Okay let’s not get melodramatic here, it wasn’t exactly a near death experience. And no, it didn’t involve a motorcycle. It didn’t even involve a trip to the emergency room. It did, however, include a visit from a couple of EMTs.

First, the boring back story:

As part of the protocol to control my diabetes, I take two types of insulin. The first, called Novolog, is a fast acting type. Injected before each meal or snack, its dosage is based on how many carbohydrates I eat. I take one unit of insulin for every 10 grams of carbs. (I may also take additional units as a “correction” dose if my blood sugar is higher than it should be, but let’s keep it simple.) Let’s say I eat a bowl of cereal with 40 grams of carbs along with a half a cup of milk containing 6 grams of carbs, since the pre-filled syringe I use doesn’t allow me to take half units, I’ll take 5 units of insulin to cover the 46 grams of carbs. My average meal is rarely anymore than 80 grams of carbs so I rarely take any more than 8 units of fast acting insulin. The insulin takes affect within a half hour and stays in my system for about three or four hours.

The second type, called Lantus, is long-acting. I take it once a day and it gives me a steady low level supply of insulin throughout the day. I take 40 units of Lantus per day.

The Novolog comes in a blue pre-filled syringe with a bright orange cap at the bottom. The Lantus comes in a gray pre-filled syringe. Keeping the two straight is essential.

Unfortunately, I’m not always good at keeping things straight and last weekend, in a rush to get out the door and enjoy the day, I squirted a massive 40 unit dose of Novolog into my leg. A half hour later: “I feel funny.”

I tested my blood sugar with my handy-dandy blood test meter and saw that it had dropped to 50. (The goal is to keep it near 80.) A blood sugar reading of 50 isn’t unheard of — it might happen if I misjudge how many carbs I eat, or if I go too long between meals, or if I’m more active than usual. I get sweaty, shaky, a little confused and irritable. The thing to do is to pop a few glucose tablets into my mouth (sugar tablets that I carry around in my pocket) or maybe take a few swigs of Coca-Cola, or whatever else is handy, and then wait for the sugar to catch up. But things weren’t so easy this time. I gobbled a few tablets and tested again: 46. Tested again: 42. Although my blood sugar was uncomfortably low, I was still lucid enough to realize what I had done: Taken more than 4 times my usual dose of fast acting insulin. Umm…Deborah? I think you might need to call an ambulance. Thankfully, we hadn’t left the house yet.

With that much fast acting insulin gobbling up the sugar in my system, there was no way was going to stay ahead of unconsciousness by shoving my gourd with candies.

Apparently the EMTs use the parking area under the elevated highway in front of our building as a “staging area” — where they park while waiting to be sent on calls. Because of this, they arrived at our door in about a minute.

“What’s going on?” the dark haired guy asked. “How are you feeling?”

“Uh, not so good.”

He tested my blood sugar with his own meter — still hovering in the 40s — tested my blood pressure, attached a few electrodes to my wrists and ankles and then stuck an IV needle into my arm. He pulled what looked like a turkey baster, or something for icing a cake, out of his bag of goodies. “Dextrose,” he said. “This should get your blood sugar up nice and fast.” He attached it to the IV tube and I felt an instant coolness as pushed the plunger.

They wanted to talk to me about taking a ride to the hospital, but waited for the dextrose to kick in first.

“Who does the painting?” asked the shaggy blonde EMT. His vocal cords sounded like they’d been sanded down with 40 grit sandpaper. Or maybe just whisky and cigarettes.

“He does,” said Deborah.”

“I did some of these paintings, but a lot of them were done by friends”

“How about the metal work? Who does the metal work?”

Some of Deborah’s recent samples — bronze castings — were on her work bench.

“Me,” said Deborah.”

“She a friend of yours?” he asked, pointing to the autographed 8×0 glossy of Linda Hamilton showing off her guns in her iconic Terminator pose, framed and hanging over Deborah’s workspace.

“No,” laughed Deborah. “I don’t know her. She’s just my inspiration.”

The EMT came across another autographed photo on another wall — of Kate Moss in a bikini. “How about her?” he asked. “She a friend of yours?”

