Girl Shy

“…and we were play­ing this weird fin­ger game on the way to New York and I said screw it, and I grabbed his hand”

It was three thirty in the morn­ing. No one in the house was awake except for me. I lay on my over­sized couch, which I had com­man­deered as my bed for the night. My tele­vi­sion dis­played a black and white silent film called “Girl Shy”. The film told the story of a boy who was afraid of girls because he of a hor­ri­ble stut­ter he had Some­how the boy devel­ops the capac­ity to write a book about cap­tur­ing a girl’s heart despite his nonex­is­tent expe­ri­ence with girl. Upon pub­lish­ing this book he falls him­self falling in love with the girl of his dreams. It was pretty heavy stuff, espe­cially for a silent movie, but to my sur­prise it was a com­edy. Of course “Girl Shy” only had part of my atten­tion that night; the girl at the other end of my tele­phone was express­ing her boy trou­bles to me. As she did so, I won­dered when I became so pathetic that my idea of a fun Sat­ur­day night was watch­ing an old silent film at three thirty in the morn­ing, and giv­ing a girl who I had the dear­est crush on, advice on get­ting a guy who sim­ply wasn’t right for her.

“Go on…”

I real­ized that when girls talk about their rela­tion­ship prob­lems they enter into an extremely volatile and fren­zied state.  To pre­vent trig­ger­ing that volatil­ity, it’s best to sim­ply let them get every­thing out first before mak­ing any remarks. Besides, the only rea­son why some­one would call me at three thirty in the morn­ing was to hear what they wanted to hear from some­body who they thought cared about them. In order to do this, I would have to hear the whole story first.

“He then grabbed my hand, and I swelled up with emo­tion, it was the great­est feel­ing in the world, and then casu­ally we started talk­ing to peo­ple, hand in hand”

When some­one talks about their rela­tion­ship prob­lems, they always pref­ace their trou­bles with the good. The rea­son for this is quite sim­ple, the per­son express­ing the prob­lem wants ever so dearly to hang onto the good mem­o­ries of that rela­tion­ship, thus they use their good moments as a means to jus­tify their feel­ings. What peo­ple never real­ize is that a few moments of the emo­tional blitz called love, sim­ply can­not jus­tify the ensu­ing pain and suf­fer­ing that comes with what­ever prob­lems they are facing.

“So what hap­pened after that?”

I looked at my tele­vi­sion to see the main char­ac­ter in “Girl Shy” writ­ing a chap­ter in his book. The title of the chap­ter was “Sit­u­a­tion Num­ber 12: Deal­ing with Vam­pires” and as the main char­ac­ter writes the first sen­tences of the chap­ter he starts by say­ing “When deal­ing with vam­pires the best thing to do is to approach them with INDIFFERENCE”. I chuck­led slightly, for a movie made in the nine­teen twen­ties; “Girl Shy” cer­tainly had a lot of wit and humor.

“Well then we got to New York, and things were pretty casual after that. I kind of assumed that he liked me and every­thing, espe­cially since we held hands, so I wasn’t afraid to be more open towards him.”

“What do you mean by more open?”

“I mean, I wasn’t so con­ser­v­a­tive around him, and made it pretty obvi­ous that I liked him. Not that we did really did any­thing aside from hold­ing hands that one time”

A quandary that I never under­stood was why emo­tions had to be hid­den. For such exhil­a­rat­ing and joy­ful emo­tions as “love” or even “attrac­tion” one would think that the most log­i­cal thing to do would be to openly express these pos­i­tive emo­tions. Instead, these feel­ings come tacked on with an abun­dance of neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions. A per­son always con­fesses their love instead of sim­ply affirm­ing it. When a rela­tion­ship ends it’s always called a break up as opposed to a sus­pen­sion of mutual feel­ings. It’s ironic that the most volatile sub­stance in the uni­verse, human emo­tion, can only be described in absolutes, and at that, only in neg­a­tive absolutes.

“So when did the prob­lems start happening?”

It was obvi­ous that the girl on the other end was reluc­tant to delve into the neg­a­tives. I had seen her cry­ing a few days prior, obvi­ously from this sit­u­a­tion. As much as she prob­a­bly didn’t want to admit it, the fact that she was call­ing me was obvi­ously a call for help. Yet, despite how emo­tional this sit­u­a­tion was, I couldn’t help but get the feel­ing that such emo­tions were over some­thing minis­cule. But that’s how it is with emo­tions, hills become moun­tains, and moun­tains become hills. The sim­plest things turn into the most dif­fi­cult of sit­u­a­tions, whilst the most dif­fi­cult of sit­u­a­tions can be over­come with the utmost of ease.

“Well, we got back from New York, and he started get­ting mad at me. He said I was act­ing too much like his girl­friend, was around him too much, and said that he didn’t want to be friends with me anymore…”

Just like that, it was obvi­ous what the prob­lem was. A class “A” exam­ple of the one sided rela­tion­ship. The girl on the other side of the line had strong emo­tions for this guy, but he obvi­ously wanted noth­ing to do with her. She prob­a­bly knows in her heart that she will never get back together with this guy, but because she is so emo­tional over him, she’s going to give him every chance he can get before she calls it quits. A nasty sit­u­a­tion, and one that is sur­pris­ingly painful for both sides, assum­ing that both ends at least have some form of a soul.

“…so any advice?”

I had taken a recent habit to play­ing the White Knight in regards to girls that I was attracted to. With the girl on the other end ask­ing for my advice, I was all too ready to take up my cape, with­draw my sword, and play that part. Of course, I didn’t par­tic­u­larly like being the White Knight as I would much rather be involved with my own emo­tional mis­chief. But for what­ever rea­son, play­ing the White Knight was some­thing that I was good at, and at the very least, it kept me par­tially enter­tained while still giv­ing me some chance with girls.

