The Story So Far....
Dan was never really sure what he had with Kim, but whatever it was, it's over now. Jayson, the instigator of all this nonsense, has been fired from his job at the hostel. So that's that. Or is it? Read on....
Every wednesday JOTP puts on a pub crawl of upper west side bars. All the stuff with kim and so on happened on wednesday morning, so that night I was looking to get wrecked. It's the only sane response, right?
Also, Harold1 was making his trademark apple martinis2 in the cafe bar: a couple of those and you feel very unwound....
So I was sat in the cafe bar, drinking beers, chasing them down with these apple martinis, chilling out with coco.
The time comes around for the pub crawl to start -and I realize just how tired I am. In the morning i'd walked 50 blocks, in the afternoon i'd been dogwalking... and all on, like, 3 hours sleep
So I think, fuck it, i'll just stupefy myself right here, maybe play some nintendo, go to bed.
Meanwhile the rest of my friends, except for coco, head out.
Two of the guys, Chris and Uwe have been drinking apple martinis... washed down with Colt 45s3. I can't believe they're drinking that shit -i'm like, what is this, Compton?
They're arseholed already, and they haven't even started the crawl....
They leave, me and coco chill, eventually the matter of having a smoke arises.
So I look for my coat... and I can't find it.
No, I think, surely not
But it isn't anywhere in the cafe bar, and since coming back from dogwalking I hadn't left except to go outside and smoke or to go to the loo. Of that I'm 100% positive.
The coat HAS to be there somewhere
The only other alternative is that someone took it -and my wallet is in that coat. And in that wallet is the $200 I took out of the ATM earlier in the day.
Man, I can't believe that someone has taken my stuff again -not after what happened the day before!
WTF?!?!
So I go over to the front desk tell them what's happened, start shooting off my mouth that there was $200 in the wallet, that if it doesn't get found i'll call the cops; harold starts to check the security cameras....
Then I go for a cigarette and have a word with myself.
I expunge the outrage and try to think with a clear head.
I have an idea of what might have happened.
Chris and I have quite similar coats: long grey woolen overcoats -Mourinhos.4 Sometimes, invariably when one or other of us gets drunk, we get them mixed up. One time I put my wallet in chris's pocket by accident and tore the cafe bar apart looking for it until I realized my mistake.
Sketchy, I know.
Was it possible Chris had put on my coat by mistake and gone on the pub crawl?
I'm trying to call those guys -no answer.
Coco goes down to the pub where they're at.
Still can't get through.
Harold is just about to drive me down there in Knight Rider, when Chris calls. He is very, very drunk:
“Dude, I got your coat.”
“Oh! Thank god-”
“But your wallet's not in it.”
“Shit! Could you have dropped it?”
“Nah man it wasn't in here, I wouldn't have put it on if your wallet was in the pocket.”
I tell him to put coco on the line, and I tell coco to grab chris and retrace his exact steps to the bar.
But i've already written off getting the wallet back. A fully loaded wallet dropped on the sidewalk at 11pm at night in new york? I bet it got swiped before it hit the ground.
So I have a drink instead.
But 5 minutes later, my phone rings. It's chris. My wallet's been found. Rachel and Uwe found it on the floor of the bar, and handed it in to the barman.5
I get coco to bring it back pronto. All the money's still there, and the cards.
Waves of relief.
But after another adrenalin fix, I don't feel tired no more. I stay up longer with coco. Eventually coco goes to bed. After a bit longer (it's maybe 1.30 by this point) I follow suit.
But halfway up the stairs to my room I stop.
A voice in my head (I like to think it was the voice of the apple martini) says,
“Heeeeey, why you go to bed now, loser? Why no go ding dongs, have one more drink, eh? Eh?”6
So, foolishly, I listen to the voice, walk back down the stairs and out the hostel -to ding dongs.
(I'd just like to say here that everything that happens from here on is recalled through the fug of an alcohol haze.)
OK. Jane and chris are still at ding dongs. Chris is completely gone. Jane is not too far behind. And i'm fairly toasted myself.
