On Getting Attacked by Whitey Bulger's Cousin
"My assailant was a double amputee Baby Boomer in a Celtics jersey."
April 17, 2017
Boston, Massachusetts
I was 23 years old
Despite my literal nightly prayer for protection before each and every overnight shift at the hotel, I had quite the run-in last night. I went into the shift thinking it’d be a relatively easy night—Lululemon had bought out the whole hotel for the entire weekend in anticipation of today’s Marathon. And all the check-ins happened on Friday night. So going into my Sunday into Marathon Monday overnight, I knew I wouldn’t have to make any late-minute reservations, I wouldn’t need to check anyone in at 2:00 in the morning, I could run the nightly audit right at midnight, wouldn't need to do any pre-arrival charging of credit cards, so on and so forth. And the rooms above Hojoko were all being used for storage so the usual bane of my existence (“Can you have that RESTAURANT turn that MUSIC down?!”) wouldn’t even be a concern. Bliss. Easy. “I’m gonna watch the series finale of Girls on the clock”-easy.
God laughs.
You see, it was easy for most of the night. I was up and down the stairs a lot, considering breakfast had to be set up in anticipation of the Lululemon-sponsored racers waking up at 5:00 in the morning. But sometime around 3:30 or so, I’m rounding the corner from Hojoko and heading back into the lobby when I hear the all-too-familiar sound of someone yanking on our all-too-recently locked front doors. I looked to see a hard-lived 50something-year-old man in a wheelchair with two stumps for legs. I opened the door, barely, and—standing in the threshold—I ask him how I can help. He asked if we had any rooms, though of course he’s already completely pissed off at me. I told him no.
“Well, why doesn’t your sign say that?” he asked, as if we’re a Motel 6.
I told him we never do that and that we sold out in anticipation of the Marathon this morning. He did not like that, proceeding to ask me why our sign said, “Open 24 hours” if we weren’t able to give him a room on the spot. I was being increasingly short with him until suddenly he grabbed the barely-cracked-open door, spun himself straight on at me, and started screaming that he needed “fuckin’ PROOF” that we were sold out or he’d “kick the shit” out of me. He then started rolling into the hotel, right at me, swiping one fist at my shirt over and over. Understandably, I’ve already told this whole story to just about everyone I know and yet still it’s hard to capture just how terrifying this was, considering my assailant was a double amputee Baby Boomer in a Celtics jersey.
But he was coming at me so quickly, pushing me deeper and deeper into the lobby. He was so fast in his chair but, even more to the point, so agile. And he has me completely cornered behind the desk at this point. Fortunately, there’s this gap between the front desk and the Wurlitzer that was too narrow for him to get into but still—we’re a foot apart from each other and he is just spitting mad at me. Demanding that I show him some proof that we’re sold out or else he’d take all “yawwhhrr cash, credit cahhhds, and yawwwhrr fahkin lap tawp!” I’m finally able to get in touch with William, the newest overnight valet guy—the one and only other hotel employee on the clock at that hour. William gets inside and remains, thankfully, really calm. That said: William is about 5’5” and maybe 107 pounds.
By now, the guy is demanding William tell him we’re sold out because “I’ll believe you—but I won’t believe him!” I tried not to take that personally. At this point, I also have 911 on the phone, telling them that we have an emergency going on, that an incredibly agitated man is being violent in my hotel lobby.
“Description, please,” says the operator.
“An old man with gray hair, with no legs, in a wheelchair.”
Between William coming to my rescue and the police on the horn, he was just about ready to fly his white flag. But first, he said, “Tell me, by! name!, that yawwhhr sold out.”
“I don’t know your name,” I said.
“It’s Bob.”
“We’re sold out, Bob.”
“First and last name,” Bob said. “You know my last name?”
“No, Bob, I don’t.”
“It’s Bulger,” he said. “That’s my last name. Bulgaahh. Bawwwb Bulgaahhh. You evah heard of it? Maybe you heard of my cousin? Whitey? You’ll be sorry, sassypants! Yawwrr dead!”
And off he went. The police showed up...fifteen minutes later. And didn’t even come inside to speak to me. Unreal. Feeling shaky and upset at five in the morning, with two more hours left of this shift, I was in the worst possible state of mind to then start immediately attending to the many, many, many needs of the Lululemon execs who were down in the lobby mere minutes after Bob Bulger rolled out. “Hi, Brian—question.” “Quick ‘q,’ Brian.” “How about we get a second breakfast assembled out on the pool deck too?” I’d never in my life wanted to go home as badly as I did. Before I left, before my shift was over, I sent an email to all the managers. I gave my two weeks notice.
