RaverMadness
Bluelighter
Hey hey. Been a long while since I posted anything in here, but here's some stuff I wrote with several glaring typos I still need to fix. Forgive any weird formatting, since I intend to publish this in half-page 'zine form. Enjoy!
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SERVICE
a short story that
could only happen to
someone just like you
1
It’s ten past six. The restaurant
will be dead for another hour (like I’d
like to be), but I’m currently busy
attempting to sponge salsa off my shirt.
They only give you one shirt here because,
I don’t know, they think you have a washing
machine in your cramped apartment and can
wash the thing every day. Of course, if I
had a place like that, I’d already have a
good job and wouldn’t have to work here.
Imagine a restaurant that serves
Mexican food. Now imagine a restaurant
that serves watered down, Americanized
Mexican food to hordes of middle class
fucks who would shit their pants if they
actually had to deal with someone who
didn’t speak their language. That’s where
I work. It’s kind of ironic, seeing as how
the kitchen staff (excepting the kitchen
manager, of course) all have a somewhat
limited grasp of English. It doesn’t
bother me that much, if I was too busy
dragging my family out of hellish poverty
or away from third-world death squads, I
probably wouldn’t have time for learning
the finer points of a language that people
who pay me shit.
One of the managers, Erica, comes
along and gives me another shirt. I’ve
worked here for five or so months with only
one shirt. I’ve brought this up, be she
keeps giving me the same crap about them
not having any in stock in my size. That’s
bullshit. They intentionally gave me a
shirt that’s a size too small, so Mr.
Breadwinner can order his family’s meal
into my tits instead of my face, like a
living drive-thru order box. I get pulled
aside into the manager’s office, and after
a brief sermon about maintaining your
appearance while carrying a fuckload of
salsa to the front of the house, I get
something else to wear. Turns out there’s
a whole cabinet of T-shirts in there.
Although they’ve been lying to me and I
still have to wear a shirt a size too
small, I guess I can postpone laundry for
another day.
Actually, it’s not like I can’t afford
it - I always have money from tips. It’s
funny how people tip. They’re using it to
rate your service when you’re only getting
paid six dollars an hour. It’s a good
thing I attended a public high school where
they teach you important life skills like
sociability, being pleasant and popular.
I’ve never taken a college class. If I’m
just going to graduate and end up like
Erica, a manager at a shitty chain
restaurant in a strip mall, I say fuck it.
Let someone else have my money. My
boyfriend, namely.
Yeah, he’s great. His name’s Pete,
he’s 24, and he’s unemployed. Not the
‘struggling-genius waiting for his big
break unemployed’, or ‘down-on-his-luck
unemployed’, just jobless. Sure, he can
work, but it’s much, much easier for him to
live off me and act like no one will hire
him. As long as he has that stack of
applications he’ll never fill out and
interviews he’ll never go to. Pete never
really expressed any interest in me
romantically or sexually until I got my own
apartment. See, there’s a problem when
you’re living with two other people and you
have a deadbeat boyfriend that lives off
you, trashes your house, and disappears for
a few days when you attempt to discuss
money or bills or something like that.
People are bound to point it out one day.
And they have. No one wants to come over
as long as he’s there, parasitically
attached to TV and video games like he
always is, leaving lights on, not flushing
the toilet, and leaving the place in
shambles. Maybe there’s some basic tasks
you have to give up the ability to do when
they hand out penises, maybe not. I just
think he’s a bastard.
That’s what he does, though. He’ll
hop from relationship to relationship, job
to job (when he’s forced to work), house to
house when people get sick of his petty
shit. The worst thing about him is that on
the surface, he’s likable. Yeah, there he
is, standing there, tall and handsome with
his beautiful clothes and his beautiful
smile and his beautiful eyes, weaseling his
way into your heart, until he drops all
that shit and proceeds to fuck everyone
over for all they’re worth. Poor guy, no
one understands him, everyone’s always
fucking him over. I understand him - he
basically exists just to do nothing for 15
or so hours, then sleep for 10 or 12. I
wouldn’t mind it so much if he actually
gave me some goddamn attention, or failing
that, at least kept the place clean.
The first customers are beginning to
trickle in, which means I get to ignore
them for 10 minutes or so while they make
up their minds what slop to eat. No one’s
been seated in my section, yet, but that’ll
change in a minute, probably while I’m out
smoking. I think I’ve pretty much figured
out how the mind of the average restaurant
customer works. One. Family decides to
acknowledge the fact they’re not talented
enough to cook for themselves. Two.
Family decides to go out to eat. Three.
Family decides that family-owned
restaurants may be laundering money for Al
Qaeda, and decide against eating at
someplace like that. Four. Family thinks
of familiar, non-threatening chain
restaurants they can eat at. Five. Family
decides they want Mexican food without all
the scary, foreign overtones. Six. Family
piles into an SUV, drives down to Casa Del
Sol, where they project all their personal
problems on to you, the wage slave.
I’ve said it before, but families
don’t work. Maybe they did when everyone
lived on farms and needed children to do
farm chores and needed some sort of social
structure between a couple people to live
life, but not today. Today you have both
parents going fucking apeshit slaving away
at jobs they hate. Of course, they’re just
chained to desks, they’re not forced to
memorize menus and deal with abuse and
people’s poorly-concealed personality
disorders, all the while putting on a
plastic smile and taking all this shit in
stride. Yeah, sit their with your office
humor and your vague dissatisfaction over
your career choice, I have to deal with
your fucking children.
Restaurants aren’t daycare centers.
They’re not a place to bring your diseased
children to tear the place apart and hide
silverware under the tables. Your children
suck, and you obviously have no idea how to
raise them. I’m not much for discipline,
but the least you could do is not have your
kids running riot and making someone else’s
life miserable. Let’s face it, you just
had kids because it was socially
acceptable, not because of any parental
instincts you thought you had.
The couple I’m waiting on now didn’t
bring their children. They’re an elderly,
apparently conservative couple. I use
couple in the loosest sense of the word,
since they don’t seen to act like it - I
couldn’t imagine spending the rest of your
life with someone you don’t care about just
because it’s easier to stay there, doing
nothing rather than finding a more
fulfilling way to live your life. Get
married, reproduce, watch your children
reproduce, vote Republican. Retire, avoid
any sort of change or progress, and die.
Have an expensive funeral, where they say
you were a wonderful, loving person who has
gone like a lamb into the arms of God, blah
blah blah.
2
These people are demons from hell.
This guy probably was shipped off to Europe
to wage war on fascists, now he’s barking
orders at me and complaining about the
amount of ice in his drink. Fuck, I guess
being shot at by Nazis isn’t half as bad as
the shit he has to deal with. He’s going
to leave a quarter for a tip, him and his
sagging gut, him and his wife who’s too
apathetic to leave the bastard and find a
place of her own with a couple cats. Why
isn’t my food here? You’ve had grenades
explode in your face, you’ve watched your
fellow soldiers wet their pants and scream
and be cut down by machine gun fire, and
now all you can think about is why
everyone’s against you. Why your order
isn’t ready. Why everyone has to drive so
fast. Greatest generation my ass, I’m not
your slave.
