A Valentine's Day Story

Last year my wife and I went to New York for the weekend of Valentine's Day, five weeks before we would be married in the same city. It was a multi-task trip. Wrapping up some last minute wedding details, couple of meetings about potential directing gigs for later in the year (neither came to fruition, at least where my involvement was concerned), and just a good time in the city for the weekend. Always love being in New York. One of the nice things about being in Boston is being able to take jaunts down to NYC. This was set to be a great weekend.

Saturday was Valentine's day. We started off with dinner at The Red Bamboo, our favorite restaurant in The Village. I presented my fiancee a Valentine's Day gift of Monsoon Wedding on DVD. Filled up on a delicious veggie jerk chicken and a glass of wine, and then took a leisurely stroll toward the Mercury Lounge. The Autumn Defense, a side project of Wilco members John Stirratt and Pat Sansone, was playing that night. An awesome night and the Mercury! Great show complete with a Big Star cover. And Monica Lewinski was rocking out by the front of the stage.

And a few beers.....

Entering the subway at Bleeker Street to go uptown to our hotel we find that the northbound local tracks are closed for overnight maintenance. So we have to go to the other side to catch a downtown local to the Brooklyn Bridge stop in order to catch an uptown express. The downtown side is an unmanned auxiliary entrance with floor to ceiling revolving gates instead of the typical turnstiles. When we descend from street level to the entranceway there is a group of teenager gang-banger types trying to force their way through the gates. As I walk up to the gate one of them is in my way. I swipe my card in the slot and look up to the kid holding the gate on the other side and say "Get the fuck out of the way". Now, if I hadn't had a few beers I probably would have looked around more carefully and done a better job accessing the situation. Counting the number of them would have been the first thought. Second thought should have been to remember what city I'm in. If one is in, say Duluth, then the likelihood of these being little posers and not real gang-bangy types is very high. New York is not at that same end of the spectrum. So needless to say I've got a couple of them surrounding me and getting in my face ("what'd you say muther fucker", etc.) and then I was hit on the right side of my head with, I assume, somebody's fist. My glasses went flying and I hit the ground and a started getting wailed on. Now at this point I start thinking smarter and just curl up and cover my head while I'm being kicked. Amazing my wife saw this major display of pussiness and still married me. By this time she had gotten through the gate herself and was screaming at them to stop and a few seconds later they all ran off. Seemed like a long kicking, but probably lasted 30 seconds. I jumped up as fast as I could so Lisa would see that I was OK, and to try to hold on to a little shred of my manhood.
"I'm OK, I'm OK", I tell her.
And she runs up to me and says "See what I mean about you always mouthing off to people?"

It was true. She had been telling me I was going to get myself beat up or something if I kept doing things like that (screaming and flipping off the guy who cut you off in traffic and the such...). Probably the best "I told you so" in the history of I told you so's.

The ride back to the hotel was long and quiet. Once there I was able to look in the mirror and see two huge bruised welts in my back. And I was sore as hell. It took me ten minutes to get out of my clothes.
I laid down on my stomach on the bed and considered what I could have done differently that night to avoid what happened. The phrase "excuse me young man, could I get past?" was one thing that came to mind.

And while drifting to sleep I couldn't help but think to myself "Fuck I hate Hallmark!"