I’ve actually been introduced to Kate Moss once. and I’ve been in the same room with her a dozen times over the years, but without going into the history of hows or whys, it was easier to just say, “No.” And anyway, it was the truth.

“I met her once,” the EMT said. “When I was bar tending in the East Village. Back when she was with that guy…what’s his name..the Libertine.”

At first I thought he meant Johnny Depp and thought it was funny that he would pull out a rather obscure movie from Johnny Depp’s filmography. I mean, The Libertine? Really? Not Pirates of The Caribbean? Then I realized he meant Pete Doherty from “The Libertines.”

“Where did you bartend?” asked Deborah, who has tended bar in a few East Village bars, herself.

“The Dark Room.”

“Oh yeah, The Dark Room, I know that place. I think my friend Lindsay worked there.”

“I don’t think I know her. It was a cool pace, though. A lot of musicians hung out there.”

“How are you feeling.” asked the other EMT, who played Felix Unger to the other other guy’s Oscar Madison.

“Pretty good,” I said, as he peeled the electrodes off my skin, giving me a little free hair removal in the process.

“We have to do our job here and try to convince you to go to the hospital. With all that insulin, there’s still a chance you could collapse. You know, worse case scenario, you could die. We have to tell you that.”

“I understand, but I can manage. I can monitor myself.”

“Okay, well, we have to call a doctor and have him talk to you. He’s going to try to talk you into going to the hospital, too. You don’t have to go, of course, it’s up to you. We can’t make you go. On the other hand, if something happens later and you have to call us a second time, then you have to go. You have no choice.”

“I understand.”

The blonde guy called a doctor on his cell phone, explained to him the situation, and then handed the phone to me. The doctor had a thick accent I couldn’t place, which made him hard to understand. He tried a lot harder than the EMTs to convince me to go to the hospital. I told him I didn’t think it would be necessary, and that I’d even gone through this situation once before, several years ago. But he was persistent. Even more persistent than the Verizon customer service representative I spoke to earlier in the week when I called to cancel my landline telephone service.

Eventually the blonde EMT passed me a note. “You don’t have to be nice. Just tell him no.”

And so I did.

Once it was settled, the dark haired guy removed my IV.

“What’s the lowest you’ve ever seen someone’s blood sugar go before they lost consciousness?” I wanted to know.

“Everybody’s different,” he said. “I’ve seen people with blood sugar as low as 20, sitting, talking to me the way you are right now, and other people with blood sugar in the 60s who were semiconscious, and totally incoherent. Everyone is different.”

He told me about a guy in Harlem they get calls for now and then. “His blood sugar drops and he gets violent and combative. He tries punching us and stuff. He never wants to go to the hospital. Doesn’t want us to treat him.”

“Who calls 911?”

“His mother.”

The image I had of the guy, living with his mother in Harlem didn’t jibe with what the EMT said next:

“He’s a professor at Columbia.”

I did have to monitor my condition more closely than usual, and was a little apprehensive about leaving the house until I felt sure the insulin had worked it way out of my system and I was out of the woods, which meant it screwed up our plans to attend a vintage car show in Gowanus, but whatever, there’s been enough vintage vehicle coverage in this blog lately, anyway.

By the way, these picture obviously have nothing to do with the story they accompany. I rode my bicycle to COney ISland yesterday, half expecting a huge crowd when I got there. It was the Friday before Labor Day, after all. But, as you can see, the place was empty.

This Sunday is the annual vintage motorcycle show/barbecue/party and general good time.

Click for details.

There will be a test. Attendance is mandatory.

Did I mention there will be free beer?

Photos by Jason

I rode with Jason and Maqui in Jason’s ratmobile to Carlstadt New Jersey to pick up as many cases of Ashai beer as would fit in the the cargo hold. Jaon told me he was picking up Maqui in front of Works Engineering — the motorcycle garage that’s hosting the show — at 1 PM and told me to meet him there. He was fashionable late, however, and didn’t arrive until about 2. Maqui, who I had not met before, was there on time, sitting in a folding chair in front of the garage, juggling her laptop and iPhone, trying to get ahold of various vendors and sponsors. I introduced myself and pulled up a folding chair next to her. Erik, owner of Works Engineering, was there, too. He was rolling his eight year old son up and down the street in a handtruck. His son was wearing his father’s motorcycle boots and helmet, and was strapped in with greasy blue tie-downs.

