***
So for the last few weeks I've been finding myself tied up in some love-life drama (which I won't be writing funny stories about, you invasive bitches), and so I've been partaking in the same self-healing exercises I always do when depressed about women, school, changing climate, foreign policy or the utter futility of astrology: I drink myself into a fine mist.
That said, I've been gainfully unemployed since August (which is another potentially libelous story that I'll have to spend some time carefully crafting before posting) and as a result, my savings from six long years of self-deprivation have been completely drained out of the necessity of having a roof over my head and something to eat (even if it's only rice and beef broth for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a goddamn year).
So I really haven't got the money I need to be able to maintain the level of nicotine and gin in my bloodstream, at which I find myself most comfortable. This displeases me on some base instinctual level, and forces me to scrounge for other acceptable forms of debasing substances: Red Bull, double-strong Tim Horton's coffee, Tylenol 3, Star Trek marathons on the Spike channel, whatever gets me through the day. Of course, when it comes to my favourite men (read: Jim, Johnny, Jack, Morgan and Gordon), just like Diet Coke, you can't beat the real thing. Baby.
So what's a poor struggling student to do?
Enter The Captain.
Since I've known him, which is I suppose about three years now (give or take), The Captain and I have had a mutual understanding when it comes to the imbibement of happy juice. That is to say, we both come from a long genetic line of cultures with which alcohol is inextricably linked.
My father's family is German; my mother's is Irish - apart from the Scots, go find another nationality that can compete with the sort of enhanced constitution this mixed bloodline affords me. Of course, it also affords me a nasty temper and a judgmental streak (insert your own racially-charged jokes here; I'm proud of my hardcore heritage). While tempered by my inherent lack of muscle mass and streetfighting skills, these traits are supplemented by a university-level vocabulary and Socratic argumentation training garnered from my father, as well as a severe case of egotism that, when fueled by alcohol, utterly convinces me that I'm by far the smartest person in the room (read: everyone else is stupid and should be called out and shown up as such). All of this tends to land me in unpleasant verbal altercations which necessarily require my larger and more physically-fit friends to come and intervene on my behalf in order to avoid frequent trips to the hospital and/or a police station. Honestly, I don't even know why these people hang around with me.
The Captain comes from a line that is half-Spanish and half mainland European; while the Spanish aren't - to my knowledge - known for being serious drinkers, Ernest Hemingway did live on their beaches for several years, so one might assume they know a thing or two about taking care of drunks (a trait The Captain comes by honestly). Couple this with The Captain's inherent Spanish sense of charm and the Antonio Banderas-level game he brings to the clubs with him (though he is the whitest white boy ever to walk the planet), as well as a credit limit which is exponentially larger than mine has ever been (he's a top-level environmental engineer that runs a chic mall in Toronto's famous Yorkville neighbourhood), you've got the blueprints for a hard-drinking hookup machine. And that's what happens to The Captain each and every time he goes out. Though he's currently not single, and his keen moral compass is a finely-tuned machine which prevents him from misstepping into the realm of pseudo-adultery, he has the potential kinetic groove to bring home with him at least three willing ladies from any given club, on any given night, at any given level of intoxication you'd like to name.
Unless, of course, he goes out with me.
I have to make this admission if I'm going to try and live the so-called examined life: I am a piss-poor wingman.
Given my aforementioned drunken qualities garnered from my checkered cultural forefathers, I have the unique ability to cock-block anyone I happen to be hanging out with, standing with or to whom I am in close proximity. I become slurred, angry and abusive to everyone around me, which makes it extremely difficult for my long-suffering friends to keep the cloud of young attractive women they tend to retain, from dissipating utterly. As I said before, I also have no game, drunk or sober. After four-plus years in a committed relationship, any ability or confidence I had regarding picking up or even flirting with women at bars, clubs, social gatherings, grocery-store queue lines, late-night cigarette runs to the Rabba, classes, funerals, campus coffee houses, bookstores, bar mitzvahs, red-light districts, or chatting on the internet, is completely shot. Even worse than this is the fact that I'm bitter about it. Not because I particularly want to get laid or find a girlfriend or replace the one I ostensibly have now; it's got nothing to do with any of those things.
