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.