"Ice-T" & Me? We have an understanding.

Several years ago I was sharing a shoebox two-bedroom apartment with three friends on the upper-west-side of Manhattan. Two roommates had to sleep on an air mattress in the living room. They were allowed cheaper rent as they were responsible for moving furniture and inflating and deflating their mattress every night and morning. The apartment was right behind Lincoln Center at 63rd & West End Ave., NYC.

There is an ultra-luxury building right across the street from the far-less-than-luxury building I was living in at the time. The property across the street had huge windows that were always freshly Windex’ed. The people that came in and out of the building were always dressed impeccably, like senior level HR women, or investment bankers, or high priced prostitutes. There were always taxi cabs waiting outside of the building. The drivers knew that these people were loaded.

I know all this because I love to skateboard. The luxury building across the street had these amazing curbs with angle iron attached to them. For those of you that don’t speak “skateboard”, just believe me when I say that it was awesome.

On the weekends during spring and summer, I loved nothing more than to skateboard on the curbs of the luxury building across the street. The best parts of the curbs were right by the exit of the building’s parking garage. As such, I would often have to stop, pick up my skateboard and step aside as the garage door would raise and a resident would pull their car out of the garage.

There was one Saturday when I was skateboarding early in the afternoon and I heard the ‘click’ that I had come to know as the sound of the garage door beginning to open. I picked up my skateboard and stepped aside.

The garage door slowly rose to reveal a cherry red Ferrari, its engine purring in idle. I dreweled for a hot minute and then wanted the car to move so I could Skate-or-Die.

The car just sat there so I looked through the windshield to the driver’s side.

It was Ice-T.

Ice-Fucking-T.

Cop Killa.

He had his left hand on the wheel, and his right hand between the legs of a ho (literally a ho in every sense of the word, you’ll just have to trust me) that was sitting in the passenger seat. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. As he idled his Ferrari in the driveway of the garage, he seemed much more focused on his right hand than his left.

Ice looked up and seemed startled when he realized that the garage door was already open. His eyes immediately fixed on me standing there with my skateboard. I did the stoic-chin-raising-head-tilting-back gesture while I looked at him with my eyeballs as if to say, “I didn’t see nothin’ man. I can keep shit on the DL, for realz.” Ice nodded at me with stern eyes and he drove away with his ho.

I took a deep breath.

I spent the next hour nervously shifting my eyes in preparation for men in black ski masks carrying silenced oozies to come and silence me. They never came. I continued to skateboard.

Over the next year this became a regular occurrence. The only difference was that Ice had a new ho and a new car every week.

I think this is what they call “The American Dream.” A new ho and a new car every week.

So basically, here’s how I figure:

Ice-T is cool with me skateboarding on his curb as long as I’m willing to keep my mouth shut about his hoes and his cars.

Well, Mr. Ice:

I don’t live across the street from you anymore and I’m busting the lid off of this story. I’m not scared of your silenced-oozie-toting ski-mask-wearing goons anymore because I live in Washington Heights now and I just downloaded a freeware security suite for my computer so there’s no way you can find me. Not even on my myspace account.

Take that, Cop Killa!

Adventure: North Brother Island

I have a new adventure planned.

I am going to sail my ass on a makeshift raft to North Brother Island.

What is North Brother Island? Good question.

I was playing around with Google Earth and was checking out Riker’s Island Penitentiary in detail. You can see the recreation yards and guard towers and all kinds of cool shit. In my mind I always pictured Riker’s to be one massive fortress. This is not the case. It’s a huge multi-facility compound. I didn’t know that.

Anyway, as I swung my aerial view back towards the city I came across a full blown island that I had never heard of. North Brother Island.

North Brother Island is between Riker’s Island and The Bronx sitting in the East River, NYC. It’s a thirteen acre island in the middle of the East River, and lots of New Yorkers don’t even know it exists. There is a reason for that.

North Brother Island is abandoned and off-limits to the public. As such, one might imagine that it has a fascinating history. One would be right. From around 1880 until 1960 the island was home to several hospitals which warranted the quarantining of its patients. Epidemic diseases, mental patients, drug addicts. In 1960 the island was home to what was supposed to be a cutting edge treatment facility for teenage drug addicts. However, widespread staff corruption caused withdrawal of funding and the program closed, as did the island. Aside from the occasional Riker’s Island escapee who uses the island as a temporary haven after a long swim, North Brother Island has been completely abandoned ever since.

I am going to fucking go there.

I’ve done a little research(see: I've become completely obsessed) and apparently there are all kinds of cool remnants lying around the ruins of the hospital units. Beds, old medical instruments, solitary cells, padded rooms, all kinds of awesome shit.

I am so fucking jazzed about this.

Rafts will be built. Intel will be gathered. Risks will be taken.

Being that this adventure is absurdly dangerous, I will be recruiting a few more adventurers to come along. The usual adventure crew will be invited--Warren, Sam & Mat. I also invited Tynan of BetterThanYourBoyfriend to jet out from Austin if he’s interested, as I appreciate his taste for adventure.

It’s getting cold, so this may have to wait until spring. We’ll see.

