Gut Instinct

Yummy, yummy, chips in my passed-out tummy.

I love this guy’s eyes. It’s the I-might-be-too-drunk-to-have-sex face. Or I’m not drunk enough.

Good Jesus, I was certainly idealistic in my youth. Back then, when my friends and I thought magazines would save the world, we published six issues of a zine dubbed Rated Rookie. It was a whole bunch of mid-20s awesome. Then we got real jobs. And our head designer decided to live in the woods, eschewing zine-making for a goat-filled existence in Tennessee. What does this mean? It’s spring-cleaning time. I have thousands of back issues. If anyone wants to purchase a six-pack (trust me, it’s an awesome time-waster), click here. $15 for six issues? Screw that. $10 for six issues. That includes shipping, sweethearts. And now back to your regularly scheduled dose of drunkenness.

A drunken bike ride leads me into a Corona-fueled dance club in Queens

“Corona!” I bellowed. “Give me a Corona!”

“Qué?” replied the busty barmaid.

“KA-RONA! KA-RONA! I want a KA-RONA!”

She tilted her ear toward me, an act more symbolic than useful. The rollicking ranchera tunes at Viva Zapata Bar (80-14 Roosevelt Ave. betw. 80th & 81st Sts., Jackson Heights, Queens; 718-898-4747) thundered loudly enough to make a cochlear-implant salesman a millionaire. Dears, what was I doing here?

I first glimpsed Viva Zapata one rambling afternoon. I’d just eaten crunchy carnitas tacos at Taqueria Coatzingo (76-05 Roosevelt Ave. at 76th St., Jackson Heights, Queens; 718-424-1977). Full of fatty pork, I sauntered down Roosevelt until a blast of south-of-the-border beats stopped me.

I assumed the music’s source was unassuming Mexican restaurant Viva Zapata. Yet the noisy culprit was its separate, second-floor lounge—bienvenidos al bar advertised a sign adorned with martini glasses. I peeked upstairs. It was shadowy. It was creepy. It was a perfect scary bar. I inserted the address into my “bad ideas” mental file, which I accessed last week.

Since it was sunny out, I eschewed the subway for my bike—always a brilliant idea when drinking. I steered my pedaling machine to Queens, maneuvering past myriad SUVs trying to steamroll me into road pizza. Upon arriving unscathed, I chained up beside texting teens and cluttered shops hawking loin-quaking music, the very sort pouring from Viva’s second floor.

I opened the door just as a gentleman with bristly brown hair exited. He froze as if hit by a superhero’s icy ray.
“Quiero cerveza,” I said. I offered a toothy smile that both said “I’m harmless as a puppy” and “I’m coming for your daughters after dark.”

“Cerveza?” he replied, inching backward.

“Yup.”

He flicked his head toward the dark, deafening upstairs void.

I ascended into a windowless, sunlight-murdering room. At the purple-neon-ringed bar, baby-cheeked Mexican men wearing baseball hats sat beside curvy ladies clad in skirts as colorful as they were abbreviated. They shouted into one another’s ears, their reflections bouncing off mirrored walls. A blow-up Pacifico beer bottle dangled from the ceiling. A disco ball splattered glittery drops across the vacant dance floor. Low-wattage red and green lights—viva Mexico—kept the mood seedy and cheesy, just like the music.

“AMOR-blah-dee-blah AMOR!” the songs blared ad nauseum.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I envisioned my girlfriend asking, examining me with fingers plugging ears.

“I’m…curious.”

“No, you’re a moron. You’ll get stabbed one of these days.”

“I’m harmless. Who’d stab me?”

My question should’ve been, Who’d serve me? After futilely shouting at the bartender, I gestured at a Corona ($4). The bartender nodded. She inserted a lime wedge into the bottle’s neck, then swaddled in white napkin. The little details are so delicious.

I grabbed a two-top table and swigged deeply. A beer-bellied DJ hidden in a CD-filled closet stepped out. I waved feebly. Belly didn’t. He retreated into the cave and cranked up the tuneage. A lady in red and a guy in blue jeans commanded the dance floor. They gyrated like high-schoolers who only recently learned how their bodies worked. But whenever the man tried touching the woman’s rump, she redirected his hands to her bony hips. This occurred, five, 10 times—until I ran out of countable fingers.

When their oddly chaste twirl ended, the guy slipped the girl currency. Good gosh, Viva Zapata was a lower-rent El Flamingo, the sexy-ballerina bar where forlorn men buy dance-floor romps with women in high heels and short nightgowns.

Tonight’s pay-to-sashay act repeated with new men. Women followed the dollars and switched allegiances like baseball free agents. I had another beer. Sometimes, that second beer’s all I need to switch from Grumpy Gus to Gregarious Guy. But the second, and soon the third, barely lifted spirits. Buying love is only funny in ’80s teen comedies. The doorway gentleman, I now saw, wasn’t telling me I was unwelcome; he was telling me I didn’t need what waited at the end of that long, lonely set of stairs.

“Besides,” my girlfriend would add, “you hate to dance.”

“There are many things I hate,” I’d respond—the Pittsburgh Steelers, tequila, men hogging multiple subway seats—“and that is definitely one of them.”

“So shouldn’t you be somewhere where you don’t have to pay to be with women? Like home?”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps?”

