Wheelchair Asshole

Yesterday was my berfday (go vampira!). I made plans to hang out with two of my favorites, John and Irmy, at the 11th St. Diner on Washington Ave for some cake. Two out of the three of us are avoiding alcohol for a little while so we were like, "No alcohol, just CAKE." They got to the Diner before I did, so I was speed-walking my way over there. There was a hot black guy walking down the sidewalk towards me and when he saw me he stopped and waited for me to walk past him. He had take-out food in one hand and held out his other hand for me to shake. Being the friendly tranny that I am, I smiled and shook his hand, and kept walking. He turned around and asked me, "When do I get to see you again?!" I yelled back, "You don't!" That reply prompted him to run after me. Whaaaat?! Dude ran down half a block to catch up to me. I started laughing and yelled, "FASTER!!" When he caught up to me I stopped and we talked for a little while. He gave me his number and we chatted for a little while. He seemed like a really nice guy but I'm not dating anyone until I start to look my age. And by the looks of it, that will be when I am deceased and decomposing in a grave somewhere.
I made it to the Diner and my babies were sitting outside waiting for me. I asked if we were gonna stay outside or go indoors and grab a booth. The weather was nice and the people-watching was interesting so we decided to stay outside. Across the street we saw this dude in a wheelchair letting out these weird crack-addict screams. At one point he stood up from his chair and walked over to a garbage can. We were like, "Awesome, he doesn't even need the wheelchair... "
While we waited for our waitress to bring us some menus, we saw two guys walk down the sidewalk right next to our table. One of them was a tall white dude, with a shaved head and a handlebar moustache, and his arms were sleeved up in colorful tattoos. I said, "That dude is delicious." Irmy laughed and John wanted to take a look, so he pretended to be a super-obvious Peeping Tom and look through the bushy potted plant right behind him. Irmy and I laughed at the way John was rustling through the plant, when he could have easily leaned forward and taken a better look at Delicious Dude. I asked him to hold the pose so I could get a picture of him, when we noticed that the wheelchair crackhead had Fred Flinstone'd his wheelchair across the street and stopped right next to our freaking table. I put my phone down & told John, "Ok, wait, I'll take the picture in a little while."
I didn't know crackheads had bionic hearing, because this motherfucker called me out on my putting my phone away. He cracked out, "What, I come over here and you put your phone down? Ahh! What, I'm not a person? What, you're better than me? Ahh! What, I spent five years in prison! You don't learn shit in school!! Only on the streets and in prison! I was in prison!!" He rambled on about how... um.... crap, I don't remember the rest of his crack monologue. He spotted a man smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk behind us and yelled out to him to bum a cigarette. Then he pretended he had difficulty standing up out of his chair, yelling, "Ahhh my leg is broken!!" The other man walked over and gave him a cigarette, and then crackie sat back down and .... fucking stayed there, watching us. Very casually. Dude was not going anywhere. When the waitress came out, John said to her, "This guy won't leave... maybe we should go inside...." The waitress said to the Wheelchair Asshole in Argentine spanish (I can always spot the Argents), "Señor, por favor, se puede mover un poquito, porque los esta molestando." (Sir, please, can you move away a little, because you're bothering them.) This request provoked Wheelchair Asshole to yell, "YO ME VOY PA' LA PINGA!!!" Roughly translated, this means, "I'm gonna go fuck myself!!!" The awesome Argentine waitress calmly replied, "Bueno, ¿se puede ir para la pinga ahora?" ("Well, can you go fuck yourself now?") Irmy and I were dying laughing because she was so calm about it, she spoke with  the same intonation as when she greeted us and brought us our drinks. The four of us collected our things and everything on the table and high-tailed it inside. It took us a few minutes to compose ourselves and stop laughing at how awesomely our waitress handled that douche. 
At the end of the night, we Mission:Impossible'd our way out of the diner, sneaking around the corner, waiting to see if there was a super-pissed-off-ex-felon-crackhead barreling down the sidewalk, trying to take one of us out with his wheelchair of delusion. The coast was clear and  the night was saved, all by one petite Argentine waitress with an immeasurable amount of sass.

