Waiter Diaries

I clocked out early tonight.

Ash drove me to school this morning.

I was surprised that she offered. Ash has a kind of edgy, almost heartless demeanor. I'm 23 now, and really, she and I have known each other since we were kids, but we've never been close. Ash and I went to the same junior high and we were kind of both in that gloomy clique.

I don't understand why she is at U of H, instead of at some fancy school out of town. If I had to guess, I'd say that Ash is in college because this way, her parents support her. Or maybe it's more complex than that. Maybe they want her to go to college because they can't abide having a daughter that isn't following the rules.

She rummaged through my music while I finished getting ready. My CDs and tapes were relatively well organized. But Ash made a mess while going through them.

She said something like how all the music I had was stuff to listen to while slitting your wrist.

But she found one tape she liked and held it up for me and said, "I'm taking this."

I hadn't ever really gotten into that album. One of those instances where I knew other people admired the band, so I bought the cassette tape, played it once or twice, and didn't love it. The band makes songs with high energy, raging, almost spastic distorted vocals and beats, and lyrics that make almost no sense, just describing violence and destruction.

That stuff doesn't appeal to me right now. Just like two years ago, man, I was all about flamboyant nihilism. And now I try to avoid that. Because at this point, suicide is not just a thing to daydream about. If I point my mind in that direction, I'll likely do it.

I've cut contact with everyone that I used to talk to from that chapter of my life. Moved away too. They said when I went through the treatment program how I needed to disconnect with people from that life.

And sure, from some perspective, I'm a success story. I've been clean and sober for almost two years now. I pay my fees. I'm working. I'm going to school. I'm going to be a productive member of society.

I think that’s part of why I’m so lonely. The misery is back now but I'm not getting high to deal with it. And I don't have any other self-destructive friends that reassure me that I'm not all alone feeling like this.

It's just really sad. I picture other students are laughing and dancing around at some house party while music blasts. At the same time, I'm here, alone, in this dark apartment, sitting on this green carpet floor, and I'm praying not to be so fucking lonely and unhappy.

OK, back to what happened with Ash though.

While we walked out to her car, I said she could have that tape if she wanted. And she replied something like "Yeah, that's what I meant when I said I was taking it."

It was a slow Friday night.

Tonight wasn't very busy at the restaurant.

Wednesdays often aren't busy. It's a nice night to work because I can take care of the tables well.

At one point, I got a four-top of two couples. I went to greet them and I recognized one of the couples. They're regulars. They've been in my section several times.

They usually buy a lot of stuff: several appetizers, at least one bottle of wine. They often try the specials.

I was happy to see them. It's nice to be a part of the experience when people really appreciate it.

I'm not good at guessing ages, but they look like the parents in a TV sitcom about a nice upper middle class family.

The guy doesn't tip extravagantly, but well enough. He likes to chit chat with me some times. I bet he's a vice president at a bank or a partner at a law firm. Some job where he's surrounded by underlings. You can tell he's used to people deferring to him.

The woman has a good sense of humor. But the man doesn't seem to like her jokes. Maybe because they're often at his expense.

I know she loves olives too. The last time they were here, after she ordered something, on a whim, I told the cooks to load it up with olives for her.

At the end of that dinner, she told me how she loved the dish. The gamble paid off. I told her how if she orders it again, she should mention how she wants extra olives.

She looked a little surprised. Then she said, smiling at me, "And if I said there were too many olives..."

I told her I followed my intuition on this one, because I had a hunch. And when I do that, I can't think about what could go wrong.

Then she winked at me and said that would get me far in life. It was a moment. So, yeah, like I said, I was happy to see them.

Back to tonight.

We make the salads at the table in an overly large stainless steel mixing bowl. While I mixed everything and handed out plates, I listened to the guy telling a story. He had gone on a road trip recently and he took his car with a manual transmission for the trip.

I got the feeling that this was just one of his cars.

He drove it through the hill country out west from here. I know the area he was talking about. Old twisty roads snake through mostly desolate abandoned small towns.

You can get through there faster on the interstate, but it's so much more fun to zoom along these back roads.

He said how all his worries left during the trip because he was totally focused on the act of driving: shifting up and down, pressing the gas pedal at the halfway point in a curve, etc.

Every bit of his consciousness was used up in the task of driving way too fast.

I liked the images that played through my mind while I listened.

Toward the end of their meal, I cleared their plates. He was still talking about his drive. He could tell that I was enjoying his story, even if his date was indifferent.

He looked up at me and said, "Marlowe, I bet you drive standard transmission, don't you?"

I smiled, nodded, and then I said how I didn't drive anything right now.

I made it a point to smile when I said "right now" because diners here do not like being reminded of the ridiculous gaps between the haves and the have nots.

So instead, generally, I hint that my relative poverty is just something fun that I'm trying out. Like this is all a special research project. Or maybe like an immersive vacation.

I said that the way he described his car sounded meditative. I asked what model he drove.

He lit up while he said the name. Some brand that I knew absolutely nothing about.

Then he talked about how old the car is now, and how it constantly needs repairs and maintenance, but he can't bear the idea of selling it.

I made a mental note to look up his car the next time I'm in the school library. I could memorize a few obscure facts and then share them subtly with other diners. That kind of inside trivia helps imply how I'm one of them.

"One of them."

I'm clearly NOT one of them. After all, I'm writing this diary entry now late at night in my tiny, run-down apartment building between a guy that drives a cab and a family of five that's here without documentation.

But when the diners think of me like one of them, they tip better.

Sometimes I get so good at stepping into this character, this quiet, reserved waiter with encyclopedic knowledge of fine wine and food, I almost forget it's all a hoax.

Like tonight, I imagined driving some two-seater roadster past beautiful old country homes on a sunny day. It wasn't real, but it felt like it.

But then I got tripped up.

I was cleaning the table, and I was about to talk about our desserts, when I remembered that time in elementary school when a social worker showed up at my house.

My teacher had reported signs of neglect.

I remember how the social worker drove up in a tiny little convertible. I had never seen a car like it before except on TV. I saw it through the window of our house when she parked out front and walked in.

That day turned into a nightmare later, but at first, I was just so excited by this person in this cool-looking car coming to visit.

Her car wasn't anything like the car this guy was talking about, but as a child, I filed her little convertible in the "fancy cars" photo album in my mind.

So, tonight, out of nowhere, I went from from enjoying about a nice daydream to remembering something much worse.

I kept thinking about the beating I got after the social worker left. Pictures and sounds played on a loop, getting more intense every time.

The room was quiet. But I couldn't hear the table. Every time they spoke, it got drowned out by my mother screaming, or my own voice pleading with her to stop hitting me.

I had to ask the table to repeat themselves. I even wrote down their choices. I never do that for small tables.

I kept a calm appearance, but inside, I wanted to run out of the restaurant.

Next I cleaned the table. I focused on the feeling of the crumber scraping on the white tablecloth. I told myself how in a few minutes, I could go stand in the walk-in freezer until I calmed back down.

I was all shook up. But I caught a lucky break.

His date, or his girlfriend, or his wife, it's impossible for me to know about their relationship, and that's not the point anyway, she said to him in a teasing voice, "Darling, this could be your new charity... help troubled youth find inner peace through racing vintage sports cars."

The other two guests burst out laughing.

I'll always give that gorgeous woman more olives.

Penny called last night (part one)

Penny called last night (part two)

I forced myself to read my textbook.

I had to stop thinking about where I was. I was getting too worked up. I started remembering bad memories from school. I started feeling like here I was again stuck in some shitty institution.

I skipped back in my textbook and read a section I already understood. It felt good to run through math formulas in my head that I was already familiar with. Like listening to a favorite song, I guess.

It helped. I stopped thinking about the room that I was in and instead escaped into the printed out charts and graphs.

At one point something funny happened. This guy in a suit went up to the window and complained because it was fifteen minutes past his scheduled appointment. He spoke loudly and said something like, "I have things to do today. It's not my problem that this place is so disorganized."

That might work well trying to shame somebody that wants your business, but here, not so much.

I studied the guy at the window. Like I said, he wore a suit. He had the signs of being well to do. I wondered why he was here. Maybe a drunk driving thing. Maybe some white collar thing like tax fraud.

It's gotta be weird for somebody like that to find themselves suddenly in this world. Nothing in their life experience has prepared them for this. The last thing he oughtta do is antagonize these people though.

They could revoke his probation and send him to prison. Or they could just creatively humiliate him. They could show up at his job, and ask all his coworkers about him. They could make him wear an electronic monitoring bracelet.

Corrections people are petty to the extreme. It's not an exaggeration to say they're people that wished they could have been cops, but couldn't make the cut.

Nope, the smart move is to just avoid conflict, keep your head down, and wait it out.

Doing this seems to be easier somehow for people from modest backgrounds. But people like this stockbroker guy at the window... he really doesn't see that how he has zero power now. All his instincts and habits are working against him.

I thought about walking up to him and trying to warn him, but then I heard somebody call my name. It was finally time for my appointment.

Now that I'm writing this stuff out, I just remembered a story I had about a really sadistic PO.

There was a guy at the treatment center at the same time I was. His name was Evander. One time when we were outside on a smoke break, he told me how his PO wanted him to pay him a little extra in cash, like bribes, and Evander didn't do it.

So then, Evander's PO got the sheriff to raid his house, and I guess they found something he wasn't supposed to have while on parole. I don't know if it was a gun or drugs or something else.

They took Evander back to jail, where he would wait for a judge to decide if he should serve the rest of his sentence in prison.

Here's the twisted part: his PO told the jail that Evander was a suicide risk, and so they put him in this special part of the jail where they literally strapped him to a table, in his underwear, for like five days.

Of course Evander was still shooting up, so he went through withdrawal in there. He talked about how he'd throw up or piss himself and they'd just leave him in it for hours, on his back, staring at the ceiling.

I really liked Evander. I hope he's doing OK. He was thirty-something years old, and he said he'd been shooting dope for most of his life.

He knew it was gonna kill him, and he hated it for how much it controlled his life, but couldn't seem to stay off it.

Now I remember how one time he said he believed god just wants him to be happy, but Evander just kept wallowing in shit.

At the time, that idea about god really bugged me.

I wanted to say something like if god didn't want us to be so self-destructive, he should have taken better care of us.

I kept my mouth shut though. I didn't want to get kicked out of the treatment program. I was terrified of going to prison. Still am. But the probability is lower today than it was then.

For me, using drugs wasn't something I had ever tried to stop doing but couldn't.

Instead, the first time I got really drunk, it felt so amazing. It was the first time I felt any sense of peace in my own skin.

