It's not the grass that's greener

They were zipping by the office window like diligent worker ants about to have an aneurysm. The trays rested on the tips of their finger tips with a slight apprehension that they might connect with the floor at any moment, yet they continued to scurry along as if the tray were attached like another appendage. The dish rags swung from their back pockets like a donkey's tail swatting away the beckoning flies in the intensifying afternoon sun. They were growing more restless as the wind died down and their peach bellinis and strawberry mojitos had perspired into watered-down backwash. I could see their pronounced eye-rolls rising above their over-sized sunglasses and the comments sneaking out the sides of their mouths.

"Does she even see us sitting here with empty glasses?"

"Where is our food?"

"She's lucky if she gets fifteen percent."

"How hard is it to waitress?"

I remembered it well and remembered the way it made you bitter from the inside-out. The running around - literally, running - for five hours straight with a permanent smile and high-pitched voice that even startled you when you greeted a new table. All to open up the checkbook and see six dollars on sixty. Even when a good tip surfaced it was difficult not to feel the envy seep in, wishing you could go out and drop $150 for the hell of it.

I could even hear the after hours conversations - everyone had a story by the end of the night. Once, I had to run from 2nd and Chestnut to Front and Arch because someone had signed the itemized check as if it were their charged card slip.

Everyone sat at the bar and had that necessary shift drink - it kept them from breaking the stools and plunging the sharp end into the head of the next asshole that asked if they were still open. Kept them from breaking down when they realized they didn't even break one hundred on an eight hour shift. Kept those ugly thoughts about their next looming birthday or the unused college degree at bay.

My fingers slipped away from the venetian blinds and I walked back to my desk. The air felt cooler as I walked closer to it. When I sat down I noticed that the sun rays fell just shy of me. A couple of the girls had asked me to meet them there when they finished their shift...I couldn't go though. It felt weird not to have any stories. The invitations were becoming less frequent too. Leaving the biz was like leaving the state. I cracked my knuckles and resumed typing, wishing I would have an aneurysm.

Moby Dick among a sea of dicks

When he entered through the front door of the bar, the permanent stench of vomit permeated his nostrils. The heat lamp that hung above the entryway lathered his face as soon as he walked in. It rejuvenated the odor and made it seem like it was cooking the smell for that night's Happy Hour meal special.
"Shipping Off to Boston" was blaring out of the speakers - only a preamble to the dozen or so more times the owner would play it from his office dependent upon how far he got through the magnum of wine. By the end of the night someone would be Irish step dancing - or thinking they could.
Every night he clocked in for his shift, he wondered why the fuck he was working in such a shit hole - a place he wouldn't have ever gone to for a drink on his own. Sometimes the conversations he had with his parents resonated: "You have a degree from a good school. Why are you doing this?"
The question followed him as he made his way through the already intoxicated crowd to the back stairwell and down into the kitchen. Before he even reached the bottom of the stairs, he could hear Pat's toothless cackle - the violin twinings of a drunken orchestra. He tried not to listen to Pat's boasting of getting out of paying child support for the hundredth time and ate his fried chicken sandwich dinner.

His ass was numb from sitting on the wooden stool near the front door for the last five hours. He was almost three quarters through the book he had brought with him that evening; it helped to distract him from the inane, slurring conversations of the crowd. He no longer noticed the frat-guy-turned-salesman pounding a Bud pint can from his bicep, or the lumpy loud girl trying to get attention from anyone she could anymore. The only time he could be distracted now was from the self righteous attempts patrons made at engaging him in conversation.
"What are you reading?" A twenty-something guy with a beer gut asked, barely even interested.
"Moby Dick," he said.
"Get outta here! Well I've never heard of a bouncer reading a book, much less a bouncer reading Moby Dick!" The guy was doing his best to carry his voice to anyone listening.
"What the fuck does that mean?"
"Nah man, I'm just sayin'! You know, you should really read Huck Finn - fuckin' great book. I read it in high school."
The guy staggered away and ordered another round of Irish car bombs for his table.
"What are you reading?" A mousey voice squeaked from behind him.
"Moby Dick," he mumbled.
"Why are you reading in such a fun place?"
"What?"
"It's so much fun here, why would you want to read? You must be antisocial."
"Right, lady." He continued to read his book while this woman continued to impart her psychological wisdom and condescending favor of conversation until closing time.

