Sometime in 2002 or 2003 in Austin, Texas, I was at a university coop party. It was a two-story, rather small apartment complex and there were inward-facing apartments. It was pretty packed and people were mingling all over.
Some people had a fire and flaming swords and staffs which were basically just big wicks soaked with kerosene. I'm not a pyro, but I'd had almost a decade of martial arts training by that time, so I was talking to the people who were about to use them. I was expecting to watch.
However, this friendly guy holding one asked if I wanted to duel, and I instantly felt I had arrived at this great moment in life. A duel with flaming swords with drunken, stoned, impressionable people surrounding us in a ring and looking down upon us from balconies!
He lit the swords. They were two-handers, with the wick part (the flaming blade!) being just under a meter or yard in length. Of course, he had mentioned we weren't trying to actually hurt each other, and I didn't get to ask how exactly they did what they do. So, I assumed it was quick, very light touches if anything, with non-contact "checks" clearly being the better idea.
So, swords lit, I assumed a fighting stance, absolutely pumped! The onlookers stood in anticipation.
The guy started dancing around and waving his sword in a way which left him with no guard at the same time as I did a short diagonal downward strike to his torso! He continued the dancing stuff while shaking his head to say it was cool, he was okay. I wasn't going to dance, I wanted a sparring duel with flaming swords, he wanted to create amazing tracer effects for anyone who happened to be hallucinating. Which was cool, but, I totally won.
I stopped and thanked him and talked with him for a moment. He was chill about me attacking him with fire rather than dancing, and I asked if he wanted to really spar, but he said they just do the eye-candy flowing movements and such.
So, I picked up my beer and went to talk to people and find my friends. A bit later I was upstairs on the walkway crossing over the courtyard. This beautiful punk rock vixen with an almost Betty Page haircut was looking at me like she knew me. She was my type. And apparently I was hers. I talked to her. She talked to me. Oh yes.
I won a duel with a flaming sword and got the girl!
The Dallas/Ft. Worth area is huge, and I vaguely remember a few parties and nights out where I convinced people to go drive out into the city to explore in the middle of the night. Sometimes, it was some random, bored Dallas person I was talking to on IRC, and we'd meet up and go wander the night.
Another Austin party story involved party versus party temporary keg plunder "borrowing". Wasn't my idea but yeah I helped carry the keg!
I'm sure others here have had the experience of being at one party with friends, and someone mentions another cool party very close by, and so people go from one to the other. Well, our party was punk rockers, stoners, a raver or two, and just laid back (yet pirate-minded) people.
We had pitched in on a keg. We still went to the other party just to check it out and be social, just having fun. We had no plan of what was to happen later.
The other party was fine, the people were welcoming and people dropping in was a positive thing. However, when they decided to end the party rather early, one of the people with us didn't forget that they left their keg just around the corner from the side-facing garage. I think this house was in the Hyde Park, Airport Blvd, or North Loop neighborhoods in Austin. Wait, pretty sure it was North Loop. This party was also in about 2003.
We went back to the other party house where some people were relaxing still, and we finished that keg. I think it was Newcastle or some other brown ale. So, we missed it when it was gone. There was much sentimental lifting of the empty, floating keg. We were forlorn. Mourning. It had been a good night, and we began to bond over the keg.
Then, the bond became restless groupthink when someone mentioned the other party's keg. Someone joked that we should go drink it. Someone joked that we should go take it and turn it in for them after it's empty, and leave an anonymous note saying it's taken care of. One girl said, fuck it let's just take it and keep it! Some guy said nah, we should leave them some money, whatever we do with the keg. The heist had already been accepted, but no one had said the magic words.
The rationalizing went on for a few more minutes. How they were all now asleep so early (it was around 2 a.m. when they called it a night), and it was wrong. We were all the types who were going all night if possible, squeezing everything possible out of it. That keg, it was waiting. Just around the garage.
They obviously didn't want all that beer. It was 3/4 full, and they had already finished their other keg. Someone said the magic words. It was officially a keg heist.
The planning began. The girl who wanted to keep it had a hatchback car. She still wanted to take it home, but myself and others successfully locked us into returning the keg later because it was better, funnier, and more fun. I wasn't even going to help if they were going to keep it. The reinsertion at dawn sounded brilliant, to me.
So, she was going to drive some of us down the street and park next door. Three or four of us were to go lift the keg quiet as possible so long as no one seemed to be awake. If we were caught, we were just going to play it as cool as possible and apply moron diplomacy. If clear, we load the keg into the trunk, leaving the hatch open so as not to make noise. Go back. Drink beer! When done, reverse the plan.
The drive to the objective was full of excitement and anticipation. The car ran quiet. She parked, and we opened our doors gently, tenderly. We walked through the yard like invaders, stepping softly. Metal Gear! We barely made any noise lifting the keg, but we did make enough that if anyone in a nearby room had been awake, we may have been detected. We were laughing breathlessly. We left their tap on the side of the trashcan.
We waddled the keg onward. The walk across the driveway and the yard suddenly an intense journey. What if one of us dropped it? The occupants of a dozen houses would hear the unmistakable metallic clang of a partially filled keg impacting concrete edge-on. It may as well have been a kettle drum bounced off the ground. The tension was amazing, though. If that had happened we likely would have left it there and died laughing as we escaped in hysterical panic, the fun type of panic when underhanded pranks go wrong.
We heaved the keg into the hatchback and took off, laughing merrily as soon as we were a couple houses away. Back at the house, we proudly tapped our plundered, adopted, unwanted and unloved foster keg (it wasn't Fosters), and celebrated our heist!
I believe it was Zeigenbock. Could have been better, but could have been much, much worse. If it had been something like Natural (Natty) Light, I'm not sure I could have bothered to help. If I had, I couldn't have celebrated so much as reveled in how much of a ridiculous joke that would have been. What the hell were we doing stealing Natty Light? The theme then would have been sad desperation, which would have been comical, and which also would have been the appropriate angle my fellow pirates could have used to convince me to go through with it.
But no. It was just good enough to be worth it. I don't want to hear any beer snobs chiming in here (we'll plunder your kegs). If beggars can't be choosers, neither can spontaneous keg burglars in the middle of the night.
We drank almost all the beer in the keg while smoking and glowing with pride until the sky began turning blue. Tired and still nicely relaxed, we finally loaded the keg and drove back for reinsertion, which went off without detection.
The End.
By the way, I prefer to be remembered for winning the duel with flaming swords and taking home the girl. I have since plundered no more beer kegs or any such thing, and I donate to keg rescue shelters to this day.