I spent the second half of 2010 working on a Congressional political campaign on Long Island. In the early stages of the campaign we were getting 1 day off a week and towards the end of the campaign we were working 80+ hours every week. One weekend we were given 2 1/2 days off from work which is completely unheard of. They wanted us to have some time off because the campaign was gearing up and we all knew how many long nights for months on end we would be working to ensure a victory. One of the days I went out to Westhampton Beach to go to Dune Road and Cupsogue Beach which I had been to previously (a family friend had purchased a vacation home there) and had a blast, so I wanted to return and see the beach for a few hours. Later in the day I had plans to meet some of my coworkers on the Indian reservation in East Hampton for their Annual Shinnecock Indian Nation Pow Wow. One of my coworkers was friends with someone who lived there and we had planned to stay the night drinking and soaking in the culture.

After entering ‘The Rez’ as locals called it, it was almost as if entering a different world. A reservation is not a part of U.S. territory and as such there exists no Federal, State or Municipalities. They have their own set of loosely enforced rules by comparison. This means there aren’t as many traffic laws, roads are overgrown with trees and foliage, mosquitoes run rampant because they don’t spray repellents, lax fire and building codes and a Wackenhut’esque security force. After arriving at their house and meeting my friends who had been elsewhere we went inside and met everyone. Their house was still under construction to a large degree. Since there were not building codes they lived in their homes as they built them and to some degree there were still walls with holes in them because they had not been fully completed yet. As the sun set you could see an incredible amount of stars because there were very few lights in the area to obscure them.

A short while after bumming around the property and speaking with everyone they told us that they were going to take us over in two groups (there were 8 of us) so that they could sneak us in the back way without having to pay. I made an off the cuff joke about this is the point in the movie when the main characters get separated and knifed in the middle of nowhere and everyone laughed. They said it wouldn’t be a problem as long as we were with someone from The Rez. Only a few thousand people lived on The Rez so everyone knew each other. My group went first with one of their friends who was built like he competed in a Met Rx competition. His arms were as big as my thighs and looked like a brick wall, covered in graffiti. As we walked towards the Pow Wow our escort told us some info about the place (how many people lived there, how large it was, etc.) As we got closer and noise was starting to pick up an SUV drove past blaring music out of the windows when the guy we were with says “For example, they aren’t from here. If they were they wouldn’t be driving around blasting music that loud.” We slipped in the back way no problem and the other group caught up with us about 2 minutes after that. The Pow Wow grounds were a ten minute walk from where they lived.

Once inside we wandered around for a few hours. There was a large central area where they were holding performances where people were dressed in traditional garb and dancing. They were holding competitions and being scored by judges. People were sitting around the central area on all sides watching. Forming the perimeter of the Pow Wow grounds were stalls and booths where trinkets, clothing and such were being sold by vendors. Some of them were locals and others were people who traveled on what was explained to us as ‘The Circuit’, which is basically like traveling to Mecca but for people looking to sell stuff at Pow Wows around the country. We were warned that they weren’t Native American nor were the items they sold Native American Made.

After spending some time there enjoying ourselves and sampling the food and shopping we decided to head back to the house. This time we all walked back in a group. When we got back to the house we decided to light a fire in their pit out back. There was plenty of wood lying around the property in large piles that had been haphazardly left there after the place had been initially gutted. I walked inside to a conversation our hosts were having about a couple of girls they were giving a place to sleep for the weekend while the Pow Wow was going on. They were from another tribe and had traveled here to perform. Apparently, they had mentioned earlier to one of our hosts that after they returned from the competition they were going to a party at [First Name]‘s place. She was telling her husband that the only ‘[First Name] she could think of was from the [Last Name] family and she wanted her husband to persuade them to not go to a party at their house. Her husband agreed and said that when they were those girls age, some of the stuff him and his friends used to do to people at parties like the one they were thinking of going to was… The conversation ended there.