November 3, 2021
Brooklyn, New York
I am 27 years old
“Why did I do that?” A question I’ve asked myself often enough to become very nearly mantric. The “nam myoho renge kyo” of my young life. A refrain most often and most easily applied to the jobs I’ve had. In the 11 years I’ve been in the workforce, I’ve had about as many careers. Retail, service, hospitality, media, labradoodles—if it’s part time and pays an annual $19,000 or less, I’ve done it. And there have been jobs I loved: leading tours at the museum makes me feel smart, dog walking made me feel free, serving brunch in my college’s cafeteria brutally hungover every Saturday morning made me feel my age. But then, for example, there’s the one (1) total shift I worked, without any prior experience in a restaurant, as a food runner at The Lansdowne Pub—a cavernous sports bar spitting-distance away from Fenway Park. Say it with me: “Why did I do that?” Sadly, there’s more where that comes from. But standing alone, an exception to my usual line of questioning, is the Verb Hotel. When I think about my year of overnight shifts at that rock-and-roll themed boutique hotel, yet again spitting-distance away from Fenway Park, I’m not asking myself “why” I did it, I’m asking, and with shivers racing down my spine, “How did I do that?”
It was the single worst job I’ve ever had. But as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of agreeing to work three days a week from 10:30 p.m. until 7 the following morning. Losing one job as college neared its end, with the ink still wet on my lease for an Allston apartment, I needed another. I reached out to an Emmanuel girl, a friend of mine named Molly who walked dogs, asking if that company was hiring. Not only did Molly hook me up on that front, singularly ushering me down my life-defining path of canine care, she reminded me she also worked at The Verb and that they were hiring more people for the front desk. Worried I’d lose out on the job if I said no, the hiring manager asked me if I’d be available for “some” overnights and just like that—every Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday for the following year—I’d board the 57 bus at ten o’clock at night and go to work.
When I wrote that my nightly prayer for protection was “literal,” in the slim chance I’m using “literal” correctly, I meant it. Besides the valet—one man out in the parking lot who, more often than not, was asleep in his own car for most of the night—I was the only employee on the clock, the one person responsible for the entire hotel. A 23-year-old who was neither visibly nor physically imposing, ensured to keep the guests safe and the property secure at the most lonesome and terrifying hours of the early morning. Directly sandwiched between the drunken debauchery of the baseball stadium and whatever goes down in the tall grass of The Fens, the hotel was a principal location for Boston’s most abject to come knocking. Massive panes of tinted glass allowing each and every lost soul stumbling down Boylston to see the inside of an expensive looking hotel solely manned by a boy. A slim-wristed boy, willowy and blond (shh!) and all alone, writing in his diary at three in the morning. In other words: a prime target.
Most nights of that year were wholly uneventful—a routined stretch of late night reservation making and extra pillow delivering before running the night audit and settling into several hours of doing whatever I wanted in the solitude of a too-quiet lobby. But I repeat: most nights. I sincerely feared for my life multiple times, working that job. Hotels bring out a careless, reckless side in people, I’d imagine that’s the case everywhere. But Boston fosters a seething kind of constant hostility in its people. So it’s a less-than-congenial combination for us lowly front desk workers—or “producers,” as we were titled at the, again, rock-and-roll themed Verb Hotel. But as far as being arguably assaulted by a debatable relative of the Bulger crime family was concerned, that only needed to happen once for me to know it was time to move on.
It’s a funny story. Now, at least. Any time Shannon introduces me to a new friend of hers, it’s a tale she wants me to share and, consentingly, happily, I do. It has twists and turns and, all the while, I can color it with the kind of self-deprecating only Brian! goofiness that I’ll modestly call my “shtick.” It was a fear of losing out on the job that led me to these overnight duties, yes, but there was also just as much awareness of the “material” this position could offer me. The chance to interact with strangers from all over, to get a window into human quirks and behaviors and demands while accommodating an exemplary stay all by myself in the middle of the night—it felt positively Sedarisian. Like I’d be getting paid $18 an hour just to live the exact kind of experiences I always wanted to write about. That somehow I’d be able to find the humor in that night when a husband was screaming so violently at his wife that four different rooms called down to the front desk telling me to intervene. That maybe I could land the punchline about that night in February when an 80-year-old man was sitting out on the pool deck wearing only his underwear, telling me he got lost coming back from the bathroom. That enough time might pass for me to forget my fears of what Bob Bulger might have in his pocket, of whether William would ever come inside from the parking lot, of getting too much of that material I was asking for. That, with any luck, I could take these midnight hours and write the stories that finally would get noticed by all the right people. That I’d graciously and inevitably get the one career I actually wanted all this time. I suppose it still could happen. It’s just a matter of how.
It will MOST definitely happen. I have the confidence in you, that has never wavered ❣️