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December 03, 2004

Diary of a Stoop Night

Somebody alerted the cops to Stoop Night. Someone had to have done so. As soon as Emma and I threw our stoop pillows (which are not signs of weakness, but rather tools of the trade required for all professional stoop drinkers) on the stoop the cops came down the street. I didn't even have my 40 of Mickey's malt liquor open yet, I had just sat down, when the squad car stopped in front of my house and one of the officers inside yelled out,"Do you live there?"
Yes.
Prove it. (There is some contention about what was actually said or unsaid by the police officer at this point. I go with the "prove it" version, Emma goes with the very mean and intimidating, but no actual word spoken version.)
So I got up, opened the door, and left Emma on the stoop. Or that was my intent anyway. To go inside to prove that it was my house, but the officer said something to the effect of: "I believe you" (at this point no one really cared what he had to say), then drove away.
Still, he came down the street a couple more times, each time making me a little nervous because I had my forty concealed in tin foil, not the usual paper bag, and I was a little unsure of tin foil's effectiveness at camouflaging open containers. (The store was out of paper bags.)
I'm not sure the tin foil really mattered, however, because Emma (who wasn't even drinking a forty, but drank a bottle of spumanti instead) was the only one with a bottle properly concealed in a bag. The others that showed up later opted for naked forties and nothing happened to them.

Of course, we had a stoop night newbie in the crowd and eventually moved inside (I know I just made it sound like he couldn't hack it on the cold stoop, and while that is not the case I'm going to give that impression because that makes it sound like we're really tough for being out there to start with).

Unfortunately during our time on the stoop there was a relative lack of crazy going on in the neighborhood. Petey, the little junkie that lives with his brother, "the bikesmith," and their mom came by and did not try to sell anything for $10 as he usually does. Another junkie that walked by sporting a black eye simply grunted. And it wasn't until well after he passed that I was overwhelmed by the smell of human excrement. Actually, the most character that I can remember, besides my friends, who are all characters, was the guy with the gold teeth and tear drop tattoo under his eye that walked by and wished us all "peace" while flashing us a distinctly non-traditional peace sign.

Stoop Night wandered itself inside where I innundated everyone with a drunken shuffling of various compact disks and the newbie called his parents to find out what his religion was. He swore to us that he was Charismatic and we all told him that he was decidedly not charismatic, so when his step dad answered he went into it right away, "Dad, what religion are we?"
Luckily he had some sort of mobile/speaker phone so we could all hear. "Evangelical."
I thought we were Charismatic. That's a religion, right?
Yeah, we used to be Charismatic, but the pastor was too dicatorial, so we moved over to the church we're at now.
They're similar though, right?
Yeah, Charismatics believe a little more in healing ...
And speaking in tongues?
Yeah, they belive in speaking in tongues.
So do we? We believe in speaking in tongues too, right?
Oh, yeah.
That was said in the most matter of fact voice that the table, including the newbie, who actually had nothing to do with the religion of his mother and step father, burst into laughter.
Then the newbie, apparently trying to keep his step father from finding out that he and his tongue speaking was the butt of a drunken table's joke, turned off the speaker phone.

There went the excitement.
We all headed down to the corner lesbian bar (now known by its acronym PITS) to try to find it again.

There we drank cheap (and occassionally free) beers and searched the juke box long and hard to find decent music.
"Britanny Spears. Mellisa Etheridge. Britanny. Creed. There's nothing good on here... Oh, it won't even take my dollar anyway."
"Get outta the way, she only responds to the lesbian touch." I was shoved away from the juke box.

Eventually we found something to play. The selections ran out shortly before closing time: around the time the drunk old (bankrupt) millionaire at the end of the bar that tried fondling everyone started getting angry with us because, well...because he was the drunk old (bankrupt) millionaire at the end of the bar that tried fondling everyone.
"I thought this was a gay bar. Why are there so many damn straight people in here? They shouldn't be in here."

Since it was about closing time and the old man was about to go to blows with Rachel Stoop Night ajourned.

Posted by calculatoronfire at December 3, 2004 12:09 PM

Comments

Wow. That is some wholesome neighborhood bonding. Much more exciting than my neighborhood. We simply nodd at each other when we all go out to move our cars before 7:30 a.m.

Posted by: Fate's Fool at December 3, 2004 03:56 PM