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I know this is boring

I think I’m out of ideas. Yup. The best is behind me, everything that needs to be said, well, I’ve already said it, and that’s on top of all of the other stuff that totally didn’t need to be said, of which I’ve already said a lot. But that was that, said, done. All that’s left is to keep on going, saying anything, keep on keeping on as if I’ve got something, when really, nothing.

Like, what can I talk about, lunch? I had McDonald’s. I think I’ve already talked way too much about McDonald’s. So, yeah, I’m also drinking a cup of coffee. Nothing like a cup of hot coffee. Look, I know this is boring, and I could apologize, but what good would that do? I’ve said sorry before, it hasn’t changed anything, or added anything relevant to the discussion.

Nothing left to do but talk about how I have to go to work in a little while. Does anybody else have to work? Or is it just me? Me and all of the people that I work with. Is that it? That’s not much of a workforce. Maybe we’d make a good pro football team. Not in terms of skill or anything like that, but just getting a whole team fielded, and then backups ready. Or soccer I guess, yeah, there are a lot of people on a soccer team. But nobody ever wants to be goalie, and for some reason I find it so much more rewarding imagining all of the people I work with every day lining up to protect me from the onslaught of opposing linemen.

Because I’m definitely the quarterback in that fantasy. Whether or not my coworkers would agree with me, well, I guess they’re entitled to their own fantasies also. And since this is my fantasy, I don’t know why I’m settling for football, I can barely even throw a football. I mean, I can get it from point A to point B, or somewhere in the general vicinity of point B, but it’s never a nice throw, I’d say maybe one out of thirty times it’ll come close to that perfect spiral, the kind of smooth torpedo that everybody else in the world somehow seems to accomplish almost effortlessly. But mine are all topsy-turvy.

And that’s not even a real regulation sized football. I always thought the footballs in my parents’ garage were like pro footballs, but one time I came across an NFL sized football at the Sports Authority, and I could barely hold it with one hand. And I have giant hands. No, no more football fantasies. From here on out, I mean, I’ve got nothing to say anyway, so it’s right back to sci-fi fantasies, it’s me, I’m the captain of a gigantic spaceship, and all of those same coworkers that were defending me on the field before, this time they’re manning Ops, rushing toward battle stations or preparing the torpedoes for launch. “Ay-ay captain!” they’ll respond, sometimes just at random, like they won’t even have to necessarily wait for an order to say, “Ay-ay captain!” that’ll be something that’s encouraged on my ship, just say it whenever you feel like it.

Even my boss. Especially my boss. Maybe he’s cut out to be the boss at work, but on my ship, I’m the boss. And I’d call him boss still, but as a really ironic nickname, like, “Hey boss, remember when we were all back on Earth? How you used to be in charge? Haha. Go make sure there isn’t any space mold in between the engineering conduits.”

Or, I don’t know, that’s a lot of responsibility, managing that big of a crew. And in space. Maybe I’d prefer one of those really small boats, not tiny, but just big enough for one cabin inside, something quaint. I’d have cable still, but no Internet. Just me, the eternal ocean, and the incessant chatter of all of the twenty-four hour news channels. All of them, right-wing, left-wing, British, whatever, I’d watch a different channel every day and I’d try my best to completely alter my opinions accordingly, like not just an act, I’d see if I could really get myself to believe in whatever they were saying. I’d have plenty of time, and nobody to talk me out of it.

But then what if one of the channels started running specials, “This just in. Never, ever, ever watch another cable news channel, ever again, only us,” and even though I do my best to believe, sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t, but for whatever reason on this day I really nail it, I so thoroughly absorb that message, I’m like, yes, just this channel forever.

But wasn’t I on a ship? I don’t know. Maybe the cable is too much. And maybe it’s a submarine. Although, I’m kind of tall, so I’d need one where I’m not constantly ducking underneath all sorts of low hanging pipes. And yeah I guess you need a pretty big crew for a submarine. Maybe I could just be like a consultant, or a VIP guest, nobody could boss me around, but I wouldn’t have to worry about management. And again, lots of headroom. I’ve banged my head on pipes before, and it sucks, it really, really hurts.

