Jason Rodriguez - The Moose in the Closet: The Day Mike Gets Shot

Now, my mom reads this blog. So this entry might be kind of weird because this is one the stories she definitely never heard. This was one of those never tell anyone type of stories for quite some time. But, several people have asked for it and I will deliver and if anything, there’s a lesson to be learned here. Don’t be an idiot.

In my January 19th posting entitled “Origin” I wrote:

“The lackluster response of the new EP combined with the not-so-good Moose the Movie, our friend Mike getting shot in the neck and G and I allegedly playing strip poker with Brian’s ex-girlfriend and her DOPE best friend, R.A.I.L. broke up and The Moose went back to the closet.”

Several people have written me emails asking if the whole Mike getting shot thing was a joke. No, it wasn’t. This is one of those Brooklyn stories. Brooklyn stories are the stories you tell when a friend asks, “So you’re from New York? What’s the worst thing you ever seen.” This is the story I tell. In no way is it representative of New York, shit like this happens once, but it’s the story they want to hear when they ask that question.

The end of our first year in college, we are all home for the summer, my whole crew. One night, a bunch of the guys get together for a night of drinking and shooting the shit about college. This guy Mike was there, the cousin of our friend Jimmy. Mike and his friend went out to some bar at around 11 or so and said they would come back later.

It’s now about 2AM. We’re all feeling pretty good and we know Mike is coming home soon. We decide to set up a “Home Alone House” complete with trip wires, greased doorknobs, stuff to step on – nothing to really injure but enough to make people laugh.

We all pretend to go to sleep. I’m lying on a sofa to the left of the entryway, giggling like a maniac when the doorbell rings. Ciro grabs a squirt bottle and the fun is about to begin.

Ciro squirts some water out of this peep-hole like thing in the door. We hear “FUCK!”

He opens the door. In comes Mike, his friend and his friend’s brother (whom we never met before then). His friend’s brother is pissed-off, screaming, “Who the fuck spit in my face?” I’m still giggling my ass off until I look up and dangling right above my face is a fucking pistol.

The laughter stops really quick when the friend’s brother starts waving that shit around.

Mike’s friend calms his drunken brother down and gets the gun off of him, tells him to chill out. The brother goes into the kitchen to cool off. I tell the friend to take the bullets out of the gun now and he agrees that it’s probably a good idea. Everyone goes upstairs and hangs in Jimmy’s parent’s room while the friend tends to his brother downstairs.

The friend comes up. Tells us his brother is leaving, he gave him the gun back but it’s not loaded. We all breathe a sigh of relief.

Then the brother comes upstairs.

“I need some bullets, I had beef with some guy at the bar and he might be after me.”

We all smile, there’s no way in fuck this asshole is getting his bullets back.

Wrong.

The friend hands his brother the bullets. Here’s where the story diverges from my version and what I heard happened. You see, as soon as the friend reached into his pocket I decided this would be a GREAT time to take that shit that’s been backing up. So I go down stairs, sit on the bowl and I’m pretty sure I start crying.

BANG!

I don’t fucking move. I hear people running, screaming, doors slamming shut and I sit on that bowl and take a shit.

Finally I come out and it’s the most surreal thing ever. I walk up the stairs and the brother is sitting on the toilet bowl, head in his hand and crying. Sitting on the sink is Mike, a towel to his neck. “What the fuck happened?” I asked him. He pulls the towel away. The fucking bullet went right through the right side of his neck, in the front and out the back. I was offset from the jugular, more of a skim pass the muscle but there was a chunk of flesh missing from Mike’s neck. A couple of inches over to the left and he was dead.

Brian tells me that this is “delicate”. It was an accident, the brother went cowboy and spun the gun on his finger. It went off and clipped Mike. Apparently the brother had some mafia connections (which was probably bullshit) and we can’t tell anyone about this. He was going to drive Mike to a friend that was going to “patch him up”. RJ, G and Ciro were gone, they ran out. G was my ride.

I go outside and they’re all in G’s car waiting for me. They rush me in and we drive off. RJ, who was standing right next to Mike when it all happened, said that the crazy fuck did not spin any gun. He raised it and fired without blinking an eye.

And that’s what happened the night Mike got shot.

Interesting side note, Mike needed to tell his parents something. He was all bandaged up on his neck. He told them a stick went through his neck while playing football. And they believed it.

If that was my parents…woah boy.

read a book, fanboy: Song of Solomon

turn off the metallica, fanboy: Black Star

Labels: mitc

The Day Mike Gets Shot

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

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