Divot.

[this story is graphic in nature, and really quite gross. Reader discretion is advised]

Way back in the Day, my friends and I had a thing. This was long before drugs and even prior to vandalism, back when we were young bucks who were just trying to do something other than nothing in our boring rural Maine hometown. And somehow the state of Maine granted us our licenses at the age of 16. (I did not have my own until 18 though).

The car most commonly used was the property of one friend, hereby referred to as Conman. And man, we would ride around everywhere in that thing. Typically at recklessly high speeds down long and windy back roads. We started a habit, nay, tradition, as many young bored and restless high school students do, of going to the local Denny's in the wee hours of the night/morning. They had free refills on their cappuccino's which we took advantage of religiously. We befriended a waitress named Sarah who loved us and we loved her and she gave us as many cappuccino's as our hearts desired, only charging us for one. We got so tight with her that we once brought a party of ten, everyone had a breakfast plate of some combination of eggs, pancakes, meat, butter, syrup and cholesterol problems, and a cappuccino. At least three rounds of cappuccino's. It must have been after the Winter Carnival dance. Shit, that's a whole nother story right there, but forget about it. Stay focused on the enormity of our purchase from this establishment. Sarah, God Bless her dissent, gave us our checks. And each one was just for one cappuccino. No food to be seen. We ate like caffeinated kings for three dollars each.

Sarah got a twenty dollar tip that night.

As you're prone to do in a Denny's at that hour, we would interact with the other patrons. Never obnoxious or crass statements. Simple things like asking how they are, wishing them a good night, and safe drive home and such. We would make the craziest assortment of friends this way. I forgot to mention, Denny's was in Lewiston. So we made the craziest friends. Like this one guy we met, Sarah introduced us to him. It was her boyfriend. He had a real name, but we never knew it. Everybody called him Divot.

Divot was a very strong looking kid with crazy eyes. He once mentioned he was on disability welfare, and this later made gallons of sense. He had marks all up and down his arms and told us about them when we asked. Some were your typical scabs from putting cigarettes out on yourself. Okay, not so typical, but compared to others, normal. Other marks were where he gave himself frostbite using ice cubes, salt, and a lot of pressure on one spot. He'd kill the skin in that one area, it'd swell up then scab and remove and leave this strange cube-shaped divot in his arm. He had plenty of these, and even did it in front of us. But this is not why he was called Divot.

On his back his friend had used a woodburning kit to scar-tattoo a pair of wings over his shoulder blades. If he hadn't have explained it, it looked like they were put there when wings once burst out of his back. Divot's obviously high pain threshold did not stop there. This man was no angel. He had scratch marks all over his back from Sarah. He liked to pull his body hair out and glue it to the top of his shoe. Then later, naked in the woods, he shot his shoes to hell with an AK-47. I do not know who let him have one of those...but this was Maine. I'm sorry. This was Lewiston, Maine. He ended up being friends with a cousin of mine, the one from the toothpaste story, not my other cousin who went to Federal prison for running a meth lab, but they would play DDR on their hands "push-up style" for hours on end. He'd given himself the most ghetto of tattoos with a needle and ink from a pen. He related this all to us from one side of the Denny's booth to the other.

He met Sarah at Denny's ofcourse, and instantly liked her. I don't know what kind of a game this man has, but it didn't fail. At one point, one or the other joked he would cut off part of his dick for her. This is madness. But that actually happened. He went into the Denny's bathroom and cut off a tiny chunk of his penis. His friend was with him to help. He cleaned up and everything and came out, but she could not actually believe he did it. So he went back in. And he did it again. This time bringing out the removed portion to show her.

This is how he earned the nickname Divot. This is how Sarah and Divot started dating.

It doesn't get more real than that.