Panic Switch
I somehow lost all 6 pots from 2009. Fuck it, oh well, nothing really happened. The site is 99% done. Enjoy.
Anyway, this weekend an old friend of mine came to visit me. Let’s call him Cal. He brought some other kid with him aswell. The weekend started out as usual with the celebratory reunion of straight vodka and rum shots. Good times were had and chairs got broken.
I planned a night out for everyone to show them around some of my favorite places in the SoHo area. Off the bat, Cal was complaining because it was ‘too hot to go out’. What’s a poor over-weight kid to do when it’s a whole 85 degrees Fahrenheit outside with a nice breeze? Oh, I got this one, wear a ‘Mine’s bigger than yours’ tshirt to a trendy bar with blue plaid shorts! I have to say, it did match pretty well, if you consider matching teal on blue a good choice to help society accept you. Cal refused to put on a button down shirt. This just about brought all of the ideas I had for bars (or anything with a no shoes, no shirt, no service policy) down to a dramatic low. After sighing repeatedly and being embarrassed because the girl I currently fancy would be meeting up with us – we were on our way to adventure!
After complaining about the heat, the subway, the roads, walking, sweating, my cat, money, walking too fast, cost of cigarettes in NYC, kittens, clowns, double rainbows, and breathing in general – we got to Amity Hall. Cal, being in a dreadfully foul mood already, started ordering $18 double rum and cokes. In my mind, I started playing the greatest game of all time ‘Guess what happens next’. After the rest of us have two beers, he finishs the third double rum and coke. Ok ready? What happens next? I had to put a credit card down to open a tab for the table, but we could split it all when we cashed out. Cal doesnt have a credit card and says I owe him because he bought a $15 bottle of rum the night before. So he stiffs me with a $54 bar tab (not including tip). I wasn’t going to let that ruin my time. Off to bar #2, my personal favorite dive bar, Botanica.
We were hanging out, talking, my female friend came to meet us. Cal sat off to the side – on his phone – ignoring the conversations of the three of us. After about 10 minutes of his display of social awkwardness, he vanishes without a word. 20 minutes later he comes in with no explanation for his where abouts (this goes somewhere, wait for it). We pay up and leave.
We were trying to find a third place to go. Mostly all of the bars had some live DJ as an excuse to charge a meaningless cover charge. We found a bar with no cover and started to go in. I turned around to see if everyone was still with me and Cal is nowhere to be seen. Apparently walking at a normal pedestrian pace was too taxing on his well-maintained body and he fell behind. We waited and still didn’t see him, so we just went in the bar and ordered a drink. 10 minutes later Cal calls me (guess what happens next) and informs me that a bunch of ‘African-Americans‘ are following him. Why would a bunch of black guys be following a fat white kid? It seems that in walking to the third bar a random black guy was asking people on the street if anyone wanted ‘coke’. Hm, so being in your late twentys, and making it this far without dying, you learn things. I think one thing I learned along the way was not to buy cocaine from random black guys that are pedaling it on the sidewalk outside of a urban nightclub, or at all. I mean, I could be wrong – why would anyone undercover cops want to sell illegal narcotics on a sidewalk?
After hearing his gut wrenching, courageous story of survival, I told him the address of the bar, and that it was three blocks away from his current location. He proceeded to scream at me because he didnt know how to get there. I explained to him that ‘buildings’ on ‘streets’ are ‘numbered’ sequentially and to follow the numbers up the street until he reached the bar. This was not what he wanted to hear; He was lost in an amazingly huge, complex metropolis where all the streets and avenues were sequentially numbered. He told me I was ‘an asshole’ and he was going to take a cab to the bar. I told him good luck finding a cab that will drive you 3 streets.
When he got to the bar I told him I was done, and tossed his friend my keys and wished them luck on their way home. I spent the night elsewhere.
So, what have we learned from this post? Don’t try to buy coke from undercover cops, fat people complain about everything, and some people are just fucking assholes.
Oh, and while he was smoking inside my apartment – of which I explicitly told him not to do – he used my salt shaker as an ash tray.
Fuck you.