He wheeled his bike out of the bar and into the dank and dingy alley of Drury Street. The garbage truck was rumbling down the street at 3:30 a.m., right on time. He gave a wave to the guys who waved back, and set out on his way home.
The late evening air was sweet with the perfumes of impending summer He did lazy figure eights sporadically down Broad Street. It helped soothe his thoughts of disdain for the general public. Everyone in the bar had story about a bitchy customer at the end of the night and it kind of left him with negativity and contempt for people. It was difficult not to think about those people he watched and encountered that night. Some made him angry, some made him laugh and the majority of encounters did both. When he first started working at the bar it bothered him, but now he just shrugged it off and was thankful that he did not have such a narrow and diluted perspective. He didn't think that he did a good deed by talking to the bouncer or leaving a two dollar tip for a beer.
When he walked through the front door of his South Philly apartment he remembered why he worked at such a shitty job. His desk had numerous papers strewn about with story ideas and blurbs written on them. He turned the lamp on and took out the pocket notebook from his grease-stained jeans. He had written about six pages of thoughts and ideas for stories. Tomorrow he would bring those stories to life.
It was always at 4:30 a.m. that he remembered the answer to his parents' question, before settling into his desk chair and cracking his knuckles.

Good advice that is hard to follow

Irvine Welsh is another writer that I have followed for quite some time. He is most famous for his novel, Trainspotting which was made into a popular film. What I've always loved about Welsh are his highly recognizable characters, each carved into a unique, Edinburgh niche where they may be the only member of the niche, but a niche it still is within fiction. People reference characters like Begbie, "Juice" Terry, Renton and Sick Boy if they want to describe a certain characteristic about a friend, or certain actions. His stories are fantasically original, ranging from a group of junkie friends who make a porno together, to an amputated girl who uses her feet to chainsaw someone to death. Welsh is the only author who has ever made me truly laugh out loud.

What I admire about this clip, however, is Welsh's advice to aspiring writers looking for alternative ways to make money. It is my belief that writers, specifically fiction writers, will always have difficulty with traditional work because it seems to lack purpose besides "paying the bills". It is unfulfilling. Welsh's advice to "quit your day job" and seek charity work is an interesting and certainly viable option - one that I have explored in the past (this included a wine induced search of the Peace Corps homepage). I will admit, however, that this is easier said than done. A St. Joe's professor once told about his son who was enrolled in the Peace Corps somewhere in South East Asia. There was no electricity, no TV, no Internet and barely any phone service. All that the son asked his father to send him were books, and not just paperbacks but the classics. He thought that he had not read enough of literature's finest and was plowing through Hemmingway, Homer, Dante, Faulkner, Woolf, Melville and the likes. I truly respect someone who can do that, and wish that I had it in me to do the same.

Not everyone has it in them, however, and I think Welsh's point can still be applicable. I may not wind up working with street children in Mongolia, but I hope I can find work that is fulfilling and has some greater purpose.

The nervous back and forths and the defeatist almost theres

Staring at the empty document on my computer screen, I wonder what kind of real, legitimate substance I can write when half of my mind is on edge. I wait to hear the footsteps near my cubicle, at which point I will hit "minimize", hoping that his eye line does not reach over the cubicle walls. The stop-and-go writing - when does it ever work? It's like hearing a couple seconds of a song and then thinking about only those bars for the rest of the day. But it's never a complete song that way. And you cling to those bars as if you've accomplished knowing the whole song when, in fact, you don't know shit. It has become apparent that there is a constant surveillance around my workspace. Perhaps I am exaggerating, because that NEVER happens.

