Tuesday, January 04, 2005

January 4th

Jan. 4, 2003... Two years ago I was at work on a Saturday of all days, miserable and bitter to all hell. I had just got my ass reamed by my callous boss who took time out of his vacation in St. Bart's to tell me how much I sucked as a broker and that he was going to fire me when he got back to New York. My days on Wall Street were numbered and I knew it. Man, I would get chills when I think about the eerie empty trading floor on Saturdays and I'd be stuck cold calling nimrod investors trying to get them to give me and the suits upstairs what was left of their savings. I secretly wished that I was fired because that would have given me an excuse to book a flight to Thailand and make a connecting flight to Nepal to meet up with Senor to explore paradise lost.

Jan. 4, 2001... Four years ago I had just exchanged money at the airport after I got off an Icelandic Air flight from JFK headed to Reykjavik, Iceland with Senor. He snagged a monster two-for-one deal and we were off to an exotic land where there would only be three hours of daylight. I read an article in Details magazine that Icelandic women were hot and easy. They were portrayed as a slew of promiscuous drunks and druggies, and the sluttiest girls in all of Europe. I wanted to find out for myself if the rumors were true. Don't ask me where exactly on our journey did we stray from the path... but at some point during our first night in Reykjavik, we ended up in a strip bar at 4am talking to coked up British strippers about chocolate chip cookies... of all things.

Jan. 4, 2000... Five years ago I was sitting in a bar in Dallas, Texas with Heather sipping Margaritas and we were trying to figure out if Austin would be a cool place for me to relocate. I recall that I had serious reservations about being in a flat land with heavily armed alcoholics running around and moving to the same city where the former President's cokehead son haphazardly ran the state. Jimmy Cliff was playing on the stereo and Heather was singing along, "You can get it if you really want..."

Jan. 4, 1998... Seven years ago I was playing poker in the kitchen at the Trout House in the Fremont section of Seattle with Brad, Ty, and several members of the band Kilgore Trout. We would toke and chain smoke and pound Labatt's like we did during our poker nights. I introduced the game Seventy-five Cent Mexican (a variation of Midnight Baseball) and to this day, the Trout House in Seattle was my favorite home game to play in... all time.

Jan. 4, 1996... Nine years ago NYC was hit with a wild blizzard and I was working at 30 Wall Street as a bond broker for a small, yet prestigious firm. Everyone was at home (except me and a handful of other brokers) and I managed to have one of my biggest sales days... ever.... since people had nothing else better to do than talk high yielding NJ sewer bonds with me.

Jan. 4, 1995... Ten years ago I was drinking bourbon in a dive bar in the East Village (before Rudy G cleaned up all the rift raft and all the hipsters moved in and drove up the rents) and there was a definite sketchy element all around. I was aggressively hitting on a mysterious, extremely thin Russian girl, who confessed that she was a part-time model, part-time high end escort who would let me snort coke off her ass in the bathroom if I paid her overdue $83.71 phone bill with my credit card... which I promptly did and wrote a poem about it while sitting on the subway on my way home.
Untitled (1995)

Drool absorbed by a transparent pillow
Mind wanders losing its edge
Tunnels of unconsciousness confuse the traffic cop
Red ice cubes float in an empty glass
The bill totals $83.71 with payments long overdue
When does the spirit absorb the weak?
Red ice cubes fill the void
Beads of sweat drip upwards against the flow
The powder sits still on her curves
Chills, euphoria, red ice cubes as the traffic trap shouts, "Halt!"
Jan. 4, 1994... Eleven years ago, I had arrived back to college in Atlanta after driving from Philadelphia with Schanzer and his three-legged cat Smooth. He chain smoked the entire way and we were jamming Grateful Dead bootlegs while flipping off every Southern cop we past. I think we ate McDonalds three times in the 13 hour drive. Smooth chilled out in the backseat and never complained once.

Jan. 4, 1992... Thirteen years ago, while home in NYC on winter break, a couple of friends from high school decided it would be cool to drop acid and go to a NY Rangers game. No one got arrested but one guy lost his wallet in a bar afterwards. I was 19 at the time and I could outdrink almost anyone who came in my path and I was hazing all my friends making them do shot after shot. I recall shooting tequila with some college girls from Iowa State who were in NYC for New Years. With Guns n Roses blasting on the jukebox, one of them, the least attractive of the bunch, puked on the bar at High Life and then proceeded to make out with one of my friends for ten minutes while the bartender cleaned up her mess. After that incident and to this day, we still call my high school friend The Mayor.

Yeah, that was my first Fred Hoiberg reference of 2005... in a flashback from 1992 of all things!

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