By 
For me, Wednesday June 23rd, may be the dumbest day of 2010 yet.
It all started pretty normal. I performed a Storybox for kids show at a Catholic school in the morning, got some fun lunch in the afternoon, and then performed with Octavarius in Battleprov at Comedy Sportz Chicago. The Kids show was great, lunch was wonderful, and Octavarius won the Battleprov show! Seems like an all around great wednesday.
Everything is swell!
That is, until I decided that I should go see my friend’s band, Par Avion. If you don’t know them, go ahead and hit their myspace and give them a listen. It’s pretty fun music.
So Klahsio and I head to Angels and Kings (a bar where apparently band people go to hear other bands) for a night of fun! We arrived a little after 11:00 P.M. while some other band was wrapping up. They were average! There was a confusingly ominous line of girls with varying levels of attractiveness sitting along a wall, and a ton of punky hip folk hanging out in the back. This certainly wasn’t the atmosphere I frequent, but it was fun nonetheless.
We waited for Par Avion to begin, and made a mission to dance and have fun while they played. Unfortunately, nobody at this bar is there to enjoy themselves. Nobody wants to have fun. Nobody wants to dance. So in the middle of a crowd of stoic standing, tattoo emblazoned, punky hipsters, are Klahsio and I, dancing like complete morons. We hoped that others would join, and tried to encourage dancing from these boring punkers, but it was a fruitless mission. So, we decided to step outside for some fresh air.
This is when we noticed that a group of homeless folk were stirring about the outside of the bar waiting for people to come out to ask for money like bees waiting for flowers to open their petals to the delicious bee food within. Sure enough, not 2 minutes after being outside, Klahsio is fighting off two bees using the little known “talk about things they can’t comprehend method (why the book, “Truth in Comedy” is so good. I’m serious, that’s what he was talking to them about)” and I am trying to convince a man known as “Shoe Shinin’ Spider” that I don’t need my tennis shoes shined at 12:15 A.M. He was persistent, however, and told me “He needed me to take care of him, cause he don’t got nothin, ya’know?”
Now, I am not a heartless person. I try to give money to street performers (that are good) and help people out when I am able. But I simply didn’t have any money. I had no cash on me, and my debit card was in the bar. I assured the man, that if there was something I could do to help him, I would. But I knew, I wasn’t going to give him money I didn’t have, and though I thought it would be a good idea to offer up him staying with Tinz and sleeping in Tinz’s bed, I knew better. But he asked my name, and I foolishly gave it to him. This would come back to haunt me.
So Klahs and I dive back into the pond that is the bar to escape temporarily from the swarm of homeless bees that have overtaken the sidewalk. We close out my tab, and give dancing one more shot. We stand in the front of the room and do our best to get about 5 other people to half dance with us. After that, we’re done. We are just done done done with this bar. We hit up the bathroom before we leave, and Klahsio has a brilliant idea for our escape.
“We’ll head out the back door.”
I am on board like no other. “Genius!” I exclaim. “We won’t have to walk by the bees!” (I’m not sure if I was referring to them as bees at this point, but I might as well have been)
Then, however, Klahsio decides to give his number to a girl. Which means we have to pass by the girl, which means we are in the front half of the bar. Now, being a good friend, I know better than to make a man walk by the girl he just awkwardly handed a scrap of paper with his number on to, so I knew we were screwed. We had to go out the front door. Into that swarm. Into our doom.
Then, Klahsio has another brilliant idea.
“We book it.” he says.
“Are you crazy?!“ I say in amazement. “That’s a terrible idea!”
“No man, we just book it. Nobody will know who we are!” he explains.
“Oh man, this is dumb dude.” I say, conceding to his idiotic escape plan.
So we head out the door, and begin a quick walk that turns into a hustled jog. At that point, I hear what I will forever hear in my nightmares.
“Keith!”
It was the spider… and he was after us.
All I can muster to say to Klahsio at that point is, “Run.”
So we run. We run 3 block and slow down, thinking, “Surely he won’t chase us 3 blocks!” WRONG. Klahsio eyes someone following us, I see him too, and I see that we are within another quick run of the red line. So we book it. When we reach the opening to the stairs heading down to the redline, I hear it again. “Keith!”
We start bounding down the stairs in the least safe fashion imaginable. Jumping down 3, 4, and 5 steps at a time. We head through the turn style, sure that he wouldn’t follow us into the station. WRONG AGAIN. At the top of the stairs headed down to the actual platform, we hear it again. “Keith!”
Again, we furiously bound down the stairs, exploding onto the platform where everyone is wildly confused at why these two white kids are drenched in sweat, hurtling toward the furthest point on the platform. We swing around a large I-beam and hide, whispering unnecessarily for the next 10 minutes. Trapped. We didn’t know if he was still after us, but if he was, we were screwed.
As we stood, gasping for breath, drenched in our own sweat, a combination of running, adrenaline, and fear, Klahsio spoke of how we would “Laugh at this by tomorrow.”
He was right. But I’ll still be keeping my eyes open for “Shoe Shinin’ Spider.” And I’ll probably jump every time I hear my name echo through the halls of the underground red line station.
