Tag Archives: bar stories

My Days as a Porn and Drug Pusher

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One thing you learn at college after your sixth year of taking classes and your fifth time switching your major is that your mom doesn’t want to pay for you to drink beer and play in weekend whiffle ball tournaments anymore. She sat me down one summer morning and told me over waffles that she loved me but that it was time to find a career path.  I thought it was a peculiar way for a mother to show love to her son; nevertheless, I relented and put a resume together and within a few weeks I had landed a part time job at a used CD store as a sales clerk making minimum wage with the possibility of earning a 2% bonus if I met some sort of sales quota which I believe could have earned me an extra $6 per month had I ever taken the initiative to explore that possibility.

The store didn’t just sell used music.  It was one of those college town stores where all the workers except me had dreadlocks and pierced noses and wore hemp sweaters or panchos and bathed as often as cattle.  Besides new and used CD’s we sold a potpourri of worthless crap, including t-shirts, posters, jewelry, incense, candles and gag gifts.  Oh yeah, and porn.  And drug paraphernalia.  In our secret back room. Did I mention the porn?

Perhaps you have visited a store like this before.  Perhaps you have not. Basically, for those of you who have not, it worked like this:  once your age had been verified, we buzzed you through a door that led to a room with shelves and wall pegs filled with X-rated movies, dildos, vibrators, blow-up dolls, accessories and just about any sex toy you could imagine and then some.

Also in the back room was a display case of bongs in various shapes and colors.  Neither we nor the customer were allowed to call them bongs or anything that involved illegal terminology whatsoever, such as marajuana or dope, etc.  We were reminded constantly that if we violated these rules that the store was at risk of being fined and even shut down.  We were selling “tobacco” pipes, and in fact, you couldn’t even say the word “glass” because that implied using the bongs for smoking crack cocaine.  What this meant was that we were happy to openly discuss the 14-inch, supercharged vibrating anal probes we sold, but if you said the word “glass” I was allowed to grab you by your collar, escort you out of the back room immediately and ban you forever.

When I first started working there, I felt awkward and embarrassed as people perused our wall of porn, and so did the people who were looking. It was like being on a first date, neither one of us quite sure what to say.  Fortunately for me, the customer was far more vulnerable than I was.  The moment you picked out something to buy, it automatically became part of your identity and that object or video exposed your innermost thoughts and desires.

After a couple of months working there, I became indifferent because I saw the same thing every day.  Some college boy would come in and look around for ten minutes, sheepishly grinning at me every so often, and then he would eventually and hurriedly grab a pocket pussy and hold it out to me saying, “It’s not for me, it’s for a joke…for my buddy’s bachelor party,” even though I knew that fifteen minutes later he would be locked in his room making love to latex.

Despite the oddity of this job, I got used to most of the screw balls and stoners who came in to purchase their underground product of choice, but I was never prepared for the guy who came in one Tuesday afternoon and fucked my world up.  He was a middle-aged guy, nicely dressed in slacks and a business shirt.  The sort of guy who comes in to buy a little something to bring home to the wifey to spice up their sex life. It wasn’t uncommon to see a husband or a couple come in and pick out a vibrator or even a movie.

Seeing as it was still morning on a weekday, there was nobody else in the store, so I buzzed him in and sat down at my customary stool behind the “tobacco pipe” display case. Normally I would pretend to clean the case or adjust and rearrange the pipes and tobacco on display to make it easier for the customers to look around without feeling like they were being watched and judged, but before I could even slide the glass door open, this nicely dressed man loosened his belt, reached down the back of his pants and pulled out a giant butt plug. “Do you have any more of these in this size?” he asked.  If you think I would make up something this disturbing and disgusting, you don’t know me very well (ok, maybe you know me a little, but this isn’t one of those times).

Any normal person would have been furious and yelled at this perverted degenerate to get the hell out of the store or perhaps stomp over to the nearest phone to call the cops.  What I did was stand there awkwardly for a moment before asking him if that was the 10 or 12 inch model.