So it's business as usual for a wednesday.
I get a drink in for me and jane. Jane's talking about how unimpressed she is with american men -the constantly being hit on (I think I wrote a footnote bout that in a previous post).
Eventually, Jane and I are the only jazz heads left in the place. Jane is explaining to these drunk guys at the bar how cup size is calculated, and they are getting a bit fixated on her boobs7, so I'm like “Hometime, Janey!”
I walk her back to the staff basement [at the time I lived with the guests in the other building, i'm in the basement at the time of writing], and the weather is filthy (wind and freezing rain), so I go inside for a bit and we end up chilling out in her bunk.
Let me say right now: Nothing happened.8
Just a lot of giggling and Carry On9 style bawdiness.
We wake up shannon, who's in the bunk below, but rather than be pissed off, she joins in with the silliness.
The three of us get louder and louder -and wake up the other person in the room, Maria.
Now she IS pissed off.
So shannon suggests that me and jane come and join her in her bed.
Ah ha ha ha.
So me and jane get into bed with shannon.
(we were all three of us fully clothed -NOTHING HAPPENED)
I was on the outside edge of the bed, so I said: “What the fuck's going on here? The dude should be between the two chicks, everyone knows that.”
So Jane shifts over: it's shannon, me, Jane.
Really, nothing happened10, just more silliness.
(I think at one point we made sex-noise! O.M.G.!)
Poor maria couldn't sleep with all that going on, and when she complained next, I told her that she lived in a hostel so she should just deal with it, or words to that effect (this was the apple martini talking again)
She left the room in tears
Not my finest hour11
Now let me tell you something about Shannon
She has a thing with another member of staff, who also lives in the basement, Darryl
I'm not going to speculate as to the nature of their relationship, as it's none of my business
but let's just say that Darryl feels a certain protectiveness for Shannon
So ask shannon if me being in her bed is going to be cool
And she's like, “Sure, it'll be fine, and nothing's going on is there?”12
And that was good enough for me
Now maria's not in the room, we don't feel like we have to be quiet anymore
We get louder and louder
I think at some point someone hammers on the wall of the room.
The next thing I remember clearly is a bunch of guys are in the room
(I don't see them because I have the sheet pulled up over my head!)
But I hear their voices: I can make out two distinctly
One is Big B's: “Hey dan you gotta go back to your own room, get back to the other building.”
The other, I assume, is Darryl's: “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN HERE?!”So this is it, I think, I'm finally going to my ass whupped
Is this the end for little danny spencer?
But the hands i'm expecting to drag me out of the bed never come
One way or the other, I don't know how, the guys go
And shortly after that I pass out -it must be 4am by then
(Did I mention that I had to work the next day -or, rather, later that day- at 6.30am in the cafe bar, on my own?)
But i'd already cleverly set my alarm for six
Less cleverly, when the alarm goes, I turn it off and give myself “10 more minutes”
The next time I wake up it's 8am
I'm an hour and a half late for work
And because i'm on my own, there's no one to cover for me
And breakfast is the busiest time at the cafe bar -i'm picturing a long line of angry guests clamouring for their free breakfast, and no one there to serve it to them
Oh shit, I think, I'm fired
So I jump out of bed and get my shit together
Two things I can't find: my glasses and my coat
I look for a good two or three minutes, but I can't find em, it's crazy
I'm still drunk though, ha ha
so I tear over to the cafe bar, ready to face the music
But when I get there, there's no queue, no pissed off guests
Valentina and Steve-o -bless them, bless them!- have opened up for me and are working the bar
I can't believe it -what absolute stars!
My ass has been saved yet again by my most excellent friends, who I've only known a month or so
There's some real good people in the world, y'know?
They even give me some time to drink a shit load of water, coffee, smoke a cigarette and generally get my head straight
It's during this time that davey comes in, sits down.
I know davey lives in the basement, so I figure I better go over and apologize.
So I do.
But he says: “It's not me you should be apologizing to, it's Darryl.”
Me: “Is he mad?”
