My Background is Supreme

Badness after badness piles up like sand in an hourglass. Alone insignificant, each grain added together marks the weight I do not want to bear. Flowing through time these grains are the changes that hurt and the signs of progress. Each grain has a story, and it would tell you if you asked. Each story is boring, mundane, but each grain added together builds a castle of feelings I don't understand.

They tell me my body is healing. They say it is better than slow suicide. Audre Lorde says we should not live fearing death. To avoid suicide is to avoid life. Philosophy or rationalization? What's the difference? Live to fight, and fight to live. Don't be a lover, be a fighter. I wish I was a fighter. I wish I was a lover. I wish I was fought. I wish I was loved. The Wild Things live in the dark parts of us. Maurice Sendak promises they are kind if we conquer them. I want to find out, but I want it to be easy.

Each grain reminds me of my loves, my hates and my lives. Sliding sand is a high-speed slideshow of memories that hurt too much to examine closely. Thankfully I watch the sand slide, one new wave covering the old. The cycle is self perpetuating. The sands of happiness are buried by the sands of loneliness. Digging through the pile, the old sand is tarnished by the fresh layer. I dig as deep as I can and all of it tells me why it hurts, and why it should hurt. I know at the core though is the magma that warms our planet and arranges our mountains. So I dig through the hurt and I dig to find the magma that warms and burns.

The sand grows faster than I can dig. This hour glass measures eternity. You don't need to flip it over.

Grain by grain my body and mind grows. Stronger? Weaker? Stabler? Shakier? The sand tells my story, grain by grain. They tell me my body is healing. Maybe I would agree if I could step back from each falling grain and see the hourglass.

DQ Blizzard -TS-C7-

For some reason, at some point, my friends started working at Steak & Shake, too. At one point, three others of our crew of eightish worked at Steak & Shake. Mac flipped burgers. Travis washed dishes. Dan made milkshakes for one night, maybe two. I kept serving. Somehow, our affinity for the restaurant as customers confused us into believing the experience as employees would be the same. In many ways it was. The unemployed members of our gang still came in and benefitted from improved access to free food, and the employed ones spent a solid amount of time hanging out with them in the dining room, or with each other in the break room.

Out of our various stations of employment, I was the luckiest. Most importantly, I made more money than any of the hourly wage workers. Second, I got to deal with humans besides angry coworkers. Comparision aside, their jobs just sucked. Mac routinely burned himself on the large, flat single burner that was the griddle for the World Famous Steak Burgers. He sweated from the heat and stress induced by Mike on the weekends. Travis never caught a break and was blamed for any delay of procedure, since it was his responsibility to collect dirty dishes from the dining room, then wash them, then bring them out for the servers and kitchen staff to use. Once business slowed down in the earlier parts of the morning he had to mop the restaurant and then rinse the floor, basically remopping it. He got the chance to go home early less than anyone else. One particularly miserable weekend had him degreasing the corners made by any wall or partition connecting to the floor, vacuuming the sealing, and thoroughly washing every window and reflective surface in a restaurant made halfly of chrome. By the time I quit, Mac was the only remaining element of the once proud and well represented, "Coffee Boys," an affectionate name granted by Julie.

By far, Dan had the shortest run as a Steak & Shake employee. His initials were DQ, a novelty we realized when Stovall decided his job would be working the essential milk shake fountain. Doesn't that sound like a fun job? It isn't. After the first milkshake you can't wait to make one for yourself on your break. On your break, after you finished making your fiftieth milkshake, your entire body feels like your tongue does after eating a big ice cream cone. Microscopic molecules of sugar work their way into your skin, making microscopic cuts that add up to irritation on par with a long day at the beach, assaulted by sand, wind, saltwater and sun. The smell of milk overpowers your nose and all that remains of your olfactory glands is an unkillable lingering of dairy. Or, in the words of Dan, "It fucking sucks." In addition to the physical problems associated with high-quantity milkshake production, it had an element of stress one wouldn't normally associate with, "hand-dipped, real milkshakes."

