There Will Be Blood

In my late teens, a series of not-so-great decisions had culminated with me not being in school, not having a job, and living in a tiny closet/apartment for which I still had to somehow pay rent.  This was in the early 90's (1990 to be precise), and the economy was pretty much in the toilet, which meant that, as someone with a high school diploma and not much working experience, I was looking at a job in the fast food industry.  Then someone turned me on to this company that was hiring security guards without any experience, and, well, you can figure out the rest.

Flash forward to later in the year.  It was just weeks before my 20th birthday.  I was a "security officer" (not a guard, thank you very much) for possibly the most half-assed security company in history.  I was between regular gigs, and had gotten an assignment to fill in at a small hospital in Portland for a week while they found a replacement for the regular guard, whom the client had fired for sleeping on the job.  This was particularly awkward, because it turned out nobody had told this guy that he had been fired for sleeping on the job.  You can imagine how surprised he was when I showed up to do his job and, thinking that there had been a mix-up at the office and they had assigned two of us to fill in, I told him that I was there to fill in for the guy who had just been fired for sleeping on the job.  I then got to stand around awkwardly while he called in and confirmed that, yes, he had been fired by the client for sleeping on the job.  Since he had only been fired by the client, not the security company, he was still technically getting a paycheck, so he got the extra-humiliating task of training me on how to do the job he had just been fired from.  It was an extremely awkward ten minutes.

Fortunately for me, this was a tiny little hospital where they practiced osteopathic medicine.  I had no idea what that meant; apparently, I was not alone, because nobody seemed to go there.  This made my job pretty easy.  In fact, if it weren't for the fact that it was located in such a shitty neighborhood, I don't think they would have needed a guard at all.  As it was, a couple of nurses on the night shift had been assaulted while walking to their cars after work, so my primary duty was just to walk nurses safely to their vehicles in the wee hours of the morning.  Aside from this, I really only had two other things to occupy my time.  One was setting up the salad bar in the hospital cafeteria for the night crew.  I have no idea why the security guard was in charge of this, aside from the obvious fact that no one else wanted to do it, and I had plenty of time on my hands.  The rest of my time was spent "patrolling," which, for the most part, meant just wandering around the hospital all night.  This was about as exciting as you would imagine, but I was determined to do a good job.  I wanted to get another assignment after the week was up and, after seeing how the last guy had been fired, I was too paranoid to even sit down for a minute.

It was a long week, but I made it through without incident.  Until, of course, the very last night.  Now, as anyone who has had this job will probably tell you, being a security guard is one of the most boring jobs imaginable.  My own career as a "security officer" (such as it was) consisted of loooong periods of boredom, during which I wished for something--anything--to happen, punctuated by crazy incidents that made me wish more than anything for nothing to happen so I could just be bored again.  All week, I had been waiting for something to happen at my tiny hospital; after all, I had heard crazy stories from other guards who had worked at some of the bigger hospitals.  One of these guys had confided in me that he always brought an extra shirt to work with him because he always got so much blood on him during his shift.  So I was a little disappointed, but mostly relieved, when nothing happened.

So the last night arrived, and I was training the guy who would be taking over from me.  Since I hadn't been fired for sleeping on the job, he was getting the luxury of a full night of training.  Shortly after 2 o'clock in the morning--not coincidentally, around the time the bars were closing--we were on patrol, checking the outlying doctors' offices to make sure nobody had broken into them looking for drugs. (I mentioned this was a really bad neighborhood, right?) My trainee and I had split up, for no reason I can think of that makes any sense, when my pager went off.  This was a voice pager, so the beeping was followed by the sound of the receptionist's voice telling me what they needed.  Unfortunately, the doctor's office I was checking out was situated right next to a 7-11, where a mammoth semi truck was backing up, so between the incredibly loud diesel engine and the piercing beeping of his I'm-backing-up-so-get-the-hell-out-of-my-way signal, I couldn't hear a damn thing she was saying.  Since a page usually meant that a nurse was getting off duty and needed an escort to her car, I wasted a precious minute looking around for my trainee.

The beeper went off again.  This time, there was no mistaking a frantic note in the receptionist's voice.  That, and the fact that she was yelling, lit a fire under my ass and I took off running back to the emergency room.  Despite the small size of the hospital, the doctors' offices were a pretty fair distance away, so I was running full tilt for a couple of minutes before I arrived, huffing and puffing, at the ER.

