Everything Is Wrong with Me (24 page)

He leaned to one side in his chair and from his pocket pulled out the keys to his truck and threw them on the table between us.

Silence.

I waited, confused. He smoked.

He spoke, not turning from the television, “I went out to the truck this morning to get a pack of smokes and found these. In the ignition. With the lights on.”

I froze.

He turned to look at me, finally, and through the cigarette smoke said, “Don’t do that again.”

At that moment, I gave up hooker hunting. I’d had a good run, but it was time.

Acknowledgments

T
his book would not be possible without the help of several wonderful, talented, patient, and forgiving people (with special emphasis on those last two). Rakesh Satyal was given a series of run-on sentences and poop jokes and made it—dare I say—beautiful. Brian Saliba took a chance and (I hope) was rewarded. Likewise, Erin Malone and Joel Begleiter put their careers and quite possibly their lives on the line; I thank them for their loyalty, which I could not repay in a thousand lifetimes or two thousand beers (I am, however, contractually obligated to mention that they are the most attractive agents in the world).

My family was somewhat important in this process, providing me with ammunition—I mean, with research and background information—as well as pictures. Particular thanks go to John and Maureen Dawson. If it were not for their beach house, the cold of winter, and the good people who make Guinness, this project wouldn’t have gotten past page three and I would likely be living out of my car right now.

Brendan Caffrey is a mad genius who has always made me look good, and Tina Concha and Danielle Del Vecchio literally helped me put this together. Thanks to many other friends who read and commented on various drafts, even if their comments were along the lines of “Are you serious with this? Like, this is what you want to hand in?”

Lastly, thanks and thanks galore to my mom Kathleen, dad Dennis, brother Dennis, and sister Megan. If you are reading this and are still speaking to me, we did good. If you are reading this, are still speaking to me, and are wearing really expensive jewelry and jetpacks, we did
real
good.

About the Author

JASON
MULGREW
is a self-proclaimed “Internet Quasi-Celebrity” whose blog, Everything Is Wrong with Me: 30, Bipolar and Hungry, has received more than 200 million hits since its inception. Originally from Philadelphia, he now lives in New York City, where he works for a white-shoe law firm that tolerates his blue-collar ways.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Credits

Cover design by Milan Bozic

Cover photograph courtesy of the author

Copyright

The names and identifying characteristics of some of the individuals featured throughout this book have been changed to protect their privacy.

All photographs throughout are courtesy of the author unless otherwise stated.

EVERYTHING IS WRONG WITH ME
. Copyright © 2010 by Jason Mulgrew. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

EPub Edition © January 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-197843-2

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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^*
That’s Danish for “ham.” It will also be the name of my next pet.

^**
England, France, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Holland, if you’re keeping score at home.

^*
Really, sex for me nowadays is the rough equivalent of sticking a wet dishrag into a shotglass.

^*
Well, maybe a little.

^*
Although I did once kiss a half-Filipina girl, so I’m pretty in tune with Asian culture. It was actually sort of a force-kiss, but, again, semantics.

^*
To this day, I’m not exactly sure what longshoremen do. I think it has something to do with taking cargo from ships that come into port on the Delaware River and putting half that cargo in warehouses and selling the other half to your friends on the cheap. Also, there is a lot of cursing, napping, drinking on the job, and complaining about your wife involved. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s the basic gist of it.

^*
Whether this is because North Wildwood had more bars per square mile than any other shore town in New Jersey is unknown, but presumed.

^*
Albeit an angel with a juvenile criminal record.

^*
My father would not get his first legal license until he was twenty-nine, despite driving a truck part-time for four years in his twenties. Don’t ask, because I don’t know.

^*
When I first started hearing this story, it was twenty years of practice. Soon it became twenty-five. Recently, I’ve heard it as high as thirty-five. By the time my children hear this story, the doctor will have been 110 years old with eighty years of experience under his belt and possibly there will be a shaman involved.

^*
Still am.

