….that have all happened to me. My writing partners in crime have been telling me that perhaps I need to give this list shit a try (this is painful), and so when I woke up to #1 on this list this morning, I figured people make lists out of anything, so why not try my hand at random brainstorming in written form? This may not ever happen again and I may go hang my head in shame after this. When you wake up with a hangover, it’s the worst feeling in the world. There are few things that surpass that shitty feeling, but I can think of a few of them.
1. Your neighbor blasting Nelly tracks.
So last night I went to Taj in Manhattan for the homie DJ Crossova’s birthday. Knowing how the team does it I knew I’d be in for fuckery, but I did not expect a minimum of five bottles of Belvedere (at least two of which were those fancy black or silver bottles which, if I’m not mistaken, are like 100 proof), and cupcakes being tossed behind the back like a bride’s bouquet at her wedding reception. I’m dead ass serious by the way. Flying cupcakes with blue frosting. I’m on a mission to drink less, talk less, and especially do less talking after drinking, so I stuck to my two drink work night limit as I knew I wanted to come home and write (still didn’t happen). Thing is, when the bartender sees the promoter give you a drink ticket, or when you have your male friends pouring drinks for you at your table, your two drinks will be like 3 parts vodka to 1 part mixer. I knew I was straight, barely felt it, but also knew that it had been a while since I stayed awake until 5am, so I was a little worried about the next day headache.
I woke up headache free until I snapped out of my drowsiness and realized that my neighbors were bumping the song above at full blast. All I’m saying is there’s a reason I haven’t thought about its song since it bombarded all airwaves in 2002. I really didn’t want to wake up to it in 2011. Especially when I just woke up cold and alone and boo-less in Bushwick. Booless in Bushwick, sounds like a movie, huh? Ha. Fuck you neighbors.
2. A person you should have run away from quickly.
I had a conversation once about cocktail waitressing in strip clubs with a friend. She was of the “you should totally do it, it’s good money, sometimes you don’t have many other options” camp. I was like,”well, I know they don’t have to get naked but still, you’re basically wearing as much as a Hooters girl and I could use a month or two in the gym before I’d feel good about that.” Then she said something that has stuck with me forever: those lights in those strip clubs will make anyone look better than they really are, and once you see a strip club’s dressing room after the night is over, you’ll pretty much feel amazing about yourself. The same holds true for regular club lighting, or the lack thereof. And wow, those light filters those club photographers have on those cameras, it’s like instant concealer in digitized form (although I’m unlucky to be the extremely pale chick with nicely tanned latino friends who always turns out bright as a light bulb when the pictures come out).
Add in liquor, thirsty ass dudes, and women fresh out of relationships on “girls’ night out” steez, and there are problems. People will do one of a few things: go home with someone they just met who they felt was attractive, go home with someone they just met because they got too drunk to go home on their own, go home with a drunk close friend of theirs because either one or both were too drunk to get home safely, or they will go home alone. Everyone should always choose the latter, even if it means taking a cab home. Dude slumped over the trash can puking outside of Taj last night? I’m sure he went home with his friends.
But trust me. As bad as he feels post-puking session, it’s not as bad as rolling over in the morning and having zero attraction to the person that passed out in your bed before you could tell them you put a pillow on the floor for them, or before the liquor wore off and you realized you shouldn’t be making out with them because they’re about as attractive as that guy with the mohawk wearing capri pants with pleather leggings underneath them on the L train the other day. Guess what? Now you’re feeling repulsed in your own bed, and they’re going to wake up and want to take a shit in your bathroom and probably want to eat breakfast, too. Dealing with that situation is a whole issue in itself that maybe I’ll address at a later time.
3. A fire alarm going off in your hotel room.
This has happened to me twice. The first time was in Ocean City when I was way younger. My homegirl and I were down there, had just spent a night chillin at the pool and had just managed to get back in our room after locking ourselves out, and we had just fallen asleep. I woke up to this ridiculous noise and a strobe light flashing in slow motion from the alarm in the room. It was the most disorienting thing ever. You’re in a place you’re not familiar with, probably don’t remember where your important shit is, and it’s pitch black dark in there. You’re either going to have a seizure from the strobe or run into a wall trying to get out, neither of which is fun at all. We somehow got a grip on things after a minute, had to evacuate the hotel, and had to then stand in the parking lot for a very long time while the firefighters came with their ladders and axes and shit to scope out the building. All that and it was a false alarm.
