So I'd thought up this great, elaborate essay using the idea behind the following Mythbusters' clip as a metaphor for the spectrum of occupation from packaging cosmetics to changing diapers/potty training, and it would build elegantly from the previous post about family vs. Bud. However, and following The Hyneman's example, rather than Adam's, I have decided to keep it simply and let the video prompt your imagination on its own, and leave well enough alone.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Mythbusters polishing poop; a metaphor for my temporary employment (and working for Bud, for that matter):
Showing posts with label Bud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bud. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Family vs. the Edict of Bud
There's nothing like campfire smoke and one-on-one time with you five-year old boy for granting articulation and/or first-hand evidence to a philosophy, and I'm not talking about Jacob's philosophy, of which there is endless supply, but to this:
I work to live; I don't live to work.
I've always felt this way, but never thought it would contribute to the decision of whether to stick with or quit my employment. It wasn't the primary issue, as you should know, but lack of pay, which I've made pretty clear and public. Over the last three weeks, I really haven't thought too much more about it; I've felt very comfortable in my decision (even if uncomfortable with unemployment). But last night and this morning, I got a little reinforcing boost.
Our ward had its annual Father and Son Camp Out last night. Jacob and I haven't attended one of these yet, despite annual opportunities. I realize now what I've been missing. We had a blast! Funnily enough, I don't think we would have gone if we had money and a career and whatever else. There's something about scraping for absolutely everything that makes you appreciate the little things a lot more. I mean little things like M&Ms or enough gas in the car to drive to grandma and grandpa's for no more reason than saying hi. Or the six bucks we anticipated as toll to drive up the canyon to the campground. (Thankfully, we already had tent and sleeping bags; that would have been a lot more than just what we could find by scraping!)
"We can't afford six dollars;" "Maybe we need to afford it;" "How?" "Let's dig for quarters;" "Do you even want to go?" "I think we need to go;" "Jacob needs to get out of the house;" "I need to get out of the house;" "Do you even want to go?" "Of course. It will be fun;" "Let's dig for quarters."
We found out shortly thereafter that when going to this particular campground, owned by the LDS church, all we had to do is say so at the ranger's pillbox and they'd let us pass.
We did, they did, and Jacob and I drove up the canyon, windows down, listening to The Great Brain and eating M&Ms (we couldn't afford those either).
About a month ago--a little more perhaps--I got in bit of trouble with the Bud. (You all remember Bud?) He thought I wasn't putting enough effort into my work. (!) (And when it comes right down to it, I'm pretty sure he's grateful he doesn't have me anymore, as now he doesn't have to pay me! In fact, several times over the last year he's even complained TO ME about how much he has to pay me ("Oh, but you're worth it, Joe," he'd chase with every time).) This is part of what he said:
I have put my family second on numerous occasions to make sure that yours is taken care of. You must make this your number one priority. Even if you have to do something uncomfortable over and over again.
Hmm. I don't remember that in my job description. And he was trying to guilt me into it! Am I required to sacrifice my family just because he sacrificed his? This is an extreme that has led more than once to the end of families, some of whom I know quite personally. There's no way I'm going to let that happen to me. If my family is the most important thing, why in the freaking world would I not put them first?
And I'm not talking about the balance of taking care of them via employment and whatever else, like on the airplane how you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself before your kids. I WANT to work! But we're talking about extremes. Here's the other end of the spectrum (on the far right is The Edict of Bud):
(on the left)
Unemployment (and I mean doing absolutely nothing), but having family and going on camp outs and wrestling with kids and making dinner for my wife.
It's Angie who always deals in extremes--black and white. Period. Done. I, on the other hand, am always looking at subtleties and gray areas, where I feel I find 98% of the world. Well, this must be part of that remaining two percent.
I work to live; I don't live to work, because homeless and together is a lot better than rich and alone. Last night proved it. Period.
Family first!
I work to live; I don't live to work.
I've always felt this way, but never thought it would contribute to the decision of whether to stick with or quit my employment. It wasn't the primary issue, as you should know, but lack of pay, which I've made pretty clear and public. Over the last three weeks, I really haven't thought too much more about it; I've felt very comfortable in my decision (even if uncomfortable with unemployment). But last night and this morning, I got a little reinforcing boost.
Our ward had its annual Father and Son Camp Out last night. Jacob and I haven't attended one of these yet, despite annual opportunities. I realize now what I've been missing. We had a blast! Funnily enough, I don't think we would have gone if we had money and a career and whatever else. There's something about scraping for absolutely everything that makes you appreciate the little things a lot more. I mean little things like M&Ms or enough gas in the car to drive to grandma and grandpa's for no more reason than saying hi. Or the six bucks we anticipated as toll to drive up the canyon to the campground. (Thankfully, we already had tent and sleeping bags; that would have been a lot more than just what we could find by scraping!)
"We can't afford six dollars;" "Maybe we need to afford it;" "How?" "Let's dig for quarters;" "Do you even want to go?" "I think we need to go;" "Jacob needs to get out of the house;" "I need to get out of the house;" "Do you even want to go?" "Of course. It will be fun;" "Let's dig for quarters."
We found out shortly thereafter that when going to this particular campground, owned by the LDS church, all we had to do is say so at the ranger's pillbox and they'd let us pass.
We did, they did, and Jacob and I drove up the canyon, windows down, listening to The Great Brain and eating M&Ms (we couldn't afford those either).
About a month ago--a little more perhaps--I got in bit of trouble with the Bud. (You all remember Bud?) He thought I wasn't putting enough effort into my work. (!) (And when it comes right down to it, I'm pretty sure he's grateful he doesn't have me anymore, as now he doesn't have to pay me! In fact, several times over the last year he's even complained TO ME about how much he has to pay me ("Oh, but you're worth it, Joe," he'd chase with every time).) This is part of what he said:
I have put my family second on numerous occasions to make sure that yours is taken care of. You must make this your number one priority. Even if you have to do something uncomfortable over and over again.
Hmm. I don't remember that in my job description. And he was trying to guilt me into it! Am I required to sacrifice my family just because he sacrificed his? This is an extreme that has led more than once to the end of families, some of whom I know quite personally. There's no way I'm going to let that happen to me. If my family is the most important thing, why in the freaking world would I not put them first?
And I'm not talking about the balance of taking care of them via employment and whatever else, like on the airplane how you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself before your kids. I WANT to work! But we're talking about extremes. Here's the other end of the spectrum (on the far right is The Edict of Bud):
(on the left)
Unemployment (and I mean doing absolutely nothing), but having family and going on camp outs and wrestling with kids and making dinner for my wife.