I take my time walking to the kitchen
to get their two orders of fajitas with
Anglo-friendly sauce. No, I’m not going to
spit in their food or do anything to it,
people can always seem to tell, and it’s
not worth getting fired over. Emilio, one
of the line cooks, and I exchange earnest
smiles through the stainless steel portal
under the heat lamps. Emilio’s a decent
guy, married, a kid or two as far as I
know, but I never get to talk to him at any
great lengths. If this were a romance
novel, we’d quit our jobs, run off to Latin
America together to battle government
forces in the hills.
“Oh Emilo, you certainly did an
excellent job of destroying that army
convoy with a homemade rocket launcher!
But don’t you fear the wrath of
Generalissimo Murder?”
Emilo laughed and stroked his
moustache, casually tossing the smoking
rocket launcher he constructed from
dumpstered materials over his shoulder.
“Fear not! Tommorrow, we storm the the
capital! Viva la revolucion!”
Nice thought, but it won’t happen.
I bring the scowling elderly man and
his wife their order with an artificial
smile, and retreat to the dank, mossy cave
of the busser’s station to wait for my next
victim. Customer. Whatever.
When you have a boring job like this,
there’s all sorts of ways to pass the time
that don’t involve tampering with people’s
food. Well, a couple ways. Right now
there’s a placemat with a sketch of a surly
looking policeman on it. To the left of
that, there’s a drawing of stick figures
with TV’s looting a department store. Next
to that, there’s a drawing of a Wal-Mart.
The game goes like this: someone draws
something on the placemat, and another
person comes along and draws something that
“beats” it. A drawing of a pineapple is a
wild card, it beats anything, but can only
be used once per game. One of the bussers,
a vaguely punk-looking kid, says he used to
play this game as a way to pass the time in
study hall. I think about what beats a
policeman, and I draw a southern lunch
counter.
Pete’s probably living it up right
now. Probably out fucking someone else, or
at least attempting to. Everyone warned me
when we started going out, and I should
have listened. Everyone knows what he’s
like, what he does to people, but he worked
his evil magic on me, and now he’s in my
apartment, using electricity I have to pay
for, eating all my food, probably putting
cigarettes out on my couch and laughing
about it. I’m not sure how someone can
fuck up an apartment that bad
unintentionally.
I’m not really a neat freak, and I
have no problem with cleaning up my own
mess, but I have to draw the line
somewhere. At least I should draw the line
somewhere. It’s got to stop, or we’re
going to end up like that married couple,
stuck together by acceptance of fate and
hating every second of it. At least I will
be.
It’s kind of slow tonight, almost
seven and I’m just taking the orders of my
second table. A bunch of guys in their
mid-twenties come in, ordering three dollar
beers and scarfing down free chips. Yeah,
we’re all really impressed that you’re
paying a lot for alcohol in a restaurant.
At least they’re ignoring me at the time,
studying their menus, taking as long as
possible to order. Shit. The guy’s
talking into my chest again. I’m sure it’s
very very hard to lift your head up ever so
slightly, and at least pretend you’re not
staring at my chest. Fucking pervert.
Fucking pervert with a twenty dollar
haircut and their career track straight to
the top, where they can sexually harass as
many people as possible and get away with
all of it.
Ha ha ha. Ha fucking ha. You and
your friends, buddies, co-workers, laughing
it up. Look at him. The guy’s probably
bragging to all of his friends how he got
away with staring at me, and how he’s going
to get my phone number and fuck my brains
out. Yeah, they should all be high-fiving
each other right now and then talking about
football.
The busser’s out having a cigarette
right now. I don’t blame him, Tuesday
nights always suck like this. There aren’t
a whole lot of people eating right now, so
you tend to notice everyone’s little quirks
and foibles. I pick up the barely eaten
fajitas, pick up the three dimes and two
pennies left as a tip, and go back into the
kitchen.
That’s right, fucko. I’m going out
for a smoke, and I don’t care if you need a
refill on your drinks or chips or if
there’s a Band-Aid in your salsa. People
try to do this scam where they put a
foreign object in their food and try to get
a free meal. All the cooks’ Band-Aids are
neon colored - I think the health
department makes sure of this, so it
doesn’t work if they bring their own.
Everyone has horror stories about shit
they found in their food, or shit their
friends or relatives found in their food.
Like we’re all a bunch of evil, scheming
madmen and madwomen who hate you and have
nothing better to do than put cigarette
butts in your ice cream and hope you won’t
notice. That’s not true at all. Well,
maybe sometimes we hate you, but that’s
conditional.
Most of the time it’ll happen to cops
at fast food restaurants. More likely the
action of bored employees than anyone with
revolutionary intent. Most of the time,
it’s a big wad of snot, or they’ll dust the
cops food with weed. These people get
caught all the time. There’s usually a
bunch of bullshit charges that follow -
assaulting a police officer, product
tampering, stuff like that. The funny part
is the police report is usually written by
the cop that got the altered food, where he
has to admit that his fat ass was buying
five hamburgers.
Truth is, most of us need these jobs,
especially the cooks. For some reason, you
can be a dysfunctional drug addict with an
explosive temper and still do very well in
this job. On days the kitchen manager has
off, you’ll sometimes see one of the cooks
chopping lines of speed on the cutting
board. I abstain.
I mean, if we really wanted to get
back at you, for being an asshole, we could
just copy the name off your credit card,
look in the phone book to see where you
live, and show up around 3 a.m. with a bat.
I know I’ve thought of it.
I stamp out the cigarette on the
ground and open the steel fire doors, walk
past the shelves where they store the
kitchen equipment, the malfunctioning ice
machine, and the dishwasher. The
fucktards’ order isn’t ready quite yet, so
I get to hang out in the kitchen for a
minute or so.
Bringing their order back to them, I
can’t help but notice how they’re dressed.
They’re all clothed in forced “casual” wear
which probably cost hundreds of dollars.
Give ‘em headset microphones and teach ‘em
to sing and dance, you’ve got another boy
band.
Four Coronas at three dollars a piece,
steak fajitas, eight dollars, chicken
quesadilla, seven dollars, chicken fajitas,
eight dollars. If there was any justice
right now, they’d all be crushed to death
by the grill of an old Ford truck that’s
hanging above their heads, one of our many
garish decorations.
You wanted Tex-Mex, you wanted
Southwestern, but a bunch of garbage was
vomited onto the walls to add atmosphere.
3
Another table is seated, and there’s
an angry-looking poet guy who sits down at
it. He just wants coffee, that I can deal
with. Why he would want to drink it here
is beyond me.
