After Hours "at the Brain Wash" (sing to "Car Wash" tune)

One time, when I was 21, and living in NYC, I got so trashed in the A.C.E Bar that I smoked a pack of ciggs I swiped for fun off the pool table (I don't even smoke), tongue kissed my friend's sister, put her in a cab back to Brooklyn at 4 AM. She passed out and had to pay $40 from the cab circling her block a few times. After sending her off, I stood by the "walk up" pizza window and ate 4 pieces of pizza with hot pepper flakes, which caused the worst burning tummy ever, so, to cool it down, I got a vanilla ice cream cone. The ice cream melted in my hand and dripped down the entire front of my three quarters black wool coat. It looked like pin-stripes, at least from my drunken point of view, so I left it on there to dry, as in, I totally thought it was cool looking.

Well, I really wasn't drunk enough yet, so I figured I'd find an awesome after hours. So I walk over to Ave B and stroll (stagger diagonally back and forth) down the sidewalk listening for music indicative of a rockin' after hours. I hear cymbals and bells and thought, 'huh must be a live band'. I enter an establishment that reeks of incense. People are dressed in brown robes and have shaved heads, one of which comes and asks me if I've entered to worship and to please remove my shoes. I remember thinking 'this is code talk for come in and we'll check you out to make sure you're not a cop, then we'll lead you to the real party in the back.' I sit in front of this Indian-looking shrine but I'm so drunk I can't even sit up straight so I lay back. The guy keeps coming over with a brass incense burner and letting puffs of pungency waft around my already light head. There's one black guy in the front playing finger cymbals, he hasn't shaved his head and still has an Afro. At this point another robed worshipper comes over and tells me I can't lay down in the temple. Temple? This dump is a temple? I tell him, "Dude I'm cool, can I go in the back now?" He shakes his head no and smiles. The incense guy comes over again to surround me in stinky smoke clouds, and the whole place breaks into a repetitive round of "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna...(again again again)."

"I'm gonna pray," I say to nobody in particular. I thought it best to clarify that I was leaning forward to "worship" rather than leaning forward to take a brief nap. As I get my head near the floor, I lose my balance and skid my forehead on the rough woven mat. "OUCH!" blurts out in a decibel higher than the current chant. Can't this place afford Berber, it would be less abrasive?

As I drift into a peaceful sleep... 'That tune is kind of catchy....I like the finger cymbals....I wonder where I can get one of those robes....Maybe I should shave my head, my hair just annoys me anyway.....WHAT! I'm being brain washed!' I jerk awake and sit upright.

I look around dazed and shockingly realize this is NOT a front for some cool after hours and these guys don't want to drink illegally. They only want my soul, and maybe my shoes, but I'm not selling either, especially not to bald and stinky men dressed in potato sacks. If it were the Women's Swedish Ski Team, perhaps, but alas, they are not. (Though I really want to ask where they bought those cool finger cymbals) I grab my newly ice cream pin-stripped coat and fancy work shoes and dash out of there lickety-split before they take me in the back, shave my head and this guy makes me drink blood like when Indiana Jones is in the Temple of Doom and that guy transforms him into a zombie. Still walking zig-zag up the sidewalk towards Tompkins Park in my sock-feet I see a cab. I wave for my rescuer to come and save me and they whisk me back to the Upper West Side away from the Bohemian Ghetto!

**Please note that for the next 2 years I'd hang out practically every weekend in this neighborhood. But at that particular moment I was still learning the ropes, still being pretentious, and still very moody from having an incense headache. Ah, memories (that I still remember).