Day One

I was sitting in a bar with my friend “Clint” last Thursday night, and I had an idea. I get lots of good ideas sitting in bars with Clint, but I forget most of them. This time I remembered.

This idea involves writing on this site every day, making it good again, and building it back up to where it was before everything got all stupid.

How did things get stupid?

I’ll get to that somewhere along the line. For now, however, I’m just going to write and see what happens.

So, let’s start again. Here’s a brief history.

I needed some extra cash in 2003, so I made some calls and got a job as a bouncer at a way-past-its-prime nightclub in Manhattan. I'd bounced for a while before that, but I'd been out of the "game" for a while -- long enough for much of what went on to be new to me again. When clubs are on the right side of the popularity curve in New York, they tend to attract the locals. The locals dress funny, they speak poorly, and they’re prone to violence. That’s why clubs like these need “guys like me” inside.

I’m a local, so I knew this already. These people are my neighbors. Still, I saw some incredible things, and I shared these things with my friends via these weekly group emails I’d send out on Sunday nights. When I saw the guy jerking off in front of the box dancers, for example, I emailed.

When we threw out a group of Indian guys, and their leader yelled, “Yo, let’s go to 7-11,” I saw the irony and I emailed.

When a girl pulled her skirt and panties down in front of me, displaying a smiling Elmer Fudd following a set of rabbit tracks into her butthole, I emailed.

Someone eventually told me to start a blog, so I figured out how to do it and wrote here almost every day. I’d go to work looking for material. I’d remember two or three stories by keywords I’d type into my phone, then go home and write out my posts.

I was doing this for nearly two years – with an audience of maybe twenty of my friends – when I was “discovered” by a couple of major websites. By this time, I was working at a few different clubs, with new material in my face just about every night. Within a month, I had a big time literary agent, a book deal with HarperCollins, and a head the size of New Jersey.

Two years later, I’ve lost a couple of family members, I’ve written a book I don’t particularly like, I’ve met tons of people who didn’t particularly like me, and I’m back where I started, albeit a shit-ton wiser for the experience.

Thank you, Clint, for an interesting week.