Alan Moore, �Alan Moore�s Shocking Futures�
I finally managed to look up my grades for the last semester. Despite working four jobs, and being out of my element, and hosting somebody for a week AND leaving the island almost immediately afterward for another week, *AND* shuttling my father back and forth for repeated trips to the hospital, I managed to get an A in the graduate course, and an A- in the media class.
Good for me. But man, I wouldn�t want to do that again.
Quitting the retail job would help, and to make up for the lost income, the club is now open additional evenings, including my DJ�ing for my very own punk night featuring two dollar Pabst Blue Ribbon. I call it the Night Featuring Bad Beer and Worse Music. But we�ll get back to that.
The job at the club has been an uphill battle, but it seems that I�m winning. I wasn�t used to his style of management, which was to try and get as much work for as little money as possible. The owner used to achieve this by hiring 17 year-olds with promises of free entry for all dance nights and little else. But the kids (and I�ve spoken with several of them) got tired of being ordered around, paid poorly (if at all), and basically treated like shit. So they left. Good for them.
When I started working there, The club was down to essentially three dedicated employees. The owner hired myself and another girl rounding out the employees to now include a doorman, a security guy, a barback (me) and a bartender.
To run a club that holds about 300 people.
As it turns out, the owner�s 84-year-old mother recently fired the security guy. I kinda feel like that was my fault. On the Ghostbusters 80s night, one amateur drinker kid, probably no older than 17, stumbled into the bathroom at the same time I was using it.
And stumbled is the proper term. He fell into the doorway, then lurched in the other direction, grabbing the sink countertop for support. Using both hands to guide his way along the wall, apparently to keep the room from spinning and the floor from leaping up and chewing his eyeballs, he made his way to the toilet stall.
The layout in the men�s bathroom goes like this: There�s the doorway. On the right side, there are two sink basins, then three urinals. Against the left wall, there�s a towel dispenser with a garbage can underneath. And against the back wall, there is one toilet booth with a door.
Or at least there used to be. What happened is the kid, while maneuvering the massive frontage of the left wall, hit a snag when he reached the towel dispenser which caused him to flip in a half circle, crashing backward into the toilet stall, knocking the entire structure down.
I would�ve slapped my forehead if I hadn�t happened to be holding my dick at that same moment.
Sheer comedy ensued. The kid still wanted to use the bathroom for whatever reason. I�m not sure which half of his body needed expelling. But he couldn�t figure out why there were all these enormous pieces of wood and particleboard blocking the toilet. He tried to shove them to the side, which didn�t work. He then tried to lift the broken frame and gently put it back into place, as if it would meld together again. The end result left the structure falling back and knocking him into the toilet, his hand landing in the bowl.
That shock of piss water up to his elbow must have snapped him back into reality, and he found his sense of balance, making a break for the exit. I followed and as he came down the stairs, I shouted ahead to the security guy, telling him that this kid just broke the stall. The security guy grabbed him as he went out the exit, and yelled for me to go get the owner�s mother.
See, the owner�s mother used to run the club herself, and she�s unstoppable. I�ve seen her come into the club during a metal show, and she�d be wiping down the walls with a rag as some longhair greasy guys play a hackneyed version of Slayer�s �Angel of Death� not more than five feet away. She waved me over frantically while they were flaying away, only to shout in her thick Korean tongue that apparently only works at top volume, �THIS BAND GOOD. LAST BAND SUCK, BUT THEY GOOD! HAHAHA!�
So I went upstairs to tell her what happened and she went with me to the bathroom to clean up the broken stall. While we were doing that, the Honolulu police happened to roll past and saw the security guy wrestling with the inebriated kid. They stopped, and upon seeing the fracas, decided to call for backup.
Nine police cars showed up.
I was called down to make a statement. The old lady followed. She marched up to the kid, who was sitting on the ground, still in handcuffs.
�WHY YOU BREAK DOOR?!?�
The kid muttered something, looking very scared.
�YOU MEAN TO BREAK DOOR?�
The kid shook his head.
�YOU FALL BECAUSE YOU DRUNK! YOU DRINK IN PARKING LOT! NO DRINK IN PARKING LOT! NO DRINK HERE! YOU HEAR? NO DRINK HERE!�
The kid nodded, showing he understood. The woman straightened up, turning to the police and for the first time, she lowered her voice.
