Honest Conversation Is Overrated
Actual Human Interactions Witnessed Or Overheard
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
While we are at JFK, most of the restaurants were closed but we were hungry. Eventually, we found an overpriced fast food place but on the way there....
Comrade: Should we just grab something to eat at Dunkin Donuts. Me: Despite our cultural heritage, you know I won't eat there. They're a donut place that can't even make good donuts. Comrade: Are we desperate enough, though? Me: I once saw a seagull spit out a Dunkin Donut and fly away.
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Yesterday, on my way home from work, I had to take a Lyft, and the driver was listening to a radio station that was playing "Bedtime Radio".
M'dudes, it was 7pm. What young children needed their parents to play Alicia Keys's "New York", four thousand Billy Joel songs, Toto's "Africa", and Cutting Crew's "I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight" at 7pm on a Monday night? "Clam" "strips" at Quincy Market.
Someone showed a picture of clams to a fryer full of breading. It ran screaming away. Harvard Student #1: Ooh. Duck breast with orange risotto. That sounds good I'll have that.
Harvard Student #2: You can't eat duck, you're a pescatarian. HS1: So? Duck is a fish? Harvard Student #3: What? HS1: A duck is a fish. HS3: What are you talking about? A duck is a bird. HS1: But...it goes in the water. HS3: It's A BIRD. Oh my god. It flies. HS1: There are flying fish. HS2: How is this still happening? HS1: There are. HS3: Ducks are BIRDS not fish. I don't even ... How do you look at a duck and a fish and think they're the same species? HS1: They hang out in water, though. They're fish. They swim. HS3: My DOG swims, is MY DOG a fish? HS1: I don't know. IS IT? (At this point the server, Comrade, has to excuse themself to keep from belligerently laughing at them. By the time they return, things have calmed down, and HS1 orders the salmon.) HS1 will grow up to be either a US Senator or a Republican Supreme Court nominee. Last night, I had a dream where I was a doctor, and had to explain various parts of the anatomy to a patient's concerned relative. Alas, the patient's relative only spoke French. So I explained to her that her relative needed to have surgery on their "entre les égouts".
I woke up translating the phrase in my head, and I asked the darkness "What part of the body is 'between the sewers'?" But I had a pretty good idea. "I'd rather give my money to you instead of Sears, or whoever owns Amazon now." --Guy who crawled out of a cave for the first time since 1982 and came directly to our store
Sears? I decided, instead of holiday movies, I'd just put Miyazaki films on in the store.
HBOMax: Because you just finished watching "Howl's Moving Castle", would you like to watch "Watership Down"? Of course not. The hell is wrong with you? Happy Holidays, kids ENJOY THESE DEAD RABBITS. Every three years, bartenders have to take a certification course. It's $40 to watch horribly acted videos, followed by quizzes that are poorly worded, and frankly insulting to be asked. Then you take an exam where they, thankfully, pretend the poorly worded scenarios never happened and focus on really dumb, insignificant shit that no one who has tended bar for more than a week doesn't know.
My favorite example, they say that, due to average size and body fat ratios, women tend to get intoxicated faster than men. Fine. Then they ask, "Which one of these people will become intoxicated more quickly?" and show a woman in a dress looking wasted, and a big, burly guy with a beard who seems stone cold sober. And, somehow the answer isn't "Gender is a lie. Neither of these people are cisgender. You're going to need more context clues to determine who You Think will become intoxicated 'more quickly'." They also had three paragraphs explaining why drugs increase the rate of intoxication when drinking. I assumed the next page would have two pictures: one would be a reasonable person politely sitting down and asking for a drink, the other would have a cocaine mustache, wild eyes, and a joint behind her ear, asking for some moonshine. Instead, one was a person saying "I don't need to take my allergy medicine right now." and the other was a woman with a pill bottle, reaching across the table saying "Emily, it's time to take your Allegra and get schwasted you irresponsible bitch!" (That's a slight paraphrase.) Also, the photos of the actors playing servers are hilarious. This "server" needs to be fired. Out of a cannon. Into a cement wall. Covered in metal spikes. Which have been doused in kerosene and set on fire. Never make that face at a customer, even if she is face down in a plate of cheese fries, a cigarette smushed in the ranch dressing, demanding (through her cheese-fried face) to get her "another apple fucken tini". At around close tonight, we had a standard style frustration: a kid who wanted to sell stuff but didn't know what he wanted to sell or what he wanted to buy, but was definitely going to be in the store ten or fifteen minutes after we'd closed. That's fine. It's a kid. Kids are allowed to not fully grasp social contracts.
