I’m not here to judge anybody

I’m not here to judge anybody. Except for that guy sitting up front with the big cowboy hat. Hey pardner, we don’t wear cowboy hats around these parts. And even where they do, how is that at all acceptable? Like you don’t think anybody wants to see what’s going on up front? Maybe you could’ve taken a seat in the back? I’m just putting it out there, take a look around, nobody else is wearing anything even close to as big as what you’ve got on your head.

And again, I don’t want to judge, but what’s the point of a cowboy hat? You know, besides the dramatic increase in perceived head size. Maybe, take it off inside? It just seems like it would be a nice gesture, again, I don’t want to harp on it here, but front seat? Cowboy hat? Come on man, that’s just rude. Aren’t southern people supposed to be known for their good manners? Because I can’t think of anything less polite than still not having the decency to move, or at least take your hat off, after me going on and on about not being able to see.

It’s fine, it’s just, I hope you don’t mind complaining, the sound of me complaining during the whole movie. Or plastic crinkling or popcorn being chewed. You want to play passive aggressive? Yeah, well, I’m playing aggressive aggressive. How much did that thing cost, like two hundred bucks? Do you have to get it professionally cleaned? It just comes off as silly. You look silly, you look like a big silly cowboy going to the movies and sitting right up front.

Hey, maybe if you sat all the way in the back, your hot could block the projector, and then nobody would be able to see anything. This is a free country, right? I’m just saying that maybe you could get in the way of everybody’s movie experience if you wear an even bigger cowboy hat, right? Like what is that, a ten gallon hat? Maybe go for the twenty, fifty, do they make hundred gallon cowboy hats?

You could get one so big that it envelops your whole body, OK, and then you’d be sitting inside the cowboy hat, and it would still be big enough to block everybody else’s view. And then you could poke a little hole in the back, you’d take a seat right in front of the projector, like I was talking about before, and there you go, problem solved, now it’s your movie, now it’s projecting only on the movie screen that you’ve got set up on the inside of your oversized hat.

No you be quiet, ma’am. If Yosemite Sam over here is allowed to come to theater and impose his big hat on everybody else, then I’m allowed to sit here and talk and complain and put way too much popcorn in my mouth and start showering the back of this guy’s cowboy hat with little half-chewed up pieces of popcorn.

What’s wrong Hoss? You got a problem? That’s pretty annoying right? Having to keep brushing off the sides of that hat? Keep scooping out all of those little popcorn bits from the sides? And what the hell’s a guy like you doing at a movie like this anyway? John Wayne’s not in this movie. This isn’t a Clint Eastwood production. Why don’t you go and see if there aren’t any other movies that might more suit …

Ow! What the hell man? You can’t just flick me like that! Way to take it to the next level buddy. Yeah, well, you’re not allowed to hit me. It was a hit. You touched me, man, you crossed the line. Yeah well, just take off the hat. Bro, just take off the hat. Just, just take off …

There you go. Oh … Oh my God. What is that? A goiter? What do you have like an iodine deficiency? Hey man, I’m really sorry. Yeah, put the hat back on, that looks incredibly … just … I’m just … Oh God, some things you can’t unsee. I’m really sorry pardner. That was really uncalled for, on my part. I can’t believe you held your shit together so well, considering all the verbal harassment I was, I was just, man, and to think I only got off with a flick. A little flick. And all that popcorn, it’s all stuck in the material. Yeah, Jesus man, I’m really sorry, I …

No you shut up ma’am! I’m trying to apologize here! Did you see that guy’s head? Well just chill out, all right? This movie sucks anyway, you just know they’re both going to die in like half an hour. No, I didn’t spoil anything, I’m just guessing. I’m just, this whole trope isn’t that original, just sit down. You want some popcorn? Sir? I’m talking to you now, sir. Again, I’m really sorry, just have some popcorn, just, just take the whole bag, I’m … Jesus.

I trapped a fly

I was just sitting down to write when I noticed a black horsefly on the screen window next to me. My reaction was pure instinct: shut the window closed, and then investigate. Sometimes a fly will be on the other side of the screen, giving the illusion that it’s trapped inside the house, but this guy was definitely inside, and now it was trapped, now it is trapped in this space in between the screen and the glass.

