Dana White, King of MMA

He said, “I can’t believe your friend just kissed me in front of everyone in this
bar. I think I’m going to throw up.”
I said, “Are you kidding? Did you even see anyone look when he did it? No one
cares. That’s just him, and he’s probably kissed half the guys in here at one time or
another.” Dana was horrified and could not get over it.
The housing at the Vineyard did not work out, and I was staying in someone’s
basement bedroom. One of the nurses I was working with told me she was going up to
Boston on weekends to work for nursing temp agencies and making good money. On
one of my days off, I headed up to Boston and interviewed with a couple of temp
agencies. I decided I was going to leave the Vineyard and move up to Boston for the
summer. I found a great furnished one-bedroom apartment that was a fifth floor
walkup in the North End on Salem Street.
Dana had flown back to Vegas and was living with his father, who had moved out
to Las Vegas after we did — so much for getting away from him. Dana called one night
and was whispering into the phone because he didn’t want his father to hear him. The
two of them were not getting along at all, and Dana asked if I could buy him a plane
ticket to come to Boston. He said he could not take another day living with his dad.
His father heard him on the phone and picked up the phone and began screaming and
swearing that Dana was not working, slept half the day away, and then went out all
night with his friends. His father said he was ready to kick him out of his house. I
bought Dana a ticket to come back to Boston before his dad killed him.
Dana arrived at night, and had a cab bring him to the apartment because I was at
work. The North End in Boston has very narrow streets with buildings one on top of
the other, and most of the buildings are brick and four to six stories high. The
buildings are very old and very charming — old world charm is what I would call it.
The North End is a world apart from Vegas, which is all new construction and strip
malls on every corner. There are no high rises. Vegas was what Dana was used to, and
when the cabbie started driving down Salem Street, Dana told him, “Buddy, you’re in
the wrong neighborhood. My mom would never live here.”
The cabbie pulled up to the address Dana had given him and said, “This is it, pal.
Get out.”