“Well I think it’s pretty obvi­ous that you should move on”

“Move on!? I don’t want to move on, I just want to be his friend now, I don’t care if I’m his girl­friend or not, I just want to be his friend”

“Why do you just want to be his friend?”

“Because I love him, but not like that. I love him as a friend, and I would be emo­tion­ally crushed if he just stopped being my friend because of this”

I couldn’t help but find humor in the lie this girl was telling her­self. No one con­nects love with friend­ship, in fact I would go so far as to say that love and friend­ship are oxy­moronic in this con­text. The girl on the other end sim­ply could not accept her feel­ings for this guy and could only jus­tify them as being friend based, prob­a­bly due to the neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions that I was talk­ing about ear­lier. An obvi­ous case of igno­rance, and emo­tional imma­tu­rity, and the only way to snap the girl out of this was to tell her what she didn’t want to hear.

“I’ve never seen some­one con­nect love and friend­ship so closely together… are you sure you don’t want to date this guy still?”

“YES! I just want to be friends…FRIENDS!”

She was still lying to her­self, and it was obvi­ous that she was never going to real­ize her lies. I turned my atten­tion to “Girl Shy” as the main char­ac­ter was writ­ing another chap­ter in his book. It started say­ing “When try­ing to get a flap­per… use the cave­man method”. I couldn’t help but take into con­sid­er­a­tion such advice. Maybe being a rough, abu­sive, cave­man was more effec­tive then floun­der­ing around as the White Knight.

“To be hon­est, I’ve been in both sides of this sit­u­a­tion and here’s what’s going to hap­pen. The guy obvi­ously doesn’t have any mutual feel­ings for you. I don’t care how you look at it, but you have to real­ize that peo­ple aren’t so damn picky when it comes to being friends with some­one. Besides, who gets pissed off when a girl who obvi­ously likes them starts act­ing like their girl­friend? He’s just being a douchebag.”

“He’s a very fickle person”

“Fickle or not, it’s pretty damn obvi­ous that he doesn’t have mutual feel­ings for you.”

My White Knight act was going a lit­tle tougher on the girl than I was hop­ing for it to be. I had been in this sit­u­a­tion a ton of times, and could write a book of advice on how to directly han­dle such a sce­nario. What I was say­ing to the girl came out of life expe­ri­ence and truth.  As much as I hoped my White Knight ploy would some­how get this girl for me, I couldn’t com­pro­mise such truth­ful advice for a chance at my own per­sonal gain.

“Then where did I go wrong?”

The nasty com­po­nent to this sit­u­a­tion, when the neglected side begins think­ing it’s their fault. The only log­i­cal thing to do is to tell that side that it isn’t their fault, which is what they want to hear. The prob­lem is, even if you tell them that, in their hearts they won’t believe it, and truth be told, the fact that some­one refuses to accept them is indi­rectly their fault.

“The thing is, you didn’t go wrong. Peo­ple aren’t so judg­men­tal, espe­cially some­one who was hold­ing your hand a week ago. Unless this guy is super emo­tional, which he prob­a­bly isn’t, then I’m going to guess that he’s just play­ing you.”

“Ahh this just so con­fus­ing, I just want to get every­thing resolved with him so I can at least move on either way.”

“And you’re going to give him every chance you can because you like him so much.”

“Do you think I’m being naïve?”

“Prob­a­bly, but I would ven­ture to say that love by def­i­n­i­tion is naïve, so there’s noth­ing you can do”

I once again turned my atten­tion to “Girl Shy” expect­ing for this con­ver­sa­tion to con­clude. As the main char­ac­ter goes on tour for his newly released book, he finds him­self sit­ting next to a beau­ti­ful girl. The main char­ac­ter tries to talk to her, but he has his crip­pling stut­ter. The girl notices his stut­ter, and think­ing that it’s cute, she holds his hand. Instantly the main char­ac­ter over­comes his stut­ter, and clearly expresses his love and attrac­tion for the girl sit­ting next to him. The girl blushes, and as the train reaches the train sta­tion, she quickly kisses him on the cheek before leav­ing.  It was ironic, see­ing as how the movie was exactly the oppo­site of the sit­u­a­tion that I was tend­ing to.

“Well, thanks for your advice tonight”

“No prob­lem, I hope it helped.”

“Believe me it did”

“Next time I have girl prob­lems I expect you to stay up until four thirty with me to talk about them”

“Haha, you bet your ass I will”

“Well good luck with all this, I hope it all works out…Goodnight”

“Thanks and have a good­night also”

I hung up, it was four thirty, and I was begin­ning to get tired. I was lucky to catch the final min­utes of “Girl Shy”. After reunit­ing with his long lost train lover, the main char­ac­ter roman­ti­cally looks upon his girl. He whis­pers some­thing roman­tic, stut­ter nonex­is­tent, but inaudi­ble due to the nature of the film. She looks up at him, smiles, embraces him, and they engage in a long kiss, as the scene grad­u­ally fades to cred­its. I laugh, real­iz­ing the antithe­sis of the two sit­u­a­tions I expe­ri­enced that night, and couldn’t help but won­der why I was still play­ing the White Knight. Then it dawned on me, I was girl shy.