I realized that I'd been miserable and running scared my entire life, but I was getting a tiny peek at feeling good.

Getting blasted was fun. Like throwing glass bottles at a brick wall.

I was born into a fucked environment. Escaping with chemicals was just artificial, synthetic happiness, but goddamn, it was the only time I ever felt so good.

If god didn't want me to seek out drugs to feel better, well, he needed to step up his offer.

I tried religion. I tried prayer and studying the bible all the time as a kid. It never fucking worked.

But getting drunk or getting high? Yes, that really worked. Temporarily at least. No existential self-loathing while puking after too much malt liquor.

Penny called last night (part three)

Back to what happened at the PO office.

Like I said, I was thinking about trying to intervene on behalf of the yuppie guy digging his own grave, when somebody called me.

It wasn't my regular PO.

I followed him to his office. I didn't love my old PO. She was mean. But after all the time of me doing everything right, our appointments were quick. She wasn't an idiot either.

Walking behind this guy, I could tell he had a cheap toupee. It didn't match the color or the texture of the rest of his hair. He was old, like fifties or sixties even.

When I first saw him, I noticed he had a black mustache.

I wondered about how and why he was in this job. Maybe he used to be a cop and got in trouble. That's all I needed -- somebody on a power trip.

We got in his office. I sat next to his desk and held up my folder and stayed quiet.

Inside the folder, I had copies of my recent pay stubs, my grades from school, my receipts from all my court fees, and the paper I take to AA meetings and get signed.

It's all the evidence that shows I've been scared straight. No need to send me to prison. It would be a waste of money. If they let me stay out, I pay them.

The PO took the folder, looked inside for a moment, boredom and revulsion on his face.

He looked at me sidways, eyes half open, and said he wanted me to tell him what I was on probation for.

New POs always ask this. It's fucking degrading.

He has copies of my case file, and if he read it, he'd know everything.

Maybe he hates reading. Or maybe he wants to hear me repeat it so he could can infer stuff about me based on what I say. As in, do I sound remorseful? Am I defiant?

So I ran through my story:

Almost three years ago, in MacArthur, Texas, police arrested me and charged me with attempted distribution of a simulated controlled substance.

I was released on bond. I completed a 30-day drug treatment program, I go to AA meetings weekly, I work, I pay my fees, I'm enrolled in college.

I don't associate with anyone I knew from before my arrest.

Next I watched the PO dig out a binder from a file cabinet with my records. He looked up my crime. He said it's a felony, with a mandatory minimum two year sentence if convicted.

It was my first offense. The judge deferred my case. I'm not guilty and I'm not innocent. Instead, I'm under supervision. I've been under supervision for like two years now. I'll be under supervision for about another two years.

I already know this. I spent a day at the law library reading the ridiculous Texas laws, trying to figure out just how ruined my life was. As in, should I just kill myself?

I still don't have an answer for that. Well, actually, I do. The answer is "I probably should, but not just yet." Hell, I procrastinate everything else in my life, why not this?

Anyhow, the PO with the cheap toupee looked at me after reading my file. He started talking.

"We can revoke your deferment any time we want. You'd go to Huntsville for your sentence. You know anything about Huntsville?"

I heard rumors about Huntsville. But today, I just said, "no sir, I really don't. I'm trying to stay positive."

He went on. "I used to work corrections there. Lot of gang activity."

He leaned in close. "You don't look like the type that does so well in there. Guy like you, you'll be on the HIV wing before long."

I've been through this kind of shit before, when somebody tries to scare you. It fuckin sucks.

I whispered back, tracing the edges of the tile floor with my eyes. "I'm trying to stay focused on positive stuff."

He just stared, way too close to me, for a while. Then sat back and looked at my folder.

He looked at my address. Said that’s the faggot side of town. I remember him looking at me with disgust. He whispered "abomination" under his breath.

I tried to calm down. I stared at the parking lot through his dirty window.

He said he might call my boss and ask if I ever cause issues at work. He said he might come into my restaurant just to check it out.

I said "why, you looking to meet somebody?".

His eyes got real wide. I knew I fucked up. I said I was sorry. It just slipped out. He stood up and leaned over me.

I could already see in my head how I was going back to jail. I stared back at the floor tiles again.

Penny called last night (part four)

After the PO started yelling at me, it felt like I was watching the whole thing from outside.

He was saying something, harshly, but all I could do was just keep tracing the tiles on the floor.

My brain was fizzing out. I felt drained. I felt dizzy too.

It wasn't just that I was scared, like I wanted to run for it. It was a more primitive feeling. Just a sense that my life had ended. There was no point in paying attention any more.

Then I realized what he was saying, what he was actually threatening me with. He wasn't saying he was going to recommend a judge take away my probation.

He was sending me in for a drug test.

That's utterly harmless. I've been clean for two years now. They're not going to find anything.

He said he was going to note in my file how he sent me in for a UA.

At that point I remembered something. During my last appointment here, my real PO, the mean lady, she said she might be going to court soon, so somebody else would be filling in for her.

This idiot was just covering visits. He had about as much power as a substitute teacher on the last day of high school.

I acted contrite. I didn't need to make this guy any angrier at me. I took the sheet of paper and walked over to the place to get tested.

During the walk, I felt like I was in a dream. A minute ago, my immortal soul was disconnecting from this realm. But then it turned out to be a false alarm.

All of this seemed so silly. Why did I have to do all this?

Getting a drug test is another humiliating experience. You gotta wait your turn with the other criminals in another section of the building.

None of that shit is a problem for me. I'm clean. I don't have any drugs in my system.

Sure, it's another big fee I have to pay, which blows away the money earned from about the last week of work, but I'll still be OK.

I sat next to other people waiting. Three of us total. Me, a Mexican guy, and a Black girl. I wondered if they were like me, people that had totally turned their life in a different direction. Or if they were worried that they were fail the test.

I normally would have studied them, looked for clues.

Eventually you get a cup, then go in the restroom.

You pull down your pants and then a cop in surgical gloves borderline molests you, supposedly searching for anything that could be used to cheat the test.

Then you pee while facing a cop, while they watch you intently. fake urine.

It's a shit experience, because the whole time, you're standing there, pants down, just feeling a like fucking low life, while a cop watches you.

I had to spend another hour and a half waiting for that to happen.

During the test, I saw my reflection in the restroom mirror. I looked like a zombie. It matched how I felt.

It was a cold walk and a long wait for the first of two buses to get back home.

Being outside in the weather got me out of that groggy state. It didn't matter why I had to do all this. That's wasted energy. The important thing is that I made it through another visit.

Each one of these gets me closer to the end of this. One day, it will get easier. I've been dealing with this stuff for years now. The system is not going to break me.

While I waited, I repeated to myslf, I'm going to make it out of this.

Eventually I saw the first bus to take back home. It pulled up, the doors opened, I walked up the steps, I dropped my coins into the hopper, and then I looked for a place to sit.

I saw Levi sitting in the back of the bus. Levi, as in Levi, the kid that went to the same church as me when I was younger.

I haven't seen him since high school. That was when I got enough courage to stop pretending that I believed in the bible and all that.

Got enough courage, or maybe the frustration overwhelmed me.

It was after that, after I stopped going to church, I felt like they shunned me. I noticed they would be polite, but not really talk to me.

I had thought that they were going to be friends. After all, we were raised to think of each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

And now they were withdrawing from me.

I didn't hate them for still believing, but I knew I couldn't keep denying that I never felt the feeling they had. I didn't expect them to shun me though. It seemed so contradictory of the faith.

Here's the stuff that led me to losing my faith:

Growing up, at church, people would tell us that in the presence of the holy spirit, we would feel it. They described memories of certain events when they first experienced it.

The adults said it was the most wonderful feeling of belonging and peace and safety.

And I remember one by one all my friends experienced it. I remember once being in a room during a late night prayer service. The lights were off, just candles light, and everyone was singing, and praying, and I remember seeing other kids crying and smiling and singing with their eyes closed.

I felt such intense hatred toward myself in that moment. I was so rotten that Jesus would not enter my heart. That's how I felt at the moment.

I started crying too, but it wasn't the ecstatic happy "everything is beautiful" crying that my friends were having.

It was me feeling like I was trash.

But when I was a little older, I saw it as everyone trying to fit in, and they were all pretending, or maybe even actually experiencing hallucinations brought on by getting so worked up.

It made me sick to remember that younger version of myself, the one that felt he was so defective, and really, it was just that he was too naive to realize it was all a game.

I went from hating myself to feeling disgust and disappointment for all the people that did this. If it tricked me, it tricked other kids too.

I couldn't ignore that feeling. I found myself wanting to insult Christianity any time I could. Point out all the horrible stories in the bible. Or just point out the obvious cruelty and injustice all around this.

When I started getting high soon after that, I remember looking back and realizing that there was a lot in common between those prayer services, and me getting stoned now.

I felt better then. Well, a little better. But it caused a lot of friction between me and my parents too.

So I was shunned by my childhood friends.

I sat down behind the driver, where the seats don't face forward, but instead face the center.

From that spot, I watched Levi.

He sat in the back of the bus, looking out the window.

He looked filthy. Like he hadn't taken a shower or changed his clothes in a week. Old baseball cap, high tops, untied, sweatpants.

I had recognized the kid I knew right away. The kid I knew was a shy kid. I used to play with Levi and his brother almost every day growing up. And we used to go to their house for potluck dinners all the time.

He had some headphones on. I watched him silently singing along with the music.

I was in the middle of a terrible fucking day. I didn't have any slack left.

But here was a kid I grew up with, clearly falling apart.

Why didn't I just sit quietly?

I always felt protective over Levi. He was a few years younger than me.

He's the younger brother of another kid I was friends with.

Levi's family and my family went to the same crazy church. But I lost my faith while he always doubled down.

Even though I don't believe in anything they told us back then, I still felt like Levi is kind of like my brother. I couldn't ignore him. Especially because he looked like he was so obviously struggling.

I asked him where he was going. He said he was just riding the bus.

Levi and I lost touch when I decided I was an atheist. When I decided that religion was just an evil way to control people.

Levi is a few years younger than me.

After a few stops, I walked to a seat near him, across the aisle. I called his name. I had to say "Levi" several times.

He looked right at me, and then I realized he didn't recognize me. I said, "It's Marlowe!" and this is when I knew he was in a bad spot. I could see him struggle to remember me. And then he did.

He told me a lot of stuff.

He said today he was trying to relax, so he buys an all-day bus pass, and rides around town. He said he lives in his house still.

He might go to school soon. He might get a job.

