They call New York "the city that never sleeps," but to be honest I think that title belongs to Seoul. In Seoul you can drink for days without worrying about such a silly thing as laws, or closing hours. Well, I spend a year in Seoul and then I go back to NYC expecting to find the same rhythm. Turns out that in NYC there's no one serving alcohol after 4am. No one respectable, that is.
After a month of that nonsense and fascism-imposed drinking hours, I decide to join my Brazilian buddy Pablo to a party in the Bronx. Now, I survived the Bronx and made it to Yale by being smart enough to know that it's best not to party in the Bronx, but again, Seoul happened, and Seoul has a way of making you forget that the world will eat you up at any chance possible.
And true enough, 4am came and the nightclub that we were at just felt like any of the other ghetto establishments in Itaewon, luring me into a false sense of complacency, and making me want more. My buddy tells me that he knows of this place near Hunts Point that serves everything up to Dominican moonshine. I should have known that walking down into that basement was a bad idea the minute a sex worker jumped on the hood of our gypsy cab. The Dominican driver shouted: "'tú 'tá loca cuero del diablo!?" and managed to shake her off. We didn't get a good look at her face, but she was wearing a small leopard blouse with fishnets.
My buddy joked: "hey, he shouldn't have shaken her off, I wanted some discount ass."
Then we walk to the entrance, and some creepy Puerto Rican guy comes out asking us why we were trying to entrap him. "This is just a gathering between friends, officers. If you don't have warrants or if you're not friends with one of the residents, I can't let you in."
My buddy says: "I was here for the party of Neno last month, you don't remember me?"
It was pretty apparent that the Puerto Rican guy didn't recognize Pablo, but he gave him a hug and welcomed him to the "house" party. We walked in and that shit was pumping; motherfuckers were digging into each other right there in the corner of the dance floor. We order some Dominican moonshine, like a gallon of shit that makes nutcracker look weak, and I'm not exactly sure of much after that, but then we saw that sex worker that had jumped on our taxi and Pablo goes over to fondle her. In a rage, a short Nicaraguan comes out of nowhere and stabs him in the leg.
I run over, drop kick the Nicaraguan, sending him tumbling half-way down the dance floor, and grab my buddy. Three legs are not better than two -- or four -- but next thing we know we're half-way down the block, and we bump into the hooker that had jumped on our taxi. Turns out that my buddy got confused and fondled some short Nicaraguan's girlfriend.
Nonetheless, he never admits that he was really stabbed by a short Nicaraguan. He still insists that he was stabbed by a pimp, and that the other guy looked much worse than him. He could be right, but moonshine happens.
