That was a real stupid thing you did to your wrist, kid. If you really wanted to kill yourself, you would have run the blade lengthwise inside your forearm. Instead, you cut across the wrist and instead of dying, all you did was make a mess.

Because you’re not on the midnight train to the big sayonara, you must have failed to Google your suicide method of choice. My guess is that you really didn’t want to die. You just wanted a little bit of attention.

I got news for you, kid: not a whole lot of people really care if you check out or not. That’s the cold, hard truth about life. It goes on with or without you.

Yeah, I know you think you’ve got it tough. I ain’t gonna say that you don’t. I’d feel pretty low, too, if my pops was a three-strike loser doing life in the can and my mom was an ex-prostitute junkie with AIDS. But hey, life ain’t fair. The Man Upstairs might have dealt you some shitty cards, but it’s up to you to make the best of them.

If you’re gonna check out, go ahead and check out. Do us all a favor next time and do it right. But if you’re gonna stick around, knock it off with all the drama. Your attention whoring is costing other people time and money.

Tags: blood · google · suicide

Hip hop night. Closing time. Knuckleheads who couldn’t get into the club loitered across the street. Punks without a post-club coital date turned into parking lot pimps. Idiots drunk, high or a combination of both. Dumbfucks with guns.

I stood my post at the front door. Tense. Anticipating.

Yelling and cursing in the parking lot across the street. Posturing. Two idiots “motherfucking” each other. Three gunshots silenced one motherfucker. The crowd scattered like cockroaches. Cars spilled out of the parking lot, sped towards the freeway.

One Jeep Cherokee remained in the lot, passenger door wide open, crimson puddle underneath. Groaning from inside the car.

I approached the car. A fat black man in the passenger seat bled, arm hanging limp by his side. Blood trickled from his seat, slowly made its way to the growing blood pool on the ground. I asked: “Where’d you get hit?”

“Yo man, nigga shot me in the motherfucking ass!”

I bit my tongue, tried not to laugh.

Tags: blood · hip hop · nightclub · shooting

Ten minutes until opening time. I took my post at the front door of the nightclub. The ropes weren’t even set up yet and the line stretched down to the end of the block. A guy was sitting on the sidewalk curb in front of me, blood leaking from his head. He looked Cambodian. Maybe Vietnamese.

Turned out Bloody Guy got into a shouting match with three black guys, or so I heard later on. They put the boots to him and rang his bell with a lead pipe, knocking him out. He woke up from his nap in a puddle of blood. One of our busboys, on his way in to punch the clock, saw the guy laid out on the pavement. He felt bad and went to the kitchen to fetch a towel. That’s about the time I showed up for work.

Bloody Guy stood up, holding the soiled towel over his wound, and made some calls from a nearby pay phone. He stared at me as he conversed. Blood trails covered his face like a crimson spider web. Foreign words and red spit popped out of his mouth at machine gun pace.

I might have been a meat-headed bouncer, but I had enough sense to know that there was rarely an innocent victim of a beating in or around a nightclub. If the fight wasn’t over some broad, it was usually over something equally stupid, like mutts scrapping over alpha dog status.

A pack of pint-sized mugs appeared from across the street. One of them yelled out to Bloody Guy. It sounded like a question. Bloody Guy yelled out a response. Vietnamese. Definitely Vietnamese. The volley of questions and answers continued as the pack crossed the street like rabid, angry dogs. Bloody Guy joined his pack. All the yelling, shouting and posturing culminated into something that sounded like a battle cry.

As the pack ran off to hunt for Bloody Guy’s assailants, there were giggles and laughter from the people outside of the club. To the crowd, Bloody Guy’s cavalry looked and sounded like a bunch of ankle-biting Chihuahuas posing as Pit bulls. There was nothing menacing about adolescent-sized men.

Minutes later, a series of gunshots rang out less than a block away from the club. A couple of us bouncers and the busboy ran down the street and turned a corner in time to see Bloody Guy’s pack spilling out of an alley, tails tucked between their legs. In addition to the leaking wound already on top of his head, Bloody Guy had a couple of fresh holes in his gut. He collapsed at the mouth of the alley.

Later, a couple of cops told me that the Vietnamese guys found the black guys sitting in a car, smoking weed, pre-funking. They surrounded the car, kicking and shouting, but didn’t figure out until it was too late that the driver had a .38 in the glove box. Two out of five hits. Not bad for a doped-up knucklehead.

Me and the busboy watched as cops put up yellow tape. We stood there for a few minutes, while Bloody Guy got loaded into an ambulance, then walked back to the club. “You think he’s gonna make it, bro?” he asked. Always with stupid questions, that busboy.

“Nope,” I replied. “They might as well start digging the grave.”

The busboy looked at me in disbelief. “What about some positive energy, dude? What happened to your compassion, bro? I think he’s gonna make it, man!”

Fucking moron, I thought to myself. So what if the fool ends up in the morgue with a tag on his toe? “Five bucks says the fool is dead,” I declared, extending my right hand.

“Ten,” the busboy replied. We shook hands, sealing the bet, before he went back inside of the club to do what busboys do on a busy Saturday night.

I returned to my post at the front door. Back to work. The crowd had grown even larger. Most were too oblivious to notice the yellow tape or the flashing red and blue lights. Those who did were too preoccupied with getting into the club to care.

Tags: blood · nightclub · shooting

Lola was a porn star turned single mom. Baby’s daddy was a three-strike loser who took up residence at San Quentin before Lola gave birth. For the sake of the child, she gave up porn, crossed two state lines and landed a gig as a stripper at a topless club just up the highway from my gin joint.

She ended up dating one of her regulars, a guy by the name of Freddie. Freddie was your average Joe with a nine to five, stock options and benefits. He wasn’t a high roller, but was making decent money. The guy had a little house, a couple of cars and a good nest egg.

Freddie knew getting into the game that Lola liked to party, and party hard. He burned up all his money financing her expensive habits. When the money well went dry, he sold the house and one of the cars to keep the party going. And when that money was gone and the party was over, Lola walked out on him.

A broken-hearted Freddie went to Lola’s club and tried to talk her out of leaving him. She responded to his pleading by smashing a can of soda on his face and breaking his nose. Freddie walked away into the night, leaving a trail of tears and blood.

Since Lola and Freddie were regulars at my place, rumors of their violent breakup didn’t take long to get to me. Freddie walked in by himself a few nights later and confirmed the news. I asked him how he was holding up and tried not to stare at the uneven makeup covering up the bruises on his face. Freddie assured me he was fine.

After several rounds, Freddie muttered, “No money, no honey.” Tears welled up in his eyes, then streamed down his face, leaving tracks in his makeup and revealing purple skin. I poured him another drink and told him it was on me.

Tags: blood · domestic violence · nightclub · porn star · relationships · stripper

In the urban jungle, people get rolled up for as little as a few bucks or some spare change. Most of the time, no one really cares.

Tags: beating · blood · robbery