Dan worked by himself, the lone soldier armed with tubs of generic frozen dairy product, a full bar of syrups, and some mixing contraptions straight out of Hellraiser. Had Dan stayed longer, he would have learned the trick to effective milkshaking is preparation. Whenever someone orders a chocolate milkshake, don't make one milkshake, make as many as you can and save the rest for the next person that orders a milkshake. However, anyway you shake it, it is still a hard job. To complicate the endless orders of milkshakes, malts, sundaes and cobblers, customers can customize their order with nuts, hot fudge, caramel sauce, cherries, whipped cream and specific amounts of milk, syrup, or variations in consistency. It's not easy to keep up with the orders, and I imagine it a bit of a blow to the ego to see customers enjoying your blood, sweat and tears so thanklessly. I got the money from them when that milkshake was particularly delicious, Dan got near-hypothermic fingers and a permanent aversion to dairy based desserts.

Speaking of desserts and their influence on gratuity, Steak & Shake had this policy where at the discretion of the server, a dessert could be given to a table free of charge to compensate for any problems that might come up during the meal. I had a policy where I tried to make as much money as possible. Giving your customers free stuff, especially when they don't ask for it, is a surefire way to achieve this end. You had to ask for a refill? I'm so sorry! Please, let me get you a Berry Berry Cobbler to resolve this injustice. Your French Fries weren't crisp? By all means, enjoy this Brownie Fudge Sundae. (God those brownies were good).

Back to Dan. He had a feisty latin temper, and his pride butted against the demands of the masses incurably. I really think he never came back after the first night, and I'm not sure if he even finished his shift. It was this same pride that kept him from hanging his head and shame and backing out of the Steak & Shake life, though. In fact, I probably couldn't have stayed at Steak & Shake for as long as I did if not for Dan. You see, I didn't (and still don't) own a car. Corey gave me rides to work, or let me borrow his car, but usually I was stuck looking for a ride at five or six AM. Dan, afflicted by Halo similarly to me, was up at these hours fragging his way to multi kills and rampages, making a name for himself in the virtual Microsoft Live universe. He used to play on my account (Landfried) and when he migrated to his own he kept part of the name he earned his reputation with and I believe goes by the tag DANXXFRIED or something like that. But he would pick me up. We shared a couple cups of coffee, actually Mountain Dew in his case, and hung out at the restaurant before the breakfast crowd started showing up.

It was always a surreal transition from dinner to third shift, or third shift to breakfast. I mentioned earlier how Steak & Shake was a very different place during the night. I always forgot the side of the social spectrum beyond the bar rush crowd, late night college students and general weirdos that popped in during the early AM. After doing battle with the hordes of insomniacs and drunks, it was slightly confusing to see groggy eyed factory workers and senior citizens coming in for their usual, low key breakfasts. The sun rose and filled the restaurant with harsh, direct light. People were quiet, building up the nutrients and energy needed to face their day. Dan and I didn't live in their world. We just finished our day, and we certainly didn't understand, and wouldn't be able to deal with, the lifestyle these individuals chose or found themselves in.

What does it say about him and I as people that the majority of humans in our country, the 9-5 early risers were space aliens to us? What value set and life path had we embarked on to feel so separated from the normal? It's not like we were artists or people pursuing a higher ideal than afforded by conventional lifestyles. We were just kids not really considering where life was taking us. We were having fun surfing down the road of faux-adulthood. For the first time in both of our lives we were self sufficient. We provided our own food, shelter and clothes. Perhaps back then that was enough for us. Never did we stop to consider what we would do with those things.

Learning Makes Me Cry

I decided it would be a good idea to go to one of my classes that I haven't attended since the first day of this semester. Perhaps I'm a weirdo, but I don't deal well with big lecture classes. There are probably 100 kids in this class, most of them on a laptop, staring at the bulbous professor pace back and forth on the stage. Behind him a giant powerpoint projection plasters the wall. Almost every sentence he repeats. Sometimes he repeats them twice. This probably is to emphasize a point in addition to giving the note takers a chance to transcribe verbatim.

