As many of you know, Mary Milan and I got engaged over a whirlwind trip in New York City over New Years. What we’ve kept to ourselves - for pride’s sake, really - is how we promptly followed the happiest day of our lives (our engagement) with the scariest night of our lives.

In my wild youth, the concept of being “frugal” was like kryptonite to me. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that being “broke,” “riddled by debt,” and “destitute” suck ass and with Mary’s patient help, I’ve learned that cash money actually does not burn a hole in my pocket as I thought it once had, and that I’m the one who controls where the money goes.

It’s the night of our departure. My Plug Uglies gang is feting us with beer and shufflepuck. The night wears on and suddenly, it’s 3:00 AM. I check in with Mary Milan and she’s ready to get back to L.A. Besides, Ray Ray Boston already performed “The Whoopsie,” his be all, end all dance move for 2006, winning a dance battle - it’s obviously time to go.

Ray Ray, Mary, and I jump into a cab in Gramercy headed back to Brooklyn where we have to make three stops: 1) at Shirley Massachusetts’ to grab the first installment of our bags; 2) at Ray Ray Boston’s apartment to drop him off; 3) at the nearest N/R stop so we can jump onto an R train getting us to Bay Ridge where Joey Jerusalem lives. From there, we would pack the rest of our bags, jump into a car service, zoom over the Verazano bridge to Newark Airport where our plane back to sunny L.A. will be going “wheels up” at 6:20 AM.

Stops One and Two go off without a hitch. Ray Ray Boston bids us farewell and as we’re headed to Stop Three, I flashback to my wild spending youth and I almost say to the driver, “Fuck the scary ass subway stop that you’re going to drop us off to our sure death, take us to Bay-fucking-Ridge,” but a previous conversation with Mary Milan where she insisted on taking the subway, in addition to my new frugal ways, compels me to open the door at Stop Three - the scary ass N/R stop - pay and tip the driver, get Mary and my bags, and start walking toward the oft-mentioned scary ass N/R stop.

Mary was lagging, probably rethinking the whole “frugality does not equal kryptonite” thing.

The scary ass N/R stop headed towards Bay Ridge is taped off. Crap. Our cab has just driven off. Fuck. We bust down the tape and walk down the stairs where we are met by the late night MTA staff member.

“Hey, hey, hey…there ain’t no train here,” he says, ever so helpfully.

“How are we gonna get back to Bay Ridge?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Go across the street. That guy will help you.”

A reasonable answer, except that it doesn’t particularly inspire confidence and since it’s 3:15 in the morning, at a scary-ass subway stop in unknown Brooklyn, and we’re lugging so much baggage that we may as well have a sign that says, “rob the crap out of us,” confidence might be the only thing that saves us.

As we cross the street, I’m praying for a cab but none are to be found.

On the Manhattan bound side, we find an MTA attendant who is more interested in getting rid of us, than he is in helping us, which might I add, is his job. If Michael Jackson skin condition is to be believed, this guy looks like what MJ would look like if he were 75 and had no plastic surgery done. Now, it’s late, I’m drunk and tired. And here’s this guy. It’s piling on at this point.

“How do we get to Bay Ridge?” I ask.

He presses the button on his mic in his little booth and says, in a somewhat annoyed tone, something.

I look at him, dumbfounded, because the voice that I heard is a cross between Snagglepuss, Huckleberry Hound, and Scooby-Dooby Doo of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series.

“What?”

“Take this train back to Atlantic and then reverse your route,” he says, slightly more annoyed.

“What?” I repeat, marveling that he’s actually a combination of the voices of all three of my childhood favorite characters.

“TAKE THIS TRAIN BACK TO ATLANTIC AND THEN REVERSE YOUR ROUTE!”

“Heavens to Murgatroid,” I mutter to myself.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

With the exception of the creepy, scraggily, homeless guy pacing up and down the platform, passing us to accost a group of Latino kids, this part of the trip actually goes quite smoothly.