There were other people who had come over by now and I started mingling with them. There was this one guy there with a pony tail and a wolfs tooth earring. His daughter was with him who looked around my age. She was pretty cute and was flirting with me. Her father was in his 50s but looked like her grandfather. He was talking about Sonic the Hedgehog when I first walked into the room. A short time later those girls returned from the competition and our host told them he didn’t think it would be a good idea for them to go to the party at [Last Name]‘s place. I walked over to the guy who walked us to the Pow Wow earlier and asked why it would be such a bad thing to go to a party. He explained to me that there wasn’t really any enforcement of the laws and their security force was a joke. He told me it would be a bad idea to walk around The Rez if you weren’t from there or were there with someone who was from there.

Ho-Lee Shit.

Did he just allude to the fact that because we were there as their guests was the only reason we weren’t being fucked with….

I thought back to the fact that they needed to escort us in groups to the Pow Wow because it was dark and we might get lost. I thought back to my joke about being split up and murdered in the middle of nowhere. I thought back to the fact that everyone on The Rez knew each other. I thought back to how there were very few laws there and those that existed were not really enforced [sic "...our security force is a joke..."]. I thought back to the fact that our host had just told us that when they were kids they used to fuck with people not form The Rez. I thought back to the fact that our coworker who invited us to The Rez, the only one of us who knew anyone there, had a habit of getting into sketchy situations. All of the little things that I had paid absolutely no attention to previously, I suddenly saw with new eyes. Now they seemed to border just on the crazy side of sketchy. Take all of these things together and I became moderately uncomfortable. We had originally decided to stay over the night. We uniformly agreed that this would not be happening anymore. It was getting close to the time for us to leave. The girl who had been flirting with me earlier asked me to come back to her place with her that evening. Needless to say I would not be going anywhere alone with anyone, no matter how much my divining rod told me that water lay buried over yonder.

So we left. Anticlimactically I might add.  Quickly.

The next evening we were all sitting around recounting the previous nights events.

Me: “I almost hooked up with that girl. She asked me to come back to her place with her.”

Him: “I thought they weren’t from The Rez and that’s why they were staying where we were?”

Me: “No, not them. The one who’s father was there with the wolfs tooth earring.”

Him: “Uh, dude…you do know that she looked like she was 12…right?”

Me: “What, hell no. She had a full B cup. There was no way.”

My skin began crawling. They said I looked like a deer in the headlights with my mouth hanging open slightly. I remember having tunnel vision. My entire world came screeching to a halt. Had I been on the verge of going home with a 12 year old had we not gotten the hell out of dodge? After the previous nights event this was the icing on the cake. It was too much for me to handle. I immediately went to my computer and did some FB stalking. I found her with some minor difficulty on FB and looked at her profile. It had a lot of privacy restrictions but I did see that she went to Buffalo University. She was in college and was definitely over 18 and most certainly not 12. I went back to tell everyone feeling much better and they didn’t believe me. So I had to show them her FB to get them to believe me. I told them not to scare the shit out of me like that again.

After the previous nights events that was way too much to fall onto my plate all of a sudden.