While getting the coffee, I notice the
placemat game has progressed remarkably.
Termites eat the southern lunch counter.
Exterminator comes and kills the termites.
The exterminator is driven off by a mob of
angry animal rights activists. The animal
rights activists are driven off by a fire
hose. I sketch a dog peeing on the fire
hydrant that the fire hose is attached to.
That makes sense.
The next table I have to serve is that
hot-shit TV weatherman and his fucking
family. Christ, I hate them. Every week
or so they come in here, and he uses his
evil powers as a minor local celebrity to
stroke his own ego. In any other country,
he’d have been eaten by wolves.
His oldest kid is apparently in Boy
Scouts. Apparently, I say because his
father is the kind of person who would buy
the uniform at a thrift store and make the
kid wear it just to prove how much of a
dedicated father he is.
I have to wonder, why Boy Scouts?
Living in a country so obsessed with gun
culture, shouldn’t we logically be teaching
our children how to be elite paramilitary
assassins instead of making them go fucking
camping?
That’s my cue to kill some time in the
bathroom. It’s pretty well hidden from the
customers, which means the fuckers have to
constantly ask me where it is. It would be
quiet in here, if it weren’t for the
overhead speakers. Keeping with the theme
of Americanized Latin culture, here we have
a salsa version of a Sheryl Crow song.
There’s only about 10 songs which loop
constantly over the speakers, but you learn
to tune it out pretty fast.
The bathroom door opens. I’m hidden
in the back stall, languishing under the
fluorescent lights.
“Claire? You in here?”
It’s Erica.
“Just a minute.”
“There’s a party of eleven coming in a
half hour, and I’m seating them in your
section. Just so you know, okay?”
Shit. I can’t hide.
“Sure, be out in a second.”
Erica’s the kind of person it’s
impossible to hate, but I try. Always
perky, always upbeat, nothing phases her.
Break out the carbon monoxide and gas a
hundred adorable puppies to death in front
of her, she’s still smiling, asking if you
enjoyed your meal and to come back real
soon. Then she’d hand a balloon to your
kid. She has to be on some serious fucking
drugs to act that way.
Party of eleven. It’s so vague, so
impersonal, eleven glasses of water, eleven
ramekins of salsa, six baskets of
complimentary tortilla chips. Three tables
together. Who are these people? Birthday
party? Relatives in town? White
separatist militia? Hard-core Satanists
planning their next cattle mutilation?
Guess I’m going to find out pretty soon.
Sean has his hands full talking to the
TV weatherman and his fucking family whose
order I apparently didn’t get around to
taking. Fuck me, I’m too busy preparing
for the onslaught of devil-worshippers I’m
about to serve. Sean’s great, though - he
doesn’t seem to give a fuck what anyone
thinks, and it’s sad to think he’d end up
working here. He’s tall, intimidating, and
plays guitar for a black metal band called
Tantalus. He’ll show you the mural of
dancing skeletons he has tattooed on his
lower back if you ask. Sometimes Sean will
entertain you with his vast knowledge of
serial killers while standing right next to
a bunch of children. He’s fun like that.
In a perfect world, he’d be tooling around
the post-apocalyptic wasteland battling
zombies with a chainsaw (whom I suspect
would bear resemblence to Mister weatherman
over there). As you may already know, the
world is far from perfect.
Important this, important that, do you
know who I am - I’ve heard it all before.
Just because you’re on TV and have perfect
teeth doesn’t mean you’re some kind of
culinary demigod who can make us mortals
cater to your every whim.
Robert, the punk rock busser, is
seating the party of eleven, who turns out
to be a very normal looking extended family
with a few kids in tow. They never seat
the hard-core Satanists in my section, it
seems.
When you’re made to wear a uniform,
you try to express your individuality in
any small way that you can. Robert has a
studded belt, and that’s how you can tell
he’s punk, even though company policy
forbids him from dyeing or charging his
hair into spikes. Other than his habit of
occassionaly disappearing when you need
him, I like Robert.
I guess if I’m digressing into the
personal lives of the people I work with, I
should be thorough. I’ve never seen most
of the waiters or bussers who work the day
shift. Tonya is an aggressively friendly
college student, Miguel is a cook that hurt
himself on the job badly enough that he got
moved to the front of the house, and now he
seats people with his arm in a sling. Kurt
is in his mid-thirties and keeps mostly to
himself, and Robin is a born-again
Christian who’s headed for a nervous
breakdown.
Rounding out the bunch is a handful of
bussers, whose names I keep forgetting due
to the rather high turnover rate. All kids
fresh out of high school with the
collective attention span of a particularly
stupid fruit fly.
That’s what happens, though. High
school is all about socialization, turning
out a new generation of aimless clones who
know how to make change and get a career in
the service industry. Some of them go to
college. Which, of course, does not
guarantee meaningful employment.
4
Then there’s people who realize all
they have to do is find someone who’s been
through a series of fucked-up relationships
and is emotionally vulnerable. They’ll
just slide into place, end up dating you,
fucking you, using your for food and
shelter, all the while doing nothing with
their lives. Wait, I take that back. Two
nights ago, Pete used my money to go to a
strip club with his friends, get drunk, and
vomit inside a mailbox. A week before that
he got drunk and ended up driving his
drunken friend’s car to the 7-11 to get
cigarettes with my money. He jumped a
curb, drove across someone’s yard, and
punctured a tire running over a lawn gnome.
And let’s not forget the 7,000 hours of
video games played.
All his stuff is at my house. He made
sure to spend a lot of time at my apartment
before doing this, though. He probably
figured that his friend was sick of having
the fucker sleeping on his couch rent-free,
and was planning on kicking him out. He
shows up, starts acting the part of my
boyfriend. Thanks to situational
depression on my part, we end up together,
and a week later, his clothes are in my
closet and on my floor, and he’s already
staked out a spot on the couch where he can
piss away the vast majority of his life
staring at a box with funny moving
pictures.
I hate TV now, especially when you
have to watch someone watching the most
asinine shit that’s ever been broadcast.
Cartoons, infomercials, it doesn’t matter.
I think he does it to rest his hands after
playing video games, but still needs
something to stare at. It’s almost like
he’ll go into a trance where he’ll pay
attention to nothing I say. Give me the
proper tools, and I could surgically remove
part of his brain, cook it, feed it to
yuppies at Casa Del Sol, he wouldn’t even
notice.
Another thing he’ll do is pick a video
I have, and watch it about twelve fucking
times in a row. I’m not sure how he does
this. The 10 or so movies I own I can’t
stand to watch.
Shit. I’ve been going through the
motions of waitressing for an hour and a
half now thinking about all this shit.
He’s been living there for about three
months, and just last month, I told him
that he has to get a job and find his own
place, since I can’t support him anymore.
