The first sparks of recognition, the flickering embers of romance, the crushing blow of rejection. It’s all part of trying to get laid in the jungle.
It was an auspicious night for Jayke MacGowan, a yellow-winged warbler, as he approached The Stump: an infamous nightspot 220 km west of Manaus, deep in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon.
“Just downed a couple of pingas and I’m charged, ay,” noted MacGowan, who was celebrating his first night off in “fucken weeks” from his job at a local service station.
“Headin’ down to The Stump cos I heard it’s a bit of meat market,” he laughed.
Accompanied by his occasional colleague and fellow touch football enthusiast Brayden Burton, the scene was set for a night of competitive binge-drinking, god-awful music, and hopefully, romance.
“Yewwww! Leessss go,” noted Burton.
After mixing hard liquor and energy drinks for several hours, things took a turn for the unexpected. We caught up the next day with MacGowan to go over the details after he’d sufficiently recovered from a hangover that made him “want to die.”
“It’s a bit of a blur, but somehow me ‘n Burto started cutting shapes,” MacGowan recalled, reluctant to go into too many details in case he retriggered the life-threatening vomiting episode that afflicted him earlier in the day.
“All of a sudden, this chick just smashed us off the dancefloor,” said MacGowan, catching the bile as it rose to his mouth. “It was brutal.”
“So we just went home. I saw Burto in the morning, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye. I tried texting him later on. Nuthin’. Fucken hell, man. Training’s gonna be heaps awkward this week.”
Better luck next time, boys.