It's a principle, my friends.
There once was a time that I could walk into a room and people (I don't know the ratio of men to women, but for some reason it's often skewed one way or the other) would look my way. I could talk my way into a young lady's heart and, by association, anything else I wanted to talk my way into, within a half-hour or so, depending on the intoxication factor and other variables (boyfriends, jealous catty bitches in the room that I'd slept with prior, availability of reasonable privacy or transportation to a private location, et. al.).
Nowadays, only if I've had enough liquid courage in the moments leading up can I initiate a conversation with a woman, without the use of a trademark pick-up line or some other such desperation tactic. However, immediately following this landmark, one of several things will necessarily occur:
a) The woman will turn to face the speaker who's just addressed her, see that I more closely resemble her older sibling's creepy frat brother (the one who spends his time drinking beer, playing Half-Life and jerking off to nude pictures of Seven of Nine) than one of the emaciated, ecstasy-driven, EMO metrosexual Chris Carrabba wannabes she usually hooks up with, and she'll take a powder. This is Honest Girl - no bullshit, just a real clear message that even I can dig.
b) She will turn to face the speaker who's just addressed her, and it won't be me: in fact, she'll specifically turn and speak to whoever happens to be on the opposite barstool, and more, she'll do her damndest to turn that into the most engaging conversation she's had all night. Doesn't matter if the guy looks like John Turturro's character from The Big Lebowski; she'll be interested for as long as it takes me to go away. This is Dishonest Girl - apparently she thinks I'm stupid enough to believe that she actually wants to talk to Jesus the pedophile.
c) She will turn to face me, and an expression of abject pity will appear in her eyes. She'll of course quickly banish the look, for fear of offending me (even though she doesn't realize that my own eyes have been trained by years of this treatment to detect even a hint of the "you poor bastard" look). She will then proceed to take a predetermined amount of time (usually around 5-15 minutes depending on exactly how World Vision this girl wants to be) to talk to me engagingly, ask me questions about myself and my plans for the evening, the weather, a local sports team, and other vapid nonsense in an attempt to make me feel as though I'm not a complete social pariah and sexual outcast. Eventually she will beg off the conversation because her friends are leaving or whatever, thank me for a nice conversation, and vanish like the angel of mercy she is into the whirling chaos of the club. This is Really Nice Girl - of course, the road to my own personal hell is paved with the good intentions of these Mother Teresas of the club district.
d) She will talk to me as long as I continue to buy the Long Island Iced Teas she's been sucking down as fast as the bartender can bring them. When the money runs out, she goes to the bathroom and never comes back. This is Profiteering Drunken Whore. No explanation is really required.
After a few of these encounters, which invariably fall into the categories I've listed above, I tend to get really bitter and depressed. It's important to note here that I really don't like clubs to begin with.
Really. Don't. Like. Clubs.
I'd hazard to say that if I could get away with it I'd set fire to the entire Yonge-Richmond-Queen area and torch the whole mess of half-assed DJs playing absolutely shit music, overpriced drinks, pissy bartenders and vapid club-crawling ginos and punkers. I'd much sooner go and enjoy my drinking experience at a small pub with live music of some description (preferably acoustic or trip-hop acid jazz), a nice vibe and generally cool people who are there for the same reasons I am. Or better yet, stay home: buy a few bottles, invite over some of my more musically-inclined friends, get a pizza and jam for the night. Yeah, now that I could dig. So, apparently, could the Captain. Here's the story.