�Let him go. He no mean it, he drunk.�
The cops weren�t feeling so magnanimous, and showed it. One of them started to walk away in disgust, then turned and yelled at the old lady. �Don�t call us out for this shit! If you can�t control people in your own parking lot, then I�m gonna shut you down!�
She obviously didn�t like being yelled at in one of life�s delicious ironies, and turned to the security guy. �WHY YOU LET THEM DRINK DOWN HERE?! NO LET THEM DRINK HERE!�
�ME?� the security guy yelled back, �I�m doing the job by myself that any other club would have three-to-five people doing! You need to hire more people!�
�YOU NO LIKE JOB, YOU LEAVE!�
The three of them all yelled and bickered as I stood there, watching each of them � the cop, the security, and the owner � get louder and more animated. Eventually I slipped away, going back up the stairs. After about a half-hour, the old lady came up, telling (yelling) me that she fired the security guy. Which meant my duties now included security as well as barback, bartender, and janitor.
A week later, the doorman (who was friends with the security) quit after three years of working there.
Which meant my duties now included doorman as well as security, barback, bartender, and janitor.
A week after that, they started the punk night with my playing DJ. Which meant... well, you know what that means.
I had conflicting emotions about all this. After all, the security guy is the one who got me the job in the first place. And while I didn�t have phone numbers of these two guys, we were friendly to each other, and by that, I�m putting emphasis on the �friend� part. But, seeing how the bartender had gone off island for the Christmas holidays, that left the employee roster with me, and ... uh, me.
I�m now indispensable.
I�m used to that in my workplaces, but this was the first time that I felt cheated. I was already being paid crap, and now I was doing the jobs of four people, and still getting paid the same way. I�m not used to having to point out my own virtues. Why, at the bookstore, working there for five years, I never once asked for a raise. I didn�t have to. My boss at that place new I did a good job, and wanted to reward me for that. It didn�t take long before he had more than doubled my salary.
Thanks, Eric, by the way. Good for you.
The new boss finally seems to have come around, however. He told me just after the new year that his resolution was to make sure I never left the club with less than $40, and he�d let me bartend on the big tip nights. I did the math. Four nights a week, at a minimum of $40 a night means that I�ll make just enough for rent at my new place. Everything else � food, credit card bills, gas, beer and cigarette money would have to come from tips, supplemented by the articles with the Honolulu Weekly and the copy-editing job with the school paper.
That was a rather roundabout way of saying what I�m about to, but what I�m getting at is that doesn�t leave much for tuition.
Back in September, I described what happened with admissions talking me into applying as an unclassified student. The short recap is that unclassified students don�t get financial aid. They also aren�t really allowed into graduate courses. I talked my way into one course last semester, but she just retired. I wasn�t having any luck with the other professors. I sure as hell wasn�t going to pay non-residential fees for a class that wouldn�t particularly matter in the long run of my graduate studies. And the only way I would be able to pay for these courses that I wouldn�t need in the long run would be on credit cards, of which I already owe about $10,000.
Um. No.
Besides, the time spent on studying and class is time that I wasn�t using for articles for the Honolulu Weekly. If I can secure a job with that paper, I won�t even need the stupid degree, but I haven�t showed the amount of dedication they need as of yet.
I�m hoping I can change that.
So, what I�m saying is, class started this week. I have enough class, thanks. What I need are cigarettes.
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With the DJ thing, I�m run into a little bit of a problem. They don�t have needles for their turntables at the club. I certainly can�t afford to buy my own at this point. Most of my really good stuff is on vinyl, and I�m playing songs from 9 p.m. until 2 a.m. Since the average punk song is about two minutes, that equals... uh... a fuckload of songs. So, if I can suggest a project, anybody want to burn some CD�s for me? I could use some of the old classic punk stuff � things like X, The Buzzcocks, Ramones, Misfits, etc. My NoMeansNo �Wrong� CD seems to skip as well. Or, you know, send things you�d like to hear if you were going to a shitty bar to drink crappy beer while people screamed themselves hoarse. Anybody want to help a brother out?