Other interesting things about North Brother Island:

• A major nautical disaster occured in the East River in 1904 when a ship of daytrippers burned. Over 1,000 of the 1,300 passengers on board were killed. Their bodies washed up on the shore of North Brother Island, as did the ship. Photos and accounts of this are easily accessible with a google search.

• "Typhoid Mary" spent her last years quarantined in a private cottage on North Brother Island.

• Since it's abandonment over 45 years ago, the island and ruins are overgrown with vegetation/vines/ivy and it has become a sanctuary for rare birds.

I am going to North Brother Island.
Fuck, I just might spend the night.

Seriously, how nuts would it be to spend the night in "Typhoid Mary's" old private cottage?

Four Brothers

Ok, here’s another “we’re wasted and leaving the bar at 4am story.”

(the crowd cheers)

Three friends and I closed down the Raccoon Lodge on the upper west side last summer, and as usual we were twelve sheets to the wind.

It was myself, a friend named Trevor (tattoo artist), a guy named Jason (pasty/dessert chef at Serendipity) and Mat. You may remember Mat from the swimming the lake in Central Park story. He was the tough guy in the bikini briefs.

We’re weaving down the sidewalk going home when Mat starts with his usual tough guy thing. He starts telling us about the time he was in on a remote Indian reservation hunting coyotes with his bare hands when he ran into a buffalo stampede. He says he puffed out his chest and stood fast like a brick wall while hundreds of buffalo traveling at full speed bounced off him like rubber balls. Then a tribe of wild Indians in full attack mode came galloping in on horses and swinging hatchets and shooting arrows. Mat wiped out the whole tribe with nothing more than a cold stare. The Indian chief was spared and recognized Mat’s warrior instinct. The chief took Mat to the top of a sacred mesa and performed a secret ritual that inducted Mat into the tribe as a true blood warrior.

Well, not really, but you get the point.

In the middle of the story Mat stops himself, turns to Trevor and I and says,

“Hey, I bet I could take both of you at the same time in a wrestling match.”

Trevor and I share a glance. We both look back at Mat.

“You’re on. Twenty bucks a man.”, I reply.

Considering how you look at it, this is probably a bad bet for me and Trevor. If Mat wins, he’ll win forty bucks, twenty from me and twenty from Trevor. If Trevor and I win, we’ll only receive ten bucks each as we would split Mat’s twenty. Whether or not this is a good or bad bet depends on how you calculate the odds that either party will win.

For it to be a good bet, I have to be certain that Trevor and I are at least twice as likely to beat Mat as he is to beat us. Do the math.

I could get into more details about the odds, but I’ll spare you.

So we find a side street that doesn’t have a lot of traffic and we discuss the rules.

Very simple, if we can pin Mat’s shoulders for three seconds, we win. If Mat can pin either one of us for three seconds, he wins. Period.

We assign Jason, who’s looking a little green in the face, to be the referee. Jason sits down on the curb and leans back against the fire hydrant.

Mat, Trevor and I all walk out into the middle of the street.

In case I haven’t mentioned this, Mat is huge. Like, 6’4”, 220 pounds, and athletic.

Trevor and I are about the same size, 5’11”, 145 pounds.

This is not going to be easy, to say the absolute least.

Mat takes his shirt off and starts pumping himself up.

Trevor and I look at each other with an eyebrow-raising head-tilting “here goes nothin’” kind of look.

Jason, our referee mumbles “Go.”

Trevor and I start circling Mat. Mat has his arms straight out to the sides turning around slowly as we circle, trying to keep us both in sight.

I shoot in and wrap up Mat’s legs and yell at Trevor to push him over from the top. Mat kicked me off like a small dog trying to hump his leg.

Ah crap, this is gonna suck.

A few more attempts at the same strategy and Trevor and I get our timing perfect and get Mat down on the street.

Trevor and I both jump on top of Mat and try to get him pinned.

Ain’t happenin’.

We were all rolling around in the middle of the street like one of those dust balls from the cartoons. You know, where an arm or leg can occasionally be seen emerging. We are all getting very tired.

Finally, I think I have Mat pinned and I yell for Jason to start the three-count.

I look down and I definitely have Mat pinned. The problem is that Mat has Trevor pinned at the same time.

We all struggle for a couple more minutes, but it’s not doing any good.

We agree to call a truce and let it go to a judge’s decision.

We slowly get to our feet while examining our bloody knees and elbows and foreheads and god knows what else. Mat’s shoulder blades looked like he’d been dragged by a car. I proudly take credit for that.

We take a moment to catch our breath.

Almost simultaneously we all look over to Jason to ask him who won.

Sure enough, Jason is passed out cold leaning up against the fire hydrant with his mouth hanging open and his eyes rolled back in his head.

Needless to say, as the three combatants, we were fairly pissed about this.

We made a deal and came to a reasonable agreement. We decided to call it a tie.

As such, Mat gave us each half of what he owed, and we each gave Mat half of what we owed. In the end, Mat was ten bucks richer. Funny thing is that ten bucks wasn’t going to come close to what he was going to have to spend to fix himself up.

Trevor and I didn’t look too pretty either. I had to wear long sleeves to work for a week in the middle of summer to cover my cuts and bruises.

Anyway, we slapped Jason in the face until he woke up and limped and hobbled home.

Wanna hang out with my friends and me this weekend?