Davey: “He was last night.”
Me: “I know it looked bad, but honestly, nothing was going on it was completely innocent.”
Davey: “It's not me you've got to tell....”
So, I'm thinking, great -i wonder if Darryl will let me get a word in before I get my clock cleaned.
But then I think, I've done nothing wrong -the truth will out!
And then, finally, I start work.
Apart from all this the other thing that's preying on my mind is where my coat's at -because my wallet is in there (I hope!)
I want to go back over to the basement, but I figure I need someone with 20/20 vision to help me
(couldn't find my specs either, remember?)
So I ask my friend bobby if he'll come over and help me look when the cafe bar quiets down
but the cafe bar is really busy for some reason, wouldntchaknow
so I ask bobby if he wouldn't mind going and seeing if he could find it for me
He's back in 5 minutes
He tells me I must have been really drunk when I woke up (and I was13) because my coat was right there on the next bunk
So I'm like, “Really? I was looking all over for it, shit!”
He hands it over and I check my wallet's there; it is.
I put it in my jeans pocket -not letting that baby out of my sight again!
Then I go back to work
At some point I decide I want a soda from the machine
So I get my wallet out, open it up
All my money, $200 dollars, is gone
At some point between going to dingdongs and me getting my coat back, someone lifted the money out of my wallet.
I've been robbed!
Holy fucking shit
What else can go wrong? Find out next time....
TO BE CONTINUED....
1 Harold works at the front desk. He's from the bronx and epitomizes the new york character. He's the sweetest guy in the world, but if you cross him... well, I won't go into details, but the first time I got a ride in his, er, ride (a black SUV with blacked out windows called knight rider; he's getting the red flashing strip) I had to move an aluminium baseball bat from my seat.
Me (dryly): Hey Harold, I didn't know you played baseball.
Harold (chuckling): Just don't lose my weapon, nigga.
2 I don't know exactly what goes into these, but he sells them for $5 a pop and boy they are strong. They're radioactive green too. They are some kind of ghetto concoction anyway; they're name checked in a Wu Tang track, Wolves: “My force might blur, the Porsche'll purr/The apple martini, of course it's stirred”
3 AKA Malt Liquor AKA Liquid Crack. Ice Cube's character in Boyz N The Hood always had one in his hand. The US equivalent of Special Brew or Tenant's Super. Nasty nasty.
4 After the iconic grey armani overcoat Jose Mourinho wore in his first two seasons as manager of Chelsea FC.
5 This is an example of how drunk these guys were: not only did they not realise the wallet was mine, even after looking at my bank card, they saw my initials “D.J.” -and thought the wallet must belong to the DJ who works at the bar! Oh. My. God. Nincompoops! Imbeciles!
6 The voice of the apple martini is the same as the voice of “Chico”, my evil mexican alter-ego. I'll tell ya'll about Chico another day.
7 When Jane gets drunk, she goes a bit crazy as far as her boobs are concerned. She is size G, and these guys at the bar were like: “Whoa! I didn't even know they went up to G!”
8 No, really, nothing happened!
9 For the benefit of non-uk readers, the “Carry On” films, were a series of films made in england in the 60's and 70's characterised by sexual innuendo laden humour: Here's an example, from Carry On Doctor (I can't believe I can quote this shit from memory):
A blonde, pretty nurse [Barbara Windsor, back in the day] with a, ahem, “full chest” is walking up the hospital concourse. She is being admired by a couple of ambulance drivers. Driver #2 is eating a pear.
DRIVER#1 (to DRIVER #2): Cor!
The nurse shimmies by.
NURSE (to DRIVER #2): Nice pear?
DRIVER #2: You took the words right out of my mouth!
(ba-dum, tsch!)
1 0 Though the next day a rumor was going round that we'd had a threesome, and I didn't exactly shoot it down in flames right away, y'know?
1 1 A couple days later I bought her some flowers by way of apology; we're good. She's back in denmark now. Miss you maria!
1 2 See?
1 3 Shannon had to guide me to the bathroom. Oh dear oh dear.