Cramps

They say that when you’re an ath­lete the worst thing you could pos­si­bly expe­ri­ence is a cramp. Your mus­cles spasm uncon­trol­lably as they con­tract and release in a rhythm which causes an almost unbear­able pain. How­ever, the real pain for cramps isn’t in the phys­i­cal spasm of the mus­cles, it’s in the psy­cho­log­i­cal quandary that a cramp presents for an ath­lete. When an ath­lete has a cramp it means one of two things. Either the ath­lete isn’t in shape, so his body is rebels against him for not being pre­pared to per­form. Or the ath­lete is attempt­ing to do some­thing impos­si­ble for the body to accom­plish, regard­less of how con­di­tioned he is. If one expe­ri­ences the first pos­si­bil­ity, then they are actu­ally in a great deal of luck because they can get into shape which usu­ally pre­vents addi­tional cramp­ing. The one’s that are stuck with option two are the ones that are screwed. These ath­letes unknow­ingly do some­thing that their body can­not cope with, and thus for rea­sons that are unknown to the ath­lete, the body sim­ply refuses to do what is asked of it. The uncer­tainty that comes with not know­ing the root of the prob­lem, and even more painful, not know­ing how to cor­rect it, is what causes the most pain when some­one expe­ri­ences a cramp. Most peo­ple take cramps lightly because phys­i­cally, cramps are always tem­po­rary, but given the mas­sive amount of pain that they can cause, I hardly see how any­one can jus­tify that.

My name is Vin­cent DeMac­cio III and for the past year of my life, I have been expe­ri­enc­ing one mas­sive cramp. No, this isn’t a phys­i­cal cramp, that would be too painful and I would prob­a­bly kill myself if that was the case. Instead this is a men­tal cramp, and one that has been harshly affect­ing me since I got it. Like all cramps I can’t exactly pin­point when and why this started, but I can clearly iden­tify the pain that I am expe­ri­enc­ing. Before we get into that I sup­pose I should start off by telling you a lit­tle more about myself. As I just men­tioned, my name is Vin­cent DeMac­cio III, my friends call me DMac for short, and I am six­teen years old. As far as my back­ground is con­cerned, I come from a rather priv­i­leged line of avi­a­tors who run and own a pri­vate jet com­pany. Now I’m not even going to try to blame my prob­lems on my lux­u­ri­ous lifestyle, because I know that it isn’t the prob­lem, and even more impor­tantly, I know you won’t lis­ten to me if that was the case. I go to a small Catholic High­school. Small because the school is tai­lored for rich kids and only a few can afford it. Catholic because that’s what all the other rich peo­ple around here are. I do fairly well in school. My GPA is a 3.7, an atroc­ity in these realms, but in com­par­i­son to the real world a rather impres­sive aca­d­e­mic show­ing. I run cross coun­try and track, play the vio­lin, am involved in the honor soci­ety, the stu­dent coun­cil, and I am the pres­i­dent of our clas­si­cal Greek club. I must empha­size that my back­ground  has very lit­tle to do with this cramp, but I feel that it’s impor­tant to present myself to be as nor­mal of  a per­son as pos­si­ble before I begin to detail my pain.

For what­ever rea­son, I have the sense that I am slip­ping. My grades are get­ting weaker because my effort in class feels abysmal, my per­for­mance in track and cross coun­try cer­tainly isn’t near my stan­dards, let alone my coach’s, and for the first time in my life I hon­estly can say that I don’t give a damn about the honor soci­ety, the stu­dent coun­cil, or even clas­si­cal Greek. Some peo­ple could cast this off as seniori­tis espe­cially given the fact that I am a High School stu­dent. The prob­lem is, I’m not a senior, in fact I’m only a sopho­more so I’m only half way through with the game so far. While I could eas­ily fall into the “rich d-bag” stereo­type, I truly am a hard worker, and you have to trust me when I say that I give my best effort in all that I do. So why do I feel like this? Why am I slip­ping? Why can’t I stop this?

But that’s the least of my prob­lems, remem­ber I am rich. If the grades are slip­ping, a lit­tle hol­i­day gift in the form of two hun­dred dol­lar Nord­strom gift cards to the teach­ers goes a long way. If I’m not per­form­ing well in my sports, I can always hire one of those hyper inflated ego, over­priced, pri­vate coaches to show me a few point­ers. As far as the honor soci­ety, stu­dent coun­cil, and clas­si­cal Greek are con­cerned, I can always min­i­mize my role.  I am sure I could offer my posi­tions to one of the hun­dreds of fren­zied prep kids attend­ing this school that’d make things easier.

Speak­ing of peo­ple, I’ve grown to hate them. No, I’m not some gothic, emo, punk who hates life.  I don’t have any rea­son to be like that and besides, that’s not allowed at Catholic Schools. How­ever, I just can’t help but despise the peo­ple who I inter­act with on a daily basis. For instance one of the most accom­plished, lov­able girls at my school, her name is Amelia, is the most ener­getic, friendly, bright, and ami­able per­son you could meet. No, I don’t mean that stu­pid child­ish, cute, high pitched voice, bull­shit that counts as energy these days. I mean real, authen­tic, good natured energy, the kind that bright­ens everyone’s day, and puts a smile on their faces. Yet I see this Amelia one day, and I feel the over­whelm­ing com­pul­sion to punch her straight in the face, just to see if that would per­haps knock the energy out of her, or at least wipe everyone’s smile from their faces. On the other hand, I sit next to a guy named Trevor in three of my classes and because of this he con­sid­ers me to be one of his closer friends. Trevor is a nice guy, def­i­nitely a lit­tle shy, but once you get to know him he opens up and you can see that there’s truly a great per­son inside of him. The prob­lem is, he’s way too con­ser­v­a­tive for his own good, and thus I find myself echo­ing the thoughts that I can’t be friends with him sim­ply because he refuses to open him­self up to peo­ple. Why do I feel this way towards peo­ple? It’s not jeal­ously, it’s not arro­gance, it’s just a sense­less dis­taste that I have for every­one I meet. If I was emo, (once again I’m not), this would be per­fectly accept­able. The prob­lem is, I don’t want to feel this way towards peo­ple. I hon­estly have no rea­son to dis­like oth­ers, and I clearly know how unhealthy it is to have these feel­ings towards peo­ple. When did I start see­ing the bad in peo­ple? Why do I feel repulsed by oth­ers? Why can’t I stop myself from feel­ing this way?

