Amateur Fight Club

It was about a year after my arrest, meaning that I had been on pretrial for a year. Weekly drugs tests, and weekly calls to report in. At least I wasn't on house arrest, even though I couldn't leave New York City.

An old friend of mine Sean from high school (boarding school upstate NY) invited Lisa and me over to his place, on the Upper West Side. Actually, it was his parents place. It was a beautiful apartment, not nouveau-riche but au contraire, it emanated that old wealth that you can only be born into.

Sean had a particular family. His (hot) older sister had moved out with her fiance, his mother was very fond of French culture (particularly their vineyards), and his father was a retired judge who was clinically diagnosed with depression.

Anyhow, I was a regular at Sean's house when I first moved back to NYC. He had a fair amount of privacy in his room so we were able to smoke to our lung's content. This night, I went there with Lisa with a bottle of Bacardi and Alize.

The three of us split the Alize, and Sean and I finished the rum. Three to four hours later, I got up for the first time to take a piss. That's when it hit me. I was pretty fucking drunk. I stumbled my way to the bathroom, still trying to not wake up Sean's parents despite my drunken state.

I finally made it to the bathroom, which was unusually long, and of course, the toilet was on the other side. For some inexplicable reason however, at the sight of the sink, I had a sudden uncontrollable urge to vomit.

And out it came. A lot of it. I don't remember what I ate that night, but from how it clogged the sink and filled it two-thirds of the way, I'm assuming I had a hearty dinner.

I tried (kind of) to unclog the sink, but I couldn't think of any way besides sticking my hand in there, so hoping Sean or Lisa would have a better idea, I left it for now. I borrowed some Listerine, then almost forgetting why I was there in the first place, I answered nature's call.

Back in the room, I heard both of them laughing.

"Yo yo yo, Alex, you gotta take a look at this," Sean said in between spurts of laughter.

"Sean, I gotta tell you something, I..."

"Yo, come check this out bro, this shit is mad funny."

"Yo Sean, you don't understand, I puked in your sink. It's clogged."

"What? Ah man don't worry man, come check this out man!"

"Nah but Sean, wait, your mom... you don't understand, you sink is completely clogged!"

"Nah nah don't worry man, come take a look man."

He never stopped laughing the whole time. Sean's bedroom walls have some posters but mainly a lot of graffiti. He used to be part of a graffiti crew back in the days. Earlier that day he had bought these new paint markers, and apparently he didn't realize drunk graffiti wasn't the most aesthetic form of art.

And to prove that point, he had tagged his name on his wall, but it was more akin to a kindergardener's scribble.

"Look at that shit!" he said emphatically, "I've never, ever, EVER tagged anything THAT fucking ugly!"

His tone of voice, body language, everything, cracked me the fuck up. You had to have been there. Obviously we all know the alcohol was the main catalyst in all that but that should be left subtly implied. I sat back down next to my girl and kept on laughing.

I was laughing so hard my sides were hurting, eyes watering, clutching my stomach and, hysterical. After awhile though, it  seemed to cause a problem.

"Yo," Sean said. "Keep it down. Keep it down man my parents are gonna hear us."

But I've already hit the point of no return. You know those rare laughs that you wished you could have more often? The laughs that let you release that inner child with wild abandon. And the more he told us to shut up, the harder we laughed.

"Yo seriously man, keep it quiet man, shut up!"

And he punched me in the face. My head whipped from side to side, eyes wide with confusion. When I slowly realized what had actually happened, I burst out laughing even more because I couldn't believe that such a good friend had just punched me.

The previous scenario repeated, and Sean actually punched me again.

"Ow, damn son, chill that time that shit actually hurt."

Laughing apologetically, he said sorry and said I could hit him back.

Drunk as hell, I barely formed a fist and I ended up only half punching him.

"Nah nah that shit don't count," I said.

He agreed to let me hit him again. This time, I nailed right on the side of the nose.

"Oww damn that shit fucking smarts!'

We laughed at what just happened, rubbing our faces, wincing every now and then. Lisa and I promoted at Exit at the time, and we impulsively decided to go. Problem was, we were pretty broke (notice a trend from these days?), but promoters didn't have to pay cover until 1:00am, and we had an extra promoter's card for Sean.

Then what's the problem? It was past 12:30am. We had to make it down to Columbus Circle, which was possible but very tight. We decided to try anyway.

On the elevator ride down, I was whispering something to Lisa in her ear, and out of nowhere Sean punched me in the neck. Seriously, what the fuck lol?? I obviously punched him back.

To this day I still wonder what his doorman must have thought seeing us walking out, holding our neck and face respectively, moaning in pain.

Walking to the train station, Sean started randomly punching car windows. He was a violent drunk. A block or so later, I'm guessing it was due to pent up frustration and anger (mainly at myself), out of nowhere, I took a couple steps and kicked at a car's passenger side window.

Next thing I knew, I was knee-deep into the car, window shattered.

"Oh shit..."

I hopped out, and made sure to shake off as much glass from my pants and shoe as possible, I sped walk around the corner. Released on bail, that was by far the dumbest thing I could have done.

