Well, rather than start a new topic on embarrassing sh
it you've done, I dutifully did a google search and lo and behold, here's this nearly 10 year old thread. Ahem. So.........
As I've previously explained, I've been sober since summer of 1995. I was most decidedly NOT sober in the summer of 1987.
I was with all my drinking buddies that I'd known since the mid '70's. Not too surprisingly, we were all alcoholics (all but 2 of us sobered up in the '90's, the 2 that didn't both eventually died from alcohol-related liver failure, one in 1998, the other in 2004). We had been drinking hard all day, it was time for me to go home. The party was at about SE 20th & Powell in Portland, I lived directly across from Civic Stadium (now JELD-WEN Field) in what is now called the Pearl District. That is one hell of a long walk at about 1 in the morning (
http://tinyurl.com/7zweqtu ) esp. when you're as wasted as I was.
So I've been walking for an hour, I was carrying my bass guitar, and was stumbling mightily. But most of all, I was PISSED. I was PISSED that I had to walk, I was PISSED at the f
ucking world, and most of all I was PISSED that I wasn't gonna get laid, AGAIN. I was doing a stumbling drunken bellowing pissed-off rant the entire way. I had been walking all this time and was now walking across the Hawthorne Bridge.
If you know Portland, the Hawthorne Bridge is a vertical draw bridge, with the drawspan closer to Downtown. And, as I described earlier, I was pissed at the world. So I'm stumbling and yelling at the world, my bass is really getting heavy, and as I approach the drawspan I see a long diagonally vertical rod iron pipe, painted dayglo tennisball green with black barberpole stripes. It is the barrier that lowers when the drawspan lifts, lest people just walk off the edge of the bridge and plunge 50 feet into the cold filthy Willamette.
I have NO IDEA what got this idea into my alcohol-addled brain, but at that point I decided I was gonna break that f
ucking pole. I reach up (I'd guestimate that the pole, at about an eleven o'clock angle, towered about nine feet above the sidewalk) and grab the pole and pull down with all my might (which was considerable, I was extremely buff in 1987, you wouldn't ever guess that seeing me now). I'm giving it everything I have, but I'd failed to notice that, at the base of this heavy, rod iron pipe, was a breakaway spring. So I'm putting every ounce of strength I have downward on ths pole. Or, another way to look at it, I was pulling that pole directly toward my head. That was when I discovered the presence of that breakaway spring. At that moment, as that spring snapped, I effectively took a nine foot heavy rod iron pipe and
POW! clubbed myself on the head at high force. I knock myself cold....
As I come to (I actually was only out for a moment) I pick myself up off the wooden sidewalk, I'm looking down at the sidewalk and *plop* a big bloody puddle appears on the sidewalk. Oh sh
it, I need some help. So my head is bleeding, I pick up my bass, sidestep the now dangling boingedy-boingedy pole and walk over to the downtown side of the bridge. In the summer of 1987 there was a meat-market type disco immediately there on 1st and Main. Everybody out to find someone to f
uck, everybody in their 1987 best outfits, with the fluffy hair and all that sh
it, and there were several of these vacuous ninny boys outside the front door. One of them sees me coming with my bloodied head, I figure maybe someone would get me some help, but the first guy that sees me just points at me and laughs "hahaha! you look like sh
it! hahahaha!" I'm thinking to myself, yeah, who gives a f
uck about my bashed in skull, what matters is how I LOOK ferpissakes...
So, fortunately, he wasn't the only idiot there and someone got me to a nurse or something that was working in the building. The only problem was, she asked me what happened. I didn't wanna say "well, I viciously clubbed myself over the head with a nine foot lead pipe", so I made up a story about being mugged (realizing that the story had this great big gaping hole in it, as I was still carrying my $400 bass). She seemed to overlook that stupid explanation (maybe she believed me, maybe she didn't) but she patched me up and sent me on my way...
OK, your turn...