Clareified

The night started as so many of them do these days. Me, insisting on being productive and studying and working hard and Kearns saying “no, come on, Dawn, let’s go play poker…you know you wanna.”
“No, Kearns. Poker is a game and it will wait until I have finished my work.”
“Look Dawn, if you don’t pick me up right now to go to this poker game, I am going to kill your puppy.”
“No, no, not my puppy. Okay, okay I’m coming.”
I hadn’t seen Kearns since he and the gang replaced me for the trip to the Borgata Open with Jordan because as Alceste put it “look we needed someone to tell jokes and blog the trip.” And then Kearns added “and he’s way cooler than you.”
Kearns came downstairs to meet me and I greeted him with my now traditional “oh, where’s your precious Jordan now?”
“Hey, don’t blame me…it was Alceste’s call…I’m just the black guy.”
We got to Manhattan fairly quickly and I easily found parking on 57th street. We were going to a fancy, rich people’s game in a fancy place of rich peopleness, so I was uncharacteristically dressed in a dress with heels and no pockets. “Here, can you hold this for me,” I said handing Kearns my pack of Starbursts, as I looked for ways to shove my car keys, money and ipod into my handbag.
He took them giddily.
“Dude, you’re just holding them.”
“Yeah, yeah…no, I know.”
I pulled into an empty parking spot. I checked the sign. No parking from 7 am – 7 pm. It was almost 7:45. The spot was a few feet away from a Citibank, so I figured I’d also get some extra cash. I got out of the car and set the alarm. I noticed a light was still on in the car, so unlocked it, leaned inside the passenger side door, turned off the light and reset the alarm. I went to the ATM to get money and, apparently fix my hair, because I was startled by the sound of Kearns’ voice saying “it’s fine, Princess, let’s go” and then noticed my money sticking out of the machine at me. I really am distractingly beautiful.
“What? Dude, my billionaire husband could be there!”
“You’re not a billionaire?”
“No.”
“Crap…why am I hanging out with you then?”
“Shut it.”
I started to look for the building number 54 on 57th street.
“Dawn, the address is 57 54th street…we have to walk three blocks South.”
“What? No…it’s on 57th.”
Kearns takes out his iphone, which has been stapled to his palm ever since he got it last December, and starts looking for my email. I take out my Treo and pull up my own text message. Dammit. He’s right.
I walk back to the corner and look down the avenue.
“Should we drive the three blocks,” I say feeling the pinch of my toes in the stupid stupid shoes.
“No, what if there’s no parking there,” he answers, waiting for his iphone to load his emails.
Fine.
We walk a block and I see a spot.
“We could be parked there!”
“Are you really going to walk back?”
“Ugh.”
We keep going and I point out all the spots we could be parked at until we check-in with the doorman at our destination. Kearns is still checking his iphone for my email.
I run into my friend Pi and she corners me into making wedding dress fitting plans for my weekend.
“You didn’t respond to my email!”
“Uh…I didn’t? What? That’s crazy…email must be broken….good thing we ran into each other here or I might have missed all the fun of the final fittings…whew, so close.”
“I kill you.”
We order up some dinner and start playing. Kearns’ iphone finally loads and he shouts in triumph!
“See? Look! The address is 57 54th street!”
I refuse to look.
He then chases me around trying to get me to look at his sexist phone screen.
“I found it! Now YOU HAVE TO LOOK!”
“No.”
I close my eyes.
“I hate you.”
“Good.”
The Mets game is on the TV and we watch the Amazins fall out of first when the TV scroll thing tells us that the Phillies beat Atlanta just moments after the Mets fell to the Nationals. Kearns groaned.
“Why am I a Mets fan?”
“Because the Jets suck and you need to get your happiness from somewhere!”
“And the Mets are supposed to give me that happiness?”
“Hmm…good point…you should become a Patriots fan with me!”
“This is no time to become a Patriots fan,” said some assface at the table.
We play for a few hours until my recently hacked open leg starts throbbing. Stupid doctors think they can do whatever they want because you’re all under anesthesia, but when that stuff wears off six hours later, they’re home in bed counting your money and you are slumped over a poker table moaning in pain until Karol politely asks for some Tylenol and you greedily snatch the whole bottle and pour pills down your throat until they wrestle the bottle from your bony fingers.
What? It really hurt.

I was waiting for the pain to subside when I looked over at Kearns and said “let me know when you want to leave.” It was around 11.
“Okay,” he garbled through his full mouth.
I looked at him.
“What are you EATING?”
“Nothing,” he garbled again.
“Can I have one,” said another guy at the table.
“Sure,” he garbles and throws the guy a STARBURST.
