Liquid Baby and the Groin of Fire

After losing my job at Amway, I got a job at a company named CompuLit. CompuLit had found a niche cataloging documents that were being subpoenaed in lawsuits. This was in 1993, when personal computers were just becoming widespread in offices. We would take reams of documents, scan them, and enter various information about them into a database, so that lawyers working on the case could easily find the documents they were looking for. This was incredibly boring work, and I wasn’t particularly good at it, but I became friends with a manager and got promoted to a position where I was monitoring other employees’ work. The nice thing about this was that nobody was monitoring my work, so they had no idea how lousy I was at it.

My friend and roommate Chris worked there too, which made the job a lot more tolerable. We used to entertain ourselves by slightly altering the labels on bottles of Liquid Paper correction fluid to create far more interesting products, such as “Squid Paint,” “Quid Pro Quo,” and my personal favorite, “Liquid Baby.” The company’s suggestion box was another source of amusement. One day I spent an hour writing up a carefully reasoned and passionately argued missive urging the company to acquire a trained monkey to go around the office, refilling the employees’ coffee cups. It was two pages long, and included a cost-benefit analysis indicating how much the monkey would pay for itself within a few months with increased productivity. At the end of this manifesto, I wrote “P.S.: Please disregard my earlier request for a soda badger.”

Despite these antics, the management tolerated me for over a year. This company was apparently one of only a handful doing this sort of work, so they had clients all over the country. In some cases, they would actually fly employees out of state to work onsite. When the opportunity came up to fly to Los Angeles, I volunteered. My wife, Julia, wasn’t thrilled, but I wasn’t going to say no to a free trip to Southern California. The company paid for our airfare and hotel and gave us $30 a day for food. I had never spent $30 on food in a single day in my life. I was there for three weeks. Sure, I spent the days pulling out staples, but at night I… well, I mostly watched bad movies on Showtime.

The job was actually in Burbank, and someone told me that the Hollywood Sign was just on the other side of the hills from the apartment complex in which we were staying. One evening after work I set off to determine the veracity of this claim. I had no hiking shoes with me, so I wore my brown docksiders (still acceptable in 1994). I found a path behind the apartments leading up into the hills.

After a long, steep hike, I reached a more-or-less horizontal path that snaked along the top of a ridge. Having noted that the sun had set around 7pm the night before, I had set out on my journey at just after 5pm. I figured that I had until 6pm at the latest to find the sign. Otherwise it would be dark before I got back, and I’d never find my way back to the apartment.

I had a vague idea where the sign was, and every time I rounded a corner I expected to see it. But it was never there. There was always one more bend to follow. I checked my watch: 6pm. Halfway to sunset. I started to jog, thinking I would round one more bend and then head back if I didn’t see it.

I rounded the bend – and there it was. Nothing spectacular, but clearly the back side of a giant sheet metal H. It was still a few hundred yards off, but it was within reach. 6:05. Ok, I rationalized, if I run to it, put my hand on it just so I can say I touched it, then run back, I can still make it before dark.

I ran to the sign, finding an old wire fence and some threatening signs that attempted to dissuade me from going further. I ducked through the wire and clambered across the steep hillside to get to the sign. It really is nothing special: just some really big sheet metal letters held up by a framework of metal pipes. I touched the metal, but it seemed anticlimactic.

The letters of the Hollywood Sign are fifty feet tall. That’s the height of a five story building. Now imagine if that five story building were built on the side of a mountain, with a near-vertical drop of several hundred feet more below it. Surround it with fences and scary looking signs. Throw some rattlesnakes and mountain lions in between you and civilization, for good measure. The sun is about to set. What do you do?

If you’re twenty-four year old me, you climb the Y. I think I picked the Y so that I could say, “Because it was there.”

It took another five minutes or so to get to the crux of the Y, by which point I was shaking from fear and exhaustion. If had slipped, I would have fallen a hundred feet or more onto jagged rocks. If had possessed a working brain cell in my head, it might also have occurred to me that I could easily have sprained an ankle and been stuck on the hillside with the mountain lions for the night. But at twenty-four I was, of course, invincible. Not only was I immune to slips and sprains; I could actually warp time with my mind. It had taken me over an hour to get out here, but I was convinced that I could make the return trip in less than half the time. I was all-powerful! I was Y-Man!

I was going to die alone in the cold if I didn’t get down from the damn sign this second.

Having taken a few seconds to exult in my triumph, I scurried down and headed back down the path as quickly as I could. I told myself I’d have climbed to the top if I’d have had ten more minutes, but in reality being halfway up the Y was about all the excitement I could take. My whole body was trembling with adrenaline as I sprinted along the path.

Run, run, run! The sun was going down. Light was fading. RUN! From my vantage point on the ridge, I could see buildings in the distance, but I couldn’t make out the apartment building. No matter. Buildings are buildings. RUN!

Stop.

Something is wrong. None of this looks familiar. Even in the twilight, I am sure that I’ve never been here before. Oh God, I missed the trail. In the dim light I hadn’t seen the fork that led down to the apartments. It could be fifty feet or 500 feet back.

Think, stupid, think!

Two choices: Waste precious minutes trying to find the trail, and then stumble along in the dark, or... Make a beeline to those buildings. Screw trails. Go cross-country.

I dove, quite literally, into the underbrush. I clawed my way through the scrub, occasionally cresting at a ridge, where I could make out lights in the distance and verify that I was still headed toward civilization. Sometimes I walked, sometimes I crawled, sometimes I virtually swam through a sea of prickly branches. At long last, I emerged at the edge of the apartment complex’s parking lot.

I stumbled into my apartment, badly scraped up, filthy and exhausted. I immediately stripped, knowing how susceptible I am to poison oak. I was sure I had crawled through plenty of it, but if I could get the oil off my skin before it penetrated, I might be able to prevent a full-body rash.

I put all my clothes in a plastic bag and jumped in the shower. I showered for a good half hour, scrubbing every inch of my body – even the scrapes and cuts. I dried off and collapsed in bed.

I was simultaneously proud and mortified about my experience, so I didn’t tell anyone at work about it. I just went into work, same as usual, wearing a fresh pair of pants, a long sleeved shirt, and... those damn docksiders.

I had forgotten to wipe down my shoes. My hands touched my shoes, and over the course of the next few days my hands proceeded to spread the noxious oil pretty much everywhere else on my body – yes, including down there. Look, my wife and I were newlyweds, and this was the first time I had been away from her for more than a twelve hour stretch. Do the math.

I flew back to Michigan the day that I woke up with the Groin of Fire. That was possibly the worst day of my life. Imagine sitting in cramped quarters for five hours with a rabid porcupine in your pants, and not being able to do anything about it because everyone around you will think you either (1) have some kind of horrible infectious disease; or (2) are some kind of horrible (and probably infectious) pervert. Let this be a lesson to all of you about touching yourselves. And trespassing. And, you know, stupidity.