So in just a few short days now, I'll be heading to Wetzel for the second time in my life. This year I venture out with
JimmyB, MG and friends.....
I'm older, some might say not too much wiser for attending this event AGAIN...but to hell with the naysayers....you only live once right? Might as well have all the fun you can, while you still can.
I'm posting this old post, from my first time out....and hopefully, I'll have lots of pictures and new adventures to post for you next week when the dust settles and I wash that dirty biker pond water off me! ;)
Don't worry, MG & JimmyB won't let anything bad happen to me.....you hear that mom! STOP WORRYING! I'll be FIIIIIIIIIIIINE!
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Ah Wetzel the bad girl’s paradise. Ever since I was old enough to know what Wetzel was, I wanted to go. A biker’s party near Middle Point, Ohio in the middle of nowhere, but in the heart of it all.Wetzel was infamous for naked people, beer drinking, tattoo contests, a pond shaped like the Harley Davidson Emblem, Easy Rider Magazine, bad weather, and every other seedy thing you can imagine. Everything all in one place you never want to be anywhere near your daughter. Oh, you should have seem my mother’s jaw drop when I was like nine years old telling people that someday I would go to Wetzel. She was so embarrassed she would tell people, “she doesn’t even know what Wetzel is, don’t listen to her!” But I did know about Wetzel and nothing was going to keep me from going there someday.
Well twelve years later, it finally happened. I turned 21 and was legally allowed on the Wetzel grounds.Oh, I was so excited. I mean 12 years of anticipation can really get you amped up when the time finally comes. There was just one problem…..apparently out of all of my female friends, I was the only one that wanted to go. It seemed that my girly friends thought Wetzel was a sleazefest and weren’t interested in the slightest about spending $30.00 to go see some washed-up band (that year R.E.O. Speedwagon) and be around a bunch of dirty bikers. I thought they were just insane, unadventurous goodie-two-shoes. Some wild friends I had! ;) So lucky for me, I had guy friends. And well, guy friends have no problem attending sleazy social events where there are booze and naked people.
My friends and long distance cousins Matt and Nick and their dad who I for some reason always thought was my uncle instead of my cousin (don’t ask) Clem were all going and they invited me to go with them. Clem goes every year, has a Harley, so did Nick, Matt and me however were supposed to drive the supply truck out there! Once again, I didn’t care if I had to ride a tricycle out there, or a unicycle for that matter.
What else was cool about Wetzel 1999 was that cousin Nick’s band was one of the opening acts for REO Speedwagon. So everybody was pretty excited about that! The day came, we loaded up our tents, sleeping bags, beer, coolers, cigarettes, clothes, boots, hats, cooking utensils and Clem’s newly pimped out Harley Davidson Custom Golf Cart which he customized himself in his garage all summer. It was awesome! Matt ended up driving the 1980-something full size Ford Bronco pulling the trailer full of supplies and I followed him with my truck. We were both smiling and bright eyed for what we were about to experience all weekend long. Of course once we got there and got in line to enter the grounds the radiator hose blew and shit started flying everywhere, so Clem being an Osting was super pissed and Matt and I drove all the way back to Delphos to fetch tools to fix it. With all of that nonsense it took a little longer to get our Wetzel weekend underway, but eventually I entered the gates and laid my eyes upon the mowed wheat field that was Wetzel. People were all wandering around, setting up tents, just sitting in their lawn chairs and drinking beer in the middle of pretty much nowhere….at 10:30 am on a Friday.I went to work getting my tent up, Matt put his next to mine. It was difficult to get my tent up since we had to fight the wheat problem, but Matt helped me and we started drinking a little, so that helped with the frustration level.