Advanced wine service: wine lists, decanters, tasting notes

In the year and a half or so that I’ve been working at this current restaurant, I’ve learned a fair amount about wine. About our wine list at least. Definitely the popular wines that we sell, the stuff that we serve by the glass. Everything else, well, it’s probably from California, or near California, and if you ask me about the year, I’m pretty confident that it’s from sometime between 2009 and 2012.

Around six months ago, when I really started becoming familiar with at least the basics of our wine list, I had this mistaken idea that I actually knew something about wine, like in a more general sense. I got tricked. By working day in and day out at my restaurant, I just sort of started to absorb these random wine facts. It was totally unintentional, almost like osmosis.

And so I’d be out at a restaurant and I’d hear a familiar phrase or word used to describe a wine that I kind of thought we maybe had at our restaurant, and I’d be like, wow, I’ve got this. But that false sense of knowing what I was talking about would unravel as soon as I’d look at the wine list, bottle after bottle of something that I’d never heard about, and then whoever I’d be with would see me studying the menu intently, maybe they’d throw me a wine question. I’d just have to pull something out of my ass, “Hmm, yeah, this is definitely very … oaky. Uh … dry. Yeah, classic … uh, that’s definitely a classic California … you know what? I think I’m just going to have a beer.”

I’m at the point now where I’m at least somewhat self-aware of what’s going on, that even though I don’t know much about wines, like I said, at work I can deftly maneuver our list to the point where, when mixed with my natural ability to bullshit about pretty much everything, I can at times give the impression that I actually know what I’m talking about when it comes to wine.

Which isn’t to say that I’m immune to occasionally showing my true colors. Like the other night, I had this party of four, and one of the guys went straight for the wine list. I saw him looking way past the typical cheap stuff, and so I got a little nervous, prepared all of my nonsense qualifiers in case I was questioned, “high acidity, very tannic, old-world style,” but he didn’t ask me about anything, he just pointed to a bottle and said, “This one.”

When I got to the computer to ring it in, I noticed the price, it was like over a hundred and fifty dollars. So I started freaking out a little, I mean, I serve wine on a nightly basis. I rarely if ever make a mistake handling the bottles, but just knowing how much this stuff cost, just imagining me having to go to my manager and be like, “OK, try not to get mad …” it was enough to put just the right amount of added pressure into the mix to make me overthink the situation, to do something unnecessary.

For some reason, I thought, OK, this is an expensive bottle of wine, I should decant it. Decanting a wine is when you pour a whole bottle into a decanter, a large wide-bottomed glass jar with a thin spout for pouring. I think that the idea is to allow the wine to react with oxygen faster, or something, I don’t really know, and I couldn’t tell you if it actually did anything besides showing off to the rest of the restaurant that you ordered a bottle of wine worth decanting.

Anyway I got to the table with this heavy glass piece in addition to the bottle and four glasses. The uncorking went smoothly enough, which, if I were going to make a huge mistake, I would have expected it to be here, the cork not coming out right, or me splashing a little as I popped it out. But it was fine.

Then I started dumping the contents into the decanter. And as soon as I did, I realized, there are four people here, that’s basically the entire bottle of wine in four glasses. Why am I decanting this? I’m pouring it into a receptacle that’s then going to be immediately emptied.

I looked at the host and said, “So, should I pour now or do you want me to let it breathe for a little while?” And he was polite, he didn’t try to make me feel bad or anything, but it was obvious that he realized just like I did that this whole process was a little awkward. “No, you can just pour.” And so I poured, four glasses, grabbed the empty bottle and the decanter and disappeared into the kitchen.

Halfway through the meal, the guy ordered a second bottle, and I knew I’d just pour straight from the bottle this time. But he didn’t leave it to chance, telling me, “and don’t worry about the decanting.”

And so yeah, like I said, he was nice. I’m probably making a bigger deal out of the whole situation than it actually was. But it was a humbling experience, a reminder that, just because I might get away with pretending to know what I’m doing ninety-five percent of the time, I need to always be prepared to confront that other five percent, those times when it’s obvious that, just because I can name three glasses of Cabernet, I really don’t know anything about wine.