The format of large lecture classes allows for little beyond rote memorization. Really, if the University is worried about saving money and consolidating resources, they should just offer the class online. Virtually, that is the experience in a class of that size. There is no interaction, we do not discuss and analyze. We are presented with information that we are supposed to digest. The professor provides an experience comparable to reading a book. Assembling people to share the information in the same room is a facade of intellectualism. This is not a chimney-side parlor talk. This is a television channel broadcast from 100 miles away.

Again, perhaps it is just me that doesn't get much out of this method of education. I need to interact to learn. I have to pick up the ball of an idea and run my fingers over it to absorb the texture. I need to lift it and toss it to a friend to recognize its weight. I need that friend to toss it back at me, maybe aggressively, for me to feel its impact. My classroom experience was more like walking through a museum of ideas. In the distance, on the stage, the ball sat on a pedestal. We were invited to look at it and listen to our tour guide describe its characteristics. Look but don't touch is a disgusting mantra that is callous in its insult to humanity.

Rush -TS-C6-

If you never lived in the Bible Belt or Utah, you might not be familiar with "Blue Laws". The religious powers that be decided to impose "God's Will" on the heathens led astray by booze. Nonsensical restrictions abound in Kentucky. For example, you can't buy alcohol anywhere except restaurants on Sunday. Beer is available at gas stations and grocery stores but wine and liquor are only available in liquor stores. These liquor stores have to close at 11 pm. You can still buy alcohol at bars until 2 am, and gas stations and grocery stores still sell it until then. The 12 am marker on Saturday night/Sunday morning is a bit of a gray area, and whether or not you can buy beer for the first 2 hours of Sunday varies from vendor to vendor. Apparently God couldn't make up his mind on the most effective limitations on piousness.

Like clockwork Steak & Shake was inundated with the falling-over-drunk shortly after the clock struck 2. We called this the bar rush, because that's exactly what it was. The restaurant sat 130 people, and it wasn't rare for their to be a line of drunks waiting for a table. The most servers I remember every being handy at that hour was five, and more usually it was two or three. In some ways this job of biblically difficult proportions was a blessing. On a good night you could pull in $100 or more in tips. Not because the drunks were particularly generous, but because there were simply so many of them. Making just $1 per table per hour led to some nice dough. That raises the question though, how much would you sell your sanity for?

More than once I saw a customer's request for extra salad dressing or a spilled tray of food lead to tearful breakdowns in the break room or explosive, screaming resignations. Servers were tense like cats threatened by an overfriendly dog. Backs arched, we approached our tables frantically and prayed they didn't expect much. Multi-tasking was an essential skill, and those that lacked it earned the wrath of all the other servers like Gomer Pyle. We didn't beat the incompetent with socks stuffed with bars of soap, but we talked behind their back, we didn't play on their team. We left them to drown in the sea of their outraged patrons. They didn't stay long. The list of servers culled out of third shift serving at Steak & Shake is imposing. Memorizing the needs of five tables at once was mandatory for survival. Ketchup at the booth thirteen, three Cokes and a sweet tea at table twenty five in the corral. Side of fries with cheese on the side at the bar. You could write it all down if you wanted to but the tickets started to get confused. You were better off winging it at break neck speeds, motivated by the knowledge that if you stopped or dropped the ball at one table the whole universe would collapse. Even more futile was plugging the orders in to their full accuracy at the computer. Not recording six drinks or additions after the initial order made time sense, and therefore money sense. Haphazardly surfing the rush, the successful servers went with the flow and just kept smiling until their brains fried.

The first few weeks, to adjust to the unusual, late-night time frame, I took ephedrine to stay energized. This is what Wikipedia says about ephedrine:

Ephedrine (EPH) is a sympathomimetic amine commonly used as a stimulant, appetite suppressant, concentration aid, decongestant, and to treat hypotension associated with anaesthesia. Ephedrine is similar in structure to the (semi-) synthetic derivatives amphetamine and methamphetamine

