Honest Conversation Is Overrated
Actual Human Interactions Witnessed Or Overheard
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
It's an ice cream day. A gelato day. A shaved ice day with a side of sorbet and strawberries.
I'm in the comic book store, abusing my employee discount. If you listen real close, you can hear it moaning "Harder, papi, harder. Ohhhhhhhh yea." I turn to my not quite boss and say, "I think I'm going to get some ice cream from Harrell's, or some gelato from the new coffeehouse place." At which point a strange (not a stranger, as I've nothing to compare him to) says "Have you tried the new place two stores down from Harrel's?" I have not. "I saw someone come out of there earlier with this...this...this frozen thing!" "Thing?" "Thing. But like, in a good way. You know, a thang." I subdue my urge to slap him, at least until I get more information out of him. My boss says, "Wait, do you mean The Snackhole?" "The what?" The what? "I mean, the what?" "I think it's called The Snackhole." "As in, 'baby, I want to stick my tongue in your delicious snackhole', or 'dude, I totally tapped her in the snackhole last night', or 'his snackhole is tiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeet!' That's disgusting! Where is it? I must go." As it turns out, the place is not called The Snackhole (though that's what I will call it forever and ever more), but is called The Food Fun Snackery; a great name, were it not for the alternative name I have already explored ad nauseum. I will not tell you of the Willy Wonkaesque tour I was given of this small, not yet officially open Snackhole. I will just tell you that I left with a large red flower shaped bowl filled with fresh sliced kiwi, shaved ice, kiwi puree, ice milk sauce, freshly sliced kiwi, lychee sorbet, and even more freshly sliced kiwi. Snackhole never tasted so good. And I love me some snackhole. I brought it back to the comic book store to share the Kiwi Snackholish glory with my future coworkers. But not too much. It was, after all, my snackhole they were munching on.
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I have spent an absurd amount of time and money into comic books this year. Between various Marvel X-titles and Vertigo series like Fables and Lucifer, I have two shelves full of graphic novels.
Yesterday, in the Allston store, where I'm prone to hanging out with the employees being bitter and judgmental, I had a bit of an OCD attack. Their trade shelves were...frighteningly out of shape, and messy. So, I did what any normal lunatic would do, I spent four hours fixing them. Realphabetized, restacked, removed doubles. It was totally an A Beautiful Mind moment...err...series of moments. So I now have a job at New England Comics. I'll be delivering comics from the warehouse to the Boston area stores (Allston, Brighton, Cambridge, and Quincy), as well as floating between stores when they need me. It's a minimum three day a week job, and it will no way interfere with my getting drunk while waiting tables/bartending job at The Cantab. This makes me happy. And less broke. My head is pounding. I finally remembered to pick up my new phone, so, naturally, I've forgotten where I left my charger, and I'm all out of battery power. I'm also out of batteries for my discman. My head is pounding too much for me to be able to finish the James Kochalka comic I'm supposed to be reading. At least I'm only two stops away from work, where I have been assured by my boss I will "make bank." This is why I dragged myself out of the house two hours early. "It's the day after Thanksgiving, we're going to be balls to the wall, come early, and you'll make bank." I later decide that he must have meant "bunk", but I'm getting ahead of myself. Right now, my head is pounding, and the bagel I had for breakfast has decided to use my stomach as a trampoline. I put my head in my hands, and all is normal on the severely crowded red line train. When I look up, there's a marching band.
