Wet Blanket

As I indicated in my last post, I've been working with the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project to create some original writing. I come up with some brilliance, and then the group workshops the piece, offering suggestions to make it better. One of the activities we do for inspiration is called a "Writing Marathon," wherein we travel around the city experiencing things that will inspire us. On one such excursion, we stopped to watch some children play in the dancing fountain outside the PPG Building downtown. This following poem is inspired by that incident, and it's an uncharacteristically serious piece of writing from me. I don't really fancy myself much of a poet, but I do fancy myself a self-indulgent egotist. That's why I'm posting this anyway, no matter how little it connects to the overall tone of this blog.

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Wet Blanket

What do we tell the children
When water shoots from the ground
As they’re dancing atop the fountain?

Do we explain
That these jets are pressurized
Through invisible pipes and tubes
Like sinewy branches
Beneath the concrete?

Do we explain
That these cascading, crisp droplets
Have been carefully chlorinated
And cleansed
And chemically treated
For their health and safety?

Do we explain
That high above them,
In the glass metropolis surrounding this aquatic square
The spires of industry reflect in the noonday sun.
That the employees within
Toil in bourgeois drudgery
To finance homes in fine white middle-class neighborhoods
That their dark eyes will never see.

Or do we experience
Forget
Allow laughter and delight
To seize our imagination
And wash away our rational explanations
Our burden of awareness

Innocence we can never have.
Magic we can never believe.

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"You can't write poetry on the computer." -- Quentin Tarantino

* JP's NOTE: I can say with certainty that more posts are forthcoming because I already wrote them and published them. They're scheduled to be released by Blogger tomorrow and the next day. You're welcome. Sing my praises with some vigor.

Writer, Heal Thyself

Oh, well look who decided to show up! So you think you can just waltz back in here and pretend that you didn't abandon me for two months?

Look, I was really busy. I tried to make time for you.

Oh, so I'm not a priority for you? I'm there for you every day. I listen to your problems, and I care about your day.

I appreciate that. I really do, but I just had some things I had to take care of.

Why should I trust you again? How do I know you won't just leave? My heart's been broken too many times.

Alas, dear readers, I don't know why you should trust that I'll be timely in this blog. The damn blog is like the monster under my bed that just demands to be fed constantly, which is a reasonable accommodation given the things that the monster must have witnessed from under there. Whenever interesting things are happening in my life, I'm too busy to post. Whenever I have free time, nothing cool is happening. I could always post things like "Hey friends! I took an epic dump today and then played spider solitaire for the rest of the night while eating saltines," but that shit is better suited to Facebook.

Well, I'll try taming this beast again (go ahead and look back over the posts for the least six months. I've made this claim at least 6 times so far). I've made some insignificant cosmetic changes already. Thank you, Blogger for updating your templates. The most insignificant of things can inspire me, so maybe this ridiculously inane change will do the trick.

So for the last two weeks, I've been taking part in the Summer Institute for Teachers, which is a six credit class that will result in me becoming a fellow for the National Writing Project. The program gives me connections out the wazoo (already scored a job interview through someone there), and it can lead to paying opportunities later on. But for the moment, this summer program has actually been providing me with a great atmosphere for invigorating my own writing, an opportunity that I'm relishing immensely.

I've been writing some poems, short stories, and especially creative nonfiction. For the last week or so, I've contemplated posting some of these stories to this blog for your enjoyment; however, several factors give me pause.

1. Some of my stories are about real people... real people who read this blog. One of the important components of writing truthfully and effectively is not censoring yourself because you're afraid of offending people. There are events and secrets from my life that have made their way into my writing, and some of you may find that offensive.

2. Related to the first point, sometimes I've taken liberties with the truth for the purpose of a story. For instance, a moment in my past may not have happened exactly as I wrote it, because I had to compress dialogue, combine characters, or alter events so that the narrative would make sense in five pages. Sometimes I exaggerate character traits because it makes for a better story. This is why the genre is called "CREATIVE" nonfiction.