On the night in question (for those keeping track this would be the Saturday that just passed), The Captain called me up around 2 in the afternoon, asking whether I'd be inclined to spend the late evening downtown getting thoroughly shit-housed with some friends of his from Richtown, Scarborough (an offshoot of Toronto which is largely comprised of Ontario Housing projects with the exception of a few gated communities: The Captain's friends hail from one of these WASP strongholds). Having just consumed a bottle of Captain Morgan rum with a friend the night before and having garnered almost no sleep whatsoever, I was more than a little leery about going back downtown to do it all over again. Also, there was the aforementioned problem with funding, which The Captain assured me would be a non-issue as he was recently paid (I honestly don't know if this is generosity on his part, or else a strong desire to not recognize his own alcohol dependency by avoiding the "drinking alone" symptom). At any rate, I told him to call me later on (they weren't leaving till around 11 or so) and I would decide then. True to form, he called back around 5.
It seems that many of The Captain's compatriots had abandoned his great plan (which was to attend a club downtown called Lee's Palace; a venue I quite like for small live shows, but whose "Dance Cave" dance club upstairs I'd not ever attended) in favour of "pussing out" and staying at home for the evening. I therefore suggested that we chill out at my place and have a few (har har) drinks here, which is my aforementioned preference anyway. He concurred and set about heading over.
This is where the principle of overcompensation comes into play. The Captain would usually procure a bottle of some intoxicating substance on his way to my place, but my inference of having a few drinks led him to believe that I had somehow come upon a treasure trove of booze akin to the rum-running scene from Pirates of the Caribbean. Of course I hadn't, so we set off to the local LCBO to procure our stash for the night. Though I'm not usually a fan of sweet drinks (hence my preference for G&T) I've had a real taste for Captain Morgan dark rum recently, and so because The Captain isn't a fan of The Captain we compromised and bought a forty of Bacardi Amber. Just as we were approaching the cash, The Captain dashed back across the store and returned promptly with an additional 26er, pronouncing "Just in case" with a wink and a nod.
Upon returning to my apartment, it became known that The Captain had never watched the admittedly guilty pleasure of a film entitled "Euro Trip". I stress that this truly isn't my kind of movie for the most part - I wasn't a fan of the American Pie series, nor did I enjoy Scary Movie or any of the other lowest-common-denominator bawdy humour shit festivals in that category. But for whatever reason, I felt some sort of kinship with the characters in this particular film and was quite enamored of the title track "Scotty Doesn't Know", so once again I forced my opinion on a friend and made him watch the film. Whether it was the movie's innate comedic quality or the rum (which we finished over the course of the 90 minutes or so), The Captain laughed his metaphorical ass off the whole time, and by the time the end credits ran, we were really amped about the idea of going out to a club like we saw in the film. It's kind of the same feeling smokers get while watching a movie like The Boondock Saints or Casablanca, where every other scene makes you want to light up. With this in mind, we decided it would be a truly hype idea to go downtown to Lee's Palace anyway and the hell with the boys from Richtown.
I'd like to take a moment here and reflect on the sheer idiocy and lack of foresight which leads people to believe that decisions they arrive at while drunk are solid, positive plans of action. The last time we had a drunken idea that seemed to be really cool, I very nearly wound up with Star Trek command pips tattooed on my collarbone. Seriously. And yet, we've apparently not learned our lessons, so we're doomed to repeat mistakes again and again, ad nauseum, forever and ever, amen.
After a quick shower, we were off and running for the TTC. For my international readers, this stands for the Toronto Transit Commission, and it's widely regarded as one of the better transit systems in North America when it actually goddamn works. I happen to live about ten seconds from the nearest subway station, which facilitates my ability to implement these really poorly thought-out plans with little time to change my mind. While riding down towards the club, The Captain and I ran into one of his myriad attractive female friends, a young black lady whose name escapes me, but was a very cool traditional African name (at least as far as my White-North-American-wired brain can tell). Anyway, we shot the shit with her all the way down until we arrived at the club.