Thirty or so sweaty, mostly overweight men in kilts and afghans of various shades of green have been known to incite motion sickness, even without moving or producing sound. This stumble of marchers, however, were not content to sit or stand on the crowded T and bask in the lurchiness of public transportation. Oh, no. They had decided that a crowded T on a Friday afternoon is the perfect place to play Christmas carols. Somewhere around the seventh day of Christmas, I start to fashion my keychain into a shiv. I know I'm not stealthy or powerful enough to take them all down, but if I at least take a couple of these unfuckers with me before I'm wrestled to the ground beneath their kilts, I'll have done the world an incredible service. By the time my stop comes, they have moved on to the most inaccurately named version of "Silent Night" ever conceived. I mean, bagpipes? Work is so dead that even vampires pass by its corpse and go "Ehhh, it had a good life, I'll let it sleep." I'm so bored that I can feel my eyes rot away, as I watch The Naked Gun on the TV in the kitchen. The safe sex scene starts when my favorite Hungarian bartender says "What was the score of the Bears game?" Which leads me to believe he's never met me before. How the fuck would I know the score of a football game that doesn't even contain The Patriots? "Tampa Bay won thirteen to ten." I was bored, okay, and the game was on the bar's TV. Then he begins asking me about other games, and how many interceptions some person I've never heard of threw, and wasn't that onside kick a weird choice? I place my index finger to his lips and whisper. "Shhhh. You're only allowed to speak to me in Hungarian. Oh, the language of love." His eyes flit from me to anyone who might be watching my bizarre behavior, and says "Uhhhh, ok." Then he walks away. "I didn't know you liked the Hungarian." David gives me a cool, hurt look. The kind an ex would be allowed to shoot at someone who'd hurt them in a relationship. But if David wasn't such a pussy closet case we'd be dating, so I don't allow the look to register. Much. "Sure," I say, "I'd like him...naked and chained to my couch." That look again. Bastard. What is it with me and unworkable relationships? What is it with me and having the same stupid epiphanies over and over? I've got to stop getting myself in these situations. Closet cases, roommates, future suicides. I've got to get over this kind of shit and move on. I've got to move. Of course. But first I have to make a phone call. An hour or so later, when both David and the Hungarian have gone to their respective homes, and most of the staff has begun cleaning, Ben and his Dad arrive in the restaurant. Because I'm already done for the night, they sit in someone else's section. I do my paperwork, sweep my tables, and do about 90% of my kitchen sidework before I'm asked to clock out. I do so. I then go to Ben's table and drink and socialize. We're there for about a half hour when I remember that I have to bring one more box of bread into the kitchen before I'm actually done done. "What the fuck?!" says a steamy eyed server, as I walk into the kitchen. "Who the fuck are you, that you think you can fucken clock out and sit at a goddamned table without finishing all the fucken bread work." I cock the Spock eyebrow. "I was told to clock out. I came back in to get the last box of bread, but―" "This is such fucken bullshit. All I want to do is go the fuck home, and you never do any work, and―" At this point, Hill comes to my rescue, "Well, since you're a closer, and the restaurant isn't closed, you can't go home for another hour, anyway. Why don't you step off him?" "No no no no no. I want to be able to fucken clock out whenever I feel like it..." "I was told to clock out." I say. "I was cut. My tables had left. And I'm almost on overtime, so they asked me to clock out." "Whatever. Where's the last fucken box of bread, huh? And knives. The knife container isn't full." "That's because I filled it before I cl― You know what? Unfuck you. Unless you just got a phone call that your mother got run over by a bread truck, and the managers won't let you leave to identify her body, you're being fucken ridiculous. This is a fucken restaurant job. It takes five seconds to get a box of bread, and it would already be done, if you hadn't attacked me the second I walked into the kitchen, but now you can do it your fucken self." And I walked out of the kitchen, put on my best customer service smile, and sat back down next to Ben. "I think we should probably go now." "Hey, where's that cute Hungarian bartender?" Ben asks, unaware of my impending sexual harassment indictment. "Chained to the bed." I whisper, while his dad talks to our server. "What?" he asks. I place my index finger to his lips. "Shhhhh. You're only allowed to speak to me in Hungarian." "Right." He says, and pushes my finger away. "What the hell is wrong with you?" "Nothing, I just feel all smirky right now." "Oh, because you have something worth smiling about?" And I do, actually. I'm sitting next to someone I dearly despise in a restaurant where, any second now, an angry little white girl is going to come around the corner screaming obscenities about bread. The satellite station is playing Aaron Neville's version of the Twelve Days of Christmas, and my head is pounding. I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be. Before leaving for New York, Ben and I were eating breakfast at our favorite diner, when he said: “You always order the Eggs Benedict, and you manage to get like three quarters of the way through breakfast without cracking the yokes. That’s damned impressive.”