It's Angie who always deals in extremes--black and white. Period. Done. I, on the other hand, am always looking at subtleties and gray areas, where I feel I find 98% of the world. Well, this must be part of that remaining two percent.
I work to live; I don't live to work, because homeless and together is a lot better than rich and alone. Last night proved it. Period.
Family first!
Friday, September 10, 2010
Doubt
I watched a movie last night. Woo-hoo, right? Well, typically, upon finishing a book or movie—and I can’t say this is the case for just any book or movie, but one that HITS me—I like to write about it. I don’t like the word “review,” but I probably ought to call a spade a ... well, not a SPADE, because that’s simply not enough, and it’s so cliché. (the Greeks, from what I understand, call figs figs, but I think the OED sites the most appropriate for the day:) So I will call a spade a “bloody shovel,” because this is likely to be significantly more than a movie review.
In the past (and still), upon a great book/movie experience, I’ve emailed a fellow literary conspirator with my thoughts, or simply given expansion to a recommendation (I rarely “review” that which I don’t care for, mostly, because I rarely finish that which I don’t care for, and I’m not going to recommend a movie that I don’t— sorry, I’ll move on). When the show or book’s really good—or impacting, at least—I frequently wish I were back with my old kids at the Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy and that we might watch, appreciate, tear to pieces, and get it. Well, I don’t have SASA. Heck, I don’t have a school at all. OR students, for that matter. I do, however, have fellow literary conspirators, and that’s whom this is seeking.
Back to the lack of a school:
Every review or critique—mine, anyway—needs a context, else there’s no understanding for the nature of the impression, or, in this particular case, the CRATER. So, I’m couching this movie review in unemployment—and not because that’s the title of my freaking BLOG and that I’m particularly interested in maintaining a theme, but because my COUCH—the very one from which I watched the movie (or at least it’s pillows which supported my view from the floor, because my back was hurting) —IS unemployment. Or my glasses are, at least.
So I watched John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt. I loved it. Period. (DISCLAIMER: if you have any thoughts that my review might be anything more than totally subjective and if you might be offended thereby, then, please, stop reading.) So, yeah, it was great. Here’s what I think (excuse the general generic-ness of the beginnings):
The performances are wonderful. I’m a big fan of the accents, for one thing. And Philip Seymour Hoffman—man! —really dug into his Father Flynn sermons. When it comes to it, and despite how great the interactions between him and his co-stars might be, these sermons were the highlight. I particularly enjoyed how each (four, I think, altogether, and two significantly better than the others) seemed to usher in the next act, which, of course, makes sense, as it was adapted from Shanley’s own stage play. (I’d love to see that.) More on the sermons later.
I appreciated Shanley’s selection for historical context. It would have been easy, and a copout, to put it all up in a more modern time, what with the Catholic church’s bad press with priests and scandals and stuff. What’s great about putting it so much earlier is he firmly points out that the movie’s not about the potential scandal (and this reinforced by the enacted, non-lexical iteration/rendering of the title in the abrupt and perfectly-placed End), but the swirls of leaves and feathers that surround it.
That being the case, I’m brought up to probably my biggest point of the movie (and thereby explain my general inability to write of the movie concisely and fluidly). But first, a word on art and poetry (please refrain from groaning):
For me—and I’ve tried to instill this in my students—art is, and should be, personal. Who cares how great a work or event or person is if it/he/she doesn’t mean something to you (case in indirect point: while I was amazed by Yann Martel’s most recent book, Beatrice and Virgil, I couldn’t understand why he—so not-a-Jew—should write such an evidently personal account of the Holocaust, and in such a way as to make it appear that the book was no more than a writing exercise designed to determine his ability at conveying a significant piece of history—it could have even been randomly selected, but I guess he was looking for audience—as artistic metaphor!)? It’s difficult for me to say exactly why any of my very favorite works are favorite. I can point out what I think makes them great or impressive, but the personal connection is the clincher. The emotional connection is what elevates the work to—another cliché—more than the sum of its constituent parts. That’s what’s happened with Doubt. Cinematography. Location. Season. Cast. Delivery. Pacing. Metaphor. Motif. Blah. Blah. Blah. Just pieces. Take the blinding old nun, for example, and her relationship with Sister Beauvier (Streep) Maybe it was just a tool, but were she not there, Beauvier would look like the dragon Hoffman’s Flynn labels her as from the beginning. But she’s not! She’s human! Though we very nearly in fact and indeed see her in no more human capacity than a great fire-breathing lizard. And her relationship with Amy Adam’s character, Sister James. This woman—Streep’s—is a good person, trying to do what’s right, but she screws up. She points the finger (echoing, conversely, the great God-finger from the gossip sermon) at Flynn.
So back to the sermons. The two strongest are the first, regarding the general issue of doubt, and later—the second? —about gossip (this one because it was just amazingly-well presented by Hoffman—yes, AMAZING). Obviously, that first sermon sets up the premise for the whole movie, and how it permeates so much of everything—like those scattered feathers of gossip do—throughout every little nook and cranny of the plot, its characters, and into the very fabric of the whole construct. Really, it’s a very small movie, technically speaking. A Hulme or Pound compared to the epoch operatics of a Tolkein or Steinbeck. But, and just like “Town Sky-Line” or “The Garrett,” it’s SO * MUCH * MORE.
So what?
(This isn’t changing the subject. Really.)
While I served my LDS mission in Italy, many of the other missionaries and I collected quotations and anecdotes from and about big members of the church, generally and particularly regarding Joseph Smith. My favorite of these, likely apocryphal, and not about Smith, regarded a current member of the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Dallin H Oaks:
Oaks had just been called to the Quorum of the Twelve and, as such, delivered his first General Conference talk. He stepped into an elevator soon thereafter and was joined by President Kimball, who congratulated him on Oaks’ address. Oaks was gratified and smiled. “Thank you very much,” he said. President Kimball then said, rather abruptly, “Therefore what?” “Pardon me?” Oaks asked. “Therefore what?” Kimball repeated. “It was a wonderful talk, but therefore what?”
The point, which I took when I heard the story and hold still is this: it doesn’t matter how eloquent or scholarly or humorous or whatever a presentation or work may be if it doesn’t ask anything of the audience (sort of takes down to nothing—if we apply this to the act of creating art—making art for the sake of making art and doing it for self (though I’ve got opinions there, too—another time)). So, the movie, Doubt. Therefore what? Well, here it is. Doubt. That’s the answer—the therefore-what: DOUBT. Duh—which is nearly as universally applicable as is my blog title, only less generic, as it turns out.
