CHAPTER 3 – WAKE-UP CALL
I looked down at the gristly man hovering over my left arm,
a large apparatus humming away in his hand. I was finally getting the tattoo I had been talking about
forever – the tattoo of da Vinci’s Last Supper as an armband. My brother had cautioned me against
getting it. He told me that with
my little string bean arms, I couldn’t fit more than two or three of them
apostles on there. When Beardy
turned around to refill his ink cartridge, I lifted my arm to see the progress. No, Jesus! – I screamed inside my
head. There was no Jesus! There was no Last Supper. In its place was a massive tribal
armband encompassing my entire forearm. I started to tell the artist that he must have made a
mistake. That he must stop. That he must fix this. But nothing came when I opened my
mouth. I was paralyzed – unable to
speak. Beardy turned back
around. “Now I’m going to start
doing the kanji you wanted.”
No! – I tried to scream.
“Stop fidgeting” he told me as he pinned down my arm, “or else I won’t
be able to get more than two or three of them kanji on this little string bean
arm.”
“Chris” I heard whispered from behind me. My roommate Sara was standing over my
shoulder.
“Oh my god Sara, help me! This man is doing terrible things to me!”
“Chris.” she repeated.
“Sara!” I said.
“Why are you letting this happen? Stop him!”
“Chris!” she shouted.
I gasped as I was suddenly thrust into the darkness of my
bedroom. Sara’s silhouette was
hovering in my door well. Sitting
up in my bed, my hand clasping my chest, I realized that it had all been a
dream. I was awake now, confused
as to why I was awake.
“Chris” Sara said as she approached my bed, “There’s a man
outside. He’s been ringing our
doorbell for the last 20 minutes.”
I grabbed my clock from the nightstand. It was 3:00AM Tuesday morning. “What do we do?” she asked, unable to mask the worry in
her voice.
“Well, don’t let him,” I said, still half asleep and not
fully understanding the urgency that would require waking me. “Of course I’m not letting him in!” she
shouted, “But aren’t you concerned that there’s a stranger trying to get into
our apartment?”
“Oh yes,” I said as the fog of sleep started to dissipate. “I guess that is concerning.” I got out of bed, and together Sara and
I went to the intercom to see what was going on downstairs. I pressed the camera button, forgetting
that the quality of the front door camera was basically useless. We could make out the shape of a man –
or at least a human – or at least an object shaped like a human. Sara asked if I thought we should call
the cops. I told her I didn’t
think it was necessary – that it was probably just some confused drunk trying
to get into the wrong building.
That’s when we heard the door downstairs open.
“Maybe you should
call the cops,” I told her.
Sara told the 9-1-1 operator that a strange man had just
entered our building and she was worried he was going to try to break into our
apartment. After hanging up, she
told me that the cops would be here any minute. Downstairs we heard someone knocking over the recycling bins. “He better not be making a mess down
there,” I told Sara. “I just
cleaned that hallway up.”
When the cops arrived, they told us that the downstairs door
had been wide open. That someone
had been in the hallway, but that it was empty now. They said they would stick around for a few minutes to make
sure everything was safe, but that we should be fine. Sara and I looked at each other
dumbstruck, wondering where this man could have possibly escaped. “I wonder…” Sara said, “I wonder if the
girls next door let him in?”
Two weeks later, a similar incident shed some light onto the situation. It was early on a bright Wednesday
morning, and I was just coming out of the shower when I heard a right kerfuffle
coming from downstairs. Dripping
wet and wrapped in a towel, I pressed myself against the front door to hear
what was going on. The foyer door
had slammed, and now there was a man pounding on it from outside. “Let me in” he shouted repeatedly. As this was happening, a series of slow
and unrhythmic thuds ascended the staircase. I looked through the peephole just in time to see a shadowy
figure emerge from the steps. It
was Short Ponytail from next door. She was moving extremely slow – carefully trying to steady
herself as she trembled up the stairs.
Her entire body was convulsing unlike anything I had ever seen
before. Her hands were shaking
violently, her legs wobbling clumsily like that of a newborn fawn. I have seen a lot of fucked up people
in my day – but this one took the cake.
When she got to her door, she reached into her purse to find
her keys. Every movement she made
was in slow motion. She fumbled
around in her bag for an extremely long period of time, only then to drop the keys on
the floor the moment she found them.
As she blindly jabbed them into the air, I noticed that from behind she
resembled a squattier Lena Dunham.
A squattier Lena Dunham with a ponytail. At least the back of her anyway - I had yet to see her face.
Without any warning, the ponytail started rapidly
approaching my peephole. Her
entire body had gone limp, and she just tipped over right there, slamming the back of
her head into the very peephole I was spying through. Her skull rang my doorbell as the
peephole ricocheted into my face from the other side of the door. The impact knocked me flat on my ass.
I was feeling guilty for not offering my assistance, but then again, I was only wearing a towel, and she had a screaming boyfriend pounding on the door downstairs. The scenario did not pan out well in my head. By the time I got back up on my feet, she was thankfully back on hers and shaking herself off. The fall had apparently sobered her up enough to get her door unlocked, and right there - door wide open, she started to strip down to her underwear. The entire experience was incredibly awful, and I shut the peephole quickly, deciding that I had truly seen enough.
Suddenly everything started to make sense. “I get it now” I told myself. “She’s a drunk!”
Yes, I am giving the Patriot Saloon 1 star. Why, you ask? Well, I'll tell you why - without editorializing or exaggeration either. Here is a play by play of the evening:
5:00PM Wednesday Afternoon: Not very crowded. I'm waiting for a beer at the bar downstairs. There are two bartenders - one working up a furry at the opposite end of the bar, and one staring into a mirror, watching herself repeatedly put on and take off a pair of aviator sunglasses. There's a crowd forming around the busy bartender, so I figure I'll have a better chance waiting in one of the many empty stools at the other end. I mean, Sunglasses has got to notice me at some point, right?
5:10PM: Sunglasses has not noticed me.
5:15PM: My friends are texting me from the upstairs bar wondering where I am. I tell them that I'm still working on getting a beer. My first beer. Finally Sunglasses notices me. She walks over, and mutters something. I say "I'm sorry?" She mutters it again and smiles, and then kind of falls over a little bit. I assume she asked me what I was drinking, so I tell her a Bud Light. She frowns. She gets really quiet. And then she lifts her hand above her head and SLAMS it into the bar, screaming in gibberish. She then turns around, and crumples up into a ball. She does not get me a beer.
5:20PM: Sunglasses is still standing motionless in a ball like formation - so I give up and decide to try the upstairs bar. My friends had warned me it was a shit show - but I can't imagine it's worse than what I just witnessed.
5:21PM: It is worse. Much worse. The bar is more crowded upstairs - all older skeez balls watching the scantily clad bartender bounce up and down around the bar. She is most likely old enough to be my mother, assuming she had her first child when she was 13 - which is when I'm assuming she had her first of many children. She is clearly high, and for all of the bouncing she's doing, she's not pouring very many drinks. In fact, I watch her for 10 minutes and she opens not one bottle. Instead, she is draped over the bar, licking her lips at an older gentleman. Everyone seems happy but me. No one is drinking.