scribblings

This is very very rough draft of something I've been working on--
none of it is really in order and there's stuff that's totally unrelated-- taking it out for a test ride, more or less--
KH--need to hear from you on this one--let me know what you think so far--
gonna try to do a short story--this is really the bare bones...

I felt shattered. I believed in nothing. Everything that I had been taught, everything that I had believed to be true—they were all lies. Life was nothing to me. Just eating, sleeping, shiitting and screwing. No meaning, no future, no past, no God, no nothing. Just a hollow man living an empty life in an empty and meaningless universe. A randomly generated sequence of events that shat me out into the void. A great cosmic accident, a great cosmic joke.
The feeling of utter and complete meaninglessness was so severe that to act in some way—to commit suicide, to fall in love, to try to believe in anything—would be to acknowledge that it did have meaning. So I didn’t kill myself. I didn’t believe in anything. Didn’t fall in love—though lust was something I couldn’t quite hold off. Because I didn’t care that much. I continued to live, albeit in an empty and meaningless way, because to do otherwise would be admitting to myself that there was meaning.

The place is named Vagrant’s Feast, but everybody just called it Vagrant’s. It had been an institution in this college town for the last seventeen years. It was the favored haunt of governors (former and current), state senators and lobbyists; it was a direct shot four miles down Grand Avenue from the state capitol, right across the street from State University. It was probably named after the album by the British-invasion rock band, but it was also the name of an eighty’s alternative label, also out of Britain. My friend Mark, had friends who had worked there before and it sounded like an interesting place to work.

I was a mess. My world had crashed in around me after the arrest and my psyche had disintegrated. I lost my apartment, my job, was now separated from all of my friends. To make matters worse, I was dropping acid and getting high at every opportunity.
After starting to work for Vagrant’s, I found himself overwhelmed and I receded more into my own mind. The head chef, Bill Thomason (BT), and the other cooks would talk about me or talk around me, but I paid no attention to anyone.
At one point, Thomason was discussing Maslow’s theory of Self-Actualization and Hierarchy of Needs and said pointedly “you can’t just bury yourself in a monastery anymore, you have to engage.” I turned around from my dish machine and looked at Thomason.

I was damaged, destroyed—could barely feed myself. The other dishwashers took pity on me, taught me how to do the most basic and menial of tasks. Showed me that there was an abundance of good food on the dirty plates. Cyclops, as he was called, perhaps because he was Greek, but perhaps just out of spite was into the I-Ching and equated it to the proper way to clean dishes. “Cirlces rule the universe,” he told me.
He often spoke of going to Greece, someday, but I had a feeling that it would never happen.
It was like me going back to Thailand—something that sounded romantic and exciting, but not something that would come to pass.

The other cooks were Meat, Casey, Brooksie and Loomox. The night cooks were an even stranger bunch, with Mofo leading the way. Also on nights were Squido, Joey Cannelloni, Spanky and Pottsy. Mofo was the bass player for the punk band, the Cruciflux, who opened for harcore icons the Dead Kennedys on their last major tour. He also did all the guitar work on the group’s second album—simply named, Cheese.

I started there at about the same time as Q-bert and Seether—I think they were both a year younger than me, fresh out of high school.
Seether was obnoxious—I seriously thought about beating him up a few times, but the guy must have weighed about 110 lbs. He was constantly talking, commenting about everything—sometimes what he said was entertaining or even funny, but usually he would be making fun of somebody or imitating them in a bad way. He was like a bald-headed parrot with big round wire-rim glasses constantly squawking and repeating everything.

Mofo’s father was the head of the Sociology Department at State U. and he went to high school at East Ottawa. There were a slew of prep cooks—the main one being “Big Dave”—the guy must have been 350 lbs.—you had to move out of the room for him to get past you in the aisle. There was also John (another 300 pounder), Damien, Chewie and Morgan. I wondered why some guys didn’t have a nickname—maybe they had more of a personality, they had earned the right to use their real names.
John was the exception; maybe the utter lack of a personality prevented them from giving him a nickname. John lived right next door to Stony in their eleven-room house. He only saw maybe four of the fourteen residents ever, but at night, he could hear John whimpering and crying himself to sleep. He was from a small town north of the college and had moved to town to attend the community college and study theater. Theater? He barely speaks to anyone—how the hell was he going to become and actor?