So why “doubt,” if this is such a personal work for me? And that first sermon of Father Flynn’s nails the big question. Is IT—doubt—a good thing, an endowment from our Maker—forcing us into care and caution? Is it the divining force toward humility, wariness, gratitude? The problem with this is that, from my understanding, caution is the opposite of impetuousness, and shouldn’t we, as testifying Christians (I speak of me, here), heedlessly/impetuously do whatever is right—black and white—and right now?
Sheesh. What does that even mean?
If I were impetuously GOOD, would I have stayed with Bud or left anyway? ...I have my doubts.... (ha!) (And, I swear, I will only permit myself two more entries that even mention the man; I’ve had other jobs, after all.)
In the past (and still), upon a great book/movie experience, I’ve emailed a fellow literary conspirator with my thoughts, or simply given expansion to a recommendation (I rarely “review” that which I don’t care for, mostly, because I rarely finish that which I don’t care for, and I’m not going to recommend a movie that I don’t— sorry, I’ll move on). When the show or book’s really good—or impacting, at least—I frequently wish I were back with my old kids at the Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy and that we might watch, appreciate, tear to pieces, and get it. Well, I don’t have SASA. Heck, I don’t have a school at all. OR students, for that matter. I do, however, have fellow literary conspirators, and that’s whom this is seeking.
Back to the lack of a school:
Every review or critique—mine, anyway—needs a context, else there’s no understanding for the nature of the impression, or, in this particular case, the CRATER. So, I’m couching this movie review in unemployment—and not because that’s the title of my freaking BLOG and that I’m particularly interested in maintaining a theme, but because my COUCH—the very one from which I watched the movie (or at least it’s pillows which supported my view from the floor, because my back was hurting) —IS unemployment. Or my glasses are, at least.
So I watched John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt. I loved it. Period. (DISCLAIMER: if you have any thoughts that my review might be anything more than totally subjective and if you might be offended thereby, then, please, stop reading.) So, yeah, it was great. Here’s what I think (excuse the general generic-ness of the beginnings):
The performances are wonderful. I’m a big fan of the accents, for one thing. And Philip Seymour Hoffman—man! —really dug into his Father Flynn sermons. When it comes to it, and despite how great the interactions between him and his co-stars might be, these sermons were the highlight. I particularly enjoyed how each (four, I think, altogether, and two significantly better than the others) seemed to usher in the next act, which, of course, makes sense, as it was adapted from Shanley’s own stage play. (I’d love to see that.) More on the sermons later.
I appreciated Shanley’s selection for historical context. It would have been easy, and a copout, to put it all up in a more modern time, what with the Catholic church’s bad press with priests and scandals and stuff. What’s great about putting it so much earlier is he firmly points out that the movie’s not about the potential scandal (and this reinforced by the enacted, non-lexical iteration/rendering of the title in the abrupt and perfectly-placed End), but the swirls of leaves and feathers that surround it.
That being the case, I’m brought up to probably my biggest point of the movie (and thereby explain my general inability to write of the movie concisely and fluidly). But first, a word on art and poetry (please refrain from groaning):
For me—and I’ve tried to instill this in my students—art is, and should be, personal. Who cares how great a work or event or person is if it/he/she doesn’t mean something to you (case in indirect point: while I was amazed by Yann Martel’s most recent book, Beatrice and Virgil, I couldn’t understand why he—so not-a-Jew—should write such an evidently personal account of the Holocaust, and in such a way as to make it appear that the book was no more than a writing exercise designed to determine his ability at conveying a significant piece of history—it could have even been randomly selected, but I guess he was looking for audience—as artistic metaphor!)? It’s difficult for me to say exactly why any of my very favorite works are favorite. I can point out what I think makes them great or impressive, but the personal connection is the clincher. The emotional connection is what elevates the work to—another cliché—more than the sum of its constituent parts. That’s what’s happened with Doubt. Cinematography. Location. Season. Cast. Delivery. Pacing. Metaphor. Motif. Blah. Blah. Blah. Just pieces. Take the blinding old nun, for example, and her relationship with Sister Beauvier (Streep) Maybe it was just a tool, but were she not there, Beauvier would look like the dragon Hoffman’s Flynn labels her as from the beginning. But she’s not! She’s human! Though we very nearly in fact and indeed see her in no more human capacity than a great fire-breathing lizard. And her relationship with Amy Adam’s character, Sister James. This woman—Streep’s—is a good person, trying to do what’s right, but she screws up. She points the finger (echoing, conversely, the great God-finger from the gossip sermon) at Flynn.
So back to the sermons. The two strongest are the first, regarding the general issue of doubt, and later—the second? —about gossip (this one because it was just amazingly-well presented by Hoffman—yes, AMAZING). Obviously, that first sermon sets up the premise for the whole movie, and how it permeates so much of everything—like those scattered feathers of gossip do—throughout every little nook and cranny of the plot, its characters, and into the very fabric of the whole construct. Really, it’s a very small movie, technically speaking. A Hulme or Pound compared to the epoch operatics of a Tolkein or Steinbeck. But, and just like “Town Sky-Line” or “The Garrett,” it’s SO * MUCH * MORE.
So what?
(This isn’t changing the subject. Really.)
While I served my LDS mission in Italy, many of the other missionaries and I collected quotations and anecdotes from and about big members of the church, generally and particularly regarding Joseph Smith. My favorite of these, likely apocryphal, and not about Smith, regarded a current member of the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Dallin H Oaks:
Oaks had just been called to the Quorum of the Twelve and, as such, delivered his first General Conference talk. He stepped into an elevator soon thereafter and was joined by President Kimball, who congratulated him on Oaks’ address. Oaks was gratified and smiled. “Thank you very much,” he said. President Kimball then said, rather abruptly, “Therefore what?” “Pardon me?” Oaks asked. “Therefore what?” Kimball repeated. “It was a wonderful talk, but therefore what?”
The point, which I took when I heard the story and hold still is this: it doesn’t matter how eloquent or scholarly or humorous or whatever a presentation or work may be if it doesn’t ask anything of the audience (sort of takes down to nothing—if we apply this to the act of creating art—making art for the sake of making art and doing it for self (though I’ve got opinions there, too—another time)). So, the movie, Doubt. Therefore what? Well, here it is. Doubt. That’s the answer—the therefore-what: DOUBT. Duh—which is nearly as universally applicable as is my blog title, only less generic, as it turns out.