Now, once again, I should explicate to those who don't know Toronto (though I assume this is probably a rule the world over): bouncers and door-people aren't really supposed to let folks in who already appear intoxicated. It's a liability for them both in the legal sense and the I-might-puke-all-over-your-dance-floor sense, and really, given it was early in the night they had nothing to lose by turning us away. However, The Captain and I have mastered the ability which I like to call the "cool-calm". It's the kind of vibe you slip into when you have to deal with cops, irate bouncers, drunk assholes that want to fight you, raging boyfriends of girls you've hooked up with, and raging fathers of the same. It's the "I'm totally cool, I'm not ruffled and I'm definitely not drunk" vibe. It's the vibe that makes them suspect that you could easily walk the straight line while touching your nose and reciting the alphabet backwards, even if you absolutely could not if your life depended on it. It's the poker-face of drunk. And we've got it. All it takes is a certain amount of decorum and a great deal of restraint: when walking past the bouncers toward the lady that will take your money, you stay straight-faced, walk with purpose and give them the masculine "hey, what up" nod. Above all, keep your mouth closed because if you don't you smell like a brewery or a homeless person who can afford better than Lysol, and those bouncers are like goddamn bloodhounds when it comes to that. When you approach the ticket-lady, you smile warmly (still keeping those lips sealed), give her your money and allow your hand to be stamped. You nod to her as well, except with the smile it becomes a nod of gratitude and pleasant acknowledgement (as opposed to the manly politeness of the aforementioned bouncer-nod) and you make goddamn sure you don't trip on the steps up the stairs. Once you're within the bounds of the club, you're usually in the clear.
With this level of grace and confidence, The Captain and I passed the gauntlet at the front and immediately positioned ourselves in front of the bar. There was almost no one in the club at this point; truth be told we'd arrived early (about 10pm) and the place wouldn't really start jumping for another two hours or so. This gave us plenty of time to do what we'd come to do - drink our goddamn faces off.
The Captain ordered up four shots of Liquid Cocaine, a detestable and yet thoroughly delicious substance that combines equal parts Jagermeister and Goldschlager in 2 oz. shot glasses. We downed these in rapid succession, at which point he brought four domestics to the table and we began double-fisting shitty Canadian beer like men possessed. Given my ambient level of depression which had been overriding for several weeks at this point, I was hell-bent and determined to quench my rising ire and caustic impulses with copious alcohol (which, as many people are aware, is very akin to putting out a grease fire with PAM cooking spray). As more and more people began to arrive, The Captain turned on the Banderas-game and went to work.
It turned out that some of the Richtown crew had decided to come out anyway, as there's little to do in the barbed-wire compound they call a community. I was reunited with The Captain's old friends The Twins, an identical pair of EMO youth that had the same haircut as that ludicrous wannabe from The Ataris (you know, the one that makes you look like a prematurely balding white man with bleached-blonde hair); haircuts and total lack of fashion sense notwithstanding, they're okay guys. I was also reintroduced to a woman we call The Screamer (figure it out) whom I'd verbally owned at a previous party in Richtown; needless to say, she was less than pleased to see me again. The only one I'd not met initially was a man I called Cowboy, due to the headgear he was wearing that looked like it had been purchased at Billy Ray Cyrus' yardsale. Don't get me wrong; I've got nothing against cowboys, but there was something about this guy's vibe that screamed "schtick". I convinced him to come up to the DJ booth with me and request some Big and Rich; needless to say, the DJ looked at me like I'd just requested Total Eclipse of the Heart and ignored me completely. Oh well, she looked like quite the k.d. lang fan with her shaved head and unshaved upper lip, and if she can't dig a righteous vibe like John and Kenny, fuck her anyway.
So there I was, sitting in a booth off to the side of the dance floor, watching Hurricane Hormone wreak its vengeance on the denizens of this little Gommorah, and the first reasonably clear thought I had since the whole night had started was "what the fuck am I doing here?". As I said before, I loathe clubs. As I looked around I remembered precisely why: everywhere the eye could travel I saw poser after poser dancing with impressionable female after impressionable female, and I couldn't help but think that, if this was a house party and I had a bottle of gin and a guitar, these girls would be on my vibe like flies to shit. It was frustrating to acknowledge that I wasn't going to attract women just by being there, but as my roommate / close friend Ariel has told me on more than one occasion, "Unless you've got a valid credit card, women are not going to come knocking at your door looking for romantic liaisons". So I figured I'd just drink until I felt ready to try my luck at dancing.