I wondered if he was really high on something. I didn't say anything though. I had a hard time imagining him on drugs. But then I found out. He had been in a psych ward for a while and now he's on a lot of strong antipsychotic drugs, and they have a side effect of making him foggy.

I told him I was sorry he went to the hospital. I said that it must have been rough.

This guy was like a younger brother to me. At that moment, I felt bad for we used to treat him.

Then he said how he went to the hospital because he kept hearing voices tell him to kill himself, and he tried to do it.

I talk sometimes about hearing voices, but for me, I guess the voices aren't audible hallucinations, just my own thoughts expressed in sounds. It doesn't feel like a conscious thing I interact with me.

When I hear voices, it's more like I see a phrase flash on a screen.

But Levi was describing something much worse.

I didn't know what to do or say. I asked him again about where he was staying. I wanted to make sure he wasn't trying to spend the night on the bus.

He'd probably get arrested for trying something like that. Or maybe kicked off the bus at some depot and then he'd been in a part of town he didn't know... I'd hate it if something bad happened to him.

I said I didn't want him to ride the bus and then get stranded somewhere. He said his brother would pick him up.

Once I stopped worrying about his immediate safety, I worried about how he got like this.

He said how he started hearing voices, and at first he thought they were angels and demons. I said, "yeah, like we were taught," and he kept going. He said the angels were loud at first, telling him Levi is a soldier of the lord.

But slowly the angel voices faded and the demon voices were all that was left. They told him he should kill himself.

Penny called (part five)

I was still talking to Levi but my stop was coming up.

I wrote my number on the bottom edge of the receipt from my piss test today. Then I tore it off and gave it to him. I told him to call me and we can stay in touch.

When I walked to the front of the bus, I said to the driver, "Hey there's a guy back there. He looks pretty rough. He's my friend. He's having a bad time but he's a good person and wouldn't hurt a fly. If you can make sure he gets off this bus downtown, I'd appreciate it."

While I waited for the next bus, I felt my eyes and nose running. Part of it was because it was cold, wet, and windy. And part of it was because I kept thinking about what might happen to Levi if he didn't get somewhere safe.

When I got home I went through the pile of mail shoved through the mail slot on the door. Was mostly junk mail for previous tenants. There was a letter from that bank I interviewed at a while ago.

It said they were not going to hire me. They said it in flowery language. That didn't help.

After an hour or so of halfhearted studying, I went out on the front steps of the building.

I needed to get out of my room for a while.

Sometimes other people from the building come out and sit on the steps.

Even if we just talk about unimportant stuff, like I listen to somebody explain to me what happened in a TV show or in a game they watched, it's nice to be around people.

But nobody else was out on the steps.

Across the street, there's a parking lot, and on the other side of that, there's a street with a few restaurants and bars and shops.

I watched cars go in and out of the parking lot. I watched people walk to and from their cars and the street.

I wanted cigarettes. It would make it more bearable while I waited outside for somebody else to show up.

But I won't let myself buy a pack.

It feels OK to buy one or two off Jake or Angie at the end of a really busy shift, and smoke then during my walk home.

But it's another thing to buy a pack every day. And that's what will happen if I start again. It becomes something that preoccupies me. It becomes something else I don't like about myself.

I've managed not to get back into that habit. It's a minor accomplishment but it's something. Makes me feel like I'm not totally weak.

A guy got off the bus at the stop across the street.

I recognized that he lives in my apartment building.

As he got closer, I said, "you just coming home from work?"

He said "night shift" and shuffled past me. I guess he didn't want to talk.

It was late and I was looking through my records. I wanted to find a song that would help me make sense of the day, or at least make feel better. I wasn't having good luck.

I kept imagining Levi wandering streets by himself, arguing with voices, maybe stepping into traffic without checking. Or not noticing he's being followed and he's about to get jumped. So many different scary things could happen to him.

I could have told him to come over. I could have cooked us dinner: mac and cheese mixed with tuna fish and canned peas, splattered with too much Tabasco sauce.

I imagined us watching a stupid kung fu movie and joking around during it. I wonder how long it's been since he's spent time with a friend and laughed about stuff.

But if he were here, what would I do if he started hearing shit again? What if he started screaming, or threw a plate at the wall, or tried to stab himself?

I keep remembering the times I didn't stick up for him when we were younger. I feel like I put him on that bus, at least partially.

The phone rang and I saw on the caller ID box that it was Penny.

Of course right away I was super happy to talk to her. It's been weeks or so since the last time we talked.

I still hope she wants to get back together.

I tried to act like I was in a better mood than I really was. I didn't want to scare her off.

She asked how I've been. I said today was pretty nice. I told her how I met a cute girl. She said, "Oh yeah? Really?" Maybe it was wishful thinking on my part, but I imagined she sounded almost jealous.

I told her how when I went to my probation appointment, they sent me in for a drug screen, and I met a really pretty lady cop.

That made her laugh. I felt my shoulders relax when I heard her laughing. And she laughed for a while.

Then she said, "What else? Really, how've you been?"

I said, "I've been too busy to do much fun stuff. So, tell me about cool stuff you're doing."

She said MacArthur is an amazing place to live. She says every time she goes out, she meets all these amazing cool people.

She said it's intimidating, but also really exciting. And she said she's really thriving. Finally being out of her home, with her psychotic father at a safe distance.

I could hear music in the background.

She said she and her roommate were going to a party at one of her professor's house. She said I'd like him. He did his PhD on poetry written by soldiers during world war one.

I didn't know what to say to that. It did sound really cool, and it seemed like a million miles away from my life of scraping tips together to just get by.

A few seconds of quiet ticked by.

I said something like "God, Penny, honestly, today was just awful."

She said "Hey, none of that, I just want to have some chit chat. Because I miss that with you. Like, can't we just talk?"

She said I always make her laugh. I held the phone away for a second.

I said back angrier than I wanted to sound, "So, you missed the chit chat, that was what you missed the most?"

I heard nothing for a while. She groaned for a short second.

Then she said she missed me, but she couldn't bear feeling attached to me but so far away, and so unable to see me.

She said she knew how sad I am. It makes her sad to think about it, because she can't fix it.

She said it's overwhelming to talk to me about it. But she missed me, and she hopped we could just chit chat, like she said before. She said she wanted to hear my voice before she went out.

It stung to hear say she was going out.

Maybe if the day hadn't been such a bad time for me, I would have handled the call better.

I said I was sorry that my life was a bummer to hear about. I had a rough fucking day and I was off my game.

There was a silence. I waited for her to say something.

I heard some noise instead. I realized it was people knocking on her door. Then I heard people talking in the background. It sounded like a bunch of people just got into her apartment.

I heard a few male voices. One yelled, "Hey Penny, we're leaving!"

She said quickly she had to go and then hung up.

I sat for a while on the floor, leaning against the wall.

Last man alive on the planet.

Worked With Angie Last Night

Worked with Angie Last Night (part two)

Once Angie and I arrived, we carried a few coolers in from her truck to the kitchen.

I saw other waiters there.

Angie, Jake, and I were setting up little plates in the kitchen and then Angie left for a minute. I asked Jake what these things are like. I figured I could find out if he's done a lot of these.

He said he mostly does these because it's fun to be in these houses.

The house was in the neighborhood with all the old oil baron mansions.

They're all gorgeous with amazing lawns and gardens.

I realized that it was pretty exciting to be inside of one for the first time. Awe inspiring, even if I was effectively the modern version of a servant.

Anyhow, while I worked with Jake in the kitchen, I looked around.

This was obviously not a restaurant kitchen. Instead of stainless steel equipment that was designed completely for use, and not at all for aesthetics, this kitchen was beautiful.

There were potted plants here and there, bright white tiles on the counters with nice dark blue borders.

Nice stereo speakers built into the house played some nice music. There were plenty of windows too. Restaurant kitchens don't usually have windows.

Restaurant kitchens are cramped, noisy, often really hot, and people are moving fast. But preparing trays with with Jake in this beautiful kitchen felt like a totally different experience.

While we worked, I told Jake I was surprised she included me with the other people working tonight... they were the seafood house super star crew.

Then Jake said, "You take this too seriously."

He said how anybody could do this job. Then he said, "Well, anybody With at least slightly above average looks."

I said this job is physically demanding though. Not everyone can walk for like four hours straight. And you gotta act nice even when people are rude.

Then Jake said, "The real kicker is you can't be qualified to do anything that pays better. Because this is a job of last resort."

I followed Jake out of the kitchen into the main area of the house, each of us holding trays of snacks.

I scanned the room itself and the people in the room.

There are young people at the party. Like people my age. I wasn't prepared for this.

It's one thing for me to act submissive to people older than me, but serving rich young kids is hard for me. I start hearing an old voice in my head. He points out how unfair life is.

Our society says they get to relax tonight while Angie and me bring their snacks.

I can't win the debate in my head and it just gets me angry to think about it.

I push it down. That voice. He's the bitter guy I used to be a little while ago, before I got picked up.

He wasn't wrong. Life is cruel. Anyone that says otherwise is selling something.

But that's not the whole story, either. We can help each other out. The choice isn't just between killing ourselves or not killing ourselves. It's between killing ourselves or trying to helping each other out.

That was the part I didn't have before. I was overwhelmed.

It's still not that comforting, but it's something.

I overheard a lot of conversation snippets tonight. This was easy work. Just take trays from the kitchen, walk around the fancy house and hand out the food.

There were no orders to record. No specials to describe. No risk of getting three new tables sitting down all at the same moment.

I spied on as many conversations as I could.

I heard one dude say how his firm is looking for a new executive assistant and they got dozens of applications.

The dude was pretty crass about it. Said how when lots of attractive women apply, he knows his competitors must not be doing great, or these women would already jobs.

There must not be a lot of open jobs if he was getting so many applications.

It's strange -- it feels predatory just writing down what I heard the guy saying. As if me writing it down now somehow means I'm endorsing it.

But I thought again about how Jake said how restaurant jobs are often people's last resort.

Jake was saying that working in fine dining takes a certain kind of person, and usually those people have much better options. This job is physically demanding. You get unpredictable pay but most of the time it isn't great. Most people aren't impressed by it either.

So in many ways they were saying the same thing. There's not a lot of good options for people without certain skills and connections so we're fighting over scraps.

And when there's a lot of people willing to do the work, it's hard to negotiate. So we take whatever pay they offer and work really hard.

This set up benefits the folks that were at the party. And it dawned on me that if I could figure that out, then they certainly had as well.

Maybe the whole point of politics, if you peel back enough layers of indirection and euphemism and nice speeches, maybe the whole point is just one side trying to protect its unfair advantage from the other side.

