CAN YOU DRIGG IT?

I know that I've been remiss as a blogger these past couple of weeks, but I have a good excuse.  Ten days ago or so--shortly after my last post--I went to dinner at a friend's apartment in Williamsburg.  We had spicy beans and rice, and washed it down with two bottles of Los Vascos, a Chilean red, available for under ten dollars, bold, tannic.  Like I said, we had a bottle apiece.  For me this used to be par for the course but, in my dotage, I've lost some of my endurance, and so as I was walking back to the L train along Driggs Avenue I was, well, let's just say that I was unqualified to operate heavy machinery.  I'm a relatively big guy and so normally get left alone on the street (and, in any case, as if New York's dangerous, unless you go to certain poor neighborhoods, but I don't know any poor people so that never comes up); however, I guess I was swaying or staggering or otherwise visibly intoxicated, because I wound up attracting some hostile attention.  Or maybe I didn't look tipsy at all, maybe it was just a matter of strength in numbers, since it was a group of about ten guys that came over to harass me.  This was in that big park that Driggs Avenue cuts across, I forget what it's called.  It's pretty well-lit so I was surprised to run into trouble.  These punks surrounded me and were kind of shoving and cuffing me; I tried to make light of it.  They ordered me to walk along with them deeper into the park.  I didn't really want to, but what could I do?  At first I was worried that they were going to walk me into some dark secluded area of the park; but, whereas it was all secluded (as in no one was there, everyone presumably being in bed), none of it really seemed to be dark.  Especially not by the monkey bars, which was where we were heading.  They were just kids out messing around, I figured, and, while things might get ugly for a while, there was also a good chance that by the time we greeted the dawn we would have become friends.  That is a really big park, and the monkey bars were far away, especially if you were drunk and not really into walking to the monkey bars in the first place.  I tried goofing around with the guys to show I was just like them, and told them the one joke I know, the voodoo-dick joke.  That got some laughs.  Then we finally got to the monkey bars.  I'd spent the last couple of minutes with my wallet in my hand, waiting for someone to demand it so that I could give it to him and be on my way again to the L train (I'd cleverly slipped my Metro card out of the wallet and into my back pocket).  Then, there at the monkey bars, the guys all gathered around me and knocked me down and started kicking me and beat me to death, I died, they killed me.