Trigger Warning: If you are offended easily, you might want to prepare yourself! This post is written by our new Admin on our FB page, DC Stanfa! More about her at the end of her post.
My affinity for catching a good buzz while semi-incognito may have been rooted in high school Halloween parties, but I began balancing out the beer with some physical fitness around the same time. I became a runner. Poison in, poison out.
When my daughter was only four, her father and I divorced. She spent Wednesday nights and every other weekend with her dad. I sleepwalked through much of that time. Until, that is, I found the right support group. I accidentally, and quite luckily, stumbled upon a self-proclaimed “Drinking Group with a Running Problem.” Officially known as hashers, they also (even more happily for me) had a shameless costume co-dependency. The Cincinnati hashers, also known as SCH4 (Sin City Hash House Harriers & Harriettes; http://www.sch4.com) were one of thousands of hashing chapters throughout the world.
Suddenly, I had dozens of friends—in red dresses. My inaugural attendance of the SCH4 annual Red Dress Run was not the first “dress up” hash I’d run in. I’d participated in the Talk Like a Pirate Hash, in which we plundered through downtown Cincy’s Oktoberfest in full regalia; yo-ho-hoing and hashing go together like grog and pillaging. The legendary Love Boat Hash of 1997 even garnered a comment about my “costume” in the rehash: a semi-official hash summary/diary written by a hare (who lead the run).
Tight Box’s arrival did make us all feel like we were poolside on the Love Boat itself: pink bathing suit, accompanied by a flimsy wrap around thing (I have no idea what those things are called—sarong?), and underscored by gold stilettos (you’re hashing in THOSE?)! Tight Box may not cum (hash lingo) often, but when she does, she cums in style!
I didn’t really hash in the stilettos. The off-road and Kentucky hill run was extreme, as was the heat. The hares had marked the trail (with dollops of flour and chalk and had us lost for hours. We never found the beer-near, nor water. (Beer-nears are breaks during hashes and vary from a bar stop to a stash of Bud Lights in the woods.)
I drank from a neighborhood water hose and ended up having a different kind of run(s) for days after.
All previous costume/themed hashes were Project Runways, leading up to the club’s equivalent of RuPaul’s Drag Race: The Red Dress Run. Picture more than a hundred people in a parking lot dressed in their finest ruby colored frocks and gowns, accessorized like Kardashians. Picture 75 percent of this group being heterosexual men, awkwardly cross-dressed—and a little drunk. This was before the run even started.
I was among hundreds of festively costumed hashers running a trail that snaked along the Kentucky side of the Ohio river, and across the Big Mac Bridge. It was exhilarating to jog past crowds of people in downtown Cincinnati. The trail led us to the Cincinnati Reds stadium—where we landed in the “cheap seats” section, in the bottom of the third inning. The beer vendors served us our beer-near.
At the top of the fifth inning, we were kicked out because of some disorderly conduct: singing bawdy hashing songs in front of children. As we exited the stadium, it was like the partying of the Red Sea. Yes, I said partying. A group of the guys lined up for a photo opp in the men’s room. Their bodies facing the urinals, their heads turned to face the camera. All dressed up, and somewhere to go.
**DC Stanfa is the author of ‘The Art of Table Dancing: Escapades of an Irreverent Woman’, and co-editor of ‘Fifty Shades of Funny: Hook-ups, Break-ups, and Crack-ups.’ She is an expert on fun, and its by-product trouble, and has cahoonas the size of coconuts, per some people who aren’t even her ex-husband. dcstanfa.com