More specifically MY STARBURST.
“What? I thought you gave it to me.”
“TO HOLD.”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
Karol and her boyfriend left at midnight and Kearns said he was ready to go whenever.
I had lost a ridiculous hand and I was trying, hopelessly to make it back.
Hopelessly being the key word here.
At the end of the night, one of us left down and the other one of us left with stolen Starbursts.
As we walked back to the car, and by walked, I mean limped, I pointed out all the parking spaces that if we had parked at, we would be at the car already. Of course, when we got to the parking space we had chosen, we were still not at the car. Instead a dark brown van was there.
“Where is my car,” I said calmly.
“Um…maybe it’s behind the van?”
We walked pass the Citibank and I started to press the panic alarm on my car.
Nothing.
I walked pass the van, already knowing what wouldn’t be there.
“Maybe we parked on another block,” Kearns suggested.
“We parked in front of the bank,” I snapped already dialing 911.
“911 emergency operator. What is your emergency?”
“I can’t find my car…it might have been towed,” I said “which would be fucking ridiculous because I legally parked at a no parking from 7-7 spot after seven,” I thought.
“Call 311, if they don’t have it, call us back and we’ll send a unit.”
I did as I was told.
The 311 system was fully automated, so I just held the line waiting for an operator. My feet were killing me and I was in no mood to press buttons through a freaking decision tree. After a few minutes I was hearing Chinese. What the fuck? More Chinese.
I still didn’t hang up because I could not imagine a scenario where pressing no options would result in CHINESE. Finally, I hung up and redialed. This time I paid attention. Evidently, for English you have to press 1, for Spanish you have to press 2, just stand there, you get Chinese.
Awesome.
I got a phone tree, accidentally pressed some option which resulted in the recitation of an alternate side of the parking calendar.
UGH.
Kearns can you call 311?
“What’s the number,” he asked in all seriousness.
“THREE. ONE. ONE.”
I need new henchmen.
Of course, it took forever for his iphone to pull up his keypad and by then I had already gotten through to the correct option.
“If you are calling to find out if you car has been towed, press 1.”
Beep.
“Our system is fully automated. You may reach an operator during ordinary business hours, press one to enter our automated system or hold for an operator if it is during ordinary business hours.”
Beep.
“We are sorry, our automated system is down for repairs, please visit our website at wearestupidfuckingmorons.nyc.com.”
I hung up and hailed a cab. Kearns was still trying to get a picture on his iphone.
“Forget it, kid. I’m just going to go down there.”
I got in the cab. “I need to go to the impound lot on the West Side Highway.”
I think I heard the driver laugh.
“Where did you park?”
“Right there.”
“Yeah, they tow a lot of people.”
My mind was racing. My car had to have been towed. I locked it.
“Did I lock it?”
Kearns shrugged his shoulders.
“Yeah, I locked it…I went back and turned off the light…and then I locked it…it was towed…it has to be towed…Dude, it’s some bad mazel, yo, when your best case scenario is “boy, I hope my car is towed!”
I was handling things mighty well considering and I am sure Kearns would agree that I handled things mighty well once he cashes the check I made out to him for that very purpose and all his wounds heal.
The cab ride took for freaking ever and when we finally reached the police lot, the cab let us off on the side of the dark, abandoned highway. Kearns paid for the cab and then we crawled under a chain and crawled through the gravel until we came to a guard in a booth.
“How can I find out if my car has been towed?”
He turned down his radio and said “go through that door,” pointing in the direction of an even darker, creepier stretch of undeveloped land.
I eventually found his “door” and walked up the platform.
Inside, it looked more like your typical city DMV office and I stood in line behind this old Hasidic man and his middle aged Mexican helper. If I were not freaking out, they would have been hysterical. At one point the Jewish man was like “they tow you for every little thing,” and the Mexican guy sighed and was like “Mr. Klein I keep telling you, you cannot park in front of the hydrants even if it’s ‘just for a little while.’”
They handed over their paperwork and the agent disappeared into the back. At that point four people came in – two couples. One was freaking out and yelling at her boyfriend. She was dressed in a skimpy black dress and four inch heels, so I can only assume, her feet were hurting too.
The agent came back, handed the odd couple a paper and they left.
I walked up to the window and handed them my license and registration — still super duper hoping that my car was towed.
He punched numbers in, Kearns was apparently laughing at my face, and I was diligently willing my car to be there.
He went to the back and came out with my paperwork.
It was there.
“Why was it towed,” I asked surprisingly not as grateful that my car was towed as you would imagine.
“Taxi stand.”
“What?”
“You were parked at a taxi stand.”
