Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk

So surreal, so absurd, it only happens here in NYC. I promise you on everything I love, each and every word is true. On a hot summer night when the humidity makes your wedgie feel like it’s been applied with Elmer’s glue, I decide I’m going to hang out with the fellas.  I’m a “sporty” sort, and at the time I had four friends all named Bill—everyone of them a Pisces. I used to affectionately call them my “man-tourage.” Rolling deep with the fellas is never a challenge for me, I’m between two brothers in the birth order and it feels natural.

We decide to meet at Grand Central Station and bar hop for the night. For the most part, the “Bills” are cool guys, gainfully employed in midtown and the drinks are on them since I’m the only woman on this bar ‘crawl.” We hit two bars for a round or two and things begin to take on that warm and fuzzy alcohol haze. At this point, everything we say is either slurred or completely illogical. But we’re having fun, laughs all around. There is one unspoken rule and that is to defend my honor and to discourage all attempts to hit on me.

As fate would have it, I’m a flirt. I honor my part of the unspoken rule by never leaving the group with anyone I’ve flirted with. I can exchange numbers; have discreet, socially accepted contact with whomever I meet without a fight breaking out. We’re on our 5th or 6th bar, and I decide to call it a night. The “Bills” put their heads and cash together and decide to hail me a cab so they can be free to chase “tail” properly. Being New Yorkers, no one drives on a drinking night, even though some of us live in the outer boroughs. They’re a gentlemanly lot and one of them stumbles to the curb and puts me in a cab.

In my drunken logic, I realize how much cash they’ve given me and I tell the cab to take me to the nearest subway station. I’m going shopping with the almost eighty bucks they’ve sprung my for safe ride home, tomorrow when I’m sober! I navigate my way down the stairs and maneuver tipsily through the turnstile. As fortune would have it the train arrives straightaway. The car I step into is completely empty save for one person. New Yorkers know, something is up when a subway car is empty on a summer night.

The car was as hot as a Native American sweat lodge and the smell of human feces was strong and fresh enough to make your gorge rise and explode!