We miss just miss a train at Atlantic, but the way the night is going, I’m not surprised, but as there are a few MTA employees cleaning the station, it gives us about twenty minutes to grill them about how to get to Bay Ridge.

“Take the N to slkkhfrk and then transfer,” the nice Haitian lady says to me.

“Huh?”

“Take the train here to slkkhfrk and then transfer.”

I figure she means that we should transfer to the R train at 59th street because the N runs express and then at 59th street, it turns to go towards Coney Island, while the R runs local and more importantly for us, from 59th, it heads into Bay Ridge.

Just to be sure I check the map and schedule which kindly states that the R does not run late night. That’s peculiar. I go back to ask another one of the late night cleaning crew and he tells me to take the N train.

“Take the N Train?”

“Yes.”

“It’ll get us to Bay Ridge?”

He nods.

We get on the N train and here are the two other people on the car with us:

1. A messy looking guy who is asleep and drooling.
2. A huge guy or girl who is rustling inside of a garbage bag (not as in he/she is wearing it as a “potato sack”, ready to race at the company picnic, more like, wearing it over his/her head as a “body bag”.)

“Yee! That’s troubling,” Mary Milan says in reference to body bag rustler.

The train starts moving and I tell Mary Milan to try to sleep. It’s the same instinct that Ellen Ripley has when she tells Newt to close her eyes just as they are about to meet their demise in Aliens, before Bishop saves the day; if you’re going to die, you may as well be asleep when it happens, or at the very least blissfully unaware.

Body Bag continues to be disconcerting as he rustles through the next few stops. Drooling man is well, drooling. I am reminded of New York in the 70’s when it was a threatening, dangerous place, and I am half expecting The Warriors to come out to play.

At 36th Street, the doors open and the train conductor ROARS over the load speaker announcing the stop.

“Shut up, shut up,” I think to myself.  “Do not awaken Body Bag”

I’m assuming that if “slkkhfrk” translates to “36th street,” there might be an announcement but the train conductor doesn’t say, “Transfer here for the R Bay Ridge shuttle.” The doors close and we’re off.

Now between 36th and 59th, Mary Milan is asleep and I’m having the following internal debate:

Side 1: Johnny Hong Kong, you’re a smooth motherfucker, you know you gotta transfer at 59th street because the N NEVER GOES to Bay Ridge.

Side 2: Johnny Hong Kong, you may be a smooth motherfucker, but even when you lived in New York, how often you come this far out in Brooklyn? What makes you so smart about the subway out here? Maybe the N goes to Bay Ridge local this time of night.

Side 1: What about the bitches need to get to Coney Island?

Side 2: Fuck those carnie bitches.

Side 1: Carnival workers are people too. We’re gonna transfer at 59th street.

As the train pulls into 59th street, we hear the incessant pounding of jackhammers.

The train doors open to reveal a cloud of asbestos dust and rat shit concrete being kicked up by the army of MTA construction workers and their jackhammers drilling up the local track. It’s exactly like the scene in Die Hard 3 after Jeremy Irons and his band of Eurotrash thugs have crashed the subway train and are excavating the ruin to rob the Federal Reserve bank.

To be sure, this has short-circuited my action plan.

Side 2: You gonna get out, now? It looks like a bomb went off. What the hell kind of train is going to run through this shit? The R train doesn’t run late night.

Even if the train conductor had said, “Transfer here for local R train for Bay Ridge,” before he closes the door, I can’t hear him above the jackhammers.

The doors close and we’re off to an uncertain fate!

As we head into the tunnel, I am trying to will the train to go straight because if it goes straight, we’re headed home. If it turns, we’re headed into the scary unknown.

And wouldn’t you know it? The train turns.

I wake Mary Milan up. It’s bad, I tell her. We’re getting off at 8th Avenue, the next stop.

As the doors open onto 8th. It’s one of those uncovered stops or what the Spanish call aire libre. Joey Jerusalem describes these stops as “trough style,” which I think is more apt.  Aire Libre recalls rolling hills and glasses of Rioja while trough recalls a sunken compartment flanked by walls with caked on shit. We decide that it is way too scary to exit the train.

