A friend of mine once asked me what I did over the weekend. This was in NYC and I was working in a warehouse in mid-town. I didn’t want to tell him that nothing happened, so I spun this yarn…
So there I was, minding my own business, when I ran into some friends of mine. We started hanging out, doing this, doing that. We hit several bars, went down to the village, hit a few more bars. We watched a guy fall over a flower stand and the owner threaten him, making him flinch on the ground. That was funny. We watched an argument between two gay guys. That was hysterical. We kept moving around, stopping to drink every here and there, mostly moving south through Manhattan.
At some point I must have blacked out or passed out, I don’t know which. When I came to I was on the Staten Island Ferry, alone. I looked around and couldn’t figure out where my friends were or how I got there. When we pulled into port I found out that was the last ferry of the night, at 3am. I would have to wait until 6am for the next one. And they were closing the terminal, so I couldn’t wait there. So I’m thinking just great. Now what do I do? Still half drunk and in a borough I’ve never been. So I leave the terminal and go for a walk.
I try to keep the walk simple so that I can find my way back nut that didn’t work out too well. So now I’m lost and still have some time to kill. I walk down this block and there are these guys hanging out on the stoop of their building, like three of them. I keep my head down, hoping they’ll pay me no mind, but tonight is not my night. One of them calls me, I try to play it off, yeah, hi, gotta go, but they’re not having it. So now they’re chasing me. I run down one block, turn a corner and as luck would have it there’s a truck parked right off of the corner. I didn’t even think about it, I jumped onto the bumper, onto the hood, I roll onto the roof and get real quiet. I hear the guys round the corner and run up, but they don’t go far after realizing they lost me. I’m thinking they’ll lose interest, but no, they start looking around. I can hear them moving around, and I’m just being as quiet as possible…
At this point I look at my friend who’s seriously inhaling this story. His eyes are wide and it looks like he’s holding his breath. I mean he was seriously invested to the outcome of the story. I say to him, “Dude, I was kidding. I didn’t do all that.” He goes “What!!!” And now he’s chasing ME through the warehouse, calling me names. That was so funny. I didn’t expect him to be so focused. I guess that’s story telling for ya’.
Arid Testimony 