Later that night, during a poetry event, Zuzu asks “Are you aware of how many times you mention Ben’s name in a sentence.” “Only about once a sentence, thank you. It’s just that I usually run said Ben sentences together.” My grandmother called today to let me know that my grandfather just got out of the hospital, and that my dad, who I haven’t seen since...let’s not speculate on that one...is staying with them for a while. So I’m going to Connecticut. Connecticut, place of my birth and adoption, where I nearly grew up, but for my father being transferred to Cape Cod when I was six. Ben plans on arriving sometime early this morning, possibly giving him enough time to sleep before he goes to work. I leave at fuckall o'clock tomorrow morning, so that my grandmother can cook a meal large enough to cover the two years since we’ve seen each other: potato pancakes, waffles, bacon, and Eggs Benedict. There’s a variety of reasons why I haven’t gone to visit them since I moved back from Arifuckenzona. They’ve been dealing with a sick relative (my not so great great uncle), selling off a house (my great grandparents’), and spending as much time waxing the floors of God’s house as their local church allows. I’ve been busy with work, moving, writing, sodomy, and coming up with excuses why I can’t go visit them. There’s never enough time. But there’s nothing like the possibility of imminent death to inspire family members to take personal time off from work to de-guiltify. Before I go, I make a run to the grocery store to buy jello, soy milk, and rice. Things Ben likes that I don’t. It doesn’t occur to me until I’m back at the house that I’m hungry but I haven’t bought anything for me. I don’t know whether I neglected to buy groceries for me because I knew I was leaving tomorrow and didn’t want to waste money or because I’ve never been good at putting myself before others. You’re more or less than welcome to draw your own conclusions, just draw them with pencil because you may change your mind later. Celeste calls during my walk home to let me know that yesterday, someone broke into the coffeehouse and stole the cash register. In addition to the physical presence of the register, they also got away with all the money inside of it. Approximately forty cents in pennies. Somewhere, there’s a very winded, very pissed off thief. I’m presuming they ran, because it’s hard to look nonchalant when ambling around Boston with a cash register under your arm or trenchcoat. I’m tired now, but not sleepy. I’ve got a million things to write about, but can’t seem to get them to lineup properly in my mind. I’m still hungry, but not motivated enough to go out and get something to eat. Tomorrow is a banquet. I will eat every bite that’s offered, and with any luck, won’t crack until the very end. I have awkward carries. You’re supposed to lift trays above your head, support dishes on one arm, and hold utensils in the other. Whenever I start a new job waiting tables, people think I must be inept. I rest trays on my shoulder, juxtapose dishes so they always look like they’re about to succumb to gravity’s kiss. But they never do. I’ve never broken a plate, or dropped a dish full of food. I’ve lost a couple of mugs, but mostly because they came straight from a hot dishwasher, and then some idiot filled them up with ice and handed them to me, and the bottom fell out. Sometimes, I was even the idiot in question.
Tonight, my second night back at Kookaburra Canyon, several of the rookies asked if I needed help, because they thought I was on the brink of dropping everything. I’d just smile, and walk out into the dining room. The weight of my life is distributed unevenly. I’ve got financial burdens lined up one arm, my failure to deal with my housing situation on the other. An urgent e-mail from my mother’s boyfriend is wrapped a little too tightly around my neck. I’ve got Ben dangling from one of my fingers. Celeste’s suggestion that I’m too focused on Ben is balanced precariously on my head. Surely, something has got to give. As I walk out of the dining room, arms full of lamb and mashed potatoes, my boss (also a Ben) shouts “Sack smack!” and lunges for my testicles. I’ve missed working for a twelve year old. When I walk back into the kitchen, he yells, “Catch!” and throws a full pitcher of water at me, which I somehow catch. When he laughs and turns around, I kick an empty mug rack on wheels at him. It hits him in the shins and nearly knocks him over. He knows I’m waiting for a call about my mother. That I don’t know if I’m overreacting to the boyfriend’s e-mail. So he’s fucking with me to keep me in good spirits, and it’s working. Everyone around me is yelling at each other and complaining to me “What’s the fucken deal? Salads are taking forever tonight. They’ve fucked up every order that’s gone through the kitchen tonight.” Not mine. The actual work part of my night was flawless. I didn’t make as much as I’d have liked, but it was nice out, and there was a Red Sox/Yankees game, so I didn’t expect it to be busy. When the rookie server who’s been there three months tells me I’m not carrying things properly, and I’m taking too much time at the soda machine, and maybe I’m a little rusty at serving, I calmly turn and say, “While you’re back here complaining about how hectic things are, and trying to tell me what I’m doing wrong, I’m back here filling the ice machine, filling the bread oven, getting fresh mugs, and all my tables are happy, and I’m happy, so really, who should be telling who how to do their job?” And at ten, I call Ben and ask him if he’d like me to bring any food home. And then I think home? Ben’s apartment, while it is where I’ve spent most of my time for the past month, isn’t my home. This is followed by Fuck, what am I doing? We’re not dating or sleeping together, yet I’m at his house almost every night, using his computer, keeping him up late talking, and slowly turning his asscat against him. And, let’s not forget, confessing how much I love him and how much it hurts that he doesn’t love me back. As soon as I’m done with work, I grab my bag full of his food, and get on the subway. At his stop, I get off, buy him a pack of cigarettes, and something to drink. It’s 12:30. He is awake long enough for me to get in the door, but then immediately passes out. As I write a lengthy e-mail to my mom’s boyfriend, he sits bolt upright and says “Some day my hair won’t beehive when I lay down.” And then promptly rolls over and passes out again. How could I not love him? I, unrealistically, expect everything in my life will work itself out shortly. I have a date tomorrow night with an emo musician who isn’t Ben. Despite the scheduler forgetting to put me on the schedule at Kookaburra Canyon, I’ve picked up every shift I could possibly work. Zuzu got my five month overdue check for the last school gig I did without the “Cash first, THEN performance” rule that I’ve had to institute, since every college and high school in the country seems to think it’s okay to keep poets waiting years and years for their checks, because hey, we all know poets are all rich beyond peoples’ wildest fantasies. Shit, Billy Collins owns half the state of Tennessee, and Bill Gates keeps calling Sharon Olds to ask her how she manages to handle her finances so well. If she can’t tell him, I will. The trick is to line one arm with dollar coins, and the other with hundred dollar bills folded into origami butterflies. Fold your stocks and bonds into the folds of your shirt. Stuff your assets down the back of your pants, and keep your debts resting on your shoes. It’s a hell of a way to carry yourself through rough times I'm by myself at the coffeehouse, have a line of eight people, and this stank ass balding hippie freak cuts in front of the line and says "Where's the recycling?"