So that’s the cramp. You’re prob­a­bly say­ing to your­self “big deal, a rich kid doesn’t do well in school, and hates everybody…who cares?” While you are enti­tled to your opin­ion, allow me to make one last emo­tional appeal. Imag­ine wak­ing up every day with the knowl­edge that no mat­ter what you do, you will not live up to your poten­tial. Try plac­ing your­self in a world in which no mat­ter what you accom­plish, you will never feel sat­is­fied because you know you should have done bet­ter.  Try ask­ing your­self when get­ting a “B” in any class was accept­able when the clear goal was to get an “A”  or, why you started con­sid­er­ing  sec­ond place in a race a suc­cess.  Imag­ine look­ing around, and notic­ing only the bad things in peo­ple. Not only do you solely notice the bad things, but your neg­a­tive out­look becomes sup­ple­mented with the desire to cause these peo­ple pain, sim­ply because they have neg­a­tive things about them. Worst of all, imag­ine not know­ing how all of this started and try to emu­late the fear that stems with not know­ing how to stop it. This is my cramp, it was spon­ta­neous, it is painful, and I have no idea how to stop it, but hey, at least it’s temporary.

I had to write a small poem for Eng­lish, based on a fic­tional char­ac­ter that we cre­ated in homage to Chaucer’s “The Can­ter­bury Tales” . My char­ac­ter is titled “The Fake” and he rep­re­sents the greed and mate­ri­al­ism of today’s soci­ety. Since we have to give our char­ac­ter a pro­fes­sion, The Fake is a Stock Bro­ker.  The poem is pretty brief, and isn’t any­thing spe­cial, but I like it.

The Fake

Work­ing with money for all his life,

Was the  rea­son  he was with­out  a wife.

For all the money in the world could only pur­chase  gild,

Thus a heart­felt rela­tion  he could not build.

His friends? He had but only one,

It was money, but he cur­rently had none.

For his greed had brought about a recession,

And if it con­tin­ued it would bring about a depression.

Because liv­ing in a real­ity where he was always right,

Would quickly bring about his inevitable plight.

Spe­cial Order

It was like any other Fri­day night at Bob’s Pig and Ribs. Large fam­i­lies, com­prised of large peo­ple, packed the restau­rant, as the masses flocked to Texas’ pre­mier source for salt blasted, fat packed, artery clog­ging food. If I had even an iota of con­cern for the health of com­plete strangers, or per­haps a con­ster­na­tion regard­ing ani­mal rights, I would have upheld my morals and quit my job in a heart­beat. As they say though, beg­gars can’t be choosers, and I cer­tainly wasn’t in a posi­tion to be a chooser.

It was the sum­mer of my grad­u­at­ing year. I had played the game well, and grad­u­ated high school with top marks, plenty of awards, and pre­ferred admis­sion to a select few Uni­ver­si­ties. By a select few Uni­ver­si­ties, I mean the kind that are almost as old as the coun­try itself, have more Latin than Eng­lish in their his­tory, and above all else, have the pres­tige that can land you a hire in any job inter­view just by men­tion­ing their name. As far as I was con­cerned, I was set, I had the smarts, I had the school, and I would inevitably get the job to see me com­fort­ably through life. That was until, life decided to kick me in the balls.

Wegener’s Gran­u­lo­mato­sis was what the doctor’s called it, a rare dis­or­der in which the body begins to pro­duce abnor­mal anti­bod­ies which slowly destroy blood cells and organs. The dis­or­der begins spon­ta­neously with symp­toms sim­i­lar to Pneu­mo­nia, harsh chest pain, and flu-like symp­toms. As the dis­or­der con­tin­ues to ail the body, the ears become inflamed, the oral cav­ity is tar­nished with a tor­rent of gum related dis­eases, skin cells begin to self destruct, uni­ver­sal arthri­tis through­out the body sets in, and most impor­tantly, the kid­neys begin to fail. With­out treat­ment, most patients die within a month, each of those days the body is slowly destroy­ing itself with­out any chance for self repair. When we brought my mother in, she was already two weeks into the dis­ease, halfway dead.

The doc­tors said the dam­age from the dis­or­der was exten­sive and if we had waited just a few days more, she would be beyond repair. Through the magic of mod­ern med­i­cine, a treat­ment uti­liz­ing a cock­tail of tox­ins to cor­rect the dis­or­der, and a few surg­eries to help repair the inflicted dam­age, were all that my mother needed to con­tinue liv­ing. The doctor’s warned us though, that such treat­ment would come at a tremen­dous price, and just like that, my col­lege fund went to pay­ing hos­pi­tal bills. Those select few Uni­ver­si­ties soon became too finan­cially selec­tive for my means. Instead of prepar­ing myself for enter­ing the realm of pres­tige and intel­lect, I got a job prepar­ing food as a waiter. If I worked my ass off, kept my mom alive, and had any­thing left to spare, there was a sliver of hope that I could pay my way into a Junior Col­lege. Even then, there was no assur­ance that I would amount to any­thing more than a spine­less ass-kisser who could mem­o­rize a menu, and write down orders on a small notepad.

Any waiter will tell you, that the best day to work is on Fri­days. It is the one day of the week in which peo­ple feel the inher­ent need to get out, get drunk, and spend their hard earned cash. This means big bills, big tips, and a whole lot of money for the under­paid, over­worked, ass-kissers of the ser­vice indus­try. Since being hired, I had gam­bled with my time by work­ing slow shifts, tak­ing on extra hours, giv­ing up days off, all with the hope of slowly mov­ing up “Bob’s Pig and Ribs” caste sys­tem to earn me a Friday.

My gam­bit soon paid off, as I was assigned my first Fri­day, and as far as I cared it was time to col­lect the Jack­pot. I had the last shift of the day, seven to ten, “the golden hours” as some called them. I was assigned a hum­ble wait­ing area of four tables, cer­tainly not a large vol­ume, almost an insult­ing one as a mat­ter of fact, but it was prob­a­bly a bi-product of it being my first Fri­day. Regard­less, I could more than han­dle four tables, which meant that if I kept a high stan­dard of ser­vice, I would be mak­ing easy money.

