The Fighter

Can I get a side of whoop ass with that toast Jan?

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There’s really not anyplace to eat near the fat camp, especially late at night. After closing down the local bar, we were always hungry and looking for someone to take us to the diner. It was the only place to get something to eat 24 hours a day and I could never drive because I was always completely drunk. The food was unbearable if you were sober but, like I said, it was the only thing open late-night and thankfully, we were never sober in there. We went there so much that Jan the waitress became quite fond of me. When I say that she became quite fond of me, I mean that she would put up with my nonsense because I was always drunk and obnoxious…

Jan was very patient with the drunks and she made really good toast. She had a tendency to screw up my order, but I usually attributed that to my pickiness and slurring drunken speech – not her waitressing skills. Jan was in her mid-fifties, had big hair like Flo from Mel’s Diner, had extremely long nails, and had a deep raspy voice from many years of chain smoking. I know exactly what you’re thinking and you’re right; she was hot!

Jan, Is that you?

One night I was out with my cousin Leaky and her friend Diana. She was a nice enough girl, but she was extremely intimidating and she didn’t take shit from anyone. She didn’t appreciate my sarcasm – which she let me know often – and was actually more like a bodyguard than a friend. Let me try to paint a picture and tell you about Diana – she was built just like a FedEx drop-off box, had both her eyebrows, her lips, and ears pierced with all manner of metallic symbols and objects, a razor-thin moustache over that constant frown, and she had really short curly red hair like a certain little orphan whose name rhymes with Fannie. Picture a female Mr. T without the jewelry and you’re not far off. I used to like to refer to her as “the Enforcer” but obviously not to her face since I was afraid of her. I really do say it about a lot of people, but she truly was crazy.

Put a curly wig on top and it’s not that far off from what she actually looks like.

To illustrate her insanity, we were in her car after picking up another friend, when she saw a guy randomly walking down the street. She threw on the brights and gassed it to the floor! The guy saw her veering towards him and bolted off while she was screaming out the window “Why are you running? Why are you hiding behind that car” as she was holding the horn down and swerving at him. Did I mention it was after midnight on a weeknight on a random side street? I was like; “Hello crazy, of course he’s running away like Carl Johnson – You’re chasing him down a dark street”…Needless to say the guy went running scared through someone’s yard towards the next block over to get away from this lunatic.

So back to the diner – Diana agreed to take us because she hadn’t been drinking and I was starving and whining non-stop about going. As we walked in the diner, I could see the look of grave concern on Jan’s face and I just assumed that she was as puzzled about Diana’s hair and clothing choices as we were. Apparently, I was much worse than usual in my level of drunkedness. I thought I was acting all subtle and smooth like jazz but, in hindsight, there was nothing subtle about me stumbling in the door and screaming: “Jan, I will fuck you on this counter RIGHT NOW if you bring me some rye bread toast immediately.” I’m not saying for sure whether she wanted it or not, but that was the quickest toast I have ever gotten in any diner, anywhere before or since.

Everyone in the diner thought it was funny and was laughing: everyone except for Jan. Jan proceeded to scold me and threaten to throw me out…”You can’t act like that in here. You better behave or you’re out again” to which I started giggling uncontrollably. Then she got mad and screamed “Out! You’re not doing this tonight” and had her hand strategically positioned on her hip while the other hand waived me towards the door like an air traffic controller with a flare. I begged her to let me stay since I was starving and anyway I didn’t have the keys to the car – I should have taken her advice and left then- little did I know.

Not one of my shining moments…

I really needed to pee so I took a bite of some of that delicious toast and stumbled off to the bathroom urinal to relieve myself. The next thing I remember was someone grabbing my arm and I went all Wu-Tang. I was swinging like Marky Mark in The Fighter because you do not mess with a guy at a urinal in the Men’s Room. That’s how I remember things going down.

What ACTUALLY happened was that I was peeing at the urinal and leaned against the wall for balance and apparently blacked out/fell asleep in the process. Sensing something was wrong since I obviously don’t shit in public with all this Imodium AD flowing through my veins, my cousin thought I needed someone to check on me. I think you can see where this is leading…

She senses something might be off, yet sends Diana in to see if I’m OK. She came in, saw me passed out and grabbed my arm so as not to startle me when I came to. Needless to say, when she grabbed me it startled me and I immediately went all funky bunch and tried to throw a cuff or two. A normal person in that situation would be a little more understanding when a drunken person with absolutely no coordination is throwing punches – not Diana.