Like when the peasants are too many, the king can see who is willing to debase themselves the most.

Of course it's more complex than that. I've got a stack of textbooks trying to explain how it all really works.

But at its heart, this dude was pretty happy with the situation. It suits him just fine to have a parade of desperate young women hoping for a job.

Meanwhile, she's making just barely enough to pay her rent.

Worked with Angie Last Night (part three)

I spent like the next hour or so walking around with appetizers.

The house was amazing.

Sure, it was fancy, and huge, and signaled "we have money." But the thing that I loved was that the walls were crowded with art. Like way more dense than it should be, and completely crazy shit.

I found myself just standing and studying some of the art. I understood now what Jake meant about how he works these parties just to be in these houses.

They're like art museums. They're like palaces. Being around so much amazing beautiful stuff almost became intoxicating.

I overheard some conversations. Most were far too boring to write down. The only thing worse than witnessing people engage in status-oriented small talk is writing it down later.

At one point I carried a tray of something and stood near a few people having a conversation. The group was a young woman -- one of the people that were near my age -- and a few older guys.

The woman had that blank eyed look in her eyes, effortless lean beauty that I associate with people that grew up on the nice side of town.

I didn't love being near her. I kept seeing myself as some peasant medieval serf mucking out a stall while she watches from inside her castle.

I should describe the men. There were three of them and they were likely the age of my father. Except these guys were dressed fashionably.

I imagined for a second imagining my parents in an environment like this, dealing with people insinuating how much money they had. It wouldn't go well.

I don't know how my father would act. Maybe go stone-faced. Maybe have too much to drink.

My mother might see something in one of the paintings and then start reciting Bible verses to rebuke Satan.

Thankfully that nightmare scenario is never going to happen.

Anyhow, back to the conversation I overheard.

I remember one guy had white long hair that was clearly very well maintained. He made me think he was the reincarnation of some aristocrat from the last days of the French Monarchy.

I listened to the three men ask the young woman about her life. She mentioned some college I hadn't heard of.

The foppish guy said, "College is a time in life you can focus so much on nothing but ideas and parties and art... I learned so much about myself during that time."

Here's what scares me about what that guy said. What if he's right, and people that spend years just having fun and making friends and reading cool books and going to parties... what if people that do all that... what if it makes those people better somehow, like funnier, or more patient, more energetic, so they can go out and just do amazing things, and it becomes almost a self-perpetuating cycle?

Well that means Penny she'll grow so much. She's away, living this amazing life, and here I am, carrying snacks on trays.

At the moment, I felt my stomach drop.

I imagined Penny in the future, pitying me, but seeing me almost like an insect or disfigured and deranged person.

I'd be so hideous in her eyes she'd avoid me. Because while she spent years becoming her best self, I'd become this bitter warped person that was getting too old to be so poor.

Yikes.

Worked with Angie Last Night (part four)

The house was amazing.

Sure, it was fancy, and all that, but the thing that I loved was that the walls were covered in framed art. Like way more dense than it should be, and completely crazy shit.

These people were collectors.

I eavesdropped on the conversations.

I checked out the art in the house.

There seemed to be two groups of people: people with money and people that wanted that money.

The first group was much bigger and much older. The second group were people that worked for the campaign.

On the drive over, Angie said it isn't like at the restaurant. We need to be anonymous, nearly invisible. This is pretty much my style when I work in restaurants already, and so this suited me.

I listened to the same guy tell three different people the exact same line... how their support is particularly valuable since they're a role model in the community.

I listen to a few more of this guy's lines. He is really good at what he is doing. I realize that even his bashful, reluctant, hesitant demeanor that was so disarming is an act. A very well rehearsed monologue. I wonder if he practices different phrases in front of the mirror while he shaves in the morning.

He talked about how important it is that a man of faith is in the governor's mansion.

And to somebody else he said how dangerous new environmental regulations will be to the energy industry.

And then I heard him say how important it is that the governor continues to fight the War on Drugs.

I feel like I'm a casualty in the war on drugs. But Maybe I'm a prisoner of war. I don't know. the war metaphor isn't perfect. But that's not my problem, because they chose it.

What am I? I'm a citizen, I made some bad choices, at least according to that side, but I didn't do anything violent? Do they (the people running the show) really see young people getting high as the same kind of threat as if were actively conspiring with an enemy?

If the war on drugs is an actual war, what's the analog for a pot smoker? Was I a spy behind enemy lines? Maybe that's why they have so much contempt.

Like I said I felt myself getting almost angry at how many bright kids are probably never gonna get their shot because of some accident of birth.

Do they not know how bad it is for people at the bottom, or do they know, but they don't care? Hell, maybe they prefer it. Like the guy looking at hot secretaries.

Worked with Angie Last Night (part five)

Ash and me hung out tonight

Date: ???

Tonight the Hoffheinz got sat in my section.

I talked with Angie (head waiter) about them. She said she dreads them, but I never really did know why

• Ooh -- this could be a chance for Marlow to think about Viv's world. Like Viv's husband Garret is working on a campaign for governor, and maybe the Hoffheinz shares his opinion.

She says "He requested my section every week. One time, something went wrong, and now, never again."

I said "He should have said 'You're dead to me now' and then kissed you."

After the shift ends, in the break room in the back, I count up tips at the end of the shift and I did pretty well.

I thought about how to me, the Hoffheinz were intense, but there was something about them that just made me want to do well for them, not fear them.

I said to Angie how Fred Hoffheinz asked me if I was in school and what was I studying, and he said it like "you better be in school." He said it like "I trust that you're a student" and I think he really liked the fact that I was studying economics.

New street person showed up tonight.

He stood on the sidewalk right outside our patio.

This guy was clearly unhinged. He screamed at cars driving by.

He was there when I showed up for my dinner shift. I asked Marie, the GM, if she had seen it.

There's a weird secret thing I found out about a while ago. If a restaurant calls the police because of an aggressive panhandler, there's not actually a lot that the police will do.

I've heard a lot of different explanations for why that is. Some people blame activist groups that say panhandling is a freedom of speech issue.

I heard somebody else say the police won't do anything unless businesses pay bribery donations to the police unions.

I have no idea what's true. One thing I know for sure though is that there's a nearly infinite stream of people that get ground up and broken by this system.

A few weeks ago, I found out our GM Marie has her own solution. She makes food for them. They're getting rice, bread from the previous night, leftover soup, etc. Mostly stuff we might throw out.

And then they work for her. They sweeping the back parking lot. They change the outside ash trays. They pick up litter.

But that's just the cover story. Really, she's not paying paying them to do any of that that.

She'd still pay them if none of that work had to be done because she really pays them to do something else, but it isn't something that she wants to get around.

When Marie tells these guys "keep the area around the restaurant clean" we see them doing stuff like picking up cigarette butts and litter, and tearing down fliers stapled to telephone poles, cleaning sidewalk gutters, etc.

But more important than that, she wants them to make sure that no street people show up during business hours.

I've got mixed feelings about it.

Tonight, the new guy must not have gotten the memo, because I watched him shuffling back and forth, up and down the sidewalk for a while, lost in his thoughts. Then he'd look up and around, watch the cars, and start screaming again.

Later, I saw Oscar the line cook walk out with Marie. She had a a plastic bag takeout container. I had tables and so I couldn't watch that closely but it seemed like she was buying him off with food.

Funny how the power structures in society aren't as absolute as we think.

This guy on thie street tonight, because he was so filthy, so willing to act like a crazy person. He has no hope so he can't be threatened really.

They had to entice him to get him to go away. For a minute, this guy wearing three layers of pants got to feel important.

I saw Marie talking and then I saw Oscar giving him the food.

Oscar is a big scary Mexican guy and he usually carries a fish knife on his belt that looks like a fucking medieval dagger. He uses it to cut up the swordfish into smaller filets.

The subtext was Marie was offering a choice between taking this food and walking away or perhaps a more unpleasant outcome.

I burned my tongue today

I sold the most bottles of wine over the last week and the restaurant was running a contest. I won a big bottle of this California red and then I also got a fancy travel coffee mug.

In the break room later, gave the red away to Angie. I said I only won cuz I used her clever lines. She said that was really sweet.

Then at the end of today's lunch shift, I made some tea and used the hot water from the coffee machine and set it aside to steep in that fancy new mug.

On the walk home this afternoon, I tried a sip and holy hell the tea was so hot I immediately had to lean over to dump it out of my mouth. That travel mug kept the tea at a boiling hot temperature.

The inside of my mouth hurt like hell. I got home and swished cold water around. And I could feel tiny pieces of skin coming off the roof of my mouth.

Then I studied for a while.

After my shift ended, I bought a bowl of the tomato crawfish bisque to go and two loaves of french bread to eat while I studied. I realized that stuff was still in my backpack.

I force myself to study a while before I eat. I finished two very dull chapters of this book of essays I have to read and then I figured it was OK to eat now.

I put one loaf of bread in my toaster after slicing it in half and adding lots of butter on top and sprinkling on some salt.

Then I tried the bisque. Tomato bisque is like one of my favorite foods ever. Particularly the version at my restaurant. It's amazing. A few cool people come into the restaurant just for the bisque.

But today, standing in my tiny kitchen, I sampled some with a spoon, and it tasted like hot thick water. No flavor. I tried it again. Nothing. I wondered if the chefs had screwed something up.

I got really suspicious when I tried the bread and I couldn't taste the salt on the bread.

I grabbed my bottle of tabasco sauce, shook some out into a spoon, and I couldn't taste anything.

Now it's been like a week.

I've got something almost like scabs on my tongue. White spots on the inside of my cheeks. And still, nothing tastes like food.

I ate a peanut butter sandwich and it was a miserable experience. When all you can pay attention to is the texture of the food, but not the flavor, you notice all these irritating little traits. Like how crunchy peanut butter is completely inconsistent. Sometimes you'll get a bunch of peanut chunks in a bite. Sometimes hardly any.

I ate a spoonful of jelly straight and it just tasted like some kind of weird viscous fluid. It didn't make me nauseous but it almost did. So I left it off the sandwich.

This experience is depressing in a whole new way. A way that I hadn't ever imagined ever experiencing.

Today was a big day.

I grabbed a cup at work and poured some coffee for myself. I added some cream. Mostly because I love watching the spiral patterns as the cream dissolves in.

During the pre-shift meeting, I sipped it.

I interrupted the manager by saying out loud "I CAN TASTE THIS COFFEE!"

Scott continued.

Ash and me went out to hear some DJ.