My first two hours went per­fectly. I had a con­stant stream of cus­tomers at my tables, and had served each one of them far above their expec­ta­tions. I was receiv­ing nearly twenty dol­lars in tips per table, and with an hour left to go in my shift, I had already accu­mu­lated well over two hun­dred dol­lars. After nine O’clock it was rare, almost impos­si­ble, to find fam­i­lies with chil­dren in restau­rants, and the rea­son­ing for this is quite obvi­ous. Young chil­dren have early bed times, and fam­i­lies are often ostra­cized by the rich, sin­gle, socialites which hit the town after nine. The com­bi­na­tion of these two fac­tors essen­tially assures that all fam­i­lies are safely at home by nine. Yet, to my sur­prise, well into the mid­dle of the nine O’clock hour, a fam­ily of four had been seated at one of my tables.

As cus­tom­ary for servers to do, I made my way over to the table and pre­sented myself.

“Hi, wel­come to Bob’s Pig and Ribs, my name is Sean, and I’ll be your server today.”

Already, I knew this table would be dif­fi­cult. As I pre­sented myself, the father refused to acknowl­edge my exis­tence under the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that he was peer­ing at his cell phone. The two chil­dren, who were both young boys, were fight­ing with each other, and the mother was doing her best to quell the brawl. I was placed in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. I could repeat myself at the risk of sound­ing rude, or I could stand patiently until I was noticed, but at the cost of wast­ing pre­cious sec­onds away from ser­vic­ing my other three tables. I casu­ally cleared my throat, hop­ing that some­one would take notice. To my relief, one of the boys looked at me, as I stood at the end of the table and screamed at the top of his lungs.

“LOOK MOM, WAITER’S HERE!”

The mother turned a shade of red as she half heart­edly scorned her son for being so rude. She then looked up at me, still notice­ably embar­rassed over the behav­ior of her son, and greeted me.

“Uh, hi”

“Can I get your order for some drinks? Per­haps a round of our very own, slaugh­ter­house brew, or maybe a cou­ple pork rind­ing margaritas?”

The mother looked towards her hus­band, who still refused to acknowl­edge my exis­tence and asked inquisitively.

“Honey, what do you want to drink?”

“Noth­ing alco­holic, this place has the crap­pi­est bar I’ve ever been to” replied the hus­band, still look­ing at his cell phone.

“I guess we’ll take two iced teas then” replied the Mother.

“Okay” I responded as I quickly scrib­bled down the order “any­thing for the boys?”

“Do you have milk?” asked the mother as she looked at the two boys who had set­tled down, and seemed not to care for the order­ing process.

“Yes Ma’am” I replied, as I read­ied myself to write two milks on my notepad.

“We’ll take two milks” responded the mother predictably.

“You got it, I’ll be right back with the drinks” I final­ized as I slipped my small note­book into my apron pocket. As I turned away from the table, the hus­band spoke.

“Oh, don’t get them milk, get them apple juice instead. I don’t want my boys con­sum­ing any­more fat than they have to after com­ing to this place.”

“Two apple juices it is” I responded, as I turned my head to acknowl­edge the order, still walk­ing away from the table.

I made my way into the server’s nook, where I read­ied the family’s drinks. I pre­pared the two iced teas like any other iced tea on the planet, with a small lemon wedge planted into the side of the glass, and a pro­por­tion­ate amount of ice to cool the tea. For the apple juices, I placed a small amount of ice into the plas­tic children’s menu cups, and then poured a small bot­tle of apple juice into each cup. I secured the lids firmly, see­ing as how the boys behaved pre­vi­ously, and then pro­vided them each with an over­sized silly straw to enter­tain them. I brought the drinks out, and placed them accord­ingly onto the table. This time order seemed to have come over the fam­ily, as the two adults peered into their menus, and the young boys were engrossed coloring.

“May I take your order?” I asked, con­cerned over the fact that the adults were still star­ing at their menus, usu­ally a good indi­ca­tor that a table isn’t ready. Once again, I was met with silence, as no one at the table seemed to rec­og­nize the fact that I had brought their drinks and was ask­ing for their order. I waited a few sec­onds, keep­ing in mind that I had wasted a super­flu­ous amount of time with this table, and then asked semi-impatiently.

“Sir, may I take your order?”

The hus­band looked up at me, his eyes star­ing straight into mine, but obvi­ously look­ing past me.

“Does it look like we’re ready?”

“Of course sir” I agreed, as I left to tend to my neglected tables.

Now, I would like to call to atten­tion a few clar­i­fy­ing details. I have never con­sid­ered myself to be a spine­less “yes” man, and as such I would have never stood for such rude treat­ment, even from a pay­ing cus­tomer. With a mother in the hos­pi­tal fight­ing for her life, ruin­ing my future as a result, I was through with life’s bull­shit. How­ever, there were a few fac­tors which kept me from los­ing my tem­per. The first of which was the bounty which I had col­lected through­out the night. With such a large sum of cash, I was already in a good mood and every dol­lar more was just an added bonus. There­fore, the family’s atti­tude merely grounded me from my greed induced eupho­ria. While attempt­ing to take orders, I also noticed the man’s cell phone. It wasn’t just any cell phone, it was a black­berry, T-3000, a high pro­file, state of the art, and of course, expen­sive black­berry model. Any man, who could afford such a black­berry, was obvi­ously well endowed, and as such a gra­tu­itous tip would be fea­si­ble. Another fac­tor was the mother’s behav­ior around her chil­dren. She obvi­ously couldn’t con­trol her off­spring and in fact, was embar­rassed by them, lead­ing me to believe that a nanny or maid had raised her chil­dren. This all but con­firmed my sus­pi­cion regard­ing the fam­ily being well endowed. To sum it up, my jolly atti­tude had shielded me from the family’s ini­tial rude­ness, and my expec­tant greed invig­o­rated me to cope with them.