The Night We Met Tyler: Part 2

I just unhinged my jaw and swallowed whole three quarters of the biggest burrito I've ever had in my life. I now lay immobilized on my bed with an engorged stomach, so naturally I felt it was the right time to continue my Tyler story. I need to type fast before my body begins to violently reject my late dinner and I'm sent running for the hills. The hills being my kitchen, where I can puke in the garbage can, surrounded by the comforting sight of all the PBR cans strewn about this afternoon by Billy, Bel, and me. We abandon empty beer cans on any flat surface, and later as I go about collecting them I reminisce about whatever random ridiculousness we were laughing at that distracted us enough that we would forget the can completely.

In "The Night We Met Tyler: Part 1," I left off at the part where the three of us became a unit. During our initial bonding experience, a tattooed guy walked into the bar. (You know how I feel about tattooed dudes...) He sat to Tyler's right and they talked to each other for quite a while. Then he came around and started asking me who tattooed my arms, and what my tattoos meant, etc. He asked what nationality I was, and when I told him my parents are Argentine, but I was born and raised in Miami, he instantly became the most fucking annoying person in South Beach. 

He started talking about Che Guevara, and giving me his theory as to why "this country fucking sucks," and how he "can't wait to get the fuck out," and it was all just a shit-storm of anti-American sentiments. My dad's a Vietnam Veteran and my brother's a veteran of both Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom wars, so I was about ready to gouge out this fucker's eyeballs. Which brings us to how he got his nickname, Crazy Eyes. He had light eyes; on a well-adjusted individual they would have been really attractive. However, on a drunken, bellicose, idiot, they made him look like a psych ward escapee. Especially 'cause he was all wide-eyed and shifty. After what felt like an eternity, and after he nearly had me in a boredom-induced coma, I looked at Tyler and Belinda with pleading eyes that screamed, "HELP ME!" I think they were enjoying my uncomfortable body language and overall look of despair, because I was slowly sliding off my barstool and must have had the worst posture ever. At one point I just leaned over and said to them, (not even caring if Crazy Eyes could hear me,) "This guy is insane, he's insane!" Tyler just laughed, and I was like, "Do you not care? He's nuts. Really. Belinda help. Help me please. I'll buy you a beer. Get him away from me." The music in there was loud enough that I thought Crazy Eyes wouldn't hear me. When I turned back to Crazy Eyes, his eyes had gotten wider, and he puffed his mouth up like a blowfish. I thought for sure he heard me talking shit about him and was gettin' ready to knock me on my ass, when he continued talking about how America is such a huge piece of shit. Apparently, not only is Crazy Eyes partially deaf, but he has a unique way of catching his breath when he's in the middle of a rant. Acting like an underwater sea creature only added to his batshit crazy vibe. 

Eventually Crazy Eyes left me to go empty his angry bladder (at this point I just assumed he had lots of misdirected anger in his small tattooed frame and that he must have really violent bodily functions). Belinda, Tyler, and I regrouped, and I explained to them that they are not to allow Crazy Eyes to get that close to me again. I asked Tyler, "What the hell were you two talking about for so long? 'Cause all I got was crazy-talk." Tyler was too nice to say anything mean about Crazy Eyes. Which is really fine with me, 'cause I got enough bitch in me for a small village. (A small village populated by a dying breed of tiny people.)

So there we were, the three of us, sitting at the bar talking while simultaneously shunning any stranger that tried to infiltrate our Circle Of Trust, when Belinda and I were approached by a super cute, short-haired, tattooed girl. She asked us a question about where would be a good place to go dancing, when Belinda pointed to a tattoo on her inner arm. Immediately recognizing the Hedwig tattoo, I grabbed her arm and shrieked. I think I freaked her out because she politely yanked her arm out of my grip. Belinda laughed and I was like, "OMG OMG HEDWIG!!!!"

That's how we met lovely Dominique and her beautiful aunt, Annika. They were on vacation from San Francisco, weren't shifty-eyed, and seemed well-adjusted, so we allowed them entry into our Circle of Trust. After a little while, Tyler and Annika kind of drifted off into their own conversation, and Belinda and Dominique did the same. I was left an open and easy target for Crazy Eyes, and he didn't waste any time in gettin' back to me. This time around, however, he didn't talk about what he feels is wrong with this country, he talked about his failing marriage. I was thinking, "Dude, talking to girls in bars is not the way to repair your marriage..." but whatever, the guy already seemed a few sandwiches short of a picnic basket. Not the sharpest tool in the shed. The lights are on, but nobody's home. I'll stop.