So why “doubt,” if this is such a personal work for me? And that first sermon of Father Flynn’s nails the big question. Is IT—doubt—a good thing, an endowment from our Maker—forcing us into care and caution? Is it the divining force toward humility, wariness, gratitude? The problem with this is that, from my understanding, caution is the opposite of impetuousness, and shouldn’t we, as testifying Christians (I speak of me, here), heedlessly/impetuously do whatever is right—black and white—and right now?
Sheesh. What does that even mean?
If I were impetuously GOOD, would I have stayed with Bud or left anyway? ...I have my doubts.... (ha!) (And, I swear, I will only permit myself two more entries that even mention the man; I’ve had other jobs, after all.)
Let’s look at it—Stay versus Go Anyway. And it really only amounts to a bunch of questions—all ultimately pointless, because I’ve already resigned!
- WAS HE A BAD DUDE?
- WAS HE A GOOD DUDE?
- DOES HIS GOOD OR BAD DUDE-NESS EVEN MATTER (IT WAS A GOOD ENDEAVOR, REGARDLESS)?
- SHOULD I HAVE FOLLOWED MY MOTHER-IN-LAW’S ADVICE ALL ALONG AND BEEN SHOT OF IT TWO YEARS AGO?
- how I discipline my children,
- working for Bud,
- joining Facebook,
- leaving public education,
- leaving Michigan?
- Is Father Flynn’s “wind” blowing at my back as well? And if so, is it destiny or suggestion?
*
So this was not an unbiased or objective critique. I apologize. I warned you. But watch the movie. We’ve all got our doubts.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Burger King and The Bud
My first job (and I imagine my calc teacher, good ol' Mr. Andreas, rolling his eyes) was burger flipping at Burger King. Any shift of mine comprised of me taking meat from the freezer, feeding it to the broiler (okay, not “flipping” per se), stashing the bubbly gray output in the steamer, and, as the orders popped up, assembling burgers at lightning speed (or I got totally chewed out by the viscious shrew in the office). Sometimes I got to wash dishes.
I was sixteen. Since then, and in no small thanks to BK, my threshold for pain has risen signficantly, and I'm sure there are a whole lot more people out there with a higher tolerance than me, but—holy crap! —my first job was bloody torture. Look at it this way: imagine your worst fast food nightmare with all its attendant grease, offal, and cobwebby corners and instead of sitting beyond the safety glass—like from your car! —looking in, you’re actually INSIDE the machine like I was or any other poor employee: a cog implemented in the production of ... well, you know.
Okay, so apart from working there, I like Burger King just fine—but as a PATRON. I am a Whopper fan. (And who can criticize the Jr.?) But, and here’s the parallel, I also like/-d my most recent employment and -er, and, yet, like BK, I am no longer there. If you read my first entry from September 8, you may recall Bud, Bud, the Uber-Ameri-Man boss with the t-shirts and goatee. You may recall that yesterday (not to mention last year) he was not the vampire; he was not the pimp (though he retained certain vestiges of both); he was the bridge between the then and the now.
I called Bud a week ago and resigned. He chuckled sarcastically and said, “I knew it.”
Backing up:
I have two, and only two, fond memories from my Burger-King days:
The runner-up moment came on an evening shift during a break. Fifteen glorious minutes. I poured my free drink (the one perk to working BK back then), grabbed a complimentary newspaper, and headed for an empty booth. I braced myself for the inevitable acceleration of time, which would immediately and shockingly launch me across space-time at a some ridiculous and entirely unpredictable rate, the moment I sat down. I opened the paper randomly, scanned a column, sipped my root beer, turned a page, sipped again, and saw it: the Announcement I’d been waiting for! (To give a little context to the time frame we’re looking at: It was more than half a lifetime ago that I was sixteen and engaging in my first “real” employment. I’m 33 now.) I was thrilled! I read it again and again.
Harrison Ford had agreed to do a fourth Indiana Jones movie! (Little did I know all those years ago....)
So that was the lesser of the two great moments, this one providing hope and happiness—yes! there is something good in the world. The next provided freedom.
It already felt like I’d been working there forever, though it had probably only been a few weeks. I hated it. My feelings weren’t a mystery. I talked to my parents about it, and my dad told me in no uncertain terms that I could only quit BK if and only if I found another job, and not bloody well until. I’d looked around a bit, chased down a possibility or two, and applied, but I hadn’t heard back from anyone yet.
One night, it all finally came to a head. It got bad enough that I even got up the guts to finally do something about it, AND willfully rebel against my father (and that, for me, was no small deal)! I was scheduled for the last shift of the evening. It was my first time closing. I didn’t know what that meant—no one had told me—and was appalled when eleven o’clock came, went, and I hadn’t been sent home. “Hey, I’ve done my hours. It’s time for me to go, right?” “Forget it, kid,” one of my co-workers said. “You’ll be here ‘til two ro three more hours, man. We gotta clean it all first.” The schedule said eleven. IT SAID ELEVEN! I got up the nerve asked my supervisor (boy, was she a GEM!). “One or two o'freaking'clock, if you’re lucky, squirt. Now mop the floor!” Really. She called me squirt. I was twice her size.
“Can I break first?”
I had my fifteen minutes. Could I make it in time? (The absurdity of this concern, considering what I was about to do, didn’t hit me until years later.)
Instead of my typical root beer and newspaper, I speed-walked to my [mom's] car, gunned it all the way home, ran down to the laundry, shrugged out of my uniform and into some cleans (still couldn’t escape the smell), back to the car, back to BK, and stopped aside the drive-up window.
You can guess what I did:
I knocked.
The restaurant was closed. The drive up was closed.
I knocked again, and the one employee whom I didn’t hate and who didn’t hate me, some older lady—spinster and toothless—answered, though part of me (the then-very, VERY small part of me that actually had a smidgen of confrontational gut to it) really, really wanted it to be my supervisor. I told her, “I quit. Would you mind giving these to B_____? Thanks.” And I went home.
Oo, it was sweet.
And what’s all this got to do with Bud? A few things. First, though it seems thin without explanation, the pleasant symmetry aligning these two jobs: first and last, both quit, no backup plan more than a prayer. Well, all that plus the fat all-American-ness inherent to both via Bud and the Whopper.
That symmetry is really where it’s at. But this is where it gets personal and serious, something I didn’t have back then—seriousness—but now, 16+ years later, I’ve got it in spades via my family. That does something to you—to me. It means something more than a cool story to tell your friends that, “Hey, yo, I quit my job and don’t have a new one yet!” what you've got kids.
