what's the point?

Stories I've Told

One night, in Madison, I was hanging out with Chia Chin, Brian and Tim. I think his name was Tim, I forget now, everyone called him Jesus, sort of like how people call Chris Ferguson Jesus. Except Tim had a shaved head. Oh and Daniel was there too. Daniel introduced me the Legendary Pink Dots.

In any event, we were all hanging out on State Street, basically right outside our private rent-a-dorm. Us out of state kids were too good for the public UW dorms. Remember when you went to college in Wisconsin to get away from all the kids in Marlboro who were going to Rutgers? Remember when you got to your swank dorm with a private bedroom and a shower you only had to share with one other person. Remember when you found out two girls from your high school lived right down the hall. Remember when you transferred to Rutgers. Those were the days.

So there we were, hanging out on State Street, across the street from whatever the fratboy bar across the street from our dorm was called. And the frat boys were all hanging out in the bar, and outside of the bar, and generally doing the things that frat boys do (later that year it included toppling a bus shelter when UW won the Rose Bowl). We decided that it'd be fun if we played some music to entertain the revellers. I'm not really sure how we decided this, or why, but it was decided. Our biggest problem was we didn't really have much in the way of instruments. Someone had a guitar, I think I had a harmonica, Daniel grabbed a garbage can and used it as a drum. I think Brian was singing. We sat on the street playing "music." We put a hat out and accepted donations from passers-by drunk and sober.

Eventually, we attracted the attention of some guy who looked like he'd been living on the street for a couple of days. He was a nice enough though. I can't for the life of me remember his name, but he had actually been living on the street for a couple of days. He had come to Madison by bus for a funeral, but didn't have enough bus fare to get back wherever he came from. He didn't come over begging or anything, he just thought we were funny college kids and sat around talking to us while we sang songs taunting drunken frat boys.

As is prone to happen in this sort of situation, especially if college party movies are to be believed, we incurred the wrath of some of the frat guys. I'm not entirely sure how it went down, but I think someone had just gotten kicked out of the bar, and Chia Chin started singing a song taunting him. He didn't so much approve and came over to let Chia Chin know ... by pushing him around. Chia Chin probably weighed 110 pounds, but he wasn't exactly one to back down. Luckily he didn't have to, as the funeral guy who had been sitting talking/listening to us stepped up the drunk frat guy, pulled out a knife and told him in no uncertain terms to get the fuck out of there.

We went on playing and hanging out for awhile still, I'm sure we were drinking ourselves as well. When we finally stopped we had about $20 or so that random people had thrown into the hat. We gave it to our protector and wished him well, then we went and got some IHOP.