One by one more and more bikes rolled on the grounds, and the place filled up quickly. It looked like a gypsy camp mostly filled with tents; however there were some diehards who maintained that they only needed the bare essentials…a sleeping bag. Matt and I took it easy, drove Clem’s golf cart around the place for a while. I tell you, I never had so many people ask to see my boobs in all of my life. That kind of behavior is not only permitted, but preferred. Everywhere you turn there are girls flashing a group of guys. Now keep in mind, at Wetzel, naked people isn’t always a good thing. Only about one in twelve people are actually someone you’d want to see naked, and only about 2% of those people actually get naked. Of course me being the good girl that I am, I kept my boobies safe inside of my shirt. I’ve never been one who in situations looses all control of their inhibitions. Sure who wouldn’t like to feel so free that they could flash strange men their naked bodies without consequence. Me however, I live in the real world….Wetzel has a website
http://www.wetzelmc.com/, men expecting to see boobies have cameras, I have parents and a family who I wouldn’t want to see pictures of me being an idiot, drunk and naked.
So anyway, Matt and I kept riding around until the lightening started crashing down around us. A major storm was rolling in. Friday night’s main event was supposed to be Steppen Wolf, but like it always does during Wetzel, it rained, and it rained good. The lightening was unimaginable. That freshly mowed wheat field turned into a mud pit so fast, you didn’t even see it coming. It felt pretty cold too since you spent the whole day in the sun getting fried. We all took cover under the big communal tent of Clem’s from Delphos Tent and Awning. We closed the flaps and lit the lantern and huddled close to whomever was sitting next to you to gain warmth. Since technically my only friend at Wetzel was Matt who like me was 21, I didn’t really know the people I got stuck sitting next to. However I was about to get to know the one to the right of me more than I could have ever imagined.
Now for the sake of privacy for the rest of the story, we’ll call him J.D. So anyway, J.D. was sitting next to me, cold and wet like myself. I thought at first he was an absolute dick. He seemed really distant and he had this look of frustration, disgust and arrogance on his face. I had a blanket to which after some talking I offered to share with him. He told me his ex-girlfriend was pregnant with his baby and how fucked up his life was basically. So we chatted some and then to my surprise I felt his finger caressed my knee under our blanket, which was completely unbeknownst to everyone else sitting there. I looked at him, he looked at me, the rain had stopped and the next thing I knew he was walking me to my tent. Just as I as about to crawl in, most likely to have him crawl in after me, I noticed that everything in my tent was floating. I had been flooded out the first night. Apparently my tent had a hole in it. I went and found Matt to tell him that I was going to drive home for the night and come back in the morning. I couldn’t sleep in three inches of water. When I walked back to my tent, J.D. was standing there. I told him that I was going home for the night and would see him tomorrow maybe. He said, “that’s too bad, I had no place to stay, and I was going to stay with you.” I was a bit shocked by his honestly, and before I knew it, he was following me out to my truck and back to my apartment.
I know what you are thinking….SLUT! Go ahead….think it all you want, he was hot, talented, seemingly intelligent, so I said. “why the hell not!” I mean if you can’t be a slut and get away with it at Wetzel where can you?
So once at my apartment, I kicked off my muddy boots, and J.D. kicked off his shoes as well. I sat on the bed, he sat down too. The rest of the night was spent, well um, talking. YES, JUST TALKING! What kind of slut did you think I was? The whole thing was really strange, here I was with this mysterious, serious and oh so sexy guy in my bed, hours into of our one night stand, and there we laid…..talking. It wasn’t until early morning that he even kissed me.
Okay, so it’s the events that follow that are going to seem strange. I got out of bed, headed for the shower, J.D. showered along side of me. We had done nothing but kiss, and then there we were in the shower together handing each other soap and shampoo. It was very strange. Who gets naked together and showers without you know, doing it prior to or during for that matter? After our exploratory shower, we got dressed and left. Once back at Wetzel, he went his way, and I went mine. Back at the campsite, Matt took one look at me and he knew I had done something with somebody, but he didn’t know whom, and I wasn’t telling.