3. Most importantly, throughout many (if not all) of my work, there's always some element of self-reflection that takes place. I noticed this yesterday (and wrote a piece on the theme with the same title as this post), but it's generally true with all of my writing. My personal flaws tend to become a satirical focus of the stories/poems that I write. Other writer folk might appreciate what I'm trying to do in those poems, but some of you assholes would probably just say, "HA HA!! JP'S A LOSER!" This is true, but I don't necessarily want that thrown in my face.

There are a few stories that I've written that are reasonably detached from reality. I may give those a try first. Yesterday we had a writing workshop with one of the associate editors of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and I wrote a sample editorial that received high praise from him. That seems like something that's not entirely mock-worthy.

In reality, I'm probably worrying about nothing. There's probably not anyone out there who still comes this blog. I've created abandonment issues in my readership.

Maybe I'll write a story about that.

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"Hmmm... I don't recall ever fighting Godzilla, but that is so what I would have done."

Running the Race

I like my readers to be comfortable here on the blog. After all, it's been awhile since I've made a post, and I want everyone to feel warm and fuzzy after such a long hiatus.

So let's talk about racism again.

And as I say whenever I blog on this topic: I'm white, stupid, and I often dream of candy. If I say something ludicrously offensive, please accept my humble apologies ahead of time.

I'm eating lunch in the teachers' lounge today when race enters the discussion. This happens periodically in this school with zero non-white teachers and a 90% white student population. Specifically, two older male teachers are lamenting particular affirmative action policies in businesses. The one math teacher regaled us with the tale of how he developed industrial fasteners for a company that was hoping to make a lucrative business deal with the military to sell said fasteners. Unfortunately, the military refused their contract because they didn't have enough minorities working for the company. According to the math teacher, "We'd tried to hire minorities, but we'd interviewed 900 black applicants, but all of them failed the drug screening."

Now I have some problems with affirmative action policies, not because I don't believe that minorities don't need protection from the racist/sexist/homophobic power structure, but because the ill will seems to create more problems than are solved. Nevertheless, I had some qualms about the facts of the story. First, how did he have that kind of information? Second, I know quite well that companies can refuse to hire someone for the flimsiest of reasons. Who's to say that the official reason wasn't drugs but the "real" reason was that the hiring manager didn't want those brown fellows fiddling with his fasteners? Finally, what are the odds that ALL of those 900 black applicants failed the drug screening?

But hell, let's accept the premise. Let's assume that every single one of those 900 black applicants was actually a full-blown drug addict (ignoring the fact that you can test positive for drugs from, among other things, poppyseed cake). While neither teacher actually came out and started on about "I hate black people" or anything of that nature, the following general statements were agreed upon:
1. Black people are underrepresented in business (and the school) because they're unqualified.
2. Organizations for minorities are the most racist organizations in existence.
3. Poor black kids do not succeed in the school/workforce no matter how much help you give.

To provide another list, here are the reasons why I'm often uncomfortable discussing race and why I never said a word during this entire exchange:
1. I'm a giant white guy with the world experience of the postman from Mayberry.
2. I'm the English teacher and, therefore, filled with pie-in-the-sky impractical ideas.
3. My opinions are often derided as ludicrously naive because I'm young and haven't been properly jaded by enough bad incidents with black people.

Well, whatever. If I waited to talk about stuff until I thought I was fully qualified to do so, I'd never speak up unless someone had a bug up their ass regarding a comparative analysis of Captain Ahab's whaling ship and the hyperdrive of the Millennium Falcon. So here it goes. Here's why the lunchroom conversation pissed me off.

The two teachers seemed to be conflating cause and effect. The black people can't pass the drug tests; therefore, we're better than black people. Let's completely ignore the slew of economic conditions and media glamorization that leads young black kids to turn to drugs. Women and blacks have created their own organizations that discriminate against white men. Let's gloss over the fact that EVERY OTHER organization is pretty well dominated by white men.