"I don't know. Try over by the trash can, there's probably a box or something." He does this evil, impatient half-laugh. "There is no box. Where is your recycle?" "Sir, I don't know. This is a galleria, I'm sure there's recycling somewhere in here, but I don't know where." He pushes his glasses up over his nose. "You don't know??? Where do you recycle?" "At home." I say. The lady behind him clears her throat. "I'm really busy right now. There's a security guard over there who can point you in the direction of the recycle." "I think you need to talk to your boss and get recycling in here." "My boss owns a chain of coffeehouses, all of which have recycling in them," this is probably a lie, "but this is a galleria storefront, so only the people who run the galleria can install recycling, so why don't you go talk to the security guard, and he can point you to their offices." "But if I talk to you, and you talk to your boss, then we can fix the real problem. Recycling is good, don't you think?" And because Celeste is quitting, and I'm tired, and I'm all itchy from having shaved, I say "Why don't you go back to Burlington Vermont and let me work." And he is stunned. "How did you know I was from Burlington?" Because you smell like cheap pot and week old farts. "I used to live up there, and you look kind of familiar, now if you'll excuse me." This is a lie. But, generally, assholes who want to impress their equally stank, dreadlocked girlfriends by antagonizing coffeehop workers about environmental concerns are all from Burlington, Vermont. Stanky goes away to try and find Canadian Hydro, and I return to the line, where someone is telling me about how soldiers are trained to kill, but no one ever untrains them, and I'm about to ask him why he's telling me this when I realize I'm wearing my "God Bless America" t-shirt, and I don't have time to explain that it's ironic, I just want him to take his machiatto and leave me alone. It's been 2:18 for over a month now. I get up at 2:18. I sleep at 2:18. Life at Zuzu's is consistently 2:18.
The last time it was 2:17 was when Renee Francois, a French student (quel suprise), moved in. Renee has the peculiar habit of launching into showtunes during the midst of conversation: "Hey, Francois, how's the new job?" "It's good for my brain...I could while away the hours, consulting with the flowers..." It's cute until you're trapped in a car with him for ten minutes. "Is he gay?" Zuzu asked me. "Either that or he's French." It was still 2:18 when he moved out last weekend. One of his friends, a very Elvis Costelloish nerd, came over to help him move. "Stop oogling my tenant's friends." Zuzu said. "I'm not oogling." I said. "I've never oogled anyone in my life. I'm ogling. Check out his ass." And for once, I wasn't calling attention to my favorite boy part because of its shape, but because of what was in the back left pocket: a red bandanna. "What does it mean?" She asked. I made a fist with my right hand, a small hole with my left, and then punched the right hand through it. We tried not to giggle everytime Costello walked down the stairs. "It could just be something else." Zuzu said, but the next time I saw Francois walk down the stairs I noticed the red bandanna in his right pocket. I had to go out back and laugh into my fist until the look of my fist grossed me out, which caused me to laugh even harder, then I was thinking the word "harder", and I was a snort away from hiccuping. Shortly after Francois moved out, Zuzu adopted Pup Ratzinger, an impossibly cute (not miniature, thank God) dachshund who only barks when barked at, and has a nearly insurmountable fear of stairs. For some reason he reminds me of Dmitri. Last night, while Zuzu was training Ratzinger, Landlord, Doctor O, Straight Roommate and I went out to a French Bistro to wish bon voyage to Straight Roommate, who will soon be replaced by an Evangelical Christian. I couldn't imagine why Landlord was inviting an Evangelical to live with us until I saw a picture of our future roommate. He's a Chinese guy in his early twenties. Landlord would invite Reverend Phelps to live with us if he looked remotely Asian. "Don't prejudge him because he's Christian." Landlord said when I rolled my eyes at his the picture he's brought with him. "It's not that." I said. "Look at the banner he's standing under: Crusade for College Christianity? Crusade? No one in their right mind would combine the word Christian and Crusade these days unless they were trying to evoke negativity or violence. Why not just call it 'Kill a Campus Muslim for Jesus'?" We argued semantics for a few minutes until the hot, obviously straight, Asian waiter took our order. I don't like American French Food. Pate disgusts me, and if I'm paying twenty dollars for an appetizer, it better suck my cock before I eat it. Dr. O and I split an order of escargot in garlic butter that was amazing. Then, I had some lobster bisque. For $18 I got two tiny pieces of lobster in about an ounce of bisque. Next time, I pick the restaurant. This whole week has been a series of papercuts with elaborate bandaids. No working computer means I spend more time Chez