Picture this: A quaint prewar walk-up on a tree-lined block in picturesque Park Slope, Brooklyn. It’s 3 AM and a drunk, naked, bewildered man who doesn’t live in the building is wandering the halls banging on strangers’ doors. A Buddhist neighbor takes pity on him.
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pparently I drank a little too much whisky at this bar downtown. Last thing I remember is my buddy leaving the place and saying, “All right, man, I’ll see ya later.” Next thing I knew I was in the stairwell of a strange building looking for a bathroom. I realized that I was completely naked and I didn’t know where I was or why I was there. I became probably the most frightened I’ve ever been in my life. It was like every bad dream you’ve ever had come true all at once.
Slowly I started to piece things together. I’d come home with someone who lived in this building, we had both passed out in her bed after doing it, and then I woke up needing to piss. She had told me that the bathroom was upstairs—or at least that’s what I thought she had said. Turned out that was impossible and I had locked myself out of her place. When I couldn’t find a bathroom, I tried to go back into the apartment but I couldn’t remember which door I’d come out of. In a total panic, I started trying to open all the apartment doors in the building. Finally, one of the neighbors opened his door to talk to me and he kindly offered me a towel.
Suddenly four police officers came barging up the stairs. I never saw anything like it. The cops really wanted to get me out of the building, but I kept telling them that I belonged there, that I had pants, I had a jacket, I had things, and my things were here—I just didn’t know where. They were like, “Give us any information you can,” but I couldn’t give them anything. I didn’t even know what town I was in.
Somehow the cops figured out the right apartment. They led me in, woke the girl up with a flashlight in her face, made her identify me, and left me there. They made fun of me and laughed as they were leaving. They were mostly just smiling a lot and laughing. There was one Herc-from-The-Wire type guy who got in my face a little bit, threatening to take me downtown or some shit. I was terrified. I must have been really, really unmanly, like begging them not to put me in the police car. But I will take any kind of embarrassment over going “downtown” naked any day.
So I just went back to sleep. Woke up the next day and went to work. That’s it. The experience has definitely stayed with me. When you hit bottom real bad it doesn’t go away very easily.
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