The bassist of In Alcatraz 1962, Jon, had a profound pleasure of inflicting "rat tails" on other people. It was always funny, but he was inclined to get me with rat tails all the time.
For the first instance, we had just finished playing our show in Sarasota at Stage 64. We were all breaking down our equipment and packing up our vans for the trip back to Tampa and call it a night. I grabbed our merch box full of our t-shirts and walked towards the van. Jon, just behind me, rat tailed the living shit out of left ankle. I could have promptly put the box down and held my fresh flesh wound, but instead I comically stood in place and yelled into the sky like in werewolf movies (I like to make them). I grasped the box as tightly as I could muster and yelled out to nowhere, "THIS HURTS AND I CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!" It wasn't until I stepped into the van that I discovered that I was bleeding from the gash my beloved Jon gifted to me.
The next day, we all played a house show in the Ft. Myers/Cape Coral area. While I was in the kitchen, Jon dealt a barrage of rat tails on my husky ass when I was cornered by the fridge. Littered with lines and marks on my body, I took those rat tails like a bitch.
A few days later, we play in Pompano Beach at Solid Sound Studios. I had just acquired a severe sunburn (2nd degree burns, I earned sun spots on my shoulders from it) at Jupiter Beach/Inlet the day before. After performing our last set on tour at Solid Sound Studios, I walked around the venue with no shirt on because it was too unbearable to put my shirt back on when I was sweaty. As I was standing outside in the back, my naive-self said out loud, "With my luck, somebody's gonna smack my shoulders or Jon's gonna rat tail my shoulders." Sure enough, Jon was within an ear shot and delivered the most elegant and hellish rat tail in the history of rat tails. Like a certified whip, the frail end of the towel licked the sunburn on my shoulder and emitted a loud crack. I immediately screamed expletives and starting grunting the anguish away and walked back inside. I stood inside in the back of the venue facing the corner of the wall trying to calm myself. The only thing I accomplished was that my eyes started welling up and tears began to flow down my cheeks. Now for the record, I wasn't crying. I was simply tearing up because the pain was SO great that my body was doing nothing but reacting to the infliction.
In Alcatraz 1962's vocalist Andre felt terrible about my misfortune and told Jon to apologize to me. Jon did so and I forgave him. We're all brothers and it was all out of good fun. But damn, that rat tail fucking hurt. I now have a deep-rooted fear of being rat tailed. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
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