My Dental Dilemmas: Part One

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There is no beating around the bush here, I’ll just come right out and say it: I am a pussy when it comes to going to the dentist!I really like brushing and flossing and taking care of my teeth. I love that deep burning tingle from swishing the Listerine around in my mouth. What I do not care for is going to the dentist. I get all sorts of anxious and I start to sweat profusely and get nauseous – and that’s just in the car on the way over.

For as long as I can remember, going to the dentist has always been a traumatic experience for me. When I was little, I would get so freaked out in the dentist‘s chair that I would wait until he turned around to get equipment and then I would jump up out of the chair and make a run for it. My bib would be flying around the back of my neck like Superman’s cape and I was off and running down the hall. After making it out of the room more than once, my mother did what any supportive, loving, compassionate, and caring mother would do: She pinned me down to the chair. Her full body weight was on my chest and one of her hands was holding one of my arms down and her other hand would be jammed at my throat, pinning me to the headrest while my Aunt laid across my recklessly flailing legs trying to hold my other hand – effectively immobilizing me. As with any poor, defenseless animal caught in a trap by hunters, I was too terrified to scream and could only lay there in terror – waiting for the torture to end.

Now, any normal dentist would stop right there and say “wait a minute ladies, this might not be a good idea if we actually have to assault him to open his mouth” but not Long Island Dentists in the 80’s. He was just as bad as my mother and aunt because while they were pinning me to the mat, he was prying my mouth open with one of his hands and sticking torture devices in and out of my teeth with the other all the while drilling just for the fun of it. That is when I realized that life really isn’t fair after all. 

I would like to tell you that that was the only time that I have been held down and literally assaulted in a dentist’s office, but if I told you that, it would be a lie. There were many, many other times and it had only made my fears worse. Also, don’t even get me started about how they had to restrain me to get blood from my arm at the doctor’s office. The two of them weren’t enough that time and they needed two additional nurses helping them to try to hold me down. I was thrashing around like The Hulk and they were kicking and punching back because I was determined to get out of there. Each one of us left that office feeling downtrodden and covered in bruises…Sadly enough, if you were to look back through it, my medical history memory bank runs like a Tarantino film. 

As for my current dentist: It took me forever to find someone I am comfortable with but there are still issues.  I still freak out and my wife has to come and stay in the room with me to try to calm me (or apologize for my behavior). He actually makes me take the last possible appointment of the day because he doesn’t have a door on any of his exam rooms (I’m like the 3:00 show) and  apparently, I scared some of the kids and parents in the waiting room last time when I was freaking out during a cleaning, so he bumped me til there is no one around. By the way, he also makes me wear a pink nose cone to get the gas because he says the other colors are too small and won’t fit around my nose. Leave it to a dentist to make an already nervous person self-conscious about their big nose. I just can’t win!

The Greatest Love of All

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I bet that if you were to ask my wife, she would say it was her – but let’s be honest here: My soulmate and the great love of my adult life has been Imodium AD. I love my wife to death, but this is a no-brainer and pretty obvious. Imodium  AD has touched me in an obscene, all-consuming way that no woman could ever truly understand. It’s done more to support me and has just always been there for me – it’s ‘had my back’ as we used to say on the street. I would never stray, but lately I’ve been having these overwhelming feelings and I’m torn – Don’t tell Imodium, but my Rogaine is fighting to get control of my heart!    

In case you don’t know what I look like, I’ll give you a visual. Picture a younger George Costanza with contact lenses instead of the glasses and that’s me. I’m short, overweight, balding, and unemployed, and those are just the highlights! I have actually come to accept these quirks and try not to harp on them anymore. I mean, I can’t do anything about the shortness (especially since I fell the last time that I wore platform boots), I’m actually eating more to bulk up for the eventual stomach band surgery I’ll get, but baldness is where I draw the line.

I say balding, because I have been fighting an uphill battle to keep those baldness dogs at bay for a few years now. I don’t have the luscious mane that I had in high school or the bleached blond (just like Slim Shady) full head of hair from college, but I’ve still got a bit up there. If you go through my family tree, no man in my family has hair past twenty years old. It starts thinning and thinning, until the only thing left is a memory. My brother Arthur finally shaved his head, but until he did, the front of his head looked like a yoyo – all surface and one little string in the center.

I’ve actually considered (and still might) converting to become a Jew so I can have the yarmulke cover my bald spot.

Funny little side story: At my brother Anthony’s wedding I was an usher and we were waiting in the bridal room for the DJ to announce the wedding party. We were drinking for a while and I had already soaked the flower girl with a pitcher of water because she touched my food (don’t you dare say that’s a mean thing to do – that little bitch deserved it!) I found a yarmulke with Daniel’s Bar Mitzvah emblazoned across it in rhinestone in a drawer so I put it on my head figuring that it would cover my bald spot for the photos, but my brother Arthur saw it and asked what the hell I was doing. “Get that off your head, are you an asshole? Why are you wearing that?” I didn’t miss a beat and said, “Are you kidding, you were at my wedding! You know my wife is Jewish and I converted. I’m Jewish!” (which was a crock of shit that I made up just then and really, what self-respecting Jew is wearing their Daniel’s Bar Mitzvah Rhinestone-covered yarmulke at a wedding?) He apologized immediately said “I’m sorry, I forgot that you did.” I replied as gingerly as a drunk fool could “Are you an idiot? -You don’t even know if I’m Jewish or not? I made it up – I’m not Jewish!”  “Come on” he replied “Are you Jewish or not?” My own brother didn’t even know if I was Jewish and it wasn’t like I got married years before – it was only a few months before this wedding – I love it.

I know that some people might be offended by that, but I am more of a shallow man than I am a religious man, so converting religions to cover a bald spot isn’t a lot to do. I know people think it’s not a big deal and I am acting crazy with this fascination with my hair, but on this one I will defer to Babs from Making the Band 2 when she fought with Chopper: “I TOLD YOU CHOPPER, YOU DON’T GO MESSING WITH MY HAIR” when he didn’t give her a phone message from the stylist and she was trying to get her weave done. Sing it Sister – I hear ya!

