the gathering of parts to a whole

See, it's like this. A bunch of people who work together infrequently being gathered together under the premise of learning just how many things they aren't doing right and to be introduced to new coffee and pastries and partners (what sbux calls its employees) on a Friday night is what I like to call a receipe for diaster.

I mean, what exactly did they think was going to happen? People would be overjoyed? Thrilled? Delighted at the idea of all these trains passing each other on a tenuous schedule would be routed and timed to arrive all at once? Put that way, it sounds like a catastrophe.

Before I was ever someone who worked for retail corporate America, I knew that store meetings were a waste of time. I was glad that in the months that I'd been entrenched in my new job there was never talk of this strange event, of this gathering of parts to a whole, this bringing together of people who are more comfortable with tasks, things to do, action at hand.

What's the point of sitting us around in a circle and telling us things we ought to know? Most people learn by watching someone else do it and then copying them. Most people learn by experience. Some people learn by doing something wrong and being told immediately the correct way to accomplish a task.

Instead, we sit in plush chairs and sofas with the cafe, counters and store at a distance, and talk about things out of sight...

With a twist of backstory nuance:

Our meeting was envisioned by one of the eager go-getting supervisors who went to a Sanitation class and realized that a lot of the way things are done at our location are not up to code with both city and state regulations. And rather than do what many many many people before her had done, she decided something had to be done about it.

[an aside] between you and me, that kind of action--not just doing things to get through the time being, but the sorts of things that make things better for everyone in the long run and being very vocal about it--is pretty cool. if she was someone I liked, I'd totally support it. as it is, she's someone I tolerate, so I kinda respect her sheer determination. she's fighting uphill with an army of red ants stinging her ankles and trying to crawl into her eyes.

peering through the beads of a kaleidescope. 

where gore vidal covers, I tread

In the Introduction to the Collected Stories of Tennessee Williams, the brilliant essayist and author Gore Vidal wrote, "Like most natural writers, Tennessee could not possess his own life until he had written about it."

When I read those words something in me trembled. Vidal had explained, very matter of fact and succintly, what it meant for me to do the writing I have done, to expose the navel I have gazed forlornly upon and to take my life and infuse it into the fiction writing I have made. I was so struck by these words and their subsequent explanation that I realized I had been frantically reading through two pages before I took a breath.

As I considered that needing to take hold of my life was the driving force behind my writing, I immediately thought of this journal and those before it, that held a flashlight to my life and showed the scurry of the pests inside the shadows. And as I have grown older and more modest, I realize that I have been denying myself this kind of writing in an effort to be entertaining or funny or happy...

Larry's Training Day

The following is a selection from a short story I have been writing. It is told from another character's point of view. Steinbeckian Intro, Madeline The Sniffer and Everyday is Halloween are the previous selections featured here, which you can read by clicking through the archives.

“Natural Ice is our best selling twelve pack. It’s brewed by Anheuser Busch, which makes it an American beer. People are really into that now.”

“Okay, Larry,” she said, “I can read.”

“Oh,” I said, “Of course you can, you’re very smart.”We stood there, in the cooler, looking at each other. She was rubbing her hands up and down her crossed arms to warm up.

I had my hand on my chin, rubbing stubble. I was stalling. I always rub my chin when I play poker with the guys and trying to figure out what to do next. They always yell at me to hurry up. It was getting cold in the cooler and all she was wearing was that bodysuit. What was she thinking? If Sayed saw her, he’d kick right her out of here. It wouldn’t be right, but he’d probably bellow, “No whores in my store.” Hey, that kinda rhymes. Neato. But I guess it being Halloween and all; it would be okay. I started to think about whether or not she was wearing any underwear.

“Larry! It’s freezing in here!”

“Oh,” I said, “Well, let’s just go on out through these.”

I held the rubbery panels for her and she pushed through the door.

“Jesus, I hope I don’t have to spend a lot of time in there.”

“No, José spends the most time in here doing restocking.”

“Then why did you take me in there?”

“Oh. Well, I don’t know. Just showing you around.”

She stood with her hand on her hip and looked angry. She sniffed again. I wondered about that sniff of hers. She looked a bit like a squirrel or a chipmunk, you know how when you see them twitch their nose, and the rest of their little faces moves with the twitch, that’s sort of what it looked like when this girl, Madeline, when she sniffed. She looked like a squirrel trying to make out a smell.

That sniffing thing was just about the only thing about her that wasn’t very attractive. Even the black hair and the funny looking makeup worked somehow. Must be a pretty girl under all that stuff. I never really understood those Goth kids. Some of them come in here and act like they’re Dracula or I don’t know who they want to be, but this one seemed different somehow.

“You know,” I said, and shut the door to the cooler. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a young lady work here before. Have we then Cy?”

Cy’s hands went up in the air and he muttered something. I don’t know what he said, but I figured he wasn’t disagreeing. Half the time, when I’m standing right across from him I can barely hear what he has to say. If he wants to set something straight though, you can bet he will, and he sure can yell. Cy has been the manager here for years. He’s worked here longer than anyone. Even the boss, Sayed, he got trained by Cy.

Story goes that in Iran, where Sayed is from, he worked as a street performer, with a group. He was a juggler. I imagine it a lot, Sayed fifteen years ago, maybe he has less gray in his hair, maybe he is thinner, but he still has this bulldog of a face. His skin is painted white and maybe he has one of those red foam balls for a nose and big red circles on his cheeks and a clown outfit, except, thing is, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sayed smile. Not once. Maybe that’s why he stopped performing.

He bought Miska’s dirt cheap, made Cy manager, and wanted to work the different jobs so he knew what to expect from people. Then he hired a lot friends of friends, all Persian guys for a while, guys he knew he could trust, because if they worked him over, he could ruin their reputation in the community. I’m not sure why he hired me. Maybe he wanted to practice his English.

