I was working in a nightclub in Princeton Junction, New Jersey. They had live music seven nights a week, very professional rock cover bands, most of whom would try to get away with an original or two (though once they had The Dregs and it attracted over 2,000 people and I made my bones kicking a guy out for pissing in the sink, ushering him past the owners who were counting cash at the door). I worked as a doorman, or bouncer (barback duties went with the job description), and the music, the girls, and the party were a major attraction.

The manager who hired me got me hooked on crystal meth, and when he was dry one night, he handed me off to a guy who worked there named Boris. Boris was a biker with long black hair and a big beard, a Lebanese dark featured dude. He'd be scary to most but I didn't give a fuck. He gave me some speed that first night we formally met and after that I started buying it from him. Before long I moved into the third bedroom of the house that he shared with another long haired, bearded biker. His name was Paul and he was the bass player in a working southern rock cover band. Paul did a lot of cocaine. His girlfriend's parents owned the house, which was in a normal upper middle class suburban neighborhood. The girl, Nicole, was a stripper during the summer and a student of veterinary medicine the rest of the time.

Boris had quantities of drugs other than meth: cocaine, pot, LSD, Quaaludes, what they called mescaline in those days that was more like a speedy acid, and whatever else happened to be around at any given time (no heroin though). He offered me his retail franchise at the club, and I accepted because I couldn't afford to buy the speed I was snorting. He charged me too much and I knew it, but there was still a profit margin, and he let me carry a balance that was always inching up and he never pressured me about it (at least not much).

I became kind of a "superstar" in the Warholian sense at the club. I'm tall and when I was young people said I was good looking. I say "people said" because I don't want to sound like an asshole categorically stating that I was good looking. But I have recently seen a picture of myself then, and in fact I was. If there was a chink in my armor it was the tendency to be a little bit overweight because I drank copious quantities of beer on a daily basis. The meth took care of that, so I would run around the club turning heads while tending to the party needs of the employees and clientele while doing a great job keeping the bars stocked and being the go-to guy for the bartenders.

Getting tight with the people behind the bar was key, because the top sellers were in with the owners, and if they liked you, they would say good things about you and you would see yourself on the schedule more. The top bartender was a guy named Lee. If Lee was down with you, you were golden. I would always ask him what he needed at the busiest, craziest, three and four person deep bar madness moments and it got to the point where we were pretty telepathic about it. I also took care of his drug needs for free, and he would kick down drinks discreetly, which was a no-no for bouncers but I was on the schedule six nights a week and had carved out the kind of status that a superstar of my caliber so richly deserved. He was fat but really charismatic and girls flocked to his bar, and we complemented one another well as a two pronged magnet for women. Life was fast, but life was good.

After a particularly busy and eventful Saturday night Lee and a guy named McMahon, who was Lee's old since-childhood kind of buddy, invited me to go out to breakfast with them at like 5:00 a.m. Getting this invite was a sign that I was moving up in my relationship with Lee. I had my eye on a shot at bartending, and his influence was important. The club closed at three, and we would drink Heinekens while cleaning up, restocking, and waiting for the owner to count things up and shut down. The owner was a Jewish guy named Stu. He didn't care if some of us (the superstars) hung around and drank, smoked joints, and did shots after work. His wife did, but she was rarely there. Stu was cool. I recall him actually puffing with us on one occasion. So we went to breakfast after Stu locked up in McMahon's van. This was the early '80's. People had conversion vans then.

After breakfast we went to McMahon's place and drank more Heinekens and snorted speed, though it had limited effect at that point. We started talking baseball at about nine o'clock in the morning and by eleven or so we ate some acid and were on our way to Yankee Stadium in McMahon's van.

I was very high and sitting in an easy chair in the back of the van on the way to the Bronx. Every now and then I would find myself in my body and feel a sense of shock that McMahon was actually driving. He was a courier for a living so he prided himself on his driving and he was in his element behind the wheel under any conditions, and Lee had total confidence in him, so I just let myself melt for the most part and before I knew it we were at the ballpark.

They were both Yankee fans and had been to the stadium dozens of times, but I had only been there once previously as an adult with friends, and I went once when I was a little kid with my grandparents. I didn't know my way around at all, but I just followed them. It was the middle of the summer and as I say it was the early '80's. Have you ever seen the old clips of basketball players back then, with the short shorts? I was wearing a short-ass pair of silkish gym shorts that had no pockets, but a little pouch inside the waistband like a lot of bathing suits have. I left my wallet in the van, and just put some money in the pouch. I was wearing a size small Sex Pistols tee shirt with the sleeves cut off that fit tight and showed some of my flat stomach. Hey, I was a superstar, and I had to look the part.

I don't remember much about the game. I know that I spent almost all of the money that I had in the pouch on beer, lots and lots of beer. I do recall being surprised that the game was over all of a sudden. Lee and me had to go to work that night at 8:00 o'clock, and McMahon always approached driving like it came with a deadline, so they were hurrying as we left the stadium and of course I hurried along with them.

I saw a guy selling pretzels. I stopped to buy one. When I looked up, I saw people everywhere heading toward their cars, but I didn't see McMahon and Lee. I ran up ahead and looked everywhere, but they were nowhere to be found. I realized that they would wait for me as long as they could and I just had to remember where we were parked, but the fact was, I had absolutely no idea. I was tripping hard when we got there and McMahon was so in control of everything it never occurred to me that I would need to know where we had parked.

So there I stood, wide-eyed, nearing a panic, up for over twenty four hours, still aglow from the acid, in my shorts and Sex Pistols bare midriff tee shirt with about two dollars and change in my little waistband pouch, outside Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx. Some superstar.

I tried to look like I knew where I was going as I circled the area in the ever waning hope that I would accidentally find the van. Nothing looked familiar. I actually wound up in a crowd waiting for the Yankees to come out of the player's exit and I saw a couple of them, which was some parenthetical consolation in a twisted kind of way.

After an indeterminate amount of time that was spent roaming in the realm of something that can best be described as the surreal I found myself the only person around who had attended the game. I saw a bus stop. I knew nothing of New York except Penn Station, where the train stops when you go to the city from my hometown of Trenton in Jersey. I figured I'd somehow get to Penn Station and call somebody who might be willing to take a train there and pay for my fare back.

The bus came and it was, incredibly, actually going to within walking distance of Penn Station. People were looking at me funny. I realized I would be a no-call no-show at work, but I felt pretty confident that Lee would cover for me somehow.

I walked through the Times Square area dressed like a male prostitute with eyes fixed straight ahead until I found Penn Station. I had decided to call my friend Zach. We had been tight since we were kids, and I knew that he always had money. I called collect and told him the tale. He was there inside of two hours. He brought a pair of sweatpants.

He didn't laugh. He didn't bitch. He handed me the sweatpants and looked at me like you look at a friend that you care about. He said, "Let's get some beers. I know a place," and we went to an Italian bar and grill around the corner.

Many beers and bites of spaghetti and meatballs later, we walked, slowly, together, back to Penn Station and waited for the next train...I was thinkin'...old friends and new ones...hmmm...there, in New York, in my shorts and Zach's sweatpants, sitting and waiting for a train back home on a spinning world that interrupts the sky.