I’m not going to get into the whys and wherefores of my most recent resignation. Suffice it to say I had good reason for leaving. I hold no ill will for Bud or his enterprise. In fact, a lot like Burger King, I really love the old Whopper, and what his business plan was trying to accomplish was really pretty great (even if I can’t confess a belief that it would or will ever actually work).
Remember, it was my dad who said I couldn’t quit BK until I had another job. He never found out about the glorious nature of my departure from Job #1, or the short gap before #2 kicked in, but he knows all about what’s going on right now. We had a pretty long, pretty serious TALK about the ethics and morality involved in such a decision, stepping into the dark of the unknown on a prayer, and while I can’t say I ever PRAYED that Harrison Ford would do a fourth Jones, that announcement all those years ago—so late, so late in its realization—did in fact give me something positive to hold on to. Well, I’ve got my own prayers, but what’s even better is I’ve got the prayers of my family, most importantly my wife (and not, “Dear God, fix my idiot husband!"). We’re working side-by-side at this. I resurrected an old computer, I put all my application files on both, and we hunt and search and apply and follow up all day long. Almost like a date actually (how desperate is that!).
It’s a funny thing, looking back now: practically the day I started working at Burger King, I swore I would never take another fast food job. I’ll tell you, it’s nothing but the seemingly-universal fear of employers’ for hiring the “over-qualified” that’s maintained my old, naive vow. We’re so desperate right now, even Burger King’s looking good.
I was sixteen. Since then, and in no small thanks to BK, my threshold for pain has risen signficantly, and I'm sure there are a whole lot more people out there with a higher tolerance than me, but—holy crap! —my first job was bloody torture. Look at it this way: imagine your worst fast food nightmare with all its attendant grease, offal, and cobwebby corners and instead of sitting beyond the safety glass—like from your car! —looking in, you’re actually INSIDE the machine like I was or any other poor employee: a cog implemented in the production of ... well, you know.
Okay, so apart from working there, I like Burger King just fine—but as a PATRON. I am a Whopper fan. (And who can criticize the Jr.?) But, and here’s the parallel, I also like/-d my most recent employment and -er, and, yet, like BK, I am no longer there. If you read my first entry from September 8, you may recall Bud, Bud, the Uber-Ameri-Man boss with the t-shirts and goatee. You may recall that yesterday (not to mention last year) he was not the vampire; he was not the pimp (though he retained certain vestiges of both); he was the bridge between the then and the now.
I called Bud a week ago and resigned. He chuckled sarcastically and said, “I knew it.”
Backing up:
I have two, and only two, fond memories from my Burger-King days:
The runner-up moment came on an evening shift during a break. Fifteen glorious minutes. I poured my free drink (the one perk to working BK back then), grabbed a complimentary newspaper, and headed for an empty booth. I braced myself for the inevitable acceleration of time, which would immediately and shockingly launch me across space-time at a some ridiculous and entirely unpredictable rate, the moment I sat down. I opened the paper randomly, scanned a column, sipped my root beer, turned a page, sipped again, and saw it: the Announcement I’d been waiting for! (To give a little context to the time frame we’re looking at: It was more than half a lifetime ago that I was sixteen and engaging in my first “real” employment. I’m 33 now.) I was thrilled! I read it again and again.
Harrison Ford had agreed to do a fourth Indiana Jones movie! (Little did I know all those years ago....)
So that was the lesser of the two great moments, this one providing hope and happiness—yes! there is something good in the world. The next provided freedom.
It already felt like I’d been working there forever, though it had probably only been a few weeks. I hated it. My feelings weren’t a mystery. I talked to my parents about it, and my dad told me in no uncertain terms that I could only quit BK if and only if I found another job, and not bloody well until. I’d looked around a bit, chased down a possibility or two, and applied, but I hadn’t heard back from anyone yet.
One night, it all finally came to a head. It got bad enough that I even got up the guts to finally do something about it, AND willfully rebel against my father (and that, for me, was no small deal)! I was scheduled for the last shift of the evening. It was my first time closing. I didn’t know what that meant—no one had told me—and was appalled when eleven o’clock came, went, and I hadn’t been sent home. “Hey, I’ve done my hours. It’s time for me to go, right?” “Forget it, kid,” one of my co-workers said. “You’ll be here ‘til two ro three more hours, man. We gotta clean it all first.” The schedule said eleven. IT SAID ELEVEN! I got up the nerve asked my supervisor (boy, was she a GEM!). “One or two o'freaking'clock, if you’re lucky, squirt. Now mop the floor!” Really. She called me squirt. I was twice her size.
“Can I break first?”
I had my fifteen minutes. Could I make it in time? (The absurdity of this concern, considering what I was about to do, didn’t hit me until years later.)
Instead of my typical root beer and newspaper, I speed-walked to my [mom's] car, gunned it all the way home, ran down to the laundry, shrugged out of my uniform and into some cleans (still couldn’t escape the smell), back to the car, back to BK, and stopped aside the drive-up window.
You can guess what I did:
I knocked.
The restaurant was closed. The drive up was closed.
I knocked again, and the one employee whom I didn’t hate and who didn’t hate me, some older lady—spinster and toothless—answered, though part of me (the then-very, VERY small part of me that actually had a smidgen of confrontational gut to it) really, really wanted it to be my supervisor. I told her, “I quit. Would you mind giving these to B_____? Thanks.” And I went home.
Oo, it was sweet.
And what’s all this got to do with Bud? A few things. First, though it seems thin without explanation, the pleasant symmetry aligning these two jobs: first and last, both quit, no backup plan more than a prayer. Well, all that plus the fat all-American-ness inherent to both via Bud and the Whopper.
That symmetry is really where it’s at. But this is where it gets personal and serious, something I didn’t have back then—seriousness—but now, 16+ years later, I’ve got it in spades via my family. That does something to you—to me. It means something more than a cool story to tell your friends that, “Hey, yo, I quit my job and don’t have a new one yet!” what you've got kids.
I’m not going to get into the whys and wherefores of my most recent resignation. Suffice it to say I had good reason for leaving. I hold no ill will for Bud or his enterprise. In fact, a lot like Burger King, I really love the old Whopper, and what his business plan was trying to accomplish was really pretty great (even if I can’t confess a belief that it would or will ever actually work).
