In the first pocket notebook I ever had I wrote this as maybe the third entry
There are two kinds of jobs in the world. The ones you have to shower for before and the ones you have to shower from after. If you find one that requires neither, stick with it.
My current job: Get there: Get up at 7:30 AM, shower. Leave the house at 8:30AM, stand on subway, emerge in midtown by 9:30 AM, cut four pounds of fruit, set up bar, clean glasses, open a thousand bottles of wine. Be real polite. Lots to do, that's why you have to train for six shifts. Break for half hour to herd into a cold room and eat college-like food on plastic plates while everyone calls their baby-mommas/mamis. Sometimes we sneak in a shot or a glass of champagne in a coffee mug. Leave somewhere around 5:00 PM, or maybe stay until midnight when I have to take down the whole bar and restock it for two hours.
My first night at my new sunday night gig Hang with roommate after work, make dinner, smoke, watch movie. Take my subway one stop. Get there: 9:00 P!M! Say hi, order something delicious off the menu and hang out for an hour. Bar is set up by barback, all fruit is cut. Shift starts at ten and they've already taught me the computer. Manager wants to speak with me. Manager wants to do a shot with me. Owner comes in. The owner wants to do a shot with the new guy. Nikki comes in. The five of us have to do a shot with Nikki, according to the manager. Managing partner comes in. Five bands comes in to play in the back room. Managing partner wants the new guy to go upstairs and sing kareoke in the middle of his shift. Managing partner says I should maybe do a shot with him first. Bartender training me choses "Milkshake Song." When I return, triumphant and securely brought all the boys to the yard, we do a shot. Everyone else is drunk and so I close down the bar in stages. At 4:05 AM we've counted the money, cleaned the place, done another shot together and walk out the front door, pulling down the gates. This is probably really boring to read if you're not a bartender, but exciting to me because sometimes I can't stand my other job.
After almost three years in New York I finally have the job I got on my first day in Chicago. And I still haven't showered.
1) Oh my god when Jackie calls to wake me up this morning, I may just finish my new novel. Which is to say that it took me less time to write my new novel than it did for me to start my record label.
2) Yesterday I saw this magician called a "chiropractor." He had me lie down, pressed on my chest, and popped my body back into alignment. For two weeks I've been told not to drink because of the pain medication they put me on, yet I haven't needed one since. That's actually how I thought psychotherapy would be (CRACK! "Ahh.. Much better.") But I'll accept that.
3) Not working is very depressing I think that even if all my dreams come true, I'm still going to have to bartend just to have something to hate/fuel me through my week.
Before I come home from work one night to find an intervention in my house (which I'd probably be late for and drunk) I just want to admit that I have a problem.
I am unnecessarily emotionally attached to electronic objects. I do not mean I have a fondness for the key pad on my phone or the arrangement of single-letter shortcuts on my web browser (although, gosh, when I think of them as my own I get chills). I mean that I was probably more upset about my computer crashing yesterday than I was about Annie moving out and breaking up with me.
No. Not probably. Definately. At least when Annie broke up with me she didn't force me to DJ with no laptop and no way to make CDs. She didn't delete all of my photographs and short stories. The only irreplacable file on the computer is my new novel and I had emailed it to myself for no reason about three seconds before.
I was depressed all day. The same thing happens to me at work if my phone runs out of battery. I told Ben that I only have two chapters to go and so he lent me his old laptop for as long as I need it. This was especially nice because it cheered me up to have everyone at the Olde English show tonight congratulate my on hypothetically writing another novel.
While this was a fantastic thing for a good friend of ten years to do, Ben failed to mention that he got a new laptop because his power supply is messed up from droping it on the power cord, which fried the battery and in turn you have to insert the plug at the proper angle or else it will shut off. The cord itself is broken so as you reaffix it after everytime you get up from your chair, you get a nice electrical shock, start over and when it loads up you have to reset the clock.