*Aside: A rarity for me, I got through this whole post withough cursing once.

Long Way Down

I do pretty stupid shit on a regular basis.

However...

My buddy Tynan of BetterThanYourBoyfriend.com put me to shame last weekend.

He installed a swing on the balcony of his high rise apartment. It swings out over the edge and drops down 200 feet. You guys have to see this. Pictures and all.

FYI, Tynan also designed the graphic and layout for this site.

If anyones needs a web page designed or a swing installed, you know who to call.

Another New York Moment

A few friends of mine and I shut down our local bar around 4AM on a Friday night last October. As tradition dictated, we walked a few blocks over to Central Park to find our favorite spot to cause trouble. The rocks by the lake always paid dividends in this respect. It’s somewhere in the area of 72nd St. on the west side of the park.

The path we usually take to get to our spot leads to a rock cliff with about a nine foot drop to a sand bar below. One has the option of jumping down to the level below or walking around and down to get to our little spot. Since I’m a really smart guy, I know that the shortest distance between two places is a straight line. I’m in for the jump. I turn to my friend Sam, who will rarely back down from a challenge, and say,

“Hey, if you do it, I’ll do it,” and I motioned towards the cliff. Sam must have known immediately from the look in my eye what I was going to say because before I could finish an eight word sentence, literally, Sam had hurled himself off the cliff without even looking over the edge first. Wow, balls.

Okay. I had jumped off this particular cliff a few times, and I know it’s something you have to prepare for. It’s dark, it’s a long way down and there is all kinds of nasty debris on the landing.

Sam is a reasonably fit guy, able bodied and strong willed. Even so, I was pretty sure that anyone who did what Sam just did would more than likely not be okay. They would be hurt. My notion was supported by the grunting and moaning coming from the bottom of the cliff.

I crouched on the edge of the cliff, found where I wanted to land and took flight. I landed a few feet away from Sam just as he was getting to his feet. He actually seemed to be okay with only a couple complaints about an aching foot. Good for Sam. Sam is man.

Sam and I got to our spot on the rocks by the lake before the other three guys did. Pat, Warren and Matt showed up a couple minutes later because they took the dress shoe route, around and down.

At our spot we all sat or stood on rocks, talking about whatever, when Warren turns to Mat and says,

“Mat, I’ll pay you $100 to swim across this lake right now. All the way across.”

Mat’s eyes got really big and he immediately starting taking his clothes off and got down to his bikini briefs. This is particularly funny because Mat is a really big tough guy. He’s got be at least 6’4”, 220 pounds, and not fat. Yep, big scary guy standing at the edge of the lake in Central Park at four in the morning wearing bikini briefs. This may not be as uncommon as I thought, as later in life I heard that this is a very popular “cruising spot”. I don’t wanna know.

I’m sure Mat’s enthusiasm in regards to the proposition had a lot to do with the fact that he was newly unemployed. In addition, he had managed to completely botch his state unemployment claim and now receives a total of $38/week income. By comparison, it would be like someone offering me around $3,000 to swim the lake. I don’t blame him for being excited. (See: Einstein's Theory of Relativity)

Remember, this is October in New York City. It was about 43 degrees fahrenheit outside. Warren argued it was in the low-50’s, at least.

Mat took a couple deep breaths. Even though he doesn’t believe in god Matt said a quick prayer where I overheard something about dirty needles in his feet. I don’t know.

Mat literally set one foot in the water, spun right around and said there was no way in hell he was going to do it. It was way too cold. Of course everyone started goading him but he wouldn’t budge. He said it was just too cold.

At that point I immediately offered to take the bet myself. Warren, who had originally offered the bet looked at me and said,

“No. I know you’ll do it. That’s not the point.”

I had a feeling that’s what he would say. But everybody in attendance was already worked up and wanted to see someone swim the lake.

Warren’s a very bright guy and proceeded to make everyone the following offer:

Warren, Pat, Mat & Sam would each pay me $25 to swim the lake. Someone would have to cover Matt’s portion as we already know he’s broke.

Warren has a gift for working a great deal for himself in any situation. He was ready to bet Mat $100 out of his pocket to swim the lake, and all the other guys would have gotten to enjoy the spectacle on Warren’s dime. Now Warren has worked a new deal to make everyone else pay to bet someone whom they already know will swim the lake. Nice work.

Of course, I take the deal. I strip down to my boxers and approach the water. The film on the top of the water containing algae and god know what else made it impossible to see the bottom. Great. I don’t believe in god either but I think I said the same prayer Mat did. I added broken glass to the prayer.

Mat was right. It was really cold, but probably manageable. I mean, we’re not talking about immmediate hypothermia or anything. I waded slowly into the water, being extremely careful with every step. My focus was so intensely concentrated on the nerves in my feet that I think I could have read a newspaper with my toes, no brail. I could have identified Coke over Pepsi with the soles of my goddamn feet right then, I swear.

Once the water got up to mid-thigh or so, I started swimming because I couldn’t fucking wait to get my feet off the bottom of this death trap. The bottom of the lake slowly dropped out from under me and the cold began to set in much faster than I thought it would.

I swam faster.

