Pabst goes to Coney Island

It was Veteran’s Day weekend, November of 2019, and I had been living in New York City since March. In that time, from the first week of March to the second week of November my cat died, I broke my two front teeth, and I had failed to quit drinking three times. The last failed attempt was in September when I made it thirteen days because I started gambling to distract myself. You lose enough hands at poker drinking starts looking like a 401K. I moved to New York to continue pursuing stand-up comedy and had tried in vain to get booked at this show or that show, and like sobering up was failing miserably.

It is not always about how funny you are in the beginning; it is about who you know, and I knew only a couple of people who in turn did not know many others. The person I could rely on to introduce me to the right people was flying on cocaine most of the time, and when he was not, he was stealing my cigarettes. That all changed in October when I got an email telling me that I was selected to perform at the Coney Island comedy festival the next month. I forgot I had applied. I was ecstatic.

That weekend I got off work in Queens and headed to Coney Island, not knowing how long it would take to get there. Coney Island in the bitter cold of November is like seeing a dead mermaid washed ashore, bloated from years of drinking white wine and screaming at sailors from atop a mossy rockface. It is eerie with faint whispers of freak shows and successful kidnappings in a bygone era. I arrived too early, which was exactly my intention because when I had important shows I liked to start drinking an hour or so beforehand.

The Red Doors Bar and Grill was the only option other than a Dunkin’ Donuts, and I needed something stronger than Dunkin’ brand sugar with coffee. I walked into the bar and every single table looked up at me as if to ask, “What are you doing here?” The bartenders glared at me as I pulled a stool out of the bar to sit.

There was regulars, there was the bartenders, and then there was me.

Can I get a Jager bomb, please?

The bartender charged me upfront. That will be Six-Fifty.

The older bartender came up to him and started yelling in what I figured was Russian. The young guy taking my order yelled back, the older guy walked away, and the young guy looked back at me. Seven-Fifty.

I started doing the math.

That’s twenty-six including tip. I planned on having at least three.

I gave him my card. We talked; his name is Boris. He likes stand-up.

That makes one of us.

I continued drinking until my then girlfriend met me, and we both drank Jager and vodka until we needed to go to the show. It was on the boardwalk and thankfully, they had booze. The host was a Russian national, the audience was full of other Russians and Long Islanders. The show is not a usual comedy festival, it was a competition. Fine, I just need the stage time in front of actual people.

I drank vodka cranberries.

I went up in the middle.

I crushed.

And I won.

I got a hundred bucks and a guaranteed spot at Stand-Up New York, a club in Manhattan.

Thank God.

I went outside to enjoy a cigarette on the boardwalk, content not to say anything at all that might ruin the small victory of the night after the long trudge since March. I felt the wind of the shore and thought back to moving to New York City in winter with nothing but a hoodie to keep myself warm.

Damn this feels good.

This could be the turning point. It is a turning point.

I heard someone behind me walk up the boardwalk steps from the street, probably from the Red Doors by the way they were stumbling. I furrowed my brows watching the figure chuck himself over the boardwalk railing on the sand of the beach, get up mumbling, and then walk toward the dark Atlantic before falling face first onto the sand halfway between the shore and magical Coney Island. I look at my girlfriend, roll my eyes, flick my cigarette, and hop the railing.

The wind tore into my face, and I pulled my coat around me, tighter, it’s just a heavy raincoat but anything is better than that hoodie. I walk pretty straight considering the wind, my boots, and my buzz. I knelt down beside him, asking him if he was alright. He’s three sheets to the Atlantic wind and his face is cut up like he got into a fight with a dog holding scissors. He’s not coming to even as I try to speak broken Russian to him, assuming he is of the persuasion due to our location and where I figured he was leaving. I looked up to the boardwalk to yell to my girlfriend that he is not moving when, all of a sudden, he snaps out of his blackout, grabs me by my collar, and lunges at me. He gets on top of me yelling. I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!

I am not sure if it was the adrenaline, vodka, or being soured on Russians from the night, but as he was throttling me all I could think was, “Really? You spoke English this entire time?”

I got him off me despite his size and he returned to the sand and his blackout.

Now, I’m pissed.

