An Unexpected Adventure
Right after the new year, our good friend Don was getting married to his girlfriend Heather. They had been dating for a while, but now she was pregnant and in turn it kind of rushed a wedding. She was now very pregnant.
Two of Don’s good high school friends planned a bachelor party the two days before the wedding. Tony who was a frat brother of his as well, and the more obnoxious Mark. They rented a bar out west near Hofstra, the school Tony and Don attended. Luckily it was across the street from a train station. It was a bit of a trek for the rest of us if we planned on drinking, so we Matt, Sean Denver and I opted to take the train in.
The party started off well, it was an open bar for an hour or two, but later on during the night Tony and Mark had hired some entertainment. Yay, a stripper! Unfortunately , what arrived felt more like a prostitute and there were two of them. One was short and stocky the other tall and lanky. Neither were very attractive and got totally nude sans a ballerina-like skirts. It didn’t take long for things to feel unsavory. I leaned over to Denver and asked “Why do I get the feeling that the things going on here.. they don’t seem legal?”
“No sir, they most certainly are not.” Denver answered in a disapproving schoolmaster voice.
Sean and I hung back as these girls went around to each of the guys in turn and shook for dollars. The one named Dakotah came over to Sean and started grinding on his leg.
Sean handed her a dollar and said “Here’s a dollar, go bother this guy” And motioned to me. She starts toward me an tries to grind on me. I handed her two dollars to go back to Sean.
Sean gave her five dollars to just go away. He knew he wouldn’t outspend me in torturing each other with a skanky stripper. After we got her away from us we fell back even more and noticed the huge black guy wearing a Knicks cap that had escorted these fine girls to their ‘gig’. He was just sitting at the end of the bar reading the basketball scores in a newspaper. Sean and I became more interested in this Pimp/bodyguard. So we sat over by him and tried to discuss basketball to each other In hopes of getting him to join the conversation. He did not join in. Finally we tried to ask him his opinions and he just smiled and said. “I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing.” And went back to his paper. There went our entertainment.
Around this time Mark came around to us to collect money to pay these girls to give Don and his best man, Tony a little something ‘extra’ in the back. A venereal disease was not something I wanted to give Don for his wedding and declined. The other ‘frat boys’ did come up with enough money and they went into the back room. Matt, Denver, Sean and I decided that now was the time to leave. Tell Don we said goodbye.
Both Matt’s father and my father worked for the railroad. And because of this fact we had keys to manually open closed train cars. Matt had his and decided we should use it and get our own private car for the ride home and free of charge. We had all been drinking so it seemed like a good idea to follow Matt’s idea. Unfortunately, the train we took was not the same line we all were most familiar with. We usually took the southern line from our homes, but because where we were going was out of the norm and we didn’t want to transfer we took the central line to the bar. Matt, however, opened a closed car for a train going on the north line. Because we were in a closed car we weren’t hearing the announcements and thus, didn’t know we were on the wrong train for several stops. When I caught the error we decided to get off at the next stop and take the next train back. We jumped of at Cold Spring Harbor. Then looking at the schedule realized that another train wasn’t coming back for another 3 hours. Damn that after 1AM schedule.. Worse yet, it was absolutely freezing in the dead of night on a January. The wind made it feel like it was 10 below and the train station waiting room was locked for the night. Denver and Matt were desperate enough to keep trying to kick the door in.
There was a ‘short list’ of people we could call for a ride. The guys we knew were more or less at the bar we just left and no one had cell phones. Those of us with girlfriends did not approve of how we were spending the evening and us guys didn’t like the idea of them having this to hold over our heads about it. None of us knew where the Cold Spring Harbor train station was to call someone to pick us up nor could explain why we were there. But I had a plan. I called Chrissy. She owed me, I thought. I’ve now lent her plenty of money the least she could do was pick me up at 2AM. She had gotten home from a wedding shoot and didn’t know where Cold Spring Harbors was, plus she was ‘really tired’ so she couldn’t help. I was less than pleased. But I had a backup plan… I had a Jen! A Jen that I usually called at all hours in the morning. A Jen who was studying to be a railroad train conductor and might know where we were. I woke her up and told us our situation and of course she agreed to come be my hero. I was reluctant to call her first because she lived further away and it would take her a lot longer to get us than Chrissy.<span style="mso-space
run: yes”> While we waited, Sean and Matt tried bribing a limo driver that was parked at the train station to give us a ride. The request didn’t work. Matt didn’t trust Jen to come because of her tendency to be a bit flighty. I knew here flightiness was more just a tendency to be impulsive and not irresponsible. After meeting Chrissy, I knew there was a difference. Almost an hour later, Jen’s orange 1969 Ford Bronco convertible came racing across the parking lot with horn blaring! She was our hero and at that moment everyone loved her almost as much as I did. For them it was almost as cold in the back seat as being outside, but I was warm in the front seat with the heater blaring. If she didn’t literally save our lives, she did save some fingers and toes!