Official Documentation of My IdiocyTuesday night I did not sleep. I've never had that problem unless I had drugs in my blood. But Tuesday I couldn't sleep because STUDIO MASTER, the friend mastering my FunKruze album (which I must finish before I leave Florida), lost the master tape. So I tossed in bed and searched for analogies and situations to describe the way I felt about losing the tape. If I had a son. Named Drayton. If I gave Drayton the FunKruze master tape to keep in his bookbag for me and Drayton was kidnapped on the way to school and later found mutilated in a ditch behind Celebration Station, I would die inside. I would fall apart. I would lose much sleep. And three months later, I'd wipe the tears out of my eyes and ask the police in a whimper: "Did you guys happen to find an ADAT in his bookbag." I'd worked so hard on that music, by myself, for so many hours. It sounded perfect: the first music I'd created that ever made me 100% proud. I was on the verge of proving Tampa wrong. But then STUDIO MASTER lost the master. Hours and hours and 100's of dollars and bags of pot. This is why I did not sleep. But the sun eventually rose, and the rest of my day went like this: 9 a.m.:
I arrived at THE PAPER knowing The Head Editor would ream me out at some point in the day, as planned yesterday by the woman playing my Immediate Supervisor. "We're going to have a talk with The Head Editor tomorrow." She said. Her and I argued loudly in the empty newsroom. 10:30 a.m.:
I suddenly realized I was suppose to be at the doctor to have my balls checked (I've already been tested for STD---negative. Which scares me even more). Also, blood has freckled my stool since I was 9 or 10. I had my colon checked at the University Health Center while in college, but I really don't like being probed. I hate it. So I didn't go back when the University Doctor suggested a specialist, with a bigger finger and different tools, and more knowledge of colons and why they bleed. Besides; I figured that if my bleeding colon hadn't killed me by now, it couldn't be too bad of a problem. But now I wanted to confront San Francisco like a military man: with a clean bill of health. So, I figured I'd get all my medical shit (no pun) taken care of while I still live in Tampa and THE PAPER still pays my doctor bills. 10:45:
I accidentally drove past the Dr's office on North Boulevard and MLK. I pulled a U Turn to go back and ran over a broken cement curb and my tire ripped off my truck violently. The giant slit in my tire stared up at me sadly like a sloppy, uninviting, gray vagina. In the 100 degree heat, pissed at myself because a new tire is a night's work at PIZZA DIVE, I walked the three hot Florida blocks to the Ball and Ass Doctor (that sounds like a 2 Live Crew song title). A strong film of sweat coated my arms and made its way through the chest of my shirt as well as running down the crack of my behind where the doctor would soon be peeping and poking. 11:
Thankfully the doctor made room for me in his schedule, despite my lateness. 11:15:
The doctor was about to do uncomfortable and painful things in areas I rarely let my girlfriends go. As he played with me, I wondered if, in doctor school, they teach time limits for how long you can hold a patient's penis in your hand before said patient feels uncomfortable. But Dr. Cruz made me feel as comfortable as I could have hoped for given the compromise of fingers in my rectum. Dr. Cruz is a Chinese man with an afro. He has a cute accent and an obscure sense of humor that broke down my resistance. When I pointed to the side of my white belly where my stomach hurt he said, "It's your ovaries." No laughing. I really appreciate a poker-faced comic delivery. "Lay on your side and grab your knees," he said. A female assistant entered and I shuddered for a brief second like a scared cat, almost reaching to reflexively pull up my pants but realizing that I should just let go of my pride, or whatever part of me doesn't like being naked and explored. 11:30:
The doctor stuck a needle in my arm for a blood test. My arm throbbed and the assistant put the possibly infected dirty needle in a red plastic container decorated with a skull and cross bones on the side. NOON:
