Everything Is Wrong with Me (23 page)

I’m not sure how I came up with the idea of hooker hunting, but like all of my best ideas, I’m guessing it was born from drunkenness and lust. I always find that whenever I’m visiting home in Philadelphia, I get very, very drunk. Don’t get me wrong—I get very drunk in New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, and in pretty much every other city, town, or boat in America—but something about being in Philly and drinking with old friends puts me over the edge. And I’m not an economist, but I think this is also because in Philly I can plop down thirty dollars at a local watering hole and drink until I fall off the bar stool. Whereas in New York City, thirty dollars will get you a martini, but you probably won’t have enough left over to tip the bathroom attendant.

Nor do I remember my first night hooker hunting. I can only assume it followed the pattern of later nights on the hunt—I get very drunk at a bar, spend all night unsuccessfully hitting on a woman, go to the local twenty-four-hour diner for some grub, then decide to go for a drive. And the hunt begins.

My vehicle of choice for the hunt is my dad’s truck. No one drives in New York City, so I don’t have a car (and there’s the whole matter of how I’m broke). And I don’t have a car waiting for me in Philly, so I have to use my dad’s truck to get around. My dad got this truck a few years back and neither I nor my brother nor my sister have any doubt that he loves this truck more than any of us. If I had to come up with a list of the top five things my dad loves most, it’d go:

1. Marlboro Reds
   
2. The truck
   
3. Watching shows about serial killers
   
4. Coffee
   
5. Watching shows about nature
   

I can only hope that Dennis, Megan, and I make the top ten. But he really loves cereal, going to the bathroom, pizza, Marlboro Reds (again, just for the hell of it), and having a mustache, so I’m keeping my optimism within reason.

My dad has a gene that he did not pass on to either myself or my brother, the gene that is the basis for the complicated love between a man and his truck. When I look at my dad’s truck, I see a mode of transportation that I can put a couch or a bookshelf in the back of. When my father looks at his truck, he sees everything that is right and good with being a man, the end result of hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution and mechanical development, the ultimate representation of the symbiotic relationship between man and machine. And he is happy.

He doesn’t talk about the truck in affectionate terms. The truck does not have a name. It’s not like he’s out there washing and polishing it every Saturday afternoon. There’s no cooing, there’s no petting, tapping, patting, or any other silliness. Because that would be gay. And the truck itself is nothing special. It’s not even really a truck, but rather one of those half-truck, half-SUVs that my dad decried as “stupid” for years before eventually buying one.
*
But the point I’m trying to get across is that though he loves it, it’s not like it’s a BMW or a Lexus or anything; it’s just one of those average trucks. Not a piece of shit, but a plain, black, standard truck. And there’s no physical manifestation for his love of this truck. If pressed about his feelings for his truck, he’d probably give a funny look and shrug it off. Love a truck? That’s just stupid. Stupid.

And these are precisely the justifications I use when it’s 4
A.M
. and I’m drunk and I decide to drive his truck to look at hookers.

[Before I go any further, kids, please do not try this at home. Drunk driving is no laughing matter and I in no way support it. Unless you really don’t have another option. Or you’re not that drunk. Or you’re doing it to impress a woman. But under any other circumstances than these, please don’t drink and drive.]

It was a Saturday in December, a few weeks before Christmas. I was in Philly because I was doing “research” for this book, which, as mentioned, basically entailed asking awesome questions of my parents, like “So Mom, did you ever consider abandoning us, or perhaps abortion?” and “Dad, I’m going to say a word and I want you to say the first thing that comes to your mind:
methadone
. Thoughts?” After an exhausting day of work on the book (read: napping), I decided to meet some friends at our local bar, Mick-Daniel’s. To say that Mick-Daniel’s was my home away from home growing up would be a stretch, but I’m both lazy and not a good writer, so we’ll have to stick with that. I started working at the bar when I was about thirteen, washing dishes during the Friday and Saturday evening dinner hours. The money wasn’t great but it was enough to get me by. But more important, the job was my first real experience with bar culture. And it was damn near love at first sight. I know this has something to do with how young I was at the time and how cool it was to tell my friends that I worked at a bar, even if I did only scrub grime off pots and pans. But there was something else. It was the excitement of the whole thing. It was watching how the bar transformed from 5
P.M.
, the start of my shift, to 10
P.M.
, the end of my shift. I’d watch the place slowly fill up with people, the lights getting dimmer and the music getting louder as the time passed; I’d see the smiles on the patrons’ faces as friends showed up, watch them greet each other with handshakes, hugs, and pats on the back; I’d hear their bottles clink together in toasts, a sound drowned out by loud stories and laughter. In short, I was enthralled.