Once I went all Iron Mike, Diana responded like Jackie Chan. She threw an elbow, somehow kicked me in the face as I was falling and then threw me onto the floor. She threw me onto the filthy public bathroom floor! As if that wasn’t enough – she dropped on top of me with the sharpest elbow on the East Coast and started punching the drunk out of me. Homegirl got all out crazy and was giving me a full throttle beat-down right there at the urinal. She seemed heavy before – but with the sheer might and gravity of her torso pummeling me, I really thought that deuce and a half of Diana might literally break me. Remember what Bane did to Batman in The Dark Knight Rises – well He’s got nothing on Diana!

Bane or Diana?

I’d like to tell you that I connected with a few good shots in on her as she was picking up her next title fight belt, but the truth is I didn’t connect with anything but the bathroom floor. She was doing a real number on me, but in my defense, I was mostly just trying to get my pants buttoned up and put my junk away. Not the best visual, but imagine my fear about having my privates hit that very public and filthy bathroom floor! No amount of penicillin is gonna make that go away.

Usually in circumstances like this, there is a savior – someone who sees the wrong in this situation and does what they can to assist because it is the right thing to do – not that night! You know who my savior was? Not my cousin, who was laughing at my screams while she finished eating my toast back at our table. No, my savior was Jan who heard the commotion and screaming (mine) and came running in. She kicked the bathroom door open (almost hitting me in the face with it, by the way), grabbed me by my ear and proceeded to drag me out the bathroom towards the front door like I was a rolling suitcase. Turns out she wasn’t saving me at all – she was throwing me out! I thought she was coming to my rescue and was like “Thank God, she’s kicking the shit out of me! What took you so long?  Wait, why are you throwing me out – she attacked me!!! Hey that hurts – let go of my ear! Can I at least take the toast to go?” Needless to say, the view from my perch on the front steps where she deposited me was not pretty.

As I sat on the front steps beaten and defeated, I tried trying to compose what was left of my tattered pride and shake it off. I had just been the victim of a drive by ass kicking, and there they were eating and having a good laugh at my expense. I’m sure it would have bothered me more if I hadn’t passed out again while I sat there on the steps leaning against the glass door.

Rye Bread Toast, how I love thee…

Jan actually did bring me some toast out on the steps a little while later – which made me laugh because it confirmed what I already knew to be true: she wanted me….she’s lucky the bully beat down took every drop of energy I had in me or I might have tried to make a move on her…Granted, she didn’t apologize for dragging me out by my poor little delicate ear, but the toast was all I needed to know everything would be all right…

This has absolutely nothing to do with this post – I just thought it was funny.

I Hate Birds Part Four – No love from the dove: It wasn’t a pisser when that bird popped me in the kisser!

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As I have bemoaned many times – I hate birds. Indulge me as I share another example why…

I used to do event planning and would attend many trade shows to meet prospective clients, but just as importantly, to meet new vendors. If you’ve never been to one of these trade shows, picture a huge hotel ballroom with rows and rows and rows of booths full of everything from cakes and flowers to event venues to Yiddish poets and strolling minstrels.

The person that was supposed to go with me bailed at the last-minute, so my wife filled in to help me out running the booth. It wasn’t a big setup, but there was a huge crowd and one person can easily get overwhelmed by it. We got set up and were meeting a ton of people – everything was going great…

All of a sudden, I see this really tall glimmer of red sparkles through the crowd…The crowd parts and then this magician struts up to our booth in a bright red sparkly jacket and top hat. He was covered in sparkles and definitely not blending subtlety into the crowd. I’ve dealt with a lot of entertainers, so I was used to “eccentric” but I’ve seen showgirls with less razzle-dazzle than this guy…He stepped up to me and thrust out his hand to present his business card, but I was so distracted by all the sparkles that I dropped his card on the ground.

I bent down to pick it up and was on one knee facing the floor to see where the card landed so that I could pick it up. All of a sudden I hear the magician scream “Huzzah!!!” which caught me off guard and I looked up to see what had happened…

Once he thrust the card at me, he reached back in his waistcoat where a dove was waiting (I get it you’re a magician it’s normal, but who keeps a bird in his pants? That’s just disgusting and weird!) and then he thrust that bird forward. I guess it was supposed to be impressive or a trick to be like “WOW, here’s a bird.” That was the intention anyway – what happened was a different story altogether.

