Life in the big city is a fickle pickle. Too many variables make it the volatile vegetable (or flickery fruit) that it is and nothing is more unpredictable than the inconsistent night life experience:
Friday night: I didn’t holla at any rucas at the club tonight because none of ’em were smash-worthy.
The following Friday night: Damn, all the rucas at the club tonight were dime pieces. Very intimidating. I didn’t talk to any of ’em.
Saturday night: ¡Carajo! Look at the line around the corner to get in. It’s gonna be jam-packed. I’m not going in there.
The following Saturday night: There’s no line. Place is dead. I’m not going in there.
Sunday morning: I’m crudo from going to the club.
The following Sunday morning: I’m crudo from going to the club.
That’s the only part that’s consistently consistent; me and my FOMO desperation. It doesn’t matter how mediocre or how sorry shit is, I’m still wit’ it, rain or shine. Last month they had a grand opening for a new downtown bar called Tavern. I used to go there when it was called Lounge but they turned it into a speakeasy with no name that no one could get into anymore. Now that it was a saloon again and under new ownership, I was down to clown, front and center. More front than center because the place was packed to the gills and the bouncer kept many of us out front for most of the night until it thinned out. Once inside, I enjoyed every minute of the final hour they afforded us before it closed, and afterward, I met this chubby chica in a tutu named Tallulah who was drunk out of her mind. Like a responsible gentleman, I agreed to walk her wasticated ass safely back to her car so she could drive home drunk. On our walk down Main Street, I got a phone call and temporarily forgot about Tallulah, who was draggin’ ass and ended up lagging a few yards behind. All of a sudden, I heard a LOUD COLLISION, followed by a THUNDEROUS CRASH, and I whipped around like “DUH-FUQ was that?! A car accident?!”
Nope. It was tubby Tallulah. Apparently, she had barreled headlong into an aluminum valet stand and then fallen down on top of it; crushing the entire podium as it toppled off the curb and SMASHED onto the street — umbrella and all! Immediately I erupted with laughter, howling my balls off and pointing at the bumbling team of valet attendants as they struggled to get Tallulah back on her feet while they collected the scattered car keys that once hung comfortably on their assigned hooks inside the crashed-up lectern. I managed to snap numerous pics of a fallen Tallulah with her tattooed ass in the air and would’ve posted them here for your viewing pleasure but, like I said before, I’m a gentlemen. Sometimes you just let the Tallulahs fall where they may and you move on, which is what we did. I got her safely to her vehicle, and this is where that big city inconsistency rears its ugly head again: on my way back to my own parked vehicle, I was robbed. Totally random!
The mugger came out of a dark alley and held me up at knife-point. He was actually a pretty nice guy for an assailant, but his criminal mind wasn’t nearly as sharp as his weapon of choice.
“Gimme ya wallet,” he ordered in a polite tone.
“Here you go.”
“Thank you.”
“Can I ask you something before you leave?”
“Make it quick.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ha-ha! Nice try, buddy boy.”
“Worth a shot.”
“You gotta wake up prehhhhhtty early in the morning to fool old Jarvis Carter.”
“I hear ya, Jar-Car!”
We high-fived each other and then he disappeared back down the alley. I think it took the cops a whole 15 minutes to pick his dumb-ass up. According to them, he was at his “usual corner” trying to buy crack with my seven dollars.
“You need to invest in a can of pepper spray,” suggested the officer who took down my report.
“You were lucky to get Jarvis this time, but not every mugger is a goofy crack-headed buffoon. Most are ruthless and violent criminals and you should be armed with a handy flamethrower capable of delivering a steady stream of OC gas to their faces and skulls.”
