Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy

sooo i just got home yesterday and this is likely to be my last post on this blog. now for better or worse, i am categorically against ever having to explain myself in any manner to anyone….  but i’d just like to clarify for the record that this trip was fucking AWESOME. ive been hearing lots of the little sewing circles badgering on about how miserable we were on our trip and i must say i was kind of surprised by that……until i reread our entire blog. i think we sound so miserable because jason and myself both share a very healthy(or unhealthy) appetite for dark and sarcastic humor. what can i say, what’s not hilarious and horrifying about a man getting mauled by a zombie? or in our case, a bear? shrug, so i like laughing at really bleak and inappropriate things, bite me.  anyways so i flew into new york yesterday morning and if there’s one thing that kind of overwhelmed me about that, it was the strange affinity/connection i felt with the city. i mean i grew up in ny but i never felt that strong sense of identity that comes with it for crazy rappers. i swear i almost crossed my arms and yelled BX!!!!!….i’m not from the bronx but there’s no cool sign/yell for all of nyc to my knowledge. so yea, this trip has definitely definitely made me appreciate nyc in its entirety and it definitely feels like home more than ever. anyways i know we slacked a lot in our blogging, and some of the most ridiculous shit happened int he past week of our trip so that kind of sucks for any readers. i would add on to jason’s blog about that infamous night in new orleans but all i remember is punching a kid in the face and then sitting in brett’s living room… as for the rest of this trip something i’d like to declare is that austin, texas absolutely stole my heart away. nyc will always be my home, but i’d love to make my life and home home in the future in austin, texas. just the whole vibe, people, layout, places, girls, music scene, everything about that place is just top shelf and fits with me. it has its really crazy fratty areas, but aside from that it just seems like such an ideal place to live to me. there was this one place that we went that was just a gigantic natural spring…it was HUUUUGE and fucking beautiful and it operates as a swimming pool. can you imagine? i mean i grew up  with the local swimming pool being this dingy little shithole in dix hills, long island where parents would come and dump their kids off who’d pee in the pool and stuff like that. austin puts that to shame. i wish we had a picture of that place.   what a true adventure this trip was. i also found it really strange and cool how jason and myself both eventually found that the most comforting place to be was on the road. it was the only thing that was left familiar to us on our trip. i definitely recommend you try it.  anyways i don’t know what else i should say, there’s just so much to say that it kind of overwhelms me into silence. i’ve definitely learned a massive amount of things about my life on this trip, but i’ll spare you all of that. just wanted to write here to say good luck to jason for the rest of the trip and props for being a stellar partner in crime. i’ll definitely hold the memories of this trip real close.   —anyways i’m done w this! FINALLY! i hate this blogging business!AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I DON”T HAVE FACEBOOK, MY “FRIEND” is IMPOSTERING ME. STOP IMING ME.

-elliot

(my initial draft of this post was about 4 pages long, so i had to shave it down for the sake of time and space. This is one of those stories that’s best told, not written. But Ive done my best to give as much as possible here.)

As we last left off, Elliot and I were about to have our last day in New Orleans to “do all the debaucherous shit we can handle” if I might quote myself. Well, I think we got more than we bargained for.

The day was quiet and nothing really went on. Mostly sitting around and listening to everyone figure out their evacuation plans. When the night rolled around, we went upstairs to the apartment above Bret’s to have a few drinks. After that we ended up at the house of a friend of his, for what was described to me as a “hurricane party”. Is it tasteless to theme your party based on an impending natural disaster? I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. We ended up at one of the local college bars and things just seemed off right from the get go. We had been in the place for all of about 20 minutes when I noticed some guy was in Elliot’s face. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but seeing his angry look and then a gesture towards a spill mark on his shirt I put two and two together and figured they had bumped into one another which made the guy spill his drink and now he was angry about it. I was drinking a bottle of beer at the time and, as I moved between the two of them, I inconspicuously switched grips on the bottle from a thumb on top “im drinking from this bottle” grip to a thumb down “im going to smash this bottle over someone’s head” grip. I got Bret’s attention and he stepped in to talk to the guy. He seemed to talk some sense into the him, or at least the guy realized that it was about 4 on 1 and that his odds weren’t looking too good. So he walked away and I talked with Elliot about how stupid it was that this guy was so angry over nothing and that fighting over something so stupid would have been ridiculous. Elliot suddenly turns to me with a stupid grin on his face and says “I bumped into the guy on purpose”, then proceeds to elbow me, mimicking the way he nudged the guy. Great… I almost bashed a guy on the head with a glass bottle for something that wasn’t even his fault. (EDIT: it totally was his fault. he bumped into me pretty hard and didn’t apologize, so i wanted him to get the fuck off of me…..plus i drank a lot of whiskey >=] -elliot) The night was getting off to a bad start and things just felt tense and strange. Maybe it was hurricane anxiety mixed with drunkenness. Bret explained to us that it was a pretty bad idea to get into a fight around this area, mainly because we didn’t go to school here and you never know if the guy you’re hitting is in a fraternity with a dozen or more of his frat brothers standing right behind him, ready to stomp your face in should the shit go down. The way he explained it was dead on, and we all agreed that frats were basically school sanctioned gangs. We left it at that.

