So it’s no wonder that I return to Mick-Daniel’s so often when I go home. I met my buddies Jimmy the Muppet and David there on this wintry night. Our intention was to take it easy—both Jimmy and David were hungover from the night before—but that plan went out the window around beer number 3. Then came beer number 4. Then beer number 6. Then beer number, um, 9? Then…sooner than we expected, the lights of the bar abruptly came on, signifying the end of the night. With many of the other patrons, we filed out of the bar on our way to the Oregon Diner, a twenty-four-hour place a few blocks away. It’s not an unfamiliar scene to see groups of young people pouring out of the local bars at closing time, walking in formation to the diner, looking for a nightcap in the form of an open-face turkey sandwich or giant piece of apple pie.
I don’t recall what food I went with that night. I usually start my postdrinking sober-up meal with French onion soup, then it’s on to any combination of chicken fingers, broccoli bites, nachos, corn dogs, and pretty much any other food that will weaken my heart and/or colon. Whatever it was, the meal was quickly devoured as the three of us gulped it down like we were refugees. Soon we were tumbling back through the neighborhood to our homes, this time much more quietly, our drunken exuberance quelled by cheese, starch, and grease. Jimmy and David said good-bye and left me at the corner of my dad’s street. I let myself in his house, grabbed his truck keys, and headed back out. It was time to go hunting.
[It’s at this point that we must stop again to clear something up. Yes, I was drunk on this night. I would even say that yes, maybe I was even very drunk at certain points of the night. But I’ve found over the years that nothing sobers you up like a bowl of soup, a pound and a half of nachos, and four Sprites, so that by the time I started driving around, I was on the road to sobriety. Besides, what’s the difference anyway? What are you—a fucking cop?]
Finding a parking spot is very difficult in my neighborhood, as it is in many cities. On the weekends, local public schools allow residents to park in their schoolyards to ease the burden of finding a spot. It was from one of these schoolyards that I took my dad’s truck that night and started my drive.
The route was familiar to me by now, having been hooker hunting a dozen or so times before. Up Ritner to Broad, down Broad to Race, then making circles around the Center City area. One thing I picked up on these drives that I never before noticed about my hometown is how quickly and dramatically the streets of Philly can change. On one block, you’ll find million-dollar town houses occupied by professionals, but three blocks north you’ll drive by the same run-down houses that make nightly appearances on the news as crime scenes. I can offer no explanation for this, because, personally, if I’m dropping that much on a house, you’d better believe that the son of a bitch is going to have a pool and nary a crackhead within a twenty-mile radius. But this sudden and abrupt deterioration, I surmise, makes things easier for the working girls. You’ll find them on the outskirts, or rather the inskirts, those blocks just within the nicer neighborhoods, hawking their wares. This is convenient. If they want, they can retreat into the sketchier parts of the neighborhood, but by stationing themselves on the nicer blocks their johns don’t have to drive into the more dangerous areas.
What always surprises me is how normal the whole process appears. As I drove around and watched the girls casually stroll up to cars for a chat, I couldn’t help but thinking, “Where are all the cops?” The girl will never get into the car right there, but instead instruct the driver to drive to a less crowded area and that’s it. Simple, like two friends meeting up for a drive to the mall, not two strangers about to have sex for money.
I kept going in circles, checking out the scene, driving up, down, and around the streets of Center City Philadelphia. I’m not sure what compels me to do this. I have never been with a prostitute and am pretty sure I never will be. The combination of my Catholic guilt, my fear of disease, and probably most important, the potential embarrassment of getting caught will preclude me from such behavior for the rest of my life.* So it’s not a sexual thing for me. It’s more like the opposite of sexual, really; a morbid curiosity, a dark fascination. It’s like watching a real live crime show on TV, but right before your eyes. I didn’t stick around for too long—I usually don’t—and after a few minutes and a couple of loops, I was on my way back home. The initial appeal wears off pretty quickly, especially since a friend had recently pointed out that police are supposed to patrol high-vice areas. Even though I’m usually sober by this point, or at least getting close to it, I think getting a DUI in an area known for prostitution might put my mother in a mental hospital. So I drove back home.