So it’s no wonder that I return to Mick-Daniel’s so often when I go home. I met my buddies Jimmy the Muppet and David there on this wintry night. Our intention was to take it easy—both Jimmy and David were hungover from the night before—but that plan went out the window around beer number 3. Then came beer number 4. Then beer number 6. Then beer number, um, 9? Then…sooner than we expected, the lights of the bar abruptly came on, signifying the end of the night. With many of the other patrons, we filed out of the bar on our way to the Oregon Diner, a twenty-four-hour place a few blocks away. It’s not an unfamiliar scene to see groups of young people pouring out of the local bars at closing time, walking in formation to the diner, looking for a nightcap in the form of an open-face turkey sandwich or giant piece of apple pie.

I don’t recall what food I went with that night. I usually start my postdrinking sober-up meal with French onion soup, then it’s on to any combination of chicken fingers, broccoli bites, nachos, corn dogs, and pretty much any other food that will weaken my heart and/or colon. Whatever it was, the meal was quickly devoured as the three of us gulped it down like we were refugees. Soon we were tumbling back through the neighborhood to our homes, this time much more quietly, our drunken exuberance quelled by cheese, starch, and grease. Jimmy and David said good-bye and left me at the corner of my dad’s street. I let myself in his house, grabbed his truck keys, and headed back out. It was time to go hunting.

[It’s at this point that we must stop again to clear something up. Yes, I was drunk on this night. I would even say that yes, maybe I was even
very
drunk at certain points of the night. But I’ve found over the years that nothing sobers you up like a bowl of soup, a pound and a half of nachos, and four Sprites, so that by the time I started driving around, I was on the road to sobriety. Besides, what’s the difference anyway? What are you—a fucking cop?]

Finding a parking spot is very difficult in my neighborhood, as it is in many cities. On the weekends, local public schools allow residents to park in their schoolyards to ease the burden of finding a spot. It was from one of these schoolyards that I took my dad’s truck that night and started my drive.

The route was familiar to me by now, having been hooker hunting a dozen or so times before. Up Ritner to Broad, down Broad to Race, then making circles around the Center City area. One thing I picked up on these drives that I never before noticed about my hometown is how quickly and dramatically the streets of Philly can change. On one block, you’ll find million-dollar town houses occupied by professionals, but three blocks north you’ll drive by the same run-down houses that make nightly appearances on the news as crime scenes. I can offer no explanation for this, because, personally, if I’m dropping that much on a house, you’d better believe that the son of a bitch is going to have a pool and nary a crackhead within a twenty-mile radius. But this sudden and abrupt deterioration, I surmise, makes things easier for the working girls. You’ll find them on the outskirts, or rather the
in
skirts, those blocks just within the nicer neighborhoods, hawking their wares. This is convenient. If they want, they can retreat into the sketchier parts of the neighborhood, but by stationing themselves on the nicer blocks their johns don’t have to drive into the more dangerous areas.

What always surprises me is how normal the whole process appears. As I drove around and watched the girls casually stroll up to cars for a chat, I couldn’t help but thinking, “Where are all the cops?” The girl will never get into the car right there, but instead instruct the driver to drive to a less crowded area and that’s it. Simple, like two friends meeting up for a drive to the mall, not two strangers about to have sex for money.