He just ignorned me and disappeared for two
days. He does that, any time you talk
about money or responsibility. Corner him,
and he’ll change the subject. Tell him he
needs to help out, and he’ll just suck up
to you for a few days instead of
conributing.
I’m not knocking unemployment, I’ve
been there before. There was a period of a
month or two when I couldn’t find work and
wasn’t able to pay rent when I lived at my
old apartment with two roommates, but I
actually took the initiative to clean up
the place and do something productive.
Fuck, if I could, I wouldn’t work, and
would find some creative way to occupy my
time. Painting. Writing. Something I’ve
never done before. Anything but sit on my
ass absorbing mass media entertainment.
The reason so many great bands come
out of England is that it’s so easy to get
welfare there. You’re able to devote all
your time to your music, and you end up
pretty fucking good. Sean has to work
inbetween shows, which he gets payed fuck
all for, but he still seems to be, for the
most part, creative and intelligent.
Still, you have to wonder if The Beatles
would have been so sucessful if they all
had jobs in a tire factory.
“We all work in a tire factory.” It
doesn’t sound right. Living in a yellow
submarine doesn’t really reach out to the
working man in the same way, though.
Fuck, I don’t want to end up like
these people. Look at them, with their
families, with their new cars, their houses
in the suburbs, pretending they don’t hate
each other. Mortgages, babies, kids to
support. Still, that seems like what I’m
doing, supporting a kid. Pete is
perpetually sixteen, running around
drinking and fucking and smoking pot and
having a grand old time at my expense. At
least he’s not shitting his pants like a
screaming infant. Yet.
I wouldn’t feel right living off
someone and having them support me. As
much as my job sucks and puts me face to
face with familial units of suburban
halfwits eating familliar food with vaugely
Spanish-sounding names, at least I have
some sort of dignity. Dignity stuffed into
a uniform that’s too tight and forced to
march around taking orders from everyone,
but it’ll get better someday.
Back to reality. Back to the
customers. Oh yes.
Leering businessmen. Leering, fucking
money grubbing businessmen, the same type
of people who stare at me in public. The
same people who mistake me for a
prostitute, even though I’m wearing jeans
and a hoodie. I’m not sure where they got
that idea, maybe they fell asleep during
Soliciting Prositutes 101 back at whatever
Ivy Leauge college spawned them.
Before I go on, let me start by saying
that I’m not a violent person. I’ve only
been in one actual fight, way back in the
tenth grade. I usually think people should
live and let live, with love, peace, unity,
all that hippy crap. Or maybe not.
There’s a breaking point where you
just let go, where your happy-go-lucky,
day-glo petrochemical disposition you hide
behind turns to blind rage. One of these
fuckers grabs my ass, and the next thing I
know, my fist goes straight into his face.
He falls out of his chair onto the colorfly
Southwestern floor, and I let him have the
full brunt of my formerly repressed
hostility.
Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you, you
fucking sex pervert, fuck you, fuck your
friends, fuck your family, fuck everyone
you know. Fuck you.
I don’t hit him again. I wish I had.
That’s probably for the better, seeing as
how I’d probably be spending the night in
jail rather than just losing my job. Erica
shoves me into the kitchen while she
attempts to mollify this poor, poor man who
just had his ass handed to him by a girl.
The last I saw of him, he was bleeding from
the gums.
It would be funny to hear his side of
the story, where he, the innocent
bystander, is savagely assaulted without
cause by the hysterical bitch waitress.
Erica storms into the kicthen. Holy
shit, she’s showing another emotion.
That’s fucking incredible.
What’s gotten into you? Have you lost
your mind? Get out, and don’t come back,
ever, or we’re calling the cops. Lawsuit
this. Lawsuit that. We’ll mail your last
paycheck to you. And don’t come back.
I’m fired, sent out the back door into
the cold night to mill my way through the
parked cars and strip mall shoppers to the
bus stop.
I always get sleepy on the bus, but
this night it’s different. I get to watch
the other bus riders, the elderly with
their revoked licenses, teenage skater kids
without cars, all the other fuckups, just
like me.
The door to the apartment is unlocked.
Pete is gone, as usual, but I’ll stay up.
I’ll be waiting.
5
The police show up an hour or so
later, announced by the unmistakable,
authoritarian three knocks on the door.
“Evening, Miss. We had a report about
a possible domestic dispute coming from one
of these units.”
“Excuse me? I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”
“Are you sure you didn’t hear
anything? We had a few complaints coming
from your neighbors.”
“No, I’ve been asleep since about 10.
I have work tomorrow.”
They weren’t buying it.
“Mind if we come inside and have a
look around?”
“I’d rather you not. I have to get up
awfully early.”
“I see,” the police officer scowled,
“just call us if you hear anything else.”
“I’ll do that. Goodnight, officer.”
I shut the door, biting my tongue to
keep from laughing.
You’re wondering if I killed him. I
didn’t.
If someone who you thought was too
passive, too giving, too nice to say
anything about your shameless mooching
pulls a complete 180 and flips out on you,
it’s a pretty scary sight.
Pete walked in the door close to 2
a.m. when he was hit in the chest by his
own gaming console. It was probably a
pretty cliche thing to throw at him, but it
weighs about four pounds, and with the
controllers removed, makes a handy
projectile.
Sometimes it’s hard to get up the
courage to say something that needs to be
said, and you need to express yourself in
other ways.
“What the fuck was that for?”
I use my best pasted-on waitress smile
on him.
“Sorry I had to do that, but I
couldn’t deal with telling you to leave and
having you ignore me again.”
Pete rubbed his bruised ribs and
stared at me.
“I just want to get this over with.
Our whole relationship is bullshit. All
your stuff is by the door. You have an
hour to move it.”
Still smiling.
Pete wasn’t really prepared for this
kind of confrontation. In fact, I don’t
really rememeber him saying much of
anything during all of this.
I haven’t heard much news of him for
about a month now, but his friends all
think I’m a crazy evil bitch. It happens
sometimes, if you’re the “cool girlfriend”,
you’ll make a few enemies when you break up
with someone like this.
I’m still not allowed back at the
restaurant under penalty of death, the guy
I beat up tried to sue the restaurant,
unsucessfully, and I kept in touch with
Sean. He told me about a place he played
at that needed a bartender, and I’m working
there now. At least I have a counter
between me and the teeming masses.
As far as I know, none of the kitchen
staff there have led an insurgency
movement, no hordes of the undead have
taken over the earth, and the TV weatherman
and his fucking family are alive and well.
One thing I know for certain is that
I’m never letting myself be taken advantage
of again.
(This is a work of complete fiction. Any
similarities to events, persons or places
real or imagined is only a product of the
author’s disordered mind. Don’t do
anything illegal. Disclaimers suck anyway,
so this is me, the author, personally
telling you to fill your veins with as much
methamphetamines as possible and wreck up
your house with a baseball bat before
setting fire to the building. Do it. Now.)