Andre, my new boss

I got a new job through a temp agency, nothing to write home about really, typical office work, but they said that if I played my cards right, I had the possibility of getting promoted to something permanent. Is that a promotion? Or a new offer? I don’t know, I guess the big difference would be that I’d be getting a paycheck through them and not through the temp agency which, how much of a cut are they getting anyway? How long do I have to keep giving them some of my pay?

But I got way ahead of myself, because guess who just happened to be my new boss?

“Oh, he’s such a cool guy,” the guy sitting next to me said, “Yeah it’s like he’s more of a colleague than a manager. He even hangs out with us after work sometimes. We had this karaoke thing last week, he was so cool, and right before he left he paid for the whole tab on the company card.”

What was this, Google? I mean, this sounded too good to be true. And of course, that’s exactly what it was, way too good to be true.

“Andre?” I said when he turned he corner, holding a cup of coffee in one hand, a stack of papers on a clipboard in the other, he had on this really skinny tie, a short-sleeved button down that you could just tell he was only wearing to go for that cool-nerd look. “You work here too?”

“Hey, yeah, I work here. I’m your new boss!”

And he just stood there and smiled for a little bit, eventually putting down his coffee and extending his hand, as if we’ve never met before, as if this were some kind of mock-introduction. I already knew Andre. We used to be pretty tight, rolled with the same group of friends. But we haven’t talked in like half a year, ever since he blew me off at that fro-yo place by the subway.

“So let’s just get some of this paperwork taken care of, OK?”

“Andre, why do I have to fill out paperwork? I already filled out a ton of paperwork at the temp agency.”

And this stack of paperwork Andre had clipped to his clipboard, it was a ton of stuff, I knew it was going to be all of the stuff that I already wasted my time filling out, useless information like, “What was your major in college?” or, “Are you sure you’ve never been arrested for anything?”

“Yeah, it’s just that HR likes to have everything in our own format, you know what I mean? It’s just an easy way to streamline all of the information.”

Streamline. Please, now he was just showing off, using all of his fancy corporate terminology. Look at me, I’m wearing a tie, my short-sleeved button-down is slightly untucked in the back, like is that on purpose? Or am I just so cool that I don’t even notice that it’s untucked? And I could tell that it was a deliberate stylistic choice.

“Andre, come on man, that’s going to take like forty-five minutes. Can’t you just have the temp agency send everything your way? What’s the point of having me fill this stuff out twice?”

And really, I should have said three times, because after I submitted my resume to the temp agency, they had me basically retype everything into their website, a little separate box for each piece of information, so I couldn’t even copy and paste anything. Actually, it was four times, if you count me actually writing out the resume, and then guess what the first thing they made me do when I had my interview at the temp place? Yeah, another stack of papers, “OK, just fill out these forms and someone’ll be over in just a sec.”

“Rob, it shouldn’t take you forty-five minutes …”

“Come on Andre, how long have we known each other? Do you really need me to write out where I went to college? Come on man.”

He kind of just looked at me for a little bit before picking up his coffee.

“All right man, it’s cool,” and then he turned to the guy sitting next to me, “Morris, how’s everything man? Karaoke on Thursday?” and Morris was like, “Yeah boss, sounds great!

I looked at Andre. He didn’t extend the invitation to me. Or, I don’t know, maybe it was an implied invitation. But maybe not. Probably not, because the temp agency called me when I got home, they said that there was a mix-up, that they’re actually going to send me to work at a sorting facility at some shipping place.

And I couldn’t help but thinking that it was Andre, he didn’t want me there, cramping his style, I was undercutting this ridiculous bullshit professional image that he’d obviously spent way too long trying to cultivate, the cool boss, look at me, I sing karaoke. I wish that I got to be Andre’s boss, just for a second, not a second, but a day, maybe a week, I wouldn’t toss him out the door after one day, not even a day really, it was just once, just that one interaction, I didn’t see him again until the end of the day, but he didn’t even say goodbye, not really, he just kind of half-waved at me from his desk as I was on my way out.

