I was good and drunk—and I’m a nice drunk and had no seeming worries walking around this civilized area of Northeast Queens with a local. I would not have walked this drunk in Baltimore. But the old Italian people at the bar—not much older than I—had kept buying me drinks. I remember them asking me curiously, where I lived, and wondering at the term Baltimore, to which the old fellow looked at Mescaline and said, “You been there? What’s it like?”
The young man answered, “Just imagine an entire low-rise brownstone city the size of Queens, with almost the entire population right out of Brownsville.”
“God, God!” the man next to me said, “You’re a nice fella. You should live here, not in such a place.”
That bought my beers for the rest of the night.
The old lady who danced with the little white dog the man had leashed to his bar stool, had me selecting music out of the juke box and the big barmaid was discussing when I would be back next and if we could get together, when Mescaline signed that he had had enough to drink, that he was near his limit.
We walked back toward the flat he rented from the Chinese woman and were heading past a bar he had eschewed earlier, as “A hipster fаggot bar, but with good beer—the one thing hipsters do well” when I noticed that he was getting loud and waxing angry about my situation in Baltimore and that if a certain type of person were absent then you had no violent crime. He was even using the N-word and since he had just told me that the only real danger on the streets out here were the cops, I suggested we have one last beer at the hipster-fаggot bar, a nice microbrew and pack it in for the night.
We turned the corner into a strip mall where the bar was situated in the recess of the two joined storefronts. Mescaline was still loudly spouting racial epitaphs. I noticed three figures at the door of the bar and motioned for him to be quiet, but he paid no heed, stalking from side-to-side.
To the right, on my side, was a nondescript white hipster.
In the back corner on a chair, sat a tall white kid with a hockey mask on, as this was a Halloween dress-up night in the area, with numerous costumed young adults showing up at the old Irish pub as we had been leaving.
At the door was a black dude in his late 20s, a pudgy welterweight, with big intelligent eyes, his hands in the pockets of a black hooded sweatshirt that had security stamped on it in gold. This guy was not confident, had not done this before, was not big, was not in fight shape and was obviously selected as a cut-rate doorman by the proprietor for the obvious fact that such upscale whites [that is on my scale, not the New York scale] as patronized this bar are universally terrified and cowed by the image of black masculinity portrayed in our media church.
This had gone bad in a hurry.
I immediately envisioned myself sleeping on the sidewalk outside Mescaline’s flat as he spent the weekend in jail.
I stood back, about to suggest we go get a slice of pizza, when Mescaline stepped up menacingly toward the man blocking his door.
The doorman keept his hands in his hoody pockets and looked vacantly ahead, taking his eyes off the obvious aggressor and said, “I need to see some I.D.”
I began to say let’s go, but Mescaline snarled, “I.D.? Me? Since when?”
The nervous doorman said, “I’m checking I’D. tonight, for the [Halloween] event.”
Mescaline slid closer, angling a little behind the guy, looking to me like he was really thirsty for a chocolate suplex drop.
The doormen got more nervous and said, “I just need to see some I.D,” as he keept his hands in his pockets, tensed up and began to stammer nervously.
To this Mescaline snarled loudly, in a building rage, “You! You!! Here! Me! You!!!!!”
The doorman began to shake visibly and the tall kid flexed his ass to get off the seat as I looked for a distraction, knowing that any direct attempt to dampen Mescaline’s engaged rage was going to meet stiff—don’t ruin my white ethnic moment—resistance.
Looking up I saw that next door was a boxing gym! And blurted, “Hey, Mesc, you didn’t tell me there was a gym here. We could get you some sparring, maybe bring Sean and Oliver up.”
The flexing, masked string bean sat back down.
Mescaline stood stunned with a WTF look on his face.
The doormen then took his hands out of his pockets, looked at me with his mouth open and eyes wide, then looked up into the uncaring night sky, reaching with his hands and pulling them graspingly back down to his palpitating heart and said, “What irony!”
Every element of this odd picture then fell into place as I barked a short laugh and walked off across the lot: The hipster "boxing” gym was obviously staffed by a real boxer or two and attended mostly by hipster chicks. Certainly, this non-fighter, looking like a man trying to get into the first real shape of his life at the cusp of 30, was some comic book geek attending this gym to seek fitness in a safe, mudshark-rich environment and had been spotted by the bar owner, probably as he undid his gym work at the bar stool after training, and tossed a security shirt for a night of free drinks.
Mescaline soon caught up to me, complaining, “That guy ain’t nothing. I could flatten him!”
“Mesc, the guy isn’t even a fighter. He’s some hipster-fаggot comic book geek, wearing the worse-conceived security uniform on earth—which would get him shot by cops or thugs at any venue that needed a real doorman—and you scared him to death—look here, a cop car, pigs cruising by. They’d be arresting you right now.”
“I’m sorry, man. I just drank too much and didn’t expect to run into a ոigger at my own spot. I guess it’s a lesson learned. Dude, you’re not going to put this in an article, are you?”
“Now would I do something like that?”
Thriving in Bad Places
Somewhat off-topic, but you mentioned the security guy probably trying to get into shape. Made me wonder what sort of food regimen you recommend for those training.
My webmaster will be laughing at this as he blames my decrepitude largely on my $20 per week diet.
Here is the advice my boxing coaches have given me, and which, when I follow it, I have gotten good results.
Do not eat anything white, unless it is a fresh root or vegetable.
Drink and eat nothing that is pre-sweetened.
Following these two guides cuts out 80% of what we sell in a supermarket.
Make sure you are still a little hungry when you push away from the meal, as your sense of satiation lags 20 minutes behind your need.
Mister Frank called these "push-aways," a fighter's most important weight-making exercise.