[ 07 November 2002: Message edited by: *CrystalMeth Bunny* ]
--------
SERVICE
a short story that
could only happen to
someone just like you
1
It’s ten past six. The restaurant
will be dead for another hour (like I’d
like to be), but I’m currently busy
attempting to sponge salsa off my shirt.
They only give you one shirt here because,
I don’t know, they think you have a washing
machine in your cramped apartment and can
wash the thing every day. Of course, if I
had a place like that, I’d already have a
good job and wouldn’t have to work here.
Imagine a restaurant that serves
Mexican food. Now imagine a restaurant
that serves watered down, Americanized
Mexican food to hordes of middle class
fucks who would shit their pants if they
actually had to deal with someone who
didn’t speak their language. That’s where
I work. It’s kind of ironic, seeing as how
the kitchen staff (excepting the kitchen
manager, of course) all have a somewhat
limited grasp of English. It doesn’t
bother me that much, if I was too busy
dragging my family out of hellish poverty
or away from third-world death squads, I
probably wouldn’t have time for learning
the finer points of a language that people
who pay me shit.
One of the managers, Erica, comes
along and gives me another shirt. I’ve
worked here for five or so months with only
one shirt. I’ve brought this up, be she
keeps giving me the same crap about them
not having any in stock in my size. That’s
bullshit. They intentionally gave me a
shirt that’s a size too small, so Mr.
Breadwinner can order his family’s meal
into my tits instead of my face, like a
living drive-thru order box. I get pulled
aside into the manager’s office, and after
a brief sermon about maintaining your
appearance while carrying a fuckload of
salsa to the front of the house, I get
something else to wear. Turns out there’s
a whole cabinet of T-shirts in there.
Although they’ve been lying to me and I
still have to wear a shirt a size too
small, I guess I can postpone laundry for
another day.
Actually, it’s not like I can’t afford
it - I always have money from tips. It’s
funny how people tip. They’re using it to
rate your service when you’re only getting
paid six dollars an hour. It’s a good
thing I attended a public high school where
they teach you important life skills like
sociability, being pleasant and popular.
I’ve never taken a college class. If I’m
just going to graduate and end up like
Erica, a manager at a shitty chain
restaurant in a strip mall, I say fuck it.
Let someone else have my money. My
boyfriend, namely.
Yeah, he’s great. His name’s Pete,
he’s 24, and he’s unemployed. Not the
‘struggling-genius waiting for his big
break unemployed’, or ‘down-on-his-luck
unemployed’, just jobless. Sure, he can
work, but it’s much, much easier for him to
live off me and act like no one will hire
him. As long as he has that stack of
applications he’ll never fill out and
interviews he’ll never go to. Pete never
really expressed any interest in me
romantically or sexually until I got my own
apartment. See, there’s a problem when
you’re living with two other people and you
have a deadbeat boyfriend that lives off
you, trashes your house, and disappears for
a few days when you attempt to discuss
money or bills or something like that.
People are bound to point it out one day.
And they have. No one wants to come over
as long as he’s there, parasitically
attached to TV and video games like he
always is, leaving lights on, not flushing
the toilet, and leaving the place in
shambles. Maybe there’s some basic tasks
you have to give up the ability to do when
they hand out penises, maybe not. I just
think he’s a bastard.
That’s what he does, though. He’ll
hop from relationship to relationship, job
to job (when he’s forced to work), house to
house when people get sick of his petty
shit. The worst thing about him is that on
the surface, he’s likable. Yeah, there he
is, standing there, tall and handsome with
his beautiful clothes and his beautiful
smile and his beautiful eyes, weaseling his
way into your heart, until he drops all
that shit and proceeds to fuck everyone
over for all they’re worth. Poor guy, no
one understands him, everyone’s always
fucking him over. I understand him - he
basically exists just to do nothing for 15
or so hours, then sleep for 10 or 12. I
wouldn’t mind it so much if he actually
gave me some goddamn attention, or failing
that, at least kept the place clean.
The first customers are beginning to
trickle in, which means I get to ignore
them for 10 minutes or so while they make
up their minds what slop to eat. No one’s
been seated in my section, yet, but that’ll
change in a minute, probably while I’m out
smoking. I think I’ve pretty much figured
out how the mind of the average restaurant
customer works. One. Family decides to
acknowledge the fact they’re not talented
enough to cook for themselves. Two.
Family decides to go out to eat. Three.
Family decides that family-owned
restaurants may be laundering money for Al
Qaeda, and decide against eating at
someplace like that. Four. Family thinks
of familiar, non-threatening chain
restaurants they can eat at. Five. Family
decides they want Mexican food without all
the scary, foreign overtones. Six. Family
piles into an SUV, drives down to Casa Del
Sol, where they project all their personal
problems on to you, the wage slave.
I’ve said it before, but families
don’t work. Maybe they did when everyone
lived on farms and needed children to do
farm chores and needed some sort of social
structure between a couple people to live
life, but not today. Today you have both
parents going fucking apeshit slaving away
at jobs they hate. Of course, they’re just
chained to desks, they’re not forced to
memorize menus and deal with abuse and
people’s poorly-concealed personality
disorders, all the while putting on a
plastic smile and taking all this shit in
stride. Yeah, sit their with your office
humor and your vague dissatisfaction over
your career choice, I have to deal with
your fucking children.
Restaurants aren’t daycare centers.
They’re not a place to bring your diseased
children to tear the place apart and hide
silverware under the tables. Your children
suck, and you obviously have no idea how to
raise them. I’m not much for discipline,
but the least you could do is not have your
kids running riot and making someone else’s
life miserable. Let’s face it, you just
had kids because it was socially
acceptable, not because of any parental
instincts you thought you had.
The couple I’m waiting on now didn’t
bring their children. They’re an elderly,
apparently conservative couple. I use
couple in the loosest sense of the word,
since they don’t seen to act like it - I
couldn’t imagine spending the rest of your
life with someone you don’t care about just
because it’s easier to stay there, doing
nothing rather than finding a more
fulfilling way to live your life. Get
married, reproduce, watch your children
reproduce, vote Republican. Retire, avoid
any sort of change or progress, and die.
Have an expensive funeral, where they say
you were a wonderful, loving person who has
gone like a lamb into the arms of God, blah
blah blah.
2
These people are demons from hell.
This guy probably was shipped off to Europe
to wage war on fascists, now he’s barking
orders at me and complaining about the
amount of ice in his drink. Fuck, I guess
being shot at by Nazis isn’t half as bad as
the shit he has to deal with. He’s going
to leave a quarter for a tip, him and his
sagging gut, him and his wife who’s too
apathetic to leave the bastard and find a
place of her own with a couple cats. Why
isn’t my food here? You’ve had grenades
explode in your face, you’ve watched your
fellow soldiers wet their pants and scream
and be cut down by machine gun fire, and
now all you can think about is why
everyone’s against you. Why your order
isn’t ready. Why everyone has to drive so
fast. Greatest generation my ass, I’m not
your slave.