I had some work to do one Saturday evening on Long Island so I decided to spend the night and see some college friends who were still in the area. The festivities began at my friends place where a few of us started our pregame while watching Bill Maher’s Religulous on TV. NB: Having a debate on religion while consuming alcohol is simultaneously both hilarious and ill advised. It was when the Bacardi was brought out that I first noticed the nagging feeling in the back of your consciousness that the night may hold surprises yet to be discovered. I regaled everyone with my 3 year old tale of why I no longer drink Rum or Jager, at the completion of which I promptly began drinking the Bacardi due to a lack of available alternatives. I’ve developed a pseudo psychological stigma against these 2 items since a bad experience I had with them jointly in the past. So drinking Bacardi at this time did not bode well for me in the end. My system ended up rejecting it eventually (read: within 10-15 minutes of consumption). We were pretty drunk at this point and decided we should get to the bar before the lines got too long to bear. Within 3 minutes off arriving I received a text from a friend who had not pregamed with us and was currently at an entirely different bar. Her text read “U puked!!!!!!” followed by a subsequent text comparing me to a certain female organ of evolutionary significance. News travels fast. I launched into my defense stating that I was merely making room for better things to come and that I couldn’t control how my body reacted to rum. All of these perfectly sound and reasonable arguments fall on deaf ears while intoxicated. Inside the bar we quickly found that a fraternity brother of a member of our party was a bartender. Hellooooooo Lady Luck. Not only that but he was hammered out of his gourd as well. Case in point: we gave him a ten for a $7 pitcher and he gave us 13 back. We quickly decided on entering into business together. Anytime we needed something he was there. If things weren’t already on a downward spiral then what the bartender did next should have sent alarm bells off inside my head. He placed 2 shot glasses on the table and proceeded to fill them with Jager, the second of my dreaded drinks. Both had appeared on my radar within a short time frame of each other. Nevertheless I promptly turned to our third friend who was there and said “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he gets you one too!” As soon as I turn back I realize that the bartender was doing a shot himself with his fraternity bro and that I was not included in that event, much less so our third friend who I had just reassured. I said “Awww”, and according to my friend the “look of disappointment on your face was priceless!”

It was at this point a couple members of the mens basketball team took it upon themselves to dance on the bar. No one stopped them and in my inebriated state I said to myself “Why shouldn’t I be allowed to do that.” So after a failed attempt or 2, I managed to hop up on the bar. Before even turning around to face the crowd a bouncer was in my face telling me to get off. I have no recollection if this was directed at the other people up there but I promptly hopped down off of the bar…onto the bartenders side. We were already receiving free beverages for the night, so why shouldn’t I assist the hardworking bartender in serving them to my friends? It wasn’t long before I was banished back to the commoners side to return to my life of drunken poverty. At some point in the night as my condition degraded exponentially I decided I wanted pizza. The next thing I remember is being handed an entire pie while handing over the entire contents of my wallet as payment. So the money that had been spared by the free drinks was used anyway. On the way back to my friends place I tripped and spilled the pizza on someone’s front lawn like I was in a TMNT cartoon. I lost my sh*t over this. I had been looking forward to pizza and I was gonna be damned if I didn’t get to enjoy it. I started tossing slices back into the box while my friend said “Just leave it. It’s not worth it.” My eloquent response according to him was “5 second rule.” He decided to try a slice while we walked back to his place but tossed it aside when he tasted some sort of grit from the lawn. I was so drunk I was under no such cleanliness regulations. The next morning I discovered that despite the 1 slice my friend ate, I had consumed an entire pie in my stupor.

Well, It was time to get in my car and head home. It seems that at some point in getting into and out of my car a bee had flown into the car and landed on my shoulder while I was on the highway. I have a deathly psychological fear of bees. It’s the only insect or animal that actually frightens me. I was attacked by a swarm of wasps as a child and have since developed a compounded fear of anything of the flying & stinging variety such as bees / wasps / hornets / yellow jackets. It’s not a fear that I can easily control and it’s been made worse over the years by consistent encounters with these insects. I’ve dove out of desk chairs before upon hearing a buzzing in my ear. Even if it turned out to be a simple horsefly, it’s simply something that I cannot control. My brain sends the command and I react. Needless to say, finding a bee on my shoulder while driving a car at 65 miles an hour on the highway was pretty scary. My attempts to get rid of it were almost comedic. I tried blowing it off my shoulder but it had too strong of a grip on my shirt. So then I swatted it off onto the floor by the passengers seat and I looked around for something to beat it with. The best ‘weapon’ available was my titanium sunglasses case. So imagine driving down the highway and looking at another driver to see them frantically swatting themselves and brandishing a small eyeglasses case… Anyways, it landed on the floor and crawled under the seat. Great, now there was a bee somewhere in my car waiting to duel me at some point. Once I got back to my neck of the woods I stopped at the grocery store to do some shopping. When I was finished I returned to my car and suddenly my bowels erupted with those post-night out ‘entire box of pizza eating’ demonic sounds that shortly preempt a disastrous bout of diarrhea.  I got in my car and left for the 5 minute home stretch, of which I could feel would be cutting it awfully close. I could tell I’d really have to concentrate on this one. I only prayed that the bee wouldn’t choose this moment for Round 2 as I would surely shit my pants in the commotion. The only upside to that would be how much better the story would be. Alas, I made it home uneventfully and rushed to the nearest bathroom where I had a mini-religious experience and became closer to God as a result. There is still a bee somewhere in my car awaiting battle. It may have died already but I’d like to think that in some small corner of its world it has found some way to survive so that we may once more meet again.