“I don’t know,” he said, rather annoyed.  ”Look at it!”

He held it out to me as if it were a rare, sanctified artifact that had been unearthed from Egypt, and I was half-expecting him to blurt out “BEHOLD!”  Even as a young, scared kid I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that he didn’t really expect me to determine its size.  After all, this wasn’t a shoe store.  I didn’t have a little device with a sliding metal cursor to measure its length.  We didn’t store our dildos and toys in boxes in the back, organized by size and stacked in neat, economical rows.  This man had an agenda, and it wasn’t to buy something sexy for his wife.  I, in no way, wanted to see the endgame to that agenda, so I simply pretended that this was totally normal, that men like him came in everyday presenting their butt plugs like defective hot dogs.

“Uummm…let’s see,” I said, opening a drawer in the display case which held nothing more than extra packs of tobacco in them. “What color would you like?”

“What?  Whatever.  I don’t care.”

“Is that latex or rubber?” I asked, still shuffling through bags of tobacco as if I were looking through our giant inventory of butt plugs.

“I don’t know,” he snapped.  ”Latex, I think.”

“Did you see our special on flavored condoms?  Buy four get the fifth one free.”

“No, I don’t need any condoms.” He was getting flustered now, I assume from my method of trying to get through this thing the only way I knew how, which was to distract him and me from what was really going on, and what was really going on was that this guy was getting off on his public display and my squirming discomfort.  Personally, I would have rather rammed an ice pick down the shaft of my penis than participate in public humiliation of this magnitude, but that’s just me.  I really wanted him to put the damn thing away, but certainly not back in its sheath where it came from.

“How much were you looking to spend?” I asked.

“I don’t care,” he yelled.  ”Just…LOOK AT IT!”

It was at this exact moment when I realized that people who say human beings are just a different version of the same thing don’t know what the fuck they are talking about.  This man wasn’t a version of anything I had ever come into contact with. It wasn’t a gender thing with him either.  He didn’t care if I was a man, woman or giraffe.  He simply needed a witness in order to get that adrenaline flowing, but instead here I was asking him if he wanted to save a buck on flavored condoms.  I didn’t mean to, but by trying to avoid the horrific awkwardness of the situation, I was fucking up his shock value.

“We have flavored lube too, if you’d like. I could give you a deal.”  He just stared at me with unblinking eyes, his lips locked together in a tight, bloodless line while still holding the plug out in front of him.  I knew he didn’t really want another one of the same size.  What would he do with two?  Still, he wasn’t leaving, so what was he hoping for?  Did he want me to jump up and eagerly perform lewd acts with him right there in the store?  Was he taking a mental picture of this moment so he could recall it from his memory files for later enjoyment?  Or was he planning an assault?  I felt a sinking sense of dread as I pictured the front page headlines in tomorrow morning’s paper:  College Student Bludgeoned to Death by the Buttplug Bandit.

Of all the subjects I had studied and switched my major to, at that moment I wished I had stuck it out in psychology so I could fuck with this guy’s mind like Hannibal Lecter and get myself out of this situation.

“I think we have a shipment of vibrating ones coming in tomorrow if you want to come back then,” I said.  I was running out of stall tactics, and I was afraid if I stood up he might interpret that as a signal for him to engage me and then he might start trying to kiss me or caress me or something that causes you to need therapy the rest of your life.  So I stayed seated where I was and just kept looking through the same ten baggies of tobacco in my 8 x 12-inch drawer, hoping he wouldn’t notice that the only way we would store butt plugs in something so small would be if it was some sort of Narnia drawer that opened up into a world of snowy porn.

Just when I thought I might have to make a run for it, someone from the front of the store yelled, “Is anyone here?  I need to buy this CD?”

This jarred my creepy friend back from his perverted world and he quickly shoved his toy into his pants pocket and hurried out of the store.  And just like that it was over.

