After Hours

The Life

Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash

The good life was so elusive-

I Love a Man in a Uniform (Gang of Four)

First it was called 325. 

Sometimes I see that number in my head, wish it would have just stayed 325. 

Not too many people knew about it.

Black door, direct to some basement stairs.It smelled like they pumped perfume or something in the ducts so it didn’t smell like weed and sweat.

You had to know someone to get in.

Whatever you wanted and some shit you didn’t want you could get there. 

Ernie Wazz’s cousin OD’d in there, so Ernie wouldn’t go anymore.

I was 19, overdeveloped macho and underdeveloped risk/reward balance.

One of the guys who ran 325 was Carlo. Missing his lower left leg, pinstripe pants–always pinstripe pants– perfectly cuffed and stapled over the end of his leg.

Always smiling.

They let me into 325 because my Uncle Nick tourniqueted Carlo’s leg and carried him to a helicopter outside the city of Hue.

“Didn’t save my leg, but saved my life.”

I was 19, and because my uncle had done something fifteen years prior, 8000 miles away, I was a VIP.

I did drugs I didn’t know the names of. I banged Ernie Wazz’s girlfriend, because he wouldn’t go there anymore.

I learned how to win at blackjack, both the honest way and the cheating way.

Slept with women twice my age and women other guys paid for.

325 started getting hot, and I don’t mean in a good way.

Carlo moved the entrance to a different part of the building. You had to go up one flight of stairs, get on the elevator and come down to the basement.

Same club, but now they called it Rascals.

I was 21, bartending four nights a week, burning through my septum, falling asleep at 4pm, getting up at 9pm and starting all over again

The old timers called me The Little Rascal. They thought it was funny. I thought I was God.

Rascals started getting hot.

And I don’t mean in a good way.

Carlo moved back to the original door. Took the address off. Called the place Lucky’s.

I was 22 and I was a fat pocketed, cock waving, nostril stuffed know-it-all asshole who only knew what a good time was.

My Uncle Nick sold incense he made himself in the back of a record shop in Ann Arbor, always rocking his Vietnam Vets Against the War shirt. 

I didn’t go see him very often, because I didn’t have time.

But I owed him, and I owed Carlo.

I had a sense of honor, and gratitude, hidden deep inside that selfish little prick.

Lucky’s got raided, and I had a chance to prove it.

When the guns started discharging, I guessed that it might have been like the day my Uncle Nick got Carlo on the helicopter.

Cops weren’t gonna shoot everyone right?

Except it wasn’t the cops.

And I had to save Carlo. 

It was probably the drugs, mixed with the cockiness, but I wasn’t afraid of getting shot.

And I didn’t get shot.

But when I went to help Carlo out of there, an automatic weapon discharged inches from my face.

Do you know what flash blindness is? 

I didn’t.

All the old timers, the guys who looked out for me because I was Nick’s nephew,they’re all dead.

I lived.

Nobody helped me to a helicopter.

An ambulance took me to Receiving Hospital.

I never recovered my sight.

I was a VIP.

For three years I was the luckiest kid who ever walked the earth. 

Now I’m that old blind guy with a sign you walk by on Third and Alexandrine.

I’m not a veteran. But I kinda am. I’ll just never tell you I am. But now you kinda know.

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{Inspired by a few true stories}