I got to the middle of the lake and was getting kind of tired. I stopped and treaded water for a few seconds to get my wind back. Apparently it worried my friends when they stopped seeing the splashes because they all starting screaming words of encouragement,

“You’re half way there man!”

“You can do it!”

“Keep going!”

I have pretty smart friends, but to this day I’m surprised at how scripted their encouragements seemed.

“Shut up dicks! I’m just resting!” I yelled back.

They shut up.

I started swimming again.

I was wearing a really old pair of boxer shorts in which the elastic in the waist was completely worn out and stretched. While I was swimming, the drag of the water kept pulling my boxers down. Accordingly, I had to stop swimming to pull up my stupid underwear several times. This began to take up a lot of precious energy and was completely killing my momentum.

I had to let the boxer shorts go.

I hated this idea for several incredibly obvious reasons, but the job had to be done. As hard as this decision was initially, I have to admit that it was a rather liberating experience when I finally roundhouse-kicked the boxer shorts off my left ankle with an aquatic propulsion force matched only by the finest U.S. made nuclear submarine.

I gargled through the last third of my swim across the lake at Central Park completely naked. The other side started getting closer and closer and finally I felt the bottom again. Oh god. Not again. Being the genius that I am, I didn’t think about having to deal with the bottom while getting out of the lake also. To make things worse, I am now naked. (See also: Completely Exhausted)

I stay in the lake, laying motionless in the shallow water with only my head sticking out. I look around for my friends, moving only my eyes.

I feel like a naked Navy Seal.

Fuck its cold.

I started shivering pretty badly and decided I had to get out of the water. I floated up as close as I could to the bank, where the water was only a few inches deep. I stood up and made a hot-coal'esque scramble through the shallow water to the shore where I found a sadly small tree for cover.

There I was standing two feet from the main walking path, shivering violently and completely naked. More than the sole embarrassment of being naked in public, I was really concerned that a gaggle of hot twenty something chicks would walk by and think that my penis was really that small.

“No, no! It’s the cold, I swear!”

It's amazing how priorities change in extreme circumstances.

Thankfully there were no hot girls around as far as I could tell, and I could see my friends coming around the path carrying my clothes. They were still pretty far away.

I screamed at the top of my lungs,

“I WANT MY PANTS WITH MY FUCKING MONEY IN THE POCKET!”

I see my friends chuckle from a distance and continue to take their sweet ass time walking up the path. Sam seems to be limping.

Another sudden priority shift.

Let me try to explain something about being naked, cold, and alone in the middle of the night in a location where record numbers of murders and all kinds of mind-blowing violent crimes occur:

Every second seems like a fucking year. I cannot stress this enough, as the proper words do not exist in the English language.

The guys obviously didn’t understand the urgency of the matter.

“HURRY THE FUCK UP! I’M NAKED AND I AM GOING TO GET KILLED!”

This got their attention.

Speaking of getting attention, I realized that the exact words that I screamed should have been chosen more carefully. I mean, if some sicko really was lurking in the shadows of Central Park waiting for the right victim on which to pull off some crazy sex-murder, which guy would they target? Probably the one standing there screaming about being naked with money in his pants, right?

All my friends started laughing hysterically from a couple hundred feet away. I was not laughing. Warren, great guy that he is, starting jogging up the path with my clothes but he was laughing so hard that I wasn’t sure he was going to make it. It was the first time I'd seen someone almost fall down from running and laughing at the same time.

Finally he arrived to find me, sure enough, shivering and naked. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t even hand me my clothes. I had to snatch them from him and get them on as fast as possible, which isn’t easy when you’re wet.

Pat, Mat and Sam all found us a minute or so later. Sam was definitely limping.

We headed back up the path to leave the park and go home. I used the time to collect my winnings from everyone.

Warren was still laughing.

Sam wouldn't stop bitching about his stupid foot.

Pat complained that the whole thing wasn't worth his $25.
That’s Pat in a nutshell, but you gotta love Pat.

Mat had a silent defeat about him.

The sun was starting to come up.

Alas, the punchline:

We were all walking down Broadway, tired, drunk and just blocks from home. I was also getting a little queasy, and I wasn't sure why. We were passing by a group of tourists who were standing in front of thier hotel waiting for a cab with their luggage. At the exact moment that we walked by the tourists I vomited, while walking, never missing a beat. The tourists all gasped and looked shocked and a little scared.

Immediately, the tourists' shock turned to absolute confusion when I turned to them and quipped ever so matter-of-factly,

“What? It’s just lake water.”


***Later that morning, we all woke up to Sam's voice on the answering machine. He was in the hospital with a broken heel.

Read the original New York Moment.

New York City Blackout

Yes, I realize this happened a long time ago.

When the big NYC Blackout occurred, I remember that the first thing I thought was, “If I don’t come out of this with a great story, I’m pathetic.”

Well, not only did I get a story, I got some pictures too.

I was working for a pair of Oscar-winning movie-making-mogul brothers at the time. My office in Tribeca shut down around the time of the blackout, maybe two or three in the afternoon, I don’t remember. The local bar was unloading all of its beer for half price so I stayed there drowning myself in half-price love until around six o’clock. Knowing that I would never see this good of a deal again, I drank as many bottles of Budweiser as I possibly could, as fast as I possibly could. I got totally seriously hammered and decided I should probably start walking back to my apartment in Queens.