After the incident, I was embarrassed of what others might think so I never told anyone.  I’ve never devoted much time to guilt, but that’s exactly how I felt and it wasn’t fair.  I hadn’t done anything wrong, yet I felt like I was a willing participant in this man’s dirty little scandal.  Was this what rape victim’s went through but on a much more severe level?  What was the lesson I was supposed to learn from the man who went around terrifying college boys with his greasy toy?

Perhaps I’ll never know, but until I do figure it out, be very cautious around me when adjusting your belt.  I get very jumpy around anyone who I think might loosen their pants in a moments notice. I guess in a way that makes me damaged goods.

Cheers, until next time.

The RB

The Misguided Wave

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At the beginning of my shift last night I looked up and saw a girl across the bar whole-heartedly waving and smiling at me, and even though I didn’t quite recognize her from that distance, I returned the wave with childish enthusiasm , only to realize a sickening second later that she was waving to someone right behind me.

Yeah, that actually happened to me, and I’m not sure why a genuine mistake like this would make me feel like the biggest donkey in the stable, but it totally did, and so I had to quickly pretend I was shooing away some imaginary stench in the air, and then I buried my head in the sink and pretended to clean out the drain for like twenty minutes so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact with anyone who had witnessed me wave at the girl who had no intention of being my friend.

It wasn’t fair, to be caught in this predicament, to be feeling this way.  I was just trying to be friendly and now I’d been tagged as the guy so desperate for companionship that he had to resort to acquiring friends by intercepting waves from people.

The worst part is that the girl who waved to me–or should I say “waved in my general direction”–saw me wave back which means she was perfectly aware that I didn’t know her and that by me waving back I was fully prepared to pull the whole “I-have-no-idea-who-you-are-but-I’m-going-to-pretend-I-do” routine, which makes me look like a moron AND a liar.

Wait, I take that back.  The even worst-est part is that even though she saw me wave at her, she chose to participate in our little charade, acting as if she didn’t see me either, so now we’re both doing this pretending game, only she has actual friends who are receiving her warmly and all I have is this cold stainless steel sink I’m pretending to scrub.

So I have my head buried in the sink while she heads in my direction to hug her friends and all I can think is, Please don’t order a drink from me, and now I double-take-it-back because this is where it could actually get worse than the previous two worsts because I just know that the second I look up she’s going to be standing there staring at me with a holier-than-thou smirk on her face, and she’ll say, “Did you really think I would wave to someone like you, idiot?”

Thankfully she was merciful  and now we have a really clean sink at the bar.

I can’t figure out why something like this needs to be embarrassing at all, but it is.  It’s like when you stumble on a sidewalk crack while you’re walking down the street and you either 1) stop and look back at the crack like you’re all baffled and angry and thinking “Who the fuck put a sidewalk crack right there in the middle of the sidewalk?” or 2) you break into a light jog and look down at your watch as if you suddenly forgot that you were late for a meeting even though you’re wearing sweats and a baseball cap backwards which means there’s no way you’re going to a meeting unless you were meeting with Run DMC or something, and now you’re committed so you have to keep up your run for like two-hundred yards to get out of site from anyone who may have witnessed the initial stumble because you have to make them believe that you really are late for something because who runs ten feet when they have to be somewhere?

The moral of the story?  Be very careful when dispensing waves to your friends by making sure no one is in the line of fire.  Or maybe the moral is to learn some humility by learning to deal with embarrassing situations in a mature manner.  You know what?  I don’t really care what the moral is.  Just don’t fucking fake wave at me if you come into my bar because it’s MY goddamn bar and I shouldn’t be made to feel small and friendless in my own bar.  Not to mention I hate fake cleaning drains and sinks because it’s both humiliating that I’m hiding from you and it’s also often disgusting.

Cheers, until next time.

The RB

Fucking With Drunk People

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 I’m not sure why, but lately I’ve become more irritable about the fact that I spend five nights a week in a place where I’m sober and everyone else is flying high and yuckin’ it up.  I understand that it’s my job, but after awhile it feels like I’ve been invited to a party but when I arrive, I’m told I should stand out front and wait for guests to arrive so I can park their cars.  I hate it I hate it I hate it!!!

