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.

Hell No! We Won't Go! Well, I guess maybe. Depends if theres a cover.

I just wrote a 16 page paper for one of my classes. I am a creative writing major and it is the longest thing I have written all semester. It was a summary of The Golden Compass, a fantastic fantasy novel that I read in junior high. It was the single piss-poorest assignment I have ever done. I am quite mad that I did it. What a complete and utter waste of time. Why did U of A put this professor in charge of 600 students 3 hours a week? I give a vote of zero confidence. Just...what an utter waste of time. Give me a prompt. "How did the author use human and animal relationships to further the narrative?" Something like that. Don't tell me to summarize every chapter. Ask a fifth grader to do that. Actually don't cause its a pointless assignment for them, but at least theyre not paying for that education and if they blow it off they won't incur the wrath of a lowered gpa. The classes I hate are the hardest. That makes sense I suppose, and I'm glad I'm not inherently opposed to organized academics. A part of me, no, ok, all of me, loses self respect when I actually participate in this ruse of academics.

The Rat Faced Bastard -TS-C4-

Anthony Stovall

Funny compulsive liar

A rat faced bastard

That was a haiku, for you mouth breathers. What to say about Anthony Stovall... Let me come clean up front. I love the man. He is one of those fantastic people that gains power from complete and total self involvement, as undeserved as it might be. He was confident and proud. I use his last name because of all the people I might write about I think he alone might be amused (probably not, though). Also, he went by "Stovall" so it would be a little confusing for me to call him Anthony. Our relationship was one of, for the most part, playful antagonism. One night both of us in were high spirits, a-twinkle-eyed and ready for amusement. I put my face within inches of his, and articulated, over emphasizing every syllable, "Faggot". He chuckled and said, "If I was your boss I'd fire you." He was a guy who could take a joke, and I think that is an indispensable quality in a human. However, he had some qualities that to my thinking were dispensable.

If you believed him, at the age of sixteen he was managing a Wal Mart, attending a military school where his drill seargent took him and his peers to a back alley where they engaged in underground fight club style brawls, and was banned from using a computer on account of the two charges of "virtual grand larceny". Also, I think he had some level 70 warlock or something in the MMORPG Everquest. I believe one of those things. To be fair, I have no evidence to contradict any of his stories. Perhaps he really does own a four story mansion in Asheville that he doesn't live in for tax purposes. Maybe he really did get kicked out of the casinos for counting cards (Although he said he counted cards in Texas Hold 'Em, which to my understanding is impossible and just a stupid concept that sort of exposes how little you actually know about numbers or cards).

For all of his shortcomings though, he was a natural leader. Monday through Friday he would show up at Steak & Shake at nine PM and stay until the bitter end at six AM, sometimes later. He took a pride I will never understand in his job and really did keep things running as smoothly as possible. We, the servers and cook staff, were afraid to question him and at the same time liked him. He was funny and had a strong personality. He was skilled in the verbal fencing of alpha-maleism and did not back down. He was wrong usually,  regardless of the situation, but he recognized that wasn't the important part. He led and conducted and would not allow question to his command because in all honesty we, for the most part, were looking to subordinate and undermine. He knew he was fighting us, but he had fun doing it, and so did we.

When things slowed down around four in the morning, he would take a booth, bring a newspaper and smoke and drink coffee. We would join him and he welcomed our company with coded messages like, "You don't have something you need to be doing?" But he wouldn't tell us to leave. He would tell us about his fantastic adventures, how if he hadn't gotten his girlfriend pregnant he would be a Delta Force sniper. We would arm wrestle and he would smile when he won, which was always. He was a comically built man. Short and skinny to a fault, he was made of rubber band muscles and skin pulled tight from years of smoking and a life less than indulgent. I don't think he was thirty yet, and he was balding. His teeth were bad, a symptom of a poor Midwestern childhood. Still he smiled proud and unapologetic, as one should smile when forced into circumstances undesirable as well as uncontrollable. His nose, though, is what made me call him a rat faced bastard. Pointy and pronounced, it involuntarily convulsed in sniffles above his rodent like buck teeth. He was not pretty, but the strength of his character quickly forced you to forget that. I liked him because he reminded me that truly it is not what you are on the outside but who  you are on the inside. I mean that in sort of a fucked up way. I didn't especially like who he was on the outside or inside, but regardless he was strong physically and mentally even if he needed a fabricated world and delusions of grandeur to achieve such confidence. I respect that. What is the alternative? To admit to the world that in fact you're pretty useless and obnoxious? To curl up and let the freight train of life crush you and split you into smaller and smaller segments of subhumanity? Bravo Stovall, keep fighting the good fight (which in your case is the douche bag fight but lets not split hairs).