My family can be quite strange at times. What society deems sanity is really quite a fragile equation in the sphere of people that I look up to and admire. The more of us there are within a few square meters of each other, the exponential possibility of one of us sparking a shit show becomes possible. My family is actually quite large, and for the purposes of this post I will confine my story to just one branch of my family, my paternal side.

My father used to be the ringleader of the group. The others took their cues from him, looked up to him and followed his lead on almost anything. This is not to say they weren’t bat shit insane themselves, because this would misdirection at its finest if I were to describe them as such. But when he was alive he was notorious for getting thrown out of all you can eat shrimp buffets and filming spoof Asian martial arts films with swords while wearing a karate gi in the middle of the woods, mercilessly destroying a Cabbage Patch Doll. Needless to say, I’ve got a lot to live up to. Or run away from depending on how you look at it. But if you are reading this, then that means you most likely know me (if you don’t, then what are you doing here) and THAT means you know I chose the former over the latter.

Two of my uncles, let’s name them Dr. 1 & Dr. 2, are each special in their own specifically retarded way.Here’s a couple of stories about each of them to give you an idea of their personalities:

Dr. 1 drove a summer school bus when he was in his late teens/early 20s. He was the team leader for a group of buses that covered an area of the pick-up/drop-off routes. In short, there was a gas crisis during this time. He was apt to fill up his bus, take it home and siphon some off to his car, then blame it on a leaky gasket or some such other technical thing. He would race the other bus drivers in his squad, while on the drop-off route. This meant that both buses were full of campers. When word got back to him from the camp after the long game of telephone from camper to parent to camp official to him regarding his “racing” he would simply respond with “Oh, no we aren’t really racing. We are just telling the kids that so they have fun!” Tell that to his dad whose house was on the drop-off route and was sitting outside one day when my uncle took the corner doing 30 in a school bus, causing it to go up on the wheels on one side. With campers in the bus. One could say that these were very different times than today. Another could also say that this man is insane. Both would be logical and appropriate. They would “borrow” the bus for an evening where my dad, my uncles and all their friends who were a part of that group of people and they would all pile on the bus and go get sauced. This one time they found themselves on the high school football field. Literally on the field. In the bus. It was someone’s bright idea, no idea who, to see if the bus while doing 40mph could fit under the goal post. The kick is up, and it’s good!

Dr. 2 once asked to cheat off of Dr. 1 in a high school science class that Dr. 1 was doing quite well in and Dr. 2 was, well…not. So there they are passing information from one to the other. A couple weeks later the results come back and the teacher is reading off the results in alphabetical order. He gets to Dr.1′s name and says “[Dr.1], as always, a commendable job. A stunning 98%.” Then he keeps reading. A few names later “[Dr. 2], as expected, a deplorable 17%.” Dr. 1 flips out incredulously, wondering how Dr. 2 could have fucked up such a sure thing. It turns out Dr. 2, while copying all of the answers correctly, started copying them from the second question thus answering them 1 line off the correct question.

