** The following story is for entertainment purposes only and does not represent the lifestyle or opinions of it's author. All semblance to 'real' individuals is coincidental. This is narrative fiction. **

Four times now, when someone has asked me about last weekend's attendance in the Preakness Infield, I fall to the floor choking on my own tongue, all spasmodic twitching and itchy hives, and scream out between a torrent of curse words, "Sweet Baby Jesus make it STOOOOOPPPPP!!! IT BURNS! OH GAWD IT BURRRNNNNSSS!"

This does not go over well at work.

You see, at least once in their misspent youth, a person should attend the sort of party that makes you question not only your sanity, but moreover whether humanity itself is a fundamentally pointless venture. The sort of get together that allows a man to look a police officer in the eye while he pools urine into the hot green grass at Pimlico Race Course, then retch, puke, and fall face front into his own excrement, raising up one greasy eye long enough to ask the cop whether he'd mind grabbing him another beer. It is a good exorcism of the soul when midgets are playing Kiss cover songs at eight thirty in the morning. Builds character.

The Baltimore Sun reported Sunday morning that this was one of the most reserved Preakness infield's in recent memory. Upon reading this, I looked around our hotel room the morning after the race and noted the dusty lines on the dresser, the inexplicable strap-on laying on the floor between passed out partygoers, and the gash on my feet that poured blood when I tried to clean it. I attempted to stretch my hand out and grab a warm beer, noting a sprain where I had tackled a man the afternoon prior. Obviously, the Sun's reporter wasn't running with Captain and Johnny Thunderpants.

I've had a rough adjustment moving from the backwoods of Eastern Kentucky into a DC life of concrete jungles and white-collar blues, and so was ecstatic when Captain and Johnny agreed to take me under their wing and introduce me to the wildest party on the Eastern Seaboard. Seven a.m. and we're booming down the highway with Motley Crue and a pint of Beam, the leopard print steering wheel cover verily growling in anticipation. Captain is in a red and blue lame jockey uniform, and Johnny is wearing his old professional wrestling uniform, which includes leather pants, a sleeveless Harley shirt, and stocking with a cowboy hat. We are still respectively recovering from the night before, where the last I remember was pouring a beer on my head at a downtown DC bar, and Captain left a gorgeous blond naked in bed upon our hasty exit of the District.

We pull into Pimlico, and a one-eyed veteran in full troop regalia stops our taxi to swing round a giant linen hamper and pick up our coolers. He tips the traffic cop a fiver to let us cross a major highway in peace, and suddenly it is early morning in a sea of people, I am drunk in a crowd of near and perfect strangers, and the prospect of 10 more hours of this seems fraught with potential incarceration.

But this is a lawless scene -- a beer crowd -- and the cops give me cat-eyed grins when my contraband bottle of vodka falls out of the box holding a kiddie pool. Someone attempted to confiscate my whiskey early on (no glass containers allowed), but with some cajoling and a wicked smile, the door staff allows me to pour it into a dirty cooler, where I tip up the corner and sip from that, ignoring the flecks of Nasty and concentrating on the buzz.

By 10:30 a.m. we have set up camp and made fast friends with a crew of Jersey college students, and beer pong starts while I meet another Kentucky girl, a foul-mouthed freshman in college who lets the Beam dribble off her chin while we memorialize the Bluegrass state in all its glory. I grew up around horse tracks, chicken fights, barn parties, moonshiners and hill croppers my entire life, but lord, lord, lord Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.

Preakness is the bastard stepchild of the Triple Crown because it puts on little airs, which is unusual in a horse crowd. Furthermore, very little about the crowd's mentality has anything to do with horses. This is obviously a social event, and heavily local. Very few people who have grown up in the area leave, and college girls greet each other familiarly with bobble-headed screeches, frat boys bumping chests as they scream "TOWSON" across the Infield. Where the Derby has, in recent years, cracked down on the cacophony of lewd behavior in favor of a moderate-to-intense tailgating atmosphere, Preakness rolls with the punches, and two days later, I am still a gawdam twitching mess to show for it.