It's all in how you look at it. I spent two weeks as a day-to-day substitute at the inner city high school closest to my apartment. In that school, the black students were clearly the most disruptive, the most unruly, and the most antagonistic. They seemed to have the worst grades, and they accounted for most of the security issues. That's not in dispute. It's not like there's a competing crowd saying, "Nuh uh!! It's the white kids doing all that." I don't think it's inherently racist to point out a particular racial trend. If the black kids are the ones being disruptive, that's the way it is. But a lot of people seem to put the cart before the horse here. The argument I've heard amounts to "Well, if the black kids wouldn't be so disruptive and cavalier toward their schooling, they wouldn't endure poverty, bad family lives, and drug addiction." The implication here is that black students are inherently inclined to bad behavior. But I think that this argument has it backwards. Here's how I would play it, "If we could pull the black kids out of poverty, their bad family lives, and the drug addictions, they wouldn't be so disruptive and cavalier toward their schooling."

It all comes back to economics (DISCLAIMER FROM JP: I can barely balance a checkbook so take this for what you will). Bad behavior, poor work ethic, and broken family lives are so often prevalent in households well below the poverty line. It just so happens that most poor families are black. Why are black families poor? Is it because black people inherently can't get their shit together? No, it's because white people had black people by the metaphorical balls (though sometimes the literal ones too, I'm sure) for hundreds of years. It's hard to work your way out of that. Maybe, just maybe, some of those allegations of "reverse racism" actually go a long way toward mending the inequalities that are inherent in our society and economic system.

Do minorities have to take responsibility for their own destinies? Of course. But we lovable pale males can't just sit back and pretend that black people are where they are because of their own stupid mistakes.

This lunchroom conversation weighed heavily on my mind all day, and that's always a sign that I need to write some of it down to work it out in my mind. It's incomplete, and a lot of people will probably annihilate my argument, but that's okay. This post was meant for me. It expresses my thought process about this issue at this particular time. I'm not trying to tell you how to think. I'm trying to explain how I think.

When I tell you how to think, the message will be loud and clear:
READ BLOG AND SEND JP FREE MONEY!!!

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"You see, Albert's got the right idea. He doesn't write about Negroes or Whites. He writes about robots."
"That's because he is a robot."

And Justice for Me

As told in a story that is disturbingly only three posts down even though it happened two months ago, a local asshole recently accosted me on the street, leaving me in a pool of my own blood and my own shattered ego. Fortunately, the gentleman didn't get away as he had the foresight to attack me right in front of a police officer and a paramedic. While criminal charges were not pressed against him (much to my regret after the fact), he was given a citation for disorderly conduct by the officer on the scene.

Since the incident, I've accrued almost $3,700 in medical bills thanks to what surely must have been a costly cat scan. Suffice it to say, I dearly wanted this asshole to pay for them. I managed to get in touch with the officer from that night, and he told me that I would be placed on the subpoena list for the gentleman's citation hearing should he plead not-guilty to the charges. He also told me to bring my medical bills to the hearing in the hopes that the judge would simply order him to pay my bills on the spot. I thanked him for his advice and waited to see what the asshole would do. I didn't have to wait long to find out that he was pleading not guilty.

So on Thursday morning, I traveled the sunny streets of the South Side to the district court. I'd dolled myself up to the nines - shirt, tie, black pants, gelled hair (like a felon with Magellan), and clean shoes. I was a classy motherfucker. As I walk into the waiting area, I immediately recognize the attacker sitting there. A look of panicked recognition flashes across his face that seems to say, "Oh shit! The bastard actually showed up. I'm so screwed." My attacker is dressed in an untucked gray dress shirt, green pants, and he has a mop of unkempt hair. He's also tubbier than I'd remembered. At least he shaved his beard from the last time I saw him (re: looking up from a bloody sidewalk).