I took Broad Street south, making a left on Wolf Street. Driving down Wolf Street to Second Street, I’ll come upon another night crawler, the junkie whore. You can catch them scurrying about the streets, an often terrifying spectacle, darting between parked cars and out into the street like stray cats. They are cracked-out women looking worse for the wear, aging a year for every month they use. Around the park between Sixth and Seventh streets, some of the junkies, when they see the truck coming down the street at 5 A.M., will come out of the darkness of the park or rush from their stoops onto the sidewalk and motion to the truck I’m driving, giving the universal mouth-hand sign for blow job, making clear in no uncertain terms that they’re willing to offer sexual favors in exchange for cash or a fix. But I have neither, and consider myself just a spectator catching a half-drunk glimpse into the underside of urban nighttime. I was done for the night, tired, and I was going home. Also, getting a blow job from a junkie at 5 A.M. in your dad’s truck, no matter how cool it may sound on paper, is just not a good idea. You know, so I’ve heard.
I started to grow precipitously tired on the drive home, but I was mere blocks away. As my eyelids grew heavier, I tightened my grip on the wheel and turned up the radio. Fortunately, the same spot I had vacated in the schoolyard a half hour before was open, so I pulled in. Had it been occupied, I could have parked somewhere else. I wasn’t worried about my dad seeing that his truck had been moved. He’s a late and heavy sleeper and I’m the opposite, so since I wake up before him I could always say that I took it in the morning out of the previous night’s spot. Not a big deal.
I hastily pulled into the spot, shut the car off, and sat. I needed a minute before I went in. It was cold out, but the truck was nice and cozy. I just wanted one second to sit there and relax before I went in the house. So I sat back, took a deep breath, and closed my eyes.
When I woke up, at least an hour or two later, the sun was out. I was freezing. The windows had frosted over with my hot breath. I couldn’t feel my nose, fingers, or toes. I could feel the cold deep, deep in my bones. As soon as I came to, my teeth started chattering uncontrollably. I didn’t know what time it was. I knew only that it was really fucking cold and I really needed a bed. I left the truck, stumbled my way across the schoolyard, and made my way to my dad’s house. The streets were still empty. After letting myself in, I stayed in the clothes I was wearing and bundled myself under the blankets and…curtain.
I awoke to a loud bang on the bedroom door. Not overly aggressive, but loud, assertive. It was my dad, calling my name and telling me to get up. I stretched and managed a meek “Hold on” as I kicked off my sneakers and took off my fleece to make it seem like I had a seminormal end to the night. When I opened the door, my dad had his back to me and was walking downstairs to the living room. I waited, curious, and then followed him as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
He sat down gingerly on his couch. In 2001, when he was forty-six, my dad got hurt at work. He now has four fused and six herniated vertebrae in his back and neck. Because of these injuries he’s constantly in pain, but it’s worse in the mornings. It takes him a good four hours, two pots of coffee, and his regimen of painkillers before he’s able to leave the house to do anything productive.
“How was last night?” he asked me. His eyes were focused on the TV as he sipped his coffee.
“Good” was my reply. I knew he didn’t want details and I didn’t feel like going into them because I wanted to know what this wake-up call was all about. My mind was racing. Does he know that I took the truck? Did I hit something? Is it fucked up at all?
He leaned to one side in his chair and from his pocket pulled out the keys to his truck and threw them on the table between us.
Silence.
I waited, confused. He smoked.
He spoke, not turning from the television, “I went out to the truck this morning to get a pack of smokes and found these. In the ignition. With the lights on.”
I froze.
He turned to look at me, finally, and through the cigarette smoke said, “Don’t do that again.”
At that moment, I gave up hooker hunting. I’d had a good run, but it was time.
Acknowledgments
This book would not be possible without the help of several wonderful, talented, patient, and forgiving people (with special emphasis on those last two). Rakesh Satyal was given a series of run-on sentences and poop jokes and made it—dare I say—beautiful. Brian Saliba took a chance and (I hope) was rewarded. Likewise, Erin Malone and Joel Begleiter put their careers and quite possibly their lives on the line; I thank them for their loyalty, which I could not repay in a thousand lifetimes or two thousand beers (I am, however, contractually obligated to mention that they are the most attractive agents in the world).