Horses, as the gambling crowd is already well-aware of, make us crazy. The whole scene is designed to sink gold-plated claws into a collective conscious and pig gut our 100,000 strong in attendance. And the animals stream by like monstrous angels, a thousand pounds of sweat and muscle that carry our paychecked pride on their backs. Our dreams are in the pocket of an 80-pound jockey in brilliant silks who barely blinks while we scream around the turns as our horse pulls the bend. They are the horsemen of our apocalypse, and "as it is written there is none righteous, no, not one" (Rom 3:10). Millions of dollars on the line, and Black Eyed Susan and Nattie Bo the drink of choice for a 12-hour menagerie of all that is right (wrong) in the world.

Swaying dangerously into Johnny, suddenly laying down on the turd-stained grass seemed like a fantastic idea by 2:00 p.m., and it was Johnny's huge hands on my shoulder that steadied me in the masses.

"Pull it together, Kaelan," he leaned down into me, "This is part of the Preakness marathon - You've got to stick this out, rally for the team. If you pass out now, they'll rape you blind and piss on you for the next four hours." I nod, pick up a fifth of vodka and a beer, and alternate shots with guzzles, a violent urge to punch someone becoming a bright goiter in my belly. I look like every other sweet-cheeked college girl here, but fundamental differences in our senses of pride and shame lend me to violent urges to throw a grown man up against and wall and rip his throat out.

The Thing has turned ugly by 4 p.m., and when girls raise up on the shoulders of their brawny boys and grow shy upon the 2,000 commands to "SHOW YOUR TITS," full cans of beer are hurled at their heads in righteous indignation. Coolers are abandoned like crack babies and left for dead and drought in afternoon sun. I have just been body slammed and covered in beer, and an undercover cop suggests the far left corner of the Infield for narcotics acquisition (not that I asked).

Captain comes screaming through the crowd with handfuls of cash (the most experienced horse bettor among us), tearing off his jockey costume that has been the pride of six dozen photo ops with big-breasted co-eds. "They turned violent, man," Captain started, freckles glowing in alarm, "Someone called me a jockey maggot, and when I replied with an equally vicious line, they started chasing after me. I can't be seen in costume now -- too dangerous". There is less than an hour to go, and the wail of my liver is now all that is thundering in my ears.

And suddenly it's over, and I don't even remember the race (what horses?), and I'm bleeding and scared of the crowd, aware of the potential for violence when 115,000 people stand in the sun drinking all day without repercussion from any legal authorities, other than the red-shirted bleary-eyed event staff. Johnny, a huge loggerhead of a man, holds my shoulders to guide me through that long tunnel outside and into the light.

Our hotel, next to the Lucky 7 Bail Bonds, looms out of the darkness and white shirted angels sing "Glory Hallelujah" in a high falsetto as our taxi pulls up to the curb. Ohhhh, salvation from the dark heart of Preakness. I have fallen asleep on the shoulder of a tow-headed blond financial advisor from Manhattan, who nudges me into our sardine tight hotel room. The water swirls dark brown with mud as I press myself against the bathroom wall fully clothed, attempting to regain composure.

It is important, when thinking on how horse racing fits into the psyche of a generation, to note the mythological importance of horses: the Biblical plagues were borne into mankind on the backs of horses, who, on the vision of Apostle John, brought the coming of Judgment after which the world sprang anew. I am not a religious person, and seriously doubt the author intended the usage of this passage as a comparison to horse racing, but I've always found the breathless rage of Revelations curiously enticing. As the Horsemen ushered in destruction after each of the Pagan seals were opened by demon-haunted sinners, "The riders wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulphur, and the heads of the horses were like lions' heads, and fire and smoke and sulphur issued from their mouths." (Rev 6:19). I thought of that passage, drilled hard into my head after a lifetime of Southern Christianity, as Afleet Alex turned that last curve and we screamed our youth out into the dark air. Oh, I'd rather gamble than repent, be content in the cloudy sunshine of the universal depravity of lost men, than think on any alternatives.

There was an 88 million dollar handle at the races on Saturday afternoon, but much, much more at stake than that. The gambling, the horses, the sun, all stripped bare our true inclination to have it all, fast and hard, and as much as possible before we burst at the seams. Damn the torpedoes and bet the mortgage, there's everything to lose whether you're betting or not. The Triple Crown this year will have brought me full circle with every measure of godless plague and self-destructive tendency I've ever been warned about, and as we narrow on the last stretch of turf before that final race, I'd give a final bode of encouragement to my fellow horsemen out there,

Get Thee to Belmont.