When I was younger, I swore that I would never be bald because I was still holding out hope that I was adopted or switched at birth or left on the doorstep and that I would have wonderful thick hair, but fate and my lineage turned on me like a cold-hearted bitch…so I ran to the open arms of the Rogaine. I was actually afraid of the Rogaine at first. You had to touch it to apply it and I’m OCD so I got rubber gloves. It was also messy and would drip down the back of my neck or my forehead when I applied it. I was terrified that I would end up with a thick mane of hair running down the back of my neck like a giraffe. Also, what if I started growing hair on the tips of my fingers? If Rogaine will make hair grow on my head, why not on my fingertips? Forget about shaking someone’s hand, how the hell would I ever wipe my ass while holding a ball of yarn in my hand? That isn’t sterile.

As if hearing my concerns/prayers, they worked out a compromise and came out with Rogaine Foam which has changed my life. Gone is the eye dropper to apply it and then dabbing the tissues to stop it from dripping off my scalp. It now looks like shaving cream and dissolves when you rub it in. You obviously still need the rubber gloves, but that’s not so bad. Just like the institution of marriage – this has been a blessed union. And just like the first time I had a strawberry flavored Charleston Chew (Bemish’s favorite) – I was hooked.

Although I would love it one day, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to have dreadlocks and I have accepted that. I won’t be able to have a ponytail and I have accepted that. I’m still holding out hope for the cornrows, but I will get over that too eventually. For the chance at a full-fledged mullet, I might even consider trading a kidney…I know that I would look ridiculous with each and every one of those hairstyles, but I would at least like to have the option…Rogaine is making a play for my affections and I am torn. At the end of the day – there’s enough room in my heart for both of them, but my Imodium AD will always get the top shelf.     

     

I hate birds: Part One – London (long but worth it)

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I have fear and loathing and more than just a mild disgust for birds. More than disgust, I actually hate all kinds of birds: cardinals, pigeons, vultures, thunderbirds, anything.  It’s not the movie that did it to me because I actually really like anything by Hitchcock, and when Darlene dressed up as Tippi Hedren on Roseanne‘s Halloween episode it was genius. Like I said, it isn’t the movie that made me hate birds – it’s the birds that have actually attacked me. Not just circling the car at the McDonald’s by the water that my mother used to take us to when we were little, but I have actually been attacked more than once by vigilante birds looking for trouble. Here is part one of my vendetta against birds…

 

When I studied abroad in London, we didn’t live in dorms on campus. We lived in apartment building across the way from Marble Arch and the Speaker’s Corner section of Hyde Park. Now, I will go into the stories about that building with the poor tenants that we terrorized, Neville the always drunk doorman, and the convenience store at the foot of the building where Crazy Mary and I forced the cashier to hang a photo of us on the register at another time or this entry will be ten pages long.

 

The building was in a great location, and from the outside looked perfect, but the place was filthy and infested with roaches the size of matchbox cars. I would get out of the shower and see my towel speeding down the hallway on the back of what looked like a small toy yorkie. Anyone that knows me, is scratching their heads right now and saying with my Extreme OCD – how the hell did I live with roaches and I hear you. Wanna know how – ALMOST DAILY ALCOHOL BLACKOUTS. It was either that or go back home…

 

There were five of us living there and the rooming situation was like this: Me and Jeff shared a room because we got along really well and he used to sleep at his girlfriend Laura’s room across town a lot so it was almost like having my own room half the time, Gregg and Brian shared a room because Brian’s girlfriend got the single room in  her apartment on the ninth floor and Chris ended up with the single in our apartment because none of us really liked him or wanted to share a room with him. Stop it right now, I know what you’re thinking and that is not a mean thing to say because in this world, we don’t have to like everybody and something was really wrong with him!

 

The only good part about the apartment was that we had a housekeeper, but the negatives far outweighed that: the stove and the oven were very ghetto and didn’t work and the washing machine only sporadically worked and there was no air conditioning; it was like the London version of Clayton Street. My other big gripe was that there were no screens on the windows. We were on the fourth floor and we were always hanging out those windows to heckle people on the street or to throw things at our friends below and having screens on those windows would have kept us restrained inside the windows. Or kept other things out…

 

As a preface to this next bit, I need to tell you that I am a very heavy sleeper. I have slept through policemen & firemen, alarms & sirens, and one time, an actual fire. I put my blinders on and I’m out! (Brookstone Tempur Blinders are amazing by the way – it is literally as if you took your head and shoved it right up a sheep’s ass – They are that comfortable!) I also don’t move when I’m asleep, so I’m a little bit like a dead body laying there with my mouth open as if rigor mortis has just set in. People have made fun of me for years, but I just cannot sleep without the blinders. In addition to the blinders, I desperately need air conditioning or an open window with a cool breeze because I am a very hot person. (Yes, I know that is what all those girls in college always used to say about me, but I am talking about temperature right now).

 

One night after a particularly drunk evening, I was wasted and needed to get some rest. I took out my contact lenses, took off my clothes, opened the window because the room was so hot, put on my blinders and passed out. My roommate Jeff was away in Paris with his girlfriend, so I didn’t have to contend with his usual snoring.

 

I awoke from my dead sleep at about 8:30 AM to my shoulder being repeatedly poked very hard. My immediate thought was that it was one of my roommate’s ready to get his ass kicked for disturbing me, but I lifted my blinders to find a pigeon on my shoulder pecking me with its beak. A fucking filthy pigeon was attacking me! I thought that I was hallucinating again and was squinting because I didn’t have my contacts in. That pigeon was all up in my grill shaking its beak and staring me in the eye as if to say “What’s up, Dude.” I started screaming like a little girl and tried to get it off me with my hand, but it freaked out and went nuts! That pigeon clenched its claws and dug into my shoulder and really scratched me up (it drew blood!) and then it really freaked out! I threw that mother fucker off me and it landed onto Jeff’s bed. As it got it’s bearings, it tried to fly away and started crashing into walls and was making the most terrible screeching imaginable.