I got a new nickname when BT got a call from Macy’s to do an in-store cooking demonstration. BT wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of teaching some bored rich housewives how to cook on cookware that they would probably never use. He started poking fun at the whole idea and said—“Yeah, I’ll do a whole Hawaiian theme—I’ll even take my Man Friday—Stony with me.”
“Friday?! Oh that’s rich!” blurted out Casey from the far end of the kitchen.
“Friday? F-U” I thought, but from that point on, they all called me Friday.

Big Dave was a vegetarian (a 350 lb. vegetarian?!) so Mofo and Spanky liked to throw bacon strips on his windshield before he left for the day. They were always pulling stupid pranks on someone. It was funny watching Big Dave trying to run after a beanpole like Mofo (who was about 6’4” and maybe 170 lbs at the most).

Stacia ran into the kitchen to announce to everyone that her now-defunct band, 23 CaveDogs had the number 8 dance single in Germany.
BT: “Do you get money for that?”
Stacia: “Something like fifty cents a spin, I guess.”
BT: “So are you guys gonna go on tour?”
Stacia: “we broke up.”
BT: “You’ll have to do a German reunion tour.”

Meat was from a rural town to the south. He used to be a highly regarded tennis player. Number three in the state or some garbage. They called him Meat because they all figured he had been taking steroids to bulk up. He was extremely homophobic, so everyone would make jokes and innuendos about his sexual orientation.

Casey did a play-by-play of anything and everything going on in the kitchen throughout the shift. He wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular—more to himself, but loud enough for most to hear.
I thought he was hilarious. You would do or say something and Casey was right there with a “Schweet!!” or some such comment. He seemed to be utterly devoid of an ego, though—never once heard him talking about himself in the first person. Often, his own actions were fodder for his ridicule, just as much as anyone else.

Squido was the bassist for a jam band that played the college bar scene. His brother, Philsy was the main dish guy at nights. Their father was also a professor at the State U., also in the Sociology Dept. Philsy was a guitar virtuoso, who had been publishing variations and tablatures for years. I could not figure out what the hell he was doing at Vagrant’s.
But Philsy wasn’t much of a people person. You knew he was pist at you by his grumbling and the racket he made by slamming the pots and pans around.
Squido was more outgoing, but could be pretty gruff. When I was training to be a cook, Squido announced to me, just after the dinner rush, “Hey Friday—I got a gig downstairs. I’m outta here. Sink or swim mofo, you’re on your own.”

BT’s current love interest, Lolita, was plain looking—she had curly hair, which reminded me of a poodle. She seemed nice enough, but strange at the same time. She would stare at me and not say anything—I figured she was trying to mirror his own quietness, but I just ignored her. One day when BT was up at the bar, Lolita walked in and started chatting with the other cooks.
Meat: “so what kind of lover is BT?”
Lolita: “oh, he’s very attentive.”
Meat: “how about stamina?”
Lolita: “oh, he’s got great stamina—just the other day we were doing this thing on the love seat where…”
I walked out of the kitchen at that point, to put in his required 15 minute break on the toilet. Mofo had informed me that it was not a full work day otherwise. Mofo was also nice enough to put some interesting graffiti on the wall as reading material. Most of it concerned Meat and his sexuality. Mofo signed all of his work, though—there was no denying he did it.

To celebrate another job well done, the owners, Bob and Betty Adams, ordered a round of drinks for everyone. Friday got a shot of Tequila—he didn’t know what else to get. After slugging it down, I went outside to get a breath of sweet fresh air. Half the kitchen crew was outside passing two joints around. I took a couple of hits off them, just to be polite.
I came back into the kitchen barely able to think—

Loomox: “So Friday, what did you study at State?”
Me: “Journalism”
Loomox: “Journalism? That’s cool—like TV and stuff? You’d get to travel.”
Me: ”No, print journalism.”
Loomox: “So you’re writer, huh?”
Me: “Nope.”
Loomox: “So what do you want to do, want to you want to be?”
Me: “I don’t know.”