Remember, it was my dad who said I couldn’t quit BK until I had another job. He never found out about the glorious nature of my departure from Job #1, or the short gap before #2 kicked in, but he knows all about what’s going on right now. We had a pretty long, pretty serious TALK about the ethics and morality involved in such a decision, stepping into the dark of the unknown on a prayer, and while I can’t say I ever PRAYED that Harrison Ford would do a fourth Jones, that announcement all those years ago—so late, so late in its realization—did in fact give me something positive to hold on to. Well, I’ve got my own prayers, but what’s even better is I’ve got the prayers of my family, most importantly my wife (and not, “Dear God, fix my idiot husband!"). We’re working side-by-side at this. I resurrected an old computer, I put all my application files on both, and we hunt and search and apply and follow up all day long. Almost like a date actually (how desperate is that!).
It’s a funny thing, looking back now: practically the day I started working at Burger King, I swore I would never take another fast food job. I’ll tell you, it’s nothing but the seemingly-universal fear of employers’ for hiring the “over-qualified” that’s maintained my old, naive vow. We’re so desperate right now, even Burger King’s looking good.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Pimp Daddy Man and the Vampire
This isn't new writing. Actually, I wrote it a year ago (it's doctored-up now, though; things change over twelve months). It is, however, a pretty good prelude to what's coming, as the un-named academic institution alluded to in the "column" is the one for which I no longer work (no animosity; I'm really fine with it--well, except for the part where I don't have a job right now).
It’s been a dozen years since my two years in Italy, and over those years my brain has managed to take all the instances of the once-linear memories, blend them up, and mash them down into just one place in one city, just one time of the week at one time of the year, and right there on this little piazza, right around the heart of the city center is everyone/everything I know and love. All of it all at once. A great and mighty concentration of two years’ images and impressions: It is always sometime in early winter with lots of descending fog; it’s always the weekend—a Friday night; and it’s never just one moment, rather it’s the progression of the evening, from just before sunset, through to the end of the dark, chilly, yet somehow and miraculously cozy night when all the crowd and their adornments—the fragmata of my nostalgia—slowly drain from the one square in the one city in the West of Italy, and the fogs eddy and pool in the wake of the departing.
The book ends of this stock evening and its saturnalia are, and as the title above may indicate, Pimp Daddy Man and the vampire. In Italy—or my chaotic memory of Italy (and really, if I'm honest, my the Italy from my memory and the true geographic location are not at all the same place) —it is the development, people, and ambience of the night that bridge the gap between these two ends, the Pimp at the beginning and the vampire after; In my home today in Utah County, Utah, there’s another bridge: my former boss, a once-rich, Bic’d-bald to hide he’s balding, super-sized American of the quintessentially best and worst kind.
I’ll talk about the The Pimp first.
As I sit on the bench in my mind at the edge of a small stand of decorative trees on Piazza Mazzini (which my memory portrays very differently from the representation I just checked on Google Earth), I watch the slow 4:30 traffic skirting the edge of the evening: an elderly couple on bicycles with plastic shopping bags hanging from their handlebars; a woman, a nanny most likely, walking three children surely not her own; a miniature dachshund, apparent victim of some sort of swelling, corneal dysfunction, darting about the street and approaching a young Ghanaian in brilliant purple at his blanket of knickknacks, and the dog sniffs a rawhide model hippo and defecates on the spot, then twitches violently, and runs off, leash clattering; there are two priests—one laughing, one serious—gesticulating wildly, and the serious one stops just short of the fresh offal to emphasize a point, the laugher now hidden behind a pillar, leaving the other to gesticulate alone; and then from under the portico emptying onto my piazza, I see him: I see, emerging as though surprised by the great open and sunlight in which he finds himself, casually pleased by his good fortune, and yet somehow simultaneously bored, Pimp Daddy Man.
I have seen him many times stalking for hours the streets of the city center, always dressed and pressed and mannered the same. This time and just as always, he’s smoking, and clearly bending to affect that super-dope John Travolta smoke or maybe James Dean. There’s a greasy, black ponytail to match his olive-oily skin, slick black clothes, worn and polished pimpin’ shoes, and a strut so supremely exaggerated that he must be suspended from strings. Yet this all the man does not make. The lynchpin of the Pimp’s equable livery and ensemble is the jauntily knotted black tie emblazoned with flaming pink star proclaiming its wearer in big yellow letters (and more rightly without the here-accompanying indefinite article, which, by the way and for the audacity of simply wearing such an obsequious adornment—or, perhaps more aptly-labeled, garnish—should be changed spontaneously and forever to the definite:) a PIMP DADDY.
Before this current year of my life I have not given The Pimp thought beyond the very occasional and good-humored oh-yeah-I-remember-that-guy. Now, however, I am employed by the man I will here dub Bud. (I will get to the vampire shortly.)
Earlier, I said that Bud, that über-Ameri-man boss of mine, was my current life’s connection between the now-metaphoric Pimp Daddy Man at the beginning of the pullulant evening and the vampire at its end. That’s not really the case. Bud is more, I guess, a quintessentially American analog of The Pimp himself. It was my employment under this Pimp analog (though in Italy I never worked for this or, certainly, any other pimp) that correlates to the development, people, and ambience of an Italian weekend evening in early winter. The vampire is yet something else; Bud is not—not even cliché-ly metaphorically—the vampire.
Bud is a failed developer, victim of the economy, and former though so he believes yet-football player or jock, with neatly-cropped goatee and a penchant for such brilliantly logoed t-shirts as “I’m Bringin’ Sexy Back.” This is certainly Bud’s most obvious connection to Pimp Daddy Man. There is another: while Pimp Daddy Man maintained a constant and salacious hunt for willing (willing being the operative word, certainly not another word like, say, for example, attractive) young women, Bud is a businessman, whose current ambition is—ideally attractive, but really something much more like The Pimp’s quarries—just as evasive, and for which he employed me.
It takes a few hours for any Italian weekend super-evening to really get rolling. The Peruvian street band with their smiles and amplification, the gypsies with their contrapuntal accordions, sidewalk artists and the solicitous patrons and admirers, flocks of the groomed and plumed, food vendors, chiming shop doors, rings and waves of smoke, the chattering grummets and the click-clacking shoes…. All of them emerge—materialize—as one along and from the streets, under the portici, and into the square, and the noise is a wash like the fog which plays about just like you might imagine happy ghosts, and I sit there in reverie.