Yep, I had to walk from Tribeca to Astoria(for the non-New Yorkers, that’s really fucking far). I think it was pretty hot that day, too. Again, my memory of this day isn’t so sharp. Good times.

I stopped by a deli which was selling its cooler goods for basically nothing. I grabbed a 6-pack of Coors tall-boys to throw in my bag for the walk home to Queens.

After a couple hours of walking and rubbernecking, I finally got to the Queensboro Bridge.

This is the sea of people at the foot of the bridge, Manhattan side going to Queens.


I stood there for a while looking around and taking in the scene when I saw a lot of black smoke and what looked to be an apartment fire.

I’m really awesome when I’m drunk so I made a bee-line straight for the fire.

I saw the huge red brick wall that is at least four or five stories tall. It supports an overpass that runs right by the apartment building(pictured below). So what should I do? Climb the wall of course.

Drunk people should climb walls to get very close to fire.



I scaled the wall with my bag over my shoulder. I still had two beers left. No way in hell I was leaving those behind. I got scared a couple times on the way up because the finger-holds between the bricks got really small, and it was a long way down by that point. People were cheering for me. People tend to do that a lot.

Public Service Announcement: Never begin to climb anything which you are not certain that you can summit. Getting stuck sucks.

After a pretty shaky climb I finally threw my leg over the top of the wall and sat on the overpass to catch my breath. I repeatedly flexed and relaxed my fingers, as my fingers were very angry with me.

That’s when I saw where the fire was.

(Click to enlarge)


Oh fucking sweet!

I challenge anyone to tell me the last time they were completely alone in a pitch black NYC with a burning car twenty feet away. You can't. I am the only person this has ever happened to.

This is a real life car on real life fire and I was the only one there to see it… for about two minutes.

Then the NYPD and the FDNY ruined my party.

They had the sense to stay a block away from the burning car while they repeatedly instructed me over the PA on the fire engine to “leave immediately”. I was a little too busy messing with the settings on my crappy camera to take them seriously.

I realized they were serious when I looked up and saw a fleet of New York's Finest sprinting towards me with black steel batons shouting things that I would rather not repeat on record.

I got the fuck out of dodge and started to climb back down the wall, but not before I got this picture of New York’s Bravest putting out the fire.

(Click to enlarge)


I guaran-fucking-tee you that there is no way I would have made it down that wall without the adrenaline that came from running from the cops. I slipped off the wall with about 10 feet to go and somehow landed solid on my feet. A lot of people below were watching me come down the wall, and it drew a lot of attention. They were cheering again, I'm used to it. There were several gasps when I slipped, and several relieved sighs when I landed.

I immediately blended into the crowd and made my way home.

Several people went to great lengths to follow me into the crowd crossing the bridge. I guess there's really nothing better to do during a blackout. A few people who were trailing behind me while I was trying to make myself lost in the crowd congratulated me or asked me questions about what I was doing on the wall.

I only responded with, "I got lost."

Mace, an Axe and a Crowbar: A Love Story, Part II

Read -Part I- first, if you haven't already.

About a week later, I was waiting outside in the back of my school, standing on a curb waiting for my father to pick me up. I had stayed after school for an extra curricular activity of some sort so almost everyone on the school grounds was long gone.

This was a particularly exciting day for me as my long distance girlfriend of over a year was in town and I was going to get to see her. I only got to see her once every couple months. This was a gigantic fucking deal.

As my father was running late, I shifted my focus east for a while, then west, as I didn’t know from which direction he might be coming. I was standing there, zoned out in my own little westward facing world, counting down the seconds until I get to make out with my furiously hot long distance girlfriend in the photo booth at the mall.

Then, out of nowhere, I heard a loud bang and I immediately fell unconscious. Knocked out cold.

I woke up a few seconds later staring straight at the dirt on the ground. I had no fucking clue what had just happened. Very groggy, I slowly got to my feet. When my eyes finally came into focus, I looked down to see a single red clay brick lying at my feet. I also felt an overwhelming pain on the back of my head.

My eyes rose from the ground and I saw a kid sitting on a bike in the middle of the street smiling from ear to ear.

“Where’s your mace now, motherfucker?” he asked.

I didn’t have a good answer for him, as I was completely fucked up from his generous brick to the head. I just stood there, looking like a boxer who had just returned from a trip to the canvas.

The little shit rode off on his bike, laughing. Fighting every fiber of my being, I had to let him go.

Even in my diminished state of awareness, not to mention my young age, I knew to cut my losses right there. If this kid was crazy enough to chase me with an axe and blindside me in the head with a brick, who fucking knows what he's capable of? I was happy to still be alive.

My father drove up in the family Buick a couple minutes later and I got into the car.

“Well, hell of a day to be late, Dad.” I said, while secretly wiping the blood from my head into the inside of my right front jeans pocket.

“Watch your language. Why? What happened?” He replied.

I didn’t even know where to start with the story, so I just said,

“Nothing. It’s no big deal.”

I was a little worried that if I told my dad what happened, he might make me go to the hospital and I wouldn’t be able to see Sarah at the mall, as she is only in town for one afternoon. I also didn’t want him to know that I had a habit of borrowing his can of mace when I went skating, as that part would be hard to work around if I were to tell him the story.