While sitting there, a shirtless old man rode up on a rickety bicycle decorated with dingy plastic flowers and asked in a creaky northern european accent if he could borrow a wrench. He wiggled his front wheel to show us what he needed it for. “Ask the guy over there,” I said, pointing to Erik.

The guy looked at Erik, who was at the moment rolling his son up and over a skateboard ramp that someone had built against the building.

“Just need it for a moment” the man said.

“I understand,” I said, “but you need to ask him.”

He became obviously frustrated that I wasn’t more accommodating and seemed to think I was giving him the run around.

“Can’t you get me one?” he pleaded. “Just a wrench, for just one minute.”

“This isn’t my garage, I don’t work here,” I said. “Ask him, I’m sure he will help you.”

A minute or two later, Erik rolled his son over to us and listened as the old man explained his problem. Erik unstrapped his son from the hand truck and went about helping the old guy out.

Erik’s son followed his father into the garage and came back out on a skateboard. He was a little unsteady on it and held onto the arm of my folding chair, as he rolled back and forth. “Can you skateboard?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Do you have a skateboard?”

It seemed a funny question to ask. If I didn’t skateboard, why would I own one? But I do.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you ride it?”

“Because I’m no good at it, and these days I’m liable to break an arm if not my neck.”

“Wat color is it?” he asked.

“It has a drawing of sharks on the bottom, It’s kind of gold and gray and white.”

“Can I have it?”

I actually considered it for a moment. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Just because.”

Eventually, Jason rolled up in his van, Maqui and I piled in, and we headed to the Ashai beer warehouse in New Jersey.

“Can you thread the needle?” Jason asked the forklift operator who drove out of the warehouse with a full palette of beer. Jason was hoping the operator could load the palette directly into the back of the van, which would’ve made our the job a cinch, but the operator just laughed, shook his head and said, “No, no. I put here,” he said, and we went about the job of moving the cases one by one.

Once we finished the job, and other warehouse worker came out to see what we were up to. Jason gave him a flier and said, “Motorcycle show. Do you ever go to New York?”

“Sure, sure.” he nodded, looking at the flier.

“Free beer,” he said.

The guy looked up from the flier and into the packed van.

“Vintage motorcycles, live music, free beer, pretty girls, you can’t go wrong.”

“I like to go, but this weekend no good. I go to Hushypahk.”

“Hushypahk?” I said.

“Hushypahk, Hushypahk,” he said.

“Oh, Hershey Park.”

“Yes, Hushypahk. I have resuhvashun.”

“Well cancel it,” said Jason. “You can go to Hershey Park some other time.”

“No, no. I have resuhvashun inside in Hushypahk.”

“The hotel is inside the park?” I said.

“Yes, yes. Inside park.”

“Family vacation. Hotel in Hushypahk. Three hundred fifty dollah.”

“Three fifty bucks? Per night?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Holy smokes.”

He returned his attention to the flier.

“Oh well, family is family,” said Jason. “Maybe next year.”

“Next year, yes, next year.”

By the way, I love Jason’s van. He bought it for 500 bucks to take his vintage dirk bike on a trail ride in New Jersey. The New Jersey trip didn’t work out quite as he had hoped, for a variety of reasons, but regardless, I think he’s more than gotten his 500 dollars out of it. Come to think of it, I think he had to put a couple of hundred dollars worth of repair into it, but still. He told me he drove it to a Pep Boys to buy some oil or something like that, and one of the mechanics came running out of the garage. “Nice van,” the mechanic said. “How much you want for it?”

“I told him I’d think about it,” Jason said. “But I’m probably going to take his offer.”

