(My apologies again for our recent technical difficulties, which are now mostly resolved.  I don’t know the technical name for what happened, but I believe my webhost, ipowerweb, how do you say, "shit the bed."  At any rate, the site and my email and Site Guy Brendan are now mostly back to normal.  Thank you for your patience.  We now resume your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.)

So then I said to him, "Hey buddy – you’re the one who stepped in it, not me!"  And that’s when I learned it’s important to know Spanish in jail. 

Sigh.  What a great story. 

Anyway, my old roommate Ben and five other Seattleites were in town this weekend (fortunately, only Ben stayed at my place).  He arrived Wednesday morning – Matt, Kim, Staci, Jaime, and Samantha came on Thursday morning – and only escaped NYC on Tuesday, due to the storm.  Instead of giving a day-by-day account of what went down, I think it’s more effective to focus on four themes/highlights of the weekend, which, coincidentally, coincide with the four most important things in my life.

(And yes, I realize that I just used "coincidentally" and "coincide" together.  Leave me alone.  It’s been a rough couple of days.)

food
The amount of eating that took place this weekend was legendary.  And I mean that literally – years from now, when human beings have returned to the woods and their primitive ways after the Great Race War, tales will be told of that weekend, many years earlier, when three men ate most of New York City.  Young children will sit in awe listening to how one of them – the one with the beard and the diary – enjoyed a sausage egg and cheese bagel AND Baskin Robbins vanilla milkshake for breakfast on that sunny Saturday afternoon (and then returned home and slept from 2pm to 7pm).  Or how the one visiting from Seattle ate a double cheeseburger for breakfast and a chicken parm sandwich for lunch – 30 minutes apart.  Or how about how even the little one held his own, taking out (also for breakfast) an enchilada and a steak, even though the steak was not fit to be fed to most mutts (and actually may have been made from a mutt or two).

Sure, Ben came to NYC to see old friends, but really this was an eating (and drinking – see below) tour of NYC.  In a few days, we ate at all the places that we enjoyed when Ben, Brian and I lived together in NYC, from the diners of the Upper East Side to the late night eateries of the Lower East Side.  My personal favorite was the aforementioned sausage egg and cheese bagel from Bagel Express at 92nd and 3rd.  What makes this particular one special is that not only are they generous with eggs and not only is the bagel itself delicious, but two sausage patties are standard.  This may not seem like that big of a deal, but do you know how much the stakes are raised when you go from one sausage patty to a second?  Good lord.  That sandwich is not for the faint of heart (or, more appropriately, weak of heart).         

Thus was the pattern of the weekend: a lot of bad (but delicious) food, all the time.  Needless to say, I am a mess right now.  My body is bloated, tumescent; I look and feel like I’ve been involved in a complicated and dangerous mashed potato-eating contest for the past four days.  I was going to weigh myself on Monday morning just to see how much I’ve gained, but I had my first orgasm in nine weeks this weekend and so don’t need any more setbacks in the "sexual confidence" department.  Instead, I’ll just starve myself this week and survive only on fingernails and Budweiser and I should be back to my fighting weight in no time.   

(And my colon – don’t get me started.  All of the following words could be used to describe it right now: impacted, angry, spastic, confused, cold, frightened, delirious and in serious danger.)

alcohol
Likewise, the excess extended into alcohol consumption.  After a downright embarrassing Thursday night after which I called them out on here, the Seattle guys pulled it together and redeemed themselves over the course of the weekend.  As mentioned, my old roommate Ben was the only Seattleite who stayed with me, and my old roommate Brian – the three of us once roommates in NYC for two years – basically moved into my apartment over the weekend, using it as home base/launching point for the whole weekend.  And at this home base, with the help of our friends Molly and Nevin visiting from Boston and the ever-present Jeremy, we drank, conservatively, 200 beers.  All thanks to a sneak attack.

(Let me explain.)

I used to buy all my beer at the Chinese grocery store three blocks from my apartment in ChiLiTa (my name for the Chinatown/Little Italy neighborhood in which I live).  Make no mistake, this place is horrifying.  My whole neighborhood smells like a delicate mix of feces and old fish parts, but one would think that the supermarket – you know, where food is sold – would smell a little fresher.  Not so.  It fucking reeks of evil and stale.  I no longer fear hell, because after visiting this supermarket, I know what it smells like (feces, fish, old, and heat – and throw in some urine for good measure).

However, the beer at this supermarket is cheap.  Unbelievably cheap.  A comparison: at a bodega also three blocks away from my apartment (but in the opposite direction toward Soho), I once bought two six-packs of Rolling Rock for $24.  Conversely, the Chinese grocery store sells 12 packs of cans of Pabst (in my opinion, a far superior beer), for just over $7.  So I can go to the nicer store and pay $2 a beer, or I can deal with the vomit-smelling Chinese supermarket and pay 60 cents a beer.  I was never a math guy, but that seems like a no-brainer to me.  Also, it’s not often that I’m both the tallest person and also have the largest penis out of everyone in a supermarket, and it’s kind of a nice feeling (nevermind that I hold these titles by default because I’m the only white person that enters the store).