Let’s not dilute the facts, being drunk is stupenderrific!  You’ve all been there, you know how it is:  that sensational feeling of perceived invincibility you experience after five or six drinks.  Even better is if you compound that experience by drinking with a group because the camaraderie shared between buffoons slopping alcohol on each other can only be compared to that of championship sports teams.

That’s why bars are so popular, because being drunk with a group is so much more badass than being drunk alone.  Everything is hilarious and fun and no matter what fucked-up shit you’re dealing with in your every day life, at this moment you and your drinking clan are downright convinced of your indestructibility, so much so that you find yourself discussing scenarios to prove it. In fact you’ve all agreed that, under the right circumstances, if you had a titanium body suit, a utility belt, and a Peter Pan-sized boy with a yellow cape to watch your back, any one of you could easily transition into the role of Batman.

On the other hand, being sober around drunk people is like trying to fit into a clique you were never invited to join, except this clique has the maturity equivalent of nine year olds.  Disorderly nine year olds.  With brain damage.  That’s me, every night (the guy-hanging-out-with-disorderly-drunks part, not the brain damage part).  We bartenders are like matadors armed only with one of those flimsy piece of crap Zorro swords trying to hold off a ring full of dazed, irritated bulls.  Except replace “sword” with “bar rag” and “bulls” with “vomity, cursing drunks”.

Being sober around drunks is boring, which provokes me to spice up the action, which is why I have a serious problem that some of you may have identified already, and it’s that I can’t help fucking with people who take things too seriously (See “Peta Girl”).

I can’t decide if it’s a disease or a superpower, but I do know that I’m addicted because every night before I go to work I choose some mantra to repeat to myself that might help me overcome my problem (something along the lines of, “Bar patrons are my friends, not toys for my amusement”) but every night I somehow become misaligned and betray that mantra which means I have to start my 12 steps over again and apologize to people I’ve wronged and make amends with Jesus in a non-sarcastic way that shows him I’m not fucking with HIM.

I try to leave people alone, really I do, but please remember that I work in a bar with drunk people and telling me not to fuck with them is like placing a ribeye in front of a tiger and saying, “Now when I get back, that steak had better still be there, mister.”

Yes, I understand that drunk people are vulnerable in their state of cheery befuddlement, but you should know that I leave 98% of them alone, the ones who are lovable and considerate and sometimes even offer to buy me a shot.  It’s the 2% that I fuck with, the ones who are determined to destroy everyone else’s good time.

This brings me to Artie, a decidedly irate and spiteful individual who enters my bar about once a week so he can try to drink enough to kill whatever’s inside him that he hates about himself.  I won’t waste your time with too many details except to say that Artie is the type of man that I imagine pulls the wings off butterflies for the pure joy of performing reverse evolution.  Sometimes I want to stab a pacifier into his mouth because I’m fairly certain he would immediately and innately start trying to suck all of his anger out through the rubber nipple like a teething baby.

Like most people who have issues with the world, Artie communicates his problems without bothering to pay attention to what anyone else has to say, which manufactures entertaining conversations where he attempts to recruit misery to accompany him at the bar and I do my best to derail and distract him.  This is what happened that last time Artie stumbled to the bar, already a bit schnockered, trying to tell me about the car accident he had that day:

Me:  How’s it going, Artie?

Artie:  It’s going shitty.  Some jackass smashed into my Porsche today.  Three months off the lot, and he totaled it.

Me:  Wow.  That’s too bad.  Were you alone or by yourself?

Artie:  I was…what?  I was by myself.

Me:  What happened?

Artie:  Asshole ran a stop sign and smashed into my passenger side door.

Me:  How did he smash into you if he was at a stop sign?

Artie:  No, idiot.  He ran through a stop sign.

Me:  I thought you said he was driving.

Artie:  He WAS driving.

Me:  You just said he RAN through it.