We wait our turn for the judge, and we really don't have to wait long. About a dozen small cases are crammed into a single room as the judge cycles through them each in less than five minutes. Then our turn comes. My attacker looks dejected; I'm practically strutting.
JUDGE: "So we're dealing with a case of disorderly conduct. What happened here?"
The officer proceeds to provide a nicely detailed summary of the night's events (as outlined in my previous post on the matter). The judge looks at my attacker.
JUDGE: "So why did you attack this gentleman?"
ATTACKER: "Uhh... because he was holding hands with my girlfriend."
On the judge's face, a look of what I can only describe as incredulity makes an appearance.
JUDGE (with heavy sarcasm): "Oh, well that makes perfect sense. What a sane reason to beat someone on the street."
I obviously sense that the judge is on my side, and I start beaming noticeably.
OFFICER: "I believe Mr. P has medical bills here as well."
ME: "Yes I do, your honor." [Writer's Note: I didn't actually say "your honor," but in my mind, it makes me sound more like Jack McCoy]
So I hand the judge my medical bills, and he is, to say the least, appalled.
JUDGE: "Whoa! Look at these totals. Now I'm starting to think that some jail time is in order. I really don't think you've been punished accordingly."
At this stage, the judge begins a truly spectacular rant aimed at my attacker.
JUDGE: "Look, usually I understand some part of the crime. I understand a person's motives. But you just baffle me, sir! Who does this? I mean, Jesus! We live in a civilized society here. You can't just send a man to the hospital because you're jealous. Your girlfriend can hold hands with whoever she wants."
ME (butting in): "Actually it was his ex-girlfriend."
JUDGE: "Even worse!"
I was practically having a religious experience listening to this judge crush my enemy so thoroughly and righting the various wrongs of this experience. I don't know about God, but I do believe in the powers of this judge. At this point he turns to me.
JUDGE: "So what do you want out of this guy? You want his ass in jail, or you want him to pay the medical costs?"
ME: "The medical bills are most important, but the jail time would be a nice bonus."

At this point, the judge orders the attacker to pay my medical costs plus $300 for my inconvenience (a total of $4000), but he won't go to jail. His logic: if the guy goes to jail, he might lose his job. If he loses his job, he won't be able to pay the medical bills. The judge was dropping some straight Spock logic, so I couldn't disagree with that point. According to the terms laid out by Da Judge, my attacker has to pay me $500 by the end of May and then $150 every month until he pays it off. If he fails to make a payment, I contact the district office immediately, and his ass will be hauled in for contempt of court.

Added bonus: the judge issued a restraining order. He's not allowed anywhere near me. If I enter a room/building that he's in, HE has to leave. I'm tempted to start hanging around his neighborhood just to utilize this.

I left the courtroom feeling more self-satisfied than I have in a long time. This was also the only real legal victory I've ever achieved in my life, counteracting the laughably pathetic incidents involving my speeding tickets. This incident restored my faith in the American legal system - or at least in the idea of karmic justice. I was wronged by a man, and I couldn't have gotten more justice if Jack McCoy and Matlock had forced it down my throat.

So the story has a happy ending folks. My enemy has been vanquished, justice has been served, and money dollars have been awarded to me. I'm mildly suspicious that all of this good fortune only portends some sort of major disaster in the near future to balance out the scales, but that's something to worry about later. For right now, I intend to bask in the glory of my success for as long as possible.

Maybe I should call my attacker's ex-girlfriend and sleep with her just to rub salt in his wound... Nah, she's probably got three other ex-boyfriends who enjoy stabbing, shooting, and bone-crushing in their free time. I'll rest on my laurels, thank you very much.

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"Justice is a by-product of winning." -- Executive ADA Jack McCoy
(a bittersweet quote given the announcement that the original Law & Order has been canceled after 20 years on the air)

Job Search: Redux

So here we go again... round two.

Two years ago, my job search commenced. I scoured the want ads, Monster.com, websites, internet forums, and hobos on the street to find an English-related job in the corporate world. 90 job applications and 90 job rejections later, I gave up and returned to school to get my teaching certification for secondary English education. Now the day has returned. The moment of dread is upon me again.

It's time to do the job search once more.

The last time, I was casting my net wide - craning my neck to find any job under the sun that might accept an English major. Editorial assistants, proofreaders, tech writers, composition instructors, college Registrars, legal assistants, or anyone that sought the highly prized and financially valuable services of someone with a Masters in English. As expected, this search proved laughably futile. This is partially due to my own stupidity (as illustrated in glorious despair HERE) but can be mostly attributed to the simple fact that sarcastic but gorgeous English majors are a dime a dozen (a figure, incidentally, that English majors would be notoriously poor at calculating).

