We were going to California on the 40 in a painted-up van. Being a bunch of peace-loving, good-karma-seeking hippies, we used to think that it would be a good idea to pick up anyone we saw hitching because we would want someone to do the same for us.

We stop at a truck-stop in Oklahoma to put our collective five dollars in the gas tank and notice a bum (not just a hitchhiker, like some of the people in the van, but a dirty old stankin-ass bum with eggs and crap in his beard) sitting on the sidewalk next to the door. He was fat and wild-eyed and was wearing a nasty gray army blanket with a hole cut in the middle of it for a coat.

We girls had a premonition about this guy and decided that the best thing to do would be to leave him be and just get on our way; maybe give him something to eat and wish him good luck. We definitely did not want him near us for an extended period of time. The guys in our group, however, were all, "Come on, let's see if our brother needs a ride--so what if he smells like he's been shitting his pants for a week"...I have been on the road for months at a time and when given the opportunity, I shower. This dude had probably had a dirty, callused, chapped ass for months and didn't care. So he winds up in the van with us and we're off.

 "Where ya headed?" one of the guys asks Stankass. "Just to the next town," Stankass growls, plops down in the floor, and produces a half-full, warm forty-ounce from under his blanket. The black cloud of potted meat and ass smell wafts out as well. Girlfriend and I light a couple of cigarettes, crack the windows and open a beer to take the edge off. "Kin I git one-a them smokes?" Stankass grunts. Girlfriend hands him one, quickly but politely pulling her fingers away from his so that they don't touch at all. "Hhmmph," he says. "Gimme a light." Stankass chugs the rest of his beer, seeing that we have some ourselves. "Lemme borry one-a ye beers," he says. I glance at Stankass for a second and see him staring at me like I'm a Thanksgiving turkey. I cross my arms and look away, pretending to be oblivious. I catch the eye of the guy in the passesnger seat in the rearview mirror and implore him silently to get in the back with us. He doesn't get it.

"What's your name, brother?" the guy driving asks. Stankass mutters something incomprehensible. "What was that, bro?" Driver Dude asks again. "Bob!" Stankass barks. "Fer Chrissakes," he grumbles to himself. He helps himself to our dwindling stash of beer, directly from the stash spot under the non-working van sink. "Where you all going?" he asks, suddenly interested.

"San Francisco," Driver Dude answers. "But we'll probably stop in New Mexico first." Stankass perks up momentarily. "Yeah," he starts, "I'll probably just ride with you guys, then."

"Dude," I hissed in the driver's ear, "get this motherfucker out of here." Girlfriend is now squished between the two captain's seats up front and I am pressed up against the back of the driver's seat. The smell is overwhelming, as there is not much air flow through the back of the van.

"I gotta piss," Stankass announces.

"Let me find some place to pull off the road," says the driver. Stankass is getting ready to refill the forty bottle. "Dude, he's pulling his junk out!" I squealed. "Pull the fuck over!" The driver jerks the wheel over and puts on the brakes. By this time, Stankass has partially pissed in the bottle and the rest is all over the passenger guy's sleeping gear. Ha ha.

"I'm done," says Stankass. "We don't have to stop anymore." Passenger Dude turns around. "You already took a leak, dude?"

"Yup."

"Where?"

"In a bottle."

"Well, at least throw it out," Driver Dude suggests. Girlfriend slides the van door open. Stankass tries to hand me his bathroom and I recoil. "You do it, sicko!" I say to him. Stankass scoots to the door, the bottle sloshing in his hand. All eyes are on him now. He sticks one piss-stained leg out of the door, then the other. He stands up laboriously, walks a couple of steps from the van, and starts pouring out the piss, as if he is going to save the bottle to piss in again. I jump over to the door, say "Take 'er easy," and slam the door shut and lock it. "GO! There is no way that dude is getting back in here," I declare. Driver Dude stares at me. "What the fuck?We can't just leave him here," he says. Stankass starts knocking on the door, since we're still just sitting there. "Dude, he's a perv and there's probably a reason he's a bum alone at a truckstop in the first place. Plus," I added, "he's drinking all the beer." Passenger Dude rolled down the window and made some excuses--"...sorry about all this, bro..." -- Stankass replying, "...yeah, I fuckin understand...goddam cunts...robblerobblerobble..." and finally the van was rolling again, with a little of Stankass's essence left in it. And we never saw Stankass again.

The moral of the story is, if you are a girl and traveling with a couple of hippie guys, don't let them pick up nasty old hitchhiker guys, because in my experience (and I have had more than enough of these experiences), all middle-aged male hitchhikers are raging drunks that smell like piss and don't know how to behave when they're not in a gutter.
And twenty-something wanna-be hippie guys trying to score karma points are naive enough to think that these guys aren't going to piss in their vans, drink all their beer, and be creepy, creepy pervs when no one is looking, and therefore will do nothing to stop any of the aforementioned from happening and also will feel bad when their girlfriends throw Stankass out of the van. The end.