“Yes,” I replied, emptying my Corona and heading downstairs into a brighter world.

The question is, did his friends do this or his enemies? Is there even a difference sometimes?

I sobered up long enough to pen this profile on a Dominican family who make fruit- and milk-based ices. Eat it up!

A picture can tell a thousand words, but use your words and tell me why there’s hot sauce beside this passed-out, pants-undone man.

What drives friends to barge in on their half-naked friends and take pictures of their pals passed out to the world? It’s a human compulsion I’m not sure I comprehend. You?

I’m most proud that this young gentleman has managed to wedge his head into the recycle bin, though I’m not sure whatever flies out of his tummy can be recycled.

It’s a two-handed adventure: from fried-chicken sandwiches to pig-cow heroes

Sandwiches are the most fun I can have with two hands.

“In public,” my girlfriend would like me to add.

Lately, I’ve experienced a sandwich deficit. Too many sit-down dinners, liquid dinners or no dinners at all.

“Except for bags of Zapp’s chips,” my girlfriend would also like me to add.

“Quiet, you,” I muttered, eager to embark on a bread-chomping flurry. “Grab your bike, hon—it’s eatin’ time.”

“Where are we going?” my girlfriend wondered, as we left our house and pedaled to Brooklyn’s western edge.

“Shh, shh, don’t worry,” I said, in my coax-the-kid-into-the-van voice.

“I’m hungry.”

“I’m hungrier.”

“Don’t take me to another Chinese restaurant.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. We locked up at Ferdinando’s Focacceria (151 Union St. between Columbia and Hicks Sts., B’klyn, 718-855-1545), a century-old Sicilian joint situated where Carroll Gardens kisses Red Hook. Don’t expect herb-slathered chunks of pizza-like bread; instead, this earlier-era eatery specializes in arancina—breaded, deep-fried rice balls stuffed with spiced ground beef and peas—and rarities like cow-spleen vastedda sandwiches.

“You know I’m a vegetarian,” my girlfriend explained.

“Try the panelle sandwich,” singsonged the counterman. That’s a toasted semolina roll encasing fried chickpea fritters topped with creamy ricotta and pecorino ($5).

“So good,” she said, enjoying crunchy, gooey, greasy goodness.

I oozed indecisiveness: meatball or sausage hero?

“Get half and half,” suggested the newspaper-reading owner, Frank Buffa.

Compromise. How wonderful. Who knew? My hero ($9) was a marriage of spongy orbs relenting to a fennel-flavored sausage snap. I sighed with pleasure.

“That’ll put you one step closer to a heart attack,” my girlfriend reprimanded. “And how did you get sauce on your cheeks?”

I turned the color of tomatoes as we pedaled home.

Smartly, the next night I left my sweetie at home when I visited my favorite African-American motorcycle gang clubhouse, Imperial Bikers MC (652 Franklin Ave. at St. Marks Ave., B’klyn, 718-789-2451). It was a Friday night. I was shooting atrocious pool with my French pal Bati. We were wincing down 150 proof-plus rum mixed with 2 percent milk ($3).

“Do you even like this?” he asked, his right eye involuntarily spasming

“Not really,” I said, “but it makes me feel tough—or at least drunk enough to comfortably hang out at the biker bar.”

I took a deep glug and missed my shot. Bati missed his. I lined up for another shot when my nostrils flared: chicken, possibly fried. I dropped my cue and peeked around the corner. Jolly, rotund men with names like “Chaos” were chomping golden chicken.

“Is that the Crazy Chicken?” I inquired.

“Mmhmm,” a pro-wrestler-size man answered, ripping off a crispy chunk. Months before, I’d noticed a poster featuring a raw chicken encased in a straightjacket. “Call for Crazy Chicken!” the sign touted.

“Can you order me some?” I asked, like a kid begging for a Nintendo Wii.

“Sure,” he said, whipping out his cellphone. “How many sandwiches?”
I turned to Bati.

“Are you sure it’s good? Or safe?”

“No and no.”

“Uh…”

“Two,” I ordered.

Done. I acquired another OP and milk, feeling much like Superman, if Superman was one drink away from urinating himself. Thirty minutes passed.

“Cory!” screamed Crazy Chicken, toting black plastic bags. “Cory!”

I pointed at my chest.

He nodded.

“No, I’m Josh. Cory used to be my roommate.” I’m sure scads of flour-white crackers look alike, but not Cory and I: He’s far taller, with a lumberjack-quality beard. And he’s vegetarian, for Pete’s sake. I explained the mistake.

“Well, how about that,” Crazy Chicken said.

Bati and I unwrapped our fried chicken sandwiches ($4). They stretched the very definition of sandwich: two slices of Wonder Bread smooshily encasing a thigh and leg. I peeled off the soft bread and bit into the thigh. The skin was skillet-hot and crispy, the meat peppery and juicy as a ripe orange.

“You like it?” Crazy Chicken asked.

“Yesh,” I mumbled, tearing the chicken bones apart like an archaeologist searching for buried treasure.

“All right,” Crazy Chicken said, slyly sliding me his phone number. “You just call me when you want more sandwiches.”

Readers, do you fully comprehend that I possess a fried-chicken maestro’s home number? On speed-dial? The dangers shall be documented in full greasy detail.