I was so depressed coming home from the show that I thought I might quit my shitty job. I honestly thought I might start a new career, getting a desk and a job or move. But the thought of being the new guy anywhere and for anything just made me more depressed. Then I thought I might just kill myself.
When I got home I hanged from myself off my spiral stairs for three minutes and just as I started to lose conciousness, Ben's fucking power cord snapped. I hit the ground really hard and hurt my back all over again.
Then I went to try something else but my phone was charging and so I couldn't use that cord (wears out the battery if you don't charge it fully each time). My scooter is out of gas, so I couldn't drink that. I do have all these pain pills, but I don't quite like the way my stomach feels on them, so I don't want to die feeling like that.
I was then trying to slit my wrists on the titanium case of my dead laptop when I bumped the power button. It miraculously started up and here I am.
My website stores the information not about who comes here but how they got here. And this week I had visitors who googled the following things and came straight here:
Sent home from work today and almost certain I would be fired later this afternoon when the general manager arrives, I decided to go downtown to human resources. I had a very encouraging talk with the woman there. It started out as business and then I stopped her. I say this only because I'm going to have to use it someday.
I was about to cry because I had so many plans that are contingent on a steady flow of cash. She tried to distract me. And I changed the course of the meeting by saying, "Have you ever been in love?"
Mid fifties, alone, her lip quivered. "I--I was once."
I told her a very romantic story and decided to make it Shakespearian and end it with a wedding--not my own, but one that all the characters had to go to. "And I just don't know how I'm going to do that if I'm unemployed."
She grabbed a tissue, blew her nose, blotted her make up, and said, "I'll call the manager right now for you, Brendan."
8th Grade - In perhaps the greatest scandal of my life even now, the girl I dated for the three days preceeding Valentine's Day started a rumor about us. She told everyone we had sex. This was great for about fifteen minutes, mostly since still had five years to go before I hit puberty. News travelled through the halls of Henry James Memorial Junior High School like Mono. Complete strangers asked me if I really "did it." I denied everything. The girl in question gave me a bag of those chalky candy hearts with clever sayings. Then she found out I denied everything. The next day I came to school and the same complete strangers wanted to know about a different rumor. "She says you have a stubby dick."
9th Grade - Ben and I were dating two girls who decided to be best friends so we could all double date together. My girl's father had a batchelor pad in the next town over with a pool and the kind of home entertainment system you can have if you make it to forty and don't have a wife or children at home. Ben's girlfriend was a complete bitch, whom I still hate, randomly, to this day. Anyway the girls made this red-ice heart-shaped vegan cake and presented it to us with a dozen improvised inside jokes of their, which had nothing to do with us. It read like an oaktag collage. ("Manic-Depressive girl!" "Lipgloss Boss!") They set it down in front of us with a knife. "But we forgot the plates!" they run upstairs together for some reason. (Before you think I'm a complete asshole with this inevitable ending, let me just say that I made a collage of movie and school dance ticket stubs and photos of us and went all around town getting it made into a color photocopy card.) Ben's idea. The girls return to find us holding in laughter and a jagged, broken crack carved in the heart cake. She dumped me a week later.
10th Grade - I sat in the kitchen making vegan tiger balls with the cool, older girl whom I had a crush on. Nothing ever happened with us. But I tried for over 10 years.
11th Grade - Went up to Dartmouth to make out with a girl I had grown up with. Her parents sent me with a large plastic suitcase filled with warm clothes, supplies, canned food and the exact measure of all the ingredients necessary for making chocolate chip cookies. It weighed a ton, but I was infatuated with this girl. For valentine's day I had written her this big long thing about how she's the fucken best. For Valentine's Day she made chocolate chip cookies for the guy she forgot to mention she was dating.