 

I was on the floor by this time, since I had fallen out of the bed in the commotion and was trying to get out of the door and see how badly that pigeon tore up my shoulder. At the same time that I was trying to get out the room, my roommate Gregg burst in and smashed me in the head with the door. He turned on the light, saw me on the ground, the pigeon crashing from wall into wall into wall shitting everywhere and he ran out the door and shut it behind him. He almost closed my head in the door because he tried to slam it shut to lock the pigeon in.

 

I got free and ended up in a ball trying to compose myself on the hallway floor while our other two roommates came to see what was going on. I couldn’t even tell them what happened because I started to get myself worked up and freaking out that it might have shit in my mouth (because I sleep with my mouth open) and started gagging. They, of course, thought me getting attacked in my bed was the most hysterical thing ever but I was like “get that fucking thing out of here.” And of course, I was bleeding from where it got me in the shoulder.

 

Gregg went to open the door very slowly when the noise had settled down because he said it probably flew out the window, which must be how it must have gotten into the room. He looked in the room and saw the pigeon perched atop Jeff’s dresser. Apparently, the banging we heard was the pigeon knocking everything off of Jeff’s dresser. Gregg shut the door and turned back to me and said “the window is closed – how could it have gotten in here?” I thought about it and remembered that I had gotten up at about 5:30 AM and closed the window because it was raining…Oh my God, how long was it on me? It had been in the room for almost three hours with me…

 

Between the four of us, no one would go into the room to get the pigeon out. After round one with my flying friend, I was certainly not going back in there or anywhere near that thing and I would have gladly slept on the couch and left it in there. Finally, my friend Crazy Mary came over and said she would get it out. She went into the room with a loaf of bread and I thought she was going to feed it but she was throwing the slices of bread like a frisbee at the pigeons to get it to move. That pigeon just sat there staring at her with a quizzical look as if to say “what are you doing, crazy girl?” She connected with one good shot and that slice of bread whacked the pigeon right in the head. That pigeon let out such a screech and kamikaze pilot flew right at her and almost hit her in the face. It whizzed right past her and into the bathroom and she didn’t even flinch. I, on the other hand, was once again screaming like a little girl and almost shit my pants as I dove down the hallway to get out of the pigeon’s way as it zoomed past.

 

The pigeon flew out the bathroom window a little bit later on, but not before it left a ton of shit all over the bathroom in addition to the lovely gifts it had left earlier in my bedroom. Fortunately for me, the pigeon shit mostly on Jeff’s stuff and his side of the room. The unfortunate news was that when Jeff came home the next day, he didn’t find that as funny as we did.  He kept blaming me as if I invited that pigeon to come in and date rape me. I had a really big scratch on my shoulder for a long time where the pigeon attacked me and for the rest of my time in London I NEVER slept with the windows open again. To this day, I still get uneasy whenever I sleep with the windows open…

If you don’t expect that much from me, I might not let you down

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In case you haven’t guessed it yet from these ramblings, I wasn’t always a very responsible person. I never really minded it though, because no one relied on me and no one ever asked me to do anything because they knew that I would find some way to screw it up. It was actually really liberating because there was never any expectations or pressure and Fat Camp was no exception.

There was a guy that worked there that looked just like the Boar’s Head Pig on the label of the cold cuts. I know that might possibly come across as mean or insulting, but I’m not even kidding. I’m not ready to walk down any runways and no one would put this face on a magazine cover either, but he really does look just like that. He’s also six-foot four and extremely overweight, which didn’t help his image in any way. I guess there are worse things you can look like…O.K. there really aren’t that many things that you can look like that are worse than the Boar’s Head Pig, but that’s really not the point. Anyway, he was considered more responsible than me, so they sent him and I to get bread because the Chef’s delivery got delayed and the kitchen needed it for lunch and they didn’t trust me to go by myself. It was a twenty-minute drive that should have taken us no longer than an hour to get there and back, but they were about to find out that I wasn’t the only irresponsible one.  

We didn’t even make it out the front gate before we lit up. Although in my defense, you had to be stoned in order to drive that van. It was a huge, fifteen passenger, white monstrosity and when behind the wheel in there, it always felt like you were driving a big rig. It took every bump and pothole like a gunshot and that thing rocked back and forth while driving. Granted, it was soothing if you just smoked up and were a passenger in the back of it, but while piloting it felt like you were playing a video game and the windshield was the screen.

So we get down to the corner and just as I’m daydreaming about what goodies I’ll get at the supermarket to snack on, Boar’s Head announces that we aren’t going to the supermarket – we’re going to the Hostess Outlet instead. Now I’m certainly not one to argue with logic like that and the very thought of all those Twinkies brought a huge smile to my face instantly.  

We got to the Hostess Outlet and I was like a kid on Christmas morning. I literally got out of the van and started running into the store like I was on The Amazing Race. We got two shopping carts and starting putting as much in our mouth as we were putting into each of the carts. It was a fat kid’s wet dream: There were Twinkies and Suzy-Q‘s and what seemed like hundreds of flavors of Fruit Pies (which I don’t even like, but I started opening and eating them anyway) and Snoballs and Ding Dongs and everything. All the people we passed in the store were staring at us sort of like we were celebrities that they just couldn’t quite recognize. It seemed to make the most sense to me at the time that it was because of his obvious, spitting-image, resemblance to the Boar’s Head Pig logo – but then I quickly realized it wasn’t looks of curiosity – they were actually looks of disgust! The site of me and Boar’s Head strolling up and down each of those aisles with overflowing carts (they were overflowing with just our snacks that we were eating – we hadn’t even started to get what we actually came for) was apparently repulsive to some people. Each of our faces and shirts were covered in chocolate and crumbs and a little bit of the soda that I spilled from the liter bottle of Diet Pepsi that I had brought in with me; We were not doing anything to dispel the stereotype against fat people in a Hostess Outlet by any means – but those were the best Suzy-Q’s I have ever tasted before or since.

