I work late nights. That’s how it goes lately. I like the work, it’s good and it’s honest. The late nights bring interesting characters into my life pretty often. It was the same way years ago when I worked overnights at the local diner, and I’ve accepted that it’s just part of the night life. Being a night owl means meeting interesting/strange people.
Buts it’s been a while. The past four weeks are the only time I’ve worked till 11pm since 2013, so I’m still getting used to it. Like being in a place you’ve been before, but re-learning the layout.
So it gave me some honest and bellowed laughs when I walk out of Wawa from a much needed piss to find a car pulling up next to mine. The driver, all of almost 300 pounds, had one pale (seemingly blind) eye. Blood formed a few uniform lines from his bald head and forehead to his lips, then to his chin. The closest I can describe his facial structure is to tell you he looks exactly like the main bald guy from Little Britain.
I felt great joy witnessing the same type of person I had come to love and slightly mirror from my late night gigs come into my life again. A “weirdo”.
I opened my car door as I stared straight into his eyes.
“God damn,” he says with a certain hurried-ness in his voice, “when you live 45 minutes from work, you seriously have to piss half way.”
The moment he finished his sentence I let out as deep a laugh as I’ve ever experienced as my gaze followed him as he closed his car door and entered Wawa.
Then I saw it, explaining everything, his sweatshirt. In bold, stylized lettering.
“Pennhurst Asylum”
For those of you who don’t know, I live in Pennsylvania, about 45 minutes from a building known as Pennhurst. Once a psychiatric facility for the “insane”, and now a “haunted attraction” where you pay a ridiculous amount of money to be scared out of your wits by people in makeup.
It all made sense after that, but the feeling still remains. Here I am, slightly tipsy standing outside a Wawa where I cross paths with a performer from a “haunted” insane asylum.
Fucking wicked and hilarious.
That’s how I’ve always lived as a night owl, and perhaps that’s how I’ll always be as a night owl:
Wicked and hilarious.
-B
Listen to the Podcast HERE.