Dan was never really sure what he had with Kim, but whatever it was, it's over now. Jayson, the instigator of all this nonsense, has been fired from his job at the hostel. So that's that. Or is it? Read on....
Every wednesday JOTP puts on a pub crawl of upper west side bars. All the stuff with kim and so on happened on wednesday morning, so that night I was looking to get wrecked. It's the only sane response, right?
Also, Harold1 was making his trademark apple martinis2 in the cafe bar: a couple of those and you feel very unwound....
So I was sat in the cafe bar, drinking beers, chasing them down with these apple martinis, chilling out with coco.
The time comes around for the pub crawl to start -and I realize just how tired I am. In the morning i'd walked 50 blocks, in the afternoon i'd been dogwalking... and all on, like, 3 hours sleep
So I think, fuck it, i'll just stupefy myself right here, maybe play some nintendo, go to bed.
Meanwhile the rest of my friends, except for coco, head out.
Two of the guys, Chris and Uwe have been drinking apple martinis... washed down with Colt 45s3. I can't believe they're drinking that shit -i'm like, what is this, Compton?
They're arseholed already, and they haven't even started the crawl....
They leave, me and coco chill, eventually the matter of having a smoke arises.
So I look for my coat... and I can't find it.
No, I think, surely not
But it isn't anywhere in the cafe bar, and since coming back from dogwalking I hadn't left except to go outside and smoke or to go to the loo. Of that I'm 100% positive.
The coat HAS to be there somewhere
The only other alternative is that someone took it -and my wallet is in that coat. And in that wallet is the $200 I took out of the ATM earlier in the day.
Man, I can't believe that someone has taken my stuff again -not after what happened the day before!
WTF?!?!
So I go over to the front desk tell them what's happened, start shooting off my mouth that there was $200 in the wallet, that if it doesn't get found i'll call the cops; harold starts to check the security cameras....
Then I go for a cigarette and have a word with myself.
I expunge the outrage and try to think with a clear head.
I have an idea of what might have happened.
Chris and I have quite similar coats: long grey woolen overcoats -Mourinhos.4 Sometimes, invariably when one or other of us gets drunk, we get them mixed up. One time I put my wallet in chris's pocket by accident and tore the cafe bar apart looking for it until I realized my mistake.
Sketchy, I know.
Was it possible Chris had put on my coat by mistake and gone on the pub crawl?
I'm trying to call those guys -no answer.
Coco goes down to the pub where they're at.
Still can't get through.
Harold is just about to drive me down there in Knight Rider, when Chris calls. He is very, very drunk:
“Dude, I got your coat.”
“Oh! Thank god-”
“But your wallet's not in it.”
“Shit! Could you have dropped it?”
“Nah man it wasn't in here, I wouldn't have put it on if your wallet was in the pocket.”
I tell him to put coco on the line, and I tell coco to grab chris and retrace his exact steps to the bar.
But i've already written off getting the wallet back. A fully loaded wallet dropped on the sidewalk at 11pm at night in new york? I bet it got swiped before it hit the ground.
So I have a drink instead.
But 5 minutes later, my phone rings. It's chris. My wallet's been found. Rachel and Uwe found it on the floor of the bar, and handed it in to the barman.5
I get coco to bring it back pronto. All the money's still there, and the cards.
Waves of relief.
But after another adrenalin fix, I don't feel tired no more. I stay up longer with coco. Eventually coco goes to bed. After a bit longer (it's maybe 1.30 by this point) I follow suit.
But halfway up the stairs to my room I stop.
A voice in my head (I like to think it was the voice of the apple martini) says,
“Heeeeey, why you go to bed now, loser? Why no go ding dongs, have one more drink, eh? Eh?”6
So, foolishly, I listen to the voice, walk back down the stairs and out the hostel -to ding dongs.
(I'd just like to say here that everything that happens from here on is recalled through the fug of an alcohol haze.)
OK. Jane and chris are still at ding dongs. Chris is completely gone. Jane is not too far behind. And i'm fairly toasted myself.
