Alan Moore, �Smax�
Last Friday night, the tail-end of SPRING BREAK!!! (flashing my tits), turned out to be pretty phenomenal. Not in the tit flashing sense, but we did very well behind the bar.
And when you do well behind the bar that means there�s that much more to clean up, so I didn�t get home until about five in the morning. I slept away most of the afternoon, and then passed the time by being as non-productive as possible, until I had to drag myself out of bed to go out, and the only reason that I went out is that my piece that I had recently written on the Honolulu Roller Derby team had just been published, and they were having another fundraising event. If there was a chance that a bunch of girls in short skirts and stockings who like full body contact were going to be appreciative of what I wrote about them, well, I don�t care how tired I am: I�m going out.
The next morning, however, I was hungover. That hasn�t happened in a while. Sure, sometimes I�m tired, and sometimes I feel like shit and sometimes it�s a bit of both, but this Sunday made me feel like I was 16 again, drinking Moosehead in our garage because my mom couldn�t hear us back there. (Or at least I don�t think she could. In any case, mom � yeah, that was us that made all the mess back there. Sorry.)
I woke up around noon. I didn�t get out of bed until 1:30, spending the time thinking about the two articles that I needed to write for the paper on that day. I continued to think about it when the phone rang.
I looked at the phone first to see who the hell had the audacity to call me at 1:30 in the afternoon. When I saw that it was my bar manager, I knew it couldn�t be good news. I snapped open the phone.
�Hey, Patrick,� I said, bracing to see if the register was off or something like that, which I�m always in fear of. It goes back to being a punk in high school and always getting blamed for things I didn�t do, like when my high school pulled me out of my sister�s performance in a play to accuse me of breaking into the campus on Halloween, setting fire to some files and tossing a football back and forth with some friends in the hall.
�Well, that proves it wasn�t me,� I told them. �I can�t throw or catch a football to save my life.�
I was expelled anyway.
But I wasn�t being accused of anything. Instead, Patrick said simply and to the point, �I�m golfing.�
For those who don�t know Patrick, what this means is, �I�m drunk.� The next words out of his mouth were, �You don�t have to.�
�No, it�s fine,� I said. �I�ll work tonight. What time?�
�Six o�clock,� he said. �Thanks, buddy.�
Patrick showed up with the owner and the manager of one of our sister bars around eight o�clock, recruiting the day bartender who was unwinding on his third drink to play video golf and drink with them until about 10. Somewhere around 9 o�clock, the cocktail server tried to shove two bucks toward me.
�The guy who was here earlier left three bucks as his tip, and you served him long before I got here, so that�s yours,� she said.
�You keep it,� I told her. She tried to protest but I told her to shut it. �People have been really good to me already,� I said. �Besides, we have Patrick, the day bartender, a manager from another bar and the owner of this place drinking in the corner. By the time this night is over, you and I should be able to retire.�
Well, it wasn�t that good, but we both did really well and by the time I got home I knew I had made my entire rent for May in just two days. But I also got home at 4:30 in the morning and realized I still had two articles to write.
At six in the morning, I was finished. I sent in the articles to the paper through e-mail and included a note detailing the shift that I had just worked
�I know you want me there at ten in the morning,� I wrote, �but that�s simply not going to happen. All the stuff for my section is turned in, and when I do get into the office, I�ll stay as long as I need to in order to make sure everything gets done. But for now, I�m going to sleep.�
The entire subject of when I come into the office has been a touchy one of late, because they finally noticed that I�ve been waltzing in at around noon. What they don�t realize is I�ve been staying in said same office until about 10 in the evening or later, then going out to get stories and then going home and typing up said stories until four in the morning. In any case, what they essentially told me was that I needed to be in the office by 10am or give up the bar job, since it was �obviously� interfering with my work at the paper.
They sprung that on me without warning, and my reaction could have probably used a lesson or 75 in tact. I stated that the bar job wasn�t interfering with my work at the paper (which it�s not), and that the problem was the enormous workload that the paper had dumped on me (which is true).
�But the simple truth of the matter,� I said, �is that it doesn�t matter what time I come in, because for the last three months I�ve gotten things done, because I know what needs to be done, and I do it. Turning us into timeclock punching monkeys isn�t going to help anything.�
Of course, they stopped listening to any point I was trying to make after that, because they had taken offense to the �timeclock punching monkeys� statement.
So anyway, when I woke up and got to work around noon, I was ready for anybody to make a disparaging comment about what time I waltzed into the office, because again, I had made my rent in two days time, or 16 hours of work.
I often make the observation that I had my four years of college (all right, five years of college), got my degree and have the student loans to prove it. I�ve found a job in the field that I studied in, which I�m qualified for. And yet, I�m still working behind the bar, and enjoy it more. More important, I make more money pouring drinks for people. I don�t think I�m a great bartender. If you asked me for a Long Slow Comfortable Screw against the Wall, you wouldn�t get a drink, but you�d probably need to get a test from Planned Parenthood afterward. But people seem to like me. That�s been on my mind as I kill myself at the newspaper job that pays shit, despite being run by a so-called liberal. I�m confident enough in my own writing abilities now, and have an idea of how newspapers work, so that I know I could find work at other places. Not saying that I want to leave, but I am saying, �get off my fucking back and let me do my job.�
Fortunately, nobody said anything.
I worked today at the bar, copyediting content for next week and occasionally phoning in instructions to the paper. But Spring Break is over, and people seem to have put away their tits and their tips until the next pseudo-drinking holiday. After eight hours, when I counted up my tips, I had twenty-nine dollars and seventy five cents. And twenty-five cents of that was because of the quarter I found while cleaning up.
I should probably be less mouthy.
