TUESDAY. "#9" CONTINUED...
…I drove away from the art lecture, drunk and air drumming, no weight, no anxiety. I felt ecstatic. Ecstatic to have been fired from a restaurant job I was frightened of. I was ecstatic to have drank seven bottles of beer, paid for by the USF Art Department. I felt ecstatic, but with a thin film of negativity over the existential enthusiasm: like the rush one gets from winning a fist fight that started over something that no man with common sense would fight about in the first place. But I won.

The sky above USF was blackish blue like a bruise and the roads were slick and yellow and red and green under the traffic lights. THE LITTLE RED-HAIRED GIRL had asked me to call her at 9 PM. But it was 9:19 PM by the time the lecture ended and I air drummed off the college campus. I was closer to her house than mine, so I decided to stop by.

I thought about what I might say if her boyfriend answered the door, though I knew that wouldn't happen: she wouldn't tell me to call her if he was going to be in the room as we spoke.

I had a hard time finding her place in the student ghetto apartment complex. She's a vegetarian, but a giant grill sits on her front porch. So, I second guess every time, stare at the grill, 'is this her apartment?'

I stumbled up the stairs, past the grill, banged on her door ecstatic like a fist fight. Her boyfriend answered.

"Hey." He said. He knows nothing. Damn he's a good looking kid. Kid: seven years my senior.

"Hi…uh…is TLRHG around? I was just drinking and uh…." I stuttered. Drinking? Why did I mention that? My thinking voice was loud in my head and I couldn't hear anything else.

I sometimes forget that there's really another person attached to the other end of this drama between her and I. And there he was in the doorway: the person I've been trying to dick over for over a year. I've seen him maybe four times. Damn he's a good looking kid: an inch taller than me, dark brown hair, nice skin. We've never been introduced but we know each other. He knows that her and I have kissed. He knows it confused her. He knows she almost left him because of it. Maybe he doesn't know any of that. Maybe it's not true. He lived with her in Europe. I was nowhere around. I've never been to Europe. He knows nothing.

"Come in." He said with sad but nice eyes.

He doesn't know about the nights her and I have spent together recently or long ago. "She's in the back bedroom." He pointed down the hall to where the two of them would surely sleep that night.

"What are you guys up to?" I asked him blankly, looking away from him, craning my neck down the dark hall, looking for her.

"Reading about Gilgamesh." He answered, walking back to his book on the couch.

'It's horrible what he did to the Smurfs.' I thought to say. But I just nodded instead.

To the left of the hallway, at a table in the kitchen, sat a hippie with a beard. He decorated cigarette lighters with a paintbrush. A beautiful glass-blown pipe the size of a rat, sat smoking on the desk to his left. He waved at me and stated his name but I was listening to my own loud voice in my head. We shook hands.

"Lighters." I said to him.

"Yep." He replied.

At the far end of the dark hall, she came out of the back bedroom. I walked to her, leaving her boyfriend and the hippie and the lighters. Out of their view, I took her hands in mine for a second. I was suddenly breathless and felt much drunker. "I was just in the neighborhood seeing an art show…er…lecture. I'm drunk I just thought I'd stop by…you told me to call but I figured…but now I'm gonna go…"

She wasn't phased by any of it. I know she tells him I don't matter. When we're alone she tells me I matter quite a bit. The truth is probably equal distance from both of those poles. "What was the lecture about?" She asked.

"Cuban art. I don't remember the guy's name." I pointed toward the door: 'I'm gonna go,' I thought.

"Bye." She said.

"See you guys later." I yelled to anyone listening as I opened the front door to let myself out. Her boyfriend sat Indian style with his elbows on his knees and his face in his palms, looking down, still reading about Gargamel. He said goodbye without looking up. Within one and a half minutes I'd slipped in and out like the weasel that I am.

My nagging presence, her discrepancies, have done nothing to weaken the foundation of their union. Regardless: seeing his face, I felt awful.

I write this on the following Monday. Her and I haven't spoken since. I have a feeling my squirrelly visit might have prompted some 'talk' between them. I had acted very suspicious. If I were him, I'd be asking her, "Why does that guy act so sketchy around me?"

Or, worse, she has now witnessed the essence of the character flaw I'd been hoping to hide, the monumental crack in my foundation that makes me unable to hide my frayed edges when they need to be hidden.

She hasn't called in a week. So, either her boyfriend picked up the scent and questioned her, or she saw the weakness and decided to forget me. Either way, I fantasize that she has told him she will no longer speak to me. Maybe she's just working a lot.

But the glorious weight off my shoulders by free drink and being fired at the HYDE PARK RESTAURANT, was not diminished by the weight I gained by seeing his face. I literally squealed my tires out of her apartment complex and air drummed drunk back across town to my house.