So it's business as usual for a wednesday.
I get a drink in for me and jane. Jane's talking about how unimpressed she is with american men -the constantly being hit on (I think I wrote a footnote bout that in a previous post).
Eventually, Jane and I are the only jazz heads left in the place. Jane is explaining to these drunk guys at the bar how cup size is calculated, and they are getting a bit fixated on her boobs7, so I'm like “Hometime, Janey!”
I walk her back to the staff basement [at the time I lived with the guests in the other building, i'm in the basement at the time of writing], and the weather is filthy (wind and freezing rain), so I go inside for a bit and we end up chilling out in her bunk.
Let me say right now: Nothing happened.8
Just a lot of giggling and Carry On9 style bawdiness.
We wake up shannon, who's in the bunk below, but rather than be pissed off, she joins in with the silliness.
The three of us get louder and louder -and wake up the other person in the room, Maria.
Now she IS pissed off.
So shannon suggests that me and jane come and join her in her bed.
Ah ha ha ha.
So me and jane get into bed with shannon.
(we were all three of us fully clothed -NOTHING HAPPENED)
I was on the outside edge of the bed, so I said: “What the fuck's going on here? The dude should be between the two chicks, everyone knows that.”
So Jane shifts over: it's shannon, me, Jane.
Really, nothing happened10, just more silliness.
(I think at one point we made sex-noise! O.M.G.!)
Poor maria couldn't sleep with all that going on, and when she complained next, I told her that she lived in a hostel so she should just deal with it, or words to that effect (this was the apple martini talking again)
She left the room in tears
Not my finest hour11
Now let me tell you something about Shannon
She has a thing with another member of staff, who also lives in the basement, Darryl
I'm not going to speculate as to the nature of their relationship, as it's none of my business
but let's just say that Darryl feels a certain protectiveness for Shannon
So ask shannon if me being in her bed is going to be cool
And she's like, “Sure, it'll be fine, and nothing's going on is there?”12
And that was good enough for me
Now maria's not in the room, we don't feel like we have to be quiet anymore
We get louder and louder
I think at some point someone hammers on the wall of the room.
The next thing I remember clearly is a bunch of guys are in the room
(I don't see them because I have the sheet pulled up over my head!)
But I hear their voices: I can make out two distinctly
One is Big B's: “Hey dan you gotta go back to your own room, get back to the other building.”
The other, I assume, is Darryl's: “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN HERE?!”So this is it, I think, I'm finally going to my ass whupped
Is this the end for little danny spencer?
But the hands i'm expecting to drag me out of the bed never come
One way or the other, I don't know how, the guys go
And shortly after that I pass out -it must be 4am by then
(Did I mention that I had to work the next day -or, rather, later that day- at 6.30am in the cafe bar, on my own?)
But i'd already cleverly set my alarm for six
Less cleverly, when the alarm goes, I turn it off and give myself “10 more minutes”
The next time I wake up it's 8am
I'm an hour and a half late for work
And because i'm on my own, there's no one to cover for me
And breakfast is the busiest time at the cafe bar -i'm picturing a long line of angry guests clamouring for their free breakfast, and no one there to serve it to them
Oh shit, I think, I'm fired
So I jump out of bed and get my shit together
Two things I can't find: my glasses and my coat
I look for a good two or three minutes, but I can't find em, it's crazy
I'm still drunk though, ha ha
so I tear over to the cafe bar, ready to face the music
But when I get there, there's no queue, no pissed off guests
Valentina and Steve-o -bless them, bless them!- have opened up for me and are working the bar
I can't believe it -what absolute stars!
My ass has been saved yet again by my most excellent friends, who I've only known a month or so
There's some real good people in the world, y'know?
They even give me some time to drink a shit load of water, coffee, smoke a cigarette and generally get my head straight
It's during this time that davey comes in, sits down.
I know davey lives in the basement, so I figure I better go over and apologize.
So I do.
But he says: “It's not me you should be apologizing to, it's Darryl.”
Me: “Is he mad?”
Davey: “He was last night.”