12th Grade - Technically my first fancy date. We dined at the Rainforest Cafe in the mall. I gave her a giftwrapped jewelry case. Inside was the key to my car, because that was romance to me. That was how much I trusted her. She gave me heart shaped red balloons. She also broke down a week later and told me that she didn't want me to move up to the town where she was going to school next year. She wanted time alone. This is when I learned that when people say they want time alone, they usually forget to add "with someone else." I found this out one night, when delivery pizza to the jerks at the prep school in town.
Freshman Year of College - Fuck, I have no idea. Probably something political.
Sophomore Year - I find a nice letter in my campus mailbox from the girl I was dating. Very thoughtful, that's all.
Junior Year - Same girl. Don't know what we did.
Senior YEar - Same girl fucked atleast one of my roommates.
First Year Out of School - I totally fell for the "Let's not make a big deal out of Valentine's Day" thing. Unemployed for well over six months. Big fight.
Second Year Out of School - Still hoped "not to make a big deal" because I was DJ'ing that night. Earlier in the year her birthday had also fallen on one of my DJ'ing nights, which I skirted by throwing her birthday party there. "So now what?" she said after everyone else yelled surprise! and ate cupcakes. I understand it can be a let down to spend your birthday with your boyfriend while he's technically at work. So on V-day Pete, took over. We went out to dinner. And when we came back I saw Pete's first kiss with the girl he's still dating today.
Nikki's new lingerie line was on Daily Candy today, which means that thousands and thousand of people opened their email today and heard about her.
Although I've always a strange relationship with fashion, the more I meet people who are doing it the more I like them. There's also this strange and deserved respect among artists and musicians and writers for people in fashion. I'm starting to think that it's more like a benign jealousy. Designers can do something completely against the mainstream and yet still earn money and respect for it. Meanwhile James Joyce publishes his own books, Ray Bradbury tries to sell one to me for smack, and Frank Black may or may not be working at the Starbucks on my street.
When I finished outlining the ending of my new novel, I cried. I cried because I am a fragile, oversensitive creature who does things like cry at my own stories in outline form. I did this once before in college when I wrote the best short story I'll ever write.
I would like nothing more than to walk into work today, get fired, walk right out the door and finish these last three chapters.
In high school one of the Asian kids--whose parents actually owned both the chinese restaurant and the dry cleaner in town--gave me and Ben a video called "How to Breakdance."
We practiced--once--in his basement and never watched it again. On Saturday after the bar closed the barback started breakin', poppin', etc. I was in just enough of a state to think it'd be a good idea if I did some popping and then threw myself to the ground, shoulders first and wormed for a while--before finishing in a headspin.
It is maybe the first time I've felt old. a) breakdancing? b) dancing injury? c) I may skip work today because my shoulder and chest hurt too much to use my right arm.
I've spent more time pondering Back to the Future over the years than I have James Joyce. Tonight I watch parts 1 and 2 with friends, one of whom had never seen the films. I felt like a BTTF aplogist as I countered any discomfort she had with the space time continuum.
In fact it's basically informed much of my life's philosophy. Why does Marty have a relationship with a scientist who doesn't have a lab? Why is it normal for a seventeen year old to drop by an old man's house on his way to school, plug into the amp, trash the place and destroy thousands of dollars of equipment? Wouldn't Doc care? Wouldn't he put a stop to their relationship when he gets home?
One might think. However, the Doc is serene about everything in all three films because it all leads him back to the future he has almost seen. He knows that the boy who destroys his speakers will one day help him realize his dream of time travel. That's how I feel about ex girlfriends.
However, just as one little thing Marty does could destroy him, this deleted scene would have killed the movie. For one thing, my parents would never let me watch a movie about forcible incest over and over again. And if I hadn't seen it I wouldn't have heard "Johnny B. Goode" and if I hadn't heard Chuck Berry, I'd never get into real music and I'd never learn to dance. And as Marty said to Marvin Barry, if we can't dance we can't kiss, and if we can't kiss we can't fall in love. And we're history, pal.
Nikki's new lingerie line 