Jaz was the mother hen for the rest of the waitstaff—who the kitchen rats referred to as “waitrons”. They were robotic in their niceties and attention to the patrons. They also had a low opinion of most of the kitchen staff and made quite a bit more money due to the tips.
One day there was a scared looking girl standing at the back door, asking for Jaz—I went and got her and then went to the employee “lounge” to get changed.
The lounge was a ten-by-ten space surrounded with cubbies, reaching almost to the ceiling. The lighting was dim and I felt claustrophobic whenever I was in there.
Jaz had decided to take the girl to the employee lounge as well and it turns out she was this girl’s A/A sponsor. Crap. Come on, Jaz, couldn’t you talk to the human wreckage somewhere else?
It was a little awkward hearing this woman’s life history while changing my shoes. She had fallen off the wagon again and needed support from Jaz. I was of two minds on this—1) she was weak and could be taken advantage of . . . 2) I know what you’re going through--at least you have the courage to admit it . . .

Isaiah: “Didn’t you used to hang out at Dobie’s?”
Me: “Yeah, my buddy Daver worked there.”
Isaiah: “You used to have a shaved head didn’t you?”
Me: Yeah. “I was tripping on about four hits of acid; a pint of tequila—wiped out skateboarding and somehow ended up shaving my head while looking for band-aids at some girl’s house.”
Isaiah: “So you’re not a skin?”
Me: “How could I be a skin? I’m Asian and American Indian.”
Isaiah: “I got beat up pretty bad by some skins back in Philly, they can be total asses.”
Me: “Yeah, I knew some jerks like that. So why do you shave your head?”
Isaiah: “I guess I like the aesthetics. It’s an anti-fashion statement.”

I was putting pots and pans away behind the cook’s station and walked past the radio. Someone had put a Bob Dylan tape in and the opening strains of “Like a Rolling Stone” hit me as I headed back to the dish machine. I stopped in my tracks. Sunlight streamed into the kitchen through the large window on the eastern wall. The scene before me took on a crystalline lucidity which I’d never seen before.
Oh my god—the song is about ME.
How pathetic—of all the songs in the world—I have to relate to “Like a Rolling Stone.”
Mofo would find a cassette-single by the Yugoslavian industrial band, Laibach, with a cover of “Like a Rolling Stone” and the Beatle’s “Dig It”. In typical Mofo-fashion, he would play the tape in an endless loop until someone finally complained about it.

Mofo: “So you like the rap?”
Me: “I like Public Enemy…”
Mofo: “Public Enema—they’re not bad.”
Me: “I like the mixes, they jump out at you—and the lyrics… it’s like Black History Month back in Detroit Public Schools, all rolled into a song.”
Mofo: “I went to East Ottawa, we didn’t have any culture there.”
Me: “Yeah, but you guys had a punk scene, though--“
Mofo: “But it’s dead now. I remember seeing Minor Threat back in ’81 in some dude’s basement. Those were good times. Real Punk Rock. There’s a Punk Rock Sock-Hop going on this weekend at Barley Street. You gonna check it out?”
Me: “I was planning on O.D.’ing on Ecstasy by myself this weekend.”
Mofo: “Watch out for Bluto—he hates the rap. If we got it on and he’s cutting through the kitchen, he’ll be cussing and swearing the whole time he’s in here. Stay out of his way, he’s like a mad elephant and he’ll stomp on you.”

I often felt like I was sitting in on some kind of talk show. The level of sarcasm and cynicism was quite high—more Letterman than Carson. BT worked the cook’s station like Letterman would his desk and the rest of us were vying to be his Paul Schaefer—foil, sidekick, yes-man. Nothing was sacred on BT’s show—everything and everyone was a target for ridicule. BT moved me up quicker than Seether or Q-bert, maybe because I was an easier target or maybe because I took the abuse better than them.
I suffered physical, verbal and mental abuse as a child. This was nothing. I could take it and ignore it. I could be their little beotch. Mostly because I didn’t care, or convinced myself that I didn’t care. I hated them and their world and I wasn’t about to let them scare me off. Ignoring them and their comments took all the concentration I had—I focused on what was in front of me, nothing else.
I needed their nasty job because I needed to eat. If nothing else, they fed me really well, or at least allowed me to feed myself really well. I ate the London Broil with egg noodles every day for a month straight. They made the mistake of making a squid salad one weekend—I’m pretty sure I ate most of it myself.

