The world is crashing down around you. The pillars that kept your skies as high as your dreams would reach are crumbling and with it, the last amount of peace that you took for granted. The ground is shaking. The thunder is rumbling. The world around you shows all the signs that it’s coming to an end. It’s deafening. The mouths of your friends and loved ones are moving but the words just aren’t audible. The darkness of uncertainty and fear is quickly consuming the warmth and light that your loved ones provide. It’s getting dark and cold, the deafening sound of silence after a heavy night of snow makes this all seem so eerily quiet. Confusion takes over. Doubt dangles hope in front of you like a carrot. The prospect of misery looms within the darkness, taunting you that your displacement could happen at any second now. There is no time here. There’s the constant torture of glimpses into different futures of what could happen and what will happen. Time doesn’t live here. Yet, it’s the thing I want most. How many times have I heard the pleading to unknown forces for just five more minutes with this person. Yet, here I am, experiencing the same cries and lament that ate away at some of my trusted companions. Never understanding or grasping the tremendous weight that’s slowly squeezing the life out of you with every labored breath. It isn’t hope I seek out. It’s the pleading for more time. The anger that comes with the confusion. The hot coals are stoked within, angry as to why this is just so fucking unfair and cruel. Life waits for nobody. It kicks you in the balls after it had coffee not because it felt like it, but it simply just does as it moves on and reminds you that there aren’t sides to this game. Falling tears like robust waves of emotion have a strange way of crippling you, disabling everything normal about you. Yet, the world spins, TV shows are made, people live. You’re reminded that the world around you isn’t consumed by darkness. It isn’t fear and terror that reign supreme. It’s just a brutal, heartbreaking lesson that time is fair and undefeated.
Author Archives: SuperDave
Christian Louboutin
Just a few days ago at work, I was sitting at my desk wondering why my array formulas on Microsoft Excel weren’t working. This is a common, prevalent problem that many people come across both in school and at work. Personally, I’m about as skilled in Microsoft Excel as Donald Trump is to foreign policy. After half an hour, I gripped a few handfuls of hair out of sheer frustration and forced myself up to walk around outside to clear my head.
I grabbed my hoodie and at that exact moment, the network router which sits to the left of my desk began to make a droning noise. On most days, this noise is easily drowned out and just becomes part of the background along with the hum from the fluorescent lights. There’s also the new key FOB which makes unlocking doors in our office sound like we’re in a federal penitentiary and the yelling of Eastern European immigrants as they leave the passport specialist office next door. But the noise stood out, it was loud and it made me wince a little.
As I made my way to the front, one of my co-workers greeted me and passed me by in a hurry. It turned out she forgot her wallet at her desk and that her friends were waiting for her outside to eat lunch. I smiled as she ran by and was about to make a quirky joke about how fast she was until I saw flashes of red in front of me. Not the “flashes of red” which usually indicate rage and anger on an astronomical level, but actual flashes of red.
The red paint that dons the underside of those curvy shoes worn by the beautiful women that adorn them on weekend nights are granted confidence, admiration and possibly a little envy depending on the kind of shoe. Some are matte while some shine brightly from the addition of stones. Some boast spikes that cover the surface of the shoe and some are made plain to keep things simple. Pumps, flats, wedges and platforms are all just shoes to me, but a pair of Christian Louboutins are a pair of Christian Louboutins.
Each and every time I see those distinct, red-lacquered under soles I am transported back to a Friday night several years ago. Nothing in particular stood out about the night, there were no special celebrations, extended holidays or three-day weekends, just a regular Friday night that people wanted to use to unwind after a long week of work. But on this Friday someone lost an eyeball. I’ll get to that in just a second.
About three to five minutes before someone lost an eyeball, I had received a call on a radio about a drunk man inside who was becoming more aggressive and hostile after politely being asked to leave. We explained to him that he was too intoxicated, that he would no longer be served for the rest of the night and that it was in his best interests to go home for the night. There’s only so much diplomacy and being tactful can carry you before your words lose weight while your fists grow heavy. In this guy’s case, the negotiations had come to an end and an ultimatum issued: Leave on your own or get forcibly removed by us. Eighty percent of the time the latter is chosen which is immediately followed by regret.
By this time, I had unhooked the purple velvet ropes around the chrome stanchions which lead up to the main door. After peering into the darkness of the dance floor for a bit, the muffled sounds of a struggle could be heard in between certain parts of an E-40 song as silhouettes danced and took shape near the main door. Once the man was removed from the dance floor and brought outside, he was shoved into the parking lot where he began cussing and name dropping some more.
Motherfucker! Do you know who I am? I’ll have your fuckin’ job in the palm of one hand while the other squeezes your nut sack while you beg not to be fired. You hear all that?!