“Your father and I got engaged in Atlantic City,” my mother informed us over dinner, when Deborah and I stopped at my parent’s house on our way to America’s Favorite Playground. I guess you could say that if it weren’t for Atlantic City, I might not be here.

We pulled into town at noon but since we couldn’t check into our hotel until 4PM, we decided to drive around and explore the town. Boarded up buildings, crumbling facades, houses for sale, vacant lots where little kids played on mounds of sand dotted with broken glass like sprinkles on a melting ice cream cone. I pulled over at a pharmacy so Deborah could buy some sunblock. I waited in the parking lot, sweating my balls off in the car, waving off one guy after another as they wandered up to my window asking for spare change. It took Deborah nearly a half hour to emerge from the store.

“What took so long?” I asked.

But she didn’t get a chance to answer me. “Ugh, this stuff smells awful. Smell it,” she said, waving the bottle of sunblock under my nose. “I’ve bought this brand before. I don’t remember it ever smelling like this. I think it’s bad.”

It smelled like liquid plastic — as if the bottle had been melted down and poured into another bottle. We were on the outskirts of town, away from the casinos and resorts, where, judging from all the weather-worn faces, no one used much sun block. “I’m sure it’s really old,” I said. “But it beats paying 20 dollars for a bottle of the stuff on the boardwalk.” That might’ve been true, if Deborah didn’t throw the bottle away after slathering a handful on her shoulder and getting ill from the smell. She smelled like a chachka for the rest of the day. Or at least until we checked into the hotel and hit the pool.

We relaxed poolside for the rest of the afternoon until it was time for our dinner reservation — the first of three restaurants Deborah chose for her birthday celebrations. We stuffed ourselves to oblivion with a multi-course tasting menu at a delicious, if somewhat hokey, Cuban chain restaurant on the second floor of the Tropicana called Cuba Libre. In fact, we got so stuffed that we cancelled our reservation for seafood the following night because our stomachs still felt like ripe watermelons 24 hours later.

Instead of eating at another fancy restaurant, we ate at a cheap-o depot called Country Kitchen or something like that. We sat next to a table of five women, each heavier than the next, including one in a wheelchair with an oxygen tube running up her nose who easily weighed four hundred pounds. Most of our fellow tourists — the ones we passed on the boardwalk, or saw camped out in front of slot machines — were card carrying members of the current obesity epidemic, so I might not have paid them any attention if, as they were finishing their dinner, the one in the wheelchair didn’t say, “I want to get wings later.” She hadn’t even finished swallowing her last bite, let alone digesting it, and she was already planning her next meal. “Mmm, yes,” the lady next to her said, while the others slurped their Cokes and grunted in agreement.

“I’m done,” I said, and pushed away my plate of half-eaten hamburger.

We passed the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum which was made to look like a building that had been struck by a giant model of Earth. The globe was stuck in the facade and the entire building was frozen mid collapse. “That might be funny,” I said, “If we didn’t see buildings all around town that actually looked like that.”

The entire Boardwalk is roughly five miles long and the next morning we rented bicycles and rode to the southernmost end — the high falootin’ side of town where the buildings that look like people might actually live in them are. We would’ve turned around and ridden to the north end, too, except that we were being charged 8 dollars an hour for the bikes. There was a group of homeless guys sitting on a bench near where we returned the bicycles after our ride. Two white guys and a black guy. The two white guys looked exactly alike, like twin hobo surfers with long bleach blonde hair and leathery skin. Both quite handsome, honestly. I wouldn’t have guessed it, but judging from their conversation one of the guys was considerably older than the other. “I’m an ugly old man,” one said to the other, “But you, you’re lucky, you still got your looks going for you.”

We hung poolside, laid on the beach, ate crappy seaside resort food, rode beach cruisers down the boardwalk and gambled away our pennies, so what else was there to do but check out the amusements on historic Steel Pier.