I take my time walking to the kitchen
to get their two orders of fajitas with
Anglo-friendly sauce. No, I’m not going to
spit in their food or do anything to it,
people can always seem to tell, and it’s
not worth getting fired over. Emilio, one
of the line cooks, and I exchange earnest
smiles through the stainless steel portal
under the heat lamps. Emilio’s a decent
guy, married, a kid or two as far as I
know, but I never get to talk to him at any
great lengths. If this were a romance
novel, we’d quit our jobs, run off to Latin
America together to battle government
forces in the hills.
“Oh Emilo, you certainly did an
excellent job of destroying that army
convoy with a homemade rocket launcher!
But don’t you fear the wrath of
Generalissimo Murder?”
Emilo laughed and stroked his
moustache, casually tossing the smoking
rocket launcher he constructed from
dumpstered materials over his shoulder.
“Fear not! Tommorrow, we storm the the
capital! Viva la revolucion!”
Nice thought, but it won’t happen.
I bring the scowling elderly man and
his wife their order with an artificial
smile, and retreat to the dank, mossy cave
of the busser’s station to wait for my next
victim. Customer. Whatever.
When you have a boring job like this,
there’s all sorts of ways to pass the time
that don’t involve tampering with people’s
food. Well, a couple ways. Right now
there’s a placemat with a sketch of a surly
looking policeman on it. To the left of
that, there’s a drawing of stick figures
with TV’s looting a department store. Next
to that, there’s a drawing of a Wal-Mart.
The game goes like this: someone draws
something on the placemat, and another
person comes along and draws something that
“beats” it. A drawing of a pineapple is a
wild card, it beats anything, but can only
be used once per game. One of the bussers,
a vaguely punk-looking kid, says he used to
play this game as a way to pass the time in
study hall. I think about what beats a
policeman, and I draw a southern lunch
counter.
Pete’s probably living it up right
now. Probably out fucking someone else, or
at least attempting to. Everyone warned me
when we started going out, and I should
have listened. Everyone knows what he’s
like, what he does to people, but he worked
his evil magic on me, and now he’s in my
apartment, using electricity I have to pay
for, eating all my food, probably putting
cigarettes out on my couch and laughing
about it. I’m not sure how someone can
fuck up an apartment that bad
unintentionally.
I’m not really a neat freak, and I
have no problem with cleaning up my own
mess, but I have to draw the line
somewhere. At least I should draw the line
somewhere. It’s got to stop, or we’re
going to end up like that married couple,
stuck together by acceptance of fate and
hating every second of it. At least I will
be.
It’s kind of slow tonight, almost
seven and I’m just taking the orders of my
second table. A bunch of guys in their
mid-twenties come in, ordering three dollar
beers and scarfing down free chips. Yeah,
we’re all really impressed that you’re
paying a lot for alcohol in a restaurant.
At least they’re ignoring me at the time,
studying their menus, taking as long as
possible to order. Shit. The guy’s
talking into my chest again. I’m sure it’s
very very hard to lift your head up ever so
slightly, and at least pretend you’re not
staring at my chest. Fucking pervert.
Fucking pervert with a twenty dollar
haircut and their career track straight to
the top, where they can sexually harass as
many people as possible and get away with
all of it.
Ha ha ha. Ha fucking ha. You and
your friends, buddies, co-workers, laughing
it up. Look at him. The guy’s probably
bragging to all of his friends how he got
away with staring at me, and how he’s going
to get my phone number and fuck my brains
out. Yeah, they should all be high-fiving
each other right now and then talking about
football.
The busser’s out having a cigarette
right now. I don’t blame him, Tuesday
nights always suck like this. There aren’t
a whole lot of people eating right now, so
you tend to notice everyone’s little quirks
and foibles. I pick up the barely eaten
fajitas, pick up the three dimes and two
pennies left as a tip, and go back into the
kitchen.
That’s right, fucko. I’m going out
for a smoke, and I don’t care if you need a
refill on your drinks or chips or if
there’s a Band-Aid in your salsa. People
try to do this scam where they put a
foreign object in their food and try to get
a free meal. All the cooks’ Band-Aids are
neon colored - I think the health
department makes sure of this, so it
doesn’t work if they bring their own.
Everyone has horror stories about shit
they found in their food, or shit their
friends or relatives found in their food.
Like we’re all a bunch of evil, scheming
madmen and madwomen who hate you and have
nothing better to do than put cigarette
butts in your ice cream and hope you won’t
notice. That’s not true at all. Well,
maybe sometimes we hate you, but that’s
conditional.
Most of the time it’ll happen to cops
at fast food restaurants. More likely the
action of bored employees than anyone with
revolutionary intent. Most of the time,
it’s a big wad of snot, or they’ll dust the
cops food with weed. These people get
caught all the time. There’s usually a
bunch of bullshit charges that follow -
assaulting a police officer, product
tampering, stuff like that. The funny part
is the police report is usually written by
the cop that got the altered food, where he
has to admit that his fat ass was buying
five hamburgers.
Truth is, most of us need these jobs,
especially the cooks. For some reason, you
can be a dysfunctional drug addict with an
explosive temper and still do very well in
this job. On days the kitchen manager has
off, you’ll sometimes see one of the cooks
chopping lines of speed on the cutting
board. I abstain.
I mean, if we really wanted to get
back at you, for being an asshole, we could
just copy the name off your credit card,
look in the phone book to see where you
live, and show up around 3 a.m. with a bat.
I know I’ve thought of it.
I stamp out the cigarette on the
ground and open the steel fire doors, walk
past the shelves where they store the
kitchen equipment, the malfunctioning ice
machine, and the dishwasher. The
fucktards’ order isn’t ready quite yet, so
I get to hang out in the kitchen for a
minute or so.
Bringing their order back to them, I
can’t help but notice how they’re dressed.
They’re all clothed in forced “casual” wear
which probably cost hundreds of dollars.
Give ‘em headset microphones and teach ‘em
to sing and dance, you’ve got another boy
band.
Four Coronas at three dollars a piece,
steak fajitas, eight dollars, chicken
quesadilla, seven dollars, chicken fajitas,
eight dollars. If there was any justice
right now, they’d all be crushed to death
by the grill of an old Ford truck that’s
hanging above their heads, one of our many
garish decorations.
You wanted Tex-Mex, you wanted
Southwestern, but a bunch of garbage was
vomited onto the walls to add atmosphere.
3
Another table is seated, and there’s
an angry-looking poet guy who sits down at
it. He just wants coffee, that I can deal
with. Why he would want to drink it here
is beyond me.
While getting the coffee, I notice the
placemat game has progressed remarkably.