Artie:  That’s what you say when you drive through a stop sign without stopping.  What the fuck is the matter with you?

Me:  I don’t know.  My father used to hold me under water for long periods of time…

Artie:  ANYWAY…I jump out of the car and I’m getting ready to beat this punk’s ass.  He’s like 18 years old with tattoos all over the place, and he starts running for these stairs…

Me:  What kind of stairs?

Artie:  What?  What do you mean?

Me:  I mean did they go up or down?

Artie:  They’re stairs…what the fuck? They go up and down.

Me:  Come on.  How do stairs go up and down at the same time?

Artie: Are you retarded? It wasn’t an escalator. They’re just STAIRS!  FUCK!

Me:  Don’t escalators have buttons and sliding doors?

Artie:  Can I finish?

Me:  I wish you would.

Artie:  So then I chased him up the stairs into an office building.

Me:  So they were “UP” stairs (I cleverly used my quotation fingers for this).

Artie:  Will you forget about the stairs, for Christ sakes?

Me:  What stairs?

Artie:  Are you serious?  What the fuck?

Me:  No, you don’t understand.  You said “forget about the stairs”, so I was like, “What stairs?” like I already forgot about them.  You know, like when someone says, “Promise me you won’t tell Jane about the secret passage way,” and you say, “What secret passage way?” because it’s like you’re telling them you’ll pretend you know nothing about it. It’s a clever way to say that I’m on board with you.

Artie:  Jesus, forget it.  I’m done talking to you.  You’re missing out on a goddamn good ending too.

Me:  I know, it sounded like a good plot.  What was the name of it?

Artie:  The name of what?

Me:  Hello?  The movie you were just telling me about with the guy running up the stairs.  Did you forget already?

At this point Artie slammed what was left of his Sierra Nevada down and started to stomp out the door, but I reminded him that he hadn’t paid yet so I ruined his dramatic exit because he had to rummage through his wallet for some time before he found the right credit card.  The great thing about Artie is that he drinks so much he usually doesn’t remember what he’s mad at me for and I’ll see him again in a week when he’ll tell me some other story about how everyone in the world is an asshole except him.

I know what you all are thinking and you’re right, I need help.  I’m going to ask Jesus* to guide me.

*By Jesus I mean our dishwasher, not the real Jesus.  He’s studying psychology at the junior college so maybe he knows some stuff about “fucking-with-drunks syndrome” or whatever.  Again, I’m talking about our dishwasher, not the main Jesus.  I assume the real Jesus already has psych figured out pretty good which is why he mind-fucked everyone by allowing them nail-gun him to lumber instead of using his superpowers to turn them into salamanders.

Cheers, until next time.

The RB

Dear PETA, Can I Please Join Your Extremist Group?

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ANGRY PETA GIRL

I love animals.  Probably because they boost my self-esteem and don’t judge me when I eat an entire cheese cake or watch porn.  When things are going wrong, they show up at just the right time and make you feel smooshy inside.

Then there’s PETA.  What a train wreck.  I hate them for the same reasons I hate all extremist groups, which is because they think everyone in the world is wrong except themselves, and because their priorities are skewed by rage, and because they won’t LEAVE THE REST US THE FUCK ALONE!  Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that they believe in a cause and have a purpose and all I believe in is getting the next TV and HBO series in the mail from Netflix (right now I believe deeply in The Shield).

The other night I had a PETA person in my bar, and not just one of those passive hippie-vegetarian-spread-the-love-and-live-green types either.  She was more of the angry-at-the-world-because-cows-are-sold-at-McDonald’s-by-the-billions types, and because she felt animals in general were being humiliated, like dogs being used to help blind people get around.  She is one of those people who can’t sit next to a person eating a slice of pepperoni pizza without being all judgy and making comments using the same tone as my mother-in-law.

BY THE WAY, SPEAKING OF ANIMALS, HERE IS ME WITH MY CAT NINJA, WHO ADOPTED US WHEN WE MOVED INTO OUR NEW PLACE LAST YEAR.