Me: “I know it looked bad, but honestly, nothing was going on it was completely innocent.”
Davey: “It's not me you've got to tell....”
So, I'm thinking, great -i wonder if Darryl will let me get a word in before I get my clock cleaned.
But then I think, I've done nothing wrong -the truth will out!
And then, finally, I start work.
Apart from all this the other thing that's preying on my mind is where my coat's at -because my wallet is in there (I hope!)
I want to go back over to the basement, but I figure I need someone with 20/20 vision to help me
(couldn't find my specs either, remember?)
So I ask my friend bobby if he'll come over and help me look when the cafe bar quiets down
but the cafe bar is really busy for some reason, wouldntchaknow
so I ask bobby if he wouldn't mind going and seeing if he could find it for me
He's back in 5 minutes
He tells me I must have been really drunk when I woke up (and I was13) because my coat was right there on the next bunk
So I'm like, “Really? I was looking all over for it, shit!”
He hands it over and I check my wallet's there; it is.
I put it in my jeans pocket -not letting that baby out of my sight again!
Then I go back to work
At some point I decide I want a soda from the machine
So I get my wallet out, open it up
All my money, $200 dollars, is gone
At some point between going to dingdongs and me getting my coat back, someone lifted the money out of my wallet.
I've been robbed!
Holy fucking shit
What else can go wrong? Find out next time....
TO BE CONTINUED....
1 Harold works at the front desk. He's from the bronx and epitomizes the new york character. He's the sweetest guy in the world, but if you cross him... well, I won't go into details, but the first time I got a ride in his, er, ride (a black SUV with blacked out windows called knight rider; he's getting the red flashing strip) I had to move an aluminium baseball bat from my seat.
Me (dryly): Hey Harold, I didn't know you played baseball.
Harold (chuckling): Just don't lose my weapon, nigga.
2 I don't know exactly what goes into these, but he sells them for $5 a pop and boy they are strong. They're radioactive green too. They are some kind of ghetto concoction anyway; they're name checked in a Wu Tang track, Wolves: “My force might blur, the Porsche'll purr/The apple martini, of course it's stirred”
3 AKA Malt Liquor AKA Liquid Crack. Ice Cube's character in Boyz N The Hood always had one in his hand. The US equivalent of Special Brew or Tenant's Super. Nasty nasty.
4 After the iconic grey armani overcoat Jose Mourinho wore in his first two seasons as manager of Chelsea FC.
5 This is an example of how drunk these guys were: not only did they not realise the wallet was mine, even after looking at my bank card, they saw my initials “D.J.” -and thought the wallet must belong to the DJ who works at the bar! Oh. My. God. Nincompoops! Imbeciles!
6 The voice of the apple martini is the same as the voice of “Chico”, my evil mexican alter-ego. I'll tell ya'll about Chico another day.
7 When Jane gets drunk, she goes a bit crazy as far as her boobs are concerned. She is size G, and these guys at the bar were like: “Whoa! I didn't even know they went up to G!”
8 No, really, nothing happened!
9 For the benefit of non-uk readers, the “Carry On” films, were a series of films made in england in the 60's and 70's characterised by sexual innuendo laden humour: Here's an example, from Carry On Doctor (I can't believe I can quote this shit from memory):
A blonde, pretty nurse [Barbara Windsor, back in the day] with a, ahem, “full chest” is walking up the hospital concourse. She is being admired by a couple of ambulance drivers. Driver #2 is eating a pear.
DRIVER#1 (to DRIVER #2): Cor!
The nurse shimmies by.
NURSE (to DRIVER #2): Nice pear?
DRIVER #2: You took the words right out of my mouth!
(ba-dum, tsch!)
1 0 Though the next day a rumor was going round that we'd had a threesome, and I didn't exactly shoot it down in flames right away, y'know?
1 1 A couple days later I bought her some flowers by way of apology; we're good. She's back in denmark now. Miss you maria!
1 2 See?
1 3 Shannon had to guide me to the bathroom. Oh dear oh dear.
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