And so like clockwork, every Friday when I got home from work, I’d pick up at least three 12 packs of Pabst, and if I was feeling strong, a 30 of Bud (at $20, under 70 cents a beer).  But lately something happened: I stopped finding the beer. 

I walked in one Friday evening, same time as always, over to where the beer was usually kept – and it was gone.  After communicating with a store employee, mostly through gestures and racist epithets, I learned that the beer was moved to another part of the store.  I bought some and left.  The following Friday evening, I went to this new location and the beer was gone.  Now it was back where it was originally kept.  The Friday evening after that, all the beer was gone, save for a case of Tsingtao, which I of course bought, since I need to drink.  On my weekly Friday night trips since, I’ve been buying only one case of Tsingtao, as that’s all that’s there.  

This inspired a joke among my friends that the Chinese people who work in the store were hiding their beer for me.  Every time I go in the store, I’m the only white person and I buy as much beer as I can possibly carry.  It is my theory that the Chinese employees came to fear and despise me, White Man Who Takes All Beer, and so hid the beer.  However, they offered a lone case of Tsingtao – a Chinese beer – to me almost as a sacrifice or tribute.  Just as the islanders did to not want to draw King Kong’s wrath and gave him scantily-clad women, the Chinese fear what might happen if I do not get any beer.  So they leave me one case (of Chinese beer), just to get me satisfied and keep me under control.       

Back to this past weekend.  I had off on Friday so that I could spend time with Ben.  After getting Mexican for breakfast, he and I were walking back to my apartment around 3 in the afternoon.  Since it was en route, we decided to stop in the Chinese grocery store to buy beer then and there, rather than waiting until later in the night.

And the Chinese were completely unprepared.

Since I was four hours early, what did I find but stacks and stacks of PBR and Bud, right there, right in plain view, in the same place we’re I’ve been finding my single case of Tsingtao for the past few weeks.  You could almost feel the tension as I walked in the store – with Ben in tow, no less.  I don’t speak Chinese, but I am pretty sure that these Chinese employees were saying things like:

Chinese guy at front door: "He here! He early! Oh no!"
Chinese lady at register: "He look mad! And he look thirsty!"
Other Chinese lady at register: "And he bring friend! No time to hide beer!"

Sensing the panic that was quickly enveloping the store, I felt happy.  The White Man had found the beer.

Thus Ben and I exacted our vengeance.  We bought eight 12-packs of PBR on the spot, then quickly went back and bought four 30′s of Bud.  It was a true reckoning ("You tell ‘em I’m coming – and hell’s coming with me!").

And so my refrigerator looked like the one at the Beta house at UMass-Amherst, packed with hundreds of beers.  It’s a wonder we even made it out of the apartment all weekend, but all this beer meant that we were drinking constantly.  God bless America and God bless the Chinese.  

And of course when you have a lot of beer at your disposal, certain things happen. 

betrayal
On Saturday night, I was talking to a girl (we’ll call her Leslie).  Leslie was nice.  She was cute.  She was cool.  Most importantly, when I spoke to her, she responded to me with articulate and intentional answers, as opposed to "Ewww" or "Are you serious?" or "GET OFF MY PROPERTY!"  Naturally, I thought we were going to make out.  Sweet.

(And yes, I was very drunk.)

I was out with Brian, Ben, Molly and Nevin, and Leslie was out with a friend (we’ll call her Barbara).  I could have used a wingman, but Nevin is engaged to Molly, Ben had no interest in going down in flames with me, and Brian, well, I’ve documented Brian’s wingman ability before.  But a wingman was not necessary; I was feeling pretty confident and when necessary could lead Leslie and Barbara in and out of conversations with my other friends.  Smooth sailing, I thought.

Leslie and I had been talking and things were going well.  I excused myself to go to the restroom and when I came out, I saw she was talking to Brian, who at this point was so drunk from whiskey that his face was the color of red construction paper.  No matter, I thought, and went to talk to the rest of the group.  I could play it cool for a bit.

A few minutes later, I turned around to see Brian and Leslie in a full embrace.  Not kissing, but hugging and laughing.  As Molly was talking to Leslie’s friend Barbara, Nevin and Ben started to lay into me about Brian stealing my girl.  I contended that it wasn’t a big deal, that Brian was bombed and harmless and would never intentionally cockblock me like that. 

Leslie went to the restroom and I pulled Brian aside:

Me: "Dude, I’ve been working on that girl for like two hours.  Can you lay off?"
Brian: "Dude, I’m sorry, I totally didn’t know.  I’ll stop right now."

I went up to the bar to grab a drink.  After getting one I turned around and there was Brian, again hugging Leslie, this time a little tighter, both of them laughing away again.  Now however he was stroking her hair and face, telling her what beautiful hair she had, while she touched his face, telling him what beautiful eyelashes he had.

Mother fucker.