Did you notice the line about Ephedrine being similar to methamphetamine? Ephedrine is marketed in several different ways. You can, or used to be able to, buy it at any gas station with attractive names like, "Hot Body Xtreme" on account of its hunger suppressing qualities, or "Yellow Jacket", appealing to dozy truckers. If I attempted to market the drug accurately, I would call it, "Simulated Heart AttackZ". The drug kept me alert, but I'm not convinced it was for any reason other than I was literally afraid I was going to die. I could almost see my pulse throbbing, no, exploding out of my wrist. My ribs cracked from the strength of my heart beating against them. My head would snap from left to right and my hands fought the shakes while I rolled silverware or tried to distribute a tray of ten tall glasses of soda. Abrupt, sharp, unexpected laughter would meet my tables when they made some friendly joke. Ephedrine did not mix will with a bar rush, a situation that already produces anxiety, and with slightly higher blood pressure probably real heart attacks. Eventually I decided a steady IV drip of coffee did the trick just as well without the fear of death.

A variation of the bar rush was the Bosnian rush. Bowling Green has an unusually high percentage of Bosnian immigrants. I've heard this explained by Bowling Green being an international refugee center. I can't confirm this, but I do know I was always a little surprised how Bowling Green, Ky. attracted such a large number of war torn Eastern Europeans. It seems that at night they traveled in packs, not to belittle them  or compare them to predatory animals, but this was just a fact. Once a week or even less, they decided Steak & Shake was the cultural center of Bosnian culture, and they fell on the establishment like locust. Allow me to defend myself in the midst of the racism I'm spewing. I was really great friends with several Bosnians and have no issue with their culture or residence in Kentucky. However, it is indisputable that after a night at the bars, and concentrated into one room, they were a hand full.

The Bosnian rush usually started with a large Slav looking gentleman in a tight black shirt with metal necklaces who sported a short, slicked hair cut. His alpha male intentions reeked up the room while his lady friends followed him in. Usually there were two or three of  them, and the general attire was tight jeans, high heels and some sort of low cut, transparent blouse. Heavy make up finished the picture. If they waited for a table, which usually they did not, a pet peeve of mine as a waiter, they would greet the server or host with an upturned nose and communicate in grunts and nods. Once sat, their interactions with each other usually involved faces of boredom and the occasional complaint about some personal drama. The girls looked in their compacts and applied make up while the man usually put an arm on the top of the booth and stretched his feet out while looking around the restaurant like he was scanning for rogue male lions threatening his pride.

The group grew exponentially. Next two crews showed up, then four, then eight, then the restaurant was full of people that all seemed to know each other, switching tables at will to shake hands with a friend or hit on a girl. I'm all for one love and that bullshit, but as a server, trying to keep track of dozens of individual tickets moving throughout a restaurant of people trying to look identical, it made life a little bit of a hell. In their defense, they tipped better than any other ethnic group (Caucasians included). They had a habit of making things very uncomfortable for me with questions that maybe weren't weird in their culture? "My girl thinks you're cute" or "You look like you know where the weed is" were met with my awkward smile, slow nod, and quick exit.

Some times the giant group led to serious problems. One time some guy got jumped in the bathroom, and I think he got stabbed. The police showed up and the servers kept trying to get those Frisco Melts out. Without fail, someone would vomit in the bathroom, and occasionally shit on the floor. I imagine the motivation behind that was just messing with the staff, surely no one could make it into a restaurant so drunk that they really don't get how to use a toilet? I remember another night where it wasn't so much a Bosnian rush but a table of Bosnians very intox. They had a food fight. They threw soup on each other and then chased each other around the restaurant. I actually got them more soup when they explained they spilled it on accident. I'll admit they scared me. They dripped machismo I had never encountered before. I usually didn't take crap from tables, or at least I wouldn't respond well to it. I earned notoriety for kicking a table out after they sat at a table without waiting to be seated. But I licked these guys' boots. I'm not proud of it, but I did make a lot of money off them.