Termites eat the southern lunch counter.
Exterminator comes and kills the termites.
The exterminator is driven off by a mob of
angry animal rights activists. The animal
rights activists are driven off by a fire
hose. I sketch a dog peeing on the fire
hydrant that the fire hose is attached to.
That makes sense.
The next table I have to serve is that
hot-shit TV weatherman and his fucking
family. Christ, I hate them. Every week
or so they come in here, and he uses his
evil powers as a minor local celebrity to
stroke his own ego. In any other country,
he’d have been eaten by wolves.
His oldest kid is apparently in Boy
Scouts. Apparently, I say because his
father is the kind of person who would buy
the uniform at a thrift store and make the
kid wear it just to prove how much of a
dedicated father he is.
I have to wonder, why Boy Scouts?
Living in a country so obsessed with gun
culture, shouldn’t we logically be teaching
our children how to be elite paramilitary
assassins instead of making them go fucking
camping?
That’s my cue to kill some time in the
bathroom. It’s pretty well hidden from the
customers, which means the fuckers have to
constantly ask me where it is. It would be
quiet in here, if it weren’t for the
overhead speakers. Keeping with the theme
of Americanized Latin culture, here we have
a salsa version of a Sheryl Crow song.
There’s only about 10 songs which loop
constantly over the speakers, but you learn
to tune it out pretty fast.
The bathroom door opens. I’m hidden
in the back stall, languishing under the
fluorescent lights.
“Claire? You in here?”
It’s Erica.
“Just a minute.”
“There’s a party of eleven coming in a
half hour, and I’m seating them in your
section. Just so you know, okay?”
Shit. I can’t hide.
“Sure, be out in a second.”
Erica’s the kind of person it’s
impossible to hate, but I try. Always
perky, always upbeat, nothing phases her.
Break out the carbon monoxide and gas a
hundred adorable puppies to death in front
of her, she’s still smiling, asking if you
enjoyed your meal and to come back real
soon. Then she’d hand a balloon to your
kid. She has to be on some serious fucking
drugs to act that way.
Party of eleven. It’s so vague, so
impersonal, eleven glasses of water, eleven
ramekins of salsa, six baskets of
complimentary tortilla chips. Three tables
together. Who are these people? Birthday
party? Relatives in town? White
separatist militia? Hard-core Satanists
planning their next cattle mutilation?
Guess I’m going to find out pretty soon.
Sean has his hands full talking to the
TV weatherman and his fucking family whose
order I apparently didn’t get around to
taking. Fuck me, I’m too busy preparing
for the onslaught of devil-worshippers I’m
about to serve. Sean’s great, though - he
doesn’t seem to give a fuck what anyone
thinks, and it’s sad to think he’d end up
working here. He’s tall, intimidating, and
plays guitar for a black metal band called
Tantalus. He’ll show you the mural of
dancing skeletons he has tattooed on his
lower back if you ask. Sometimes Sean will
entertain you with his vast knowledge of
serial killers while standing right next to
a bunch of children. He’s fun like that.
In a perfect world, he’d be tooling around
the post-apocalyptic wasteland battling
zombies with a chainsaw (whom I suspect
would bear resemblence to Mister weatherman
over there). As you may already know, the
world is far from perfect.
Important this, important that, do you
know who I am - I’ve heard it all before.
Just because you’re on TV and have perfect
teeth doesn’t mean you’re some kind of
culinary demigod who can make us mortals
cater to your every whim.
Robert, the punk rock busser, is
seating the party of eleven, who turns out
to be a very normal looking extended family
with a few kids in tow. They never seat
the hard-core Satanists in my section, it
seems.
When you’re made to wear a uniform,
you try to express your individuality in
any small way that you can. Robert has a
studded belt, and that’s how you can tell
he’s punk, even though company policy
forbids him from dyeing or charging his
hair into spikes. Other than his habit of
occassionaly disappearing when you need
him, I like Robert.
I guess if I’m digressing into the
personal lives of the people I work with, I
should be thorough. I’ve never seen most
of the waiters or bussers who work the day
shift. Tonya is an aggressively friendly
college student, Miguel is a cook that hurt
himself on the job badly enough that he got
moved to the front of the house, and now he
seats people with his arm in a sling. Kurt
is in his mid-thirties and keeps mostly to
himself, and Robin is a born-again
Christian who’s headed for a nervous
breakdown.
Rounding out the bunch is a handful of
bussers, whose names I keep forgetting due
to the rather high turnover rate. All kids
fresh out of high school with the
collective attention span of a particularly
stupid fruit fly.
That’s what happens, though. High
school is all about socialization, turning
out a new generation of aimless clones who
know how to make change and get a career in
the service industry. Some of them go to
college. Which, of course, does not
guarantee meaningful employment.
4
Then there’s people who realize all
they have to do is find someone who’s been
through a series of fucked-up relationships
and is emotionally vulnerable. They’ll
just slide into place, end up dating you,
fucking you, using your for food and
shelter, all the while doing nothing with
their lives. Wait, I take that back. Two
nights ago, Pete used my money to go to a
strip club with his friends, get drunk, and
vomit inside a mailbox. A week before that
he got drunk and ended up driving his
drunken friend’s car to the 7-11 to get
cigarettes with my money. He jumped a
curb, drove across someone’s yard, and
punctured a tire running over a lawn gnome.
And let’s not forget the 7,000 hours of
video games played.
All his stuff is at my house. He made
sure to spend a lot of time at my apartment
before doing this, though. He probably
figured that his friend was sick of having
the fucker sleeping on his couch rent-free,
and was planning on kicking him out. He
shows up, starts acting the part of my
boyfriend. Thanks to situational
depression on my part, we end up together,
and a week later, his clothes are in my
closet and on my floor, and he’s already
staked out a spot on the couch where he can
piss away the vast majority of his life
staring at a box with funny moving
pictures.
I hate TV now, especially when you
have to watch someone watching the most
asinine shit that’s ever been broadcast.
Cartoons, infomercials, it doesn’t matter.
I think he does it to rest his hands after
playing video games, but still needs
something to stare at. It’s almost like
he’ll go into a trance where he’ll pay
attention to nothing I say. Give me the
proper tools, and I could surgically remove
part of his brain, cook it, feed it to
yuppies at Casa Del Sol, he wouldn’t even
notice.
Another thing he’ll do is pick a video
I have, and watch it about twelve fucking
times in a row. I’m not sure how he does
this. The 10 or so movies I own I can’t
stand to watch.
Shit. I’ve been going through the
motions of waitressing for an hour and a
half now thinking about all this shit.
He’s been living there for about three
months, and just last month, I told him
that he has to get a job and find his own
place, since I can’t support him anymore.
He just ignorned me and disappeared for two
days. He does that, any time you talk
about money or responsibility. Corner him,
and he’ll change the subject. Tell him he
needs to help out, and he’ll just suck up
to you for a few days instead of
conributing.