But as he was nearing what I imagined was the end of his transaction, I flipped the sign to closed, and went outside to get the sandwich board. As I did, a woman in her forties came in, made eye contact with the kid, and then stayed in the hallway for a bit. His mom, I thought. So I didn't tell her we were closed, or shoo her away. It actually only occured to me now that I don't think she was masked, but the rest of our interaction was so Harvard Square that I didn't even process it. ****TENSE CHANGE BECAUSE IT GOT TENSE**** As the completely unrelated child walks out, and my coworker moves to the back room, she starts jumping up and down and shouting "YES!!!! YES!!!! OH MY GOD!!!! OH MY GOD!!!! WOOOOOO!" "You're a fan of Berserk?" I ask, as that is the book she is holding on to and jumping up and down with. "I usually don't come in here because .... because it would be so bad, but tonight is a treat. It's really a treat." She hugs the book to her chest. "That's great! Volume one hasn't been available to us for a while, but I ordered some last week, and we should have them in a few days. Did you want me to set one aside for you when it comes in?" "I would normally never buy myself something like this." Uh-oh. That doesn't answer my question. "But I DESERVE a treat. I got fired today." "Oh, I'm so sorry." "No. No, it's GOOD. They never gave me forty hours and there was pffffffffffffffffft nothing to do. Nothing. I'm going to treat myself tonight." "Ok." "I'm sorry. I'm a little" she mimes drinking, which was fairly apparent. "you know. Glug glug. Shhhhhh." Oh dear. She learned how to be drunk from lazy sitcom writers. "OH!!!!!!" she picks up another book, and just sort of leaves Berserk on the table. "Grrrrl Scouts! Grrrl Scouts!!!! My daughter was in the Grrrl Scouts." Ok. "She would love this. She's bi. She doesn't know it yet, but she's totally bi. I should get this for her. Not that she would read it. She thinks ... she thinks she's ... she doesn't like me ... she thinks we're SO DIFFERENT but I've seen her grades, we are the same THE SAME, you know? Do you have kids?" "I do not." "They just don't know how much they are their parents. But they're so great. Amazing. You should have some. GRRRRL SCOUTS. WOW! Maybe I'll get this for her. Oh, I wish she'd talk to me. WOW, I am talking too much, aren't I? Shhhhhh. Sorry." She is basically a monologue assignment from an acting class in the 1990s. Trust me. "I have two kids. HAD. Had two kids." Oh no. "My daughter. She's the one who's alive." OH NO. "She doesn't talk to me. She went to go live with his father. You know what HE'S LIKE." I do not. "My best friend in high school, the one I SHOULD have married. He just got divorced, and his wife looks like Kim Kardashian, and my ex-husband looks like Pete Davidson, so they should just FUCK ALREADY, right? So my daughter, WHO'S FUCKEN ALIVE, she won't talk to me, but her brother, who died." She points to the ceiling, and hugs the air. "He always speaks to me. You know? He's always the one who's been there." Fuck me. "He said I should just be happy, but when is it my turn, YOU KNOW? When will my amazing person show up? I'M RIGHT HERE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!" I begin texting my coworker about getting ready to leave. "OH, Jamie Foxx and Jared Leto are absolutely 180 from each other, you know?" I don't know how this subject comes up. We have no Jamie Foxx or Jared Leto merchandise anywhere in the store. "They're so different, but I would fuck either one of them. Just, like, show up in my driveway, and I'm yours, YOU KNOW? Today's Wednesday. Jared LOVES Wednesdays, so why doesn't he just come to my driveway and get some, right? I deserve amazing things." "Sure. We all deserve amazing things." "HIGH-FIVE" she mimes high-fiving through the Covid Shield that seperates us. I'm grateful that she's content with the air-high-five. "WE DO DESERVE AMAZING THINGS. WE ARE AH-FUCKEN-MAZING my dude! LET'S GO JARED LETO!!!!!!" I text my coworker that I'm about to politely nudge this person out of the store. Perhaps with a taser. When he texts "Here, I'll set you up." And he walks out of the backroom and asks "Are we closed yet?" "Oooops." says the drunk lady. "Time to close the office. The office is CLOSED. I'll just ... this place is great. I'm going to come back here. Definitely." And then she lifts the doorstop, checks the lock, and says "It's all locked up. Nobody can get in now. Goodnight." which was ... unexpected. And my coworker and I shake our heads. I ask if he'd heard our conversation but he says he just heard her Enthusiasm, but not the words. We close up the store, and I'm telling him the beginning of the story when we reach the gas station to fill up the car for the ride home. This is where I discover It's Full Moon O'Clock today. See, there are two nineteen year old guys who work at the gas station. They're nice, they like my coworker, and they hate their jobs, so I relate. Also, they each get stalked by this creepy probably somewhere on the queer