After tend­ing to my other tables, I returned to the trou­ble­some fam­ily. For­tu­nately, they had their menus closed lead­ing me to expect for them to be ready to order.

“Are we ready to place our orders?” I started with a smile, note­book and pen in hand.

The father started almost imme­di­ately after I had pro­nounced the last syllable.

“I’ll take a lean cut of rib­eye steak, medium rare, but lean­ing more so towards the rare side.”

“Okay” I replied, a lit­tle annoyed at such a spe­cific order “and for you ma’am?”

“I’ll have a baby-back greens salad, hold the pep­per­corn, and I’ll just have reg­u­lar ranch instead of bar­beque ranch”

“Alright” I responded, assum­ing that the children’s orders would be spe­cially tai­lored as well “and for the boys?”

“They’ll each have a kids order of beef back ribs, but with­out bar­beque sauce, just plain ribs, and a side of broc­coli for each of them” answered the mother on her children’s behalf.

“You got it, I’ll get those menus out of the way for you” I replied, as I deposited my note­book and pen, and grabbed the couple’s menus for them. I turned my back to place their orders, when the hus­band called out to me as I took my first step.

“We’re going to need to send these apple juices back, there’s not enough ice in them. I don’t know how you could expect any­one to enjoy apple juice when it’s not even cool.”

I turned around expres­sion­lessly, and silently took the cups still full with apple juice. Annoy­ance raged through­out my body, my tem­per flar­ing slightly, but some­how I was able to sup­press it as I with­drew to enter the family’s ridicu­lous orders. I refilled the boy’s cups, this time fill­ing them to the brim with ice, and using only a half a bot­tle of apple juice since ice had the most vol­ume within the cups. I returned to the trou­ble­some family’s table and politely placed the cups of apple juice in front of each child. Not stop­ping long enough to make, or expect addi­tional con­tact with the family.

I waited on my other tables for ten min­utes, until the family’s food was ready. Upon enter­ing the kitchen to pick up their food, the chefs nearly killed me for allow­ing some­one to place such a tedious order. I apol­o­gized to the chefs and offered one of my twen­ties to appease them. They took kindly to such an offer, and pro­vided me with the family’s dishes. I made my way to the table, food in hand, this time being expec­tant of another harsh show­ing. When I arrived, the mother, and her hus­band were talk­ing qui­etly, the boys still pacified.

“Okay” I started, as I placed my plat­ter on a tri­an­gu­lar plat­ter holder. “I have a lean cut of rib­eye steak, medium rare, but more on the rare side” I announced as I placed the father’s dish in front of him, he seemed to ver­ily acknowl­edge that his food had arrived.

“A baby-back greens salad, with­out pep­per­corn, and with reg­u­lar ranch” I con­tin­ued as I placed the dish in front of the mother. She fol­lowed closely in the actions of her husband.

“Finally, two kid’s orders of beef back ribs with no bar­beque sauce, and sides of broc­coli, can I get you guys any­thing else?”

I was met with silence, as the fam­ily began to pick at their respec­tive dishes.

“Okay then… enjoy the meal” I said with a smile, as I was happy to finally rid myself of deal­ing with the trou­ble­some family.

It was around nine fifty when I brought the fam­ily their food. The restau­rant was begin­ning to close, and no addi­tional cus­tomers were being admit­ted. I had fin­ished off my other three tables, and the trou­ble­some fam­ily would be my final tip of the evening. To be hon­est, I was expect­ing for the tip to be worth all the effort, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that I had fol­lowed their order to the word. See­ing as how I had no other tables to attend to, I made my way to the fam­ily to see how they liked their dishes. I had learned early in my time as a waiter that this sim­ple ges­ture makes the cus­tomer feel unique, as if I had forged a rela­tion­ship deep enough with them to care whether or not they liked their food. This of course, leads to higher tips and gen­er­ally doesn’t come at the expense of los­ing serv­ing time for other tables. It is a very effec­tive technique.

“So how does every­one like their meals?” I asked with a smile on my face.

The father looked at me, and once again his eyes peered into mine, but some­how he was look­ing straight past me.

“Well actu­ally, everything’s wrong. My steak is too fatty, and I’m pretty sure it was cooked medium, def­i­nitely not medium rare. My wife’s salad has too much dress­ing on it, and the boy’s ribs are too dry. You’re going to have to send this all back if you expect us to pay.”

Another kick in the balls, appar­ently a hobby that life seems to have with me.

Anger, rage, and annoy­ance tor­mented through­out me, as a flurry of reds came to my face. I took a few agi­tated, deep, breaths to try to calm me from down­right beat­ing the man. Instead of releas­ing my anger, I took the high road and decided to rea­son with him.

“Sir I can’t do that. We’re clos­ing, and our kitchen staff has just fin­ished clean­ing up. There’s no way I can ask them to start every­thing back up just to remake your dishes.”

“Well then, we’re not going to pay for this”

“You can’t do that either sir”

“And why not?”

“Because I have to cover the costs of your food if you don’t pay”

“So… you’ve made what? Three hun­dred dol­lars tonight, how much was on our bill?”

“Around sev­enty dol­lars sir”

“Chump change, you greedy bas­tard… you have more than enough for your­self, and you have enough to pay for the order you botched up. Come on honey let’s get out of this place, we’re never com­ing here again.” Final­ized the father as he, and his fam­ily began to stand up.

“SIR, YOU ARE NOT LEAVING HERE WTIHOUT PAYING FOR YOUR FOOD!” I shouted angrily, as more emo­tions began to flood through.

“Oh believe me, I am” said the father almost sar­cas­ti­cally as he walked towards the backdoor.