After Dominique and Annika left, we quickly formed our trio again, and went back to shunning outsiders. Belinda and I decided that Tyler was nice enough and non-creepy enough that we would want to hang out with him again on his vacation. Belinda and I put my number in Tyler's phone as "Belinda & Kat, Tour Guides." He was going to be in South Beach for a little over a week, and the next day his friend/bandmate, Mike was flying in.

Which brings me to the next installment in my blog, "The Night We Met Mike, Tony, Eric, Howard, Danny, and Crazy Eyes 2.0."  

The Night We Met Tyler: Part 1

As you know by now, Belinda and I frequent a small bar two blocks away from my apartment: Lush!!! It has one pool table, two big bathrooms, and three cool bartenders. The best part is that it's not your typical "South Beach" bar by any means. It's a great place for low-maintenance-personality types; a haven for genuine people with real hang-ups and occasional social-anxiety disorder. We went to our home-away-from home a few Tuesdays ago, and as we walked in, were greeted with an awesome thank you from the HBIC (Head Bartender In Charge) Justin, for finding him a ska band to play the following night. He was so happy, he gave us each a beer on the house as we took our seats at the bar. I said to him, "God, I really hope they don't suck... I've never heard them before but they came highly recommended from a reliable source, so they should be... sorta good...?" He said, "I don't care, I don't care, I'm just happy to have a live ska band here tomorrow night!!" Earlier when I said, "God, I hope they don't suck," the bearded guy sitting at the bar to our right laughed at my comment. I thought, "Well, there's a friendly fellow..." Little did I know that we were going to be spending the next crazy week with him and his friend. (That's not a euphemism; his "friend" is actually his buddy that flew into Miami the next day.)
So Belinda and I sat there making small talk with Justin, while Bearded Dude drank his beers and politely eavesdropped. Justin asked us where we were from, and Belinda said, "I'm from Jacksonville, and she's from Miami." He looked at me and said, "Miami? Really?! You don't look like you're from Miami." Belinda said, "Well, she does have those chola eyebrows..." I laughed and said, "These eyebrows are from South Central, honey!" Justin, Belinda, and Bearded Dude all laughed out loud; they understood that my eyebrows are a status symbol one should not fuck with. 
Since we don't own TVs, Belinda and I always get sucked in to the hypnotic flat-screen TV that hangs right over our seats at the bar. They usually have an EXTREME sports reality show playing. We sat there silently watching skiing on TV and then for some strange reason, we started talking about dying, specifically, ways we would prefer to die. Because naturally, skiing makes me think of death. 
When it comes to death and dying, my feelings and thoughts on the matter have changed over the years, except for one thought that's remained the same: I hope nothing happens to my eyebrows. (One day I was thrift shopping with my cousin and brother. Diego grabbed a funny hat and plopped it right on my head. The look of horror on my face was his cue to take it off immediately. He said, "Sorry! I forgot how you are with germs and other people's hats." I replied, "No, it's not that. My eyebrows! Did you mess up my eyebrows?!" I was more concerned that my eyebrows had been temporarily messed up than if some tiny critter laid eggs in my hair. True Story.)
I was telling Belinda that I would rather be set on fire than die by drowning, and we were discussing the logistics of the two, when Bearded Dude started laughing and said something like, "Are you two really talking about ways to die?" Belinda said to him, "Yeah, she says she would rather die from a fire than from drowning, which I think would be less painless and more peaceful." So the two of them started trying to convince me that I was fucked up for choosing fire over drowning, at least, that's the way it felt. Those goddamned bullies. They had me imagine myself dying from drowning, floating towards the bottom of the ocean, at which point my lungs began to close up inside my drunk birdcage chest. After I could breathe normally again, the three of us were emotionally attached for the rest of the night.


to be continued.... (in other words, I forgot details of that night [don't judge] so I gotta call my partner-in-crime Bel.)