^*
It is for this reason that I have always taken the longest and hottest showers in the world. As a child I woke up every winter morning with my teeth chattering, so I relished those early morning steaming showers as a chance to raise my body temperature from “deceased for five days in the Scandinavian winter” to “just about alive, I suppose.” Even though I occasionally up the thermostat to over 60 degrees in my own apartment, I still take showers hot enough to seriously wound another human being. Sadly, I know this from experience, as a naughty shower moment with an ex-girlfriend took an unfortunate turn because of my preferred water temperature (that’s all I can say about the incident at this point because of pending legal action).

^*
God, I wish this weren’t true. I don’t know how many six- or eight- or ten-year-olds try to accessorize their face paint with their eyes, but I can’t imagine that it’s a large number. And I imagine most that do so end up in an off-Broadway production or on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Which means I’m about par for the course.

^*
This was an easy way to tell who was from the neighborhood and who wasn’t. Everyone who lived there called it “Second Street,” whereas outsiders referred to it as “Two Street.” This is sort of like how a real Philadelphian would always say “cheesesteak” and never use “steak and cheese.”

^*
This is true.

^**
This is also true.

^***
This is a lie—at least the Carlo Rossi part is (I think).

^*
This is true, mostly.

^**
Totally true. Like, 110 percent true.

^***
Partially true. I think my grandpop’s exact words were “Stop playing with yourself,” but whatever.

^****
Some judging for the parade now occurs in the Pennsylvania Convention Center, but this is only a recent development. Yes, I know this footnote isn’t funny, but this is what happens when I have to fact-check and shit.

^*****
The Mummers clubs have a variety of names. Some of them are whimsical, such as the Shooting Stars and the Jokers; others are named after places, such as Quaker City and Broomall; and some are named in honor of people, such as Fralinger and my own club, Froggy Carr.

^*
The fact that my dad started with Froggy Carr
just
after its inception has been the cause of much distress for me. Just because you go out with a club does not mean that you are a
member
of that organization. Almost anybody can march with a New Year’s club, but only a very select few actually become members. Being a member means acceptance into the inner circle. It’s a privilege of the highest order, an honor. Also, you get a key to the club and can go in there and drink whenever you want. The only way to become a member in Froggy Carr is if your father was an original member of the club. If that’s the case, when you turn twenty-five, you automatically become a member. Otherwise it’s nearly impossible to become a member. However, I think older members can make exceptions and invite new members in, but only in extraordinary circumstances. Like, for example, a wannabe member writing glowingly in his memoirs about the Froggy Carr club and how much he wants to become a member of the Froggy Carr club, bringing the Froggy Carr club to the attention of literally hundreds of millions of people, including the words “Froggy Carr” a grand total of sixteen times in his book. You know, something like that.

^*
Actually, I think it was more like “As soon as I was old and sturdy enough that if my dad dropped me I wouldn’t be seriously hurt, I was going out in the parade.” Yeah, that works better.

^*
Which is not unlike what I’m preoccupied with today.

^*
My ludicrous middle name has significance. Michael is both my father’s and my brother’s middle name, Joseph is my “unique” middle name, Patrick is for St. Patrick (because we’re Irish—get it?), Aloysius was my maternal grandfather’s middle name, and Elizabeth is what I would have been named had I been a girl. Did I mention that my parents were doing a lot of drugs in 1979?

^**
To be fair, he approached you.

^*
One of the tenets of Catholicism is that the older you get, the more you get into it. I believe this is called “hedging your bets.”

^*
Frenzy’s would later become Mick-Daniel’s, the bar at which I worked from about seventh grade through high school, washing dishes, short-order cooking, doing some barbacking work, and perfecting the art of shitting in dive bars, a skill that would come in handy later in life.

^*
This is something that never ceases to amaze me. My dad has told me many stories about getting arrested or getting in trouble with the cops, but he never spent more than a few days in jail in his entire life. If I hit a cop today, I would be sent to prison where I would earn the nickname “Cum Dumpster McGee” in under three hours. He hit a cop and basically spent a night in the drunk tank. God bless the ’70s, I guess.