“Are you serious? You’re saying you’ve never, ever, ever, had a woman work here?” She waited for my response. I slowly shook my head from side to side. She talked so fast that the green half of her lips seemed to be doing all the talking, while the purple half sat still. “That’s so messed up. You could get into big trouble if someone reported you. Aren’t there a lot of lawyers in this neighborhood? I’m surprised you could get away with something like that.”

“Well, it’s not as though we don’t like women, right Cy?” I walked back over to the counter and sat on the stool. “Women don’t exactly come out of their way to work here. Hell, most of our customers are men. No offense, but I can’t figure out why Sayed agreed to hire you. This job looks easy, but there’s a lot of lifting and unpacking, some days it’s—well, I can say this because I’ve worked here for seven years—some days, it’s brutal.”

Her face sniffed. “Are you saying a woman couldn’t handle this job? That a woman is too weak to do it?” “What kind of macho chauvinistic bullshit is that? No offense Larry,” she paused with a sniff. “But you don’t strike me as the kind of buff guy who could lift a lot of shit without the help of a dolly rig, which is probably what I’ll use anyway. Got some muscles under that plaid shirt I can’t see?”

I laughed. I hadn’t lifted anything since I threw my back out two years ago.

Cy grunted. I knew what that meant. He was about to talk. The grunt cleared his throat, and the words were being picked, and he would say one thing to end the whole conversation, like he always did, which was probably why he was the manager, because squabbling never really personally bothered him, he just knew it was bad for business.

“Enough.” Cy’s hands slid off his belly and he held them out like a set of scales. “You talk,” he said to me, with his left hand. To her, with his right hand, “You listen.”

when nostalgia attacks

He grinned. It's a drive, he said.

It's fine with me, I replied.

The little car vroomed up the highway ramp. The little car, the car that completed his James Bond image, the little car he bought off the internet, the audi tt.

You just wanted me to see how swift this little car is, didn't you?

He turned to look at me with a grin. It's pretty sweet, isn't it? he said.

I settled back into the leather, stitched like a football at the seams, feeling, despite the contours and the classy comfort that I didn't belong in that little car.

We talked. The last time we saw each other was far away so we built a bridge with talk of people we know, family, movies, music, work, stuff.

Our conversation never lulled, like it does with people sometimes. He's too smooth for that. If nothing else, there was the car to speak of, even three years later it still amazes me, and he still delights in showing it off.

For breakfast, nostalgia. A little place, almost a shack, somewhere in the north suburbs, somewhere near where he grew up, but a little place he couldn't go as a high schooler and visited as a college guy. It was full of giggly, messy haired, abercrombie and fitch wearing, mouthy teenagers.

We waited for a table or pair of seats to open up and watched the activity. The back wall held the waitstaff (two fresh faced teenage girls) and the owner (a tall broad shouldered guy with boxy glasses and blonde hair, in his forties) the two cooks (thin, short Mexicans) who were picking slices of cheese off a tall stack, poking shredded potatoes on the grill, and handing off steaming plates to the girls.

On the plates, smoking piles of bacon, green peppers and onions, swimming in swiss cheese, held by a french roll cut in half. Lightly grilled hash browns skidded off the side.

That's the bacon loretta, he said, flicking his chin at the dish, which was held in the crook of the blonde's elbow. That's what we're getting.

A father and his two kids got up to leave and offered us their table. We'd been taking up tight space between the stairwell and the backs of the kids sitting at the counter stools, and there was a shuffle of feet and limbs to switch places with the family. Just when we'd settled into our seats, a gaggle of teens wanting to eat headed our way and squeezed into a table meant for two, so of course, Mr. Smooth had to offer our seats to them. They were amicable, and even glad.

Our table was about a foot away from the next, so we overheard a long conversation about the previous night from two teens who'd been to a party together. There had been vomit. And plenty of drinking. If they were older than eighteen, I would have been surprised. I tried to think about what I did in high school on a Saturday night...and maybe I was just a big nerd, but I never got drunk and the first time I ever puked was about a year ago.

Suddenly, I felt really old and really sad for the state of things. If these were the people I had to bank my future on, I felt like finding the nearest tall building and leaping. I was not amused by their bullshit, by their bigness, by their grown-upness. I wanted to shove my messy plate of crap into their laps and tell them to quit whining and wasting time and go do something.

I wanted to stand up in that restaurant and tell them that they had it good, that they could drive their parents' cars and drink their parents' booze and spend their parents' money on clothes that make them all look like preppy farmers, and they should not be sitting around on a Sunday morning whining about how hungover they were.

I began talking very intellectually, the sort of abstracty philosophical talk that I can get going into about making life what you want it, and suddenly, he interrupted me, said something about continuing it in the car, and we got up to leave. Right then, I realized that he was just like all of these kids, except he was ten years older, but he was no different, still living like life was being handed to him, having done a little bit of work along the way, his life was still as charmed and as carefree as these teenagers.

The kids next to us watched us like strangers, like we were their parents, theives, robbers, trespassers treading ground we didn't belong on. I felt their stares and wanted to give them some good Chicago crazy bitch stare back, full of the hatred I had for them, but they were just kids, kids with nothing better to do, kids that didn't really know what life was yet, and before long, they would know, and they were right, we were trespassing.

That's what makes me old, I thought, that I had a reaction and I stifled it, pushed it away, thought it out and abandoned it, choosing instead to be mute, dumb, lame.

We both promised to make this visit a habit, old times, good friends, well wishes, but I knew that he would not call me, unless I called him, I knew that I would not call him again soon.