Back in the day, my mother’s cousin used to ride a diving horse into a pool of water on Steel Pier. These days the famed amusement pier isn’t nearly as amusing. Other than a helipad at the end of the pier where you can rent helicopter rides up and down the shoreline for forty bucks per person, the only other thing for adults to do was a small ferris wheel, and a thing called “The Rocket.” A bungee contraption where two people sat side by side in a round cage and were flung skyward at a million miles an hour. 20 bucks each for that thrill. We sat on a bench and watched two guys get strapped into the cage. When they were hurled into the sky and twirled head over heels over several times, I said that if we did that, “Everything would fall out of my pockets.”

“Never mind that,” said Deborah. “Everything would fall out of my stomach…And my bladder…And my ass.”

The Rocket, Steel Pier Atlantic City from Jamie Boud on Vimeo.

Don’t ask me why this struck me so funny, it just did. On our way back to the hotel, passing various casinos, restaurants, massage parlors, boarded up stores, souvenir shops, and so on, we saw several billboards for an upcoming show by Barry Manilow. Judging by the billboards, Barry Manilow has dropped the Barry and is going by simply “Manilow.” I guess, unlike Cher or Madonna, his first name isn’t unique enough. I tried to imagine, if we saw signs for “Barry” if we would’ve known who it was. In a place like Atlantic City? Probably.

There seem to be a lot of Russians working in Atlantic City — waitresses, sales clerks, etc. — so it was funny that when we went to a place called “Red Square” for Deborah’s second birthday dinner, we didn’t have a Russian waiter or waitress. Instead, we were served by a classic Jersey Boy. “Howyazdoin’ tonight? Can I start yuz out with some Vodka?”

After looking over the menu and hearing about the specials — sixty-five dollars for this, seventy dollars for that — the seven course tasting menu sounded like a bargain for fifty-five bucks each. But we got snookered. Although the tasting menu came with a “wine pairing” that included four glasses of wine, nowhere on the menu did it warn us that the wine pairing was extra. Eight glasses of wine between us cost more than the food. Hello credit card, howzyadoin?

Atlantic City from Jamie Boud on Vimeo.

Well, at least we weren’t escorted into a back room to get our kneecaps broken, but we did nearly get tossed out of the Hilton for taking pictures. “No pitch-uhs in hea,” said the gruff eighty-something security guard to Deborah who had just popped her point and shoot at a string of slot potatoes and was setting her focus on what was by far the best people-watching-sighting of the entire trip: A guy looking a lot like Hunter S. Thompson in a Hawaiian shirt, Aviator sunglasses, a straw fedora, polyester slacks with a wide leather belt and white loafers, with a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth, was pushing a woman we assumed was his wife, who also had a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She had clip on sunglasses over her regular glasses, a curly brown wig, a brightly colored shawl, pale blue slacks and a stack of bills in her lap. The security guard got in the way before Deborah had time to fire the shutter.

“Are you serious?” said Deborah.

“No camruhs, no pitch-uhs. Put it away.”

“Why?” she asked, but wasn’t given an answer.

“Put it away or you’ll hafta leave.”

Nothing on earth is as disorienting as a casino, elaborate carpets in a maze of pathways through flashing lights and ringing bells, and by the time Deborah put her camera away, we lost track of the wheelchair couple.

“Where’d they go?”

“I think they went that way.”

“We lost ‘em.”

“Damn.”

I’m not much of a gambler. The one time I ever had any luck at a Blackjack table, I was suspected of counting cards. I was only up a couple of hundred bucks but because I was being fidgety with my fingers a floorman tipped off the pit boss and I was suddenly surrounded by goons in black suits. The funny thing is, I couldn’t count cards if my life depended on it. What they were witnessing wasn’t an math whiz keeping track of the deck, but simply a guy who needs his fingers to count 8 plus 7.

So Deborah and I didn’t gamble much. Sure, we gambled some. It was impossible to walk through the casinos without being seduced by the subliminal messages that are rumored to be mixed with the music pumping over the loudspeakers, but it only takes losing as little as 20 bucks for me to start cursing Donald Trump’s toupee. I couldn’t help thinking, “Why am I handing over my money to billionaires?” Though, to be fair, I ask the same question about my phone bill every month.

Fortunately we stayed in a non-gaming hotel, so we weren’t forced through all the flashing toll booths to reach our room.