This time I have a more focused approach since I'm only looking for teaching positions. I've already applied to positions at two school districts and I've got four more on my To-Do List. While I'm waiting on long-term stuff, I've applied to substitute at my former student teaching site and my local school district (Woodland Hills). More stories to follow regarding my adventures as a day-to-day substitute at one of the more troublesome districts in the county.

Searching for teaching jobs bears almost no resemblance to the search for corporate jobs. For one thing, if I were willing to travel south, I'd have a job in a heartbeat; however, I'm terrified of living in a locale that's infested with scorpions, killer bees, alligators, giant flying cockroaches, and swarms of snakes. That eliminates most of the south. Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and of course the great state of West Virginia are still on my radar, but my primary focus is on Western Pennsylvania, and the PA job search is its own fickle mistress. For the uninitiated, almost every district in the state subscribes to a web service called "PA Educator." The districts post their job openings, and every teacher in the state signs up for the service. Then the educators use the site to filter out the teachers they want for the position.

On the one hand, this is sort of a relief. The employers are taking it upon themselves to seek me out. That makes me feel good. On the other hand, I feel like a powerless peon with no hope of helping myself. Nevertheless, I've learned from my year of failed job searching. I'm being much more proactive this time around. PA Educator can't stop me from sending in a very thoughtful and focused letter of interest. Their ridiculous search filter won't keep me from calling the school to make a favorable impression. And really, even without all of that, having a Masters in English certainly sounds impressive when you're looking for an English teacher... or at least I hope it does. Hell, the law of averages figures that SOMEONE must be impressed by it.

Don't let anyone kid you: teaching jobs are hard to come by. Even though openings are plentiful, there are thousands of applicants interested in the same jobs as me. I've got a tremendous amount of competition, and many of them don't have a dark cloud of misfortune hanging over their heads, and they're capable of speaking a sentence without saying something incredibly stupid or insensitive.

Interesting positive side: apparently the fact that I'm male and huge is a big bonus. That intimidation factor is important to a lot of schools. Of course, being judged on my looks and my gender makes me feel like a cheap piece of meat... which is AWESOME!!! School districts, you have my permission to hire me for the most superficial and demeaning reasons imaginable. As long as the money-dollars are forthcoming, my ego will be beaten into submission through sheer force of will and daily shots of tequila.

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"I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs, alcohol and insanity to everyone... but they've always worked for me."

A Message to My Loyal Readers

Captain Picard will tell you where you can stick your complaints about the lack of updates.

My student teaching is over. My grad classes are almost over. My brain has almost returned to its normal levels of apathy. Give me a moment to catch my breath, and I promise to return with the yuk-yuks.

And why don't you folks comment more?? Jeez, give me some goddamn positive reinforcement when I'm writing well.

And make a life-sized gold statue of me and mail it in. Is that too much to ask?

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"Ha ha HA!! Mine is an evil laugh... now DIE!"

I Pity the April Fool

Go ahead, JP! You should hit on that girl at the bar. What's the worst that could happen?

Gather round, readers. I'm going to explain the definition of the term "worst case scenario."

April 1, 2010 - 6:30 pm
My Pitt class ended early on Thursday night, so my fellow English teachers in training grab a drink at a nearby bar. We're in high spirits (and enjoying spirits, as well) as we look forward to the brief holiday break.

April 1, 2010 - 8:00 pm
Most of the crowd leaves after an hour and a half, but one other guy and I decide to head off to a different bar for a little while. The week had been a long and difficult one, so I was happy to relax at a watering hole and enjoy myself. We spend a great deal of time discussing the trials of the single life and the various idiosyncrasies of our ex-girlfriends.

April 1, 2010 - 9:00 pm
As the night wears on, we start to chat it up with some cute girls sitting next to us at the bar. Because I'm not actually TRYING to impress this girl, I manage to impress her and we get along really well. The night seems very pleasant at this point, and I'm getting a nice drink on.