I guess you could say that with characters like this in my family, and believe me there are tons of us like this, the next generation (myself included) have a lot to live up to. And while I’ve had plenty of my own hijinks over the years, some of which I may write down one day, there is none I am more proud of than the following story which I orchestrated:

I was at a family gathering for a wedding or bat-mitzvah or some such thing in New Jersey. An entire floor of rooms had been reserved in a hotel for family and friends. I was in one room at the end of the hall with my parents and my aunt and uncles, as well as 4 of my cousins were in two rooms directly across the hall. Well, we got there and the reception desk handed us a goody bag that had been left by our family for every occupant of a room when they had checked by. There were all kinds of snacks and goodies in the bag including a humongous Snickers bar. I had never seen one this huge, but then again I didn’t eat Snickers so I wasn’t too surprised that I had never seen one that size before. The fact that I did not eat Snickers and that it was present in the bag is important to the story the purpose of which I will reveal shortly.

After we settled in my dad decided to take a nap. My mom, aunt & uncle and 2 youngest cousins who are twin girls decided to go out shopping leaving my other two cousins and I in their room watching a movie on my computer. Me and my oldest cousin, I guess you could say he and I are like Bonnie & Clyde when we get together. A lot like how our parents were when they were together. Our parents have told us how much our actions resemble the stunts they pulled when they were our age. He is about 4 years younger than I, but we grew up together so we are really close. His sister is about 3 years younger then him. She can be like Ma Barker herself, but mostly she ends up as the laugh track for our would-be felonies and egging us on.

To give an example, she once baited me into peeing in a crowded parking garage when both of our families were leaving a mall a few years back. I gladly obliged. It’s a common occurrence for an opportunity to present itself and for me to seize the carp and run with the situation, turning it into a fun memory. As you will quickly see as I continue the current story.

Anyways, as we settled in to watch the movie we started tearing into the goody bags. I found the Snickers bar in the bag and passed it off to my oldest cousin, since as I mentioned I didn’t like it. Sometime during the movie there was some nudity. If you remember back to when I described our age differences, my younger cousin was about 6 years younger than me so I quickly shut the laptop screen and  made a funny comment about it to make the situation less awkward. To this day none of us can remember what that comment was, but it set my older cousin off like never before. He could not stop laughing. All the while, the giant Snickers bar was mushing up in his mouth, which he had tried to eat all at once a few moments before this happened. He started coughing and choking a little bit, all the while laughing and it’s when he drooled a little chocolate on the bed that I told him to go to the bathroom and puke there instead of where we all had to see it. So he went about 5 feet away and the whole time laughing, you could only hear him getting more hysterical after he got to the bathroom. Out of curiosity I went to go look. It turns out he got some chocolate all around the toilet and though it would be funny to replicate his Andy Warhol rendition elsewhere in the bathroom. The entire place was covered in chocolate he had spit out. Windows. Shower. Curtains. Sink. Floor. Toilet. Trash bin. It was everywhere! Each time he got it in a new area, it renewed his laughter and caused him to get it elsewhere. It was ridiculous. So once he had gotten himself under control again (this took about 5 minutes) I had already formulated a 2-step plan. He was only to be made aware of the first step because it was the second part of it that was to prank him. I whispered it to him and he quickly agreed and we went back to the movie. We almost totally forgot about what we had planned until the lock started turning. The gang from shopping burst into the room and one of my young twin cousins was the first to walk into the bathroom. You just heard a scream. It was so loud, my dad was woken up from his sleep across the hall through 2 closed hotel doors. What I had told my cousin earlier was to leave the chocolate wherever it was in the bathroom (which was everywhere) and to convince my aunt that he had gone diarrhea everywhere. With how much shit we pull constantly and how easily my aunt can be convinced of things this was not a terribly difficult feat, but it was her reaction we were gunning for as it would set off the rest of the family wherever they were.