I heard him scream “Huzzah!” and thrust my head up to see why this wacko was screaming only to have him and the dove connect with my face – He punched me right in the eye with that bird! HE PUNCHED ME RIGHT IN THE EYE WITH THE BIRD! I was so taken off guard and frankly, almost blinded by that filthy beak, that I toppled backwards onto the floor screaming like a lunatic “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHY WOULD YOU PUNCH ME IN THE EYE WITH THAT FILTHY BIRD? WHO DOES THAT? WHY WAS IT IN YOUR PANTS?”

At this point, with me screaming at the top of my lungs and sprawled out on the floor of our booth, you’d think that at least someone would at the very least ask if I was OK…Not there…there were tons of people staring at the commotion asking if the bird was OK, saying “Oh, that poor bird” as if I wasn’t the victim here. Where was the magician you might ask? He was also on the ground – not checking if I was OK, but trying to see if the God damn bird was OK…that sweaty thing was hobbling around cooing in some sort of fowl distress code cocking it’s head from side to side like Stevie Wonder. Magic Mike (not the Magician’s real name) was like “It’s OK; you’re OK…It’s OK.” To the bird, mind you, not to me…Granted, the bird was probably brain-dead because it took a pounding to the head like it was fighting Iron Mike Tyson!

I was trying to remember that I was in a work setting and regain composure, but I had just been the victim of a drive by shooting courtesy of that filthy foul assassin and was legitimately almost blinded! And did I mention that filthy bird touched my face? I got up and made a run for the bathroom to wash myself and Magic Mike was like “Hey, you forgot my card…” Obviously, I got your number buddy and even if he was the best magician in the world I could never call him after that. Needless to say I spent the next twenty minutes scrubbing my face in the hotel bathroom sink…My face was red and irritated and I had to go to the Front Desk to get a real bar of soap because that dispenser soap just wasn’t cutting it.

After I finally emerged, pretending nothing had happened and hoping there weren’t any other magicians positioned to attack or member of PETA mobilizing, it was pretty hard to be professional. As is to be expected when one has just been assaulted, I was a little jittery. My wife was standing by the whole time – laughing at me really – thinking “who else would that ever happen to?”… Another day at the mill for me though…Note to all trade show exhibitors:  helmets are not crazy – better to be safe than sorry.

Forget the Apple store, the only Mac I care about starts with Big or ends with Rib!

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Hard as it is to believe, I’m a guy that really used to go to the gym every day and actually really cared about how I looked. Don’t worry, I’m still that same shallow person underneath; I’m just underneath a lot more layers now. I wasn’t always so self-conscious until people started reacting oddly to me.

Just me daydreaming again at work - they really need to fix that Air Conditioning.

After the last tuxedo incident I wrote about, I thought it better to go out and buy a tuxedo instead of renting one. I was interrupted while browsing the selections by the sales guy who felt the need to yell at me across the store “Hey! What are you doing over there? You need to be in the short and portly section down here!” As if I wanted everyone in the store to know that the height Gods might have snubbed their noses down at me but the fat Gods had given me an overabundance of gifts. And who calls someone “portly” anyway – is that even a real word? As funny as I didn’t think he was, he didn’t seem at all fazed when I yelled back “Thanks asshole; do you have any portly shoes to match this?” Some people might have gotten the hint at that point, but he then proceed to follow me into the dressing room and lecture me on how short people look even shorter when wearing the vest of a three piece suit as I was undressing. I’m not sure why, but I always seem to find the most helpful people out there…    

If you were to ask my sister Marlene to share her sage advice on the topic of me gaining a few pounds, she’d gently say “It’s because he’s fucking lazy!” but I like to think of it as being conservative with my energy. The kind and gentle words of a mentally unstable sister can be so soothing sometimes…

I’ve gained so much weight, that if you were to look at my driver’s license picture (which was taken when I was in college, when I was younger and, more importantly, when I was hotter) it looks like a distant relative. You know how when people look at a fake ID and squint and then tell you, unconvincingly, how you could almost pass for the person in the photo? It’s just like that although it looks like I have swallowed the person in my picture. Seriously, people look at that photo and then look back at me, and then back one more time at the photo to make sure it’s really me. They usually furrow their brow as if unsure how to respond and although no one has actually said it out loud yet, I know it’s only a matter of time. I just know that they’re looking at that photo and thinking “What happened you fat fuck?” Don’t tell me that people wouldn’t say that because that’s the type of thing that I would say to someone!   

I don't know why my wife won't go to the beach with me!