The next day I took the cop’s graphic advice and paid a visit to a gun store called Gunz Ablazin’. The staff there was really good about holding-in their laughter when I purchased my hot pink can of whoop ass, not like the jerks over at Shoot ‘Em Up, a rival gun store across the street. Those assholes were rude and dismissive, and altogether insensitive about my feminine needs, but at least they were open. The gun store next to them called Never Too Many Guns was closed. Really? Never Too Many Guns unless it’s Saturday? ¡Inconsistente! That’s why Gunz Ablazin’ will be my go-to moving forward, now that I’m a proud gun owner (fires gun into the air, only it’s not a gun, it’s a hot pink can of pepper spray, and some of it lands on my face as I look up at the sky and it burns my sexy mug for like fifteen minutes!)
The following Thursday night, I went back to Tavern, this time with my trusty pepper spray in my front pocket. As I sat and drank, I envisioned myself walking home and being confronted by a gang of thieves: they remained consistent and reached for my wallet but this time I torched every last one of them with a sweeping blast of red hot chili pepper juice. Oh man, I couldn’t wait for another street encounter. I was so excited I bought the place a round of drinks. Luckily, after only one week of being open, Tavern had already fallen off so there were only like three people in there. One of them was this weird Cuban guy named Tony who kept going on and on about LADWP.
“In this country,” he began, “you gotta make the money first. Then, when you get the money, you get the water and the power. Then, when you get the water and the power, then you get the woman.”
“The woman last?” I questioned.
“Yeah, because if you don’t get the water and the power, you have a dark apartment with no running water, and if you get the woman first and she comes over, she will not stay long.”
“You could tell her you’re an old fashioned romantic and light some candles.”
“That only goes so far. What if she wants to use the bathroom? Or watch TV? Eventually she will catch on, and I want the woman to stay around long enough to say hello to my little friend, you know what I mean?”
“F’sho.”
“But Water & Power is a monopoly, and these chazzers overcharge you because they know they’re the only game in town. Not only did those conios raise the rates on me, but one time they turn off my service and I call them and say I did not get a notice. They say to me Are you telling the truth? and I say, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. Then I tell them, All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don’t break them for no one. And they say We are Water & Power. We break your balls whenever we want. And those cockroaches are right. Some time I call them at night right before I go to bed … just to say goodnight to the bad guy.”
This town is full of kooky cucumbers like Tony and he’s pretty much my new best friend now. We probably did half a dozen shots before he had to leave for his NA meeting. I had a few more and was so white girl wasted by the time I left that I came out of Tavern with a serious case of “the leans.” That’s the medical condition that occurs when your feet try to make tracks while the rest of your body gets blown back by the gale force winds of inebriation.
I hadn’t been that muscular-dystrophy-faded in a long time (since the previous week) and I would’ve looked really ridiculous starring in my own drunken remix video of “Lean back” by Terror Squad if it wasn’t for the equally unsober paisa walking towards me with a similar gait from the opposite direction.
Together we looked like two shabby marionettes being handled by the clumsy hands of a novice puppeteer doing a rendition of the most shitfaced game of chicken in history. As I got closer, the other borracho stumbled to the side and started peeing in a bush. He swayed back and forth as I approached and eventually, both he and his pants went falling to the ground in a crumpled pile of sadness. I saw his uncut pee-pee, which looked like a dead baby bird with a hoodie on it. Say “aw, hell no!” to my little friend. Pure mortification. Like the blind drunk leading the blind drunk, I tried to help him back up but the vato blacked out. I got vertigo from stooping over and I also bit shit, hitting my head on the pavement as I fell, which sent me into my own syncope for like ten minutes.
When the cops woke us up, they wanted to arrest us for public intoxication. They asked us for our IDs but the joke was on them because somebody had stolen both of our wallets while we were passed out. Suddenly I felt a scorching pain between my upper thigh and my genitals and I lost my shit, hopping around like Max Taber in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when his pant leg caught on fire. Turns out I landed on my pepper spray when I conked out and the safety was off, which caused a miniature nuclear meltdown in and around my cock and balls. I almost said goodbye to my little friend!
Life in the big city, folks. It’s real hit or miss. Mostly miss.