My Dad dropped me off at the mall, I met up with Sarah and her mother in the food court. We all sat and shared a giant pretzel before Sarah and I would go our own way(photo booth) while Sarah's mom shopped. I was really spaced out and rubbing my head on occasion. Sarah’s mom asked if something was wrong with me and if I was okay. I mumbled something about axes, crowbars, rollerblades, mace and bricks.

Sarah’s mother immediately excused herself and Sarah, they never came back.

Sarah’s mother never allowed Sarah to speak to me or see me again.

End of a chapter in life.


Untill...

Five years later I got a phone call from Sarah. No shit. We had both just graduated high school in our respective states and I was heading off to New York in the next month. Sarah told me that she was going to be in town overnight and she really wanted to see me, after five years. Holy shit. This was one of the happiest days of my life, especially because my parents had just left town on vacation and had left me home alone--something they had only done one other time in my life. Talk about some fantastic fucking timing.

As promised, Sarah showed up on my doorstep a few hours later. She looked incredible. I hadn't seen her or spoken to her in five years. Suffice to say that we were able to tie up a lot of loose ends, now that we were both consenting adults.

I saw Sarah off early the next morning. We haven't spoken since.

End of a chapter in life.

UPDATE: Holy Shit! Sarah found this post. See the comments. Possibly not the "end of a chapter in life" after all... again.

This insane development leads us to present day, and-Part III-. Click and enjoy.

Mace, an Axe and a Crowbar: A Love Story, Part I

When I was about thirteen years old, I was going rollerblading with a friend. We were heading across town to go to a cooler older kid’s house. He was Oklahoma City’s stunt rollerblading answer to Tony Hawk, at least in our eyes.

We got all of our gear together. Knee pads, Gatorade, a couple granola bars, and a can of mace.

Why mace, you ask? Easy. There must be something strange in the water in Oklahoma City because every stray dog in town seems hellbent on attacking anything that moves on wheels at any cost, specifically rollerbladers and skateboarders.

Mace is a very effective deterrent against dog attacks.

Dear PETA:

This letter is meant to serve as a preemptive shut-the-fuck-up. Seriously, no one wants to hear it.

Best Regards,
Ryan


Moving on...

My friend and I set out on our trip. After a semi-uneventful trek of four or five miles we rounded the corner onto our friend's block. He lived at the end of the street.

We skated by a house where there were eight or ten kids playing in the front yard, ranging in age anywhere from two to maybe twelve. As we passed the house one of the oldest kids ran to the curb and yelled,

“Whutchu rollin’ through my hood fo', niggas?!”

I gave him a dismissive what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it glance and we kept skating. This was such a common type of occurrence that my friend and I both forgot it ever happened about thirty seconds later. I was attending an ultra inner city public school at the time, so I was used to dealing with stupid ghetto idiots. I had been punched in the face more times by age thirteen than most people have in their entire lives, if ever. Antics like his were old hat.

We got to our friend’s house and rang the doorbell. No answer. He wasn’t home. Oh well. We'll show him our new badass skate moves another day.

We decided to skate back across town to our neighborhood, so we headed back the way we came. About half way down the street I noticed that all the kids who were playing outside were gone. I didn’t think anything of it.

We had just passed the kids' house and were starting to skate up a big hill to leave the neighborhood when we heard from behind,

“I told you not to be rollin’ through my hood, niggas!”

We both turned around to see two kids running full speed straight at us, with the other eight kids cheering from the yard.

One kid was carrying a crowbar.

The other was carrying an axe. Not a hatchet, an axe.

He looked something like this, only with an axe in place of the gun.



Oh fuck. This is not old hat. This is some completely new shit.

We started hauling ass up this monster hill looking over our shoulders every couple seconds. The lords-of-the-flies were closing the gap on us at an incredible rate. This makes perfect sense because my friend and I were trying to rollerblade up a steep ass hill and the people who were chasing us were, well… black kids on foot. You tell me who wins that race.

We kept skating up the hill, but the kids were getting closer with every stride. It was useless. They were gaining on us and my friend and I were running out of gas with every push.

“I think I’m gonna have to do it, man.” I said to my friend.

“Fuck yeah man, do what you have to do!” He yelled, as if I’m retarded for having to say it in the first place.

Our attackers were close enough where I could hear their footsteps over the slow grinding of polyurethane wheels on asphalt. I took one more look over my shoulder. I stopped dead in my tracks, reached in my pocket and grabbed the mace.

I twisted the valve open and turned around. I held my arm straight out in front of me, squeezed, and let the little shit have it. He immediately stopped and covered his face with one hand and threw the axe in our direction with the other hand. Luckily, twleve-year-old kids can’t throw axes very well with one hand. His little brother was behind him and caught a lot of the spray too. He immediately turned and ran back home, smart kid. The older brother, the original aggressor, was still coming at us, or trying to. Leave it to say that I emptied the entire can of mace and stopped him in his tracks. The kid was just getting back to his feet when I looked back down from the top of the hill. He'd had enough. We made it out of the neighborhood and onto a main street.

I was in complete shock.

“Wow that was really fucked up.” I say to my friend in the understatement of the century.