This blank page keeps staring at me and I begin to wonder if I even have anything to write on it. The fear of some exec somehow seeing the tiny browser tab at the bottom of my computer screen keeps me from writing anything - paralysis by analysis, if you will. Someone could walk by and I will minimize the page immediately, then realize they are walking on the other side of the office. Am I simply self-sabotaging? Setting up a scenario where I can say I tried to write, it was a valiant effort, but all of these extenuating circumstances kept me from doing it. Damn the man! Not my fault, right?

Then I start to wonder if I am clinging to a life, a persona, that was never mine to begin with. I was never that person, that writer. Am I clinging to a life I never had? Feels like I had this life at one point...but is it just my idealistic way of remembering it because I want to be that person? Paralysis by analysis, again. I'm just a perspiring glass clinging to a coaster.

Ahhh...that line makes me cringe.

No, write!

Bah! Minimize!

Ongoing conversations

On the walk to work I have a conversation with my mother. It's too early to answer her, but, as always, even harder to make her stop.
"How's the new job going?" she chirps, or more accurately caws.
"It's fine," I say, voice cracking right at the stroke of 7:30 a.m.
"What exactly are you doing?"
"Dry stuff, not very exciting."
"Well, do you like it?"
"It's OK. Don't understand much yet."
"What? You don't like it?"
"I said it's fine..." the bag swung around my body is getting heavier.
"You know, that's life sweetie. You better get used to it -"
"Yeah, yeah...yes. I know." I can feel the sun growing warmer.
"- Everyone has to do it. It'll get better. I know how much you like being busy and you'll feel better about yourself once you start making money -"
The birds are getting louder. "Alright mom...I understand. Enough."
"- Because no one makes a living writing right off the bat. You still need to make money to support the life your father and I have given you -"
"Yes, and it's not right if it's not your way." My teeth are grinding.
"- It's a slap in our faces when you do something like waitress to write after all we've given you with education and opportunities -"
My head is aching. "Please don't do this right before I walk in..."
"- And I know you'll like it once you see the benefits. Everyone works and nobody likes it. That's life -"
"Guess it is," I say out loud to no one in particular.

I walk into the building with my mother's words chasing after me. The hallway is grey and there is a barely audible hum from the fluorescent lights that flicker above. I arrive at my desk and go through the normal ritual. Bag off. Coat off. Turn computer on. Sip of coffee. Sit down. Change shoes. Sip of coffee. Stare at screen. Coffee. I reach into my bag to take out a pen.

"Damnit," I silently curse. Left my phone at home.

On finding the balance between the dank and the light

Charles Bukowski, "The Dirty Old Man," sums up much of the push-pull argument I have with myself in this post-graduate, job-centric period of life in his poem "The Laughing Heart." The fact that Tom Waits reads it is just the cherry. This poem is optimistic and idllyic, which somewhat counters, I feel, Bukowski's "dirty realist" outlook on life. The words show his romantic and hopeful side. He communicates that side of me, and the countless others who have goals that don't fit within the harsh confines of the working world.

Everything is being digitized and monetized. Everything is getting faster. People want fast and cheap. Attention spans are diminishing. Modernized working skills are what outfit the fittest in this new society. Sometimes it feels as though old art forms are fading into the irrelevant. Ambitions are replaced with anxiety and panic attacks over making a living. Ambitions are redirected. Reading "The Laughing Heart" calms me and instills an individualist pursuit to find more in life. Or at least to find a balance that satisfies the laughing heart. I find that Bukowski submits to the fact that without work we cannot live, and the starving artist persona is not at all attractive. He implores the reader to be on the watch for opportunities that afford a little light.

When I first heard of the writer's gravestone reading: "Don't try" I thought he must have believed himself to be a failure - that writing more often than not dead ends. "The Laughing Heart" corrects this assumption, saying that you should know what makes you happy, do it, and look for the opportunities that illuminate the happiness. It may not even lead anywhere, but at least it gave your shitty life a little bit of spark.