Now that the time for action has passed, I’m settling in to think about it, my first thoughts are, how did this fly get inside the house? Did something die in here? I’ve had squirrels in the basement before. This is New York City, so it’s not totally out of the question to assume mice or rats. And then the plausible gives way to the farfetched, to an imagined family of opossums setting up shop somewhere in the basement, camping out, leaving all sorts of garbage in their tracks, attracting flies, this fly in my window.

Or it could have just flown in through an opportune door opening, which is probably more likely. Now I’m stuck with this window closed right next to me. I’m deprived of my breeze. It’s summer and this overhead ceiling fan is only half of the equation, the other half being the open window from which new air comes in to replace the old air. I can feel the room, it’s a little bit less comfortable, the CO2 levels are definitely building up. I open up a window on the other side of the room, but it’s not providing the same direct circulation.

And this fly right next to me, it’s climbing up the screen, all the way to the top of the window, then it freaks out, I can hear the buzzing, and it’s back to the bottom, climbing up again. I guess there’s not really too much to do in there. And I start to feel bad.

Like, isn’t it just a little cruel for me to shut this fly in there, to sit around and wait for it to drop dead? How long does that take, at least a day or two, maybe three? Which doesn’t sound like a lot, not to a human anyway, but I remember that two or three days, that’s like an adult fly’s entire lifespan. It’s consigned to a life sentence of being trapped in that little space, the open world impossibly close, like it can probably reach its little feelers or whatever through the holes in the screen, maybe some of its fly friend might come up to it from the other side, shaking their heads back and forth, now you’ve done it bro, look what you’ve gotten yourself into.

I’m getting carried away. I’m anthropomorphizing this tiny cluster of nerves and wings. There’s no way it’s feeling anything. I think. I hope. I keep wondering what I would be like if I found myself in its position. I think that, for one thing, at least it has a little bit of space. I imagine me being trapped in a jail cell the size of a basketball court. So at least I could run around, or at least pace the perimeter, walk up and down and few times, try to keep my mind off the futility of my existence, the almost certain doom I was likely to face without any food or water.

But bad as I might feel for this little speck of existence, there’s no way I’m letting it out. Do you know how annoying a loose fly is inside a house? Even just one fly, it’s really, really irritating. They’re crazy fast, like where are they getting the energy from to fly back and forth across each room at such high speeds? And they’ll land on your leg every once in a while, or they’ll buzz really close to your ear and it’ll sound like a helicopter landing inside your head.

No, and then what? What if it’s pregnant? I’m going to get a fly infestation? No thanks. I had flies in the house when I lived in Ecuador. There weren’t any screens, so there were just always flies in the house, flies, June bugs, moths, frogs, no thanks. One time in college, yes, I lived like an animal, but for maybe a month, we had this fruit fly infestation. Fruit flies are a whole different type of nuisance, because while horseflies spend all of their time flying at high speeds across the whole house, fruit flies kind of just hover in one spot. And they’re so small that if you try to grab one, they just slip right through your fingers. It’s not happening

I just want this thing dead already. I want to not think about this fly, I want to open the window and have a very mess-free clean up, just pick it up with a napkin and throw it in the trash. But no, it’s going nuts. I’d go nuts too. I just have to put it out of my head for a while, not think about this little black dot at the periphery of my vision, a reminder of my mortality, a general symbol of all things slightly unpleasant.

Black, laceless, size fourteen

Every once in a while I’ll find myself in a shoe store. I have a size fourteen foot, so it’s unlikely that they’ll have anything past thirteen. But sometimes there’s going to be something, and maybe it’s not a fourteen, maybe it’s a thirteen but I’ll try it on anyway. And it looks great, I feel like I’m doing a normal thing, buying shoes at a shoe store, I’ll do like a whole series of laps around the showroom just to make sure I’m not tricking myself into thinking that these things are going to work out when they shouldn’t. And I’ll do it, I’ll buy them.