My silent friend looks at me again as if I’m completely retarded for thinking its actually necessary to say that out loud.

As the adrenaline wore off, my mouth and eyes and face and skin and throat and hands started to burn. It really hurt, a lot. I guess emptying an entire can of mace upon a would-be axe murder on a windy day doesn’t come without its consequences. Who knew?

--To be continued in Part II.

New York Moment

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The 4 Train.

I had just gotten off work and was walking up Broadway to catch the subway home when I realized I didn’t have any cigarettes. I stopped at a newsstand to see if they had any rolling papers. I roll my own cigarettes now because, here in NYC, cigarettes cost damn near $8.00 a pack, and you can’t even smoke them in bars but that’s another story entirely.

As I’m standing at the newsstand trying to determine if they sell what I’m looking for, a rock star looking guy walks up beside me and asks the nice Indian man behind the counter,

“Hey bro, you got any magazines that tell me where I can find a good rock’n’roll show tonight?”

The nice Indian man looks at the rock star blankly as if to say, “Uh, just look at the magazines and figure it out yourself, tattoo boy.” The rock star picks up the latest copy of “Time Out New York” which is when I turn to rock star guy and say,

“Yeah, that’s the one you want. That will tell you what you want to know.”

He thanked me and began looking through the magazine. I turned to the nice Indian man behind the counter of the newsstand and asked him if he had any rolling papers. He said yes and the rock star that was still there flipping through the magazine turns to me and asks,

“Hey bro, you need some papers? I got some. You can have some if you want.”

“Uh, sure thanks.” I replied. “I really only need one though.”

The guy reached in his pocket and pulled out a pack of those EZ Double Wide monsters. You know, the papers that you never have enough of whatever you’re smoking to require such a mammoth ass rolling paper. Anyway, I gladly took a paper and pulled out my little pouch of tobacco to twist one up when the rock star says,

“Bro, do you just want a cigarette, bro?” And then he extends his open pack in my direction with one cigarette sticking out more than the rest as to make it even more convenient for me.

This guy obviously isn’t from around here.

I graciously accept the cigarette and light it. It was a shitty Parliament Light 100, but whatever.

As we both were about to go our separate ways, the rock star turns to me and asks,

“Bro, do you like beer?”

Ok, any readers that know me know for damn sure that I fucking love beer. I fucking love the shit.

Accordingly, I looked at the guy, hesitated and said,

“Yes.”

“Bro, you wanna grab a brew, bro? Brew-bro. Haha, you’re my brew-bro.” he chuckles.

Again, this guy obviously isn’t from around here. Coincidentally, earlier that day I was thinking of simple things I could do to break up my rhythm a little. Ya know, something besides wake up, go to work, come home, drink beer, go to sleep. I suppose throwing in a little “hang out with a complete stranger” would mix things up a bit. Why the hell not?

We started walking and he mentioned something about needing to stop by his mom’s hotel room and that he hopes she doesn’t have a customer in the room. Huh? Oh well, whatever. This guy was very chatty and seemed to have a few pieces missing from his noodle, like he would ask the same question twice in a row, weird things like that. So we walked into the Dream Hotel on 55th just off Broadway. If you’ve never been to this place, it’s awesome. A very beautiful place indeed.

We walk up the stairs to the third floor of the hotel and stop in front of room 309. He knocks on the door.

“Hey, it’s Derek!” This is the first time I have heard his name. He hadn’t asked for mine, and I didn’t ask for his.

The shockingly sexy young voice on the other side of the door replies, “I’ve got someone in here right now.”

“I just need to grab something real quick,” Derek says. The door opens and Derek slips into the room as I wait outside. Usually this is the point when I would wonder just what the hell is going on. Why does this guy’s mom have a “customer” in her hotel room and why does this guy’s mom sound like she’s a hot 25-year-old chick? What the fuck am I doing here when I could be home drinking beer and watching reruns of King of Queens? Yeah, fairly reasonable questions in my opinion. The truth of the matter is that I was too concerned about the fact that I did not yet have a beer in my face to seriously ponder the aforementioned concerns.

The door to room 309 opened again and out came my weird new buddy Derek with two frosty twenty-two ounce bottles of Corona and two wedges of lime, one of each in each hand. This is not quite what I had in mind when I agreed to grab a brew with rock star man. On the other hand, this was getting more interesting by the second and appeared to have all the ingredients of a true New York moment. The kettle was just waiting to be put on the fire.

Derek hands me my awesome cold beer and wedge of lime and we head down the stairs to the lobby of this immaculate hotel. At this point, I have no idea what the hell is going on and I have dropped the reigns. Derek is running this show now. We get to lobby and Derek asks one the doormen,

“Hey bro, how do I get to that one spot again, bro?”

The doorman tells him how to get to that “one spot” and I don’t really pay attention because I just want to drink my goddamn beer. I follow Derek to the elevator bank where we wait for an elevator. I have been living in NYC for several years and have worked in many of the tallest buildings in the world, and I have never had to wait longer for an elevator than I did on this day at this hotel with Derek. It took fucking ages. I guess this was okay as it gave Derek and I chance to talk. By the way, Derek still does not know my name and seems to be content with calling me “bro”. Sure, whatever. He gave me an awesome cold beer so he can call me Sally for all I care.