I almost feel like I need to explain to them that I broke my left ankle twice – two years in a row on April 22nd actually. It takes a real uncoordinated ass to do that but I’ll wear that crown. Whenever I try to offer that up into the conversation, my ever-supportive wife likes to remind me that it has been five years since I broke my ankle for the second time so it’s probably healed by now enough for me to start exercising again…She also likes to throw in for good measure, that three Presidents have been in office since I was last considered “in shape” so the excuse doesn’t really hold water anymore.

Would she say that to Joe Theismann about his injury? I thought not. As a side note, that is the first and only time you’re ever likely to see a sports analogy used in anything I write. It’s not because I don’t think sports analogies offer anything to the dialogue, it’s because that’s the only sports factoid I actually know and to be perfectly honest, I really only know that one because it was in The Blind Side.

I know very scant bits about sports and can offer little by the way of anecdotal evidence unless you’re referring to the subject of an Oscar-nominated movie. I wouldn’t know Lebron James from Rick James, but you get me started about The Fighter, Field of Dreams, or Rocky and I’ll light this mother up.  

Isn't he on the Miami Heat now?

I was always way too uncoordinated to ever play sports anyway. The last time I tried was the first time I broke my left ankle. Picture it like a mathematical equation if you will: volleyball + a really tall bitch spiking the ball in my face + short stubby me + a one-time jump trying to block a shot that was three feet over my head = Emergency Room, Crutches and then surgery. Get the picture?

Don’t even get me started about that surgery on my ankle because Like B.A. won’t get on an airplane, I will never go in that hospital again. They gave me a sedative and my wife and sister walked me down the hallway as the attendant rolled me towards the elevator and into surgery. I had taken my contact lenses out and couldn’t see anything past my nose. As we passed by, another attendant asked the attendant pushing me to drop a sample off at the lab and then proceeded to toss the sample on the stretcher and it landed next to me. I was squinting like mad to make it out for sure, but I knew it was shit in a bag and I looked to my wife and sister for help.

I pity the fool that put shit on my stretcher!

 Little use they were, because they were looking at each other trying not to laugh. The only thing protecting me from a log of someone’s shit was a thin layer of cotton that the hospital was calling a sheet! The last thing I remember before the sedative knocked me out was me trying to sit up and get off that stretcher because I was so worked up and muttering over and over “There’s shit in that bag…Oh God, There’s someone’s shit in that bag…” No, I am not exaggerating and I am not mistaken – THEY LITERALLY PUT A CLEAR PLASTIC BAG FULL OF SHIT ON TOP OF ME!

My biggest fear in life had been realized and where was my wife during it? Laughing in my face! I might have to go back and rewatch our wedding video, but I’m pretty sure that we covered this in the vows. If it is at all still unclear Honey, please let me remedy that right now because to me “in good times and in bad times” actually means that I vow not to let someone transport a bag full of shit on my spouse!!! 

Incidentally, the second time I broke my left ankle on April 22nd was exactly one year after the first time I did it. No volleyball this time, but I went out with friends to “celebrate” my anniversary and my finally being able to walk unassisted after a year of surgery, physical therapy, wearing a boot cast up to my knee, walking with crutches, falling with crutches, and then walking with a cane like every pimp should. I got drunk that night and left the bar to get into a cab towards home when I tripped stepping off the curb. I twisted my ankle and smashed head first into the rear quarter panel of the cab as I was screaming in agony on the ground clutching that damn ankle again.

One would think that in that situation, a normal person might get out and help someone that had fallen, but the cab driver leaned over the front seat and yelled out the open back door towards me “Are you getting in or not?” As I tried to crawl off the ground and into the back seat, he asked me “where to?” I just cringed and muttered “Hospital – I think I broke my ankle again.” The nurses and doctor thought it was so funny and so ironic that I somehow managed to break the same ankle on the same date two years in a row, but you know who didn’t think it was funny: My wife who was in Florida with her sister. At least the second time, I didn’t break a piece of the bone along with the ankle and need to have another surgery but I was back in that cast and back on those crutches for months again…       

I hope that you weren’t expecting a positive, lesson-learned ending to this post: That’s not me. I will admit that I have gained a little weight and while others might waste time with vows to lose weight this time of year, I am actually heading the other route. I’m vowing right here and now to gain at least ten more pounds over the next month to spite all of those people on a diet!

Screw you! Next time your stomach is growling or you’re tired from getting up early to go to the gym and you’re nibbling on carrots for lunch, picture me and my McRib sandwich laughing as I pass by on the obesity train. Next stop – Elastic waistband pants, Chubb Rubb, and medical intervention with the lap band surgeon! CHOO CHOO!