Originally posted Saturday, October 27, 2007
Just got home from slinging hash and for once, I was cut early enough to stay and have drink at the bar. But first, I went to the office and asked for several pieces of paper. Because it was a Friday night, I had left my notebook at home assuming I'd be there until the end. But Lo! I had some time -- I needed the paper badly.
I stayed away from the hops and ordered red wine. I picked out a place sufficiently away from the rest of "the team" yet not so far away, that I appeared anti-social. I sat down, took a hefty gulp of wine and started scribbling away. I looked up, and saw a couple of the hostesses smiling and giggling my direction.
"What? I asked.
"Nothing, Patti," one of the girls said. "We've decided that you are adorable."
Adorable? I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but I smiled back at them all the same.
"What are you writing?" the other girl asked.
It was too hard to explain, so I just told her an outline. I knew that would be dull enough that she wouldn't probe further.
97% of what I write is crap (like this post) but it's my survival at stake. I really should invest in a laptop. Once, many years ago a black homeless man came up to me while I scribbled at a coffee shop. He said: "Tell him: 'I'm leaving you.' Tell him: 'I don't love you and I'm leaving you.'" It was kind of funny and scary too, because I was in fact writing just that. Then the man showed me a round, dime-sized scar in the middle of his forehead and said, "I was shot in Vietnam." He was impressive.
In grade school, I wrote little cryptic notes to God. I coded the notes, using only the first two letters of each word, just in case I ever lost one, then I would fold the paper this very special way, and put my prayer in my pocket. And as it happened, I did lose one of the notes. I panicked, went from classroom to classroom searching for it. But someone found it before I did. There it lay, in the middle of my seventh grade math room, assaulted and opened for all to see. I picked it up and looked at it. Suddenly my code seemed blatantly, embarrassingly transparent: "De Go and Je, Pl he me…"
So here I was at the bar, drinking my wine and trying to seem comfortable, when Matt, a waiter there who loves to taunt me about my age, asked what I was doing.
"Why do you let things get to you?" he said.
I told him it's a bad habit and that I tend to look at the dark side of stuff. "Baby always looks at the bright side," I said.
("Baby" is Jon's nickname there. They loved him. Even now, some of his previous "employees" act like him, talk like him, retell his jokes, remembering him for fun – and then they look over at me and say, "Sorry.")
"Well then, Baby better get home quick. You need some balance," Matt said.
"Hey, thanks, asshole," I said.
"No, problem," he said, walking away, his deed done for the night.
As if I needed him to tell me that.
Currently listening : Yes, Virginia... By The Dresden Dolls Release date: 18 April, 2006 9:41 AM - 1 Comments