spectrum guy in his fifties or sixties who just stands ten feet away from the register and bothers them for hours on end. The fact that their manager hasn't fixed this lets me know they're exactly the kind of unqualified jackass that gets promoted to middle management at a gas station. The guy should be asked to leave, and it's not the nineteen year olds' jobs to figure out how. So I walk into the gas station's convenience store just as the 19 year old says "and here comes his sidekick." "Sidekick?" I ask. "I'm the fucken protagonist." and walk to the coolers. Creepy Dude waves at me. "I hear you work at the Paper Insane Asylum." "Today, certainly." "I must have walked by it a billionty times but I don't recall seeing it. Where, precisely is this place I keep hearing about." I point in the general direction of the store. "Over there. By the coffee shop." "I don't drink coffee." He says, proudly. "Me, neither." I shrug. "What does one sell at a paper insane asylum." What a hoot, he is. "Comic books." "Oh. I'm not a comic booker. I grew up in the sixties when they were good." Says the guy who doesn't read them. "But just the Batman. I didn't have time to read the other stuff." "Yea. Batman's great." I grab a soda from the cooler. "This one here." he thumbs at the nineteen year old "He reads the anime books." "Manga" the nineteen year old corrects him. "I watch the anime. I read the manga." "I don't know what those words mean." He smiles. Because he does. "I just know when I was his age --" "WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CLICKY THINGS?" My coworker comes in, drowning out Creepy Guy. Very purposefully drowning out Creepy Guy. "There aren't any more clicky things on the gas nozzles." "Oh, yea. We took them off. People used to forget they were on, and drive off with them. I managed to work here almost a year before it happened. I saw it happen in slow motion. So my manager came in and took them all off. "BUT I LOVED THOSE." my coworker says. "I might just deign to go this paper insane asylum, does it sell anything else aside from comical books." Cuh-reep. "Yea, we sell stuffed animals, action figures, pins, button, stickers, pop culture stuff, basically." "Well, I don't really DO pop culture." Cuh-reep. "But I should come in if I can ever find the time. I just thought it was a stationary store." "It doesn't move much." I say, paying for my belongings. "How was it down at your end of the street?" the nineteen year old asks. "Crazy!" says my coworker. "Adam just had ... I don't even know ...." he manages to not make eye contact with Creepy Guy as he says "It's just All Crazy Everywhere tonight, I guess. Have a good night!" And we walk out of the store. I mention Creepy Guy, and my coworker says "Yea, he's there bothering them all the time. I just pretend he's not there. He'll ask me stuff, or try and say something funny, and I just keep talking to the nineteen year old like that guy doesn't even exist." And we get in the car, and drive back to Boston, where I've been sitting in my house with the lights off, pretending that everybody doesn't exist. I'm walking on a sidewalk, raiding Pokemon gyms. A bus stops directly in front of me. A slender old man gets out, and waves at me. "Hello, sir. My name is Chris, and you are?"
"Joshua." I usually say Alan or Alex as those are reasonably close to my name, and if the person turns out not to be an irritant, I can pretend they misheard me. I knew this person was going to be an irritant. "Hello, Joshua. That's a Biblical name. Today the angels told me" of course "that I would meet a Joshua." "Jeffery." I say. "I think you misheard me." "Oh. Sorry, Jeffery. The angels told me I would meet a man to share a meal with." "Sorry. I don't have my wallet with me." This is very true. I was out for a short walk, so I just took my Florida ID for identification purposes. "Oh, I have money. I just ... do you know where there is a Chili's?" I had just passed one, so I pointed in the direction, in case he really was just a Christian nutter (#notallchristians, #notallnutters). "Spectacular. Will you join me for a meal?" "No, thank you." I said. "I just ate." Which was true. "I see. Did you know that this street is in" blah blah "county, and if you walk across the street you're in" womp womp womp "county?" "I don't want to keep you from your meal. You have a good night, Christopher." He reached out in my direction. "Oh. I'm not in a rush. Could you show me where the --" "Sorry. I'm not from around here. I just saw the one a few minutes ago. If you just walk that way, you can't miss it. Have a great night." "Where are you from?" "South." I said as I walked away. "Well, have a good night. I love you. I mean that. And Jesus loves you, too." "Usually through a hole in a sheet." I said. He then began walking in entirely the wrong way to get to Chili's. So I walked a little bit out of my way before cutting behind a Wal-Mart to return to the house I'm staying at. I didn't see him again. |
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