Before I was an employee, Stovall was the man that welcomed myself and the crew into the Steak & Shake brotherhood. Sure, we had the approval and favor of several of the servers, even angry old Shirley, but as long as the management frowned on us loafing and mooching, we were the outsiders. Stovall saw the attention we were getting from the young and pretty servers Andrea and Julie. Alpha-radar detecting a threat to his reign he approached us. A jovial confrontation that lasted for every subsequent visit to Steak & Shake ensued. We learned to like each other and we tossed around insults in a very friendly way. All of the sudden we had official sanction and Stovall was as excited to see us as any of the staff. In fact, he approved of us drinking for free, I'm not sure how he felt about the chili rations. As long as he established himself at the top of the totem he enjoyed our company, and we enjoyed his. He would sit with us and make fun of Jordan's neck beard or ask how gay we must be to never bring any girls with us. In our defense... wait, no, we really did never bring girls with us.

The management style used on third shift was pretty much what you would expect from someone like him. As long as the customers were happy, and no one was making Stovall's life any harder, he let us do as we please. The only company policy Stovall enforced with any tenacity was the no cell phones in the dining area rule. While busing tables I held my phone in the crook of my neck and carried the bus tray back to the dish washers and dumped it off. Stovall asked me to walk with him to the bank across the street to make the deposit. As if I had personally assaulted him, he threatened to "write me up" for the behavior and warned of repercussions if I continued to disrespect the holy code of Steak & Shake protocol. I'm not saying he was wrong, or that servers should be allowed to talk on their phones all the time, just his interest in maintaining the appearance of order was surprising to me.

As long as he was happy, we were happy. When pressure from the higher ups landed on his shoulders we felt the burden as well. Team meetings would take place in the break room. He would take two staff members into the back while the rest fended off the hordes of customers. When he was done with his first two victims he would put them back out on the floor and take two more into the shadows. The servers on the floor shared nervous looks and glanced at the entrance into the kitchen and break room like children staring at the locked door hiding fighting parents. When you went back in that room  he did his best to put his foot down. If we didn't like Stovall, if he wasn't fun and a real person, it would be easy to blow off the explosive "management". His tirade usually started with something about how this job was not a joke to him and this job put food on the table for his son  and if we wanted  to mess that up for him he'd hold the door open for us and say goodbye with a smile. He would scream. He would tell us how embarrassing it was that a table remained unbussed for five whole minutes after the party left. In his defense, maybe he really believed that the dirty table really did threaten the food supply of his child. Maybe he just knew how to push our buttons. Regardless, buttons were pushed and if Stovall was mad enough to pull us in for a conference I guarantee you the rest of the night was miserable. Solidarity among servers was a poor defense against his judgement, since most of us honestly valued him as not just a team member but a team leader. He was our boss. Mike and Ben and Will were guys we had to work with, and unfortunately they were higher on the totem pole than us but we held no special love for any of them. Their anger was laughable. Stovall's anger was personal. Even though we knew how absurd and inconsequential this job and his opinion was, we still felt like we let him down. So we tried  to do better.

Stovall would have done well as a football coach. He had a game plan and wasn't afraid to scream and hurt and humiliate to motivate his players. He always talked about some prize the corporate branch awarded to the best wait staff out of all the Steak & Shake restaurants. He spoke of it like it was the Super Bowl, the prize to keep our eyes on. I don't know if he was using it as a tool to motivate or if a part of his pride actually wanted some recognition from the bosses that only knew how to reinforce positive behavior by screaming and threatening the behavior they disagreed with, like veering from the script given to servers. The part of me that hopes for his well being prays it was a motivational ploy. Please, Stovall, don't whimper for your bosses with tail between your legs, hoping for that pat on your head.