Well after hearing her daughter scream, she walked into the bathroom to see what was wrong and immediately its her voice you hear coming from the other room. “OHHHHH MYYYYYY GOOOOOOOOD! BRIAN GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW! You–you didn’t..you couldn’t have..you-…you shit EVERYYYYYYWHERE!!!!! ARE YOU [expletive]ing insane!? You have got to be [expletive2]ing me! PLEASE tell me this is chocolate and not shit? You couldn’t have, it’s got to be a prank, no, OMG YOU[expletive]ing [expletive2] all over every [EXPLETIVE] thing!!!! This whole string of commentary went on for about 40-50 seconds straight. It had us rolling on the floor.

And just as we anticipated her next move, my cousin was prepared with the next thing I told him “we” should do. I say we because he did it. And while it was my idea, it was never my intention to do it, only to make him do it, under the guise of freaking out my aunt further, in order to reveal the portion of my plan that I had not told him about. His mom had called him in there and by this time we were all gathered around watching the results of his handiwork. My two young twin cousins were crying because of what their eyes had seen. My parents were outside this door now, having heard the screaming, trying to find out if everything was alright. My uncle stood there with a smile appreciative of how we had freaked his wife out because it was deliciously hilarious. Me and my younger cousin were in fits of laughter as we knew what was about to happen and my aunt was standing over my older cousin making him clean up the toilet.

At this precise moment when we were all gathered around, my cousin lowered the toilet seat where there was more chocolate, leaned in and licked it off real clean. Now this set my aunt off again as we had sufficiently convinced her that it was indeed poop and not chocolate. It right now that I myself started freaking out with laughter as my cousin had done exactly as I had intended. My cousin goes on to explain what had happened earlier and what he had planned for when they returned. But that wasn’t the only reason why I was laughing. By this time my parents had entered the room and were quickly brought up to speed. After hearing everything my mom looks at my cousin and says “You’ve got problems.” Then I revealed that while I had intended to freak out my aunt, it was also my secret intent, which even my cousins who were there at the time did not know, that I had successfully convinced my cousin to lick a hotel toilet and he most likely now had aids or some other disease. Everyone just looked at me in silence with their mouths open at the perfect depth of the scenario I had crafted from the opportunity I had been given. Eventually my mom just looked at me and said “You’re the sickest one of all.”

That about sums up this story (for the most part) so I’ll end it here. Hope you enjoyed reading it.

We decided that for our first weekend at college the three of us would go to Bogarts. This was a club that had been around for about 14 years. At the time, it was technically located on campus property, directly next to the Public Safety building. As such, they only allowed 21+ entry. On certain days however, they allowed Hofstra students in who had a valid campus ID, meaning that you did not have to show proof of your age. Oh those sweet, sweet loopholes. Yet due to my overall experience on that evening, that would be my only time going to Bogarts.

I guess I should describe the college bar scene at Hofstra during this time so that those of you who were not around then, have something to compare it to. There were 4 bars around campus during this time within walking distance. There was Bogarts which was a campus legend. It would eventually be bought out by Wayne Chrebet and turned into a ‘fancier-wannabe’ bar/restaurant. He ended up losing money on it and after about a year sold it and that’s when it became Bar/Social, as it stands today. There was a place called XS which was a 2-story bar down past McDonald’s. This was shut down towards the end of Freshman year and eventually reopened as a Chipotle restaurant. Then there were McHebes and Dizzy Lizard Saloon. These were right next to each other and were owned by the same guy. A real sleazeball. Dizzy’s was always the piece of shit that it is now. McHebes wasn’t much better except for the fact that they sold pitchers of beer for $7 and was very economical for the average college student. Round up 4 of your friends and for $7 each you’ve got yourself about 6 beers each. I should also mention that towards the end of Freshman year 3 of these 4 bars were raided hardcore and 2 of them shut down permanently. Only Bogart’s was allowed to reopen (the next year on Chrebet’s management) and Dizzy’s stayed open. McHebes closed down, seemingly for good (until it reopened the end of Senior year, 4 full years later) and XS was shut down which as I mentioned was replaced by Chipotle.