A note on dancing: I am the epitome of white-boy dancers. After a lifetime of being a musician, I have absolutely no desire to partake in that outdated ritualistic mating process; I'd much rather be elevated on a stage, making the music so others could pursue random copulation. That, and I couldn't do the goddamn Macarena convincingly. The closest to dancing I ever got was when I was younger and used to attend raves, but really I don't know how much of my ostensible ability to rave came from a legitimate grasp of the music and the style with which ravers move themselves, and how much came from really excessive drug use. Either way, no one at those functions cared. Clubs are different.
I don't get where the genetic imperative comes from. Both my mother and sister have admittedly excellent rhythm and they're quite good dancers (keep your Oedipal jokes to yourselves you fucks), but both my father and I have no interest and thus, no rhythmic ability to move our bodies in tandem with music. I think this is a fairly common line between the sexes: women like to dance and such are good at it (with notable exceptions) and men don't like to dance and as such they suck (with notable exceptions - my gay friends kick ass on the dance floor). So my response to dancing is the same as my response to everything: if I drink more, I'll either get good at it, or just be intoxicated not to give a fuck that I look like a lame duck with a six-inch dildo buried in its rectal cavity.
So I sat in that corner booth, double-fisting Labatt Blue or some other rotten hops beverage (I absolutely refuse to drink Molson Canadian even though it's my country's "signature" beer; I'd rather be force-fed horse urine Terri Schiavo-style) and trying not to think about the fact that I'd have to go back to my place alone, even though The Captain (who was currently dancing in the center of a circle of more-than-marginally attractive women), were he to take advantage of his potential, could be bringing home a full harem of willing bar broads to do his every bidding. The more I drank, the more convinced I became that were I just to get up and try already, I might be able to get back some of that magic that I once owned and wielded prettier than a 10th level Elven cleric.
Then I asked myself whether that analogy could really be considered advantageous thinking at this point in the night. Fuck all of you, D&D kicked ass back in the day.
While these and other dark thoughts permeated my skull, I continued to sit and pound back the beers that The Captain had so charitably provided. Suddenly and without any warning whatsoever, I felt myself lifted from my seat by a meaty paw on the scruff of my black dress-shirt. I turned to curse at whoever was obviously trying to pick a fight with me, and I came face-to-face with a veritable ocean of black-shirted pec with the white-fonted words "SECURITY" emblazoned across the barrel-like chest. I looked up at my assailant and was greeted by the stone face of the absolutely enormous black bouncer I'd passed with the "what up" nod on the way in. Seriously, this guy made Michael Clarke Duncan look like Christian Bale after a three-week cocaine binge. I might as well have tried punching my way through one of those steel green electrical boxes you find near public schools nation-wide. I decided at that moment, even through my drunken haze, that resistance in this case was completely futile and that I better not make any sudden moves, or Golgotha here might just decide to eject me through one of the club walls and down two stories to the unforgiving concrete of Bloor Street. That, or he'd want to make me his "little puppy". Either eventuality was not terribly attractive to me.
"You gotta leave, man." Jesus H. jumped-up Christ in a sidecar, the guy sounded like James Earl Jones with a tracheotomy tube. I still had no idea what I'd done, but before I could even voice my objection, Big Brotha had hoisted me clear of the booth and was directing me much like a snowplow blade through the crowd of eager patrons. More than one Smirnoff Ice bottle bounced off my cheekbones and forehead before we cleared the crowd and headed for the stairs, which didn't improve my mood, though there was little I could do about it at the time. In the midst of this forced march I tried desperately to plead my case with Big Brotha, asking what I had done to warrant being kicked out and please, sir, couldn't I have just a little more beer before I went? No such luck.
However, the luck did kick in when The Captain noticed my imposed extraction and removed himself from his fan club to follow myself and Big Brotha to the entrance. I told him that for some unknown reason I was being kicked out of the club and also said that he was welcome to stay, given the sort of attention he was being afforded on the dance floor. He declined like the hardcore gentleman that he is and escorted me past the cute door lady and onto the street. Once outside, I promptly lit a cigarette (which are no longer allowed inside clubs in the Toronto district due to provincial legislation) and took stock of the situation. We both agreed that there was no reason for my expulsion and we should definitely scream Fuck You at the doors and sealed windows of Lee's Palace and never return again. With that, we progressed off into the night.