I didn't want to go at first. I hate going to places where the music is so loud that it's impossible to have a conversation. I worried I'd be standing around, bored, feeling out of place, waiting for Ash to tire herself out while dancing to some mediocre music that was blasting far too loud.

When we got there though, I was thrilled... the place was tiny and there was absolutely no room at all for dancing. A few vinyl booths along one wall, a bar, and a tiny raised area where the DJ had set up his stuff.

And get this -- when we walked in, he was playing that gloomy band that Ash made fun of me for being so into.

She and I both stood inside the tiny bar for a bit and looked around, and when she turned and looked at me, she said, "what the fuck is this? This feels like your apartment," and she squinted her eyes and looked at me. I asked her if she thinks I set this up.

We waited to get the bartender's attention. I said how it's really a curse... being into all the cool shit before everyone else. I said over and over again, I watch as stuff that I really love goes from being underground and barely surviving, to finally getting the attention it deserves, and then it really becomes beautiful, and then it changes again and becomes a blatant overly hyped mockery of what it once was, and then fizzles out.

She ignored me during this. I was hoping to evoke an eye roll, at least, but got nothing.

Ash said she was hoping this place would be more energetic. I pointed out how a booth opened up. After we grabbed it, Ash lit a cigarette and looked sideways at the room.

There's something about Ash's face that turns on and off. When she's on, she looks really pretty. Not friendly, not sweet and affectionate; more like a gorgeous predator.

But I've seen the other side, when she's off. She's got a hurt scared demeanor as well.

I talked to Ash about how Levi was on the bus a few days ago, and how I keep thinking about him.

I told her how I keep wondering how Levi's life would have played out differently if he grew up somewhere else.

The way we grew up, we got told to believe that Jesus was coming back any day now.

And people with medical problems were being tested by god. They would be cured if their faith was strong enough.

I told Ash how at church every week, there was a point in the service where they turned off all the lights, and the windowless sanctuary got really dark. That was when everyone would start swaying and singing in tongues.

It would go on for minutes. People would often cry. Sometimes, somebody would lay on the ground and writhe around.

So no wonder that when Levi started hearing voices he figured it was angels and demons.

A kid like Levi, but in a different family, well, he might be living a much different life.

If he started talking about hearing voices that told him to hurt himself, maybe Levi could have gotten some help.

Maybe he could have talked to somebody about the voices.

Ash had a different take. She said she doesn't think the medical system would have treated him very well. Thirty years ago they would have given shock treatments or a lobotomy.

Ash said, "He'd be drooling in a cell somewhere."

I looked at her and told her she didn't need to be cruel about it.

Then I said how I keep thinking about him riding a bus all day, staring out the window.

Ash said that it could be so much worse. She said nobody is torturing him right now.

And this is another thought that keeps coming up. I wonder if I hadn't gotten out of that scene, if I would have stayed in that church, what would have happened to me.

I don't know if I would be like Levi, but I think I'd be a mess. I'm not doing great, but I'm doing OK enough. OK enough to feel guilty about not bring Levi home with me.

I remember feeling such intense shame at my own rotten nature as a boy.

Here is something else. Did the same creep that messed with me also get to Levi?

I didn't mention that part to Ash.

The night got weirder.

I thought the place was too small for anybody to dance, but people standing along the bar started dancing.

Then I saw Freddie there, and he was dancing, and you know what? Freddie, he jumped up and down a bunch, and acted like a complete buffoon.

I don't know how he got into the room without me noticing.

It must have been while Ash and me were

Here's this guy that seems so cool, acting like a goofy kid.

Ash and Freddie and me talked. Freddie mostly ignored her and said how he read the paper that I wrote about Elvin Goodrich.

Then later, the DJ came over. Freddie introduced us. He was much nicer than I expected.

Freddie talked about the paper I wrote.

I ended up explaining the whole story again.

The DJ and Freddie were ridiculously into it.

At the end of the night, I felt "cool".

After the Lunch Shift, I Went Out With Angie and Jake to a New Burrito Place.

There's something about being a waiter, and playing a role for hours that makes me desperate for a real connection after. I'm done acting, wearing a smile.

The three of us sat at a picnic table outside in this shady spot in the front yard of the place. I couldn't decide if I liked this place or not. It wasn't clear if it were a humble restaurant started by some cash-strapped chef with a dream, or if it was a new concept and the bare-bones aesthetic was just them testing how cheaply they could operate and still be successful.

I don't remember how we got on the subject, but I started telling them about an idea I had a long time ago.

I imagined that there was a civilization that realized it was doomed. Their scientists or their psychics or their temple priests discovered that an earthquake was coming that was going to wash them all away. Or maybe it was a comet that was gonna crash into them. The mechanism isn't really important. The point was that the whole culture is facing oblivion in a few weeks, or months, or whatever.

But instead of people turning against each other, they spend the last time they have just being really nice to each other, and being honest about all the shit they regretted, and everyone goes around forgiving each other, and saying goodbyes to each other, and thanking the people in their lives.

In my daydream, in the time before they all die, people play music in the streets and cook amazing food and give it away. Some people dressed up in their fanciest clothes for no reason. Jewelers walk around giving away their most beautiful things just to make people.

Then on the very last day, they all go outside to the beach or to the top of a mountain or whatever and wait for the tidal wave or the comet or the swarm of flesh-eating locusts or to come and destroy them.

Now I remember how I got on this topic. Jake was talking about how he watched a documentary about the people that lived in that Greek city that were all killed when a volcano erupted. I was obsessed with that as a kid. I wanted to list all the amazing subtle things that archaeologists had discovered when Jake brought it up, but I didn't wanna trample his topic.

So that's how I ended up describing this weird daydream I've had for years about people realizing they're doomed, but just accepting it, and then rather than cursing it, or struggling to the very last second to escape, they just comfort each other.

Then I realized I had been excitedly talking for a few minutes. Too much. Normally I try not to say much. I started feeling embarrassed. I love my thoughts but I know a lot of people think I'm really weird. And I hate when people then kinda make fun of my silly ideas.

A lot of times when I really open up about these daydreams I have, after, I feel like nobody wants me to share that stuff. I imagine while I was talking about something, and getting excited to tell them about it, maybe they were all looking at each other, wondering when I would shut up.

So mostly, I don't talk. I try to show interest in others. Listen to them. And it shows me over and over so few people say anything remotely like what I think about.

I abruptly stopped talking when I realized I was getting excited.

Nobody talked. And here comes the nervousness. I could feel my heart starting to pound in my chest. I opened my empty drink and grabbed some ice cubes.

I said, "Sorry, I didn't want to dominate the conversation by making y'all listen to my weird daydreams."

Again, dead air. I wanted to snap my fingers and disappear and wipe their memories about this whole afternoon. I shouldn't have gone out with them. Now I've switched from being the quiet but sometimes funny guy at work to being a delusional weirdo.

Going home and staying inside was the safer choice. I felt vulnerable now. I felt myself sweating. From the heat and from feeling exposed.

Then Angie said, "Wait, no, we were into it. So, what happened? What happened when they all went to the beach?"

I looked at her. I had been studying the hell out of the empty red plastic basket lined with wax paper that my food came in. I concentrated on the different bits of food still left that had fallen out of my burrito. A few bits of diced red onions. Some incandescent orange smears of hot sauce. Pale brown liquid from the soupy pinto beans.

I saw tiny fractals where the hot sauce touched the bean liquid. I don't know why, but I find myself staring at shit intently when I get nervous. Maybe it helps me deal with feeling overwhelmed.

I looked up. Angie wasn't staring at me. She had lit a cigarette and she was watching cars drive by.

Jake meanwhile was turning the pages in the newspaper.

I said, "Well I made all this shit up, so whatever you want can happen. I guess I imagined they were all wiped out. But they died together."

I felt a breeze. It was hot but when it's breezy and we're in the shade, it's not that bad.

And then I felt the excitement coming back. I pointed with my finger for no reason. "OK, I got it. The gods, or time travelers from the future, or something else, some deus ex machina device comes in and spares them. But that's only because the aliens or whatever see how they'd spent their last days."

I stopped talking again. Tried my best to figure out what the hell was going on. Did Angie and Jake just want me to shut up but didn't want to say it? Was it possible that they were enjoying this? I loved the rush I got from sharing these ideas in my head, but I don't want to annoy the people around me.

God, the not knowing if I'm bothering them is the worst. I watched the cars drive by. It really was a nice day. But I decided to finish the thought.

Angie watched the cars drive by. "That's cool. I like that story. I like it better when they're all OK."

She paused. "Then a year later, they could do it again. Like a holiday."

Jake spoke up. "Until comet extinction day becomes really commercial."

It's Important for Everyone Here to Look Sharp.

That's something that Jake had said offhand when I was a trainee, before the dinner shift.

He was talking about something very specific -- my shoes were scuffed and dusty -- but since I looked up to him so much back then, I started thinking he had told me the meaning of life.

It hasn't even been a year since I moved into the city and got this job waiting tables, but I've changed so much. I was such a scared shy kid back then. I couldn't handle sustained eye contact. I had just quit drinking and getting high and now all the shitty feelings were back. And the mean voices were back too, at louder volume before.

Anyhow, I remember how Jake found black shoe polish in the manager's office and a rag and I used it to clean my shoes. They were old steel-toe work shoes that I used to wear to punk rock shows. In that world, looking filthy was a good thing.

A small flaw throws everything off, he said. "It's all a magic show, really. The food, music, the waiters in starched shirts all standing quietly at their stations, the spotless white tablecloths; the polished chrome on the freezers showing the catch of the day... it all combines to be greater than the sum of the parts."

There's a big mirror on the wall behind the bar in the main part of the restaurant. I'd often glance at myself throughout the day when I was feeling frustrated or overwhelmed or embarrassed or like a failure. I don't know why, but I've always felt a tiny bit reassured seeing my own reflection. A tiny bit less lonely.

That other person sees everything, and they know that while I'm not perfect, I'm not human garbage either. The mirror version knows all the details and understands that all the little choices I made usually seemed like the right thing to do at the moment.

We glance at each other, him in his world, me in this one, and he usually says something like, "I feel it too. You're not crazy."

After I finished polishing my shoes, when we walked back out to the front of the restaurant, I glanced at my mirror friend. He looked like he wasn't sure he couldn't handle all this.

That night I stood by and watched Jake stand in front of all these tables of rich people going out for dinner, and he looked so relaxed, so peaceful, so attentive. He talked about wines and seafood and different cooking methods with such quiet confidence and expertise.

You would have thought that Jake was a chef to European royalty. It's funny now, almost a year, to realize that while all that part is real, there's another part too, where Jake lives in a tiny efficiency apartment, lost his license after one too many drunk driving arrests, and his romantic life is like a gay version of those day time talk shows where guests get in fights on stage and bouncers have to pull them apart.