“BUT!.…” I started as I con­sid­ered plead­ing with the man for the sake of my sick mother. Then I real­ized, I wasn’t a pathetic “yes” man and as much as I felt like it, I wasn’t a beg­gar. I would not dis­grace myself or my mother’s name in the futile attempt to appease an impu­dent man, and his family’s ridicu­lous demands, even if he was going to walk out of the restau­rant, forc­ing me to lose almost half of my earn­ings for the night.

I stood there for a few moments, still fum­ing over what had tran­spired. My fists were clenched hard, to the point in which my knuck­les ached. My chest con­vulsed greatly, as I inhaled, and exhaled great breaths to try to con­trol my anger. Life, life had been so unfair to me. It took away my future, it took away my hap­pi­ness, and iron­i­cally enough, it almost took away my mother. Why had I, of all peo­ple, been cho­sen to deal with all of the bull­shit that life could throw at some­one? Why did I have to waste my time work­ing at Bob’s Pig and Ribs when I was meant to go to pres­ti­gious schools, and live a ful­fill­ing life, with a more than ade­quate job? These thoughts looped con­tin­u­ously through­out my mind with each iter­a­tion pro­duc­ing the same result, frustration.

I began to clean up the family’s table. I pushed in the chair, which the father had sat in, and as I did so I felt a small object fall briskly from the cush­ion of the chair on to the floor. The slight rip­ple of plas­tic on wood floor res­onated, through­out the almost silent and empty restau­rant. I reached under the table to find the source of the dis­tur­bance, and upon grasp­ing a slick, and smooth rec­tan­gu­lar object, I recoiled my hand to view my dis­cov­ery. It was the man’s black­berry T-3000.

With hurt­ful intent in my heart and a plot­ting mind, I touched the dis­play and sorted through the man’s recent emails. After a few min­utes I found a par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing email that he received ear­lier in the day. It read.

“Dear Hec­tor,

You were amaz­ing last night. Too bad we can’t get back together until next week. I really wish you didn’t have to spend so much time with your wife and kids this week­end. If ever need some­one who can actu­ally sat­isfy you, don’t hes­i­tate to call me before our next appoint­ment. Oth­er­wise, can’t wait until then.

–Vanessa”

Then it dawned on me. Life, life is not about expe­ri­enc­ing pres­tige, liv­ing abun­dantly or even being com­fort­able. Life is about expe­ri­enc­ing pain and suf­fer­ing, frus­tra­tion, hatred, and dis­ap­point­ment, cop­ing with sor­row, and bear­ing through tough times. Only through fac­ing and over­com­ing the tri­als of life can humans expe­ri­ence the full­ness of it. Until one faces these cir­cum­stances, they live a life that is noth­ing more than a per­pet­ual ani­ma­tion, full of mean­ing­less heart­beats, and wasted breaths.

A man who had every bless­ing that life could bestow upon him, walked into Bob’s Pig and Ribs. He had a beau­ti­ful wife, lots of money, and two young chil­dren. Yet, he squan­dered these bless­ings by refus­ing to father his chil­dren, by reject­ing the love of his wife, and by instead wor­ry­ing about the small things like how rare his steak was cooked. It is men like these, who have never lived; it is these men that need a kick in the balls from life. This time, it looked like life was let­ting me do the kick­ing. I went through all of Hector’s con­tacts, all two hun­dred of them and for­warded the email to each one of them. I then found Hector’s per­sonal email and sent him a mes­sage reading.

“Dear Hec­tor,

Life sucks, then you die.

–Sean”

Mes­sage in a Bottle

The alarm clock thun­dered as it reported “6:00 A.M.” in crim­son dig­i­tal dig­its. Like a well trained dog, Con­nor reacted accord­ingly, and rose from his bed, more so out of reflex than out of will. He crossed his tiny apart­ment flat, and started the shower blankly. As the pound­ing echoes of water on shower floor refracted off the walls and vapors of steam filled the abysmal bath­room, Con­nor mind­lessly undressed and stepped into the shower. Like a machine, Con­nor method­i­cally scrubbed his body. At well timed inter­vals he applied soap, and sham­poo to the appro­pri­ate regions of his body. When his short list of show­er­ing require­ments had been exe­cuted, Con­nor imme­di­ately shut off the water and exited the shower almost as mind­lessly as he had entered it. From there, he applied a bleach white towel roughly to his wet and drip­ping skin. He rubbed him­self as dry as exact, and as well rehearsed as he had exe­cuted his shower rou­tine. Rep­e­ti­tion, redun­dancy, order, these words formed the essence of Connor’s life.

Break­fast was noth­ing more than a grey bowl of oat­meal, two cups worth to be exact. A small splash of milk sup­ple­mented the mix­ture to add mois­ture, while two ounces of raisins were mixed to add a generic fruity fla­vor. A half glass of orange juice accom­pa­nied the oat­meal, as the two rested plainly on a tin tray table besides the couch. The T.V. flick­ered on, just in time for Con­nor to track the only thing that ever changed in his day… the weather.

At pre­cisely six thirty, Con­nor spot­ted off his bowl of oat­meal, and sipped the last con­tents of his orange juice. The weather report finally con­cluded, and with this Con­nor picked one out of his twenty white, short sleeved, col­lared shirts to wear for the day. A bash­ful, pure black, tie was selected to sup­ple­ment his somber, ebony pants. Con­nor then made his way back to the kitchen plac­ing both the empty bowl and cup into the sink for clean­ing later in the day. Finally, he returned to the bath­room with­draw­ing a tube of generic mint tooth­paste, and an unso­phis­ti­cated man­ual, scrub­bing, tooth­brush. As metic­u­lously and as method­i­cal as ever, Con­nor pol­ished his teeth as he uti­lized every angle and every vary­ing degree of force in his brush strokes.

