"You're a motherfucker!"
That's what I found on my voicemail the other morning — before my coffee, before my daily dropper full of B-12, before my head was prepared for such brutal language. Waking up to a fresh voicemail is a source of fear, especially for me, because I usually stay up very late. If I miss a call at night, there's a good chance something crazy occurred during that dangerous period of early morning darkness when people get pulled over and shackled and ruin their lives while having a bit too much fun.
I recognized the voice. It was my best buddy, a roughneck construction worker I've known and raised hell with since the sixth grade. He's the same bastard who threw firecrackers at me while I was passed out on a sofa. That was during our wild college years, when we shared an apartment that had an entertainment center made of unfinished wooden planks and stolen cinder blocks. The indoor fireworks incident took place midway through a three- or four-day Fourth of July bender that also involved blasting bottle rockets from our back porch at our cute neighbor Liz's place and then at each other while running around a golf course.
Anyway, my pal sounded pretty pissed on my voicemail. "Yeah, I blew a tire on the truck on my way home, motherfucker. I'm in the ghetto. Waiting for Triple A to tow it. A [man] just rode past me on his bike and jumped into the bushes because there is four cop cars chasing him." The missed call was from 12:02 a.m. I hadn't heard it. I'd passed out by then. Or maybe just hadn't heard my cell phone buzzing. Truth be told, even if I had noticed it, I would have told my buddy there's wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. It wasn't my fault he got drunk and drove his big-ass redneck truck into a steep curb and blew a tire. I was too tanked to drive over and comfort him while he tried to make friends in the 'hood.
"Hey, you pussy, I'm driving down Howard, I'm stopping by for a beer." That was the message I'd received from my buddy earlier, around 10 p.m. that same night. At the time, I was halfway through a cheap but tasty bottle of white wine from Australia. I'd just finished some writing and was getting ready to curl up on the couch and put on an old Peter Boyle flick called Joe (it sucked) that had arrived that afternoon via Netflix. My rule is to not go out at all — no after-work beer, nothing — Monday through Wednesday. But my buddy had tied one on at the Yankees game and decided to take a slight detour through SoHo before returning to his wife, their two young children and the lovely two-story home they all share in Seminole Heights. I missed his first call because I was in the kitchen pouring myself another fat glass of wine. I called him back.
"I passed your place, but I'm turning around, I'll be over in three minutes," he barked.
What the hell? I met him downstairs on Albany and we trotted in the direction of The Dubliner. I walked with a bottle of Miller High Life in hand — The Champagne of Bottled Beers — almost right past a police officer busy ticketing some poor soul who'd parked too close to an alleyway entrance. "Whoa, watch it over there," my buddy said. I casually pressed my beverage against my leg and waited until we'd passed the lawman and turned onto DeLeon, where I guzzled the rest of my beer, or almost the rest of it.
A guy younger than us outside Dubliner demanded we show identification. That cracked up my buddy. The pub was awfully crowded and I recognized a dude there from junior high school, standing by himself at the bar, who had managed to kick my ass during an eighth-grade locker-room brawl. I was afraid of getting a bit too loaded and trying to do something stupid to even the score from 16 years ago. By the time the third person in five minutes bumped into me, splashing my plastic tub of Bass all over my jeans, I was more than ready to split.
We downed our pints and walked over to the less crowded MacDinton's, had a round and watched some dude bravely approach a tabletop of coeds and throw a little game. He was still trying to score digits or maybe just save face — his friends were probably watching — when we left and walked back to my place. We had another beer and gossiped about old acquaintances. Then it was time for my buddy to head home.
"You all right to drive?" I asked.
"Yeah, man," he replied.
And then I plopped down on my bed, turned up some Lou Reed and passed out. The next morning, I found the ugly voicemail. We talked later. He got over it.
This article appears in Apr 25 – May 1, 2007.