By far, the most epic rush, that I only experienced once, was the legendary New Year's rush. Weeks before the first minute of 2006 the servers told stories of past New Years with terrified reverence. They spoke of the holiday with the air of an urban legend that people half believe, like the psychopath who escaped from the insane asylum showing up in the backseat of that poor girl's car. On December 31st minutes before midnight I stood in the server station behind the soda fountains, staring at an empty dining room. Literally not one table was occupied. The parking lot was empty and snow lightly fell from the sky. Mike, the dry drunk general manager, stood with me. He held a small glass cup, the one's servers drank out of. He too stared at the empty tables. He hit the trigger for Dr. Pepper and filled his glass with slow, calculated movements unusual for his normal, panicked and frenetic approach to motion. He uttered the only words I ever remember being able to understand from him. Not so much to me as to himself and the universe, he said, "The quiet before the storm." The room was so quiet that we could hear the big hand on the clock swing to the 12 position.

Someone from the kitchen yelled, "Happy New Year!" The rest of the staff, which was quite a few since they scheduled every employee they could for the night, sat quietly casting sideways glances at Mike. Before the second hand finished a full rotation on the clock, a single sedan drove carefully into the parking lot. Four staggering college students fell out of their car and stumbled towards the restaurant.

Mike set his Dr. Pepper down, looked out the window and said, "Here they come." He turned around and walked into the kitchen like a dead-man-walking. Within five minutes two school buses, countless cars, taxis and drunk buses dropped off troves of people in spirits much higher than ours. Many held plastic cups and wore silly glasses and party hats. They were loud, they were happy, and they were drunk. We tried to keep up with the deluge, we tried to sit them on time and keep up with the three-minute-after-food-delivery check ups. We tried to get orders right and we tried to keep smiling but we were drowning.

Like an unprepared General, Mike screamed at the kitchen staff while casting eyes-ablaze on any server that tried to ask him a question. The servers pulled each other's limp bodies through the trenches and gave encouraging words of false hope. That was all that kept us from drowning ourselves in the deep fryer. It is remarkable how the communal high of celebration shared by the customers manifested in unparalleled rage towards the servers. Their derision fueled the inebriated party in our restaurant. I went numb. I stared at my tables without the slightest attempt at pleasantness. At one group of eight too distracted with themselves to look at me I yelled, "What do you need? What do you want?" They didn't respond, so I left and went to the next table. How unhappy we were correlated directly to how good of a time they had.

Physically we survived, but I think I speak for the staff as a whole when I say a part of us died that day. When the restaurant finally cleared several hours later we huddled in booths and shook while we stared at the mess we had to clean up before we went home. Several bills went unpaid and Mike was busy tracking down the servers responsible and made the usual threats of forcing us to pay the tabs. Less exhausted we probably would have defended ourselves somehow, but we just sighed. I actually gave him thirteen dollars for one of the tickets. I was a soldier tired of battle. War weary I was willing to pay any price for peace.

Being New Years and all, I feel like I should finish this piece with something about resolutions. Perhaps I resolved to lead my life in a way that would guarantee never again would I celebrate the upcoming 365 days with people I despised to make some bucks. I didn't. There was talk at the beginning of the night of resolutions to quit smoking. I think even the non-smokers were hammering in a few coffin nails after that night, and who could blame them.

celebrate indeed

Julie -TS-C5-

From the beginning, Julie was one of our favorite servers. We first met her when the boys and I were trying to remember who invented the printing press. We asked her. She didn't know, but it opened a channel of communication that lasted to this day.

Julie was the epitome of cute. Plump and short, she had the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. She was so nice and sincere that instantly you were her friend, even if she didn't like you. It took me a long time and a lot of work to ever discover any darkness behind her. Outspoken, intelligent and funny she was my best friend at work. In the break room she would ask me for a cigarette. She didn't really quit, but she was pretending  because her boyfriend Marc, the bane of my emotional existence for some time, didn't like it. A nice, vivid slice of memory I hold in a fond place recalls her in the dish washing area talking to the busser, Frank, who will definitely get his own chapter at some point. I walked up to her and asked her to guess what I was doing. I then charaded. I hopped into an athletic stance, feet wide and knees bent. My hands went up in a basketball-guard fashion and started snatching at the air with quick darts. She laughed. "I'm picking blueberries," I explained. She laughed harder. It's awesome when she laughs that hard cause it kind of takes control of her and she has to put a hand in front of her mouth and struggle to contain it. We were buds, it was great.

