In a conversation about gross jobs, Dog Groomer
came up. Only because you have to "express" dogs anal glands. My dog
was having problems back there and the vet suggested I try to do it myself.
Armed with rubber gloves and a roll of paper towels I went for it. I won’t go
into the details but it was one of the most disturbing moments in my life. Definitely
a top five. That got me thinking about what would be on my top 5 most
disturbing moments. It’s tough because I don’t gross out that easily. But strangely,
ketchup and bleeding open wounds gross me out to no end. One thing for sure
that makes the list is my almost dead hooker incident.
I've told the story quite a few times but there’s no better place than here to
put it down in sans serif for all of you to read.
The Almost Dead Hooker - by Kirk Shelton.
Based on true events.
When my band was on tour we saw many things and met many people. There were a
small group of people we would travel with and get to know throughout the tour.
Band members, tour managers, techs, roadies, etc. One of the types of people
you never really talk to or get to know are the truck drivers. If you’re on a
bigger tour the headliners have a full 18 wheeler truck that they cart around their
equipment, stage, lighting and everything else you get when you have a real
tour budget. Mudvayne was nominated for a Grammy, they were one of those bands.
We first became aware of Mudvaynes truck driver in Allentown PA. The venue’s loading
dock was down a side alley and we were pretty impressed with the skill it took
to get that huge trailer down in there. We saw him kind of wipe the sweat from
his brow as he hopped out of the cab. He looked at us with a face of
pride and relief. We looked back and gave him a thumbs up to his good driving
skills. We said something like "damn man good job, I don’t think I could
get my car in that spot" All the while thinking to ourselves that he
probably does stuff like that all the time and it was probably not that big of
a deal to him. Later as we started moving our gear into the club we began to
have loading issues of our own. This place was the most unorganized club we'd
ever played. load on was a pain in the ass, and loading off down roped off corridors,
down stairs and through a sea of sweaty, drunk, self-riotous Mudvayne fans wasn’t
a walk in the park either.
As we finally settle down and cool off from being so frustrated at the loading
situation we see the truck driver walking away from his truck with a duffel
bag. Before our encounter earlier we wouldn’t have noticed but now we kinda
knew this dude. He told us he was off the tour and going to work for some other
better paying tour. Well that sucks, we all thought to ourselves. Right about
then a new driver gets dropped off by a taxi and starts to check over the
truck. We walk over to him and make a point to casually introduce ourselves
since we had just gained a new respect for truckers. He had a little rougher,
unshaven, leathery, unkempt appearance than the last guy but what the hell, he
was a trucker. That’s how truckers are supposed to look right? He hopped into the cab and after he gets
settled he starts to pull out of the alley to get on the road for the next stop
on the tour. As he pulled out we started to hear this loud scraping tearing
metal sound and suddenly our images of seemingly magical skilled masters of the
fine art of maneuvering 70 feet of steel and rubber were fading like this new
driver’s blurry, blue prison tattoos. As if he didn’t hear what we were hearing
he kept pulling forward. We went around to look and we saw his truck inch by
inch ripping the steel framed canvas awning from the front of the club right
out of the concrete wall. He finally realized what it was and stopped. Not
before there was hunks of stucco and painted plaster coating the sidewalk and
the hood of his semi. Welcome to the tour!
This is the guy who Mudvayne is depending on to get their gear from town to
town!?
Jump a week, five
towns and five shows later. We had just played El Paso, Texas which borders
Juarez, Mexico. A big group of guys from the other bands and crew went over to
Juarez. Juarez is where members of another band we had toured with went and
came back with tales of the "Farmacia", pain medication abuse and
drunken gun shooting. ahh México es bueno. So now we’re further east of El
Paso, playing a show in another border town. McAllen Texas, which is pretty
much Mexico. English was the second language there. For some reason, as I was
hanging out at the merch table, explaining to the Mexicans that we can’t accept
Pesos for T-shirts, I start having a conversation with the crazy truck driver
who now had been with us for a week without incident. Half paying attention to
him as he just keeps rambling on about stuff he mentions that he just got out
of prison like 5 years prior. He tells me how he used to run meth and cocaine
for the Hells Angels in the 80's and got busted. At this point I realize this
dude is totally out of his mind, but being naive like I was I gave him the
benefit of the doubt and didn’t fully give up on this guy. There had to be
something good and noble left in him. After all he had a pretty decent trucking
gig for a pretty big band. Right?