Under the direction of Stovall the third shift crew at Steak & Shake was something of a local treasure. We had real, regular customers. An actual repertoire developed between staff and customers. These people kept coming back for more because in a weird, professional sort of way we were friends. Stovall allowed us, for the most part, to be humans. Once all the other managers left for the rest of the night he was OK with us undoing our bow ties and wearing them dangling from our neck. He overlooked us grabbing a bowl of cherries for the customers that asked for them and when things got busy he'd grab a bus pan or run drinks and food for us. The customers of Steak & Shake all night long were treated like humans by humans and it cultivated a sort of counter culture of love and humanity led by none other than the rat faced bastard.

i got this photo from his myspace

Management -TS-C3-

Earlier I said it is great being eighteen because you don't realize how much of an idiot you are. I imagine when I am twenty five I will write about how awesome twenty two is because you don't realize that every one hates you and you are still an idiot. However, as a now mature adult, looking back at the other mature adults managing my life in those Steak & Shake days, I have to laugh a little bit. Thirty to fifty somethings did their best to run this masquerade ball every night by using the most embarrassing and ineffective management techniques available. 


For example, Mike, the general manager that many argued was a "dry drunk", commanded his troops with incomprehensible mumbles, angry and large hand gestures and a complete inability to articulate instructions to get anything done but an equally impressive ability to let you know how angry he was that you did not execute his non-plan correctly. On a busy night, when inevitably someone screwed up an order and put "cheese" on fries that was not ordered, the plate would be returned to the kitchen. Through the foot wide slot between the dining room and the kitchen Mike would glare at you, and then the plate, and then grunt like a bull ready to stampede. He'd grab the plate and declare, "Fug shulp guff." The situation would resolve itself and he would threaten to make the server pay for the wasted food. That food, by the way, was thrown away to discourage servers from intentionally screwing up the orders for a free meal. I ate the food out of the trash if no one was watching, so jokes on them. 


Another manager, named Will, tried a much more personable approach to management. He knew he was your friend and he knew that you admired his lush moustache and wanted nothing more than to grow up exactly like him. So, happy to mentor, he would tell stories about his internet girlfriends and how pretty soon she was going to visit from Korea, but he'd be goddamned if she was going to try to get a free ride out of him for her kids. What is the world coming to when you can't even trust the love of your life you met on the internet in a country on the other side of the world? Unfortunately, most of his stories weren't this exciting. Too many involved the megapixels on his new camera or how he upgraded his internet speed; probably a good call if you're downloading your love every night. My absolute favorite interaction with him was roughly half way through my Steak & Shake career. One late Winter night I sat in the break room by myself, massaging my Beatle hair with a pen and massaging my lungs with carcinogens. In walks Will. He sits down and with the air of an international spy delivering code words to earn my trust, he asked, "Hypothetically, what would you say if I told you I heard you were the biggest pot dealer in Bowling Green?" Hypothetically, I would laugh. Hypothetically, I would feel very sorry for you because you project an exciting life of underground goings-ons and intrigue on your actual life of failure culminating in a minimal exercise of influence over twenty year olds and senior citizens who hate only themselves more than you. I denied my involvement with the high risk lifestyle of a Bowling Green, KY trafficker and Will nodded and smiled. Playing along with my game he continued, "Of course, but if I needed to get some pot where do you think I might look?" I believe he still thinks I was a dealer. If I was a dealer why in God's name would I work at Steak & Shake? I don't even like pot, but that is besides the point. The remainder of interactions with Will involved him yelling at you when you didn't have a silverware cup in your bus tray because goddamnit those forks will scratch the plates and do you want to pay for those plates? They're not free you know. Oh, and there was some drama with rape charges against him from a coworker. The establishment's response was to move him from one Steak & Shake branch to another. And I think they fired the waitress who brought the allegations. 