And it always turns out that, despite my in-store laps, I had tricked myself. Because whatever pace I was maintaining on that soft shoe store carpet, now that I’m outside, man, these things are way too tight. It’s the kind of discomfort that only starts to manifest like an hour, two hours after continuous wear.

One time I bought this pair of black shoes for a job at a new restaurant. I needed a very specific style, laceless, black, some sort of adhesive grip on the bottom. I don’t know, it was all a lot of very exact rules for buying these shoes. And I had like a week to make it happen. And so I went online, I found the shoes, they showed up maybe five days later, but they were too big, like way too big. These things said fourteen but they felt like a seventeen.

And so now I only had three days left. I placed another online order, but I wasn’t sure they were going to get here in time. And they didn’t, so I wound up at the shoe store again, tricking myself into buying those thirteens. Don’t worry, I told myself, you’ve got this. These are going to work out fine.

But that slow pain that starts after an hour or two, it was crippling after three or four. By the time I got out four hours after that, my toes were practically purple. Thankfully, while I was at work, that second online order arrived at my house, and so I didn’t even bother to try to them on, I thought, well, I’m definitely never wearing the thirteens ever again, and I don’t have anything else, so they have to work, they simply must fit.

The shoe store lady kind of put up a fight when I went to return the thirteens. “Did you wear them?” and I should’ve just said no, like, what is this lady, the shoe judge? No, just accept the return, thank you very much, you have a nice day too. But for some reason I was overly honest, “Well, yes, but just for one day.”

“One day?” she looked up at me, recoiling the handheld barcode scanner that she was just about to use to zap the purchase clean from my credit card. “What do you mean one day?” and usually I’m much more confrontational, like usually I would’ve been like, “What do you care? Just zap it, what are you, personally invested in this pair of shoes?” But I was so defeated, my feet still swollen from the day before, I think I might of started to weep, a soft weeping, but still, I was like, “Come on, please, they hurt so badly, I can’t …” and she kind of deflated, like I could tell she was looking forward to that confrontation, but this, I had to have been weeping, it was a pity zap, she thought I was pathetic.

And I got to work, my second day on the job, and these shoes, the second online delivery, they said thirteen, and these actually felt like a thirteen. I couldn’t understand it. The fourteens felt like seventeens, but the thirteens a strict thirteen? There was no winning here. It was another painful night. I thought about how I was going to go forward. I thought, am I going to have to find a new job? Why is it this hard to find a pair of shoes?

At the end of the shift, peeling those thirteens off, the rush of blood to my deprived extremities, I said, screw this, I don’t care. No way am I going through another night. I returned everything, all of the boxes, take it all back, I give up. I went into the back of my closet and reached for my trusty pair of blacks, laced up, a little scuffed on the edges, soles so smooth I could slide across the floor with little more than a brisk two-step.

And you know what? Nobody said anything. That stupid rule book that they gave me when I was hired, what a joke. Someone must have written it up years ago and that was the last time it was ever seriously consulted. One time I was on the floor and one of my managers even stopped me, he was like, “Hey Rob, your shoe lace is untied.” I was like, “Hey thanks a lot boss, good eye man,” and he gave me one of these winks, a really mild thumbs-up, like keep up the good work Rob, nice shoes buddy.

Gum check

I’m a waiter. I get people Diet Cokes and make sure that everybody’s happy. Great. The dinner rush comes and goes, closing time is at eleven, and barring any customers trying to spend the rest of the night camped out at my tables, it’s time for me to start making my way toward the exit. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as counting up my tips and calling it a day. “Hey Rob,” the head waiter calls out to me just as I’m packing up my stuff, “Make sure you check for gum.”

Fucking gum check. Do you know what that is? It’s me having to get on my hands and knees with a flashlight and checking to see if anybody stuck their chewing gum underneath the table. And you know what sucks? You know what’s really crazy? It’s that there’s always gum. Every single night, there’s at least one wad of chewed up gum stuck under one of my tables.