I kept going in circles, checking out the scene, driving up, down, and around the streets of Center City Philadelphia. I’m not sure what compels me to do this. I have never been with a prostitute and am pretty sure I never will be. The combination of my Catholic guilt, my fear of disease, and probably most important, the potential embarrassment of getting caught will preclude me from such behavior for the rest of my life.
*
So it’s not a sexual thing for me. It’s more like the opposite of sexual, really; a morbid curiosity, a dark fascination. It’s like watching a real live crime show on TV, but right before your eyes. I didn’t stick around for too long—I usually don’t—and after a few minutes and a couple of loops, I was on my way back home. The initial appeal wears off pretty quickly, especially since a friend had recently pointed out that police are supposed to patrol high-vice areas. Even though I’m usually sober by this point, or at least getting close to it, I think getting a DUI in an area known for prostitution might put my mother in a mental hospital. So I drove back home.

I took Broad Street south, making a left on Wolf Street. Driving down Wolf Street to Second Street, I’ll come upon another night crawler, the junkie whore. You can catch them scurrying about the streets, an often terrifying spectacle, darting between parked cars and out into the street like stray cats. They are cracked-out women looking worse for the wear, aging a year for every month they use. Around the park between Sixth and Seventh streets, some of the junkies, when they see the truck coming down the street at 5
A.M.
, will come out of the darkness of the park or rush from their stoops onto the sidewalk and motion to the truck I’m driving, giving the universal mouth-hand sign for blow job, making clear in no uncertain terms that they’re willing to offer sexual favors in exchange for cash or a fix. But I have neither, and consider myself just a spectator catching a half-drunk glimpse into the underside of urban nighttime. I was done for the night, tired, and I was going home. Also, getting a blow job from a junkie at 5
A.M
. in your dad’s truck, no matter how cool it may sound on paper, is just not a good idea. You know, so I’ve heard.

I started to grow precipitously tired on the drive home, but I was mere blocks away. As my eyelids grew heavier, I tightened my grip on the wheel and turned up the radio. Fortunately, the same spot I had vacated in the schoolyard a half hour before was open, so I pulled in. Had it been occupied, I could have parked somewhere else. I wasn’t worried about my dad seeing that his truck had been moved. He’s a late and heavy sleeper and I’m the opposite, so since I wake up before him I could always say that I took it in the morning out of the previous night’s spot. Not a big deal.

I hastily pulled into the spot, shut the car off, and sat. I needed a minute before I went in. It was cold out, but the truck was nice and cozy. I just wanted one second to sit there and relax before I went in the house. So I sat back, took a deep breath, and closed my eyes.

When I woke up, at least an hour or two later, the sun was out. I was
freezing
. The windows had frosted over with my hot breath. I couldn’t feel my nose, fingers, or toes. I could feel the cold deep, deep in my bones. As soon as I came to, my teeth started chattering uncontrollably. I didn’t know what time it was. I knew only that it was really fucking cold and I really needed a bed. I left the truck, stumbled my way across the schoolyard, and made my way to my dad’s house. The streets were still empty. After letting myself in, I stayed in the clothes I was wearing and bundled myself under the blankets and…
curtain
.

I awoke to a loud bang on the bedroom door. Not overly aggressive, but loud, assertive. It was my dad, calling my name and telling me to get up. I stretched and managed a meek “Hold on” as I kicked off my sneakers and took off my fleece to make it seem like I had a seminormal end to the night. When I opened the door, my dad had his back to me and was walking downstairs to the living room. I waited, curious, and then followed him as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

He sat down gingerly on his couch. In 2001, when he was forty-six, my dad got hurt at work. He now has four fused and six herniated vertebrae in his back and neck. Because of these injuries he’s constantly in pain, but it’s worse in the mornings. It takes him a good four hours, two pots of coffee, and his regimen of painkillers before he’s able to leave the house to do anything productive.

“How was last night?” he asked me. His eyes were focused on the TV as he sipped his coffee.

“Good” was my reply. I knew he didn’t want details and I didn’t feel like going into them because I wanted to know what this wake-up call was all about. My mind was racing. Does he know that I took the truck? Did I hit something? Is it fucked up at all?