I said before that my bench is at the back of the square, tucked under the eaves of the little cobbled park with its trees and two-seater café tables. Along my left, its right-hand border parallel with the back slats of my bench, is a narrow street, down which I’ve never walked (and which, according to Google Earth, doesn’t even exist anyway), and I don’t know if I ever will, though not for lack of interest, especially considering the general attraction and invitation of such isolation after so-ebullient a bevy. I imagine what it may be like, and I can even see—see like you can see in dreams—the total silence, that entering this alley will entirely isolate the absconder from all the ecstatic noise and smell and imagery meters away. And down along this right hand wall, where I can’t see it from my bench, though I know—again, with dreamlike certainty—it’s there, there’s a door, unlit and plain. Through this door is the vampire.
Again, Bud’s not the vampire. Patience, Grasshopper.
Bud recently attempted to purchase a massive building as premises to his newest business venture over which I would be the presiding manager. The building had its genesis as a giant indoor carnival replete with cafes, video arcades, band stands and bowling alleys, rides and roller coasters and roller rinks, photo booths, popsicles and popcorn and corn dogs, elephant ears and funnel cakes. Over the years it’s been remodeled and retrofitted to house a rather ridiculous variety of endeavors. Bud got his eye on it when the present owner gave up and listed it. Bud had grand visions. He pictured again the cafes and now a computer store and now a gym and day spa, sporting and athletic fields, services to the community, auditoriums and classrooms, and all as accompaniment to and in symphony with his grand scheme. It would be magnificent. We even moved in on the promise and trust that earnest money for the purchase of this place would soon arrive and all else would neatly slide in place. Three or four weeks later, I sat in my office, leaned back in my chair, and breaked a momen--from such tenable duties as creating forms and informational pamphlets and letters, hiring staff, and all the other official tittles wrought by a presiding manager--just to steal a look out my big windows. Maybe I would even step out and into the tremendous atrium, five stories high with full skylights above and trees and gardens below and along the cobbled paths leading from front doors and offices to cafes, bandstands, and two sweeping, Cinderella staircases.
In Italy—my stilted, jumbled memory of Italy—it is at the deceleration of the festa that my attention is drawn to the dark, absorbing street; here, now, in Utah and my deluded fantasy—unavoidable spawn of Bud’s over-ambition (and I think I’ve always known it would never work) —it’s when I step out of my office and into the great wide open and see that there isn’t anything or even anyone here—just Bud, his remnant crew from previous ventures, and me—that my attention is drawn away, and in a building this tremendous and overwrought—so many new walls built and old walls removed, newly lowered floors and raised ceilings, new furnace, tech, and storage closets—there are near-numberless dark, absorbing streets, each, certainly, with its attendant vampire or other beasty. Bud walks these just as the Pimp did in Italy. I’ve seen him do it hours at a time, and each time he steps from an alley or byway of the great construct and back into the sunlit atrium he’s blinded, casually smug, and maybe even a little surprised by the light.
This all ended, of course. The building is no longer an option, and the court is forbidding our reentry. It’s no longer Pimp Daddy Man, the party, or even Bud drawing the attention of my thoughts. It’s the vampire.
When I was in Italy—such a romantic, mysterious place—it had to be a vampire that lived behind that otherwise-inelegant door down that sucking side street. Things are different now. I don’t know what’s behind the door anymore, and I don’t think it really matters. Maybe it’s a vampire, maybe some other monster, fell and caterwauling, maybe the apartment’s just empty . Maybe there is no apartment—never was an apartment—with or without a door or anything behind it.
But, really, I don’t think it’s any of this.
No matter how wonderful the potential of the great and spacious building, Italy—my metonymy of all things bright and beautiful—my Italy (and again and maybe/probably my Italy now isn’t anything like the Italy that’s really over there) is the point. Bud’s there. The Pimp’s there. So is the party, every Friday night. The alley’s there, and so, of course, is the door. All a mystery, and someday, and I like to think no matter what, I’ll get back there. Then there’s the next point: about two years ago I started walking down this dark, quiet, unknown and inelegant alley when I accepted the offer from Bud. The road’s there. I just exited.
Surely there are other doors. Maybe Italy’s behind one of them.
It’s been a dozen years since my two years in Italy, and over those years my brain has managed to take all the instances of the once-linear memories, blend them up, and mash them down into just one place in one city, just one time of the week at one time of the year, and right there on this little piazza, right around the heart of the city center is everyone/everything I know and love. All of it all at once. A great and mighty concentration of two years’ images and impressions: It is always sometime in early winter with lots of descending fog; it’s always the weekend—a Friday night; and it’s never just one moment, rather it’s the progression of the evening, from just before sunset, through to the end of the dark, chilly, yet somehow and miraculously cozy night when all the crowd and their adornments—the fragmata of my nostalgia—slowly drain from the one square in the one city in the West of Italy, and the fogs eddy and pool in the wake of the departing.
The book ends of this stock evening and its saturnalia are, and as the title above may indicate, Pimp Daddy Man and the vampire. In Italy—or my chaotic memory of Italy (and really, if I'm honest, my the Italy from my memory and the true geographic location are not at all the same place) —it is the development, people, and ambience of the night that bridge the gap between these two ends, the Pimp at the beginning and the vampire after; In my home today in Utah County, Utah, there’s another bridge: my former boss, a once-rich, Bic’d-bald to hide he’s balding, super-sized American of the quintessentially best and worst kind.
I’ll talk about the The Pimp first.
As I sit on the bench in my mind at the edge of a small stand of decorative trees on Piazza Mazzini (which my memory portrays very differently from the representation I just checked on Google Earth), I watch the slow 4:30 traffic skirting the edge of the evening: an elderly couple on bicycles with plastic shopping bags hanging from their handlebars; a woman, a nanny most likely, walking three children surely not her own; a miniature dachshund, apparent victim of some sort of swelling, corneal dysfunction, darting about the street and approaching a young Ghanaian in brilliant purple at his blanket of knickknacks, and the dog sniffs a rawhide model hippo and defecates on the spot, then twitches violently, and runs off, leash clattering; there are two priests—one laughing, one serious—gesticulating wildly, and the serious one stops just short of the fresh offal to emphasize a point, the laugher now hidden behind a pillar, leaving the other to gesticulate alone; and then from under the portico emptying onto my piazza, I see him: I see, emerging as though surprised by the great open and sunlight in which he finds himself, casually pleased by his good fortune, and yet somehow simultaneously bored, Pimp Daddy Man.