WEDNESDAY:

After work I stopped in the HYDE PARK RESTAURANT, under the guise of 'returning my workshirt'. I actually went in to ask BACK-UP SINGER RESTAURANT GIRL (BSRG) on a date. She was hostessing, dressed in sexy mall clothes. I hadn't seen her since I wrote her THAT STORY.

"Are you convinced of my brilliance?" I asked her, with no irony.

"Almost." She said. I asked her out. She said yes. Thursday we would go out.

THURSDAY:

I picked her up from her restaurant job. She was dressed to go out. We sat at the restaurant bar, talking as her co-workers scurried around us, pounding out side work in their white aprons and pinned up hair. It was the first time her and I had ever really talked.

My recent anxieties about jobs and moving have deflated me which, it turns out, is beneficial to my love life: I feel calm and humble and slightly, innately defeated. It almost translates as charming. Defeated but charming.

Somehow, I mentioned a Dr.'s appointment next week which I wasn't looking forward to. I immediately wished I could rescind the information.

"You should wear protection so you don't end up at the doctor." She joked.

"No, no it's not that."

"Sure."

"Seriously, I've been checked. I am clean."

"Then what is it?"

"Um, I don't exactly know."

"Well, where is it?"

"It is in…my…it is my balls, but it's not you know."

"Right."

"No, seriously. I hurt myself."

"Doing what?"

"Playing Frisbee." I answered. She laughed. She's very easy going. I had hurt myself. Ruptured something. But I don't remember how. I fictionalized the Frisbee accident because I thought it'd sound suspicious if I didn't know how I'd hurt my balls. This was the start of our evening.

She'd totaled her car earlier in the week. So, not only did I pick her up from work in North Tampa, ten miles from my house: I also drove her home at the end of the night, all the way to Brandon, ten miles from my house in the other direction.

We spent all night at a bar, talking and laughing and getting along famously. Afterwards we walked in the gardens by the waterfront art museum. When I am on hand to witness Florida's romantic beauty, I feel it's being wasted on me. When I feel a 78 degree breeze on my back as stars glare off the night time river lined with palms; I wish I could donate the whole thing to some couple. I still felt this way on the water by the museum, even though I was with a woman.

By the end of the night I was drunk. I drove her to Brandon. She didn't kiss me goodnight, : "I don't even know you yet." She giggled. I can't figure out whether that's good a good sign or not. Maybe it means she's a good person. I hate the idea of becoming jaded. I loath it. As I got very lost on the way back to I-75 from her house I thought, 'Situations like these are good tests of my "OPTIMISM/PESSIMISM" reflexes'.

I air drummed.

THURSDAY:

Thursday: my day off. I sweated over the piece I'm working on for The Weekly Planet's Fiction Contest. $1000 grand prize. This would solve most of my problems: moving, the book, music.

But only a doctor can solve the problem of my balls. So, I stopped in at my desk at THE PAPER to check my Company Health Insurance information and use the phone and make a doctor's appointment. There were too many reporters standing around my desk. I eventually called my mother and asked her to make the appointment for me, "So I don't have to talk about my balls around my co-workers." I whispered to her into the phone, while at work, surrounded by a newsroom full of reporters. I felt helpless. But she helped out as best she could.

FRIDAY:

Friday after five hours of working at THE PAPER, I went about searching for another restaurant job. The traffic on Dale Mabry was thick and unbearable. I air drummed frustratedly. No one was hiring: I felt relieved. I felt guilty for feeling relieved, but I can't help it: I like when it's not my fault.

I stopped in SHELLS SEAFOOD as a last resort. I stood in the doorway ogling the high-school aged hostesses. No matter which restaurant you work in, you will always have to deal with the torture of sexy, underage hostesses.

SHELLS is a chain dive. They serve their food in wicker baskets, which are easier to carry than the sizzling, layers of ceramic at fancy restaurants. SHELLS menu is in English.

"Baby, you don't want to do that," BSRG said softly the night before when I'd said I might apply at SHELLS. She's been a server for six years.

As the underage SHELLS hostess handed me an application and a pen (it's bad to not bring your own pen---but they probably don't notice that kind of thing at SHELLS), my friend Mark McManus came in the front door by himself. I wondered if he too were looking for a job.

"No," he said. "I just had a craving for shrimp."

Mark is one of my favorite people. This was a weird coincidence, as there are hundreds of restaurants on Dale Mabry by Tampa Stadium where the Bucs play. But I was eternally grateful to God for giving Mark that random shrimp craving. Mark's surprise presence brought me back to life after two hours of looking for a shit job like a wounded soldier looking for a gun so he can just end it all. Mark is one of my few writer friends in Tampa. We sat down at a table and talked about art: he ate his shrimp pasta, I filled out my application to work at SHELLS. "Baby, you don't want to do that." I kept hearing in my head.

SATURDAY

In the morning I drove to THE PAPER to write the morning obituaries. Then I came home and took a long nap with no dreams.