Zuzu, overindulging on homemade food and watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force with her son, Lot. Put some ice on it. Because yet another coworker was late, and I spilled coffee on myself, I had to skip a night out with a cute non-poetry-slam bisexual and his friends. Instead, I spent hours on the phone talking with cute friends in Iceland and California. Kiss it and make it better. I still haven't made it to the post office, and I have a ton of shit to send, so I go home and eat a half dozen macaroons I bought at the French restaurant. Bathe me in Bactine. Fuck papercuts, all of my problems are two tiny pieces of lobster in an ounce of bisque. People would kill for my problems. Except Tuesday night. Tuesday night was a six pound order of escargot sauteed in battery acid. Tuesday night was Reverand Phelps with automatic weapons. Instead of a papercut, Tuesday night was a guillotine. For the eleventh time in one day, I'd identified someone as the cutest person in the world. I watched him watch me watch him for ten minutes before he came to the counter to order some "Mode?" No one has called me Mode since I was a camp counselor over ten years ago. "Grant?" I can't believe I was checking out one of my former kids, why he must only be...25...ok, I can believe it. I just forget that the "kids" I counseled were only three years younger than me. The chasm between 14 and 17 seems immense, but 25 and 28? Who cares? I walked around the counter and hugged him. An act that would shock most of my friends who seem to think I wrap myself in barbed wire to keep people from touching me. "How've you been?" "Better." He said. "I've been much better than today. My mom's here." He waved in the general direction of the hospital. "Breast cancer." "I'm so sorry." I said. "Oh, it's no big deal. It's just that this is the first time I've been back to Mass since the Bernard thing." "Bernard thing?" I asked. He gave me the Velociraptor Look. "You don't know? Oh my God, it must have been after you left. Do you want to go out for a drink after work? I'm buying." I don't remember the last time I said no to that question. For the next hour, I flashed through disjointed memories about my days as a camp counselor at Camp Davis. Nothing emotional, just a series of snapshots of people I'd forgotten. Bernard. Bernard was my nemesis. When I was an eleven year old camper, Bernard was a twenty year old counselor. He taught archery. All the cool boys got special permission to spend time with Bernard at the range, while the rest of us suffered through gymnastics or horseback. I was not cool, so I hated Bernard. The first year I was a counselor, Bernard was unemployed due to his mistakenly thinking he was more valuable to the camp then he was, so I got to work on the archery range with his assistant. Sure, the cool boys spent a lot of time hanging out with me, but so did the uncoordinated girls, the boys with lisps, and even the girls who smelled like their fathers' insecurities. When Bernard returned the next year, I was banished from archery, forced to teach swimming to the kids not cool enough for bows and arrows. At after work parties, Bernard shunned me, and spread the rumor that I was a fag. I wanted to shatter his smile into arrowheads. Oddly enough, it was Bernard who offered the peace pipe. I was dragging a cooler down to a beach with a group of Irish friends when Bernard drove by in his black Jeep and blew the horn at me. "Hey Mode, I'm having a party at my house tonight. If you and your friends want to stop by, that'd be cool. Just bring some beer." So a sixpack of Zima and a sunburn later, my friends and I were sitting on Bernard's porch, listening to the Black Crowes and mingling with some of my other coworkers. The night was fireworks with no calendric meaning. I stumbled into the kitchen for another Zima when Bernard grabbed me by the hair and said "Take your faggy ass friends and get the fuck out of my house." The people around us supplied the "What the fuck?" for me. "You come into my house, trash my living room, drink my beer, and..." "What are you talking about?" his girlfriend of the week asked. "The living room is fine, and he brought the beer, remember?" I ran out of the house before he could respond. I stopped on the porch and looked at my friends. "We have to leave. Now." From that day forward, we spoke in scowls and glares. Then I grew up, took a real job and forgot all about him. "He molested us." Grant said after our third shots of tequila. "Fuck." Was the only thing to say. "Didn't you ever wonder why it was only the cute boys? Why he called everyone he hated 'fag'?" I hadn't. Then again, I'd been a naive 18 year old when I'd left. "He made me hate myself for years. Then I found out he'd started messing around with my little brother and..." He took another shot. "It had to stop." My tongue was granite, my eyes seized. "There were so many of us...Jared ended up in jail for some hate crime thing. Brad still won't talk about it with anyone. And Ryan ended up killing himself." No. No. Must not break shot glass in fist. Must not shake Grant until he sucks his story out of my brain to some place