It was covered in blood.  Well, okay, it was liberally splattered with blood, but in my anxious state it looked like the inside of a slaughterhouse.  There were two guys facing off in the middle of the room.  One of them, the nursing supervisor, who was sort of my on-site boss, was covered head-to-toe in blood.  The other guy was a big, beefy dude with a greasy black mullet and matching mustache.  He was wearing a dirty wife beater that showed off his meaty, tattoo-covered arms, one of which appeared to be the source of the blood that had turned the ER into a Jackson Pollack painting.  A large chunk of meat was protruding from one of his forearms, no doubt completely ruining an otherwise perfectly good tattoo.  He was in the process of swinging this arm around in such a way as to distribute the blood as evenly as possible over the various surfaces in the ER, possibly unaware that in doing so he was making them completely un-sterile. 

When I walked in the room, everything stopped.  Everyone looked at me expectantly.  I could almost hear them thinking, Oh, good, the security guard's here.  He'll make everything all right again.  I'm sad to say I disappointed them almost immediately.  I did not take charge.  I did not wrestle the large, profusely bleeding man-bear to the ground and subdue him.  I just froze.

I should mention here that it was not entirely my fault that I was completely unprepared for this situation.  I was not an armed guard.  I had no gun, no nightstick, no taser, no pepper spray.  I had been assured, when I took a job with the aforementioned half-assed security company, that I would never, ever, have to subdue anyone, under any circumstances and, moreover, I was under the impression that I would get in trouble for doing so.  During that interminable moment when I was standing there in the entrance to the ER, desperately wishing I were somewhere else, I flashed back to something I had been told during orientation.

"Orientation," such as it was, had lasted for one whole day, during which I was shown, along with the other trainees, two videos--one was on the importance of being courteous in the course of our duties, and the other was on the importance of properly filling out the appropriate paperwork (daily activity reports, incident reports, etc.) on a daily basis.  During the part where we were being reassured that we would never be expected to engage in the kind of physical combat I was now anticipating, one of the trainees asked Al, our elderly trainer, what the hell we were supposed to do if we were attacked by an armed maniac.  I have never forgotten Al's response.

"I probably shouldn't tell you this," he said, gravely, "but this--" he held up his cheap, ballpoint pen, "--can be a deadly weapon."  I had a feeling, right then, that I was--if you'll pardon the expression--screwed.  But I really needed the job.  And that, my friends, represented the full extent of my preparation for my present predicament.

The situation, as I understand it, was that the tattooed side of beef in question had come into the ER with his unpleasant boo-boo and had subsequently spotted a girl that he knew sitting in one of those little curtained off sections that ERs have, where a doctor was stitching up her hands.  Apparently, there was some bad blood between them, because he decided that his next course of action should be to kill her.  Naturally, the ER staff objected, and had (so far) prevented him from killing anyone.  Their strategy, it seemed, had been to have the nursing supervisor (who was a pretty big guy himself) stay between the would-be killer and his objective.  I actually thought that this staying-between-the-psycho-and-the-girl strategy sounded way better than a fight-with-a-large-scary-man-and-get-killed maneuver, so I took up a position next to the nursing supervisor that also put me between the girl and our bloody friend, in the hopes that the real police would soon show up and save my ass.

It quickly became clear to me that our friend was on something.  He was raving nonsensically about why he needed to kill the girl (he mentioned that he couldn't go home because she had stolen his home), and he was paranoid, refusing to let anyone patch up the hunk of meat that was hanging out of his arm because they were "trying to trick" him.  Most telling of all, my presence seemed to intimidate him.  Let me repeat that: the terrifying killer who outweighed me by at least 50 pounds and who could have probably pulled my arms and legs off and beaten me with them (hey, is that becoming a theme for me? I think I said that about a guy in my last post, too!) was intimidated by the skinny nineteen-year-old who was desperately trying not to piss himself.  Fortunately for me, all he saw was a shiny badge (at least they gave me one of those), which his addled mind interpreted to mean I was, at least on some level, sort of a cop.  He even, at one point, actually pointed at me and said to the nursing supervisor, "He's in charge."  This probably would have made everyone laugh if things hadn't been so tense.  Unfortunately, his respect for my authority did not keep him from taking a few more swipes at the nursing supervisor's outstretched arm, which said gentleman was using to keep him back, further soaking him with blood.

I'm pretty sure the cops were there in less than ten minutes, but of course it felt like hours to me.  During this whole time, my trainee was still wandering around somewhere among the doctor's offices, unaware of what was transpiring in our blood-soaked emergency room.  I was really wishing he would show up because, unlike me, he had a flashlight.  I should mention that a lot of the guards that worked for our company got around the prohibition against weapons by carrying flashlights--the really long, heavy, Mag flashlights that are made of metal and could probably crush someone's skull if you tagged them with one.  I was really kicking myself right then for not having one.