Toward the end of the night, Jake had me handle a few tables while he watched. And I didn't fuck it up that bad.

I remember Jake taking the tip and smiling. He explained how the trainer gets the tips. I said that's kinda like pimping. He said, "No, it's EXACTLY like pimping."

I remember walking home after that training shift. I felt a weird sense of pride. This job was going to be very difficult for me, but I got through that shift OK. I didn't have that tip in my pocket, but they tipped me. I could do this.

It's really late, and I'm tired, but I want to write this down.

Tonight after work I rode with McCall to Rich's, that gay club in the warehouse district.

Penny and I used to go there; we thought we were so edgy. Two straight teenage kids driving into the big city and dancing like uncoordinated maniacs in a gay club. We were so innocent.

• Add more detail about how Penny and me would come here. Add more notes about how oppressive the small town where we lived really was. Talk about it in terms of foreshadowing for why Luke also was so miserable and had to hide his nature.

Maybe I always tag along when McCall mentions he's going to Rich's because some part of me holds out hope I'll run into Penny there. And the nostalgia from when we were younger and infatuated with each other will hit like a wave and we'll be back together again.

Yeah, that's almost certainly why I always go.

Tonight after we got in, I got a bottle of water from the bar. I watched McCall and Jake move right away into the crowded dance floor.

McCall is like 40 something years old, but he dances with such innocent joy.

I think this place has that effect on everyone though. This is maybe the only place in the world where I don't feel too awkward to dance. Maybe it is because I'm not here to meet anyone, or impress anybody; I just listen to some loud music and lose myself for a little bit. I think if there were cute girls here, I would get self-conscious and paranoid. But they're not here! Just an army of dudes, all in tight shirts, and so many of them are bald, all dancing silly.

I still have to psych myself up a bit before I can dance stupid on the dance floor though. So I walked to a different spot. During the walk through the crowd some guy touched my chin and whispered "damn" and smiled and we shared a glance and I smiled back at him. I kinda love those flirtations.

When somebody that has their shit together shows an attraction, it feels nice.

I turned back to the dance floor and I watched McCall, twirling around, moving his hands like some kind of flamenco dancer on way too much crank. I was grinning, reflecting his glee. I heard McCall say on the drive over that dancing at gay clubs feels like recess. I love that idea.

McCall looked up at me, and then waved, and Jake waved at me too, and I waved back. Then I saw that right next to the two of them, the guy that was dancing was Luke!

As in, Luke, the kid that I was totally best friends with until he moved away!

Almost every day after junior high, he and I used to ride bikes and talk.

Tonight, Luke was wearing a tight tank top (which is pretty much the uniform here), and had crazy short hair (also very much the uniform), and lots of earrings, but it was definitely him!

I watched Luke dance and it made me so happy. Back when we were young, I never got why he was so quiet. He seemed to have everything: his mom was such a cool lady, and girls at school always told him how cute he was.

I never got why he wanted to hang out with me of all people, but I was thrilled to have somebody that liked listening to my weird ideas.

And watching him tonight, it all became clear to me. Of course Luke was gay. Dang. In our shitty one truck stop town, that must have been so hard! Now I remember kids picking on him. Even calling him slurs. And yet I had absolutely zero suspicion. Dang. I'm really naive.

Now he's here, tonight, grinning, writhing like a snake, eyes closed. He's safe here and loving every minute of it.

I went to the floor, stood in front of him and then I touched his shoulder, and it was such a joyful moment to watch his face go from puzzled to maybe a little annoyed at maybe getting hit on and then him seeing me and recognizing me.

We hugged and he kissed my check and the music was so loud I couldn't hear him laughing but I felt it.

Luke and I went upstairs, and we must have talked for like two hours. He was just the same as I remember, but louder. I mostly listened to him talk. He is doing really well! He doesn't live here; he's in town to visit his mother. He lives in MacArthur now (of course, because that's where all the cool people move to).

He said he could tell when we were young I had no clue at all. I really didn't! Now looking back it was all totally obvious.

Then he asked me if I ever published any of my stories. I had no idea what he was talking about. He looked shocked. Then I remembered what he was talking about. I used to write science fiction stories and I would talk about plot lines and characters and imaginary inventions on our bike rides, or when we would go to the woods to explore.

He told me that to this day he still thinks about one of my stories. He repeated it back to me because I couldn't remember it.

• Change this next part to use dialog between me and Luke to describe the story.

• Also explain WHY Luke remembered the story. One easy explanation: he sees society first programmed to hate gay people, and then suddenly programmed to not hate them any more. He's amazed and disgusted by how malleable everyone is.

It was about a kid that notices how TV is controlling everyone around him. All the kids in school repeat lines from TV shows without even realizing it. People repeat jokes and everyone laughs but the jokes aren't funny. They often don't even make any sense.

And it goes the other direction too -- he notices lots of people wearing the same strange hat one day and then that night he sees the hat in a bunch of TV shows.

Nobody believes him when he tries to point it out. He feels totally alone. Then one day he hears somebody yelling how TV is programming everyone's brains, and he sees a crowd gathered in a circle, so he pushed to the center of the circle, and everyone is looking into a shop with a bunch of TVs, and the voice is from a new trailer for a new TV show about a kid that thinks television is mind control.

I think I said out loud something like "That REALLY IS a FUCKING GREAT STORY!"

I totally forgot about all of that. But now I remember all the spiral notebooks, full of sketches and story ideas and notes.

Yeah, what a night. We exchanged phone numbers. He said how he didn't like a lot of growing up, but he loved when we used to spend time together, even though he could tell I had absolutely no idea what was going on with him.

We hugged again, and he whispered in my ear something that I could barely understand. I think he said something like "you're a beautiful fucking genius" and he kissed my cheek again. Maybe that's not what he said. I didn't want to throw off the moment and ask him to repeat it. If that's not what he said, well, anything else is gonna be a disappointment, so that's what I'm going with.

He ran back to the dance floor and I left with McCall.

My cheek feels nice. Not like if Penny kissed it, but it's still really nice.

I got Chinese food today on the way home.

This afternoon after I did my mandatory lunch shift, I stopped on the way home to get something to eat. I had a little extra money.

Weekday lunch shifts are often completely wastes of time, but I'm on the schedule because everyone is supposed to work one.

I let myself spend some fraction of the money I make from these on whatever I want. Maybe food, maybe I can stop at the record store, whatever.

Chicken N Egg Roll is a good example of the weird, repurposed, architecture that happens so much in this town. The restaurant is obviously just a house converted haphazardly into a restaurant. There are two doors. The main door goes to the proper dining room. But that section sucks. I don't enjoy eating solo in a dining room.

There is another door, a door that is on the side of the house. That door doesn’t look like a door you’re even supposed to use if you’re a customer. It goes into the kitchen, but there is a high counter with like five bar stools and you can watch the cooks because the grill is right there.

This area feels like it was designed for people eating solo. And it feels like you're in on a cool secret.

And there's something to watch while you wait for your food or while you eat.

I like watching the cooks while they work. Any cooks really. On the one hand, working in kitchens often pays less than working for tips. But they’re the ones that actually do the magic. I just learn how to pronounce words and act charming.

I see it all the time but it always thrills me how cooks transform really mundane ingredients like green onions and potatoes into dishes that are so delicious that we feel emotion. Sometimes, the flavors even haunt us for days afterward.

We all have access to these ingredients, but somehow, we don't have the magic touch.

I remember one time watching the cooks at my restaurant make roux gumbo. There is nothing fancy involved in each step.

Today while I waited for my food, I thought about a conversation I had with a regular.

His name is Rod. Been going to the restaurant for years, apparently. That's what Carla the hostess said anyhow.

One time Rod was in my section and he was reading a book that I had read, and it turned out we had both read a lot of the same stuff. 1950s science fiction mostly, back when being a scientist was really cool. When everyone thought that we would be vacationing on the moon. Shit my dad would read. Shit I had read to try to feel close to my dad.

Last week, I remember Rod saying he always wanted to be a writer. And then he said, looking dead at me, "but what the heck do I have to write about?"

It stunned me. In that moment, I got the feeling that Rod had looked at his entire life and did not think any of it had any intensity.

It's one thing to look at your life, and conclude the joy didn't outweigh the pain. I can comprehend that.

A life of pain and frustration? That's definitely worth writing about!

But to say that there's just nothing there at all woth recording? That the whole thing has been so unremarkable?

I can’t comprehend that idea. I got a glimpse at a degree of self-loathing that stunned me. But why does he get out of bed every morning? Why not set fire to it all?

Here he was, eating the greek salad and oyster gumbo for maybe the five hundredth time, telling me he didn't think anybody would care if they knew his life story.

Like I said, I can’t comprehend it. It's not sad. It's not hopeless. It's more like utterly pointless.

After a pause, I think I made a joke and said he could make shit up about a ceiling fan store on a space colony.

The writer that we both liked clearly just made up stuff, like luxury cruise liners that went to the asteroid belt.

He said nobody wants to hear his story. I realized that he wasn't talking about publishers or market demand.

I didn't like that moment. Being a waiter involves me stepping into a persona. I'm somebody that acts amused or even delighted to meet people, and I'm just always so happy making other people happy, and life is great, and I'm full of hope for my future.

That's the character that seems to get the big tips out of diners. I've tested others, and that's the most consistently successful one.

But Rod just obliterated my ability to pretend to be that guy.

Here was somebody thirty years older than me, but somebody I kinda felt some similarities with, telling me that his life was completely empty, meaningless, unremarkable, uninteresting. Infinitely forgettable. Not worth experiencing.

That moment added a new fear to my head. A relatively pain free but meaningless life.

I had the interview for that summer internship today.

A big consulting firm runs a summer internship every year.

I remember how I poured my heart into the application. There were questions like "what do you know about our company's mission" and "how does your background and education prepare you for working with us."

I spent several days in the library studying the firm, reading recent news, and then writing and rewriting my reply.

I read a bunch of stock analyst opinions of the firm.

It dawned on me at one point how I was probably going too far.

Then a few weeks ago at the career center, I went to an overview of the program, led by a few people that had gone through it, then finished their degrees, and now work there full-time. They said the program is a lot of hard work, but it was also a really fun time, and they made a lot of friends.

And today was screening interviews. I got to the career center almost an hour early.

Finally they called me in.