I’ve been manhandled financially and now, physically, by these stupid Russians all night long and this one just killed my buzz. I walk back to the boardwalk, pissed and shaking, right past my girlfriend and to the illusory comfort of the Red Doors. I ordered a Jager bomb in an effort to save my drunk, they could’ve charged eight and change, it wouldn’t have mattered. Boris noticed that I was visibly shaking, and he asked what happened. I tell him the story and he explains that he just kicked that guy out.

No kidding, I wonder. Boris gives me the Jager bomb on the house and does one with me. This does not make me like Russians, again, but Boris is alright. We do another once I start feeling straight again, by then I had decided that five hours at Coney Island was enough. It was time to go home.

The trains don’t run how they usually do at night in this dark water puddle of Brooklyn, so we waited on the platform until I started feeling hungover. The adrenaline was gone, the booze evaporated underneath the Russian on the beach. The red bull was going the way of Icarus. I was exhausted. My girlfriend was only getting started.

She was born in New Jersey and like a refugee was evacuated out, heading South where we met. But there is something in New Jersey that gets in you if you’re born there; it does not matter how long you stay, you take some of it with you. We rode the Q to the G back to Bed-Stuy. It was an unholy hour of sobering up. The annoyance and bittersweet aroma of the night becomes more defined underneath the fluorescent tubes of the train and the lulling effect coming from barreling through the portals to Brooklyn.

It was somewhere between Fulton and Classon that the final leg of our trip became the beginning of a different night entirely. In honor of Veteran’s Day weekend one of our local veterans deprived of housing and bereft of sobriety, began walking the train car yelling at every single person, informing them that he was, in fact, a veteran and he fought for our freedoms. The tallboy in his hand was like a ruling scepter and a gun keeping us all staring at the ground, for me, I needed no motivation to do that with my loss of adrenaline and impending hangover.

Now, any sensible person in this situation would take in all available information and, probably, decide to say nothing at all to the man holding us hostage on the way home. But see, that is not how Jersey people interact with information. Their preferred approach is to engage this type of information with countered hostility.

My back is to the veteran, facing my girlfriend, we’re situated by the train doors so I can prop myself up against the bars. I’m listening to him and, having only just accepted that this would be my reality for the next few stops I hear my girlfriend say, “Fuck you!” I look up from the ground and stare at her, moving in closer trying to catch her eye, internally screaming, “What are you doing?!”

She doesn’t look at me, she looks past me, and the more I try to catch her eye the more she moves her head to look beyond me at the veteran who, of course, cannot take this act of aggression lying down. The wordsmiths chuck verbal “Fuck you’s” at each other in a barrage of drunkenness and matched disorderly conduct. Now, I’m pissed again. She won’t listen to me, she won’t look at me, and now I feel him moving closer to us.

Great.

I could be dead on the shores of Coney Island, at peace in victory, but now I have to deal with this mess.

I turned around halfway, half slurring a half sentence, “Hey man, don’t talk to her like-“

Wham!

My girlfriend’s dispo nemesis punches me in the jaw.

Time becomes fast and slow. The people sitting near us stood up and got in between us now that things had escalated enough for the group to get together. Thanks everyone, could have used you about five seconds ago, but glad you’re here now. The veteran gets kicked off the train. My girlfriend assesses the situation now that the New Jersey devil was no longer whispering in her ear and in the aftermath is able to distinguish her responsibility for the entire scenario. She goes to say something, but I hold my hand to stop her.

No.

It was all I said, and from Classon Avenue to Myrtle-Willoughby we don’t say a word.

A fellow traveler pulled a fast-food napkin out of their bookbag and handed it to me, I was confused, and they point at their mouth. Your lip is bleeding. I looked down and saw my jacket stained with streams of blood coming from my bottom lip. I sighed and thanked them, at least it’s not a hoodie. Mrytle-Willoughby was our stop, but I continued to the next one, Flushing. That’s the stop of my bar, the Righteous Room.

I sat down and ordered a Jager shot, a vodka soda, and pulled out my pack of cigarettes running down the list of every community that I now harbored a prejudice against: Russians, veterans, and girlfriends from New Jersey. I threw back the Jager and thought, busy day. I took the first drag of my cigarette, letting out a sigh and then I started laughing, incredulously, at this reverse “Warriors” movie I just experienced.

I paid for my drinks with the hundred-dollar bill. I got more cigarettes on the way home, from one of the bodegas that didn’t tax.

I returned home after a very long day and even longer year with a slight buzz and split lip.

Victorious.

Si comprehendis, non est Deus