Do you ever have one of those days when you lay around and do nothing?  You sleep in late, and before you know it the sun has set. I spent that whole day Saturday binge watching 30 Rock and around 10:00 decided to go out and get food so that I wouldn’t feel like a complete loser.  While en route my friend, we’ll call her River, hit me up asking if I wanted to go to a trap music party in the city.  There are many things in this world that I love, but few things bless my spirit like ratchet music.  There’s just something about a Future song that makes me want to move back to Atlanta, become a stripper, date a drug dealer, and sell weave on Instagram, but I digress.  Anyway I forgo my late night meal and head to the city to a place called Pacha on like 10th Avenue.  Pacha looks like that typical club bikers go to in post Apocalyptic movies.  I’ve always wondered what’s up with that in those films.  The world has ended but you guys are still gonnna party?  Again I digress.

Pacha is a multi level warehouse that stages multiple parties on multiple floors and none of these parties are related, but you have to walk through each one to get to the party for which you came.  For example, floor one looked like a bunch of wealthy kids from California took their parent’s private jet for the night.  There were strobe lights, techno music, fog machines, and fake boobs as far as the eye could see.  

We finally made our way to said trap party and it was like everyone popped the same cocktail of hallucinogens all at once, because it was pure chaos.  Everyone was equally unattractive but in the same way.  It was as if we had walked into an incestuous family reunion.  We went to the bar knowing that the evening would require alcohol in order to get through it.  Just then across the way I see a guy wearing an Omega Psi Phi hoodie.  I’m not even the kind of person who is big on Greek life (in that sense) but you so rarely come across normal black men here that I was thrilled to see someone who looked human in this sea of drugged up 19 year olds.  River and I approached the guy who seemed nice enough.  We exchanged numbers, and what happened next ruined my life for like two weeks.  He turned his head to speak to someone revealing that he had a single gold hoop earring.

Is there a nice way to say to someone I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were wearing a hoop earring may I please delete my number from your phone?  I scurried off and told River it was time to go.  Just an aside that guy was a real creep.  In spite of me telling him like five times via text that I wasn’t interested he kept texting me asking when we were going to hang out.  I eventually blocked him.  

River headed to Harlem and I got on the Q train to head to Brooklyn.  As we approached the 14th Street Union Square stop, something told me to get off and get food.  Mind you I still haven’t eaten, but I said no it’s too late to eat I’ll just head home.  Three stops later the train comes to an abrupt screeching holt, so much so that I slide down the seat and hit the rail.  We are paused for about ten minutes.  As trash as the MTA is, this is rather unusual.  The train usually stops for maybe three to five minutes at the most but this long delay meant something was wrong.  At this point it is about 2 AM and everyone on the train looks like they’ve had a long night.  

Finally the train starts moving again and we have crossed the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn when the train comes to another screeching abrupt stop.  We are three stops away from mine, and we are halfway in and halfway out of a tunnel.  All of a sudden we see flashlights and police officers running alongside the train, and then the power on the train shuts off.  There I am in the dark with about 15 strangers in a horror movie scene.  

I think to myself oh ok so this is how I’m going to die: on a train in Brooklyn alongside a homeless schizophrenic woman who is having an intense conversation with herself.  Some brave soul opens the train door to find out what happened.  A few stops back a man shot someone and ran down into the station to allude police by jumping in front of the train.  They stopped the train in order to recover the body.  We are all confused, disgusted, and disturbed knowing that there are police officers looking for human remains under the train we’re on.  After a couple of hours they send along another train to attach to ours so that we can walk through the tunnel and come out at the previous stop.  At this point it is about 4 or 5 AM and my phone is dead.

We all walk to the front of the train only to be met by the quintessential New York police detective.  Overweight, balding with greasy hair, and a really unpleasant disposition.  He looked like he had been married and divorced like four times and was poor from paying alimony, and now he’s a loose cannon on the job taking out his frustration on unsuspecting citizens.

Dear Angry Police Detective,

If you’re reading this everything will be ok.  You will find love again.

He demands that before anyone gets off the train we all provide him with our contact information so we can be questioned.  Sir, we were all on the train, what the hell do you think we know about what transpired?  In the most dramatic form of white privilege I’ve ever seen, some white man explains his constitutional rights and how he doesn’t have to do a damn thing.  Somehow this worked and we were all allowed off of the train.

Dear Angry White Man,

If you are reading this, thank you for exercising your privilege on that early morning, because I was tired.

I now have to figure out how to get home when I see that there is a 24 hour Dunkin Donuts.  I go in and plug up my phone to request an Uber.  Twenty minutes later I am picked up by a middle aged Jamaican man who was very nice.  As we are headed towards my house there is a fight in the middle of the street between a taxi driver, an irate woman wearing a tragic lacefront, and a police officer.  Apparently the woman kicked out the window of the taxi and the police officers were trying to subdue her to arrest her for accosting the window of said car.  My Uber driver swerves around this commotion and I’m just wondering if I’ve gone through some sort of time portal, or if there’s a full moon because this night has been insane.  But don’t worry, it got a little more creepy.  My Uber driver starts talking about how we are living in our last days and how God is coming back to reclaim the world.  I think to myself oh so this is how I’m going to die.  Finally, I arrive home and run into my house where I am actually still starving but it is 6 AM at this point and all I can do is thank God that I’m alive and question the entire night.

So let this be a lesson to you.  If you are hungry, eat.