I started off the night sitting in Bryant Park, drinking a Heine out of a paper bag and reading Eyeless in Gaza by Huxley. Unfortunately, I sat down next to a group
of people learning about basic finances. I didn’t mind them talking but I think they minded that I kept laughing out loud when I got to into my book. This made me look around a little more and I noticed a women and her two daughters who looked to be from Spain. They had Goldfish (my favorite snack) which I stared at longingly until I caught the mother’s eyes.
“I wasn’t trying to be creepy. I was only staring at your goldfish,” I say sheepishly.
She gestures that she doesn’t understand English and gets her daughter to face my direction. In fact, now the whole family is sitting and staring at me. I freeze up and then mumble, “I just was saying that I really like goldfish a lot.”
She stares at me for a second and then says with an a pretty accent, “You can have some.” I walk over and she pours some into my hand. I offer to trade some of my Heineken for the goldfish but the mother just laughs and shakes her head.
I’m there to see A Shot in the Dark, a Pink Panther movie with the unequalled Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. The movie begins so I abandon my goldfish toting friends and move two chairs to where I can see the screen.
A man sitting a few feet in front of me turns around and says, “What are you doing?”
“Just getting ready to watch a great movie,” I say with a big grin.
“Why are you sitting so close to me,” he says with menace in his voice as he stands up.
“Because I want to see the movie,” I say in a calm voice.
“Why did you have to sit so close to me?”
“I’m not sitting close to you.”
“Why don’t you sit over there?”
“Because there’s a tree in the way.”
“You’re some kind of smartass aren’t you?” he says loudly, as he stands directly above me.
“No. I’m just trying to watch the movie.”
It goes on like this for a few minutes and I stay cool except for calling him an idiot once. He gets very heated and I flinched once when he made a sudden gesture because he was angry enough to start throwing punches. I felt pretty good about being able to sit there while he was in my face but I also don’t know why I felt a compunction to “win this battle”, as if it mattered if I won againt this angry, possibly crazy, man.
Eventually one guy goes and gets a cop. Once my weird antagonist realizes this, he starts yelling more but from farther away. He finally takes his seat when the cop approaches but he continues to glare at me for awhile until he settles down to just swinging his arms behind himself randomly to make sure I’m not there. He acted like a crazy homeless person but he had a brand new iBook on his table and dressed normally.
Ironically, once my brother got to the movie, we realized that his chair was behind a tree so we had to move to where the guy wanted me to sit in the first place. My brother wants some water to drink because he’s dehydrated after a long day of moving rich people’s junk. I tell him there’s a place down the street where I got my forty of Heineken. He decides he’ll get another one for each of us. As soon as he said that, I knew it would be an interesting night.
We have a great time drinking and watching Peter Sellers working his magic. I vowed to my brother that I will surprise attack around his house someday soon just like Kato attacks Inspector Clouseau. Quotes:
Clouseau: And I submit, Inspector Ballon, that you arrived home, found Miguel with Maria Gambrelli, and killed him in a rit of fealous jage!
Clouseau: Well... that just goes to prove what I have said all along.
Dreyfus: What you've said, Clouseau, qualifies you as the greatest prophet since Custer said he was going to surround all those Indians!
Afterwards, as we biked over the Williamsburg Bridge, we switched bikes to see what it felt like to ride a different fixed gear. He had a lower gear ratio so I could get more speed on the downhill of the bridge but I had a hard time skid-stopping. I was ready to switch back to my bike and Colin’s only remark was, “It felt like I just fucked your girlfriend.”
We made it to the hipster mecca of the Union Pool bar. I knew that Williamsburg packed in the hipsters but this place was crawling with them. It felt like a roach motel that gathered them in with cheap PBR instead of pheromones. We got our drinks and sat down at an outside fountain across from two girls. Soon we’re talking to them. Actually, my brother is talking to the exotic beauty from South America while I’m playing wingman with the one with a facial blemish from Jersey. He got her number and a promised date so I consider it a job well done. I met a girl who is the bike mechanic for a peditaxi company and she says they can make up to $200 bucks on a good day.
After a few more trips to the bar, I get a free round from the bartender because she says we have been good customers. I figure that’s a good indication that we’ve been there too long. We get on our bikes and Colin leaves for a girl’s apartment and I unknowingly go the wrong way under the BQE. I eventually get to some docks and I have no idea what body of water I would be running into but I hike back up the BQE and cross the water on the highway bridge, weaving around the late night construction. I get off the exit at 57th street and 57th avenue.
I have no idea where I am. I know there’s nothing like these streets in Brooklyn and I’m pretty sure, judging by my surroundings, that I’m not in Manhattan. Somehow, I completely forget about the borough of Queens. I ride despondently for a few blocks and then I just give up. I find thick bushes around an apartment building and crawl under them to sleep the sleep of the damned.
I wake up at seven with a little hangover and start biking to Grand Central. I stop at a restaurant for some a wash in the bathroom and a bacon, egg and cheese. I make Metro-North but I fall asleep five minutes before my stop and snooze for three stops. I wake up with that “Oh shit” feeling. I jump off the train at Mount Kisco and find out that the next train back is an hour later.
It’s a miserably hot day, I’m hungover and so I decide to hitchhike back to Valhalla because the highway goes right next to my work. After a hot and sweaty 45 minutes of wandering around trying to find the highway entrance, I give up and take the train to White Plains. Somehow, this whole sad, crazy adventure puts me at work only about 45 minutes after my boss, albeit stinking and miserable.
