Blood on the escalator

Saturday night we spent the evening with a few friends at Makumba, an African bar in Soho that has live music from a really great Senegalese band. I was tired early, so I left everybody at the bar around midnight and headed home. As I was about to get on the escalator, I passed two guys - I'll call them Big White Guy and Tiny White Guy. It seemed that Big White Guy was severely inebriated, and Tiny White Guy had walked him to the escalator to put him on his way home. As I walked by, I heard Tiny White Guy say, "Have a good weekend" and Big White Guy reply "Bofmm gleah." This is when I first sensed trouble.

Big White Guy got on the escalator shortly after me. When I was about halfway up, I heard a thunk - just a small one. I turned just in time to see Big White Guy stagger down a step, then pass out cold, falling straight backwards like a big white tree. As the escalator continued going up, he kept sliding down, so each new step slammed into his head. The motion of the escalator caused his body to rotate, so he was face down with each step now slamming into his face. This was awesome.

But alas, it couldn't go on forever. I sprinted to the top of the escalator and hit the emergency stop button, then yelled at some random white guys to help me. They sauntered over and vaguely pulled out their phones and shuffled their feet as I ran back down the escalator to grab Big White Guy's ankles so he wouldn't slide down headfirst into the concrete at the bottom. At some point, Tiny White Guy must've heard the commotion, because he came running back. He immediately went into macho crisis panic mode, yelling "mate! mate!" and patting his friend's face. Okay, whatever. True, the guy was bleeding profusely from a nasty head wound and a broken nose, and true he was unconscious, but he was clearly breathing. It made me very happy that Tiny White Guy had to use his tiny Armani jacket to soak up the blood that was gushing from his friend's head.

So I crouched there on the escalator holding Big White Guy's ankles for a while, the whole time cursing myself for leaving the house without my camera. What the hell was I thinking? Eventually Big White Guy woke up and we got him into a sitting position. He kept mumbling that his head hurt. I laughed and told him to wait until tomorrow, which earned me a nasty look from Tiny White Guy and a great sense of personal satisfaction.

Once the police came, I figured most of the action was over, so I sprinted back to Makumba to tell everybody about my adventure. They were fairly sloshed, so the story was exceptionally well-received.

I love it here.