And later the next day I texted him, about everything, about me getting switched, about the karaoke night. And I got a reply within an hour, “Sorry, wrong number.” What the fuck dude, did you change your number? And you didn’t let me know? I mean, my contact should still be in there. What if it’s an emergency? Or are you just messing with me? Fucking Andre, man, I really hope it’s a while before I run into him again.

New Years Day in Ecuador

Whenever I get really cold, like one of those deep chills in my bones, I think about the time when I was living in Ecuador, a couple of guys in my town asked me if I had any plans for the day after New Years. I never had any plans, not really, a big thing that I took away from my experience in the Peace Corps was that feeling of being like a little kid. My communication skills weren’t really one hundred percent, and it wasn’t exactly like I knew what I was doing down there, so I basically relied on the good nature of the people of Pucayacu for everything.

So I went from no plans to having plans, they’d take me to these natural waterfalls nearby, we’d cook, we’d swim. Great. And it was great. That morning the guys came by to pick me up. They were in the back of a large dump truck, which isn’t supposed to be some sort of a joke or creative imagery or anything like that. This was a heavy-duty dump truck, like right off of the construction site.

I guess that word of our trip had spread, one invite led to another and this casual daytrip snowballed into a community pilgrimage. Normally it would have been easy for us to take the bus, but apparently these waterfalls were pretty far off the paved roads, and besides, all of the drivers were hung over from the New Years festivities. This guy’s uncle had the truck, and he didn’t mind dumping us off at the waterfalls about an hour and a half away from town.

Seriously, he actually dumped us out. As soon as we got to where the path was no longer wide enough for the truck, he hit the dump button and the whole back of the truck tilted up. “Jajaja!” everyone laughed as we fell over each other, smashing and piling out the back door.

The day was like was any other day in Ecuador, that is, a total adventure. I learned within a few weeks in country that, regardless of what I was doing, I couldn’t rely at all on my expectations of how something was supposed to happen. Ecuador always had a way of throwing me for a loop. Like, it’s only a four-hour bus ride, right? Yeah, it’s actually an eight-hour trip, and there’s a military checkpoint, and you’re sitting next to a guy holding a chicken.

We had a great time, a lot of swimming, tons of eating and drinking. As the sun set, my neighbors had me play volleyball against unwitting opponents oblivious to my spiking ability. A few hours after that, someone said, “Well, I guess we should get going.”

“Great,” I offered. I was exhausted, and I wanted nothing more than to take a shower and get to bed. “How are we getting back, is your cousin picking us up?”

“No, my cousin only had the truck for a little while.”

“So …”

“Yeah …”

And this began what felt like an eternal quest to get home. Like I said, it was a holiday, and even if there were pickup trucks or buses traversing these sparsely paved back roads, it would have been unlikely even on a good day to find a ride capable of getting all twenty or so of us back at once.

After what had to have been two hours of waiting, somebody somehow convinced a passing cattle truck to haul us up the long mountain path. No sooner had we all piled in, standing room only, in a sawdust covered flatbed, did it start raining. Pouring. As we ascended in altitude, the nighttime chill plus the downpour made every second a test of endurance.

We were bumping along the road, I was kind of hunched over so as to try and maintain some sort of standing up balance, and my thin t-shirt and jeans combination was soaked through. And then we stopped because there was a flat time. And nobody uses jacks in Ecuador, you have to walk into the woods and find some stones big and flat enough to pile up underneath the wheel.

I eventually made it home, shivering, wondering if I’d ever get warm again. I know that the mind has a way of exaggerating pain and discomfort, but I remember even in the moment that feeling of being beaten down by the elements with absolutely nothing to provide me with even the tiniest bit of comfort.

Anyway, yeah, so whenever I get cold, whenever I’m walking to the grocery store and I get to the point where I say something to myself like, “It’s freezing out,” I just put myself back in that pickup, I can still feel the rain on my back, and I know that it’s all going to pass, no matter how bad things get, it’s all momentary, I’ll be back in bed soon enough.

Nobody wants to know about your bedbugs

One of my neighbors dragged a mattress out to the curb the other day, and he taped a big piece of cardboard to the side, a handwritten sign in black permanent marker that said: “Do not take! Bedbugs!”