April 1, 2010 - 10:00 pm
The girl I'm hitting on (Let's call her Sue... not her real name) gets a text message. Sue appears visibly annoyed, and she says, "God! Why can't my ex-boyfriend take a hint." Having hacked my way through my own field of troubled women, I could understand her troubles. We joked about clingy exes for a few minutes.

April 1, 2010 - 11:00 pm
I come back from a bathroom break (remember, booze be tasty) to hear Sue finishing a conversation on the phone, "I'm in Oakland. I don't want to see you. Leave me alone." I should have sniffed out a possible bad situation brewing, but my mind was elsewhere. Booze be tasty... and her curves appealing.

April 2, 2010 - 12:00 am
My friend who I started the night with decides to call it a day. I don't think he was a huge fan of the other girl, so I understand. I decide I better stop drinking if I hope to do well with this woman tonight, and I do somehow need to get my car out of the parking garage.

April 2, 2010 - 1:00 am
The lady friend and I begin to discuss what we'll do once we leave the bar. Suggestive comments and knowing glances abound. In my mind, I'm thinking, "Shazaam!!!"

April 2, 2010 - 2:00 am
I offer the lady friend and her friend a ride home. I'm not pretty sober, feeling only that slight after-drunk that happens when you've only been drinking water for 2 hours. We almost make it back to the parking garage when I realize, "Oh crap! I left my bookbag back at the bar."

April 2, 2010 - 2:15 am
We trudge back to the bar and retrieve my stylish bookbag. We head back to the car once again. While strolling casually down Forbes Avenue, I'm holding the girl's hand and joking with her when I feel a jolt to the side of my head and I fall to the ground. Thoroughly confused, I look up to see this wild-eyed 20-something punching and kicking me. "This is a mistake!" I yell. "I didn't do anything to you." I hear the attacking lunatic yelling to the girl I was with, "Why are you holding hands with HIM!!??"

April 2, 2010 - 2:20 am
I rest my head on the concrete, and a few passersby help me sit up. In an instant, a police officer and paramedic are on the scene. In Oakland, they know better than to leave college students to their own devices. I look down at the sidewalk to see a surprisingly sizable pool of blood. "Oh wow!" I say, somewhat disoriented. "What the hell happened?"
"Dude! I saw the whole thing," says one of the Samaritans. "That asshole just stopped his car in the middle of the street, leaped out, and he punched you in the side of the head."
"Yeah," his friend chimes in, "The punch knocked you into that pillar there. I think it knocked you out for a second."
"The asshole kept hitting him and kicking him even when he was down," the first guy says, now speaking to the police officer. "That's just not cool."
Now from my perspective, I don't really think any of it is cool. Well, that's not entirely true. I did ask the bystanders, "Do the injuries at least make me look badass?" This apparently amuses them greatly. The paramedic checks me out for immediate injuries. He throws a bandage over my eyebrow (which was bleeding profusely) and puts me in a neck brace (which was soon reasoned to be unnecessary).

April 2, 2010 - 2:30 am
I start to get my bearings a bit, and I look up to see four bystanders, a police officer, a paramedic, and some bearded gentleman apologizing profusely to me. "I'm so sorry, man! I don't know why I did that. I was just so mad." I suddenly realize who this guy is. "Wait! You're the guy who attacked me!!??" All the pieces start to fall into place. Clearly, this guy is the girl's psycho ex-boyfriend. Someone is obviously the jealous type. I look around for the girl to get some confirmation on this, but she's nowhere to be found. I find out later that her friend dragged her away after the police told them to leave.

April 2, 2010 - 2:35 am
After the paramedic patches me up, the police officer takes me aside and asks, "Would you like to press formal charges against this guy?" I mull it over, but I'm still woozy and not in the best of moods. "I don't know," I honestly say. "Well," the officer explains, "If you press charges, you have to show up for trial and fill out the necessary paperwork. He'll most likely be charged with disorderly conduct." In retrospect, I don't think the cop wanted to do the paperwork. But all I want at this time is to get fixed up and go home, so I tell him that I don't want to press formal charges. He'll be taken in and given a citation. More on this point later.