One of the most common symptoms of drunkenness is an irrational desire to find and consume the most vile and objectionable foodstuffs available. Under normal circumstances my preferences are Taco Bell (yes, I can't help but love that Grade F cat-meat) and Burger King, where I am encouraged to Have It [My] Way. Unfortunately, in the area we were walking neither option presented itself; in fact, the only option that we came upon was purchasing a piece of cardboard with fake cheese and plastic toppings from the Pizza Pizza chain. I seriously doubt this travesty of a pizza conglomerate is limited only to Canada, but for the sake of the rest of the world, I sincerely hope it is. These people are famous for providing pizza to elementary school Pizza Lunches across the nation, which suggests to the average consumer that they are indeed the Lowest Common Denominator of pizza restaurants, as they're willing to give away their product to a bunch of pimply-faced pre-teens who will eat really anything, no matter the nutritional or flavour value. At any rate, this was our only option on this fateful night, so we each purchased a slice of mediocrity and promptly doused them in an entire bottle of hot sauce in order to kill the taste of boredom that we otherwise would have had to choke down along with the pedestrian "hot" Italian sausage and "extreme" three-cheese blend. The only thing "extreme" about this pizza, to reference Maddox, is the "extreme" shit you have to take later on - but this sort of logic really doesn't apply when you've had a grand total of 20 oz. of rum, 5 oz. of cinnamon liqueur and 10 bottles of domestic beer a piece. After our less-than-satisfying trip to the Pizza Place That Fun Forgot, we headed for the subway station.
At that point we were both certifiably intoxicated: read, we likely could not walk the aforementioned straight line while reciting the alphabet backwards, so we were somewhat confused when we arrived at Spadina Station, also known as the "other" northbound station (also, three stops too early). So we got off.
This was a fundamentally bad plan.
Spadina Station is divided into two floors: the top floor contains the East-West line on which we had originally been traveling, and the lower floor contains the North-South line on which we had decided we were going to travel. The upper and lower floors are connected by a series of stairs, or for those of us with laziness problems, there are also escalators.
Now, several things at this point must be understood.
First, when Al gets drunk, the first thing to go is his gross motor skills - for the uninitiated, this means the ability to run, jump, or even walk with any degree of precision or accuracy. I can sit and play guitar all night with forty ounces of booze in my stomach, but ask me to get up and walk somewhere, and I'll likely decline out of a combination of laziness and sheer inability.
Second, Al wears contact lenses when going out. Contact lenses are a wonderful invention, allowing people who were heretofore unable to see past the end of their noses without the use of glasses, new freedom - the ability to play sports (har har), swim and see at the same time, and also look a great deal cooler than they do wearing glasses, when the glasses they bought four years ago have since been co-opted by the EMO movement and as a result have been taken under the same stereotypes which affect that particular subculture. I'd like it understood that I'm not an EMO kid - I really don't dig on Taking Back Tuesday or whatever, and I really really think that someone should fucking crucify the fucking Cure guy so at least he has something to complain about. Unfortunately I liked the idea of black, square-frame glasses several years in advance of their ruination, and because I haven't the cash to purchase new glasses simply to avoid being associated with a bunch of asshats, I've no choice but to continue looking like a poor Rivers Cuomo imitation. Anyway, contacts.
For those of you who wear contact lenses, you know that the more tired (or more drunk) you get, the more difficult it is to see out of the selfsame lenses. The reason for this is because fatigue and moisture lost due to alcohol consumption tends to dry out the eyes first, and without the natural tear-moisture provided by blinking, the porous plastic of the contact lenses starts to dry out, turning the world into a series of blurry light sources and (if you're drunk) disembodied voices telling you to beer-bong more tequila. This bizarre limbo is where I found myself while traversing the two floors of Spadina Station.