Of course, eventually, after everyone had acquired a few more layers of blood, the real police showed up, made our suddenly not-so-scary friend let someone patch up his arm, and took him off to jail.  My trainee showed up at this point, far too late to render any kind of assistance, and I filled him in.  The nursing supervisor, who by this time looked like Carrie after the prom, turned to me and said, "Why didn't you take him down?"  To my credit, I did not laugh in his face and remind him that I was making only slightly more than minimum wage (about $4.75 an hour, if I recall correctly), and what the hell was I supposed to do, take him out with a ballpoint pen (I can imagine the confused look on his face after that one!).  Instead, I just shrugged him off.  I got a fair amount of snide comments from other nurses and doctors that were present, confirming the one useful thing I had actually learned from old Al: when things go wrong, the security guard will get the blame, so you'd better cover your ass. 

I finished my shift, and left that little hospital for almost the last time.  I would return for one night almost exactly one year to the date after this little incident...but that's another story.

PS - I looked it up on the internet, it looks like this hospital went bankrupt around 2000, was bought by Reed College in 2004, and torn down.  See ya!

Near Misses

Awhile back, it occurred to me to wonder why I seem to have so many stories to tell about myself and the things that have happened to me.  It dawned on me that what most of these tales have in common is at least one really bad decision on my part.  This has led me to the conclusion that poor decision-making leads to good stories.  And from my own experience and observations, I would say that nothing gets those bad decisions rolling like alcohol.  Booze.  Hooch.  Demon rum.  Which brings me to my first story:

On one particular night in the fall of 1996, having elevated my blood alcohol level with liberal amounts of crappy domestic beer at a mediocre sports-themed bar in downtown Phoenix, I got the ball rolling by making my move on a young lady.  Now, this was not in itself a bad idea; after all, the young lady had been casting what definitely appeared to me to be a serious bedroom gaze in my direction.  These inviting glances came up on my radar while my friend/wingman and I were playing pool at the next table over from the young lady in question, waiting for the rest of our usual weekend sausage party to show up.  Upon receiving confirmation from my wingman that I was, in fact, getting signals from the target, we moved into formation and swooped in on the young lady and her female companion with one common goal--getting me laid.

Several hours later, it became clear that I would not, in fact be getting laid, and would instead have to settle for a phone number.  My wingman had disappeared sometime between the arrival of the female companion's boyfriend and the arrival of the rest of our crew.  In fact, it occurred to me as the young lady prepared to depart with her friends and I bid her goodnight, that I had no idea where my friends--and, consequently, my ride--had gone. 

Those of you who are familiar with the Arizona Center in downtown Phoenix probably know it as an office complex with shops and restaurants on the first floor and offices on the second floor; however, in the 90's the second floor consisted mainly of a maze of nightclubs.  The sports-themed bar I was in was connected to a godawful piano bar and an extremely crowded club that played whatever kind of alternative music hipsters danced to when they were trying to get laid.  I made several circuits of this maze before coming to the conclusion that my buddies had ditched me.

This, of course, was the first in a series of bad decisions I would soon be making.  My beer-soaked brain reasoned that my boys were so supremely confident that I would be going home with the blond that they had left me to sink or swim while they went looking for greener pastures.  Clearly, this was laughable on a number of levels.  Nevertheless, in my impaired state I quickly reasoned that my next logical move was to walk back to my car.  Which I had left at my buddy's house.  In a different part of town.

This was bad news for a couple of reasons.  One, this was about a six-mile hike due east of the Arizona Center.  Two, the Arizona Center is located on Van Buren.  Bear in mind that this was the Van Buren of the mid-90's, before Sheriff Joe's campaign (or maybe between campaigns) to clean up that particular avenue.  At that time, the Arizona Center was located in a very small window of respectability on a street that was otherwise infested with prostitutes and other sketchy characters, drawn by its rows of skeezy little hotels that rented rooms (and diseases) literally by the hour.  You could drive down Van Buren on a Sunday afternoon and see a dozen hookers out working the after-church crowd.  I had recently been in the market for a car and, while visiting a sleazy used-car lot on Van Buren, I had to push past a hooker hanging out by the front door.  Like Mos Eisley spaceport in Star Wars, it was "an evil hive of scum and villainy."  I got walking.

At first, things were going great.  It was a beautiful evening in late autumn; warm, with a hint of a cool breeze--great walking weather.  Presumably because I was on foot, the prostitutes and pimps that I passed let my walk by unmolested.  For some reason, despite having gotten no further with the young lady at the bar than a phone number written on a napkin, I was feeling good about how things had gone that evening and was in high spirits.  As time passed, however, and my buzz faded, it began to dawn on me just how far I had to walk.  Also, as a result of a car accident I had been in a few months earlier that had shattered my ankle, I had a fair amount of hardware (bolts, screws, and a plate) in my left leg and still walked with a bit of a limp.  It was starting to give me little twinges; not painful, just letting me know it was prepared to start giving me trouble. 

