Time for cheap thrills!
A fire broke out in my building. How do you love that? Nobody was hurt. But an apartment was destroyed. The fire department got to show up and fill the role of the brave heroes ascribed to them by the American public since the events of 9/11. Short stumpy cops played second fiddle to the towering, well rested, and well compensated fire men. It was one o’clock in the morning. Perfecto.
The envious NYPD was as confounded as the residents who had to evacuate the premises. Even though happy for the action, one lady cop with a short ponytail and a big ass kept telling everybody to stop loitering on the steps in front of the building. So, we stood across the street staring in awe at the fourth-floor apartment going up in smoke, the firemen climbing the fire escape, breaking out windows and doing the do.
Nothing else was going on besides that. So, I decided to think poorly of some of my neighbors. The ones who were less familiar to me. Most were in their cheesy pajamas, nightgowns and robes. Some had been on the toilet when the fire broke out - and they looked like they hadn’t finished taking care of that problem. I didn’t dally while others were rushing down the smoky staircase and out of the building screaming “fire!” But since I had experienced an event like this some years prior, I resolved to not get as worked up about it as everybody else. I made sure I slipped on clothes, and sneakers and retrieved my wallet and phone before I went outside. After all, who knew how long I would be on the street? Most of my neighbors left their phones, wallets and purses behind, complete bozo-style. Some were barefoot, standing in the dog shit ridden grass, praying to their overworked/ underpaid gods to let them get back in their apartments shortly.
Since I learned nobody was home in the blazing apartment and nobody was hurt, this was a good time to take a suspicious look at the thirty or so people standing around with their quizzical faces lit up by the flashing police and fire truck lights.
One chick, dressed like hoochie-mama-par excellence, was sipping something mysterious from a large Seven Eleven cup. Clearly drunk, she defied the cope’ instructions to stand across the street and out of the way while firemen breezed in and out of the building with great swagger. Now, the poor cops were already feeling underappreciated as it was. So, they got very emotional when the staggering, rabbling drunk woman refused to comply. She even shoved one of the damn cops. Long story short, two officers, a tiny female cop and a beef jerky eatin’ brother walked her around the corner, out of range of the fabulous lights and beat her down something awful. Bananas.
Then some dude came riding down the sidewalk on one of those unsafe scooters so popular these days. He looked like Beeper from The Muppet Show. His stiff hair shot straight in the air toward the sky. His dull eyes bulged as he stared at everything and everybody in sight while gliding through the crowd saying, “Excuse me. Excuse me.” I just wrote him off as a very nosey person. I soon started hoping his little scooter would accidently slip underneath one of the firetrucks, and him with it.
By now, I was having a good time staring at people trying to imagine how off-beat and screwed up they might actually be.
Soon some decent chick came striding up the sidewalk cradling a brown and white cat. She kept asking “is anybody missing a kitten with a red collar?” Everybody ignored her, black people style, and she went back the way she came cradling, mooching and reassuring the happily pampered beast of an alley cat. I thought, this chick must think she’s a good person or something. Who does she think she is? #!*@& her and that damn cat.’
Next thing you know, this bald middle-aged fire supervisor guy in a white shirt and likely having a questionable past staggered over to the crowd. He had a memo book and pen in his hand. He made his way among the sleepless stragglers asking, “Does anybody live in 4 Georgia?” 4 G was the apartment that didn’t make it that night. Most people didn’t want to be bothered with official business. Everybody only wanted to get back inside their literally God-forsaken building. But I was hoping the supervisor dude would approach me personally. So I could get a closer look at him. I was hoping to find out if he was high or not. But he kept bumbling about, writing things down, crossing them out, writing them down again, then crossing them out again. I think I had my answer.
A little after two in the morning, the show was over for me. The last of the invincible fire battlers left the building. All the tenants started stepping over the broken glass and trotting back into the building of ‘affordable luxury apartments.’ Up the staircase we went, annoyed men, befuddled women, and annoying children. The hallways were flooded with the water the invincible fire battlers had used to hose down the burning unit.
Before I got back to sleep about three in the morning, I decided to cancel my plans for the daylight hours and get some much-needed sleep. Besides I was itching to see some of the bozos in the building and find out if they were just as ugly in the daytime as they were the night before. They were. I was glad I felt superior to everybody else. I realized that even though I write a lot of nice-guy posts about how we should all love and treat each other well, part of me has trouble believing that. Part of me just wants to secretly stare at helpless people and get a kick out of blaming them for their own problems.
Admit it. People are very much the same. Everybody knows there’s always a time and place for cheap thrills. And it’s always when people expect more from us. God bless America, man.
If you need to speak to somebody confidentially, you can call The Mental Health Hotline at 866-903-3787. If you feel like a danger to yourself, call 988.