So there we are, waiting in the lobby of an elegant upscale hotel in midtown Manhattan surrounded by businessmen in incredibly nice suits waiting for the same elevator, twenty-two and lime wedge in hand. As we wait for this asshole elevator Derek begins to tell me his story. Derek is an ex-addict, a junkie. As in, he says he’s been clean for a month right as he pops two OxyContins and washes them down with a swig of Gatorade from his back pocket. The irony was not lost on him because he chuckled and said unprovoked,

“No, no. I don’t really do these anymore. They’re just for the pain. I had to have a tooth pulled a couple days ago. Those opiates really fuck up your teeth, see?” And he opens his mouth as wide as he can so I can take a good long look at his teeth. Aside from Derek’s teeth you could see the business men getting nervous, which in some weird way calmed me down. The elevator finally arrived and I watched Derek push the button to take us to the twelfth floor. When we reach our destination we get out of the elevator and Derek begins to look around in somewhat of a confused fashion, and of course I follow blindly down the hall, unopened Corona and lime wedge still in hand. We finally find a stairwell and I follow Derek up the stairs and out an exit door where we end up outside. Yes, outside on some sort of balcony on the thirteenth floor of the Dream Hotel. This, however, is no normal balcony. This is quite obviously a place in the building where they never intended any human being to set foot. How do I know? Easy. There are absolutely no measures in place to keep you from falling right off the goddamn roof. Seriously, you could just walk right off the edge.

So here I am standing on a roof in Manhattan with a junkie that I don’t know, and no one knows I’m here. Then it hits me. Oh shit. I am about five seconds away from getting robbed or thrown off this fucking roof, or both. Of course. I was a mark from the very beginning when this guy was supposedly looking for a magazine thirteen stories below me about 30 minutes ago. The rolling papers, the cigarette, the beer. It was all just a ploy to get me on this fucking roof so he could steal all my shit and throw me off! That explains the $250 Diesel jeans he’s wearing in contrast to the fact that he didn’t want to pay $3 for a magazine that contained the exact information he was looking for. Those jeans came from some idiot just like me whom he robbed and then fired their sorry ass right off the thirteenth floor.

Fuck me I am an idiot and now I am going to die.

Fuck.

I snap back into reality when Derek starts coming towards me with a bottle opener and says, “Lemme get that for you, bro.” This is where my life flashed before my eyes as I simultaneously shat myself. Derek reached over and popped the top off my beer and did the little snap thing with the cap and we watched it sail all the way down to the street below, which took a really long time by the way. Derek turns to me and looks me square in the eyes and says,

“Bro, that’s a really long way down!”

No fucking shit asshole and I have a feeling I’m about to find out first hand just how far down it is!

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Derek walks around the tiny balcony checking it out and whatnot, or making sure there are no witnesses. I stand there frozen with my back glued to a wall drinking my Corona as Derek continues to tell me his story. In my mind, I am positive that he is waiting for me to finish my beer so that my faculties will be impaired when he stomps me and shows me what it’s like to skydive without a parachute. I actually appreciated that he was letting me finish my beer before he killed me. Seems like being launched off a skyscraper would be less terrifying if I had a little buzz going, you know? Nice guy that Derek.

Over the awesome cold beer and a few cigarettes, which Derek bummed to me, I listened to his story. As we know, Derek is a junkie. Er, ex-junkie who’s been clean for a month and is popping OxyContin as a painkiller for his tooth. Derek is from LA/Hollywood and loves to talk about the wicked smack they have out there and the base heads and all kinds of nice things. Apparently Derek got into a little trouble in LA and got busted with a whole bottle full of OxyContins that he was not supposed to have. Derek told me about the arrest and all the details and shit and about how the five days he spent in jail weren’t that bad because he didn’t get fucked. Nice. It comes up that the woman from room 309 is not his mom, that’s just what he calls her. She is an ex-porn star from Hollywood that got hooked on meth and is now a hooker in NYC. That explains “mom’s customer”. Derek and MethHooker are old friends from LA so when MethHooker heard about Derek’s legal troubles she flew him out to NYC and is letting him stay with her for a while until his problems blow over.

With a proud smile Derek showed me some of the things that MethHooker bought for him like one of those wicked new Motorola phones, you know, the thin black ones, a really sweet Gucci watch, and the really badass jeans he was wearing. And don’t forget room 309. It’s his room for the week as long as MethHooker is allowed to use it to service her customers on occasion.

Dude, hookers make bank!

Obviously it became clear to me that Derek didn’t get all those nice things from pushing people off of roofs. All of this confusion could have been avoided had I not forgotten to factor in the MethHooker part of the equation from the beginning. I will never make that mistake again.

I wish there was a powerful ending to this story, but there really isn’t.

After I realized that Derek had no interest in stealing my jeans and launching me off the roof, I really got to like the guy. We hung out for a while on that roof. He is a really nice guy with a huge heart who just wanted a friend for a little while. Derek went out of his way to make a friend from a total stranger and give them whatever he could give to make them happy. In this case, an awesome cold beer, a couple cigarettes and a breathtaking view of the most beautiful city in the world was perfect.

Cheers, Derek. I sincerely wish you well.

Best regards,
Your "Brew-Bro"