This is pretty common banter among assholes who have used their bronze pass friendship for diamond club level exclusives. The owner of the nightclub must’ve been introduced to this asshole who used his brief, nineteen seconds of friendship as free game to do as he pleases. Always with the name dropping, the questions of their identity, wealth and power.
The fuck you lookin’ at?
He’s drunk I remind myself, just drunk. Inebriated to the point where his stockpile of spiteful comments only revolve around one’s socio-economic status, sexual preferences and the measurement of their penis. And it was at that exact moment he had made eye contact with me while his body language began to signal off all the internal ringers, alarms, bells and whistles.
Danger Will Robinson! Danger!
I immediately took notice of his hands. Where were they? What were they doing. Only his right hand balled up into a fist. I should circle around and work the other side to avoid that. I took a step back just moments as he lunged at me, barely grazing the left side of my face. I planted my feet, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and shoved him away from me.
A few other bouncers and myself watched him pick himself up off the ground. I felt the hair rise off the back of my neck and noticed that the hand that tracks the seconds on the clock began to move slower. This adrenaline flow, this hormone intended to give you a short, intense burst of energy during times of stress began to fill my body. The same hormone which aids you in your subconscious decision of whether to fight or take flight in dire situations. Then I heard a faint voice coming from within the nightclub growing louder and louder by the millisecond.
Leave my boyfriend alone or I’ll kill you!
Now, I still consider myself lucky to this day because if I had not turned around to see this small woman running toward me, there would’ve been a good chance that I would’ve been in need of something much more advanced than Lasik. I jumped back as she busted through the main door entryway with something in hand, something sharp.
These cream-colored, suede Louboutin pumps boasted a thin, 4 1/2” cylindrical piece of steel which connected the heel of the shoe to the floor. Although never intended to be a weapon, the young woman wielded her left pump with her right hand as she swung wildly. Nobody wanted to be caught up in the wild, chaotic moment of a girl swinging her steel stiletto around, we simply didn’t get paid enough to deal with shit like that. That is, until her efforts of landing a painful blow on one of us quickly came to an end.
Now, only once during my eight years of working security in nightclubs have I seen someone immediately stop fighting, after initiating the fight. After the young woman’s first wild swing went wide, she connected the second time around with the end of her stiletto which made them both scream in horror. I looked around to see who she connected with only to see her boyfriend, the same asshole that was talking a massive heap of shit to me with his right eyeball visibly “popped” out from the eye socket.
Oh my god! I can’t feel my eye? I CAN’T SEE OUT OF MY RIGHT EYE! Is it bad?! IS IT BAD?!
I pulled my phone out and called for emergency services. I failed horribly at giving them the proper address.
“YES I NEED AN E.M.T. OR PARAMEDIC TO MARKET STREET. MARKET. YES. M AS IN……MEGATRON. NO I DON’T KNOW THE FUCKING NATO PHOENETIC ALPHABET, M FOR MEGATRON. MARKET STREET! HURRY! THIS MAN’S RIGHT EYE BALL IS OUT OF HIS SKULL.”
Come to think of it now, that was probably a pretty normal 911 call.
There was no need to add insult to injury. We allowed the guy to lay down in the parking lot with his right eyeball still partially attached while his girlfriend kept screaming and apologizing. We left her alone not because we were afraid of being stabbed in the eye with a pair of Louboutins (which we took away), but because we wanted no part of that massive clusterfuck they saw as a relationship when the police showed up. What was unwise on the girl’s part was sticking around for the cops to show up only to have the officers realize she just committed a felony. They got him onto a gurney and into the back of an ambulance as it headed south for the hospital. She was placed in cuffs and thrown into the back of a squad car heading north, most likely to county for the weekend.
Anyways, I got back to my seat at the office and noticed that the droning from the network router was still going on. I still noticed the loud buzzing noise made from my co-workers FOB keys when unlocking the cell block doors which led to our lobby. I could even hear the elderly people yelling in Slavic languages about the lack of elevators in our building. I thought about my co-workers Louboutins and those red under soles one more time before everything simply became background noise once again. Microsoft Excel might be boring and mundane, but at least it never accidentally stabbed me in the eye.
If You’re Going Through Hell, Keep Going.
When I was a freshman in high school, I got placed into an experimental class filled with seniors. It was a creative writing class, with an emphasis on allowing anything to be written without repercussion from the school. You could’ve wrote something along the lines of dismembering everybody in the entire state if you wanted to, and we’d still find a way to discuss what was written. Everything I wrote was pretty vanilla compared to half the seniors in that classroom, mainly because they were chosen by other teachers to try this class as a way of learning how to vent properly with ink and pen instead of handgun and toothbrush shank.