About this time, a rather scruffy looking gentleman sidled up next to me and began walking alongside me.  This didn't worry me as much as you might expect; at that stage in my life, I spent a great deal of my spare time working out, and was in good enough shape that I was confident, to the point of cockiness, in my ability to take care of myself in any situation.  This, despite the fact that I hadn't been in a fight since junior high school, and I am reasonably certain I had never actually won a fight when I did.

After walking together for a bit in what seemed to be a companionable silence, my new friend introduced himself, sticking out his hand and saying, "Hi, I'm Mike."

"Hi, Mike," I replied, shaking his hand, "I'm Bill."

We walked on for a few moments in silence again.  I was feeling pretty good about my new friend when he turned to me again and said, "So, Bill, do you like letting off steam?"

I didn't know what to make of this question.  Was it some sort of sexual come-on?  Was he about to proposition me?  I tried to respond positively, while staying non-committal.  "Well, everybody likes letting off steam once in awhile," I said.

He seemed pleased with my response.  "Are you up for a little scrap?"

I was about 70% sure now that this wasn't a sexual thing, but it caught me off guard and my brain was still a bit pickled.  "Excuse me?"

He hastily explained, "I'm just talking about a little fair, one-on-one."

Had the movie been out yet, I would have had a name for what he was talking about: fight club.  As it was, despite my confidence in my physique, I was not quite deluded enough to think of myself as a "scrapper."  I hated to disappoint my buddy Mike, but I politely declined with a casual, "Oh, you know, I would, but I have to work in the morning." 

Mike seemed worried that he may have given offense.  "Oh, hey, I didn't mean anything by it.  I hope I didn't offend you."  For a guy who invited strangers to brawl with him, he was extremely courteous and considerate.  I assured him that no offense was taken, we shook hands again, and he departed on the best of terms.  I kept walking.

And walking.

And walking.

I was starting to worry just a teeny bit.  The leg was hurting, my limp was getting worse and slowing me down even more, and while I was still confident in my ability to walk back to my car, I was beginning to think it would literally take me all night.

A car passed me, signaled, and pulled over to the curb a few car lengths ahead.  The driver, a man, leaned over and opened the passenger door: a clear invitation to get in.  I stopped.  There was only one reason a guy would stop at 2 o'clock in the morning on Van Buren to pick up another guy.  This man thought that I was a male prostitute.

My first instinct was to decline the ride and keep walking.  No sane person would get into a car with a stranger who thought they were a prostitute and would be expecting gay sex--a kind of sex which, while beautiful and natural, is not a type of sex I have ever participated in, nor am I likely to ever do so.  But wait a minute, my still-lubricated decision-making center urged me, we still have so far to walk.  Maybe we could knock a mile or two off of the distance before this guy kicks us out of his car.  Then my vanity kicked in, reminding me that my muscular physique was sufficient to empower me to handle myself in any situation.  I got in the car.

Now, it is unlikely that I was ever the sculpted Adonis that I remember in my middle years, or that I thought I was at the time.  Never was this brought home to me as clearly as the moment I got into that car, shutting the door behind me, and turned to greet the driver.

This man was a mountain of muscle.  He was, quite possibly, the most muscular man I had met up to that point in my life.  It occurred to me immediately that this man could do whatever he wanted to me, up to and including pulling my arms and legs off with his bare hands. 

 I really, really, wanted a ride.

My brilliant, improvised strategy was to thank him for the ride and begin telling him my story as quickly as I could without stopping for breath: how my friends had ditched me when I met this girl and I had to walk home after I met this girl and I had so far to walk after I met this girl and I really appreciated the ride because I had just met a girl.

When I finally had to stop talking to take a breath, he introduced himself as Jerry and asked where I was headed.  I told him and he obligingly continued in that direction.  He mentioned that he, too, had just come from a club.  When I asked him which one, he looked at me slyly and said, "Oh, you wouldn't know which clubs I go to, dude, I'm gay."  I responded by telling him all about the girl I had just met at the bar. 

Jerry was a good sport; in retrospect, he was unbelievably gracious considering the bait-and-switch I had just pulled on him.  He made one or two more half-hearted attempts to gauge my interest in gay sex, and I stuck to my strategy of playing dumb and pretending I didn't know he wanted to bone me.  Eventually, he gave up, pulled over in a grocery store parking lot, and said, "Well, this is as far as I go."  I thanked him profusely, jumped out, and started walking with renewed vigor.  Jerry had generously knocked several miles off of my walk, and I was able to make it back to my car in half an hour or so.  It did not occur to me until much later that, as hard as I had been trying to get laid that night, I had quickly passed up my one real opportunity to get any action at all.  Nevertheless, I had made it home in one piece, surviving to try again with the young lady at a later date, unsullied by the taint of male prostitution.

I would have told her all about it, too, if she had given me her real phone number.

--Incredibill