I was eighteen or nineteen in my blueberry picking days, the exact date escapes me. She was twenty five at the time. I was only friends with those my senior. The kids my age, some still in high school, grated on my last nerve and I was somewhat scared of them. They knew something about youth, or maybe didn't know something about maturity, that I couldn't relate to. In the movie Waiting the staff at the restaurant plays a game where the objective is to trick your coworkers into looking at your penis contorted in various ways. The forms your organ might take included the bat, the brain, and the goat. A hilarious concept unless you convince adolescents this is actually a fun game to play. As I recall, only two people at work participated in this game to their infinite delight. Things like this, reckless, senseless and bizarre acts confused me and I knew I couldn't fall into that clique, even if I tried. So I shunned them and joined the group of senior servers and Stovall.

Julie and I became closer and closer. She started giving me rides to or from work. You could say our first date was when we went to Wal Mart together, late one night, or early one morning. It was in December and snow clung to the ground. Our breath turned to frosty vapor when outside. Inside the car the windows were fogged over. While we waited for the windows to clear, we hugged our own bodies and shivered. Cold weather forces your body to look for warmth. It reminds you of how dependent you are on the warm clothes around you and makes you thankful for a body to share when one is had. In  retrospect, it should have been obvious where we were going, relationship wise. It was already obvious that we were going to Wal Mart.

We were Christmas shopping for her family and her boyfriend. It wasn't a chore though, we were playing. It seemed like I could do nothing but amuse. Every joke I made was met with the same face covering laughter. I rode on the end of the cart while she pushed and I spread my plumage, although I don't think I realized it at the time. We had very different backgrounds. She had a sort of reckless childhood and got pregnant for the first time at age fourteen. I hadn't kissed a girl at age fourteen. She knew about acid and cocaine. I had smoked pot a few times and never been drunk. Two ships that should have passed in the night collided head on and fused together. That night at Wal Mart and all the long Steak & Shake nights proved we were of a kindred spirit. Something about us was extremely compatible. We spent a lot longer than we needed to at Wal Mart.

She started coming home with me after work. It was just friendly. She was old enough to buy booze, so we welcomed her into our apartment with open arms. We would have anyways though. As I said, she was your friend instantly. Her, my roommates and I played drinking games in the very early morning, sometimes while the sun was rising. Or we watched movies or just hung out on our porch smoking cigarettes and talking about whatever it is people talk about on chilly winter sunrises. It is a testament to my romantic short comings that her intentions didn't even cross my mind. I was too hung up over my ex girlfriend to recognize others as objects of romance, but I don't know if I would have recognized it anyways. I was caught off guard when she started playing footsie with me.

Some roommates fighting sleep joined Julie and I to watch Quills, the Geoffrey Rush movie about the Marquis de Sade. Julie surreptitiously slipped off a shoe and started rubbing her socked foot against mine. Instantly I was terrified. Panic roared through my head. A near panic attack took over my breathing and I fought for an idea of what to do. In the past my courtship attempts involved months of poetry and less-than-manly pleading. This forwardness was uncharted territory to me and I definitely did not know what to do. For at least an hour the merciless foot rubbing continued. The only reason I didn't start crying and run into my room and slamming the door behind me was I liked it.

After the movie we went on to the porch together and in a typical confidentless way I confessed all of my shortcomings to her and the reasons she should not be interested. I'm messed up over my ex girlfriend. You're a lot older than me. Work will be weird. I'm a virgin. Thank God she was older and a lot more mature and wise than me. I think a girl my age would have immediately lost interest and run away from the convulsing sac of insecurity that was me. I think she thought it was cute, which it definitely was.

We spent the night, well we had this conversation at sunrise, so I guess we spent the day together? The point is we fell asleep in my twin size bed together, clutching at each other in such a way that made our bodies thank us. For me this was something of a first. Never before had I felt the real security of someone with you, just the two of you, glad for the chill outside that demands this intimacy. I remember putting my head on her hip and looking out the window next to my bed at Bowling Green below. Snow still painted the sidewalks and grass and parking lots. I felt the cold coming through the glass. I was glad for the winter, the cold outside, and the warm in my bed.