I used to work at a shipping facility in the valley and one day this dock loader named Hector invited me to a house party in Pacoima. When I asked him what time it started, he said, “Dark time.”
“That’s the best time,” I replied, and it’s true. All the best times happen after sundown, during the happy hours. But the nighttime isn’t all sunshine either. Sometimes there’s dark times in the dark time, like the couple of times I got mugged in the so-called City of Angels.
I had been living in Hollywood for a few years, partying all over town like a rock star, and my partner in crime was this mariachi DJ named SkrillMex. His real name was Carmelo and like a lot of Angelenos, he suffered from that Goldilocks complex that always kept him from fully enjoying the LA nightlife.
“Let’s hit up that club,” I would suggest to him on a Saturday night.
“No way. Line’s around the corner. I ain’t going up in that hot mess!”
The following Saturday we’d drive by again. “Let’s check it out, ‘Melo.”
“There ain’t no line. Place is dead. I ain’t going up in there.”
And then when we did settle on a place, it was the same old Three-Bears-bullshit.
“Home come you didn’t holla at any rucas at the club tonight?” I’d ask him.
“None of ’em were hot.”
We’d revisit the following Saturday and he’d say, “The rucas were way too hot and intimidating to talk to tonight.”
But it didn’t matter what we did or where we went, one thing was always consistent: we were always crudo AF the following morning. We weren’t blackout drunks or anything; more like brownout drunks, and when Carmelo moved back to New Mexico to take care of his dying mother, I thought my drinking habits would go with him, but I think I was too far gone by then.
A day after he left, I went to a grand opening for a downtown pub called Tavern that used to be called Lounge. We used to go there when it was called Bar before it changed owners and became a speakeasy that no one could get into, but now that it was a public saloon again, I was down to clown, front and center. More front than center, though, because the place was so packed the bouncer had to keep many of us out front for most of the night until it thinned out. I had an hour to rage when I finally got inside and I spent every minute of it with this chubby chica in a tutu I met named Tallulah. She was drunk out of her mind by the time they closed and like a responsible gentleman, I agreed to walk her wasted ass safely back to her car so she could drive home drunk. On our walk down Main Street, I got a phone call that distracted me from babysitting Tallula. She was draggin’ ass and started lagging a few yards behind and that’s when I heard a LOUD COLLISION, followed by a THUNDEROUS CRASH. I whipped around like “DUH-FUQ was that?! A car accident?!” Nope. It was tubby Tallulah.
Poor baby had barreled headlong into an aluminum valet stand and then fallen on top of it; crushing the entire podium as it toppled off the curb and SMASHED onto the street — umbrella and all. I was 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 gentleman. I fled the scene after that because at some point you just gotta let the Tallulahs fall where they may and move on with your life, and maybe it was Instant Karma but that’s when it happened. On my way back to my car, a mugger came out of a dark alley and held me up at knifepoint.
“Gimme ya wallet, cuzzo,” he ordered in a casual tone.
“Here you go.”
“Thank you.”
He was extremely polite for an assailant, but his criminal mind wasn’t nearly as sharp as his weapon of choice.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked.
“Make it quick.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ha-ha! Nice try, cuzzo.”
I shrugged. “Worth a shot.”
“You gotta wake up prehhhhhtty early in the morning to fool old Jarvis Carter.”
“I hear ya screamin’, Jar-Car!”
We high fived each other and then he disappeared into the darkness. 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 crack-headed buffoon. Most are ruthless and violent criminals, and you should be armed with a handy flamethrower capable of nuking their skull holes with a steady stream of OC.”
“¿Oh sí?” I joked, but he didn’t laugh.
The next day I took the cop’s graphic advice and paid a visit to a gun store called The Gun Rack to purchase a canister of self defense. The staff there was really good about suppressing their laughter as I purchased my hot pink can of whoop ass, and they even gave me an important tip: “If you’re gonna pack heat in the big city, you better keep that safety on until you’re ready to use it.” I was so pumped when I got to the parking lot that I fired it into the air like a proud gun owner but of course it wasn’t a gun and a sheet of OC gas landed on my face and it burned like hell for fifteen minutes.
The following week, I went back to Tavern, this time with my trusty pepper spray in my front pocket. As I sat and drank, I envisioned a scenario where a gang of thieves confronted me in a dark alley and as they moved in to take my empty wallet, I torched every last one of them with a sweeping blast of red hot chili pepper juice. Oh man, I couldn’t wait for my next mean street encounter. I was so excited I bought the place a round of drinks and 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 quirky Cuban guy named Tony who kept going on and on about LA Department of Water & Power.
“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,” I suggested.
“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 piss-eyed 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 shitfaced paisa walking towards me with a similar gait from the opposite direction. Dude had me thinking I was looking in a mirror.
From the street we must’ve looked like two shabby marionettes being handled by the clumsy hands of a novice puppeteer performing the slowest 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. No bueno. I tried to help him back up but the vato blacked out. I got vertigo from stooping over and I also bit shit and hit my head on the pavement as I fell, which sent me into my own syncope for like ten minutes.
When the police 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. The cops left and suddenly, I felt a scorching pain in my genitals that had me hopping around like a madman, like Max Taber in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when his pant leg caught on fire. Turns out I had landed on my pepper spray when I conked out and it caused a nuclear meltdown in my crotch. Not only was I crudo AF the next day but I also had blisters all over my cock and balls. Mas no bueno. But that’s daytime for you—always quick to point out the obvious mistakes you made the night before: “Don’t drink so much, keep the safety on.” Shut up, daytime.