The last manager of note that won't be a pivotal character is Ben. Poor, poor Ben. He was the youngest manager, I believe. He had a fiancee and plans to move to Pittsburgh where surely his life would turn around. He also had a love affair with alcohol and cocaine. He was a very nice guy. I have no ill will towards Ben and I think he was the most effective and intelligent manager. When he was in charge things were fun. They were lighthearted, and  the absurdity of the whole situation was understood. The customer throwing a fit because his Frisco Melt didn't have enough 1,000 Island Dressing got a meal comped and the staff laughed after he left. However, it was a struggle to discard the signs of turmoil surrounding Ben. The cloud of whiskey smell followed him like the rumors that he knew where the cameras couldn't see, and that's where he stashed his Jim Beam. More power to him, if you ask me. If that was my life I would need a little consciousness numbing too. The freezer, in addition to preserving sacks of chili, froze the stench of marijuana. One night, I didn't see, I just heard, Ben threw his keys in the safe, told another manager he quit, started crying, and admitted to a crippling addiction to cocaine. The next day he was back and we didn't mention the incident. He was still smiling. The break down coincided with a story I heard through the grapevine about Ben's fiancee coming home (they lived together) with a man and introducing Ben to him, explaining that if he wanted to start bringing home women it would be fine with her because she didn't plan on curbing her sexual indiscretions. I don't think they ever moved to Pittsburgh. 


For the most part, these managers maintained the day time Steak & Shake, the Steak & Shake that catered to farmers in the morning and single mothers in the evening. At night, though, a different management style emerged. It was the management style of Anthony Stovall and he was a key player in my re-education. He deserves a chapter of his own, so, get ready: SEGUE. Oh, if you actually know Stovall, imagine him riding a Segue. Pretty awesome, huh?

couldnt find a picture of stovall so enjoy bourdain

So it Begins -TS-C2-

So I got the job. I think this is where the story starts. I think this is a story. You be the judge.

You know what's awesome about being eighteen? You're such an idiot, no matter what, I don't care if you're the smartest eighteen year old ever, you're still an idiot. But you don't realize it. In fact, speaking from personal experience, you're pretty confident that you are in fact not an idiot, just everyone else is. I happen to be an authority on the subject since I did some investigation and actually lived the life of an eighteen year old for a whole year, just to see what it was like. I was eighteen when I began that experiment.

My initiation into the world of serving, waiting, or whatever you want to call it, was fairly lack luster and did not reflect the glamor and excitement I expected. Some part of me just took it for granted that serving at Steak & Shake would be as entertaining as the countless hours I invested as a customer. Actually, in retrospect, I had a lot more fun serving, but the first few go throughs did not reflect this. They started me out in training with some dumb, fat, white trash girl that was profoundly boring and somehow condescending. I imagine it was a rare opportunity where she encountered someone she actually had some sway over, or someone that wasn't in a position to point out her general nature of sucking hardcore. It is a little bit embarrassing to be trained on how to serve. It is a fairly simple concept. You introduce yourself to a table, convince them to tell you what they would like to eat and or drink. Then you retrieve those things for them. To simplify this mind-bendingly-complicated process, servers at Steak & Shake were expected to memorize and religiously employ a form of short hand that was incomprehensible to anyone not trained in the Steak & Shake language. My theory is the establishment wanted to protect the orders of the customers in case our note pads were intercepted by the Muslims. An example of how awesome the abbreviations were, guess what "K" stood for? Coke. Why not C? Because C meant "cherry". Once we filled out our orders, we took our notepad to the computer where we punched in the order. Then a receipt printed out. We gave that to the cook staff. So, if I'm not making this clear, let me clarify. We had to learn and use this really stupid system that no one else would ever see unless they were trying to make sure you were using their retarded little system. If you weren't I think there was some repercussion. They probably made you wear your bow tie two notches too tight.

Did I mention the bow ties yet? We wore bow ties. We had to. I am not proud of things I have done in my life, and agree to be a bow tie faggot is above and beyond the most regrettable. Even more so than that girl I raped.

To further secure our tickets from the Taliban we threw them away after we wrote them out. Am I unjustifiably outraged by this? Are there people so stupid that they really cannot figure out a system with a piece of paper and a pen to record things like "Cheeseburger" or "Cheeseburger without onions" without needing a Rosetta Stone to decode them? Jesus Christ, I have worked myself into a proper rage. I wish I could say that is the end of my anger. I wish I could tell you I'm taking deep breaths right now and finding the quiet place in my solar plexus. My friends, this is not so. I didn't want to bring it up at first but now I think you must know. Further questioning how stupid people can actually be, I ask, is there anyone out there who does not know how to say hello? Ok, there are people with certain awkward approaches to interaction, but seriously you want to be a waiter? The world needs plenty of janitors my friend, and if you can't approach people that are trying to give them money and not entirely weird them out without a script, then you should seriously consider a career in waste management or explore your passion for suicide. My employers did not agree, so a script we had. Maybe I'm missing something about the psychology of eating at a shit hole diner like Steak & Shake with your family. Maybe you're so angry at your life that you need someone to laugh at and think, Thank God, at least I'm not that schmuck.