All I could think about was, what the hell man, who goes around town shopping for mattresses on the side of the road? I mean, somebody might take it, and that somebody is probably going to be really down on their luck. In fact, if you’re at the point where you’re looking at a mattress that’s been tossed out to the sidewalk and you’re thinking, man, I could really use this mattress, I’m guessing that you’re not going to be curious about bedbugs, you’re just going to go ahead and assume, free mattress, bedbugs.

So it’s like, what are you doing putting that sign up? You’re not even giving whoever needs that mattress anything to hope for. Because bedbugs won’t necessarily bite you. Every once in a while you’ll run into a coworker or an acquaintance that has the misfortune of landing a bedbug infestation, and it’s always the same conversation, “I don’t know, my wife got eaten alive, but I was fine, no bites, nothing.”

And that’s assuming that whoever wants the mattress still takes the mattress. You’re not thinking about how hard it is claiming a used mattress from the side of the road. It’s like, used lawn furniture, fine, that’s perfectly acceptable. Even heavy furniture, solid pieces of wood type stuff, I’d say that’s all fair game. But couches? Anything with a cushion? No, there’s a stigma attached to all of that stuff, namely, who has been sitting or sleeping on this? What else have they been doing there? And are there bedbugs?

Of course there are probably bedbugs, you don’t need proof. If someone’s throwing away a mattress, it’s because either the springs have gotten so bent out of shape that they’re busting through the fabric, or it’s bedbugs. My aunt bought a new mattress a few years ago, and you know what she did with her old mattress? She gave it to me. I needed a mattress. I wasn’t about to go shopping for used mattresses, because most used mattresses, unless is something that you’re getting from a trusted family member, I’m telling you, bedbugs.

The street is the last place you want to pick up a secondhand mattress. Anywhere else besides that very trusted family member is the second to last place you want to look. Oh, but someone’s offering a lightly used thousand dollar space-foam mattress box-spring combo for a hundred and fifty? Bedbugs. Seriously, save yourself a trip, it’s bedbugs, and the original owners, having just spent upwards of a grand on what I’m sure is a barely used piece of expensive furniture, they’re just unable to come to terms with the fact that it’s been invaded by bedbugs. They’re thinking, “This can’t be. We just spent all of this money. Surely it has to be worth something. Maybe we can get a couple hundred off of someone on craigslist.”

It’s bedbugs. And that guy standing outside of your house looking at that mattress, putting his arms around the sides, seeing if he can carry it away by himself or if he’ll need to get some sort of a rope so he can drag it away, he’s thinking bedbugs too. He’s thinking bedbugs, but he doesn’t care, because it’s a free mattress, and like I’ve already spelled it out for you, he’s not worried about bedbugs, he’s shopping for mattresses on the street.

And so you put this homemade sign up, “Bedbugs!” all you’re doing it taking away this guy’s fleeting hope, not even a conscious hope really, but a long-shot prayer, that maybe this thing doesn’t have bedbugs. And even if it does have bedbugs, maybe it’ll be the kind of bedbugs that won’t bite him. And so when he’s sleeping at night, and those little guys start crawling out of wherever they crawl out of, and they’re walking all up and down his body, they’re not biting him, and he’s not itching, and by the time he wakes up in the morning, they’re back inside however it is they get back inside that mattress. He’s thinking, this is a nice mattress, and I don’t have any bites. Maybe this thing is bedbug free after all. Maybe I hit the free mattress jackpot.

Not with that “Bedbug!” sign, he won’t. And then think about everybody else on the block, they’re all staring out the window, they’re watching this guy sizing up your bedbug labeled piece of trash. It’s like a scarlet letter, you might as well have spray-painted the side with a giant B. The whole picture comes into stark relief, this guy, he’s going for it anyway, and we’re all watching, the pity, the disgust.

Seriously, don’t worry about a bedbug sign. You want to throw it out? Just throw it out. You don’t label your trash bags, “Garbage!” on trash day. If a homeless person wants to look through it for bottles or whatever, it’s just going to happen. You’re not doing anybody any favors. And plus, now everybody knows your house has bedbugs. You think that’s good for the property value? For the other houses on the block? Keep that shit to yourself man, nobody wants to know about your bedbugs.