I pulled up my pants and walked back to my truck. In my work clothes, I crawled under and wrenched down the spare tire while thinking about the reaming The Head Editor and my Immediate Supervisor had planned for later. How would I make it to PIZZA DIVE by 5pm? And would my spirit not be completely broken by then. I can't serve pizza with a broken spirit. Even if they don't make me wear a uniform. I liberated the dust-dirty spare and jacked the car up. As I cranked the jack, my arm screamed in dull pain from the blood test that'd just been drawn. The lump grew and grew as I jacked until it looked like a mouse sleeping beneath the skin in the sweat-shiny crook of my arm. The arm still hurts as I write this. 12:30:
Can't find the tire iron to take the tire off. 12:31
Walked a quarter mile to the gas station in 100 degree heat. Sweaty and dirty. I finally borrowed a tire iron from a guy in a Taurus, after three other gas station customers treated me like a dirty panhandler. 12:45
Walked back to my truck. Sweat. 1:00:
The Ford tire iron I borrowed didn't fit on the lug nuts of my Toyota. I've been having trouble with all my nuts lately. 1:05:
I walked back to the gas station blatantly talking to myself out loud. Disgusting. Dripping. I gave the guy back his useless tire iron, got change in the gas station and called work and asked them to pick me up. 1:10:
As I waited for my ride, I realized I had scheduled an interview with an art gallery coordinator at 12:30. 1:30:
My co-worker picked me up and I left my truck on the side of the road with no idea how I would later make it home or to my second job at the PIZZA DIVE. 1:45:
My co-worker took me home to change my shirt. 2:00:
Interviewed the old lady who runs an art gallery. 3:30:
Old lady drove me back to THE PAPER. 3:10:
My immediate supervisor, whom I argued loudly with the night before, gave me her AAA card and told me to go back to my truck and wait for them to change my tire: a bipolar act of kindness. "They'll be there in 30 minutes," she said. Time off work = less money and that many more hours between me and California. 3:20:
A fellow Editorial Assistant, dear girl, took me back to my truck and waited with me in the heat. We sat together, boiling in sweat, listening to The Beatles. The context made me hate The Beatles for a minute. 4:00:
We called AAA, "Where are you guys?" Answer: "We'll be there in less than an hour." 4:05:
I realized that the car we sat waiting in was a Toyota with a Toyota tire iron. I jacked up my truck again, dripping, my brain and my tender arm screaming their hatred of my idiocy. "How did we get here?!" they throbbed. 4:20:
Went home and changed my sweaty clothes for the second time. I didn't have any pot at my house. 4:40
Back at work: In The Head Editor's office, with the door shut, this benevolent man, this tolerant man, the best boss I may ever have, reamed me so hard that my face lit up a shameful red. I had officially lost his faith. Which hurt, because I respect him; not for his position, but for his management skills and his demeanor and his soothing foreign accent. Even as he almost implored me to quit for the good of us all, his voice was level and true. My Supervisor sat across the room, listening to The Head Editor scold me. She'd thrown me to the wolves, but I did not mention her hidden crimes against the company. I did not mention my co-worker who ran a real estate agency from her cubicle. Or the co-worker who does her shopping online all day. Or the one spending 30 of his 40 hours a week, feeling out caterers for his upcoming wedding. As I walked back to my desk under the weight of The Head Editor's reaming, I could almost feel my tail down there, between my legs, where Dr. Cruz had earlier been. 5:05:
Realizing I was suppose to be at PIZZA DIVE at 5pm, I scrambled across town. 5:15:
When I arrived, the beautiful Brazilian waitress with the perfect olive skin, told me I wasn't on the schedule for that night. I asked her if I could work for her. "You can go home, I need the money really badly." I told her. "No" she said beautifully broken, "I save mo-ney to go to my con-try." "Me too." I said. That many more hours between me and California. 5:25:
I stopped at the corner store for a six pack of Milwaukee's Best Light. Cans. 5:30:
Opened my mailbox to a $45 check from THE HYDE PARK RESTAURANT for the time served training last week, before getting fired. My friend in New York had also sent me a mix tape.
5:32: I entered my apartment to find that the woman who spent the night with me last night had left a pack of 'Simpsons' stickers by my bed.
6:00
I put on some cool nylon swim-shorts and a T-shirt. My fourth suit of clothes that day. 6:30:
STUDIO MASTER called and told me he found the FunKruze master tape. My friends: I'm on an upswing now, I can feel it. Everything will be fine.