I’m not knocking unemployment, I’ve
been there before. There was a period of a
month or two when I couldn’t find work and
wasn’t able to pay rent when I lived at my
old apartment with two roommates, but I
actually took the initiative to clean up
the place and do something productive.
Fuck, if I could, I wouldn’t work, and
would find some creative way to occupy my
time. Painting. Writing. Something I’ve
never done before. Anything but sit on my
ass absorbing mass media entertainment.
The reason so many great bands come
out of England is that it’s so easy to get
welfare there. You’re able to devote all
your time to your music, and you end up
pretty fucking good. Sean has to work
inbetween shows, which he gets payed fuck
all for, but he still seems to be, for the
most part, creative and intelligent.
Still, you have to wonder if The Beatles
would have been so sucessful if they all
had jobs in a tire factory.
“We all work in a tire factory.” It
doesn’t sound right. Living in a yellow
submarine doesn’t really reach out to the
working man in the same way, though.
Fuck, I don’t want to end up like
these people. Look at them, with their
families, with their new cars, their houses
in the suburbs, pretending they don’t hate
each other. Mortgages, babies, kids to
support. Still, that seems like what I’m
doing, supporting a kid. Pete is
perpetually sixteen, running around
drinking and fucking and smoking pot and
having a grand old time at my expense. At
least he’s not shitting his pants like a
screaming infant. Yet.
I wouldn’t feel right living off
someone and having them support me. As
much as my job sucks and puts me face to
face with familial units of suburban
halfwits eating familliar food with vaugely
Spanish-sounding names, at least I have
some sort of dignity. Dignity stuffed into
a uniform that’s too tight and forced to
march around taking orders from everyone,
but it’ll get better someday.
Back to reality. Back to the
customers. Oh yes.
Leering businessmen. Leering, fucking
money grubbing businessmen, the same type
of people who stare at me in public. The
same people who mistake me for a
prostitute, even though I’m wearing jeans
and a hoodie. I’m not sure where they got
that idea, maybe they fell asleep during
Soliciting Prositutes 101 back at whatever
Ivy Leauge college spawned them.
Before I go on, let me start by saying
that I’m not a violent person. I’ve only
been in one actual fight, way back in the
tenth grade. I usually think people should
live and let live, with love, peace, unity,
all that hippy crap. Or maybe not.
There’s a breaking point where you
just let go, where your happy-go-lucky,
day-glo petrochemical disposition you hide
behind turns to blind rage. One of these
fuckers grabs my ass, and the next thing I
know, my fist goes straight into his face.
He falls out of his chair onto the colorfly
Southwestern floor, and I let him have the
full brunt of my formerly repressed
hostility.
Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you, you
fucking sex pervert, fuck you, fuck your
friends, fuck your family, fuck everyone
you know. Fuck you.
I don’t hit him again. I wish I had.
That’s probably for the better, seeing as
how I’d probably be spending the night in
jail rather than just losing my job. Erica
shoves me into the kitchen while she
attempts to mollify this poor, poor man who
just had his ass handed to him by a girl.
The last I saw of him, he was bleeding from
the gums.
It would be funny to hear his side of
the story, where he, the innocent
bystander, is savagely assaulted without
cause by the hysterical bitch waitress.
Erica storms into the kicthen. Holy
shit, she’s showing another emotion.
That’s fucking incredible.
What’s gotten into you? Have you lost
your mind? Get out, and don’t come back,
ever, or we’re calling the cops. Lawsuit
this. Lawsuit that. We’ll mail your last
paycheck to you. And don’t come back.
I’m fired, sent out the back door into
the cold night to mill my way through the
parked cars and strip mall shoppers to the
bus stop.
I always get sleepy on the bus, but
this night it’s different. I get to watch
the other bus riders, the elderly with
their revoked licenses, teenage skater kids
without cars, all the other fuckups, just
like me.
The door to the apartment is unlocked.
Pete is gone, as usual, but I’ll stay up.
I’ll be waiting.
5
The police show up an hour or so
later, announced by the unmistakable,
authoritarian three knocks on the door.
“Evening, Miss. We had a report about
a possible domestic dispute coming from one
of these units.”
“Excuse me? I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”
“Are you sure you didn’t hear
anything? We had a few complaints coming
from your neighbors.”
“No, I’ve been asleep since about 10.
I have work tomorrow.”
They weren’t buying it.
“Mind if we come inside and have a
look around?”
“I’d rather you not. I have to get up
awfully early.”
“I see,” the police officer scowled,
“just call us if you hear anything else.”
“I’ll do that. Goodnight, officer.”
I shut the door, biting my tongue to
keep from laughing.
You’re wondering if I killed him. I
didn’t.
If someone who you thought was too
passive, too giving, too nice to say
anything about your shameless mooching
pulls a complete 180 and flips out on you,
it’s a pretty scary sight.
Pete walked in the door close to 2
a.m. when he was hit in the chest by his
own gaming console. It was probably a
pretty cliche thing to throw at him, but it
weighs about four pounds, and with the
controllers removed, makes a handy
projectile.
Sometimes it’s hard to get up the
courage to say something that needs to be
said, and you need to express yourself in
other ways.
“What the fuck was that for?”
I use my best pasted-on waitress smile
on him.
“Sorry I had to do that, but I
couldn’t deal with telling you to leave and
having you ignore me again.”
Pete rubbed his bruised ribs and
stared at me.
“I just want to get this over with.
Our whole relationship is bullshit. All
your stuff is by the door. You have an
hour to move it.”
Still smiling.
Pete wasn’t really prepared for this
kind of confrontation. In fact, I don’t
really rememeber him saying much of
anything during all of this.
I haven’t heard much news of him for
about a month now, but his friends all
think I’m a crazy evil bitch. It happens
sometimes, if you’re the “cool girlfriend”,
you’ll make a few enemies when you break up
with someone like this.
I’m still not allowed back at the
restaurant under penalty of death, the guy
I beat up tried to sue the restaurant,
unsucessfully, and I kept in touch with
Sean. He told me about a place he played
at that needed a bartender, and I’m working
there now. At least I have a counter
between me and the teeming masses.
As far as I know, none of the kitchen
staff there have led an insurgency
movement, no hordes of the undead have
taken over the earth, and the TV weatherman
and his fucking family are alive and well.
One thing I know for certain is that
I’m never letting myself be taken advantage
of again.
(This is a work of complete fiction. Any
similarities to events, persons or places
real or imagined is only a product of the
author’s disordered mind. Don’t do
anything illegal. Disclaimers suck anyway,
so this is me, the author, personally
telling you to fill your veins with as much
methamphetamines as possible and wreck up
your house with a baseball bat before
setting fire to the building. Do it. Now.)
[ 07 November 2002: Message edited by: *CrystalMeth Bunny* ]