We literally filled that enormous, fifteen passenger, empty van with bread, rolls, buns, all of our Suzy-Q’s, Fruit Pies and assorted junk foods and I carved out a nice little spot between the fresh italian breads stacked neatly on the second to last seat for a tiny little nap. I awoke to Boar’s Head slamming on the brakes forcing the breads and me to go flying off the seat. Cupcakes were everywhere and ended up getting smushed when I landed on them. I made my way up to the passenger seat to find Boar’s Head chugging a half-gallon of skim milk (he actually told me later with a straight face and he was dead serious, that skim milk has fewer calories in it which I took to mean that he thought it evened out the four thousand and counting Hostess calories he had just consumed…) and asking if I wanted a sip. “No, thanks! Where did you even get that?” He apparently stopped off for gas and got it at the Mobil Mart. “Where are we?” I asked looking around at the houses on this random street in who knows where.

 “Timmy’s house” as if I should have known what that meant.

“Timmy who?”

“I Can’t tell you his last name – come on and Don’t say anything!”

What happened next was like something out of a bad 70’s Cheech and Chong movie. A normal person that wasn’t coming down off the drugs and sugar high would have stayed put, but I was getting a little nauseous from all that chocolate and needed to get out of that van. We walked around the corner and down the block because apparently, we weren’t allowed to park in front of Timmy’s house.

We went around the block and came up to a random house and walked up to a side door and Boar’s Head knocked softly. Timmy, late thirties, long hair, very dirty looking opens the door and looks around searching the area and whispering about who I am before he’ll let us in. “He’s with me; He talks a lot, but he’s O.K.” Boar’s Head said. It wasn’t really wrong, certainly it was a rude comment, but not wrong – so I didn’t say anything. Besides, I had no idea why everyone was whispering. We entered a normal looking house with his mother in the kitchen – an older lady almost sixty cooking something. We passed through the Living Room and went down the hallway toward the back of the house. This Bedroom – or what I thought was a bedroom – had a huge padlock on it. Who put’s a padlock on a door inside their house when they live with their mother? Was she a klepto?

When he opened the door, it was far from a bedroom – it was more like an Arboretum in there. This huge room and walk-in closet had been converted into a greenhouse and there were tons of lights hanging from the ceiling over lots of plants, what looked like a bathroom exhaust fan on the ceiling, and there were tables of plants and scales everywhere with small clear plastic bags strewn about. It didn’t smell offensive, just overpowering. Some people would have gotten it right away because it should have been obvious, but I was like “What’s with all the plants – do you like gardening or something?” before it clicked in my head that Timmy was obviously a drug dealer. That’s who puts a padlock on the inside door of a house he lives in with his mother! Boar’s Head made a fist at me and told me to shut the fuck up so I didn’t piss Timmy off. Of course my curiosity got the best of me and as they were “conducting business” – I couldn’t help but touch the scales and walk around to check everything out, I had gotten drugs before, but never actually seen the operation like this.

‘Timmy, does your Mom live with you? That’s nice to have company, isn’t it?” I innocently asked to which he replied “It’s obviously her house – why the fuck else would she be in the kitchen cooking?” I replied  “Why do you live with your mother?” to which he replied to Boar’s Head “What’s with him  – my mother gets lonely when she’s by herself and it helps me save money on rent.” I had never heard a drug dealer cry poverty before, I guess I just always thought they were rolling in it like in the movies and could afford any type of place they wanted – shows me how wrong it is to assume. From the looks of his clothes and this dump,  they weren’t making anything. There really wasn’t much in the way of conversation after that…we stayed for about an hour or two (I started to lose track of the time again) and tested out all his bongs and I gotta tell you – that was some good shit! Timmy’s not much for friendly conversation, but he has a real green thumb.

As we stumbled back to the van for more Hostess delights – Boar’s Head proceeded to rip me a new asshole about asking Timmy if he liked gardening…”Are you a fucking moron, you wanna get your ass kicked?” “By who, Timmy’s hot mother?” I maturely replied which set us both into hysterics…Needless to say, Timmy told Boar’s Head never to bring me back to his house again. After a trip to McDonald’s and Burger King (because we couldn’t stop arguing over which of them had better french fries) and another tiny nap with the smushed cupcakes for me, we headed back to the camp.

We pulled into the entrance about 6:30 PM (Keep in mind that we left at 10:00 AM that morning and that we were only supposed to be gone for an hour) and headed over to the kitchen. The Chef came running out from serving dinner and started screaming (which I didn’t appreciate at all) that he needed that bread for the lunch AT NOON and we come back hours later and didn’t even get the bread he wanted – just a truck full of shit! Also, why did we bring all that junk food back to a WEIGHT LOSS CAMP? Talk about an ungrateful person; Two people do you a favor and go to the store for you, and that’s how you respond? You think that he didn’t get it, imagine how the bookkeeper felt when we gave her the receipt for almost six hundred dollars worth of junk food and stuff that couldn’t even be used. Some people just don’t understand the munchies.

Needless to say, in addition to them not trusting me already, they never sent him on an errand again after that and Boar’s Head never did let me go back to Timmy’s house.  Timmy actually told Boar’s Head that if he ever found out that I was talking about his “set-up” and where it was (as if I had any idea where the hell we were) he would find me and beat the shit out of me; so if you ever run into a dirty looking guy in jeans and a sweatshirt with really good shit, and his mother’s in the kitchen cooking – don’t mention me.

It’s A Dog’s Life

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A friend of mine just randomly told me a crazy story about when they masturbated their male cat. Please take that in for a moment before we go on. I know exactly what you’re thinking – how does that come up during a casual conversation? I don’t know either. Now, I’m not usually prone to speechlessness, but I gotta say that one got me. They said it only happened one time, to which I say that’s all it takes: One time and the cat’s hooked. I promised I would not put that on this website, so I will not reveal their name or gender, but it made me think of treating animals bad and of course my thoughts drifted back to college…

I’m not going to get graphic and tell you about the female roommate that I had on Clayton Street who had sex with her boyfriend’s American Terrier on his coffee table in front of his friends – I want to talk about that dog. (By the way, she’s now a school teacher and one day when my son is older, knowing my luck, I’m sure that I will walk into a Back-to-School night and come face to face with her) That dog was as big as a small show pony: he was over a hundred pounds, had huge teeth and paws, and his head was the size of a barbecue grill. I use the barbecue grill as a point of reference because he was always tied to that grill out on their porch. One day, he took off after someone and proceeded to drag that barbecue down those porch steps and then right up Clayton Street. The sparks were flying as that barbecue bounced around like a tennis ball and they had to go chasing after him. They didn’t think he’d run away, they were just chasing after him because they were afraid of the propane tank still attached to that barbecue he was dribbling up the street like a basketball. We thought for sure it would explode and take out the whole block, but they were pretty fast and caught up to him about twelve houses down. Most amazing of all though, is that the barbecue still worked after that – those things are really solid.