My family was somewhat important in this process, providing me with ammunition—I mean, with research and background information—as well as pictures. Particular thanks go to John and Maureen Dawson. If it were not for their beach house, the cold of winter, and the good people who make Guinness, this project wouldn’t have gotten past page three and I would likely be living out of my car right now.
Brendan Caffrey is a mad genius who has always made me look good, and Tina Concha and Danielle Del Vecchio literally helped me put this together. Thanks to many other friends who read and commented on various drafts, even if their comments were along the lines of “Are you serious with this? Like, this is what you want to hand in?”
Lastly, thanks and thanks galore to my mom Kathleen, dad Dennis, brother Dennis, and sister Megan. If you are reading this and are still speaking to me, we did good. If you are reading this, are still speaking to me, and are wearing really expensive jewelry and jetpacks, we did real good.
About the Author
JASON MULGREW is a self-proclaimed “Internet Quasi-Celebrity” whose blog, Everything Is Wrong with Me: 30, Bipolar and Hungry, has received more than 200 million hits since its inception. Originally from Philadelphia, he now lives in New York City, where he works for a white-shoe law firm that tolerates his blue-collar ways.
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Credits
Cover design by Milan Bozic
Cover photograph courtesy of the author
Copyright
The names and identifying characteristics of some of the individuals featured throughout this book have been changed to protect their privacy.
All photographs throughout are courtesy of the author unless otherwise stated.
EVERYTHING IS WRONG WITH ME. Copyright © 2010 by Jason Mulgrew. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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* That’s Danish for “ham.” It will also be the name of my next pet.
** England, France, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Holland, if you’re keeping score at home.
* Really, sex for me nowadays is the rough equivalent of sticking a wet dishrag into a shotglass.
* Well, maybe a little.
* Although I did once kiss a half-Filipina girl, so I’m pretty in tune with Asian culture. It was actually sort of a force-kiss, but, again, semantics.
* To this day, I’m not exactly sure what longshoremen do. I think it has something to do with taking cargo from ships that come into port on the Delaware River and putting half that cargo in warehouses and selling the other half to your friends on the cheap. Also, there is a lot of cursing, napping, drinking on the job, and complaining about your wife involved. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s the basic gist of it.
* Whether this is because North Wildwood had more bars per square mile than any other shore town in New Jersey is unknown, but presumed.
* Albeit an angel with a juvenile criminal record.
* My father would not get his first legal license until he was twenty-nine, despite driving a truck part-time for four years in his twenties. Don’t ask, because I don’t know.
* When I first started hearing this story, it was twenty years of practice. Soon it became twenty-five. Recently, I’ve heard it as high as thirty-five. By the time my children hear this story, the doctor will have been 110 years old with eighty years of experience under his belt and possibly there will be a shaman involved.
* Still am.
* It is for this reason that I have always taken the longest and hottest showers in the world. As a child I woke up every winter morning with my teeth chattering, so I relished those early morning steaming showers as a chance to raise my body temperature from “deceased for five days in the Scandinavian winter” to “just about alive, I suppose.” Even though I occasionally up the thermostat to over 60 degrees in my own apartment, I still take showers hot enough to seriously wound another human being. Sadly, I know this from experience, as a naughty shower moment with an ex-girlfriend took an unfortunate turn because of my preferred water temperature (that’s all I can say about the incident at this point because of pending legal action).
* God, I wish this weren’t true. I don’t know how many six- or eight- or ten-year-olds try to accessorize their face paint with their eyes, but I can’t imagine that it’s a large number. And I imagine most that do so end up in an off-Broadway production or on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Which means I’m about par for the course.
* This was an easy way to tell who was from the neighborhood and who wasn’t. Everyone who lived there called it “Second Street,” whereas outsiders referred to it as “Two Street.” This is sort of like how a real Philadelphian would always say “cheesesteak” and never use “steak and cheese.”
* This is true.
** This is also true.
*** This is a lie—at least the Carlo Rossi part is (I think).
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