Four cylin­ders and one hun­dred forty five Amer­i­can horses roared, as Con­nor turned the igni­tion to his dark blue sedan. After the ini­tial com­mence­ment tones had sounded, quiet and peace­ful jazz whis­pered from the gills of the sedan’s two speak­ers at no louder than twenty per­cent vol­ume. Con­nor checked all three mir­rors, each one of them not hav­ing to be adjusted, the park­ing brake was released, the sedan put into gear. Silently, slowly, the sedan rolled down the dri­ve­way, Connor’s head turned back cau­tiously look­ing out the rear win­dow just as the DMV had instructed him to do so twenty years ago.

A red light sig­naled hun­dreds of feet ahead. Con­nor let off the accel­er­a­tor, calmly guid­ing the sedan to a peace­ful stop. His start­ing speed not an iota faster than the forty five mile per hour limit. There he sat, all alone, with noth­ing but the sheep­ish sounds of morn­ing Jazz to accom­pany him. At such an hour there were no cars beside him, no law enforce­ment patrolling, miles of empty road­way in front of him. Yet, Con­nor remained, bound by a four way stop light in the mid­dle of a clear road.

The pres­ence of monot­ony was all too abun­dant as Con­nor sat in his con­ser­v­a­tively dec­o­rated cubi­cle. Back and forth, back and forth, Con­nor shuf­fled paper. Input, out­put, input, out­put as Con­nor wrote and printed his mean­ing­less reports. Every fif­teen min­utes Con­nor reli­giously checked his email. Care­fully ana­lyz­ing and sort­ing each piece of new mail before min­i­miz­ing the pro­gram and return­ing to work. Key­stroke, key­stroke, key­stroke, a sound that one per­son should not have to hear eight hours a day.

“12:00” reported the prim­i­tive mechan­i­cal clock, as both of its’ obsid­ian hands rested on the twelve. In pris­tine, tran­quil, and absolute silence, Con­nor sat in the empty con­fer­ence room his rus­tic brown lunch bag rest­ing on the broad oaken table. As Con­nor meekly con­sumed his peanut but­ter and jelly sand­wich, he glanced at the twelve chairs which were closely asso­ci­ated with the grand table. Each chair was ele­gantly crafted with smooth brown leather, golden stitch­ing, and cloud like cush­ions. Each chair, one that Con­nor would never fill.

“12:15” reported the clock, this time it’s two hands spread at a ninety degree angle, the larger one at the three, the smaller on the twelve. A frac­tion of the lunch break had expired, but as mutely as Con­nor sat, he exited, leav­ing no impres­sion of his pres­ence. Key­stroke, key­stroke, key­stroke, a sound which returned all too soon, had once again entered Connor’s ears. Point­lessly, need­lessly, and with­out addi­tional reward Con­nor con­tin­ued to work, the ulti­mate prod­uct of his efforts, meaningless.

The risqué, almost exotic sounds of Latin Jazz oozed freely from the sedan’s stereo at a mere twenty per­cent. Cor­nered by cars in all four direc­tions, Con­nor sat in rush hour traf­fic, a num­ber, among the drones, among the masses. The sun was set­ting illus­trat­ing the heav­ens with bright flur­ries of oranges, reds, and pinks. It offered the only dec­o­ra­tion to ease such point­less con­ges­tion, and con­fine­ment. Yet, Con­nor donned his square rimmed shades, put down the sun block­ers just above the wind­shield, and blocked what­ever beauty the sun had created.

Rinse, wash, and repeat this cycle would be the cli­max of Connor’s life…

Luna hov­ered omi­nously over the night’s sky, her bril­liant, inces­sant, aura pre­sent­ing the only illu­mi­na­tion in an ocean of dark­ness. Con­nor mechan­i­cally sorted amongst the keys on his ring until he acquired the key to his apart­ment. With pre­ci­sion, and con­fi­dence the key pen­e­trated into the key­hole, and with a slight turn, the lock­ing mech­a­nisms released. “6:00 P.M.” read the crim­son dig­its of the clock, the only lumi­nous source within the abyss of dark­ness con­sum­ing the inte­rior of the apart­ment. Con­nor entered blandly, more out of reflex then of will. Auto­mat­i­cally, he made his way over to the light switch, flip­ping them on as light shot through the room forc­ing the dark­ness to retreat.

Like a glim­mer of hope, an unusual lus­ter caught the cor­ner of Connor’s eye. Some­thing spon­ta­neous, some­thing dif­fer­ent, some­thing out of the ordi­nary had a pres­ence within the room. Con­nor turned towards the dis­tur­bance and observed a small, corked, emer­ald bot­tle, no larger than six inches perch­ing peace­fully upon the tin tray table. Curios­ity tempted Con­nor, and for the first time in his life he yielded to it. Like a pre­cious gem, Con­nor cau­tiously grasped the bot­tle; he peered past the trans­par­ent, ver­dant glass, and into the con­tents of it.

It con­tained no liq­uid or edi­ble sub­stance of any sort. Within its’ con­fines the bot­tle held only a tightly rolled piece of paper. With­out tak­ing so much as the time to prop­erly acquire a cork­ing uten­sil, Connor’s grace­ful fin­gers wrapped around the top half of the cork. With a quick snug, and a pop, the seal was bro­ken. Con­nor soon tossed the cork care­lessly to the floor. Con­nor flat­tened his hand and shook the bot­tle over it until its con­tents came out. A plain white piece of paper landed peace­fully on his hand. Con­nor grace­fully placed the bot­tle back on the tray table, and used both hands to unravel the scroll of paper.

“If you can help me… I can help you… 343‑0021”

In an instant Con­nor reached deep into his pock­ets and with­drew his cell phone. As he read the paper, his fin­gers punched in the dig­its. Key­stroke, key­stroke, key­stroke, who would have ever thought such a sound could bring about res­ur­rec­tion? As the seven dig­its dis­played across the screen, Con­nor re-read the mes­sage one final time. His thumb slipped over the dial button…green light.