Wrong.
A couple days later we find ourselves in Las Vegas. The buzz was hot in the air
about Mudvayne heading south to Mexico to play some huge rock festival. But the
tour is coming to an end. One more show in LA and we head home, Mudvayne to
Mexico. We got to Vegas early and while Mudvayne had a ton of gear to set up we
were just waiting around. Hanging out backstage and in the loading dock with
the other band and some of the crew. It was early afternoon, which was
practically morning for us. We were comparing how sleeping is tough on the
road. V-Shape Mind, the other band on the tour, was still in a van and got
hotel rooms. We were in a tour bus but it was a pretty crappy tour bus with
little to no amenities, while Mudvayne and their crew had new top of the line
Prevost busses with DVD players and stuff in each bunk. At this point crazy trucker
jumps in on the conversation and says "you
have trouble sleepin? ‘cuz I got some pills for that when we were south of the border"
I tried to end the conversation and said "no I sleep pretty good.. Sometimes
I oversleep" then he quickly countered excitedly, "well, I got pills for that too!! Wake you right up!" I’m thinking this
guy is a complete nut, but again, rolling with it. He overheard us talking
about the cool stuff Mudvayne has in their bus and says "hey you should see what I got in my cab". I was curious
and interested since I’d never really been in a real big rig before. So I followed him to the front of his truck
which was backed into the loading zone. I didn’t realize it at the time but I
was the only one to follow him. The group of dudes I was talking with seemed to
conveniently disappear.
"Hop on up" he kind of chokes
out with a voice reminiscent of a pack of Camel Non-Filters. I climb up and sit
in the well weathered driver seat. I bask briefly thinking it was kind of cool
sitting up there. Then he says to take a look. I look around in front of me and
to the passenger seat and don’t see anything unusual. Just another worn out
seat and a slightly more complicated dashboard than I’m used too. But nothing I
didn’t expect. I look at him like "what am I supposed to be seeing
here?"
He then points behind
me toward his sleeper cab. "oh yea, his bunk" I looked around at eye
level for some kind of cool TV or video game set up. Seeing nothing I was about
to look back at him ... then I saw it.
As my eyes moved down, to about the level of my knees. With only the dim
daylight shining through the windshield into the unlit sleeper cab, behind the
driver seat, on a shitty foam mattress the width of the cab, I saw a woman. She
was completely nude laying on her back half covered at the waist by a dirty
blanket. She had the physique of a holocaust victim. Very emaciated and
greyish. It might have been the lighting but she looked like a dead body you’d
see on CSI. As I take in all of these observations all within a few glances I realize
she isn’t moving. Instantly I freak and think "oh my god she is dead!!!! This
guy has a dead hooker in his truck oh my god, holy shit!!!" I think I even
squeaked out a little girl scream. Then as I'm about to jump and run as fast as
I can, she moves. Slightly like when you’re about to gasp for air. She doesn’t
wake up but inhales quickly. Her whole body shudders violently, yet still unconscious
she gasps for air in a breathy, but fast 'eeeghhhhh' then a second later she
does it again.
I think to myself. “What
the holy hell am I looking at? What the fuck?” Then I exclaim to the truck
driver out loud "What the fuck man?!!" as I stare in shock and awe.
He then replies... "You can have her
man, go for it, she aint gonna wake up for a good 2 or 3 hours...." Back into my inner monologue “Holy shit this
is a hooker?” Instantly visions of all those truck stop prostitutes stumbling
between semis I’d seen while on tour for the past year and a half surfaced in
my memory. He continues "...yea, she
won’t wake up, I gave her some of those pills I got in Mexico. You can do
whatever you want to her and she won’t wake up"
UGH........completely
disgusted, freaked out and slightly frightened I slunk out of the seat while saying
as politely as I could “uhh no thanks man I'm cool" then once on pavement I
walked as fast as I could back to the stage door. I saw the group I had been
talking to before and said "dude that guy is fucked, he has an almost dead
hooker passed out in his cab!" then I gave a brief recount of what had
just happened.
They all laughed jokingly asking "so how was she?" laughing more as
they said "why do you think we didn’t go over there, that dude is fucking
nasty man" Thanks for the warning assholes.
I don’t think I’ve been the same ever since.