I did not take this well, but was placed into an awkward situation.  Brian was, as he usually is at 2am on Saturday night, destroyed.  Leslie was also very drunk.  There was essentially nothing I could do without looking like a sore loser/jerk, so instead I stood with Ben and Nevin, got ripped on, and stewed.  All I wanted was some pizza, and maybe a handjob for less than $30. 

I got neither.   

justice
I’ve written before that a major reason that Boston blows is that every time you’re out, every Masshole wants to fight you, any time, any place, any way.  There are such bad vibes in bars and dudes giving hard looks that it can make having a good time difficult.  This is Reason #14 why Boston sucks.

In New York, we don’t have this problem.  This is because we are pussies.  Sure, there are some elements who like to fight – the Long Island/NJ bridge and tunnel trash that invade the once-decent bars over the weekends, the former frat boy bankers who live in Murray Hill and Hoboken, and, of course, the minorities and poors.  But for the most part, people my age in NYC don’t like to fight.  I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more fights in one St. Patty’s Day weekend in Boston that I have in six years of going out in NYC.   

On this Saturday night, after watching Brian and Leslie cuddle, our group – including Leslie and Barbara – headed to Rosario’s to get some late night pizza.  At this point, I was resigned…I knew that Brian and Leslie weren’t going to go home together (no way he could even get an erection, let alone sustain it), but it didn’t matter.  It took us awhile to get a cab because it was pouring rain, but soon our taxi, which I shared with Ben, Nevin and Molly, pulled up to Rosario’s.  I would finally get my delicious pizza. 

Yet in keeping with the awesomeness of the night, when I opened the door to Rosario’s, two dudes tumbled out and fell at my feet, punching the shit out of each other.  I watched them for a nano-second, thinking, "I probably have to break up this fight, but the pizza is right over there. Is there any way I can just step around them?"  But if there’s anything I got very good at while growing up on Second Street in South Philly, it’s breaking up fights.  Instinct kicked in and soon I, with Ben and Nevin, were pulling the dudes apart from each other. 

We successfully separated them.  I led one to the take out window while Ben and Nevin walked the other guy across the street.  I tried to assess what was happening.  There was very little doubt in my mind that the guy I was "guarding" had taken in the LIRR (Long Island Railroad) into NYC that night, in the hopes of "doing it up Oyster Bay-style" and possibly "crushing some pussy" in the big city.  The guy that Ben and Nevin were guarding was a rare Angry Hipster – probably a big fan of The Islands and The Knife, but also not afraid to throw down.  Truly a rare breed.

Wanting to learn more, I tried to talk to my dude.

Me: "Bro, what happened?"
Dude: [thickest Long Island accent imaginable] "We were in line and I called into question his sexuality and he got pissed off."
Me: [surprisingly crestfallen] "Um, oh."
Dude: "Well, he’s a fag."

That was about when I decided it might be better to head back into the pizza place, which would be closing shortly and was definitely running out of food.  Also, it was fucking pouring and I was soaked.  Further irritating me was that while I was standing outside with this douchebag, I could see Brian and the three girls chowing down inside at a table.  Mother fuckers.  Things were calmed down anyway; the Angry Hipster had been led away and some of the LI Douche’s friends had come outside to take him from me.  So Ben, Nevin and I went back inside to get our eat on. 

Because so little was left, I had to go with a mushroom slice and frankie and cheese (this is an actual picture of the frankie and cheeses in Rosario’s).  But it was ok, because I was about to eat.  And then all the yelling began.    

As I was grabbing napkins by the door and moving to the table, I looked outside to see the LI Douche and the Angry Hipster rolling around on the street at the intersection of Orchard and Stanton.  Ben and Nevin and I looked at each other.  Prior to this night, I had never considered myself nor Nevin and Ben to be crusaders of justice, but for whatever reason, we threw our food on the table with the girls (and Brian) and were shortly again prying these morons off each other (did I mention it was raining like a mother fucker?).

This time, the calming took much longer until we decided to drop the "The cops are on their way – you’re going to spend a night in jail card," which sufficiently scared both the LI Douche and the Angry Hipster to go their separate ways.  I may have used only one sentence to describe what happened, but this whole process took a solid six or seven minutes.

When Ben, Nevin and I finally sat the table, I didn’t even have an appetite.  I was pathetic; bombed, cockblocked, soaked, and now tired.  Leslie and Barbara had the last bite of Brian’s frankie and cheese and were bummed out that there wasn’t any more, so I just gave them mine.  Then, our friend Lauren randomly appeared at the pizza place at 5am when they had nothing left, so I gave her my mushroom slice.  So I didn’t even have any food at the end of the night.

So much potential, so little actualization.  Crap.

************

However, despite Brian’s betrayal and my lack of pizza on Saturday night, the weekend in total was great fun.  Sadly, Ben has gone on record to say that because of the abuse he put his body through, he will never come to NYC again.  So I guess the next time I’ll see him will be in Seattle next December at the Second Annual West Coast Wine Drinking Competition.      

(Let’s just hope I can at least get a decent slice at the end.)