Even though I am partial to dogs, Ninja is some kind of serious awesomeness resting on a bed of kick ass. It’s not just her blackness that makes up her name.  She catches like three gophers a day (which probably puts her at the top of PETA’s euthanization list) and can climb a telephone pole like a squirrel on crack. I want to give her a mini Samurai sword and some throwing stars just to see what she could do, but I’m afraid the CIA might show up at my door and tell me that they have an international incidence on their hands, and then they’d hold up a picture of Ninja and ask if I’d seen this cat recently.

Anywho, the way I found out this girl was from PETA was that a guy at the bar was getting ready to take a bite of his cheeseburger and Little Miss PETA said (while looking straight ahead, like a bad guy in a John Wayne movie), “Hope you like the taste of cruelty.” (And then she proceeded to tell me she was a member of PETA, which I guess is how I really found out.)

I could see this guy was perturbed about eating his burger so close to this nut case, so I provided some distraction by striking up a conversation and to fuck with her in general.  The great thing about extremists is that they are so gung-ho about spreading their gospel and telling everyone how to live that they’ll ignore the hostility around them as long as they can assemble their soapbox and educate everyone on what horrible people they are.  Here’s how our conversation went, approximately:

Me:  Hey, I was thinking of joining PETA.  What’s the criteria?

PETA:  It’s simple.  Love animals.  Don’t eat them.

Me:  I do love them.  I love them with potatoes and au jus.  Can I still join?

PETA:  No, scum nuts, we don’t want people who eat meat, or do anything else to harm or disgrace animals.  That makes you a hypocrite.

Me:  Well I wouldn’t WEAR it or anything, like Lady Gaga, unless it was Halloween of course.

PETA:  That’s the problem with the world, you don’t even know what a disgusting dickhead you are.

Me:  What if I gave up everything except bacon?  Because I love pigs but I’m not IN love with them.  You know what I mean?

PETA: No, asshole!  Don’t you get it?  Animals are better creatures than us.  Humans don’t deserve to be on the same planet as them.  You can’t pick and choose which ones to slaughter, you evil prick.

Me:  What about ostrich burgers.  I heard those are super healthy.

PETA:  It’s got nothing to do with health, dumbass.  You’re killing a living creature!

Me:  Yeah, but they’re really low in fat.

PETA:  Christ you’re an idiot.

Me:  My uncle got eaten by a cougar once, so shouldn’t I get like an exemption in this case.  You know, like when we betrayed all the the Indians and stole their land 500 years ago and so now we let them have casinos and if you’re of Indian heritage you get to collect fat checks because your relatives were treated unfairly?

PETA:  Your tiny-dicked uncle probably deserved it.  I hope he bled a slow death.

Me:  What about ants?  Can I still squash ants?  Sometimes I like to pretend I’m a giant who came to their planet where I wreck havoc on their little world.

PETA:  Ants are better than you.  They build entire colonies, dipshit!  What do you do?

Me:  I know they do.  It’s AWESOME.  I like to get a hose and stick it in their little hill hole thingy, and then turn the water on and yell, “FLOOOOOOOOD!”

PETA:  Now you’re being an idiot.  You’re making fun of me, right?

Me:  I’m just curious how it works.  Before I decide to join I want to know what I can and can’t do.  Can I throw red paint on people?

PETA:  I won’t stop you.

Me:  Can I throw red paint on you?

PETA:  What do you think?

Me:  Can I hit a dog on the nose with a rolled up newspaper if he pees on my carpet?

PETA:  Can I punch you in the nose for being a worthless piece of shit?

Me:  What about spiders?  Can I pull their legs off, because they really creep me out?

PETA:  You are fucking ruthless!

Me:  I am not.  I’m completely ruth.

PETA:  What?

Me:  What?

PETA:  You’re what?  What did you say?

Me:  What did I say?  When?

PETA:  You’re ruth?

Me:  Yeah.  I’m totally ruth.

PETA:  What the hell does that mean?