This is also the same dog that another day, dove through the screen of one of their front windows and made a run for it. He came straight across the street and up the stairs right into our apartment. He broke through our front door causing my two roommates to panic and jump onto the furniture trying to get away from him before they got bitten. One of them did get bit in the ass, but he didn’t break the skin. I, of course, happened to be taking a shit during all of this and when I heard the commotion and screaming, I thought the house was on fire. I didn’t even get a chance to react, because right then he broke through the bathroom door and I was literally, face to face with a monster and the bathroom door shut behind him. Picture it if you will, because I was sitting there thinking “Oh My God, I’m going to get mauled on the toilet by this killer.” I was trapped inside that small bathroom with him and I couldn’t even try to get up or move in any way. I thought that I could take it like a man if he bit me anywhere above the waist, but I was terrified that he would go for my sack if I stood up. If he got me there, I would have had to call it a day because my life would have been over! I could have lived with scars on my face or body, but you mess with the Goods and you’re screwed in a way that won’t leave a smile on anyone’s face!

He then sat down and proceeded to lick his lips while giving me the stare down (like a certain grandmother I know) mere inches from my face. I was sweating profusely and on the verge of tears when his owner and three or four other people on the street heard the commotion and screaming so they came running to find the dog. They peeked in the front door and said “you guys seen my dog?” and then started hysterical laughing when my roommates directed them to me and they opened the bathroom door.  The crowd all thought it was hysterical seeing me pinned on the toilet like that by this beast and they just kept laughing. All I can say is thank God they didn’t have camera phones like everyone does now or I would be a YouTube sensation with the way I was screaming bloody murder. They finally got that monster out of our place and I learned a valuable lesson about shitting in college: Go as fast as possible because you never know what’s outside the door!

They finally had to put that dog to sleep after he bit a few more people, but his memory lived on every time they used that barbecue. Even though he was like a wild boar, no one was happy that they had to put the dog down because it was a sad situation. Well, I shouldn’t say that because our mailman was very happy about the dog being gone. In the mailmen’s defense, he did get chased and bit quite a few times so you could understand him being happy. We never thought he minded because it was pretty funny to watch the dog attack him and then after it he always used to stick his head through the front window and smoke a joint with us. I would say he had a radar to know when we were smoking, but it was a safe  bet that if it was light outside, we were smoking.

So, my friend says they will leave the cat alone, and was just curious that one time. I say that a cat’s private parts are a gateway drug and that the next stop is a trip to the Nature Center and a meeting with an Alpaca with a golden smile…

How have I not had the shit kicked out of me yet?

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As hard as it is to believe for anyone that knows me, I have never actually been in a fist fight in my life. Many, many, many, many times, I really should have had the stuffing knocked out of me, but by some grace of God – I have eluded the fisticuffs (although there have been a few scuffles). I never got to throw even one punch in any of them, but that’s not really the point I guess. Not even when I went up to that girl in The Dark Horse Tavern and told her that her face looked like diarrhea because I thought I was helping her out, not even a slap. Of course, I was drunk and slurring my speech when that happened, but she got my meaning and just as an FYI: if someone is trying to help you, I think you should at least hear them out! 

In Elementary School, I used to incite the girls that I liked so that they’d chase me around and then beat me up when they caught me. I was young and had crushes and besides, I actually liked it when they beat me up. My first love was Elizabeth Taylor (when I saw her in Cleopatra at the age of five, I knew one day she’d be mine), but my next love was a girl in second grade named Jennifer who could run faster than any of the other girls (and most of the boys) in our class. When she eventually caught up to me, and she always did, she would take hold of my hand or my ankle and swing me around so fast like a carnival ride…Granted, she would eventually let me go and I’d usually go flying face-first into a chain link fence or a brick wall, but she did hold my hand for those few brief moments… 

I have three older brothers and one younger sister, so there were always fights in our house growing up. Usually, the fights were between my brothers Angelo and Anthony, but my sister was always the wild card. She was the one who would say “You know, Mommy says you can never hit a girl, right” and I would tell her that of course I knew that and before I could even ask why she was asking me that, she would haul off and punch me in the face. Literally, closed fist punch me in the face. Of course, I was stunned and disoriented and then she would run to my mother saying I was after her which would have my mother screaming at me to leave her alone. That bitch was crazy back then and to this day I still refuse to sit next to her at family dinners in case she has a flashback or something. I mean, this is also the girl who took a razor and gouged the hair and at least ten layers of the skin off of my right ankle while screaming “Wanna shave your legs too” and then ran off while I lie there bleeding. It has been over twenty years since that happened and the hair still doesn’t grow over that scar.     

As a point of reference, I don’t count the time that I got jumped by those three guys on Wellwood Avenue trying to get my wallet, as a fight. My wallet was in the chest pocket of my poncho (no jokes, a lot of people wore ponchos) and the zipper, of course, got stuck on the material of the poncho as I tried to give it over to them. I’ve never been a hero or what you’d call brave – I think the technical term is actually that I’m a Pussy. When I didn’t hand my wallet over, they knocked me to the ground and just kept kicking me in the head, face, and chest figuring any smart person would give them the wallet and let them be off. That whole time, I was trying to get the zipper unjammed and give them the wallet, but I couldn’t get it loose. Finally, I just said “Take the fucking Poncho and the wallet already” and tried to take the poncho off. I don’t know if you have ever tried to remove a poncho over your head while three people are steadily kicking you in that same head at full speed, but it ain’t easy – so it just added to the confusion.