Just because we didn’t gamble much, doesn’t mean we didn’t get ripped off. Living in New York, you’d think I’d be used to paying too much for things, but even after I started increasing my already bloated price predictions by buck or two, I still continued to be sticker shocked at every turn. (I still feel dumb for not taking the time to find an ATM that didn’t change a $4.50 service fee, but who knows if one even existed?) Adopting a “What the hell, we’re on vacation,” attitude is precisely what tourist traps prey on, but what else can you do?

The weekend’s only real bargain was our hotel room. I’ve paid more for a musty, smoke-stained flea bags in the middle of nowhere than we did for an ocean view at The Chelsea. As long as we didn’t touch the mini bar we were safe. “They screw themselves with their greed,” said Deborah when we came back to the room one night. “They could easily charge five bucks for a bottle of water and still make a good profit — and right now, I’m thirsty enough that I’d break down and pay five bucks for that water — but seven fifty? No fucking way. Uh uh.” We didn’t even bother checking the prices of anything else in the mini bar, the candy bars, the pretzels, the beers, wine or champagne. Until the following night when Deborah wanted to pop the cork on a 35 dollar bottle of five dollar wine. “It’s my birthday,” she said. Which was almost true. Deborah’s birthday is actually on August 14th, today. But that didn’t stop her from getting a dessert with candles three nights in a row. (Four, if you count the dinner we had with my parents, who happen to live less than an hour north of Atlantic City.) Birthday dinner details to come.

—————————————————
The fantasy:

The reality:

—————————————————

End of Part I.
Stay tuned…

I’m not sure exactly what prompted the last minute change of plans, but we somehow decided to drive to New Jersey instead of Long Island for a little beachside R&R. As we sat nearly motionless in a freshly paved glue trap on the Garden State Parkway, I began second guessing the switch. “Whatever,” said Deborah, “there’d be traffic no matter what. Besides, we’re in no hurry.”

Off the Parkway and onto Rt 36, things didn’t get any better. Only ten miles from the park’s entrance, we sat in traffic moving 10 miles per hour. Construction delays, the signs warned, though there didn’t seem to be any workers or backhoes of dump trucks anywhere. Just miles and miles of cars lined up as if evacuating a disaster area.

“I guess we should’ve left earlier,” said Deborah.

“It’s going to be a bitch trying to get back into this mess, but I need to get gas,” I said, and pulled into a service station.

“Whatdaya need?” the gruff white-haired, ruddy-faced attendant asked. He looked to be in his sixties, though his weather-worn skin may have been misleading. He was wearing navy blue chinos and a light blue polo shirt.

“Fill it with regular, please” I said.

He lifted the nozzle, and jammed it into the tank with enough force to shake the whole truck. “Heading to the beach?” he said as he pumped.

“Yeah.” A beach umbrella and a couple of chairs in the truck’s bed, and Deborah in a bikini must’ve given us away.

“Staten Island? You guys from Staten Island?” I suppose he’d seen the New York license plates on our truck and assumed we’d driven from the closest borough.

“No,” I said.

“Where yas from?”

“Brooklyn.”

“Hmph. They don’t have any beached in Brooklyn?”

“Um, yeah, they have beaches in Brooklyn,” I said.

“Then why’d you drive all the way out here for?”

Maybe because this is America, and I have a car, I wanted to say. “I don’t know. For a little variety, I guess. Besides, I grew up in New Jersey and old habits die hard.”

“You grew up in New Jersey?” The fact seemed to take a little edge off of his attitude, but he was suspicious. “Where?” he said.

“New Providence.” He didn’t seem to have ever heard of it. I wasn’t surprised; it’s not a very big town. “My parent’s live in Barnegat,” I added, to give myself a little shoreline cred. He was unimpressed. I think the only thing that would’ve satisfied him was if I came from the same town as he did, or at least from a town whose high school football team played his high school’s team.

“You goin’ to Sandy Hook?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“You gonna keep your clothes on?”

