Oh crap, now I'm all that's left holding the middle. I start taking turns firing from both sides. I am under heavy attack from the right, but most of the attention there is still on the main portion of Red Team, which is on the right side of the field.
As I come back to the left side, I see that Yellowjacket has actually cllimbed into the tower of one of the fake buildings, presumably to act as a sniper. He's like a modern day Charles Whitman. It has a clear view of the whole left side of the field, where our raiding party should be. I can't let him discover them, so I start shooting at him. Of course, it always takes a couple shots to calibrate how this stupid excuse for a gun actually aims, so I don't actually hit Yellowjacket, and by the time I have a good bead on him I am forced to dive for cover as his semiautomatic return fire sprays the area.
What follows is 6-8 minutes of deeply personal, one-on-one attempts by each of us to kill the other. I am vastly outgunned, but I manage to drive him from the tower. He disappears for a couple minutes, and when I poke my head out for a quick look, I see him coming around the corner of the next house to mine, momentarily exposed. For whatever reason, he's surprised that I've caught him, which gives me enough time to get my gun up and shoot him twice in the gut. He looks down at the green paint, and then ducks behind the house.
WHAT? CHEATER!! YOU'RE DEAD!! YOU'RE DEAD!! YOU'RE DEAD!!
I duck back behind my house. I'm so fucking pissed right now. I want to hunt him down and beat his pansy cheating ass to a bloody pulp with the butt of my pathetic rifle. I poke my head around the side of the house and immediately get shot right in the forehead by Yellowjacket, now ensconced in the nearest house. The shot hurts like a mutherfucker, and I snap back around into my hidey hole.
As I massage my now-green scalp, I realize that I have two options: (1) I refuse to be turned into a cheater like Yellowjacket, play by the rules, and march off the field, or (2) I hunt him down like the worthless coward he is and beat him to death. Although I'm leaning strongly toward option 2 right now, I figure the jail time will put a serious crimp in my future plans, and so I go with option 1.
I'm done. I've had enough paintball for one day. I raise my gun over my head and march off the field.
While I'm waiting in the holding area, I realize that I'm orbital about Yellowjacket and his cheating Blue Bastard team, and so to calm myself down I petition the Fates to provide a future for him in which he marries some hot chick, who then proceeds to sleep with all of his friends before divorcing him and taking half his money, which sends him into a depression that causes him to pick up a hooker in his town's red light district, who turns out to be a man in drag that clubs him over the head, takes his wallet, and fucks him in the ass, leaving him with no money, and HIV. Cheered by this vision of the future, I wait a few more minutes, until I hear the horn. The game is over.
Up come Ed, MK, Carrie, Tom, and Keiko, who was waiting in a different holding area. Apparently, we have won! Our raiding party was successful, and Ed, with covering fire from the rest, snagged the Blue flag and got it back to our side. Fucking cheaters lost! I am ecstatic. Soon Yellowjacket and his buddies come back from the field. Yellowjacket looks really down. It's awesome. I am suffused with the feeling that Russians call "zloradost", and Germans call "schadenfreude", the feeling of glee you get when someone else is suffering, and you think they deserve it.
We turn in our stuff, and pile into the cars to head back to the city, to drop off Carrie and head over to Tom's. Tonight we're having a home-cooked Italian meal...
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