As this was happening, there was a lady who was about sixty years old sitting on her porch swing at the house we were in front of watching the commotion and saying (not even screaming, but just saying at regular voice) “You boys better move that away from here before I call the cops” to which I gingerly replied back at her (trying to poke my head through the barrage of kicking feet wailing at my noggin so she could hear me clearly) “HEY LADY, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR? – THEY’RE BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF ME – CALL THE FUCKING COPS ALREADY!!!”

Long story short, I couldn’t get the zipper undone and then a cop car drove by (she never did call, the cop was patrolling the area and randomly passed by) and they ran off. As I tried to get myself up off the ground, she just kept saying that she didn’t want trouble in front of her house. If that cop wasn’t there and I had my bearings, I most certainly would have went all Jackie Chan on her ass, but I was a little bit shaken up and, truth be told, she probably could have taken me in a fight too.  

At the police station, I didn’t want to get my mother nervous (it was the middle of the night and she had cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy) so I called my friend Elaina’s house to ask her to come and pick me up. That was a mistake. Apparently, that Yenta had hung up the phone, told her mother, then called my mother and then between the two of them, called everyone they knew and more than twenty people showed up at the police station. It probably wouldn’t have been bad if my mother and Elaina’s mother hadn’t started a vigil in the waiting room like Kris, Bosley, and Julie did when Kelly was in surgery after being shot in the head on the last episode of Season Five of Charlie’s Angels.

As I walked into the waiting room and saw all of them there and heard my the aforementioned Yenta‘s wailing and crying, I remember thinking “Oh my God, this is humiliating, what could possibly be more embarrassing than this?” I found out the next morning, when I woke up to my mother hysterical crying on the phone with someone – “They beat the shit out of my baby, my baby boy” (as if she were talking about an infant.) I went to the kitchen and let her mutter on with her call thinking it was her friend Bonnie and as she hung up, I tried to tell her that I was alright and not seriously hurt and asked her to calm down. I asked her to hand me the phone so I could call in sick to work to which she replied “Who do you think I was just on the phone with? That was your boss, Joyce, I called in sick for you. She is so upset” I literally had the shit kicked out of me again right there. Needless to say, I was ragged on quite a bit at work over the next few months for being 20 years old and having my mother calling in sick for me while crying hysterically to my boss…     

So I don’t necessarily consider any of the above an actual fist fight (they were more like drive-by shootings) and as a side-note, I do have really nice hands. I think that one day I could possibly be a professional glove model or ring model, so I would hate to scar them up with bruising and teeth marks from a fight…so it’s really not practical for me. Don’t worry though, because I will update this entry if, by chance,  I ever do get into a fist fight where I actually get to throw a punch – not just receive them.

The upsides to living in a condemned building…

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Off-campus housing in college is always a challenge.  For some reason, I always seemed to wait until the last-minute to finalize and during my second senior year, I mistakenly let my friend Weezie handle everything. I should have known something was up when we got a prime spot on Clayton Street across from the bars, but who thinks like that?

School was starting in two days and Weezie called to tell me that we had somehow “lost” our apartment because other tenants were showing up and moving in and we now had nowhere to live for the school year. Apparently, the two landlords that owned the building had a parting of the ways and both of them had rented our apartment out to separate tenants. They both took the money and ran, so they were suing each other – which forced the court to appoint a Trustee to handle everything relating to their properties. Here it is two days before school starts and it was like musical chairs – the music stopped and there were not enough rooms for every one of us that was still dancing. 

It is probably my fault for planning on living with a lunatic, but Weezie was a close friend and we were together almost daily – so who better to live with?  She called and explained to me how people kept showing up and claiming rooms, but no one could find either one of the landlords. The Trustee finally showed up to help settle the situation, wanting to keep the peace and he offered to find us other housing since the other roommates had already shown up and were getting settled. Not gonna work buddy – we had to live there.

That apartment was a wreck; It had only one heating vent in the living room for the whole apartment, so no other room had any sort of heat and the winters in upstate NY are brutal. There were four bedrooms and my tiny little bedroom had a door leading out to a metal fire escape that wasn’t fully attached to the building – it actually used to bang against the building during storms. That wouldn’t have been so bad if there also wasn’t a ten-inch gap between the bottom of the fire escape door and the door frame which allowed the wind, rain, and snow to come in if there weren’t towels and blankets jammed in there. The furniture was old, mismatched, wobbly, and disgusting (even before my roommate that we liked to affectionately call “Unibrow” (for obvious reasons)  pissed all over the couch like a stray cat one night when he was drunk), the windows were broken or wouldn’t stay open unless propped up with books, and the stove didn’t always work.

The apartment was on the second floor in a condemned building that was scheduled to be torn down after the semester to make a parking lot for the YWCA next door, but it was on the bottom of Clayton Street steps from the bars and my friends were living in the houses next door, so I never gave it a second thought. Clayton Street is a long steep hill with the college campus at the top of the hill and the bars at the bottom of the hill and the apartment was in the last house at the bottom of the street across from the bars which more than made up for not having heat, working appliances, or a sanitary environment. You know what they say – location, location, location (so you can understand the importance of us not losing that apartment).

So the Trustee “worked everything out” with Weezie  as the two of them had now become friends. She was to live out in the back building, which was literally an old garage that was crudely converted into separate upstairs and downstairs apartments. Another feature of the apartment was that it was actually on an incline; if you put a basketball on the floor and let it go, it would roll towards the corner. It was so dingy in there that the Trustee gave us a case of beer if Weezie and I agreed to paint the inside of the garage (I mean apartment) so you can just imagine what it looked like. A case of beer is hard to pass up and I wasn’t that invested since I didn’t have to sleep out there, so we painted it.  Also, keep in mind that she was living with two strangers in there and didn’t have a door on her room. These apartments were also illegal so Weezie couldn’t get a phone out there, couldn’t get cable, and couldn’t even get mail delivered back there; but as I said the location more than made up for any negatives the place might have had.  