The next stop, Fort Hamilton Parkway, isn’t much better, but in the three seconds we have to decide, it seems like we could stay on the train hoping for a “safer” looking stop while getting further and further away from where we need to go, or we could get off and fend for ourselves. We decide that getting away from Body Bag was probably for the better so we get off.

On the street, we’re hoping for a cab or a car service but neither is to be found. Instead, we find three late night loiterers on the street, making a racket.

“Get back inside,” I tell Mary Milan.

Back inside, Mary Milan is looking for weapons while I try to call a car service. The first three don’t answer and finally on the fourth I get someone.

“I need a car at the Fort Hamilton Parkway subway station.”

“Hold on. Uh…I don’t have any cars tonight.”

“What?!”

“I don’t have any cars.”

“The hell are we supposed to do?”

“I don’t know.”

Mary Milan chides me for exiting the subway stop and on to the street because I may attract unsavories. I am doing this continuously - and possibly dangerously - but I am only trying to aid possibly flagging down a cab or a car that may happen to be near our dire situation.

“You may also flag down the person that’s going to rape, rob and kill us,” Mary Milan says.

“Kick nuts,” I tell her.

Our options are to take the N back to 36th and see what happens, walk, or try to get a car. Going back to 36th street seems like the most logical one except that we’ve been screwed by the MTA like we were a Phillip’s head, making any decisions based on faith in the MITA seem ridiculous, not to mention time consuming; it’s near 4 AM and our flight at Newark Airport leaves at 6:20 AM flight.

Desperation is running high and I’m certain that we won’t make it. It almost seems like we should just hole up at Fort Hamilton Parkway and wait it out until morning.

I make another call to a car service and surprisingly, I get through. He tells me that a car will be there in five minutes.

Whew.

But man, I need to piss.

10 minutes pass. No car. Bladder full of pee and desperation is at an all time high. Imagine, you’re stranded on an island and you get a message saying that in a day you’ll be rescued but three days later you’re still playing with Wilson.  That shit is demoralizing.

Mary Milan is near tears. She scolds me again for going outside. In my numerous ventures outside, I’ve noticed a small Hyundai rolling around the block a few times, passing our very little subway stop. This gives me pause as the windows are tinted. I think, “Who tints windows on a Hyundai? I don’t want to find out.” I keep this information from Mary Milan.

The tinted Hyundai passes one more time while I’m out there and I think, “Fuck this shit, there ain’t no car coming, if we’re going to get robbed, raped, and killed, I’d much rather be a moving target. I’m gonna piss on this godforsaken subway stop and we’re gonna walk to Bay Ridge. I don’t know where it is but I think I can find our way. Sheeeeeeeeeit.”

False confidence. It’s not unlike the time Ricky Tokyo, Gerry Germany, and I were in the woods looking for aliens, and scared out of my mind, I said, “Fuck those bitches. Let them come. I’ll kick them in the head.” Gerry Germany coolly replied, “It’s no use. They’ll sing songs and paralyze you.”

Anyway, I pee on the side of the Fort Hamilton Parkway subway station and as I’m zipping up, I see…a cab approaching in the distance. The light on top of his car is off suggesting that he is off duty but if he is, he’s going to have to run me over, as I am standing in the middle of the street waving my arms in the air like a madman.

The cab stops and says he’ll take us. We jump in, relieved and surprised, that we are still alive. He takes us to Joey Jerusalem’s, waits as we grab our remaining bags, and takes us to Newark where he rapes us -

…on the cab fare. I tell him to take us over the Verazano Bridge. He says that’s fine but he doesn’t really know how to get to the airport that way and it might be an “adventure.” The safest way he knows to Newark is to go all the way back into Manhattan, through the tunnel, and then on to Newark.

As Mary Milan settles in for a much-deserved nap, I tell the driver fine, go whichever way, just get us to the airport.

The entire fare for the Fort Hamilton Adventure: $100 toll and tip included.

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