Around the corner of 72nd St, a family was walking by, grandparents, parents and kinds (why kids were out that late, ask the parents), but Sean randomly went to a trash can and threw it across their path, garbage and litter spilling all over the place.

Too embarrassed to even look at them, I 've always pictured the look of complete shock on their face.

Without missing a beat, Sean runs up to a Benz, and rips out the Mercedes symbol from the hood, then runs to a phone booth and smashes his hand so hard against it to shatter the glass of the advertisement.

We finally made it into the train. Sitting there and talking, Sean repeatedly taps me on the shoulder while talking, unaware that his hands were covered with blood. About to say something, I realized the futility of it all, especially considering that I already had blood all over my jacket by now.

We arrived at Columbus Circle 59th St., and I guess Sean was ready to have a little fun. Every person he saw on the train platform, he ran up to them spastically and shoved his bloody hands right in front of their faces and screamed:

"AHHH! AHHH! I GOT AIDS!!!"

Then ran off to the next poor unsuspecting victim. I was cracking up, I never seen Sean this drunk and wild.

He grabbed a piece of paper from the floor which turned out to be a post-it note with "PULL MY ADHESIVE" written on it.

Sean ran out of the subway, the post-it note by his crotch, approaching strangers and couples alike, thrusting his hips forward shouting:

"Pull my adhesive!! Pullll my adhesiveeee!!!"

All pedestrians avoided him like he was the brainchild of the plague and swine flu. Lisa and I tried to keep up, and I kept calling his name and he either didn't hear me or ignored me. I think it was the latter.

He climbed up the side of a small Mack truck, tried the door handle, and by some weird twist of coincidence, the door actually opened. Lisa and I looked at each other somewhat confused, and before we could say anything, a Jansport backpack flew out into the sidewalk.

"Sean! SEAN!"

I looked in the truck and he was no longer there, the passenger door was open, and he was already a half block down.

Lisa didn't look too happy.

"Are you mad?"

"Yeah kinda, you guys are acting like fools."

"Yeah I know, sorry bebe."

I knew we were acting like fools. But to be honest, only Sean was now. I somewhat sobered up after kicking in that window.

As we were talking, two guys walked by and I thought I heard one of them say something about Lisa. When I said I had somewhat sobered up, that was a half lie. Still drunk, but just not retarded drunk.

"What the fuck did you say?" I asked.

One of them seemed to be as drunk as I was, meanwhile the other was sober.

"What?" the drunk one spun on me.

"The fuck did you say about my girl?"

"Look, you don't want none of this. I got ten people following a couple blocks behind us, you don't want none of this."

In the meantime, his sober friend was trying to squash everything and keep walking, saying it was a misunderstanding.

"I don't give a fuck about you, or your ten boys, I'll kick all of your asses!" said the Bacardi and Alize.

By this time, Sean doubled back and was wondering what was going on. No sooner had he caught on, we were surrounded by ten people or so.

Ah fuck, not again...

But luckily, the ten other people were in no mood for a fight even if it would have been like winning a court case with Johnny Cochran as your lawyer.

At Exit, we missed the promoter's line. Bummed, we started to leave, and waiting to cross street, the infamous paint markers resurfaced to perform an encore of a child's scribble on the club wall. Two guys soon approached Sean, and thinking that they were thugs trying to start shit with him, I went to see what was going on.

One of them intercepted me and asked:

"He your boy?"

"Yeah he's my boy."

"So you got his back?"

"No shit I got his back."

Thinking shit was going to go down, he put his arm around my shoulder and waved a walkie-talkie in my face.

"You sure you got his back?"

Ah fuck... (for the second time tonight)

But it was too late to back out now.

"Yeah I got his back."

The other security guard was talking to Sean across the street and ended up letting him go. Walking away, Sean was furious.

"Those fucking fake ass thugs think they can fuck with me, I'll motherfucking slit their throats, who the fuck they think they are stepping up to me like that I..."

"What the fuck nigga, they were cops, security for the club. They're doing their jobs.."

"Nahh fuck that man, they were just some thugs stepping to me man, they..."

"They waved a goddamn walkie in my face, what the fuck are you talking about? Yo, every time you're mad drunk you do some dumb shit, I can't even fuck with you like this anymore."

We started arguing with one another, shoving each other but things calmed down. He slammed his hand against another public phone booth (old grudge perhaps?) but soon he sobered up.

We went to a nearby McDonalds and he washed up. In the subway station where we were going to part ways, he asked what the fuck happened that night.

I started to tell him the story I just told you, and at first he wouldn't believe that he hit me to begin with. An hour and a half later, finally done (I omitted some smaller unimportant details here), we went home.

Next day around 3:00pm, I got a call.

"Hey man, it's Sean."

"Hey..." still groggy.

"I think you told me last night already but I don't really remember, but can you refresh my memory?"

He had no idea what happened. Moral of the story? There isn't one, I just thought it was funny lol (minus my little slip of the foot)