The window to her “living room” was about twenty-five feet from my bedroom fire escape door, so she would throw things at my door or scream HOOKA!!! out her window to get my attention and see if I wanted to go get lunch at the Grill Room or watch a movie. Since she didn’t have cable, she’d have to come over to watch anything or borrow a movie. One day I came home to find Smokey missing and a screwdriver rammed into my front door with a note saying “Walter, I have your dog!” which is a quote from The Burbs. 

I thought she was crazy to live out there, but I didn’t really argue with her because I still got to live in the apartment that we were originally supposed to, although with two strangers. It was awkward – they didn’t like that I had a dog that kept shitting in Unibrow’s bedroom and used to chew his books and piss on his bed, but like I said – location made up for a lot. I also didn’t like that Evan would order food and then go have sex with his girlfriend and of course when the food was delivered – they were still going at it. It actually isn’t as awkward as you might think to answer the door to a pizza delivery guy to the sounds of Evan’s bed banging against the wall, him moaning and his girlfriend screaming as you might think.  You might imagine that Evan’s girlfriend would be embarrassed when she dismounted and came out scrounging for food when they were done, but you would be mistaken for thinking that. She’d come strolling out of his room with him following shortly after like they just got back from running an errand, making small talk as if he hadn’t just pounded the shit out of her and everyone in the building had heard it. 

Here I was thinking I made out better than Weezie and then she started getting hand-written notes from the Trustee with cute stickers on the envelope. Now, ponder that for a second because what man in his mid fifties sends hand-written notes with stickers on the envelopes to a random girl he just met? My thoughts exactly. I only knew she was getting hand-written notes because she had to use my address as she couldn’t get mail out back. I also came to find out that Weezie was paying hundreds of dollars less than me for the rent. When I questioned the Trustee, he told me that Weezie had been through a lot. As if I hadn’t? Unless by being through a lot, he meant him hitting that…To this day, Weezie denies that there was anything between her and the Trustee besides friendship, but I am still not convinced. It could have all been innocent, but all those visits from him and the stickers and notes were pretty odd if you ask me…Also, this is the same girl who still denies that there was almost a fist fight in her sorority house because someone ate one of her frozen eggos, but I digress…In her defense, I must say that Weezie will admit to coming home to her sorority house one night and  finding a bowl that she had made in Ceramics class that had been used as an ashtray and went to Sara‘s room pounding on the door (Sara was being pounded by her boyfriend at the time, but it didn’t stop Weezie’s pounding at the door) and when Sara answered the door in just a towel, Weezie attacked her and almost beat the shit out of her too…

So over winter break, the pipes out in Weezie’s apartment/garage burst and she couldn’t live there anymore. A studio apartment opened up in the main house on the second floor, so the Trustee brought Weezie over to see it. She took one look at the rickety loft bed with desk under it and told the Trustee “I can’t have sex on that thing – it’ll fall apart and will never hold me.” Who says that? She still denies that she said that, but like I said these stories are all made up…She ended up moving into the studio and the chaos just kept on going…

More on that apartment and that glorious street later…

Fat Camp

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It’s funny, because when I used to talk about my aunt owning a fat camp (a weight loss summer camp for kids) and having worked there, people never believed it. It sounded crazy and I was constantly accused of making it up until I actually brought people there. I was in good shape and used to go to the gym every day, so I guess it was a stretch.  But now, whenever I talk about the camp, people believe every word because they look at me (I have probably doubled in size since those days) and nod with that look that says “Of course you were at a fat camp and by the way, you really need to go back. There are many many many Fat Camp stories, most are entirely inappropriate for anyone’s gentle ears – but let’s start with this one:

My friend Weezie (Now talk about a Hooka with a capital “H” and I say that as a very high compliment) used to come to the camp with me all the time (and she actually worked there with me one summer – to almost criminal results) because I lived there and for her it was the half-way point while driving home from college. Our routine was simple, stop and drop our bags, get the crew together, go to Cronin’s, tear it up and stay there until we closed the place and were about to pass out, beg someone to take us to the only place open late night out there in the middle of nowhere, the famous Quickway Diner, engorged ourselves, and then she’d drive home the next day.

My brother Angelo thought it would be a great idea to have a family reunion one weekend and get the whole family together at the Fat Camp but I could smell something brewing from the onset. He was so worried about who would fight with each other that it was only a matter of time before trouble dropped by. With my family coming en masse, I needed reinforcements and invited Weezie and a couple of her sorority sisters to come and visit me. Of course, I “forgot” to tell them there was a reunion going on until they got there but they were real troopers.

My brother Anthony arrived late and the gates were closed and locked. The gates were closed and locked because when I say he arrived late, I mean hours and hours and hours late. Now upon coming up to a locked gate, a normal person would have just left his pickup truck (which was oddly reminiscent of the one Lamont used to drive on Sanford and Son) outside the gate until morning since the camp is located on a side street right in the middle of absolutely nowhere. I mean, there was no worry of vandalism – unless a local deer wanted his stereo or Metallica cassettes – but no, he had to get in that gate. The gate in question is a ten-foot high wooden stockade fence around the whole camp (over 200 acres) with the only openings in it being one small part by the main entrance he was trying to enter through.

So instead of driving up the road a little bit to go into the entrance by the house we lived in where there is no gate, Anthony did the logical thing and proceeded to try and drive around the main gate through the little opening to get in. His truck was about ten feet wide and the path he was trying to drive on to get around the fence was about three feet wide, so of course his truck ended up going front first down the incline and into the ravine on the side of the gate. Not a steep ravine, but there is a small stream flowing gently there.

Now, Anthony was not one to believe that this could, in any way, be his fault, so he proceeded to start screaming and cursing and went to find the person he held responsible for this – whoever locked the gate. Needless to say that when the female police officer showed up and told Anthony that he had five minutes to move the truck after he called her sir (once again, not his fault) my Uncle Raymond immediately took charge and instructed all of the overweight female cousins with a “little back” to them to get into the bed of the pickup truck to weigh it down and then they could put it into reverse…needless to say, he’s not one to take no for an answer so he pulled out the big guns (and by big guns I mean my cousins) and those girls got the truck out of the ravine. Who needs AAA or a tow truck? Also, just a word of advice; if you ever have a big stash of weed in the glove compartment of your truck that you just drove into a ravine and a female police officer shows up – Don’t call her sir!