After my nap, I picked up BACK-UP SINGER RESTAURANT GIRL from work. She looked good. We drove to ORPHEUM in Ybor where I was to play guitar with MY DJ. Our musical side project is called the BEYOTCH BOYS. Say that out loud.

BSRG spent the night in my bed. Not necessarily because she likes me that much. Mainly, because she needs a place to stay. But I don't mind. It's nice. Though I didn't sleep well. I hum in my sleep and I'm afraid I'll keep her up. So I keep waking myself up the instant the humming starts. I wake up and try to focus my sleep away from the hum (if that makes any sense). I cautiously try and sneak up on sleep again without humming. I hum. I wake up, look over, she's still asleep. She looks beautiful. I don't want to wake her up. I focus. All this trouble because a beautiful stranger needs a place to stay. Life is sad and beautiful.

In the morning I drove her to her house far away in Brandon. I try not to think about being used. 'Just live it,' my own too-loud voice in my brain tells me, 'Try not to be jaded by suspicion. Just write about it.'

SUNDAY EVENING:

Half way through Sunday I realized I had forgotten my mother's birthday the day before: after she'd helped me with my balls and everything. Fuck me. Painfully. I am horrible. I immediately called her and we had a warm loving conversation, which we never ever do. I am horrible. I will drive 30 miles out of my way, all over town, for a stranger. But I forget my own mother's birthday? Fuck me.

After the guiltfest, I got the bright idea to seek employment at the PIZZA DIVE where MY SISTER'S BOYFRIEND (SIS BOY) works. The place was slammed. At the counter a young black guy spoke to the manager. The black guy was searching for employment himself.

"No," said the manager, from behind the counter, in an Italian accent. The manager wore his hair like Ricky Schroeder's Dad on Silver Spoons: feathered, just covering the tops of his ears, straight down the back of his neck. He was the only one behind the counter not wearing an official PIZZA DIVE uniform. "We've got the schedule down tight already." He told the black guy. "All positions are filled. Sorry."

As the black kid walked away, SIS BOY spotted me. "Hey, what's up Mike? What are you doing here?"

"I was actually gonna see if there were any server positions available. But…"

"Yeah, I think there are…you need to talk to Tony" SIS BOY pointed to the guy I'd just watch deny the black fellow a job. "Let me get him for you."

"Wait." I said to SIS BOY. "How much money do you make here…about?"

"About ten dollars an hour on average. But it gets busy. It depends on how hard you want to work." That's more than I make at THE PAPER. It's exactly the same amount the manager at HYDE PARK RESTAURANT quoted me when I posed the same question.

"Yeah, go get the manager." I told him. SIS BOY walked over to the counter and squeezed in between the customers to talk to TONY THE MANAGER. TONY and SIS BOY gesticulated a conversation, but neither of them looked my way.

Eventually Tony came around the counter and he and SIS BOY walked to me. TONY stuck out his hand and said, "Yes." He nodded at me and said it again. "Yes." He turned to SIS BOY. "Are you working Wednesday night SIS BOY?"

"Yeah, uh huh." He answered.

He turned back to me but didn't meet my eyes. He focused his eyes between me and SIS BOY, into the kitchen behind us, giving me a chance to study his features up close in a way I might have felt uncomfortable doing otherwise. He was easily three inches shorter than me. His Silver Spoons hair looked a bit big for his small, muscular torso. A gold rope chain laid softly beneath the thin blanket of black hair emanating from the collar and button holes of his polo.

"We can use you for the first time on this Wednesday night." He said to me, though he seemed focused on no one in particular. I supposed he addressed SIS BOY when he said, "We'll just throw him in."

My moral obligation began to seethe. My own loud inner voice was replaced by Chuck D. in the back of my head, telling me not to take the job: the manager was a racist. I often resort to W.W.C.D.D. in times of moral dilemma: What Would Chuck D. Do?

The manager stopped on his way back to the kitchen and I heard him say to SIS BOY: "This is what I was looking for. Not just someone who came in off the street: someone who came to us through a connection."

I now work at PIZZA DIVE, right around the corner from my house.

Not only did PIZZA DIVE take me on with no threat of a 200 item menu test in a foreign language, no threat of a tie, no table-side service, no mountains of side work, no ancient computer system to battle with, no manager with the same name as my Middle School nightmare: PIZZA DIVE didn't even make me fill out a fucking application. Perfect.

If I want to move to California by January, I must work as many hours as I can. The next four months of my life must be poured into THE PAPER and PIZZA DIVE and whatever freelance writing work I can muster. I will bite down on the rag and take the pain. I will try to see it for what it is: a means to an end. In the end, when I reach my destination, I will have an intense sense of freedom.

But between then and now I will have an impossible time seeing this restaurant job as something that's helping me go forward.