The TTC subways stop operating after a certain point in the evening; usually this is in and around 1:30AM, and given I never wear a watch I was unsure as to the time when we arrived at the crossroads. I remember being extremely concerned that we would miss the train, notwithstanding the fact that The Captain still had enough cash left to get us home via a taxi were the necessity to arise. As a result I was in an extreme hurry to get to the lower platform in order that we would not miss the northbound train.
I spied, through my drunk and dehydration-fogged contact lenses, an escalator that appeared to lead to the lower platform, and so I ran for it with all the grace of a crippled ostrich with a seven inch dildo buried in its rectum. I would be extremely happy to say I noticed too late that the escalator was one which actually ascended from the lower level to the upper, but the truth is that I did not. I ran headlong into an escalator which was coming the wrong way and yet I had it in my mind to try and get down anyway.
I succeeded, rather spectacularly.
When I regained consciousness, it was to The Captain and some random drunken frat-boy he'd conscripted to help me up, yanking on my arms with considerable force until I balanced under my own power on my own two feet. I vaguely remember the statements "Are you okay?" and "Does he need an ambulance" thrown about, to which I replied in what The Captain informed me later was a completely rational and composed voice, "No, ma'am, I'm perfectly fine to get home on my own without the assistance of an ambulance; but thank you very much for your concern." This The Captain found unerringly hysterical upon reflection, because of what had just occurred and the following state in which I found myself.
As it happens, I had attempted with some success to walk down a set of moving stairs that had been in fact coming towards me the entire time. This made my movements vaguely resemble some absurdist BodyBreak Stairmaster commercial for approximately five seconds before I inevitably lost my footing. According to The Captain, he saw me keel forward like a domino that had been nudged in the direction of its fellow slabs, only to disappear out of his sight. What followed would have been the most frightening and nauseating experience of my life, could I remember it.
Evidently, my entire body flew forward like Keanu Reeves going off the building in the Matrix, but this time there sure as shit was a fucking spoon. The front of my head collided with the divots in the escalator's metal stairs, and it didn't stop there. In essence, I went headlong down the escalator like some demented luge racer, using my forehead as a brake the entire way. I finally came to rest at the bottom of the escalator, whose emergency stop button The Captain had yet to press, and so in some bizarre twist of fate, the escalator performed its duty and brought my prostrate body back up to the top of the stairwell.
Imagine my confusion when, drunk and punch-addled from my race to the bottom, I found myself back at the apex of my colossal fall, wondering with the innocence found only in drunkards and accident victims: what the hell just happened?
At this point, The Captain hit the emergency stop and the escalator ceased its desperate attempt to eat my pants as I brought myself to a shaky kneeling position at the top of the decline. In his own admission, The Captain had feared the worst: he figured I'd goddamn killed myself falling down a flight of metal serrated stairs with that sort of speed, but upon seeing me in a semi-kneeling position, his hope to avoid police involvement was reignited. Unfortunately, I bore an uncanny resemblance to a drunk and fat version of Our Lord, dressed all in black and bleeding profusely from wounds in my forehead and like a running tap from my nose. Yes sir, I was indeed the K-Mart Jesus.
Unable to right myself under my own power, either due to alcohol or the severity of the blow to my head, The Captain recruited the aforementioned drunk frat-boy to help lift me up into a standing position, which is when the terrified TTC janitor came running at full tilt to see if we required an ambulance. In our still-intoxicated state we insisted that all we required was some paper towel and directions to the subway platform. At this point I had smeared my life's blood all over no less than three of the escalator stairs as well as on the wall beside and part of the handrail. More's the pity; according to The Captain, the poor janitor had just finished cleaning the selfsame escalator prior to my stupendous leap of faith.