Everything went well at first. We talked about what the consulting firm does, and why they hire interns every summer. It sounds like there's a huge pile of data entry work that needs to be done, but they don't want to call it data entry. He said a few times how interns often get job offers after they graduate, and the salary he mentioned made my eyes bug out. It would be a life-changing amount of money at that point. I could afford a car.

He implied that normally they don't hire graduates from this school. He said he went to some shool I had never heard of, but the way he said it, sounded expensive.

But he and I had both read the same econometrics textbook.

We even swapped war stories about the glitchy and very confusing software package we use in the statistics class to figure out mathematical relationships between variables. He described a shortcut to check for correlations that I hadn't heard about.

I asked him to repeat it and I wrote it down in my notebook. What he described seemed wrong, but I wasn't going to argue about it.

Or maybe he knew something I didn't know. Both were possible. This guy and I seemed to have a rapport. And maybe he was right about the shortcut. I'd go to the computer lab and check it out, because I was curious.

Anyhow, I was fucking soaring at this point. I could see a path up and out. I was already imagining the moment when I would tell the other waiters they could have my aprons, because I'm done. Maybe I'd buy the crew a round of shots just to be nice. Yes. Definitely will do that.

He asked if I had any questions. I said I wanted to know how frequently we get paid. Was it every two weeks?

He looked at me, and kinda looked confused, maybe disappointed in me, and said, "well, it's an internship." As if that meant something. I said I didn't understand what that meant.

He said the firm doesn't pay interns. It's a learning opportunity for young people interested in careers in financial analysis. He said it like the firm was doing this as a favor, as some kind of charitable outreach.

I wouldn't be able to wait tables if I was working this job. The guy had mentioned how there were a lot of late nights. If I don't wait tables, I don't make money, so I can't pay my rent, so... what can I do? Save up by picking up every shift possible? Maybe, but I can't do that and go to school. I already see a difference in what my grades could be and what they are because I just don't have enough time to study as much as I want.

I felt like I was trapped in a room and the walls were closing in on me.

I said without thinking first that I didn't think I could work all summer for free, and I realized as I was saying it that I sounded angry. I WAS angry after all. This is just another example of how difficult it is to move up from one tier to the next. Once you get mixed up in the criminal justice system, it's so hard to ever get

And the thing happened where I stopped being able to act normal. Stopped being able to fake that I'm a happy, well-adjusted sane person.

I felt the smile go off my face. I looked at this guy and I could tell that deep down, he could read the hate I was feeling toward him. He's just a representative though. I don't hate him. I hate that he participates in this scam and doesn't question it.

I was smart enough to realize that I shouldn't burn any bridges. I just stopped talking much. The feeling in the room went from being friendly to really cold. Before, I had played up how much I liked what I read about the firm, and how it sounded like a great opportunity, and a wonderful way to apply what I was learning.

But he saw my mask fall off, so to speak, and I wasn't going to try to keep pretending.

I counted the panes of glass in the windows, and then I counted the acoustic tiles on the ceiling while he kept talking. But I could barely follow what he said any more because I was so lost inside.

I got up, shook his hand, and left, but my vision was getting blurry. Fuck this was disappointing.

I went to the computer lab.

I wanted to find out if this fucker's shortcut really worked. I've been working really hard to learn everything about this statistics program and what he described didn't feel right. If it was right, it meant that I'm not any good at this stuff, because I overlooked something so simple. I need to find something else to study.

He mentioned a particular function by name that quickly checks two time series to see if they are related. I knew the function. I started the online help program, searched for the function name, and read the documentation.

It specifically said not to use it in the way this guy described. I remembered this conversation I had with my professor in a new way at that moment. She had described a famous paper that showed how solar flares coming off the sun correlate with economic boom and busts.

It was just a coincidence though -- they both on average repeat every eleven years -- but there's no link between them.

Yeah, fuck that guy. He didn't know shit about anything. I realized how much shame I had felt when he implied how I should have known that internship meant I wasn't getting paid. I had imagined him thinking how I was wasting his time, and this is why poor kids from small towns need to stay in their lanes.

I printed out the documentation for the function because it went on for pages about a bunch of stuff that I didn't really understand, but I was going to read it until I did.

Then I searched the name of the university online. Holy hell. I looked up the average SAT score. It was below mine. Then I looked at the tuition. Nearly ten times what this 2nd tier state college costs.

I got up and walked to the printer and watched the pages slide out. I imagined walking back over there, kick in the door and fucking show him that he doesn't know shit, and his whole consulting firm is probably full of mediocre assholes like him. I imagined shouting "fuck YOU!" as loud as possible and then smashing him through that window.

I was completely out of my mind. Seething.

I looked around the computer lab. Lots of students. At least half were just playing computer games or writing messages. Everybody looked relaxed. They weren't taking everything so seriously.

I needed to eat something. I hadn't eaten since last night and I realized it was already two in the afternoon. The career center where the interview was had free coffee and of course I had like three or four or five cups because I got there two hours early. I got there two hours early because I ride the bus and it's unreliable.

Yeah. When I'm like this, I need to eat.

So I went to the cafeteria. There's a place that sells a big plate of pasta, tomato sauce, and garlic bread for three bucks, and they let you serve yourself the parmesan cheese. I cover it with way too much parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes and it tastes pretty good even though the cooks boil the noodles for way too long.

It's by far the best deal in the cafeteria in terms of calories for price.

I ate and studied the printout. I knew this stuff. That guy was completely wrong.

I felt so much better after getting some food and after reassuring myself that I'm not an idiot. He's the one that has it wrong.

I went into the bathroom, got out my travel toothbrush from my bag, stared into my own eyes while brushing my teeth. I looked OK. I like this suit and I'm wearing my favorite tie and the little metal tie clip. In fact I look amazing. This suit fits perfectly.

I remember how I found this suit at the charity shop. It was in nearly perfect condition, but just a little too big for me.

I took it to the dry cleaner where I get my aprons and shirts cleaned and starched for work.

The old Asian lady knows me there. I asked if she could alter it to fit me better. I barely understand her when she talks, but she seems to understand me. She said it was a really nice suit.

I remember standing in the back of her store, up on a stool, in my socks, while she used pins and a little piece of chalk to plan out her attack.

She always talks to me in whatever language she speaks. Maybe it's Vietnamese. Not sure. But then I'll hear something that I understand.

This time, embedded in the stream of stuff I couldn't understand, I heard her say "I need two weeks." And then later, I hear her ask where I got this suit. I ask if she knows the bluebird thrift store and then gesture in the vague direction where it is, a few miles away.

It was an intimate thing. Not in a sleazy way. Just in that we spent like half an hour together, me standing in my boxers and t-shirt while she measured me and then later had me wear the suit, while she orbited around me, using her pins to secure folks, or her chalk to mark little lines.

I've been going to her little dry cleaning store for more than a year now, and I always try to be friendly. Heck, she has sold me several shirts left behind by people and never picked up. Nice shirts, too. There's a sign on the wall that says shirts left for more than 30 days will be sold, and now some of those shirts are mine.

Waiting tables means getting a lot of stains on your clothes, and sooner or later, either the stains won't come out, or the chemicals used to get them out eat a hole right through the fabric.

So I go through shirts.

And now maybe I was going up a notch. Up from service work to a job where I'd need a suit. I like to think she was happy for me. Even proud of me.

I realized later how me asking for her to alter it was like an external marker of how slowly I'm climbing up out of the swamp. Something visible to somebody else watching my life from a distance.

I've been taking in my aprons and shirts for work to this lady's dry cleaner. She recognizes me. She gets the tomato sauce and wine stains out of my clothes.

But this time, we spent like an hour together in the back half of her shop. She had me stand on a step stool in my boxers and a t-shirt while she measured me. Then she had me put on the pants, so she could pin parts and draw lines with chalk.

Anyhow, a few weeks later, she called and left a message on my machine. I listened to it. She said something like "Hello Mr. Marlowe" in the recording. I wondered how she knew my name until I remembered how I wrote down my name and number for her.

What does it mean about my life that I'm feeling some weird sense of friendship because my dry cleaner knows my name and saw me in my underwear? I know what it means. I'm fuggin lonely. I'm too isolated.

I was so fucking hopeful that this internship was going to work.

I remember when I came back and picked up the suit, she had me try it on. I looked at my reflection in the mirror. This was the beginning of a new phase in my life. First, I was a gloomy, quiet kid. Then I became a drug-obsessed atheist suicidal maniac poet. But now, I've been rehabilitated. I'm adjusting to society rather than defying it. I'm going to be a productive worker.

Except it wasn't the start of anything new. That's the illusion that keeps us all striving.

There's a fucking invisible barrier.

That seamstress for example. She's gotta be in her sixties maybe, and for her whole life, she's been altering beautiful clothes for other people, while she wears their castoffs. She will literally never get to experience what it feels like to be them.

Christ, this is the stuff I used to rant about when I used to get high. And while brushing my teeth, staring at my eyes in the reflection, I couldn't find any flaw in the logic.

In the end, I might struggle, I might work really hard, but there are doors that are locked and I don't have the key.

I realized my gums were bleeding again because I brush my teeth too hard. This wasn't good for my peace of mind. I can't work myself up into a class warfare frenzy.

I walked over to my statistics professors office. I wanted to talk about the function that the guy had mentioned. I stood in a line outside her office. She had her door closed so I waited.

A few other students were nearby and I listened to them talk. We were about the same age, but they were so unfamiliar. I listened to them talk about some party they were at, how silly somebody was. They talked about what they were going to do for fun that night.

I looked at them. Two women, early twenties. Both really cute.

They kept talking. One mentioned how she had to write an essay in Spanish about what she did for fun and she said she likes going to movies and reading but really none of that's true, she never does any of that stuff. She goes to parties, works out, shops, spends time with her friends.

I watched. They were both cute. One was striking. She had copper hair with white streaks in it. She had maybe just come from the gym, or was going to the gym, wearing leggings and a sports bra. She was beautiful and she knew it.

It was alienating. Is this what I should be doing? How? I can't bear being around people socially. What do I do for fun? I daydream about a life where I have some free time. Where I don't need to beg for an opportunity to prove myself.

Why is it that they get to have such a fucking easy life, but me and the old seamstress work like seven days a week? How is this the way the world works?

She glanced at me for a second and it was obvious that she was not inviting me to join their conversation. I dug out the printed documentation on the function and read it over again. Making sure I understood it the best I could. I saw a few drops of spaghetti sauce on the printout because I had been reading it while I ate lunch.

My professor called out, "next", and I went in.

I said I had a question about the function. She rolled her eyes and said "We covered that in class... it doesn't work!"

And then I realized that she thought I was coming in here and acting like I believed in it. I explained how I didn't, and I explained how it came up in the job interview I was just on.