safer. Must not drive back east, find whatever cell Bernard is currently occupying and rip his balls out via his ear canal. "Fucked up, huh?" I heard nothing else until goodbye. A brief hug. I gave him my phone number and told him to call me if he needed to blow off steam. I've spent enough time in hospitals this past year staring at white walls to know the loneliness of fluorescent lights. "Sure." He said. "I'll probably come down and get coffee from you tomorrow. Mom might come with me. She'd shit if she knew you were here. You were one of her favorite counselors." "That'd be great." I said. I didn't see either of them on Wednesday. Thursday was my day off. Yesterday I took long breaks, and spent most of my non-break time reorganizing shelves. I'm staying at Zuzu's to avoid the temptation to answer the phone at my house. When I close my eyes I see a slideshow of kids with question mark eyes and closed mouths. I wish I'd been smart enough or strong enough to help them back then. Today, I'm thankful I'm out of earshot. Where is my "Future Fry Cook"? It's 10:30 in the morning, and I have no one but Augusten Burroughs and a creepy looking woman with a banana peel sticking out of her shoe for company. I have Audioslave's "I Am The Highway" on repeat in my discman. I am about halfway through rereading Running With Scissors, and I'm getting really into it when the bus begins to lurch. My eyes shake. A piece of the hot dog omelet I had for brunch makes a mad dash for the outside world, but after a frightening two seconds seeing the light of day through my trachea, it returns to my stomach. For only the second time in my life, I'm motion sick, and have to put the book down.
The first time I was motion sick, I was sailing from Jacksonville, Florida to Portland, Maine with my dingleberry grandfather and his douchebag son (my uncle, not my Dad). I had a pleasant/smooth sail all the way up to my home on the Cape, but while we were docked in the Cape Cod Canal, I made the unfortunate decision to eat a large bowl of lobster bisque before we set sail in the midst of a really bad storm. That happened when I was twelve. In the intervening sixteen years, I haven't been anywhere close to motion sickness. Before the boating trip, I was only vaguely aware of what motion sickness was. Kevin, the friend who my parents had basically adopted, was motionsick pretty much constantly. Even a brisk walk made him dizzy. When we were thirteen, my parents took us white water rafting in Maine, and during the car trip up there, we had to stop four times to let Kevin puke. And we were bringing him white water rafting. The lurching bus brings me my first thought of Kevin in over a year. I'm thinking of writing down a few memories of him when the bus lurches again. No writing for Safey. I am so focused on not being sick that I miss my bus stop, causing me to spend three minutes longer on the bus, as it lurches through a stoplight. I hate lurching. If Ted Cassidy were still alive, I would cockslap him in the eye. When I finally make it off the bus, I am an octopus on rollerblades, a one legged turtle surfing on an armadillo's back. Luckily, I work near a hospital, so if I do fall and get a concussion, a hot doctor is only a few steps away. I do not fall and get a concussion. Still, my head hurts. All the customers are either whispering or screaming. One manages to do both simultaneously. I am trying to figure out what the Lithuanian woman who speaks no English would like in her coffee, when the phone rings. "Safey? It's Helga. I'm going to be a little late for work. My son is having a baby." There are three things wrong with Helga's statement; "My son is having a baby." One: boys do not have babies. Two: Helga does not have a son. Three: Helga is seventeen, so while it is possible that she could have hidden the fact that she had a son from me, the odds that her son is old enough to reproduce are fairly nil. "What?" "My" *cell phone static* "is having a baby." "Whatever. How late are you going to be?" "Maybe ten minutes." Helga never shows up to close the store. This is the third week in a row I've had to close for someone because another employee just didn't show up. My head hurts. I need to sit down. My son is having a baby, and it is motionsick. If I sit down, I'll fall asleep, so I run to CVS to pick up some Coke. I plan on filling the Coke with our cherry syrup, because the CVS doesn't sell Cherry Coke, but I accidentally add Boysenberry syrup to my Coke. It's not as awful as it sounds. But it's close. The phone rings. I expect it to be Clarissa, as she hasn't called in nearly a day. A new record. It's not Clarissa. "Thank you for calling the MBTA." the phone says. I have not called anyone. The recording has called me. I hang up the phone because I need to sit down, and I don't think I can handle sitting down and talking on the phone at the same time. I have to clean the espresso machine soon, but my son is ringing and his Boysenberry is sick. I wanted to go to the Audioslave show tonight, but Boysenberry didn't show up to cover my shift, and CVS is motionsick. I didn't have tickets anyway. I've been listening to the