He handed me the papers and sent me over to the cashier’s window.
I paid the $185 fine and went through the door to the impound lot waiting room.
“Well…you were looking for material to blog about…right?” Kearns asked as we sat in hell’s waiting room, also known as the NYPD impound lot.
I can’t remember if that was before or after I raised the hackles of my fellow towees when I said “this is such bullshit. If Obama was President, this would never happened,” and the woman next to me said “yeah, you know that’s right.” And we started to chant O-ba-ma until the lone guard looked at us suspiciously.
“Dude, I don’t need my car getting arrested to get blog material…there are enough black cars in jail in America, don’t you think?”
“Summers?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Wait there and a police van will take you to your car.”
Kearns and I walked to the door and one of the other couples followed when their name was called. The van pulled up. It had NYPD blazoned across the side.
“Oh, cool!” Kearns said getting in after me, “we get to ride in a police van!!!”
“Well, I’m glad you’re excited. Makes it all worth it.” I was not glad. It was not worth it.
“Sorry, only the drivers with receipts,” the cop driving the van said gruffly.
Kearns and the other guy got out.
He was sad.
The van weaved through rows of cars and suddenly stopped.
“What kind of car do you have ma’am.”
“Green Honda.”
“Is that it?”
“Yes.”
I got out and hugged the Professor. She was very scared.
I went back for Kearns and we drove out onto the highway. I was soothing my poor baby.
“I’m so sorry, you got taken back to that horrible horrible place.”
Kearns laughed. “You’ve been towed before?”
“No! I loaned her to Ficsh last year the day before I had surgery and he got her towed like the next day, but he didn’t have my registration, so she sat in jail in for like five days, while I was in the hospital and all sorts of horrible things happened to her…actually she got out almost exactly a year ago,” and thus, a conspiracy theory was born.
Kearns and I decided to go back to where we had parked.
I started to vacillate between hoping I read the sign wrong because in New York City, even if you’re wrongly towed you don’t get back the $200 tow fee…although, if I read the sign wrong, there are many even sadder implications about my reading comprehension abilities that I will have to face…toss up.
“Why don’t they give you back the fee?”
“Because the towing company has provided you the service of towing your car…for that service, you pay $200. Whether or not you wanted that service or deserved that service, once you have received that service, you owe $200.”
“Aah, so it’s like they tow, you pay and they say ‘you’re welcome.’”
I groaned. Yes.
I made turned right onto Park ave and we drove toward the bank on 57th street.
I became bitter.
“Dude, why the hell do they call this PARK avenue. They should call it TOW avenue. If they called it TOW avenue, I wouldn’t have parked here.”
Kearns is now giggling his head off.
I pull up to where we parked and sure enough, I see the sign.

I double checked the address on my ticket. Yep. Everything is as I remember. I get out and take a picture.
Kearns is like “haha they towed you, and you’re like, ‘fuck you guys, I’m coming back and parking here again!’ You are so gangsta.”
A couple of guys standing on the corner watch me taking pictures.
“Did you get towed?”
“Yeah.”
“Same thing happened to my girl, make sure you get the building number in the picture…they adjourned her hearing until she did that.”
The other guy said that they were changing the signs on the street, and while there was a sign at the corner that said “taxi stand,” they did not take down the other sign in the middle of the block which says you can park after 7 pm. My ticket was issued at 12:34 am.
I got back in the car and we headed home.
“You know, if we had gone back to the car after the bank and parked closer to the game, this never would have happened,” Kearns said, “or if we had left when your leg started hurting.”
“So, basically, this is all your fault.”
“Well, it was fun and now you have something to blog about!”
“So, you want me to thank you?”
“You’re welcome.”
“Bite me.”
“Imagine how much more you’d have to blog about if it wasn’t stolen and we had to go down to the police station and fill out a report,” he said, his eyes beaming.
“DUDE! Bite your tongue. I love my car, Kearns. If it was a choice between your life and my car. My car wins.”
“But it would be close…?”
“No. Not close. Not even a little.”
“I’m starting to feel less bad about your getting towed, you know, so thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
It was about 3 a.m. when we finally got back to Brooklyn.
Kearns yawned. “You know, this is about the time when I would be texting you, ‘weren’t you supposed to call me when you got home?’ And then you would text me ‘oops, I forgot.’”
Shut it. You forget like one or twelve times and suddenly it’s something you always do.
I dropped Kearns off and drove home. I got gas and parked my poor traumatized baby in her spot.
I got to my apartment and received a text from Kearns: “The Starbursts are delicious.”
Motherfucker!
I texted him back.
“I’m home. I hate you.”

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 9:31 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.