The office dead

She was lurching closer, albeit at a slow pace and with a bit of a tired limp, but still progressing on a sure and definite path. From where I stood I could still see a glimmer of remembrance, a subtle nod to who she formerly was before the transformation took place. Difficult to pinpoint the exact moment of descent - like announcing the exact moment in which you become "old."

But at some point, her hair slackened, her coutenance became pallid, veins jutted out and she found herself walking up and down the same hallway without purpose or conviction. Perhaps some twenty-five years ago she saw herself doing something more romantic with her life than succumbing to the nine-to-five plague. Contagious and difficult to avoid without the financial backing to get you out of it.

I wondered if she was still the same inside, having the same thoughts about moving to Europe and writing a modern neo-noir screenplay. A slight wrinkled appeared between her eyes, perhaps when thoughts of the man that was once in her life seared through her brainless waves and she wondered what leaving this city with him would have been like. Leaving the security of stable income and demanding family behind. Sometimes I saw a lustful color in her greyish black eyes. Then I remembered her dream had died long ago.

And she approached closer. I could hear the scratching of her nylon thighs rubbing against one another. Her jaw hung slackly in a silent "o" - perhaps a disguised cry for help from the soul that still existed inside. I continued to stare at my computer screen, nervous and still in the hopes that she wasn't coming for me. But she was standing over me now.

"Did you get your name plate yet?"

I turned around and looked up at her expressionless face and red stained teeth. "No Mary, not yet."

She nodded her head and slowly turned to walk back the way she came. I relaxed a bit and turned back to my computer. Must suck to do the same thing day after day, I thought as I sent off another excel spreadsheet.

I felt my eyes glaze over.

The beginning is just the end working backwards

A tingling sensation snakes its way up my arm and I know that this is the end. This is how I go at age twenty-four.

I didn't even make it to my 25th birthday. Such a shame...it really, really fuckin' sucks. I can feel this abysmal black's engulfing grin devouring me in one gulp, it's all so tragically emo. The freezing hot wash of nausea. The intense disgust. And my book had never been published! It still remained in the dusty back files of my flash drive, becoming lame with every passing year of irrelevance. Without the ego-boosting of a publication, I couldn't look at the stories anymore for fear of self-deprecation. For writing such banal drivel. How do you know when something is truly good? Or even just done?

My reflection says it all. Dark navy pleated pants that sit awkwardly on my hips - not quite high enough to be in-style and not low enough to be comfortable. I feel bloated. They know exactly where to pinch the hip paunch so as to remove any inclination of attractiveness, and to make the wearer conscious of being unattractive. Underwear lines protrude through the pocket-less back, like they're at war with the pants for ugly domination. There's a lot to be said for the security a hooded sweatshirt affords a person.

My image blurs and then buckles.

I'm sitting on the end of my bed. I tried right? Got a stack of rejection letters to prove that. But that doesn't pay the bills, right? Maybe I am a bad writer. It's easy to have a misplaced sense of superiority when you're sitting in a fiction workshop class with frat and sorority kids who write about their wild stripper/keg parties. "It was fuckin' crazy man!"

I look up at the image in front of me one more time, but it's washed away. The room is quiet in the early morning hours, except for the muffled pleas to not be such a failure.

The back and forth argument is confusing. I have a degree, shouldn't I use it? I need to make mom and dad proud after everything they've done for me. Everyone hates their job and why should I be different? That's life. Writing's not a real job. You can't make any money from writing.

It's surprisingly easy to submit to this argument. The practical choice. The "I won't look like a loser at family gatherings" choice. The choice that washes you in the warm glow of approval after telling your parents. I suppose it feels like the "adult" decision and the one that's needed to make after two years of drifting. I'm just being a baby. Yet here I am now. Exposed. Crying. Uncomfortable. But, see, that's the argument! Right there!

I look at myself again. Makeup stains around my eyes and down my cheeks. Sad and pathetic. Pretty comical in retrospect.

Fuck me...it's only the first day.

You really are buried in a suit.