The teacher they had chosen for this experimental class was the right fit. She respected your work as long as she believed that you actually tried. She also once told me that she saw me as a professional bull rider or rodeo cowboy as my future occupation. I have absolutely no idea how she even came to that conclusion, but I wouldn’t have minded becoming the first Asian-American professional bull rider. Chicks dig bull riders. The class was like a mixture of Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver, with a little Good Will Hunting peppered in. Now everybody had their own story and background that made things interesting, but one individual in particular stuck out to me, mainly because I was assigned a seat directly next to his. His name was Jack.
Jack was massive. At six-foot-five with arms from an 80s Sylvester Stallone movie, Jack was the most terrifying man on the planet to me. When casting directors needed to hire a high school bully to pick on a helpless kid because he was scrawny, they wouldn’t have hired Jack because the idea was to instill fear that the bully was just going to give you a black eye and take your lunch money. Jack looked like he’d take your life if it meant getting super-sized fries at McDonalds instead of a large.
But Jack was nice. Asides from the punch-to-the-arm which served as Jack’s affectionate way of greeting someone (which I’m also sure is responsible for fracturing several arm bones to several others), Jack treated me with kindness and was always cracking jokes with me during class. I remember asking Jack one day why he didn’t play football, we could’ve use someone like Jack on the squad, the Dallas Cowboys could’ve use someone like Jack when he was sixteen, honestly. His response was something that only Jack could get away with without people laughing off as a joke. He looked at me with a big grin on his face, and told me as his t-shirt sleeve rolled back a bit to show the nine-inch scar from armpit to bulging, inner-bicep, most likely from a knife fight of some sort where Jack ended up eating the poor guy.
“I can’t play because if I get out on that field, I’ll seriously hurt someone, and I don’t want to hurt nobody. That’s why I don’t play football.”
Now normally, if you or any of your buddies said this while huddled around a bunch of beers and wings with the conversation of all of you prospectively playing in a flag-football league next September, you’d get laughed at and promptly told how much you suck at life and that your penis resembled a sample spoon from Baskin Robbins. But not Jack. Only Jack could say that and have everyone present understand that Jack doesn’t want to be the reason an entire hospital wing was created for all the teenagers he paralyzed from playing high school football.
If you’re wondering why I’m talking about Jack, it’s because he helped refine my style of writing, my voice. Because I was seated next to Jack in class, we’d always have to swap work with each other during exercises to full blown short stories. Jack always made me feel proud of my work. When he read my short stories, he always asked me to tell him more about the fictitious characters I wrote about, and that telling him was no good because he wanted to read it. Jack taught me how to paint images in other people’s minds through writing. He’d always laugh out loud when the entire class was silently reading and editing, he’d make remarks on how the stories I wrote were always funny, and most importantly, he gave me some of the most important advice I’d ever receive in my life.
“David, don’t ever let some bitch-ass, motherfucker grind you down. Don’t let them tell you what you can, and can’t write. What you can, or can’t do. Just do you, and life will naturally sort everything out for you.”
Why that piece of advice resonates with me to this day isn’t a mystery. Jack was like the bigger, older, Polynesian brother I never had. Everyone is given advice nearly everyday, and more than 95% of the time, it shoots into one ear and is already on its way out while the person is still talking to you. But Jack didn’t just tell me this without acting on it, he did the most critically important thing one could do. He instilled confidence in me. He made me believe in myself.
Winston Churchill once said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” If you’re grinding away and you find yourself tired, stressed out of your mind because there’s only so much clawing you can do to your face out of frustration, just keep going. And if there’s people telling you to stop, or to reconsider, or even that what you’re doing is pointless, whatever that may be, refer back to the advice Jack gave me. Don’t let the bitch-ass, motherfuckers grind you down.
Doorman PSA
“Why can’t we just get in?” I hear that all the time, from people of all colors, shapes, and sizes. This isn’t a race issue, nor is it a gender issue. People enjoy their freedom, they enjoy living their life the way they want, and when your job is the gatekeeper and you hinder or even deny entry to where people want to go, people want demand answers. When you provide them with one that isn’t deemed adequate or acceptable, very few people are okay with walking away. On the other end of the spectrum, someone will tell you they feel disrespected and will show signs of aggression as a means to intimidate you to get their way. There is no scale in terms of what answers given are deemed adequate or acceptable. Let’s face it, people have a hard time being told, “No.” *
When people get an answer that doesn’t satisfy them, they often get upset and lose the ability to relate and look into the situation from the other person’s perspective. To most nightclub bouncers, keeping communication to a minimum while still being clear and respectful is the most effective way to handle situations. Throughout the night, I’ll be asked where the bathroom is over a hundred times (not an exaggerated number), be asked to escort people who have lost all their fine motor skills as well as some of their gross motor skills, deal with bodily fluids, break up fights which sometimes includes getting hit, take selfies with other club attendees, and to diffuse situations where two or more parties of people want to hurt each other because there’s no better way of getting your point across than making someone bleed. Yes, I signed up for that, and I knew what I was getting into when I filled out my W-2, but that doesn’t mean I’ll allow someone to degrade me. Stress, anxiety, anger, and frustration usually build up over time, just like it does for every other human being. Working in a nightclub only accelerates the build up. This is why being concise is the way to go. We want to minimize that build up. We want to be able to get through the night without any problems. Honestly, we just want to go home at the end of the night, maybe grab a snack, and head to bed. Scouts honor.