As I’ve written about before, Sandy Hook has a nude beach. I guess he figured if we were bothering to drive all the way from Brooklyn, it was probably to hit the nude beach. He might’ve been right, but we hadn’t decided. “Yeah, we’re gonna keep our clothes on,” I said. “Well, not all of ‘em. It is a beach after all.”

By the time our tank was full, he was convinced enough that we weren’t a couple of perverted New York City weirdos to give us a little friendly advice: “Sea Bright is a nicer beach,” he said. “It’s where the locals go. Sandy Hook, is like the fuckin’ League of Nations, know what I’m saying.”

Yeah, I think I did.

“Did you hear me when I said we live in Brooklyn?”

“Pfft,” he said, rolling his eyes as he handed me my change. “Good luck.”

We pulled out of the gas station and into the line of traffic, which had thankfully picked up its pace. “If by ‘locals’ he means Sea Bright is where his likeminded cronies go, then I’m not interested.”

In fact, we headed to the clothing optional beach, just on principal. It turned out to be not such a great idea, but that’s another story for another day.

I’m tempted to sign up for this class just to see what they’re teaching and who they’re teaching it to. Then again, I guess I wasn’t that curious, since I didn’t even bother to take one of the free catalogs.

I need a new hobby.

In other news, Deborah won her suit against her non-paying client. Since the case was heard by an Arbitrator rather than a Judge, there is no appealing the decision and the woman is required to pay up within thirty days. We’ll see. Deborah contacted the woman, as suggested on the back of the judgement slip, but she hasn’t heard back. I have a feeling it’s not going to be as easy as that, but Deborah is determined to see it through, whatever it takes.

It would be nice to get the money in time to blow it all in Atlantic City, where Deborah and I are going for Deborah’s birthday in a couple of weeks. I’m not sure why we chose to celebrate in Atlantic City, other than the fact that it’s so close — although, that was never reason to go before. (I’ve only been to Atlantic City once in my entire life.) Las Vegas is a couple of thousand miles away and I’ve been there more often. Then again, I’ve never been to Las Vegas as a destination in and of itself, either — only as a brief layover on my way to Utah or Death Valley or some other remote desert location with the intention of getting away from all the nonsense represented by places like Las Vegas. Still, I’m determined not to think about things too much and just have a good time. Either way: photo ops up the yin yang.

After waiting a couple of months for a check — submitting and re-submitting an invoice — it became clear that one of Deborah’s clients had no intention of paying her for the bookkeeping work she did. “I should always go with my gut,” Deborah said, referring to the fact that she had a bad feeling about the client from day one. But work is work so she tried to stick it out. In the end, though, she reached a breaking point and it was either quit or go insane. “I don’t think it’s a good fit,” she told her client, although she may as well have told her the truth: “You’re a kook.”

Deborah sent an invoice for the days she worked, waited a month, resubmitted the invoice, waited another month and then began calling to see what the problem was. When she finally got the client’s elderly man-friend on the phone — a guy Deborah had met before, but whose role at the company was never made clear — he admitted that they had no intention of paying her. “We thought is was suspicious that you quit so suddenly,” he said, implying that she quit because she didn’t know what she was doing.

Deborah has been doing freelance bookkeeping for years and, although it’s not her passion, she’s quite capable and has never had a complaint or a problem with any of her other clients.

“See you in court,” she said, just like they do in the movies. She hung up the phone and immediately began investigating how to file a Small Claims suit.

Deadbeat clients are a real problem for freelancers. They aren’t offered the same protection from the Department of Labor as full-time employees are. While progress is being made, for now the only recourse for a freelancer is to take a deadbeat client to court. Fortunately, Deborah’s wages fell within the limit allowed to be pursued in Small Claims and she was free to file. Freelancers who get stiffed for thousands of dollars are up shit’s creek.

I was surprised at how quickly she was able to get a court date in what, according to the New York City Small Claims Court website, is one the busiest Small Claims Courts in the world (no surprise) but when we got to the courthouse and saw the clerks barking orders in their thick New Yawk accents, it was clear they didn’t fuck around. “If you don’t ansuh when ya name is cawled, ya case’ll get dismissed and you’ll be outta luck, so listen up people! And no tawking!”