Shortly after I got back to camp, I met these two crazy biker dudes from Michigan…Carl & Pete. We all hit it off right away and I ended up spending the day with my new biker friends. We went up to the pond and I pointed in horror and amazement at naked people performing oral sex on each other. Now I know why people warned me not to swim in the pond, you go in for a dip and you come out knocked up without the slightest clue who the father is. Then we watched a guy ramp his bike into the pond, followed by some guys who parachuted into camp. Once bored of all of that we went out riding on their bikes all over the countryside together, just me, Pete and Carl. I had been gone for hours, so I hurried back to camp to check in, I mean, I was a twenty-one year old girl, last seen with two bikers from Michigan. A girl can get herself into a whole heap of trouble if she didn’t have her wits about her. Back at camp, J.D. was sitting there with Nick. He smiled at me, I smiled back at him. Nick said hi and then said, “Hey Heather, who were those two dudes you’ve been with all day?” J.D. seemed interested in my answer as well. So I did what I normally did, tell the vague truth. “They are just these guys from Michigan…Carl and Pete”, I said. J.D. got up to leave, but didn’t escape before Pete and Carl rolled back into camp.
The next time I saw J.D. was when he was on stage with the band. He sounded great, looked great, and we all danced like the drunken idiots we were. Then the “Skin to Win” beauty pageant was underway. Naked girls ensued. Forty-five minutes into the REO Speedwagon concert, I was bored. Carl noticed and offered to take me for a ride on his Harley. He grabbed my hand and led me through the crowd and onto the back of his bike. It was humid and once on the road, the wind was invigorating. My hair was whipping wildly behind me and Carl was like a statue in front of me, solid and surreal. We shared a cigarette and our ride came to a halt then I found him turning into the parking lot at the Day’s Inn in Van Wert. I was immediately on alert for something “bad” to happen. I mean isn’t this how all rape/murder scenarios occur, “she was with him all day, what did she think was going to happen?!”
He said he needed to go inside to “get something” from his room, I told him, I’d stay with the bike. He insisted that he didn’t feel safe leaving me in the parking lot alone. I wasn’t sure where I would be safer; either way presented a certain amount of danger. I reluctantly followed him inside. Once at the door to his room, I insisted I would remain in the hallway while he entered the room, he gave me this look, like for Christ sakes, I’m not going to kill you! I stood in the doorway with the door kept open. He rummaged through his bag, looking for something when the phone rang. He answered it, and had what I could hear was an important phone call about a hospital, a woman in labor, early labor….it was choppy, but I still hadn’t comprehended everything when Carl hung up the phone, looked at me and said, “So….Okay, well I guess now you know I’m married!” I hadn’t actually come to that conclusion yet, but I knew now. Not that it mattered because I wasn’t interested in pursuing a romantic avenue with Carl anyway. And for the record, just because I was slutty by showering with some guy I barely knew that morning didn’t mean that I was ready to hop in the sack with a married man that evening. My sluttiness has limitations. See there is a fine line between a Slut, and a girl who knows how to have a good time within reason. Cross one boundary and you are a Slut, walk the line and you remain safely un-judged.
Carl and I loaded up on his bike and he drove me back to Wetzel. He told me the story about Pete and himself, both decided to take off their wedding rings on their way down here and had intended to have as much fun as the Wetzel God would allow. Boy did he pick the wrong girl to waste his precious ring-less time with. Pete however was hooking up with Tina in a tent somewhere back on the grounds. Carl told me to find Pete, tell him his wife went into early labor and he was heading to the hospital. I bid Carl farewell, told him good luck, and I watched as he drove way. He didn’t rape me, he didn’t murder me, but I’ll never forget him, why, I’m not exactly sure.The rest of Wetzel went by without incident. I saw more naked people, crazy biker behavior and I sat on my cooler and took in the last hours of the event I had waited my entire life to be a part of. I haven’t been back to Wetzel since. I don’t know that I ever will. I do know however that if I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
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what can I say *shrugs* I think i was a dirty biker myself in a past life er sumthin...
because being around the debauchery, felt almost like coming home.
Strange...but true.
~hl~
