I feel sorry attributing this post to Phish, because I don’t know all that much about Phish and I’m sure somewhere out there, there are reasonable level-headed people who enjoy the band and attend their concerts. As for self-described “Phish heads”, you’re on your phucking own, Phish.
One night a girlfriend, let’s call her Sally, and I invited a male acquaintance and two of his buddies over to my Manhattan studio apartment. They were on their way home from a Phish concert at Madison Square Garden and wanted to bring over some beers and hang out. Okay. Now, I would describe this male acquaintance of mine as purely a friend, but you never know what can happen between two single people, in the least I knew he wanted to impress me and Sally. Have at it!
The guys showed up a little after midnight- wasted- no real surprise there. We all hang out and are drinking and it’s clear that of the three guys two of them are more clear headed than the third. He is becoming less and less cogent and eventually ends up laying on my daybed and drifting off to sleep.
I’m not quite sure when things became outrageous, but whenever that moment hit it escalated quickly. First, Sally started making out in the corner with one of the guys (a cogent guy, not the passed out one), which was fine. She later told me that after they made out he told her he had a girlfriend and then kept making out. Anyway, all of a sudden, sleeping guy stands up in his “sleep” turns toward the bed and before any of us realize it begins PEEING on the bed. Yeah. Full on, heavy stream pissing on the bed. Disgusting. I start screaming and tell my male acquaintance to get him to stop. We’re all yelling at this point, but the pisser only mildly reacts. This guy is so out of his mind he pees on the wall all the way down the hallway and stops in the entry way where he finally finishes peeing in the corner right on a brand new pair of caramel colored leather boots.
Sally and I are now screaming at the pisser and his guy friends to get rid of him. They apologizingly oblige and push the guy out into the hallway, where he presumably gets on his way home. The guy friends apologize, Sally helps me clean up (aka bag all of the linens and anything the pisser might have possibly touched for the drycleaners) and I eventually go to sleep on my couch.
When I wake up in the morning, I see on my phone that the doorman has tried to call me several times in the middle of the night. I phone down, apologizing for not having the ringer on and ask what was the matter. No worries, they tell me, at the time they were just trying to figure out if the man they found wandering incoherently in the halls of my apartment shoeless belonged to me, as someone had called the police. Right. It only takes a little bit of hunting for me to stumble upon a GIANT pair of men’s athletic sneakers in my back hall closet. Indeed it appeared he did not leave with shoes on.
I call my male acquaintance friend to debrief about this ridiculous and rancid set of events. He had sent me apology texts all day long, but clearly we need to chat. He feels really sorry and embarrassed for his friend- so sorry- and eventually because we are pals and because I’m extremely good natured, we laugh and I get over it. It is in the conversation however where I am able to ask perhaps the most poignant question regarding their horrid display- “What in hell were you guys on last night??” I ask this rhetorically, because apparently I didn’t know anything about phish heads. He laughed heartily and then gave me a stolid duh-how-did-you-not-assume-that response of: “Ecstasy”.