Me:  Well, ruthless is bad, so ruth has to be good, right?  Kind of like being dicklesss is bad but having a dick is good. Unless you’re you, of course.  It’s a word.  Look it up.

PETA:  It is not.  I’m done here.  Enjoy your bloody, slaughtered cows, assholes.

Me:  Wait, come back tomorrow.  We have goldfish races on Wednesdays.  We totally won’t swallow them or anything.  Anymore.

PETA:  Fuck off!

Just for the record, my uncle wasn’t eaten by a cougar, I don’t really squash very many ants, and even if Ninja was delicious, I totally wouldn’t eat her.  Probably.

Cheers, until next time.

The RB

Drunk Talk of the Week: Presidential Candidates

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Our Drunk Talk of the Week comes from two twenty-something boys sitting at the bar drinking PBR’s and discussing the upcoming presidential election.  This is evidence for why we need to stop encouraging EVERYONE to vote.

Frank:  Are you going to vote this year?

Billy:  I don’t know.  Probably.

Frank:  Who do you like?

Billy:   I guess I like Obama.   He seems cool.

Frank:  Yeah.  I just don’t like his health care reform.

Billy:  Uh huh.  So, this might sound stupid, but I can’t remember his last name.

Frank:  Who?

Billy:  Obama.  I keep wanting to say Bin Laden, but that was that Iraqy dude.

Frank:  Yeah, it’s actually Osama Bin Laden, with an “s”, and he was from Saudi Arabia.

Billy:  Oh yeah.  So what’s Obama’s last name?

Frank:  Obama IS his last name.

Billy:  Yeah, right.  So his name is Obama Obama?

Frank:  You’re an idiot.

AMEN, FRANK!

Please Shut Up Now

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In case ya’ll haven’t noticed, I’m on a bit of a hiatus for reasons I will explain in the the not-so-distant future.  Until then, thanks for dropping by.  -The RB

I get a lot of emails that aren’t quite hate mail, but are closer to “your opinions suck ass, please embrace and express mine instead” mail. The theme of these emails seems to follow a pattern, which is:  ”You are callous and indifferent towards people”.  In all fairness, I have to say that this does not sound like me at all.  Hold on a minute…actually that sounds exactly like me.  I can’t help it.  I have been structured this way ever since I can remember, and that is to say I have the attention span of a teenage boy in a warehouse filled with porn.  Small talk hurts my brain.

Nevertheless, there are times when my job is downright exhilarating, like two nights ago when I donated a portion of my life to share in a dynamic conversation between three fine men who were unearthing the timeless mystery of why some animals do not need an “s” on the end of their names to make them plural.

Genius #1:  ”Seriously, like take deer for instance, man.  Why aren’t they called deers?”

Genius #2:  ”Yeah, or fishes.  Wait…” (pauses while he tests the singular and plural forms of fish out loud to himself)  ”The fish swam in the lake…the fishes swim south for the winter…”

Genius #3:  ”What about buffalo?  Is it ‘Flying Eagle kill many buffalos’ or ‘many buffalo’?”

Genius #2:  ”I don’t know.  That’s crazy-hard to remember, man.”

Though this 20 minute conversation went on for approximately 19 minutes and 60 seconds longer than it needed to, you can imagine my elation when they started debating whether the plural of “wolf” was spelled W-O-L-V-S or W-O-L-F-S.  At this point I decided to do something a little more enjoyable so I grabbed a sheet of paper and began administering paper cuts to the underside of my tongue.

THINGS I WOULD RATHER DO THAN LISTEN TO THREE MORONS DISPUTE ANIMAL GRAMMAR

SAW BOTH MY FEET OFF WITH A SWISS ARMY KNIFE

HAVE MY ANKLES HOBBLED BY THE LADY IN MISERY

HAVE ONE MY MY TESTICLES CRUSHED IN A VICE

FORCE A 9-INCH ICE PICK DOWN THE SHAFT OF MY PENIS

What gets my engine really revved up is when someone presents me with a sentence that goes something like, “You’ll never believe how cool and wonderful and perfect my kid is.”  This means I’m usually in for a treat, an out-of-this-world anecdote about how their kid got an “A” in jumprope, or whatever.