Unless you work as a waiter or waitress, maybe you think that I’m full of shit, that nobody goes into a restaurant and knowingly deposits their chewed up gum for someone else to clean up. I mean, that’s what I used to think before my bosses started making me do gum checks. The first time I thought it was a joke. I was like, that’s a funny thing to go and check for. Why would anybody spit out a piece of chewed up gum, inside a restaurant, at a table, and just leave it there?

But sure enough, I did that first gum check and there were like three pieces of gum. I couldn’t believe it. A hot towel wasn’t really doing the trick, because this stuff had since dried out and cemented itself in place. I found this flat chisel shaped tool, and that was kind of doing it, but finally I went to the maintenance guy who gave me this can of compressed gas stuff that froze the gum at the end of a long tube.

Still, it was a pain in the ass. Each piece of gum took like two minutes to clean up. Multiply each piece of gum by two, add that to the end of a busy night waiting tables, it’s not fun. It’s not a nice way to wrap things up. That first night I thought to myself, man, they must not have checked these tables in a while. Well that should take care of the gum problem for a few months at least.

And then on my second night, just as I was about to head out the door, the head waiter stopped me again, “Hey Rob, did you make sure to do a gum check?” and I barely even halted my stride. I just paused long enough to say, “No man, we did those last night.” But he persisted, “No, Rob, we have to do those every night. Gum checks every night.”

Every night? That seemed a little much. Sure, I could accept the fact that maybe once in a while someone would be careless enough to leave a piece of gum under the table. Maybe they were on a date, maybe they forgot to bring a wrapper or they were too embarrassed to ask for an extra napkin. I don’t know, things happen, people get funny in restaurants.

Like I said, once in a while. So I grabbed the flashlight just to kind of go through the motions, like yup, check, no gum, check. But on that first table, I couldn’t believe it. It was another three pieces of gum. I had just cleaned three pieces of gum from this table the night before. And now three more pieces? Was it three different guests, each leaving their own mark on our furniture, or was it a repeat offender, someone just constantly chewing gum in between bites of food?

At this point I wish I could say that I’ve made peace with the insanity of my situation. But every night, right as I should be on my way home, I find myself on the dirty floor scraping someone else’s chewed up gum off of the underside of our tables. It’s every night. It’s every table. What in the actual hell is going on? Who does stuff like that?

Since there’s so much gum at this restaurant, I’m statistically bound to assume that the majority of diners are guilty of this offense. But since I’ve never actually heard anybody talking about leaving gum, no friends or family members, I’m inclined to believe that everybody’s doing it in secret. Everybody chews, everybody sticks it to the table, and nobody says a word.

And all that’s left is me touching other people’s chewed up gum. It’s disgusting. It’s the absolute worst way to end any night. There’s nothing I’d rather do less than squeeze myself under a table and, with one hand hold a flashlight, using my free hand to clean up gross nasty it’s-been-in-someone-else’s-mouth-for-a-while chewing gum.

So here’s out with it. If you’re reading this, if you go out to eat, don’t put your fucking gum under the table. Ask me for a napkin. I’ll stick out my hand at the table and you can spit it out right there, I’ll catch it, I’ll actually do that, because even though that sounds horrible, trust me, I’d rather do that right there while it’s still fresh and pliable than at the end of the night when I’m tired, and I want to go home, but I can’t go home, because your stupid gum is all dried up and stuck, and maybe I’ve got half of it off, but the base layer won’t budge, and it’s coming off all stringy, and the gum string is really thin and wispy, and did one of those strings just float up and hit me in the face? In the mouth? Get me the fuck out of under this table, please, just go to the bathroom and spit out your gum, come on, let’s do it like they do in Singapore, where if you get caught chewing gum some police officer has to give you like ten lashes to the back with a cane, you know, that’s not a bad system, we look at them and think, how cruel! How barbaric! But we’re the barbarians here, we’re walking around chewing this gum like it’s cud, and we’re just sticking it anywhere, it’s sticky and so I don’t have to find a trashcan, I can just leave it wherever the hell I want. Why? I have no idea, but I’m just going to do it, and I don’t care, because some other jerk will clean it up eventually, and it won’t be me.

Don’t be an inconsiderate asshole. Spit out your gum in a napkin.

Let’s race!

