I'm turning on "The Wolf" by Andrew W.K. so I can get back in the mood. Okay, sweet. Opening lines of the first song, "Victory Strikes Again:" THIS -- IS -- WHY -- WE -- ARE -- ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE! Flash back to the morning after seeing Andrew perform live at Santos Party House in NYC on Thursday, May 28: I'm not sure I am alive. Thanks to Andrew, and good friends Anheuser Busch and Jack Daniels, my friends and I wake up on Friday morning aching, dry-mouthed and disoriented. My jeans are hanging from the huge oak tree in my front yard. There's a $25 drinking in public citation stuffed into one of the pockets. In my driveway sits a totaled 1991 Mazda Miata spewing ungodly fumes into the warm spring air. There are sirens going off everywhere. I don't know who the cops are looking for. I don't want to hang around to find out.
I stagger out of bed and grope around the floor for my cellphone. The last 9 calls I made were to Dominos. They were made from 3:21 to 3:30 a.m., on the minute, every minute. The call log slowly helps me put the pieces together: Clearly, I went to bed wanting food. Clearly, my attempts were in vain.
Like godly rays of heaven-sent sunlight penetrating through dark clouds of doom, my morning mission becomes clearer, too: Complete the quest you failed to complete at 3:30 a.m.
Closing my eyes and massaging my temples, I confront the question of where to eat. A light bulb goes off: Surely my parent's refrigerator must have some useful ingredients.
I stumble down the hallway to the kitchen. But the chill from the opening of the refrigerator door blasts me with an avalanche of ice-cold truth: Will Trader Joe's organic hummus, pre-pitted Kalamata olives and 11-grain stone-ground wheat wraps really be a worthy adversary for the beast-like hangover-hunger-hybrid gnawing at my insides like a grizzly bar thrashing around the innards of a giant bee-hive hurtling through the rocky orbit of Jupiter's outer rings?
No. No, fuck that, it most certainly will not.
I need substance. I need heart. I need soul and love and unpretentiousness. I need a battle-tested veteran with callused hands, scarred cheeks, bleeding knuckles and burning eyes. I need the Scotchwood Diner.
As the thought crosses my mind, I see Andrew W.K. smiling at me and nodding approvingly with his arms crossed. Somewhere deep inside my soul, the voice of a fire-breathing dragon whispers quietly, but forcefully, "Narrow is the road and wide is the gate that leads to heaven." I respectfully nod in agreement.
I shuffle back to my room -- quietly, so as not to invoke a "60-minutes" session with my parents -- and start poking at my cell phone. I call and text the other war-torn soldiers from last night's expedition: Sean, Aaron and Matt, along with Neel, who met us on the train ride home (two other fallen comrades, Steve and Ratul, can't muster up the strength to leave their beds). I'm not surprised to find them shell-shocked, too, and all more than eager to have their war-wounds dressed by the wiley medics and knowledgeable healers masquerading as pissed-off waiters and cooks at Scotchwood.
Despite collectively being on the verge of coma -- or maybe because of it -- we mobilize quickly. Matt comes by within 15 minutes to cart us through Watchung Reservation and across Route 22 to Scotchwood, our personal Valhalla of greasy salvation.
The Scotchwood Diner is quintessentially Union County. Because of its location in the middle of the most diverse county in New Jersey, Scotchwood draws an awesome variety of patrons: struggling day-workers in Rahway, rich NYC-commuters from Westfield, drunk high schoolers from Berkeley Heights. Gaudy but unpretentious, it is crammed along the commercial wasteland that is Route 22, neighbored by a gas station to the south and an ambiguous, weed-filled parking lot to the north. Across the street is a McDonald's with a gigantic playpen, popular for kids having birthday parties. The fast-food station is bordered by a liquor store and a billiards store. Behind these proud establishments (where employees smoke Kool menthols and enjoy the occasional dumpster-side BJ) sits Watchung Reservation, a 1,985 acre "wilderness" refuge that backs up onto the highway. My friends and I used to swim in a small hole in the reservation until we remembered that the preserve was bordered by Route 22, a cement-mixing plant, a granite quarry, and the six-lane behemoth known as Route 78.
Matt parks his boat-like 1995 Chrysler Concorde in the parking lot and we carry our wounded bodies and salivating mouths into the diner. The host and owner, unsmiling and speaking in an unknown Eastern-European accent, leads us to a table adorned with white paper place-mats featuring local ads around the borders. In the middle of the placemat sits Scotchwood's famous clock logo. The clock's time is set to 4:20. This fun nugget is not lost on me and my knucklehead friends.
After we make a few original and clever jokes about smoking doobies, our waitress -- a classic Connie D'Allesio -- comes over and begins bantering with us."Ya boys been through the meat-grinder or what? Ehh. Heh heh. Drink some water."
She laughingly cackles. We happily grunt. This woman is a mix between Carmela Soprano and the crazy, sloppy-joe-wielding cafeteria lady in Billy Madison. Collectively, we realize we've hit the "Stereotypical New Jersey Diner Waitress Jackpot."
After a few minutes deliberation, we begin our somewhat complicated ordering process.
Matt: "I want a Sloppy Joe. Would it be cheaper to get cheese fries on the side? Or if I upgrade to the Deluxe, how much more will it cost for you to put some swiss on those fries?"
Sean: "Give me the Buffalo Wings. And some disco fries. But put the gravy from the disco fries on the side so I can douse my wings in it. So I guess just normal cheese fries. With a side of gravy. And I want some bleu cheese dressing, too."
Me: "Short stack of pancakes. And a broccoli and cheese omelette. But put in feta instead of cheddar. And instead of just broccoli, add tomatoes too. So basically a Florentine Omelette, with broccoli and tomatoes instead of spinach and onion. With the feta."
We wait 12 painstakingly long minutes. When the food comes out, it is both savior and destroyer. Thanks to our weakened minds and abused bodies, our sense of quantity is highly skewed, and we order way too much.
The pancakes, omelets, sandwiches, wings, fries and shakes are greedily and quickly devoured, with only random, scraggly survivors remaining on the plain white plates that serve as our victual battlefields. The food helps us forget the pain of our hangovers, but only by replacing that pain with the gut-wrenching uncomfortableness that comes from overeating on foods that don't go together, like cheesesteaks and pancakes.
Our goal is accomplished, sort of, but we still feel awful. We vow to never eat at the diner again (a vow we would undoubtedly break the next time we woke up drunk), leave a tip on the table, and navigate our bloated bodies through the maze of tables in the restaurant. We pause at the cash register to pay the check, grabbing free toothpicks and mints, and, despite our overblown stomaches, gaze lovingly at the astonishing display of cakes, pies and pastries sitting in the glass display case to our left. Groaning, we will our feet to walk through the 1980s porn-movie-like vestibule and out into the spring sun. The warm air and blue skies taunt us, seemingly saying, "If you weren't such worthless wastes of humans, you could be playing outside and enjoying this gorgeous spring day. Have fun feeling shitty all day."
As we unbutton our pants and slump onto the seats of Matt's Concorde, we aren't sure whether the food has treated or exacerbated our problems: all that is certain is that this will not be the last morning we pay an emergency visit to the doctor they call the Scotchwood Diner.
SCOTCHWOOD DINER: FIVE KNUCKLES
A typical New Jersey Diner, but this is a good thing: solid cheese fries, omelettes, club sandwiches and the like. You don't go here for a steak or seafood. But if you're drunk, hungover, or looking to kill time, Scotchwood will treat you right.
-- CAPTAIN CHEDDARSTORM
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