When my sister Marlene used to work at the fat camp, she used to date this guy Dan that lived around the corner from the camp. He and I were good friends and when he heard that Marlene was coming to the reunion he, of course,  thought she might be coming to see him. I explained that she was dating a new guy(who was a muscle head with no neck and was about as smart as a can of turpentine, but I digress) and bringing him to the reunion, but he came over anyway in case she wanted to see him.

So, to give you a visual about the layout of the camp, it’s set on over 200 acres with a huge lake in the center of the property, and there are golf carts to get you everywhere because of how spread out everything is. The swimming pool is up by the house we lived in, the lake is in the center of the camp, and the main buildings and bunks are down by the main entrance.

So, as the day went on, I was drinking at the pool with Dan, Weezie and her two sorority sisters, and Anthony – my pickup driving brother. The more Dan drank, the more convinced he was that my sister was actually attending the reunion to see him. I say that he was convinced because Anthony was convincing him. In his infinite widsom, my brother thought the best thing to do in this situation was to give Dan a joint to settle him down and keep him drinking. This probably would have worked if my brother didn’t start peppering him with his take on the “situation” and keep offering up his advice. Keep in mind that  this is the same man who drove his truck into a ravine less than 24 hours earlier and now he is giving love advice to Dan about how messed up it was that my sister was here on his “turf” with a new guy and that it wasn’t right. He thought Dan should go down to the bunks where everybody was and speak with my sister to settle this. I thought that he should go home before he got himself killed by No-neck, and with that we (me, Weezie, and her sorority sisters) went down to the bunks because I thought I should let Marlene know that Dan was there and already drunk.

During the camp season, the golf carts didn’t go any faster than a senior citizen at Ponderosa, but the maintenance guy rigged them up so we could really move in them during the off-season so we drove down by where everyone else was in a flash.

So picture this: I’m standing in a circle next to the golf cart that we just drove down there with my sister, Weezie and the two girls, and my cousin Beverly talking about Dan and around us there are about forty-five people milling about. Some were playing cards, some were sitting at picnic tables talking, some were playing lawn darts, but all in all everyone was just hanging out. All of a sudden up by the infirmary hill we see my brother and Dan (who at this point was absolutely wasted) and Dan is staggering towards us blowing kisses to No-neck, my sister’s new boyfriend.

In a literal flash: Dan is blowing kisses at No-neck, No-neck goes running and screaming up the infirmary hill after Dan, Dan goes running toward the back fence leading to the cemetary next door to the camp, Everyone abandons what they’re doing to watch this new drama unfold, my brother Anthony lights another joint as he’s watching the show from the infirmary hill, and then all of a sudden my sister jumps into my golf cart and takes off up the hill to stop No-Neck from killing Dan.

I tried to get into the golf cart too, but I was in flip-flops and she was just too damn fast. I fell because I was trying to enter the golf cart as she was speeding away and I lost my footing. I thought for sure that since I was her brother and we were close and SHE JUST SAW ME FALL, that perhaps she would stop the golf cart to let me get on – but I was wrong. As I lost my balance and fell, I grabbed onto the sideboard of the golf cart to avoid hitting my face and getting my head ran over by the tire and then she took off like a tornado. She just didn’t stop. In a split-second, I went from trying to be a good person and avoid a situation, to literally being dragged up a steep hill by an out of control golf cart piloted by a madwoman.

She flew through dirt, grass, mud and didn’t miss one bump. She was leaving a cloud of dust and I was a mess. I was screaming for bloody murder and begging for some help and I was afraid to let go because I knew that she would most certainly run my body over. I mean she had no problem dragging me up a hill so running me over wouldn’t stop her either. I finally lost my grip and was thrown after about two hundred feet up the hill because she slowed down for a split second when my dislodged flip-flop was thrown from my mangled foot and flew over her head and distracted her. That crazy bitch didn’t flutter or even turn around to see if I was still in one piece as she took off up the hill leaving me a mangled heap in the dirt.

As I tried to stand up and regain my composure (for I knew the dignity was lost fifty feet ago) I turned to face my family and, of course, my three friends from college. As I stumbled back over to them, my cousin Beverly goes “Oh God, she’s so upset, I just can’t believe it – I hope she’s O.K.” to which I responded – “Fuck her – that crazy bitch just dragged me up a fucking hill and almost killed me – literally…almost killed me! What about me?” It was like when Alexis shot her rifle to spook Krystle’s horse and it took off dragging her across the field and caused her to lose her baby in Season Two of Dynasty. (Of course, a Dynasty reference to help those of you who weren’t raised right – Yes I’m talking to you Bemish!)

For a quick second, I thought Weezie was crying but then I realized it was laughter (they were all laughing hysterically) and she helped me find my other flip-flop and when she regained her composure she said “I want you to know that every time you tell me one of your crazy stories I always thought – come on, who do these things happen to? After seeing that just now, I can picture every single one of them – that was unbelievable. I will never doubt you again and I am going to tell this story to everyone we know.”

As for Dan, because he lived around the corner and knew the area, he made it over the cemetery fence and safely home, eluding No-neck. As for my sister, her official “story” (which to this day I still don’t believe a word of) about the golf cart is that she didn’t hear me screaming bloody murder or see me until the flip-flop flew into her frame of view. As for me, it took three showers to feel clean again and then we went straight to Cronin’s where I drank until I couldn’t taste that dirt in my mouth anymore.

Moral of the story and the lesson I learned – Family reunions are not for me! Interestingly enough, that happened in 1999 and we haven’t actually had another reunion since! Or if they are having them- they’re just not inviting us which I truly cannot blame them for…

Did you know…

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Did you know that you can’t sell a used colostomy bag on Ebay? Apparently there’s a sanitary code or something…I say, just give it a hot rinse it’s not like you’re not adding more shit to it…Literally, you’ll be adding more shit to it…There goes that revenue stream…