Third World dictators and similar potentates seldom travel abroad. The reason for this is fairly simple: the moment the Sole Immortal Supreme Leader has touched down in Paris, lured there by an invitation to a conference on some topic along the lines of "The Role of Rain in Making People Wet," a coup is mounted and the aforementioned Sole Immortal Supreme Leader is deposed and forced to live out the remainder of his days in the penthouse suite of the Ritz-Carlton. The person responsible for this upheaval is of course, his most trusted ally and confidant, the one who convinced him to fly off by whispering in his ear that the country's prestige was at stake and much in attention and foreign aid was to be gained by keeping a high-profile presence on the world stage. This same individual is, naturally, now himself installed back home as Sole Immortal Supreme Leader. In the New York City Hash House Harriers, in contrast, we have by custom two Immortal Supreme Leaders, although we normally call them Joint Masters; this clearly is a problem for the other guy, the handsome, athletic one, since he made a bold attempt at grabbing sole power for himself last Wednesday evening, possibly but possibly not with the aid of co-conspirators from the feared Upper West Side Mafia, and came perilously close to succeeding. Only by the skin of my teeth did I arrive at the On-In just in time to catch him brazenly undertaking a solo conducting of the ceremonies.
Hubris, of course, was at the root of my near-downfall. The prior couple of Wednesday evening efforts were, shall we say, a little lacking in some of the more basic elements of a successful Hash: a couple of weeks ago, we were led on a nine-mile forced march through most of the lower fifty percent of Manhattan Island, and, a week later, Messrs. Holden and Kurtzer, both of whom should know better, fell, as described so eloquently in his account by Trailmaster Gilbert, into some of the more elementary traps, including a bar more suitable for the Brooklyn Hash on a wet Monday night, not that that ever happens. So yours truly attempted to lean on the virgin hares by offering a list of obvious tips in the business of trail-setting. Now, this is fairly laughable, since I was taught almost everything I know about setting a trail by Sole Immortal Supreme Leader in His Own Mind Hardy, whose idea of management nurturing is to intone "Turn" "Stop", "Too long", "Fucked Up" as a response to any request for feedback. So, when 7:15 arrived and not a Hare was to be seen, my nervousness that I might actually have been responsible for giving them some bum advice grew to a state of extreme apprehension, whereupon the aforementioned Other Joint Master seized upon my vulnerability for his nefarious purposes, and whispered in my ear "The inside information is that it's practically an A to A; the On-In is right around here."
Gratitude at such helpful advice explains why, at 7:55, I was still standing at the corner of 20th Street and 3rd Avenue, scratching my head and refusing to be daunted by my complete failure to find a single mark of the trail beyond the first half-block, trying hard not to be annoyed at the Hares either for their parsimoniousness of chalk or for their failure to mark the On-In location at the start. Actually, anybody who read the recent extraordinary account in the Times of the open warfare between rival factions for control of Gramercy Park (half the trees are falling down while the idiots try to decide which slate should attend to the future of this little elite corner) would not be surprised if any chalk marks had immediately been washed away. Finally, I put on my special Joe 90 X-ray vision spectacles and saw the on-trail deep into Stuyvesant Town, and this kept me going for a while, through the familiar territory of Waterside and the Heliport, before again becoming beached at 34th and 1st and another unmarked check. What kept me going was Guiley's words in my ear that "it's practically an A to A;" Glocca Morra being my venue of choice, I periodically swept by there in between trips back to the start and calls to the Hotline, none of which yielded any fruit, but, knowing and trusting my fellow JM, I refused to leave the neighborhood. Finally, in desperation, after I had exhausted my stack of quarters and was now burning up my calling card dollars, a voice appeared on the answering machine, well past the management-mandated lead time, announcing an On-In at the Shandon Star. It was at this point that, to my horror, I realized the magnitude of the deception that had been perpetrated on me; in a blind panic, I hopped the M104 bus, sweating and shaking as it crept past every remaining house of pornography on 42nd Street and 8th Avenue, keeping my eyes planted firmly ahead and my mind on the task in hand, willing the bus to speed up and get me to my destination before it was too late. I burst through the door (well, actually, I think the door was open) only to find Doug surrounded by a vast crowd of cheering Hashers, John and Laird with evil grins on their faces, and Keith with the smile of one who has seen this sort of thing hundreds of times before, and will see it hundreds of times more, if his doctors will permit him. Adding insult to injury, they tried to make me perform a Down-Down. Who do they think I am, Alice?
After this excitement, the On-In was pretty standard, although the large size of the pack and the number of virgins was noteworthy. Some young pup, who may or may not have been out with a signed parental permission slip, was foolish enough to boast of unparalleled ability in the speed drinking stakes; of course, our Lisa blew him away with one flick of the neck, if you'll excuse the unintentionally vivid imagery. A pair of notable returnees brightened up the evening: Steve Brett, in a brief interruption of his new, glamorous globe-trotting lifestyle, stopped off just long enough to stuff the contents of the Hash Treasury into his underwear and disappear again, and Chris Tyree, Christian male spinster of this parish, appeared out of nowhere to the plaudits of his many fans, whereupon he picked a fight on politics with two of the most charming, good-looking and articulate people you're ever going to find at an On-In, and emerged verbally bruised and bloodied. Meanwhile, Basil, the new Studmuffin of the Hamptons scene, tried to keep a low profile about his new-found status, although some of us will have the bad taste to keep reminding him of it. Finally, I must note that, talking of reminders, while the Shandon Star was a good choice for the size of the pack, the beer was such unbelievable shit that even my normally tolerant gut was rejecting it for thirty-six hours afterward. Good job, guys.
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