I showed her the printed out docs, and talked through how I thought about it all in my head, and she nodded a bunch. She said "you've got it right. That guy in the interview ... he's an analyst at where again? Yeah, don't tell me. But it doesn't surprise me. The whole industry is notorious for shoddy work. Big firms hire them to vet their financials and verify their projections so they can go out to Wall Street and raise money, but there's a huge conflict of interest when you get paid by the industry you are reviewing."

I said it sounds like a food critic getting paid by a restaurant. My heart swelled when I saw her grin and nod at the analogy.

She asked if I was going to take the job. I had been standing this whole time, near the door. I never want to overstay. I'm kinda crazy about this professor. Again, not in a sleazy way. But I want her to like me.

I sighed. She waved at a chair near me. I took the stack of papers and books off it and put them on the floor and sat down. I said how I can't afford to take the job because they don't pay and I need to work. She nodded.

I waited. I expected her to express some kind of sympathy. Maybe she had leads on other paid jobs out there and she could introduce me. After all, she had written me a recommendation for the job.

Maybe she could give me something that would help me get a career started. But nothing like that happened. It was quiet for a few seconds.

She said "So, don't look for shortcuts when you're doing your work. There aren't any." I realized she was telling me it was time for me to leave. I thanked her for the time, and walked out, and heard her call out to the next student in the hall.

The two women were gone too. I walked back to the bus stop and waited to catch it back home. I was due on the floor at work at 6 PM.

Waiter Diary: This suit was a great find.

I remember when I got it.

I got off the bus after school a few stops early and walked to the thrift store and after I at the old records and tapes and books and art work, I looked for white shirts to wear to work. They're always getting stained eventually and it's crazy expensive to buy them new.

And that's when I found the suit. Dark grey with faint stripe pattern. I remember when I bought it, the lady ringing me up commented how this was quite a find.

That thrift store in particular is interesting. The staff is exclusively rich old ladies. They all volunteer at the shop to help raise money for whatever charity the shop supports. But also it feels like conspicuous leisure.

Like, notice how I'm so wealthy that I prefer not to be paid for my labor. You couldn't afford what I'm worth so I'll just do it for free. Anyhow, I mention all that to say that while I don't know anything about fancy clothes, this lady ringing me up sure did, and she was impressed. today I wore the suit for an interview for an internship today. A paid one, too. I make sure to ask that right away after the soul-crushing disappointment of the last one.

It's at an oil and gas company. They want to build a model to predict energy consumption based on weather. When it gets hot, people use air conditioning more. So, that means more electricity, which is generated by burning natural gas.

This is the stuff I've been geeking out on so hard at school. I've been studying my textbook like it contains the secret to infinite cosmic power.

I rode the bus out to the oil company's office, wearing the suit, and when I got to the building, I walked through the glass doors, and into the lobby, and I caught my reflection, and I looked like I fit in here. Normally, I would have felt intimidated being there. Not today. This suit was like a space suit, keeping me safe in an alien environment.

The interview went well. If they hire me, I'd come in three days a week, and go to school on the other two. It'd be a separate source of money, but also, it's not crazy that I get hired full-time when I graduate soon.

And I feel like I have this job in the bag.

The guy I met, Brian, mentioned he had called the department, asked for their best statistics undergraduate student, and Dr. A told them it was me.

It was intense when he said that. There's some other really bright students. I think the only thing I have on them is that I'm really focused. I pick at stuff until it makes sense to me even when the class has moved on to the next chapter.

I remember when Ash came over after I picked up the suit and I showed it to her. She's funny -- she still plays that whole "I'm too cool to care about anything and I might float away forever any minute" but I saw her smiling when I tried it on.

I said, "It's not bad, right? I look like a normal person in this!" and I remember how she smiled and nodded. She said I looked like a square. Like the rich asshole guys that came in to drink martinis when she danced.

I told her how that's exactly what I want. I want them to think I'm one of them.

On the way back home on the bus ride, I felt a weird mix of happiness because finally stuff is turning up and also this grim feeling that none of it will really help though.

I try to keep a positive attitude.

But honestly, I live a grim life. Something about seeing a shot at something better calls ny attention to the things I’m not happy about but have to put up with now.

For example, it’s always been difficult for me to make friends. Now I don't even have much energy to deal with that because I'm struggling to pay my rent and stay caught up in school.

There was an awkward situation during the interview when Brian said how much fun college was for him. I grinned and played along but I doubted it was believable.

This isn't a fun time right now. My life is about pushing myself forward.

A part of me that desperately hopes my life will change sooner or later, as long as I keep pushing.

But There's another part that I try to ignore. That part says it's all pointless. Maybe I can make it up a few rungs in socioeconomic status, but I'll never feel any different.

I'm stained. With ink.

This voice says that my entire life can be summarized in a few images:

• Me carrying oysters on silver trays to upper class dinner

• Me in a classroom at school, watching other students chit chat

• Me in the department of corrections waiting room, waiting my turn to pay my fees and then convince my officer that I deserve to stay out of prison for another month

• Me at home at night, scribbling notes from textbooks.

Like I said, I try not to listen to that part of me. I try really hard not to let it even get out a word.

But that part came out of nowhere and got to me on the bus today.

So, yeah, I’m a weird mix of hope and gloom.

Ash just called.

She wanted to know how the internship interview went. I told her about it. Then I told her how it was nice to know she cared, knowing it would provoke her. Of course she made that "ugh" sound she does when she wants to express annoyance or disgust, but I told her it was too late to back pedal.

Her calling me shows she cares about somebody else's happiness. No Ash is an island.

I asked her if it hurt to feel some small amount of joy and hope, even if it was for somebody else, like when you've been in the dark for a long time, and somebody shines a flashlight in your eyes. She said she didn't care that much, and I think I laughed and said she obviously did and I think it's really sweet. We talked for a few more minutes.

I should add an image of me talking on the phone to Ash to that list of bullet points up above that defines my life.

I'm glad we're pals.

Penny came to visit

Late saturday night, Penny and me in my apartment

I ask what they did all day.

Penny wants to fuck, uncharacteristically.

After, I'm smiling from ear to ear.

Then Penny tells me I shouldn't be hanging out with Ash since she does coke all the time.

I tell her I have a hard time believing her.

Then she says Ash told her she could never be attracted to me. Ash tells Penny about her ex-boyfriend.

Penny tells me how Ash still loves this other guy and she could never be into a guy like me and it really messes me up.

I say she's just a friend. "I love YOU, P, not her".

Sunday morning in my apartment

I'm ironing my shirt getting ready to work and Penny is packing up.

Penny packs up and leaves and says I need to figure out what I want.

Ash left a message on my machine today.

I realize I haven't even written in here about the fight.

It's been a while since Penny told me how she and Ash had sex, and then Penny said to me that if Ash would fuck her, then Ash would fuck me too, and Penny can't trust me with her.

So Penny said she can't be with me if I stay friends with Ash.

God, this whole situation went from wonderful to a nightmare quick.

My brain barely works.

I'm just going to type into here what Ash said on the tape.

I'll make sense of all this one day, but right now, I can barely think.

Here's what Ash said:

I know I did something wrong. But we have been friends for so long. Close friends, I thought.

Don't you want to even hear what it was like for me?

Penny got me drunk.

For a minute, I thought she was really into me. I thought she loved me.

It was a wonderful feeling too.

For a second, I thought we were going to figure something out, like we would all be together somehow. I don't know how.

But now, now I think she just wanted to ruin my friendship with you.

Hey, I know I made a mistake and did something rotten. But I thought we were close friends, and it really hurts that you're not even trying to fight to save this.

You fucking miss me, I know you do. But you're so terrified she's going to leave you again that you're going to throw me away.

She's got you under her spell, you know that, right? She's a monster. But you know better.

If you don't call me, fuck off and die.

Penny saw my new apartment

My lease was up in the last place. I found this place. It's in the same neighborhood. It is twice as much, but it is surreal how much more money I make now.

Everything feels different now.

In I got this internship in the Fall.

I'm nearly done with probation, too. Like it will be three months and then no more.

It's so weird. I get up and go to work in an office now.

I have an expense account now.

This was my last shift

It went fine.

I've been doing the internship, and going to school, and waiting tables.

But after that lady Lois, retired, and I took over scheduling her gas, and it actually worked OK, Brian got me a raise. I make as much now per hour as I did working a slammed Saturday night.

And he told me that he's working with HR to update Lois's job description so that I could apply for it.

Except instead of running back and forth on my feet, I sit in a comfy chair.

Yesterday afternoon I spent like an hour just reading this book that I found on Lois's shelf all about risk management accounting.

In August, I'll have finished. I'll switch to working here full-time in September.

Side note: it's funny that risk management generally means trying to REDUCE price volatility. Like smoothing out the peaks and troughs.

But what we are actually doing by adding and dropping these futures contracts based on day to day changes in the weather or whatever, we're really just speculating under the cover of a hedging program.

I heard Brian call it Texas hedging.

It's funny... we literally tripled our monthly revenue last month doing this stuff.

We bought and sold the same natural gas like five times last month, each time, buying it back when prices fell, and then selling it again when prices went up.

Tripled our revenue. When that hurricane was off the southwest coast of Africa, and prices were heading up, Paul, our president sold 100% of our production at that price.

Then a few days later, the hurricane dissipated, just like our weather dude said it would. Prices fell.

Paul undid our swaps. We essentially bought back the gas that we were committing to sell.

I asked him why he didn't just let the first sale ride all the way.

He said, "where's the fun in that? Besides, month ain't over yet, and there's more hurricanes coming."

Sure enough, I watched and in a week another hurricane formed and started moving toward the Gulf of Mexico, and of course, natural gas prices started heading up again. I watched Paul use that weird ancient calculator he carries in his pocket.

He said to lock in prices for like 20% of our production, and he said as long as the price stays above $2, sell another 20% every day.

It's so bizarre watching this guy work. Paul was like the right hand man for T Boone Pickens. He knows what he's doing.

I've tracked his trades. The guy beats the market every fucking month, by huge amounts.

But when I try to understand his methods, they make absolutely no sense to me. He throws out some vulgar cowboy aphorism and then winks at me.

This is probably the worst I've ever felt about myself.

We were watching something on TV. Or she was. I was trying to read a magazine.

She hit me, and without thinking, without even realizing, I hit her back.

She was wearing those horn rimmed glasses.

I can barely write about it all, but since she moved in, things have changed.

Penny hates her father. With good reason.

But now I get the feeling that somehow she is lashing out at me because she hates him.

I went to the dentist today.