{"id":587,"date":"2011-08-05T17:38:41","date_gmt":"2011-08-06T00:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poisonspur.com\/?p=587"},"modified":"2015-03-30T17:20:02","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T00:20:02","slug":"a-night-of-bourgeois-horror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/poisonspur.com\/?p=587","title":{"rendered":"A Night of Bourgeois Horror"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are maybe 200 calories in a ceviche tostada, give or take. \u00a0I was eating two of those and was on my second pint of Trumer Pils. \u00a0Each beer was also 200 calories. \u00a0Combine that with the dressingless salad and however much sugar I dumped into the coffee I drank throughout the day, I figured my total calorie intake was somewhere between 1200 and 1500. \u00a0Wait, my tostada came with tortilla chips. \u00a0so maybe the maximum for the day was more like 1800 calories.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Still, that wasn’t so bad. \u00a0A sedentary fat bastard pushing 50 is supposed to burn over 2000 calories per day. \u00a0Doing the math, I could honestly say I was slowly but surely getting myself back into shape as I sat at the bar, swilled beer, and stuffed my face with toasted corn and fishy bits.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Meanwhile, the others in the bar were making disapproving groans at the wide-screen TV as our own SF Giants continued to get their collective ass handed to them by the Arizona Diamondbacks. \u00a0I already had my evening’s fill of baseball that night.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
It’s usually more than the evening’s half-inning saturation point, but i think a lot of that was because I was eating at the time. \u00a0I get self conscious about my table manners, especially when the food is difficult to eat without being disgusting about it. \u00a0Rather than be careful in how I consumed my meal, I instead sat off at the other end of the bar where I could have food fall out of my mouth without getting any dirty looks.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
It was still early, not yet nine pm, but I knew I’d be going home soon. \u00a0Two pints, or maybe three, was my limit most nights. \u00a0It was enough to pay lip service to my alcoholism, but not enough to prevent me from doing a little reading in bed before I fell asleep.\u00a0This was not always the case, not even close, \u00a0but I’m more grown up now. \u00a0At least that’s what I tell myself.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I tossed my food container in the trash, said goodbye to the bartender, and headed out the door. \u00a0As I walked down the street toward where Valencia runs into Mission, a 49 bus rumbled by me heading north. \u00a0I used to get on this bus about this hour of the night. \u00a0There was a variety of mischief to be gotten into at a couple of stops along its route. \u00a0None of that had much appeal anymore, too exhausting. \u00a0Maybe that’s what maturity is all about. \u00a0You don’t really get any wiser. \u00a0You just get tired.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I crossed over to Valencia Street and started walking up toward my house. \u00a0The night air was cool and misting, not uncommon for an August night in San Francisco. \u00a0It was the kind of weather that conjures up that Mark Twain quote we’re all sick of by now, bullshit he never actually said<\/a>.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
To the left of me was the old stone-and-brick portion of St. Luke’s Hospital. \u00a0Even during daylight hours, the doors and front gate are locked and bolted. \u00a0It is as if that wing of the hospital served no purpose other than to lend character to the rest of the institution. \u00a0If that were the case, it was doing a damn good job of it. \u00a0It looked like either the admissions office of Miskatonic University or perhaps an insane asylum run by Christopher Lee.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The main wing facing Cesar Chavez Street looked more like what you’d expect from a hospital: parking, ambulances, and an emergency room open for business. \u00a0The chances of my getting wheeled into one of those have gone down since my behavior has improved. \u00a0It would certainly go up again when I got old and feeble. \u00a0For the time being though, emergency rooms were for those less fortunate than myself.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
It was times like these when I felt reasonably satisfied with my life. \u00a0After a productive day at work, I had a bite to eat and a couple of well-deserved beers before heading home. \u00a0Tomorrow I’d be ready to do it all again. \u00a0I might not have been a great success in life, but I wasn’t a failure either. \u00a0If nothing else, I was able to enjoy the peace of mind that comes from having no great crises on the horizon.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I got the mail before climbing the steps to my apartment. \u00a0It was junk mail mostly, except for one thing from the company that managed the 401(k) from my last job. \u00a0It was probably the quarterly statement with some less-than-stellar news on because the market’s been in the toilet lately. \u00a0After I got in and let the cat inside, I opened the envelope and read the letter inside. \u00a0It informed me that the entire balance of my account had been withdrawn. \u00a0If I had a problem with this, I could call them at 8 am eastern time to discuss the matter.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
There had to be some mistake. \u00a0I had withdrawn nothing. \u00a0I got on my computer and went to their website, hoping to find what was going on. \u00a0I tried logging in but failed. \u00a0I then followed the forgot-your-password link to a page that prompted me for my username. \u00a0It dawned on me that I wasn’t 100% sure of that either. \u00a0There was another link for forgotten usernames that took me to a page informing me that my username would be made available by talking to a customer-service representative start at 8 am eastern.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I went to the bedroom, lay on the bed, and stared at the ceiling with the light on. \u00a0Maybe they’ll be sending me a check, I told myself. \u00a0This didn’t seem likely so a number of other scenarios entered my head, all of them involving identity theft. \u00a0Some involved an elaborate crime syndicate while others were the work of a lone hacker a local meth addict who’s been stealing my mail. \u00a0Very few of the possible outcomes included the perpetrator being arrested. \u00a0Fewer still included me getting my money back.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I slept about four hours that night.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
When 8 am eastern rolled around (which was 5 am for me), I dialed their 800 number and got put on hold. \u00a0At this point, my mental state had deteriorated to the point where every detail no matter how small pointed to a worst-case scenario. \u00a0There mere fact that they said there was a high volume of calls meant that they were dealing with a major crisis. \u00a0Maybe everybody’s money was gone, sucked dry by Al Qaeda operatives or handed over to Haliburton in the interests of national security.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
When an actual person got on the line, I tried my best not to freak out. \u00a0When she asked me questions to verify my identity, I took a moment to remind myself that this was perfectly reasonable and not some phishing ploy because she was in on it too. \u00a0Eventually the truth came out. \u00a0My money had actually been transferred from one internal account and they, in their infinite wisdom, only thought it was necessary to tell me about the withdrawal. \u00a0It isn’t often I feel like I want to simultaneously thank and kill someone, but this was one of times.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
So there it was. a crisis that never was. \u00a0I was now free to go back to my life of counted calories and rationed alcohol. \u00a0The only difference was the lingering feeling that this little glimpse of hell could one day come back, maybe next time for real.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are maybe 200 calories in a ceviche tostada, give or take. \u00a0I was eating two of those and was on my second pint of Trumer Pils. \u00a0Each beer was also 200 calories. \u00a0Combine that with the dressingless salad and however much sugar I dumped into the coffee I drank throughout the day, I figured … Continue reading A Night of Bourgeois Horror<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":588,"href":"http:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions\/588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}