About 25 minutes after advising us not to fight anyone that night, Bret ended up punching some guy in the face. The guy had been dancing with some girl and not paying attention to where he was going, causing him to repeatedly grind his ass into Bret’s crotch. After asking him to “please stop grinding into my crotch”, the guy got into Bret’s face, trying to act tough, which is what started the fight. After having landed two punches on the side of this guy’s head the bouncers noticed the fight and came rushing over. The other guy grabbed the bouncer and leaned in to his ear to tell him his sob story about how he got hit in the face and didn’t do anything wrong, So Elliot, Bret and I were immediately thrown out of the bar while he remained inside. We cut our losses and headed to a second bar.

The next bar seemed decidedly calmer than the first; the entry was a bit stricter here, so I assumed that the relaxed attitude was due to the absence of freshman. However, after having been in the bar for less than an hour, a friend of Bret’s was tossed out for reasons unbeknownst to all of us. Anyway, he ended up outside and we decided to leave the bar soon after.

Then the shit really hit the fan.

I walked out of the bar and saw Bret’s friend fighting some guy in the street, immediately followed by both Elliot and Bret running across the street and jumping in the fray. I ran across to help them out and saw Bret laying on the sidewalk in a headlock from some guy in an orange shirt. After getting on his feet again he chased the kid around the street and the kid tried to get into a car and leave. But Elliot pulled him out of the passenger side, at which point the driver peeled out and left his friend in the orange shirt stranded in the middle of a fight. What a thoughful friend. Having seen this, Bret began to chase the guy down again and Elliot ran after them as they made a right turn onto the intersecting street. Out of nowhere, a guy in a black shirt runs up next to elliot and shoves him, sending him flying into a telephone pole. Elliot hit the pole head first and bounced off, ending up face up in the street. At this point, Im still standing on the street where I initially ran across, but seeing Elliot knocked out and Bret now with two kids on his hands around the corner i decided it was time to jump in. To say the least, I was super fucking pissed. I started sprinting at full speed and rounded the street corner to see the two guys (the one in orange and the one in black) holding Bret down and fighting him 2 on 1; the guy in the black was holding his arms as the guy in orange kicked him in the face (little baby kicks, like the kind you might use when trying to shove a piece of furniture back into place with your foot). As soon as I was in range, I punched the guy in black square in the face. He stumbled back a few steps, and now that Bret’s arms were free and it was a fair fight the guy in orange stood up and cleared out. I took a few steps forward and swung again at the guy in black. He threw his arms up to protect his face from a second blow and then took several huge running strides back and reconnected with the kid in orange. The two of them started sprinting away down the street, but not before one of them (I don’t remember which) turned around to yell “New Orleans” at me… what a retarded thing to yell as you run away from a fight. Did he think he was “repping New Orleans” or something? And keep in mind this is as hes RUNNING AWAY. How do try and act like a tough guy while simultaneously running off like a chicken shit? Idiots. Anyway, after a little effort everyone regrouped and headed back to Bret’s where Elliot was taken care of, since he was now dazed and bleeding from the head. As we debated whether or not Elliot needed to go to the hospital, three cop cars pulled up outside the bar, which was visible from Bret’s front porch. It was at this point that i found out what had caused the fight in the first place. Bret’s friend who was thrown out of the bar started the wholoe thing when, i kid you not, he called the guy in orange a fag because his car alarm was going off. A car alarm? Car alarm?! Elliot got his head knocked and i punched someone in the face over a car alarm?! Of all the fucking stupid things to fight over i think this has to be one of the dumbest ive ever heard. The last time i hit somebody without gloves on and not in a gym was 10 years ago (I was 12). Since then people have done plenty of shit to me or around me that they deserved to get hit for, but i always let it slide. Now i hit someone in the face over a car alarm? Thinking about that put me over the edge and i decided just to stay quiet for a while, the alternative being to blow up and scream my head off at how ridiculous the entire situation was. Ultimately, we decided Elliot didnt have to go to the hospital, the bleeding having stopped almost entirely. We kept him awake just in case he had a concussion and the night ended with us watching a vampire movie and trying to remember everything that had happened.

So, our time in New Orleans ended in a crazy manner. But then again, it seemed appropriate. Our visit had been full of craziness and we had basically been given the kind of New Orleans experience that one might want but at the same time not want. A raucous, inebriated blur filled with drinking, gambling, and fighting.

Sounds damn near perfect when you think about it.

-jason