You want to race? I’m always racing, people, groups of people, I can’t help it. I’m just so competitive. Like one time I was playing basketball and these guys on the other side of the court challenged me and my friends to a game of basketball. Like I said, very competitive, which, when we’re talking about basketball anyway, all of the competitiveness in the world wasn’t going to help. We got crushed. It was humiliating. And not really entirely my fault, anyway, not totally, Frank missed the majority of his shots, when he wasn’t getting blocked.

But even though basketball in this case happened to be a race to twenty-one points, yes, I’m talking about a race, race. Right after the game, and maybe I should have cooled down a little bit, maybe I should have just taken that high-five from the other team’s big guy because, yeah, I guess it was gracious at the time, but I couldn’t. “Let’s race!” I started getting in their faces.

And not the big guy, although, he did surprise me, how quick and light on his feet he was for a big man. And it was like that Sandra Bullock football movie, the big guy was like, hey man, I actually don’t like being called big guy. And I was like, sure thing big man. But I was just trying to get in his head. Again, I probably shouldn’t have discounted him entirely, making fun of him for accepting the challenge in the first place. Because like I said, he was pretty quick.

Not quick enough, because he didn’t win. But let’s be honest, he was never really in the running, pun totally intended, like running, get it? No, it was the little guy with the crew cut who looked like he might be the fastest. “What are you talking about race? Who’s got the next game?”

I got right in this kid’s face, like you’re not going to accept? Fine, I’ve got to make you accept. I threw the ball over the tall fence on the other side of the park, and while he was busy being all, “What the hell man?” I was like, “Come on, what are you scared? You little baby? You little scardey cat? Buck-buck buckaw!”

It worked, he took the bait, although it was a little dramatic, the way he ripped his shirt off, easy there Turbo, it’s entirely possible to run a race without taking your shirt off. But, whatever, if his intended effect was to intimidate me by showing off how ripped he was, like totally in shape, very cut, then yeah, I’ll admit it, it was slightly unnerving, I was caught just a little off guard, like shit, I had better win this race, like how did he get those bumpy muscles under his ribs so well defined? He’s got to be doing something besides cardio. I hope he’s not a runner.

“So what are we doing, like laps around the park? Four? Five?” It was the big guy asking the questions, and I was like, “Take it easy big man. This is between me and Turbo over here.” I was actually calling him Turbo all game, like trying to get in his head, but I don’t know, my whole smack-talking game, one, it’s much more effective when my team is solidly in the lead, and two, it just wasn’t really on that day, I don’t think it’s ever really on. But we’re never getting pummeled that badly, and I guess that was my lesson to learn, on shutting my mouth with the amateur smack-talk when I’m getting destroyed by this team of semi-pro guys, just all really built, like not everybody as built as Turbo, but man, all really pretty cut.

“Go!” and that was it. Turbo wasn’t a runner, it turned out, so you know, I stayed with him for the first three laps, just to make sure he wasn’t saving anything for the end, and then on that last lap I took off. Like I got so far ahead at one point I even turned around, started running backwards, I was like, “Is that all you’ve got Turbo? Ha!”

And yeah, that was all Turbo had. But the big guy, I think I mentioned already, he gave me a little scare, he definitely saved a little something for the end, and so I had to abandon my smack-talk, which sucked, because this was exactly the type of blowout that would’ve made even my talk sound like it was smack, like smacking. Smacking talk? No. You see what I mean?

I won, barely, and I was way too out of breath by the time I crossed the finish line to do any sort of a convincing gloat. “Whatever man,” Turbo was being a sore loser, “Just go and get my ball.” And I was like, “What? Loser gets the ball.” And he was like, “Says who? You threw it!”

But I refused. And he didn’t really have a choice, he had to hop the fence, a big one, like two stories tall maybe. On the other side it was just trash, just like a weird space between the neighboring building. And he jumped down and tiptoed around all the garbage to his ball, he was like, “Fuck man! It landed on a piece of glass!”

Yeah, that kind of sucked, it was all deflated. But he was behind a fence, so what was he going to do? I had like a good minute, minute and a half head start, and by the time he made it back to this side, I was gone.