April 2, 2010 - 2:45 am
Because I have an obvious head injury, the paramedic insists that I go to the emergency. The four guys who saw the incident offer to walk me to the ER (which is only a block away) so that my uninsured ass won't have to pay for an ambulance, but the paramedic offers to take me there for free since he's heading back there anyway.

April 2, 2010 - 3:00 am
For the next two and a half hours, I regale the emergency room staff with my tale, and I muse about the unfortunate nature of these circumstances. "My friends always tell me to hit on women. 'What's the worst that could happen?' they say. Well, now I have Exhibit A." I tell the ER doctor how much I was hoping to get my ass beaten down by a lunatic while on my way to a girl's house. The doctor agreed that this was about the worst cock block he'd ever heard of.

April 2, 2010 - 4:00 am
Injuries sustained: The blow to my forehead put a deep cut in my eyebrow, and I had a huge lump there. The doctors give me a stitch or two in my eyebrow. My knees were skinned VERY badly. My back and neck hurt, but there was no major damage there. The doctors were very concerned about a concussion or brain injury, so they performed a cat scan. Once again, I will stress that I am one of the uninsured masses, so none of this comes cheap. The cat scan, in particular, really racks up the cost.
April 2, 2010 - 5:30 am
I am released from the ER. It's now been 24 hours since I've had any sleep (aside from a few brief naps in the ER), my knees are oozing blood, my head is throbbing, and I've got stitches in my face. I didn't get laid, I have no jacket, and my shorts are stained with blood. I'm hobbling along the street like a distempered hobo. I'm feeling like absolute shit, and I want to go home. I make my way to the parking garage where I left my car the previous night only to discover.... THE GARAGE IS CLOSED!! There may, in fact, be a God. But if there is, he's certainly a malevolent being who is out to get me. I bang on the gate of the garage, and a guy comes out. He tells me that he can't open the garage until 6am. So I have to sit out in the dark for a half hour nursing my wounds. I have time to reflect on the night's events, and my reaction is one of surprising calm. More than anything, the entire incident seems so bizarre, unlikely, and brimming with irony that I start to laugh.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

This incident just completely cemented my place as the unluckiest man in love. I can't even pick up a random girl at a bar without inviting insanity to follow me home and introduce my face to a concrete pillar. Even a one night stand ends in disaster now. Instead of getting laid, I got laid out.

Now that a few days have passed, my wounds have mostly healed. My brother thought I looked rather badass with my eyebrow scar, though I thought it made me look like Quasimodo. My knees still hurt because of the scrapes, but at least the pain is relatively manageable.

I have no real desire to press criminal charges against this aggressive asshole because I don't need the headaches of trial dates, filing police forms, and possibly even hiring an attorney. What is very important to me is that I manage to get this jackass to pay my emergency room bills. I'm expecting my fees to rack up into the thousands, and I'll be damned if my family and me are going to shell out that kind of cash just because this lunatic can't understand when a relationship is over. So now I'm in the process of finding out what I need to do to file a civil case for the cost of my medical bills. Nothing allows me to channel the spirit of Jack McCoy quite like filing a lawsuit in small claims court.

The day after the incident, the girl from the bar texted me. I'd forgotten that she'd obtained my cell phone number that night. She apologized profusely for the incident, and she said that her ex-boyfriend had never done anything like that before. She told me what a great guy I am (not news to me), and that she really wants to see me again.

Now, I'm all about the easy pickings, but really, there are plenty of nice girls out there. I don't need to pursue the one that has a psychotic ex-boyfriend who may attempt to stab me in the kidney whenever we go out on a date. Really, with my history of women, I can usually expect the woman to be the one who's going to beat me up. Adding in deadly baggage is just pushing the limits of my pain threshold.

So there you have it, friends. The epic tale of my night of misfortune. And after all of these hardships and trials, I've learned my real lesson:
Never escort a woman down the street after 2am. Just have sex with her in the alley.

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"You'd shoot a man in the back?"
"It's the safest way, isn't it?"