Isaiah: “Watcha got in the delivery bag, Friday?”
Me: “Books and P-Rock tapes.”
Isaiah: “Where’d you get that bag? I see a lot of people with those messenger bags.”
Me: “I don’t remember. I think I stole it from an ex. She got it at the Gap or some crap, that’s why I tore off the emblem and wrote some song lyrics on it.”
Isaiah: “Pretty stylin’.”
Me: “I used to skate to and from all my classes—it was less bulky than a backpack.”
Isaiah: “Watcha reading, Friday?”
Me: “Zen Buddhism.”
Isaiah: “You like the Buddhism, Friday? You don’t dig the Nietzsche or Sartre? Did you see Psycho Dave at the party this weekend? He wrote “Sartre” on the flipped-up bill of his cap.”
Me: “I can’t get with the dead white guys, no. Psycho Dave is just flat out weird.”
Isaiah: “I haven’t read much Zen—what do you think of it?”
Me: “It’s cool, but . . . I don’t know—it’s like mental J.O. (masturbation)—nice brain candy.”
Isaiah: “Brain candy? Hahaha . . .”
Me: “Maybe it’s just me, it just seems to get in the way of living—too much thinking, not enough living. But then again, I’m high all of the time . . .”

I became the salad guy. My area was at the end of the cook’s station and I would throw salads together as needed. It was a step up from Prep Cook, although I still did quite a bit of prep work when things got slow. BT always listened to NPR leading up to and through the dinner rush.
I was standing there listening to a report about the air quality in Mexico City—something about traces of fecal matter being found during a recent test.
“Not only can you not drink the water--you can’t even breathe the air.” I said almost absent-mindedly to BT.

Mofo: “Friday, you gotta eat better. I’m not saying to eat a N.Y. strip or a filet mignon every night, but you can treat yourself to one at least once a week.”
Me: “But I like the London Broil.”
Mofo: “But you eat that stuff EVERY DAY. Make yourself a sammich or something.”
Me: “Nothing else sounds good.”
Mofo: “You are in a rut, my friend. Get out of your rut.”
Me: “But I got this itch . . .”
Mofo: “An itch you can’t scratch? Even though you keep scratching and scratching?”
Me: “Exactly.”

Spanky: “Aren’t you Isaiah’s brother?”
Isaac: “Yeah, I am.”
Spanky: “Holy crap, dude, you talk less than Friday.”
Isaac: (blank stare)
Spanky: “They used to call him Stony due to his stony silence.”
Isaac: (another blank stare)
Spanky: “We used to think he had taken a vow of silence or something-isn’t that right Friday?”
Me: “Felcher.”
Spanky: “You wish I was. (To Isaac) You and you’re brother are pretty different, aren’t you?”
Isaac: “Yeah.”
Spanky: “That’s cool. We’ll look out for you. You’re brother was tres cool.”
Isaac: “Yeah, he is.”
Spanky: “What’s Isaiah been up to?”
Isaac: “He moved to Portland with his girlfriend.”
Spanky: “Is he still dating that hot Goth princess?”
Isaac: “Yeah.”
Spanky: “Lucky bastage. I might be moving to Portland—my old lady’s been talking about it. What do you think, Friday? Should I go to Portland?”
Me: “Yeah, good riddance.”
Spanky: “You know you’re gonna miss me, I’m the anti-Friday—the antithesis of everything that you are. You know what antithesis means, Friday?”
Me: “No idea, Spanky.”
Spanky: “How the hell do you not . . . how did you get into college, man? They’ll take anybody these days, won’t they?”
Me: “Anybody but you, apparently.”
Spanky: “Touché, Friday, touché. Your not gonna have me to kick around much longer.”
Me: “Pottsy’ll be happy to hear that, I heard he’s making the moves on your fat neighbor that you used to bang when you was fourteen.”