Farting in Glory Holes

By Dave Hyde

Have you ever had the urge to pull off the highway when you see one of those fantastic XXX superstores at a questionable exit somewhere in the middle of where you were and where you’re going? I live in South Central Kentucky these days and travel quite a bit. A majority of my travel is back and forth to the Chicagoland area. Along Interstate 65 on that trip there are 3 of these places.

Anyone who has gone into one knows all about them. To not render my typing here pointless, you all have no idea what these fantastic slums are all about. If you do, most wouldn’t want to admit it. Anyway… They almost always have a gnarly gravel parking lot along with semi-truck parking in the back, and the exits they live at might have an almost equally disgusting Amoco station next door and possibly a fireworks store across the street filling the otherwise completely empty landscape. The exit itself is usually for nothing more than a town called Whiteland or Brownsville. It’s literally an exit you wouldn’t dare stop at after nightfall or if you had your family with you. You’d risk someone pissing the seat or running out of gas before you’d stop there.

So now we’re in the parking lot. Grab your tube sock full of quarters, lock your car doors and head inside. It looks like a fairly normal sex toy shop. Usually a few gross dudes lurking around that when you are caught down wind of them you can smell that nasty piss smell that is either actual piss or meth… or both. You can wander around a bit looking no less shady than the other dudes, but hopefully you smell a little better. Eventually you work up the nerve to find your way to the back rooms.

Peep shows and glory holes! Population 7. Shoes sticking to the floor the closer you get to the walls. No eye contact with a soul in this area for sure. Now you can start pumping quarters from your tube sock into the peep show and through a slab of glass you can visually/at your own hand enjoy whatever it is they are willing to do for you. Not a bad setup, but honestly I think I would rather stick to xHamster on my laptop. The gold is in the booths. The glory holes! You get into these, you may need something a little more flammable to spend than the quarters. My understanding is one can present their rope through said hole and be welcomed by a few different options. I don’t know too much about this because if I am ever to this point, I am all in on paying the fee for the person on the other side to close their eyes and open their mouth, no questions asked. Then I would press my balloon knot to the hole and fart like nobody’s business.

This isn’t about being shitty to the recipient. It’s about my level of (im)maturity. I am pushing 50 years old and farts are as funny to me now as they ever have been. My father used to tell me “son, the day a fart doesn’t make you laugh, you’ve grown too old”. The thought of farting in glory holes runs wild through my imagination every single time I pass one of these places. I can say with complete honesty, I have not actually ever done this, and actually I have only set foot inside one of these places maybe twice just to see what was what. So where am I going with all of this then? Good question.

I really just want to tell you a little bit more about myself and my existence with my band Those Naked Guys. I am most known for Showoff, which is just swell, but TNG is a completely different animal and so much of it is rooted in immaturity and most of that comes from me. That may be giving a little too many mature points to the other guys in the band. We’re all young at heart. That’s part of what makes punk rock so great. Keeps you young, or kills you young I suppose, but somehow in my case, it keeps me young in spirit and heart while my body betrays me with age. Anyway, allow me to cheat and do a little copy/paste from a post I made in 2023, before TNG reunited for the first time in almost 30 years.

I’m belligerent just to see the look on their faces. I believe in tapping into my self-deprecating ego. The burden of brilliance and ability to clearly see all possible paths to execution usually lead me to not apply myself, to dummy up and keep my mouth shut and ideas locked in the vault. I could do so much more, so much better… I just don’t want to. I love to exist in that balance and work very hard on the things I do want to do.

Most musicians are inherently rebellious, yet most take few risks to push limits of a standard, expected and predictable performance. This is something I have never understood even though I am guilty of it. Most of what I do is more calculated than it appears, which is part of the calculation. I love to provoke energy and reaction out of people and situations.

I’m reliable for a good diatribe. Fear of the unknown reaction lets you know that you’re alive… unless they kill you. I am not as offensive as you are offended. Addicted to self-destruction. Remember that self-destruction doesn’t just manifest in ways you see. Most of mine resides in my mind and emotion. These are not words of wisdom, they are my words of wisdumb.

I can’t and won’t speak for the rest of the band, but I never set out to make friends or have fans. We were birthed out of a time where Punk and Pop Punk music were growing into a massive movement and everyone was looking for a way to be a part of it. When I was asked to join this band and informed they wanted to be a punk band, I was excited to have the opportunity to be involved. The only issue early on for me, they were not a punk band… yet. We turned that around really quick. We did not however become another typical Chicago area punk band. We had 4 guys who loved a very wide range of music and it all managed to inform our songwriting and attitude as a band.

For my part, I wanted to bring a snotty, childish, and aggressive character to life as the front person of a punk band. I wanted to be Darby Crash, Mike Muir, and Mike Patton all in one excessively rude and crude package. What I lack in vocal ability I more than compensate for in energy, improvised lyrics and above all, the drive to make everyone not want to like me or my band. Like I said, I wasn’t out to make friends or fans. It’s punk rock. It is music and attitude in its most pure, raw form without a care in the world of what anyone thinks about it… and in an era of “everybody’s doing it”, I wanted to be the anti-band/person to that entire movement.

People would come to our shows in football helmets and shoulder pads. There was an excitement and danger in the crowd as there was on stage. Most shows I felt a little bit of what GGAllin must have felt when the crowd would all cram into the furthest from the stage portion of the room. Not that I ever threwshit at people or anything GG style like that, but there was still some unknown that always caused distance. It was fun to try to lure people closer and to suddenly rush out to them.

We existed for a few short years, quietly self-destructed and ventured out on new journeys. Funny how it all circles back eventually. Maybe not exactly the same, but same enough. When you’re in this, you’re in it.

That was where I more or less came from and what most true to my heart as an artist is. In my older and supposedly wiser years, I assume I have mellowed a bit. I care more about those involved in the situation. The root of it all still lives in me and lives in this band.

Will we play more shows, make new albums, and continue as a band again? Sure. Not going to rule it out. For now, all I can say is keep your eyes wide, your ears open, your defenses up, and by all means, please keep your face away from the receiving end of a glory hole… I tend to just show up unannounced in all possible scenarios.