The Campfire Confession
It wasn’t a loud kind of night. No screaming guitars, no shouting. Just the crackle of logs and the silence between friends who’ve known each other long enough to be comfortable in it. Most of the crew had gone off to bed, but a few of us stayed behind—lingering in the cool mountain air, soaking in the heat of the fire. The kind of night where conversation isn’t required, just stars overhead and the occasional sigh of a camping chair adjusting under the weight of your ass. The kind of night where you start to believe the fire is magical.
Then one of us broke the silence like a fart in church—sudden, jarring, and impossible to ignore. At first, he stumbled around it, rambling about his top bucket list items and not making much sense. But then, with the weight of the moment and the kind of clarity only bourbon and weed can unlock, he dropped it:
“I’d say the number one thing on my list, is to fuck a little person.”
Jaws. Dropped. The fire might as well have gasped.
Not in a joking way. Not for shock value. No smirk, no punchline. Just raw, unfiltered truth from a man who’d stared into the abyss of his bucket list and found that staring back.
He explained it like it was gospel—said he’s always liked little women. Not just petite. Little. Short. Compact. And he was very clear: while he appreciated the spectrum, his soul’s north star was a little person. A real one. Not some passing fetish, but a lifelong fascination wrapped in earnest desire.
And in that moment, I did what any real friend would do. I said, “Okay. I’ll help you.”
Because friendship isn’t just about listening to your boy’s dreams. Sometimes it’s about rolling up your sleeves and figuring out how to make them happen—even when that dream makes you pause mid-drink and question reality for a second. Even when it sounds like something out of a Hunter S. Thompson fever dream.
To make it even more poetic, he missed a midget wrestling event that very same night—because he was with us. Camping. Staring into the fire. Speaking his truth. The universe has a fucked-up sense of humor sometimes, doesn’t it? Like it was dangling fate just out of reach, whispering, “You should’ve taken the detour to the armory.”
We sat there for a while, passing the bottle and tossing around thoughts like stoned philosophers. We debated aliens, free will, the size of the cosmos, the taste of freeze-dried food, and whether this dream was insane or noble. (Spoiler: it was both.)
Someone claimed the moon was fake. Someone else said they had a theory that time wasn’t real, just an elaborate lie we all agreed on so meetings could happen. We spent a solid ten minutes ripping on Creed and Nickelback like it was our patriotic duty. If hell has a soundtrack, someone said, it’s probably “Photograph” played on loop by a guy named Chad in cargo shorts… That might have been me, actually.
We didn’t talk about bears. We weren’t debating woodland predators or philosophizing about Bluetooth speakers in the wild. We were locked in. Focused. On a mission.
Most of the night, honestly, was spent brainstorming how to help our friend achieve his very specific, very earnest dream. Craigslist? Weird. Dating apps? Probably a waste of time. Local events? Maybe. We talked about bar strategies, icebreakers, and how not to sound like a creep. At one point someone suggested contacting a traveling wrestling troupe. Another said we should develop our own little people dating app. It was equal parts ridiculous and heartfelt—stoned scheming with the intensity of NASA engineers solving a launch problem, except the rocket was the bucket list and the moon was a little person.
But here’s the thing: in the weird, sacred space of firelight and too much THC, it all made perfect sense. That night wasn’t about the bucket list item. It was about saying the thing out loud. Owning it. And watching your friends say, “Fuck it. We’re with you.”
That’s real love, man. Twisted. Beautiful. Unapologetically human.