misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

As some of you have been asking for an update about the man drinking himself to death in the apartment above me (by "some of you", of course, I mean Amanda), I, the great workmonkey, will attempt a never-before-seen feat of strength and willpower. I will suppress my tendancies to overdramatize and elaborate to provide a succinct and matter-of-fact description of my recent face-to-face encounter with said drunk.

(Here's a quick recap of my previous blog: The man living above us is a depressed, drunken, 56 year-old who we've been informed is literally drinking himself to death. We'd further been told, at his current pace, he had a few weeks or months before he'd be dead.)

A few nights after writing the blog, Jill and I were stopped outside our apartment by a concerned neighbor, Lou. Lou said that he was headed to a play, but that our drunk neighbor upstairs (who apparently had a name - Stephen) had his door open, and was in serious trouble. He politely asked JIll to call 911, and asked me to accompany him upstairs to watch over Stephen while I waited for the paramedics to arrive. Lou offered to introduce me, but he really had to get to this play (thanks, Lou. Nice priorities. Play > Dying Man). I reluctantly agreed.

As we walked upstairs towards his apartment, I encountered a smell unlike any other in the history of mankind. It smelled like rotted manatee flesh, like boiled urine soup, like your grandma's scalp. Only it was like a wind. It wasn't stagnant - It flowed from his open door with a forceful energy, like a smell spirit. It was truly overwhelming.

As I walked into the apartment, feeling as if the smell was penetrating my very essence, I was simultaneously overcome by the visuals. The door itself opened only slightly due to ceaseless stacks of porn magazines scattered across the floor. Vomit was smeared upon the walls, the dull wooden floors, the antique couch, the magazines. The apartment wasn't lit, as Stephen had somehow managed to break all sources of light. Only the light from the hallway, and some ambient light from the windows, gave us any sense of sight.

As we squeezed past the half-open door, past the stacks of magazines, I found myself outside his bedroom.

There, a mattress laid on the floor in the middle of the otherwise empty bedroom. The mattress was covered with vomit, blood, and an old comforter. Also laying on the mattress was an old man in white underwear. He wore no shirt. His legs were covered in scabs and deep bruises, like small lakes. He writhed over the mattress, almost an extension of it. He was fat, and the bruises clearly didn't stop at his legs. They reached up his back, into his neck. His hair was grey. His face, like his legs, was covered in cuts.

Lou "introduced" me to Stephen, said I was here to talk. I was petrified. What the hell were we going to talk about? Was this smell going to give me disease? What ever happened to that golden retriever from Punky Brewster? I was way out of my league. Within seconds, Lou quietly apologized to me, wished me luck, and left me alone in this man's bedroom.

It was only then that i turned around. Behind me, was what was left of a living room. Stacked three high, across three-fourths of the living room were 24-ounce cans of Fosters. All empty. I'd estimate about two hundred in total. About fifteen empty bottles of vodka were scattered among the beer cans. I was standing in a pool of dried vomit.

As I looked around for a safe place to stand, Stephen called out. He said, "Mark, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to go to the store and buy me two big cans of Fosters. You have to do this for me."

He was surprisingly lucid. For the next 15 minutes, we engaged in a battle of him asking me to get him beer (he was unable to walk) and me imagining excuses for why I couldn't get him that beer. I couldn't step anywhere, as I there was so much filth on the floor, I didn't want to test just how gross it was. The last thing I needed at his moment was to step on human feces.

After fifteen minutes of him talking, I learned that he hadn't eaten in days, he was born in Connecticut, and he really, really, really wanted two tall cans of Fosters.

Luckily, the paramedics (along with two undercover cops, two uniformed officers, and some sort of social services guy) finally appeared. Stephen said he didn't want to go anywhere, and ordered them out of his apartment, but by law, if police see a person trying to do himself harm, they have the right to take him to the hospital. It took about four people, but they strapped his almost naked, struggling body to the wheelchair, carried him out of the apartment, and wheeled him down the stairs. Before he disappeared, he turned to me and asked, "Where you able to get me those beers?"

The cops told me he would have been dead in a few weeks, judging by his current status. They said they would take him to the hospital for a few days, but that was about all they could do. He'd probably be back soon, and continue destroying himself. There was nothing they could really do. He said to be on the lookout for the smell of death.

That's the last I've seen of Stephen in the past two weeks. I don't hear anything from upstairs, so I am guessing he is still away. Jill is afraid he'll come back home, and climb down the fire escape to try and get revenge on us for calling the cops. That might be a challenge for him, considering he couldn't even stand, but let's just say, if I can't handle that guy in fight, I'm pathetic. All i'd have to do is throw a beer in the corner and watch him chase it.

Upon returning to my own apartment that night, I briefly lost my taste for beer. It took almost thirty-seven minutes for me to gain it back. And although I don't think I'll ever be having a Fosters again, I am content to know that I am not, in fact, an alcoholic.

Age is, though.