radio all week to try and win. The last time the WBCN Ticket Load is announced on the radio, I call the station. Instead of Audioslave tickets, they are offering tickets to see Papa Roach. No, thank you. The DJ announces that he has taken the last pair of Audioslave tickets for himself, but to make up for it, he's going to play a half hour of Audioslave music. I decide to crank him. I call up and ask if they still have Nirvana tickets available. He laughs, then hangs up on me. The espresso machine is still giving me its dirty look. Cleaning it will require getting up and moving. Instead, I call my house to check my messages. I don't have any. My voicemail is motionsick. My Boysenberry son is ringing the espresso machine. The MBTA wants tickets to Nirvana. "Are you okay?" An unfamiliar woman on the other side of the counter asks. I lie. "Yes." "What time do you close?" She asks. "Between seven and eight." "Yesterday I came at 7:15 and there was nobody here." She says. "Yes." I say, pulling myself up, using the mini-fridge for leverage. "If it's slow, we close around sevenish. If we're busy it's closer to eight." "But yesterday, at 7:15..." My son is a minifridge with tickets to Nirvana. I grab some Boysenberry for leverage. "I'm sorry." I say. "Can I get you something to drink? Maybe a cookie?" She shakes her head and walks away. I grab a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie for myself, and begin to clean. Once the cookie has successfully voyaged into my stomach, I grab a lemonade from the minifridge, I add four spoons of sugar (it helps the medicine go down), and drink and clean and drink and clean and it's 8:30 and I'm beyond late for getting home for dinner. I grab a slice of pizza on the way to the T. The T lurches. The pizza is made of aluminum and velcro. I need to get off the T. Copley. Sweet sweet Copley station is next. I get off, and wander around Newbury Street. Last time I was on Newbury, Dmitri and I were in the Hello Kitty Store buying lollipops for one of his professors. And for us. Each of us took a Hello Kitty Pop home. I still have mine. When I get home, I'll suck it away until I can suck no more. Goodbye Kitty, you make me motionsick. I grab Dmitri for leverage, but he hasn't been here in nearly a month. Fuck you Boysenberry Street, fucking with my memory. It's not long before I'm in Newbury Comics, wandering around the used CD aisles. Before I moved to Pieceofshitdeserttown, I was a CD collector. I wanted to own every piece of music I loved. I had over 1,000 CDs, and I listened to as many of them as I could, as often as I could. Since I moved back from Pieceofshitdeserttown, I've bought one CD: Modest Mouse's Good News For people Who Love Bad News. Last year, I lent it to Celeste. I haven't seen it since. I'd be bitter, but a year and a half ago, she lent me Kingdom Hearts. She hasn't seen it since. Tonight I need music. I rebuy the Modest Mouse CD, as well as the best of Stone Temple Pilots, and the Velvet Revolver CD. A total of $20. Not too shabby. I count the rest of my money: 1.80. .90 for the bus ride home tonight, .90 for the bus ride to work tomorrow morning. At the bus stop is a woman who smells like the MBTA and Nirvana. I wait behind her for ten minutes, while two fags in hot hats talk about something I can't begin to comprehend. The way they wave their hands make me motionsick. When the bus arrives, I get a transfer, and shut my eyes. I wake up in Central Square, my head is a minifridge filled with Boysenberry sailboats. I want leverage. The wind cockslaps my face. I shake my head and look at the bus schedule. I have 45 minutes before my connection shows up. I open Running with Scissors and begin reading where I left off in the morning. I feel my head clearing. All of my instability is pouring out of my eyes and into the book about Augusten Burroughs' childhood. I didn't have a relationship with a pedophile until I was 19. My parents never left me with their crazy psychiatrist for more than an hour at a time. I'm the one in my family who writes crappy poetry, not my mother. My world comes into focus. Nothing is spinning anymore except the pinwheels that someone has attached to the back of a woman's wheelchair. I am content, and ready for anything. Modest Mouse is singing "The Good Times are Killing Me." A man motions for me to take off my headphones. "Do you know what time our bus comes?" He asks. Our bus? "9:45." I say. "Good. Good." He says, inferring how much he's going to enjoy our special waiting time. "Mind if we talk?" I look closer at him, trying to see if he's a police officer, a family member, someone I've wronged, a hallucination brought on by too much Boysenberry Coke and motionsickness. There are tears in his eyes. "I just need to talk to you about something." He says. That's when I realize, I'm sitting at a bus stop in the middle of Cambridge, and about to have a conversation with God. Every morning, on my way to the hospital, I find the hottest guy on the bus and try to picture how Interesting our life will be when he realizes that I'm his soul mate. Usually, there's a body part to fixate on: eyes, hair, the back of their head.