I am pleased they understand that it’s not only their invaluable drivel I look forward to listening to, but also the drivel concerning someone I’ve never met.  Luckily, I am Ninja-awesome at fooling you into thinking I’m interested (or even listening) to what you’re saying by providing a practiced face of genuine interest.  Like this:

WHAT I’M REALLY THINKING ABOUT WHILE YOU TELL ME YOUR KID GOT AN “A” IN JUMPROPE, OR WHATEVER

YOUR KID SOUNDS LIKE A TOOL

I’M HUNGRY FOR LEMON PIE

PLEASE ALLOW A PIANO TO FALL FROM THE SKY AND MERCIFULLY SQUASH ME INTO PULP

I believe I’ve revealed more than I should have, and now I’m becoming quite paranoid that baring my selfish soul to you will come back to haunt me.  The only reason I can think of for why I did it is that it is therapeutic in some way.  Supposedly, sharing dark secrets can release you from future heaviness and torment.  I also think the charts and graphs are pretty sharp.

This, of course, is not fair to you, my guest, so the next time you come in, I will do my best to engage in pleasant and snappy conversation.  Perhaps we can form an unbreakable bond that will stick like fairly adhesive masking tape, forever and ever, unless you talk too much.

I Love Wine

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MY EX-COWORKER, DANIEL

Hello, my name is Daniel and I love wine.  If you do not believe me, just ask people who I serve wine to and they will tell you that I love it.

I used to work with Dave at a restaurant that served wine.   Wine involves smashing grapes and putting their juices in a bottle.  There are many reasons that wine should replace other interesting things.  You can talk about wine.  You can smell wine.  You can claim the wine is corked and dump it down the drain to show the manager that you are knowledgeable about wine and do not care about profits.  You can come to my restaurant and I will use words like oaky, jammy and tannins and then you will think I’m smart and trust me to recommend a glass of wine for you that is way overpriced.

Here are some rules to follow about wine if you are not as great as me and don’t know about wine:

1.  Ask to have the wine poured into a giant glass container that looks like a goldfish bowl so the wine can breathe, like a goldfish.

2.  Sniff the wine like you’re a cocaine whore who is not only addicted to cocaine, but who also wants cocaine all the time.

3.  Throw out arbitrary fruits and spices that you think the wine smells like and I will do the same because there is no wrong answer. You might detect hints of blackberry, wood and leather.  I might notice small traces of vomit, stool samples and unwashed feet.  We are both right because we are not wrong.

4.  Swirl the wine around the glass and see if it makes the glass dirty.  This is called the “legs” and it is called that because it is a sexy thing to do.

5. Taste the wine and make a disgusting gurgling sound through your teeth before swallowing it.

6.  Do some other stuff with wine that makes no sense.

If you don’t like wine, it’s ok.  Wine is for sophisticated people like me.  And winos.  If you are not a wino or a sophisticator, you can still come to my restaurant and listen to me talk about wine and watch other people sniff and drink wine.  Be sure to reserve a large window of time because it takes four hours to drink wine.  Three of those hours involves swirling the wine and telling amazing wine stories about other times you tasted wine.

I do not like Dave very much because he makes fun of me for talking about wine.  Dave needs to be kinder to me if he wants to be invited to my bunco games where we drink wine and talk about wine and sometimes roll dice in which the winner wins a bottle of wine.

If anyone knows who invented wine, please give me their name and address so I can send a letter of appreciation and request a photo of him or her so that I can make it into a poster and pin it on my bedroom ceiling.  My letter would look like this:

Dear Inventor of Wine:

Thank you for inventing wine.  It tastes and smells like wine.  Please send me a photo of you so I can make it into a poster and pin it on my bedroom ceiling.

Sincerely,

Daniel, Wine Demigod and Master of the Universe