When someone doesn’t get their way and won’t accept, “no” as an answer, people throw tantrums. This is where the fun begins. By fun, I actually mean seeing the worst in people. This usually comes out in the form of insulting, mainly by way of stereotype. Granted, the stereotypes of doormen aren’t pleasant things. If you asked anyone off of the street of legal drinking age, you’ll be told that we’re big, angry, have no patience, resort to violence as a means of response because we’re incapable of intellectual thought beyond operating a microwave. I’ve also heard that we have no people skills; that being prudent and reasonable have gone the way of the dodo bird for members in our industry.
My personal favorite comes from psychology majors who often love to tell us that there’s an underlying problem behind all that anger and rage. That it most likely stems from a childhood problem and our parents failing to raise us as functional, normal everyday human beings, and that we wouldn’t have to work a job like this if we were properly indoctrinated into society. Second place runner-up is insulting how much money we make. People love reminding us about how shitty our lives are because we only make a fraction of what they make. **
As insulting as that is, some of it holds true. Some of us are big, some are angry, and some are control freaks that have problems communicating clearly with people. I’m not justifying their actions when a bouncer does go crazy and continues stomping on an unconscious person’s head after they’ve been knocked to the ground, but a lot of these negative stereotypes come from an era where delivering a roundhouse kick to the face Roadhouse-style was considered normal. When I worked in Las Vegas, I’d talk to the veteran guys and ask them about stories of nightclubs in Vegas before the EDM scene blanketed the strip. The consensus of what I heard was that it was an animal house. People were getting broken off twenties and hundreds like candy during Halloween. Drug usage and binge drinking ran rampant, and that if you did something wrong, you were hauled off into a room with no windows or cameras and had several large men beat the shit out of you before they kicked you out. But it’s not like that anymore, well except the money, drugs, and alcohol. People are getting sued left and right for the most asinine reasons. If you walk into an establishment where it looks like the owner got together with several investors who each committed a large amount of money, chances are you won’t find a lot of short-fused, hotheaded bouncers you’ve been accustomed to seeing on television. If you walk into a dive bar by the airport that is known to be a den of prostitution and prone to several shootings, those kinds of places tend to govern themselves accordingly, take that however you will.
But remember, it’s also our job to assess you, your friends, your sobriety, your behavior, and your choice in garments for the night. It’s our discretion that will dictate whether you will be let in. Will you cause a problem? Will you be rude and disrespectful? Any respectable establishment will put their full trust in their doormen, so speaking to a manager as an attempt to get your way will only make the doorman hate you more and stay cemented in his decision on not letting you in. I could go on and on about people and entitlement, but I will save that for another time.
Lastly, we want you to have fun because most importantly, we’re still a business that requires you to spend money in our venue for us to stay afloat and have a job. Be nice, be polite, don’t be completely hammered when you get to our establishment, dress nicely, and bring girls because it never hurts to come with women. Be nice to the doorman, get to know his name, and that’ll carry you far with nice incentives like not having to wait in line, not having to pay cover, the list goes on. A girl once brought me cookies that she baked earlier that night, I never made her and her friends wait in line again. We’re still people. We laugh, we have tough days, and we like fun. And remember, if you’re not let into an establishment for any reason, it isn’t the end of the world. There are plenty of places that will gladly accept you in their place of business. You’d be surprised on how many people forget that.
* – When I worked in Las Vegas, the majority of the time guys weren’t let in was because it was a gender issue. Las Vegas nightclubs are multi-million dollar businesses. I once saw a man spend over a million dollars for champagne alone. A nightclub full of guys doesn’t look good. Nobody enjoys a sausage-fest. So in Las Vegas or other popular nightlife scenes around the world, it usually is a gender issue. But that discussion is for another time.
** – If you insult and look down on other people because you make more money than them, you deserve an entire migrating flock of birds to shit on you, your car, and everything you love for several years. Seriously. Where are the psych majors slamming these assholes of society for being pompous douchebags?
The State of Constantine 