Today's obsession was all eyes and fauxhawk until he folded his copy of The Metro, revealing a bright-green (eye accentuating) t-shirt that read "Future Fry Cook". This suits him probably more than he'd like to admit. But is this his long-term career path or do his shirts and jobs change by the season? If this sort of honesty through t-shirt slogan catches on, I can finally land myself a blue shirted "Future Doctor" or better yet, a black shirted "Living Off Multi-Billion Dollar Inheritance". I see myself flipping through my closet, filled with "Recovering Bartender", "Former Loss Prevention Agent", "Jester-Suited Fudge Maker Eventually Embarrassed Into Finding Real Job". I would keep the pretentious "Occasionally Makes Money Off Writing" in the back, with the stonewashed denim suit and the Kurt Cobain flannel. Future Fry Cook clears his throat when he notices that I'm staring at him. I blink my eyes twice and redirect my imagination out the window. At work, I tell Celeste a revised version of my fantasy: "An entire closet of patchwork t-shirts reading "Odd Jobber". "What about 'Marginally Employed Barrista Approaching Thirty'? Or 'Whore With Crippling Emotional Distance'?" "Laugh It Up 'Flakey Artist Who Pours Coffee Near Hospital'." This will never catch on. I'd rather wear a shirt that had pictures of all the ugly guys I've slept with. At least then I'll be able to point out that it's all stuff from my past, not my future. No, really, someday I will be a famous novelist. I'm not a "Future Waiter", I'm a "Former Waiter". I'm in the middle of coming up with a color scheme for my line of "Future Job Wear" when a guy with the most beautiful eyes in the world approaches the counter. He is the fourth person with "the most beautiful eyes in the world" that I've seen today. I'm convinced that he's about to tell me how hot I look in the black hat I've been wearing to hide the fact that I didn't have time to wash my hair this morning, but what he actually says is "I'd like a hot black Colombian with lots of head." Me, too. Oh, wait, he means the coffee. I've really got to find a new job. This morning at work, one of my coworkers brought me a gift: Mexican candy. How sweet, I thought. How fucken wrong I was.
Has anyone on this list ever had Mexican candy before? I've had Australian candy, Austrian candy, Brazilian candy, British candy, Canadian candy, Chinese candy, French candy, German candy, Italian candy, Nigerian candy, Swazi candy, Swiss candy, and Taiwanese candy. Some I liked (Swiss chocolate...mmmmm), some I wasn't particularly fond of (toffee is...ehhh), but all was easily identifiable as candy. The four objects that were presented to me as Mexican candy was a textural and flavorful affront to God. I don't know what the hard chunk of rock in the center of my "candy" was, but it was covered in a squishy layer of CHILE POWDER. Let me repeat, the "candy" that I was given was covered, not in sweet sugar or whatever it is that makes sour worms sour, but CHILE FUCKEN POWDER. It would be rude of me to spit out the candy I was given as a gift, however, as the gift giver was quick to point out, my eyes were watering. I was also on the brink of puking. Seriously, I haven't gagged that hard since I blew the hippie with the nine incher and the gallon of patchouli he used in lieu of showering. "Why does everyone gag on my candy?" She asked. "Is good, no?" No. Is not good. Is very very bad. And the mango lollipop that she gave me should have been good. I love mango. Candied mango is one of my favorite snacks in the world, but candied mango is covered in sugar, while this...lollipop?...was covered in...yeup, Chili fucken powder. The flavor was so intensely awful that I started to hallucinate. I envisioned a troop of hot Mexican men that I'd wronged handcuffing me, and forcing me to give cunnilingus to a stank woman with a chili powder covered vagina. It took a whole gallon of Cherry Coke, and a few hours of intense therapy to get the flavor out of my mouth. |
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