The second time I was alone. On Christmas Eve a friend and I had crushed two bottles of wine and obscene amounts of Chinese carry out, and whereas they went home afterward, I stayed to watch some TV and be close to the Lincoln Tunnel to make my Southern escape as quickly as possible when morning hit. So I’m happily drunk and asleep when I start hearing this annoyingly loud beeping noise. Again, I amazingly had no hangover and suddenly a headache hit. I realized unlike the first hotel episode, this was only coming from my room, not the whole building. I’m standing on the bed trying to reach it to rip the batteries out, because clearly there is no fire in my room, and no luck. I actually laid back down and tried to sleep through it because Chardonnay will make you not give a fuck like that, and then the phone in my room started ringing. I ignored it once. It rang again. I decided I had to go pee and let it ring. While I’m in the bathroom peeing I hear a knock on the door and then a key trying to swipe it (thank god I always deadbolt that shit). I quickly grab a towel because I’m pretty much not wearing anything and open the door to see some wee little Asian man holding a smoke detector in his hand. He just walked in, ripped the beeping one off the wall, put the new one in, apologized and went away. I was towel clad, with empty wine bottles and way too much Chinese food for one person lying around on Christmas day. Not one of my finest moments. I would have preferred a lonely hangover easily cured with ibuprofen.
4. The feds knocking at your door.
Because the terms of someone’s probation suck ass and random searches of your crib are not what’s up, or because being interrogated by agents because your next door neighbor wants to move up in the ranks of the agency he works for never happens on your ideal time schedule. Need I say more?
Oh wait, I forgot one. Part 4 and a half: non federal cops knocking on your door because you were the last person to see somebody before they disappeared. That’s always fun. I love my life.
5. In relation to number four, the feds blocking off your entire neighborhood.
It was about 6:15am and I was walking (on time for once) up this big ass hill from my crib to the bus stop when I was in high school. I already hated that walk, but then I saw some black cars creeping up the hill. I look back down the hill and realize there’s at least ten of these tinted out black vehicles. I thought hmm, that’s a little fishy. Then they all stop, of course right next to me, a window rolls down and suddenly there are a swarm of men with bulletproof vests and assault rifles with handguns strapped down their legs running around like roaches when the lights go on. Man, I ran my ass up that hill to the bus stop so quick…dodging crazed old white men with guns and badges was not my idea of a balanced breakfast. I’ll skip the details after that but in a nutshell a suspected terrorist was on federal house arrest in my neighborhood and I guess he had tried to leave his crib, or didn’t check in with his P.O. Something like that. My neighborhood made it on CNN for that little incident.
Fast forward a couple years, and I woke up, got dressed, and was trying to get to class for a test (this was college now). I walk outside and notice a tinted out SUV double parked near this guy’s crib that I knew. No big deal. I get in my car and warm it up. I’m looking in my rear view and I see another whip pull up, and this time it parks in the middle of the street, right where I need to be. Oh, silly people, the bag of weed you want to buy isn’t worth blocking the street, but that’s cool, I’ll just go the other way. I back up, and look the other way down the street, and then realize I can’t get out that way either. Wait…what the fuck? I put my car back in park, get out and look around. Something definitely isn’t right. I look behind me once again and now there’s guys with assault rifles getting out of the cars. Are you fucking kidding me? They weren’t ambushing the guy’s crib with the type of fury that only suspected jihadists can create in an agent, but they weren’t quite standing around shooting the breeze (pun intended) either. I was like fuck this shit, I gotta go, I’m going to fail this class if I don’t get out. I decided to just get in my car and try to drive out anyway. They of course stopped me, and wouldn’t let me leave. It took about fifteen minutes of getting grilled with questions before they would let me leave my own neighborhood when there were a gang of guys with guns running around. I had to show them ID, proof of my residence, point out which house it was, put on my only child sad face and plead with them to let me out quickly or else I’d fail college, all that shit. When they finally let me go I get a text from my homegirl like “yo I seen mad cops go in your neighborhood, wtf, be careful!” Gee, thanks for telling me now. I got out, obviously passed college with no problem, and it turns out this time a gang member who had stabbed someone to death was hiding out in their friends crib a few doors down from me. Ironically, this is the same place where the aforementioned missing person was hiding as well.
I would have preferred a hangover.
