When You Almost Get Stabbed I

September 28th, 2019

3.09am

It’s funny. You would have thought I would have learnt my lesson. Fool me once, or something like that. Yeah, I know the phrase. Questioning the validity of it though.

It’s funny, you would have thought I would have learnt my lesson. But no, i end up being out at three am on a friday night. This time i stayed up. That time i had woken up to get to the gym. To be fair to me, I don't do this often. I am not one of those people that goes out every weekend to get trashed because my life doesn’t have enough meaning. I am not one of those people that enjoys getting trashed. I enjoy the company of people. Sometimes. I place value or at least, some value, in important moments for my friends. Depending on the friends. So when my best friend from college, and roommate for two out of three and a half years - during my college days - wanted to celebrate his twenty fourth, I could not really say no. it was going to be late. I was going to be out late. Even though I was usually in bed, seven days a week by seven, and asleep by seven thirty pm. Besides, this week had been rough. I had barely been sleeping four hours a night, my smartwatch says my average sleep for the last seven days has been five hours seventeen minutes. And I napped sometimes during the day this week, until I had to assume my responsibilities as a parent, for a needy Shepherd ten months of age.

So I said yes. Of course I would have said yes.

It’s funny though. You would have thought I would have learnt my lesson. The club was a setting, aren’t all places, that tries to enable you to have fun. But true fun comes from the company of the people you surround yourself with. So sure, it was fun. I really cannot deny that. And at some point, I asked my friends to leave, so we could meet my girlfriend.

She was supposed to meet us at Union Square, we were at 21st and 7th. We went there. Damn, this is a long prelude. Sounds better in person. Just read it out loud. We got there late, and decided not to go to more bars. Everyone had to go home. Of the five people that remained, two left us at 14th and 3rd, one left us on 14th and 4th. Birthday boy, and i remained. His station was on 14th and 6th, mine was on 14th and 7th. We walked past 14th and 4th. It’s funny how you remember things after. When we started walking towards 5th, we didn’t notice anything different. We used to live in that area. We’d made this walk dozens of times. Many dozens of times. A lot of those were late at night. Weekends, weekdays, holidays, you name it. Yet, upon introspection, this one time seems different. Probably because of what came next. Probably because memory is malleable, like putty. The more you touch it, the more it changes.