"Hello, welcome to Steak & Shake. My name is Sam, and I'll be your server today. Our soups are brocolli with cheese and grandma's liquefied vagina. Can I start you all out with some drinks?" Do you know how much of a tool you sound like when you spit out some clearly memorized bullshit like that? Do we really live in a world where earnest greetings and sentiments of welcome are only receivable in this freeze dried, microwavable and inhuman manner? Is that what you want from your waiter? A robot? C'mon you know that's bullshit. I would like to say that I made it an extreme point of pride not to do that as soon as left the womb like comfort of my trainer's wing. Play it by ear. Some people want that shpeel. Don't give it to them because they suck and you don't want their money anyways cause it probably has retard boogers on it and that shit is like cooties. Be polite, be welcoming, be sincerely nice because Jesus Christ these are the people that are going to pay your wages. Also, they are human beings. Do you really need an excuse to be nice to another human being? Unless of course they're spewing retard boogers out of their upturned noses.

The whole process that I learned from training (and then immediately discarded) puts the plight of America in center stage. Everything about a server's interaction with the customers was so entirely regimented that in five years a robot will be able to do that job and the customers will never know the difference. What is it about predictability that is so marketable? I do not want to go to a restaurant and mouth my server's speech along with them. It is not desirable to me to experience anything, including a dining experience, in some painful bubble of security where I am not required to consider another person as a person but a stooge, a tool for a company trying to execute individuality. Individuality is threatening so to make their customers feel completely at ease Steak & Shake used the guillotine business model and lopped off every employee's head so all that remained was a gaping neck spewing the blood oath of uniformity.

Training only took a few days. At first, I was nervous, and I earnestly tried to do it "right", which I put in quotes to emphasize how not right it actually was just in case you, the reader, are one of those retard booger people and are too stupid to wipe the drool off your chin. I would ask my fat white trash catastrophe trainer questions like, "Ok, well when do we give them refills?" And she would cite the employee manual that said we should refill drinks if ever we notice they are two thirds empty at the three minute first response after food delivery or at the fifteen minute check delivery/dessert pitch but not on the final check drop. At some point I actually thought, and I think most of the servers still think, that somehow this system mattered and made us better servers.

I survived. I whiled away my time in the break room. Two four person tables squeezed up against the wall in what was really a closet designated the relaxation area. Soda syrup traced glass rings on the tables. Salt and scraps of French Fries lent atmosphere to the room. This is where we were allowed to be humans. The younger servers would flirt with each other and play games while sucking on their cigarettes. The older servers would stare bitterly at the wall, like those white bricks dashed their dreams so many decades ago, while sucking on their cigarettes. A server has an interesting relationship with cigarettes. Dolphins swim majestic loops through the ocean and hunt for food, maintaining a pose of power and grace. They can only do it for so long though before the laws of nature force them to the surface where they ejaculate water out of the top of their heads with a wet fart noise. Servers dance through the dining area, juggling trays of food and too many glasses at once while smiling so hard the corners of their mouths crack and bleed. When they make it to that break room, though, they collapse into a chair and gasp for the nicotine that sustains them. Clutching at hair and holding back a tear they convince themselves that they just have to get through today, that if they make fifty dollars they can get their son a new backpack. Then they go back out there and they keep smiling and laugh almost too hard at the customers' jokes.

I sucked those cigarettes down, too. Not because I was so stressed out or had a strong dependency at that point, but because I was a kid and I was scared to be around these people that seemed to know something about the world. These were not my teachers anxiously aiding me to a grade. These people had their own issues. Not only did they not care about how callous my ex-girlfriend and her bull dyke mom were, they would not even think to ask. Dolphins are one of the three species of animals that kill for fun. These guys weren't going to try to kill me, but they sure as shit weren't going to hold me to their collective bosoms and promise me the world was going to be alright. So I sucked down those cigarettes and pretended like I didn't expect them to.

this one is a lot cooler than what we wore