This one was written by pre-PF guitar player, Jay Young.  Aside from being a really good musician, he is also probably the funniest person I have ever met.  While not directly related to Plaid Faction, it's still a great story that has many Plaidalicous elements to it.  So check it out...

                          My Kingdom for some Underpants...

During my sophomore and part of my junior year at Baylor I was in a heavy metal band in Dallas.  Not actually in Dallas itself, but another small town named Waxahachie near Dallas.  One of Frank's best friends was Jarrett (from previous stories) and I ended up getting hooked up with him.  He was learning to play guitar and loved heavy metal.  His parents had a huge house and a separate garage with an apartment above it.   Jarrett had turned the apartment into a studio for jamming / party house.  I would go up to Waxahachie almost every weekend and practice with the band during the day and get rip roaring drunk at night. 

Jarrett's garage apartment was THE hang out for Waxahachie, so we usually had 20 - 40 people there each night, bonging beers and playing Sega.  During the winter it would be freezing and the only source of heat was a big gas heater.  One of the things I remember the best was that, whenever the heater was running, all of the smoke from everyone's cigarettes would get trapped above 3 feet, and all the clean air would be trapped below 3 feet making for a very surreal environment - almost like a reverse swimming pool with smoke instead  of water.  Consequently, all the smokers would stand up in the smoke to get more and all the non smokers would sit on the floor to be away from it.  I'm sure there are many more stories to come about the nights in that apartment, but this is all to set up some of the characters from the Waxahachie gang. 

I've told about Jarrett, Bill, Candice, Robbie, and Kyle in earlier stories, but two other guys in this story are Jeremy and J.C.  J.C. was a really cool party guy from Waxahachie who would also come into town from school on some of the weekends to party with us, he would also be the one to replace me as lead guitarist in the band.  Jeremy was our drummer and looked like Jim Morrison with a good tan and gray eyes.  He was one of the best looking guys I've ever seen and a fantastic drummer. 

One day I came home from class and Frank told me that Jarrett had called - Jeremy had died.  The story that got pieced together was that some friends were driving  home from a party in a truck with Jeremy in the back, but when they got home he was no longer back there.  They figured that in typical Jeremy style he had simply jumped out at a stop sign to mess with them, but later the police found his body on the road.  Apparently he had fallen out of the back of the truck on the highway and some cars had hit him.

It was still really sad to loose someone that we had spent so much time with.  Sadder, more for the gang in Waxahachie that had grown up with him.  That weekend Frank and I drove up to Dallas for the funeral.  By this time Jarrett and Bill had an apartment just outside of Dallas, so we stayed with them.  The funeral was a real downer and by the time it was over we were all ready to drink heavily.  That night, everyone was at Jarrett's apartment drinking and talking.  Though the overall mood was somber, things eventually started getting wild (can you have that many people drinking and not have it get a little wild?)  This is where J.C. comes in.  We were both really hammered, and J.C. had this great idea that we should do something totally crazy just to take everyone's mind off of Jeremy. 

Let me add at this point that Kyle is the undisputed bad-ass of anyone that I've mentioned in any of these stories.  He was really into karate for a while, but he was just a damn good fighter and loved to do things like grab people by the pinky or put his thumbs in their adam's apple - real sadistic stuff.  And he was strong as a m.f.'er too.  Fortunately we were real good friends, but even the playful beatings I would periodically receive from him were things to be dreaded.  Of course, I'm a total puss, so that's not saying much.  Anyway, back to the story . . . I think J.C. was more interested in getting me in trouble than in actually helping anyone over their grief, because he had the great idea that I should drop Kyle's pants in the middle of the party.  At first I thought that was the most suicidal thing I've ever heard - I'd rather kick Mike Tyson in the nuts!  But J.C. was a real smooth talker and I was really drunk.  He explained that I had nothing to worry about.  He would go up to Kyle and put his arm around him and start talking to him and I would sneak up behind them, yank down Kyle's pants and yell "Hey!  Check me out!" a-la Weird Science.  That bastard eventually talked me into it.

I watched J.C. go up to Kyle and put his arm around him.  I snuck up.  I grabbed Kyle's sweatpants and yelled "Hey!  Check me out!" as I dropped them.  Then my heart stopped.  I was not staring at Kyle's underwear.  I was face to cheek with his naked ass, which meant that the roomful of people on the other side of him were getting the full Monty.  This was one of the few times in my life that I can truly say time stood still.  I was instantly panicked.  This had gone WAY farther than it was supposed to.  I remember seeing the _expression and hearing the screams of some of the girls on the other side of the room.  In a split second I was bolting away into the back room as fast as I could, as Kyle quickly pulled his pants back up.

True to his word, J.C. grabbed him and I found out later that Bill and Jarrett helped restrain him too.  I was huddled in a bedroom in the dark in the back saying "Oh S**t" over and over, knowing that any moment Kyle would be back and would not give me a friendly beating, but would likely put me in the hospital.  It seemed like I waited back there forever before J.C. came back and told me that Kyle had calmed down.  Scared out of my mind, I walked back into the main room where everyone was still laughing.  Kyle, apparently was not as furious as most people would have been and I apologized profusely.  I think he hit me a few times - hard, but playfully and he swore he would get me back.  If it wasn't such a weird event, and if we weren't all drunk it could have been a real bad situation, but I got out of it about as good as I ever could have hoped.

There were two more instances in the future in that apartment, however when Kyle tried to get me back.  One time I managed to put up enough of a struggle that he gave up quickly, but another time he and Bill ganged up on me.   Inasmuch as I'm the first to admit that I'm a puss, I put up one hell of a fight and though they picked me up and threw me around, they were never able to get my drawers off.  Eventually they gave me credit for being tougher than they thought and let me go.  I still have a feeling that one of these days, though, Kyle is gonna get me back.  I've seen him a few times over the years, and invariably someone brings up this story.  Maybe he'll drop my hospital gown in the nursing home.