I have seen him many times stalking for hours the streets of the city center, always dressed and pressed and mannered the same. This time and just as always, he’s smoking, and clearly bending to affect that super-dope John Travolta smoke or maybe James Dean. There’s a greasy, black ponytail to match his olive-oily skin, slick black clothes, worn and polished pimpin’ shoes, and a strut so supremely exaggerated that he must be suspended from strings. Yet this all the man does not make. The lynchpin of the Pimp’s equable livery and ensemble is the jauntily knotted black tie emblazoned with flaming pink star proclaiming its wearer in big yellow letters (and more rightly without the here-accompanying indefinite article, which, by the way and for the audacity of simply wearing such an obsequious adornment—or, perhaps more aptly-labeled, garnish—should be changed spontaneously and forever to the definite:) a PIMP DADDY.
Before this current year of my life I have not given The Pimp thought beyond the very occasional and good-humored oh-yeah-I-remember-that-guy. Now, however, I am employed by the man I will here dub Bud. (I will get to the vampire shortly.)
Earlier, I said that Bud, that über-Ameri-man boss of mine, was my current life’s connection between the now-metaphoric Pimp Daddy Man at the beginning of the pullulant evening and the vampire at its end. That’s not really the case. Bud is more, I guess, a quintessentially American analog of The Pimp himself. It was my employment under this Pimp analog (though in Italy I never worked for this or, certainly, any other pimp) that correlates to the development, people, and ambience of an Italian weekend evening in early winter. The vampire is yet something else; Bud is not—not even cliché-ly metaphorically—the vampire.
Bud is a failed developer, victim of the economy, and former though so he believes yet-football player or jock, with neatly-cropped goatee and a penchant for such brilliantly logoed t-shirts as “I’m Bringin’ Sexy Back.” This is certainly Bud’s most obvious connection to Pimp Daddy Man. There is another: while Pimp Daddy Man maintained a constant and salacious hunt for willing (willing being the operative word, certainly not another word like, say, for example, attractive) young women, Bud is a businessman, whose current ambition is—ideally attractive, but really something much more like The Pimp’s quarries—just as evasive, and for which he employed me.
It takes a few hours for any Italian weekend super-evening to really get rolling. The Peruvian street band with their smiles and amplification, the gypsies with their contrapuntal accordions, sidewalk artists and the solicitous patrons and admirers, flocks of the groomed and plumed, food vendors, chiming shop doors, rings and waves of smoke, the chattering grummets and the click-clacking shoes…. All of them emerge—materialize—as one along and from the streets, under the portici, and into the square, and the noise is a wash like the fog which plays about just like you might imagine happy ghosts, and I sit there in reverie.
I said before that my bench is at the back of the square, tucked under the eaves of the little cobbled park with its trees and two-seater café tables. Along my left, its right-hand border parallel with the back slats of my bench, is a narrow street, down which I’ve never walked (and which, according to Google Earth, doesn’t even exist anyway), and I don’t know if I ever will, though not for lack of interest, especially considering the general attraction and invitation of such isolation after so-ebullient a bevy. I imagine what it may be like, and I can even see—see like you can see in dreams—the total silence, that entering this alley will entirely isolate the absconder from all the ecstatic noise and smell and imagery meters away. And down along this right hand wall, where I can’t see it from my bench, though I know—again, with dreamlike certainty—it’s there, there’s a door, unlit and plain. Through this door is the vampire.
Again, Bud’s not the vampire. Patience, Grasshopper.
Bud recently attempted to purchase a massive building as premises to his newest business venture over which I would be the presiding manager. The building had its genesis as a giant indoor carnival replete with cafes, video arcades, band stands and bowling alleys, rides and roller coasters and roller rinks, photo booths, popsicles and popcorn and corn dogs, elephant ears and funnel cakes. Over the years it’s been remodeled and retrofitted to house a rather ridiculous variety of endeavors. Bud got his eye on it when the present owner gave up and listed it. Bud had grand visions. He pictured again the cafes and now a computer store and now a gym and day spa, sporting and athletic fields, services to the community, auditoriums and classrooms, and all as accompaniment to and in symphony with his grand scheme. It would be magnificent. We even moved in on the promise and trust that earnest money for the purchase of this place would soon arrive and all else would neatly slide in place. Three or four weeks later, I sat in my office, leaned back in my chair, and breaked a momen--from such tenable duties as creating forms and informational pamphlets and letters, hiring staff, and all the other official tittles wrought by a presiding manager--just to steal a look out my big windows. Maybe I would even step out and into the tremendous atrium, five stories high with full skylights above and trees and gardens below and along the cobbled paths leading from front doors and offices to cafes, bandstands, and two sweeping, Cinderella staircases.
In Italy—my stilted, jumbled memory of Italy—it is at the deceleration of the festa that my attention is drawn to the dark, absorbing street; here, now, in Utah and my deluded fantasy—unavoidable spawn of Bud’s over-ambition (and I think I’ve always known it would never work) —it’s when I step out of my office and into the great wide open and see that there isn’t anything or even anyone here—just Bud, his remnant crew from previous ventures, and me—that my attention is drawn away, and in a building this tremendous and overwrought—so many new walls built and old walls removed, newly lowered floors and raised ceilings, new furnace, tech, and storage closets—there are near-numberless dark, absorbing streets, each, certainly, with its attendant vampire or other beasty. Bud walks these just as the Pimp did in Italy. I’ve seen him do it hours at a time, and each time he steps from an alley or byway of the great construct and back into the sunlit atrium he’s blinded, casually smug, and maybe even a little surprised by the light.
This all ended, of course. The building is no longer an option, and the court is forbidding our reentry. It’s no longer Pimp Daddy Man, the party, or even Bud drawing the attention of my thoughts. It’s the vampire.
When I was in Italy—such a romantic, mysterious place—it had to be a vampire that lived behind that otherwise-inelegant door down that sucking side street. Things are different now. I don’t know what’s behind the door anymore, and I don’t think it really matters. Maybe it’s a vampire, maybe some other monster, fell and caterwauling, maybe the apartment’s just empty . Maybe there is no apartment—never was an apartment—with or without a door or anything behind it.
But, really, I don’t think it’s any of this.
No matter how wonderful the potential of the great and spacious building, Italy—my metonymy of all things bright and beautiful—my Italy (and again and maybe/probably my Italy now isn’t anything like the Italy that’s really over there) is the point. Bud’s there. The Pimp’s there. So is the party, every Friday night. The alley’s there, and so, of course, is the door. All a mystery, and someday, and I like to think no matter what, I’ll get back there. Then there’s the next point: about two years ago I started walking down this dark, quiet, unknown and inelegant alley when I accepted the offer from Bud. The road’s there. I just exited.
Surely there are other doors. Maybe Italy’s behind one of them.
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