So anyways, we went to Bogarts on this Saturday night after the first week of classes and got in without a problem. I remember my first drink in college, at this bar, being a Seabreeze. Such a wimpy drink but I didn’t know any better and my roommate, Nyah! handed it to me. Hell I didn’t even get to finish it. Our other roommate, Ping Ping, had stepped outside to smoke a cigarette a short while before. It’s a good thing he had, because from the back of the bar, his absence prompted us to look towards the front door to see if he was coming back any time soon. As soon as we looked up front we noticed that two police officers had just entered the bar. Moments later a bouncer walked past, whisked the Seabreeze out of my hands and back onto the bar from whence it came while saying only “Sorry bud” before moving on to someone else who didn’t have a wrist band. Me and Nyah! decided to split before the cops got to us and we made the cardinal mistake of underage drinking. We drew attention to ourselves by heading for the back door. Stupid, I know, but we freaked. But Nyah! was going to get his money’s worth before we left. Within a handful of steps he had chugged the rest of his Seabreeze and tossed the cup whilst murmuring something to the effect of “I’ll be damned if The Man prevents me from getting this yummy in my tummy.” We reached the back door, stepped out into the night and silently said “Fuck.” as we stared at the hood of a cop car parked there facing us. It’s like they had a plan or something and knew what our next move would be! But the car was empty, only there to scare. Within seconds the owners of the car came out the very same door we had. They had covered the distance from the front door with frightening speed. When they asked what we were doing I responded that we were “Just leaving.” One of the cops responded that that would be an excellent idea before heading back inside the bar.

We exhaled with relief and headed around to the front where Ping Ping was waiting with an all knowing smile as if he knew, the moment he saw the cops go in, what we must have been going through inside. We decided to call it a night after that and head for our dorm where we continued the party. While this never dampened our desire to go to the bar, it did leave a sour taste in our mouths about Bogarts. It wasn’t the only reason and I would be unfair to suggest that it was, but it was definitely one of the main reasons. The others were the prices, extremely high, even by the other trashy bars standards. The floor was also incredibly dirty and the crowd was pretty much upperclassmen which we didn’t really fit in with too well. We wanted to drink with people our own age, not those who had been jaded by alcohol and were instead doing it to drown out the thought that their college days would soon be over. We were just beginning and wanted some optimism with our Seabreeze’s.

I’m not sure, but this close brush with the law probably only served to increase my own confidence in my invincibility while in college. Stay tuned for my next story!

P.S. -

Well, I’ve already described where I got the handle ‘Don Juan’ from in the ‘About This Blog‘ section so I guess I should explain where the title itself came from. Consider this my first story. This should be a short one. In the Fall of 2005 I entered college a wet-behind-the-ears Freshman at Hofstra University. I lived in a triple my first year. That is, I had 2 other roommates in a closet the size of my bathroom. For those that have already explored this blog, you will know that I grew up in South Florida. You will also know that I am Jewish. Well, my two roommates, both of whom I remain friends with to this day despite us all pursuing different educational paths, were both diverse in their own way which contributed to the ‘atmosphere’  of our room. Vince “Nyah!” da Vinci (last name stereotyped to protect the innocent) was an Italian who grew up on Long Island and Fernando “Ping Ping” Lee Ho Mahn Bok Choi (once again…) was Columbian-born of Chinese descent. This smörgåsbord of characters in a single room caused us to reduce ourselves to countless hysterics. When 1 of us wasn’t really on the top of our comedic-game, the other 2 were surely able to make up for it. I suppose that explains the United Nations portion of this posting. As far as the Club 709 reference, well that became a running joke amongst ourselves and our closest friends because we were young reckless Freshman new to the college scene and we had most of our hijinks, many of which I will write about here, based out of our dorm room which was room #709.