In an act of unadulterated brilliance, we elected to return to The Captain's apartment, which resided on the northernmost-west side of the giant "U" which makes up the Yonge-University subway line (again, look at the map if you really care), instead of returning to my apartment where I live with my EMERGENCY ROOM TRAUMA NURSE ROOMMATE who might have looked at my injuries in greater detail. Nope, no such luck for us. Instead, we returned to The Captain's place where he called his brother no less than three times, requesting that any and all First Aid supplies they had in the house be ready and waiting when we arrived. The entire subway ride back, The Captain was more than a little amused to note that every time I took the paper-towel away from my head, I exclaimed with renewed surprise:
Al: Am I bleeding?!
Cap: Yes, you stupid bastard, you're bleeding like a damn sieve. Keep the fuckin' paper towel on your fool head.
Al: Wow. What happened?
Cap: *sigh*. You fell down a goddamned escalator. Don't you
remember?
Al: No man...(removing paper towel again)...wow, am I bleeding?
Needless to say, this got a bit repetitive for the old Captain, so he eventually ignored me, much to the chagrin of the other five people on the subway car with us, who were unadulteratedly staring at me with an expression of amusement mixed with abject horror. I must have looked like I just walked out of an MXC competition with my face all cut up and blood seeping through my clothes in random places. Evidently I was quite lucid; I was reassuring everyone on the train that I was "perfectly fuckin' fine" and that I was extremely desirous of Burger King (which I knew was right around the corner from The Captain's place) the moment we exited the train. The Captain's response was to tell me that yes, we would indeed get Burger King, but first he would take me home and treat my wounds, and then he would venture out to bring me an Uber Whopper or whatever it was I wanted. Like hell he would.
We finally returned to The Captain's abode where he slathered me with Polysporin and haphazardly slapped bandages on my face before we both mutually collapsed under the excesses to which we'd subjected ourselves over the course of the night. Amazingly enough, it was the best sleep I'd gotten for almost three weeks.
The following morning was a bizarre experience; The Captain was still prostrate in his bed when the unbearable thirst I felt in my throat and cotton-mouth drove me to rise from the couch and to the sink, where I consumed probably four gallons of shitty Toronto tap water before I could even stop myself. I was unsure as to whether I had dreamed the events of the night before or whether they'd actually happened; a trip to the bathroom and a look in the mirror solidified the horrifying and yet endlessly amusing reality of the situation. My face looked as though I'd been struck repeatedly with the ass-end of a hammer, as did my chest and legs. My left kneecap was swollen out to the point that it looked as though that joint was about to give birth. I'd also done significant damage to my thumb; my initial prognosis was that I'd broken it or at least fractured it in my swan dive, but more recent improvements have suggested merely a sprain. All in all and combined with the significant amount of liquor I consumed, I bore a striking resemblance to some kind of white-trash Bruce Campbell clone a la Army of Darkness. Every movement I made was like dipping my limbs in acid, and I spent two consecutive days walking like Hopalong Cassidy. And yet, I had survived. All told, I got off light: the following evening I went to sleep early, and was plagued with nightmares of what might have been: a blow to the neck might have rendered me Christopher Reeve the second, or a slight miscalculation in the impact point might have turned me into the Toothless Wonder. All manner of ill might have befallen me had I not fallen in just the right way to avoid permanent damage: my roommate told me that the fact I was drunk probably aided in this as I was loose and bendy when I struck the cold, hard steel. Of course, it's the great Catch-22 of drunken escapades - had I not been drunk to begin with I likely would not have attempted to body-surf my way down the wrong escalator. Brilliance, thy name is Al.
The sound of water falling into the sink evidently awoke The Captain from his slumber, and he came out to join me in the living room. We both sat quietly for several minutes, before The Captain finally broke the silence with the words:
Cap: I can't believe that fuckin' happened.
Al: Neither can I, Captain. Neither can I.
Cap: Are we getting old, or are we just really excessive?
Al: At this point, I'd say we've crossed a line from borderline alcoholism into true debauchery. Let us never speak of this night again.
Cap: Are you goddamn kidding? I'm going to tell everyone I know about this! Fuck, man, it's not even Spring yet, and we've already got completely ridiculous wild-ass drunken stories! Isn't this great?
At the time, I couldn't have disagreed with him less. But I'll be damned if I tell anybody that. More to come...welcome to the Freak Parade.
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