Scheduled for the evening session, we arrived in the courthouse fifteen minutes early, at 6:15PM, and sat in a room filled with about 50 or so other litigants. Deborah was well-prepared, but anxious –”I just want it to be over with already.” — but not nearly as anxious as the Weeble-shaped bald guy sitting in the row ahead of us. He was with a guy who seemed to be acting as his lawyer, although there are no lawyers at a first hearing in Small Claims Court claims court (no doubt another reason why things moved so quickly) so I assumed he was an interpreter who happened to be helping out with some friendly advice.

Apparently the bald guy was the defendant in a case. He was fidgety, his Jimmy-leg shook the whole row, and he kept wiping his face and wringing his hangs. “I dun unnerstent why dis ist happenink,” he said in what sounded like an Eastern European accent. “I didn’t do annytink.”

His advisor had several pages of printed notes that had been typed in an extra-large font. “It’s just procedure,” he said as he flipped through the notes, finding key words and sentences to highlight with a Day-Glo yellow marker. “Even a serial pedophile can get his day in court,” he said. “and this? This is way way less than anything like that. This is nothing. But you gotta follow the procedure, that’s all, otherwise whaddayou got? You got Nazi Germany.”

True enough, and so, doing our part to promote the American Dream, we waited for Deborah’s name to be called. When it was, she and her nemesis were sent to another room on an different floor to, again, wait for their names to be called. It was slightly awkward waiting for the elevator, but thankfully there was a bank of three or four elevators and we managed to get on a different car than Deborah’s enemies.

Although the dingy yellow room we were sent to was a court room, it was essentially just being used as a holding pen. Glued, slightly crooked, to the back wall was a small engraved brown plastic sign — the kind you might see on a mens room door or a middle manager’s desk — that said, “In God We Trust.” It had been painted around, not very carefully, several times. Under the sign was a Judge’s bench, sans Judge, and next to that was a dingy American flag. In front of the Judge’s bench were two desks, pushed together into one. Two guys were seated behind the desks, one in a Police uniform, the other was in an ill-fitting suit and had a bushy salt and pepper mustache. They took turns calling names from a stack of papers.

At one point, a woman who was standing at the front desk muttered something under her breath as she walked away. The mustached man blew his top. “Say that again and you’ll be leaving here in handcuffs!” he bellowed. The woman left the room and a few seconds later we could hear a disturbance in the hallway. The mustachioed man leapt from his chair and bolted out of the room. It was several minutes before he returned and the roll call continued.

Deborah’s name was literally the last one called. She and her nemesis were offered the choice of having the case heard immediately by an arbitrator, or scheduling a date with a Judge a month or two down the road. The only difference, at least as far as I understood it, was that by going with an arbitrator, you waved your right to an appeal, but since the filing fee for an appeal was more than the money Deborah was seeking, going with a Judge offered no advantage. Both sides needed to agree to an arbitrator, however, but thankfully Deborah’s nemesis was sensible enough to want to get things over with. Once they signed their names, they were sent to another room, this one set up like a court room too, the only difference being that it was empty save for a woman seated in the Judge’s bench. Deborah and the woman she was suing stood before the arbitrator while the elderly man-friend and I sat in the pews.

They got right to it. Deborah went first. She was focused and composed, speaking evenly, making her case clearly. Even as the dead-beat client gave her side of things, the only sign Deborah showed of tension was reaching into her bag for her lip balm and putting it on her lips. As things progressed, they got a little heated, though nothing like some of the screaming we heard coming from behind a door along the way. After some relatively even-tempered back and forth, the arbitrator told them she’d heard enough, “You’ll get my decision in the mail in about a week.”

And so we left the courthouse without knowing whether she won or not.

“I need a drink,” Deborah said. We stopped at a nearby restaurant, sat at the bar and reviewed everything that happened. “I think you won,” I said. “I really do, but regardless, you stood up for yourself and I’m proud of you. If it had been me, I probably would’ve just written it off. Good for you, cheers.”

“Cheers, thanks.”