a funny one to break the trend.

a lot's been going on lately, it's been a busy time. i've experienced some pretty amusing shit, but haven't had time to get it all down because i've been working so much. my other boss has a lot of work coming up so i'll be working pretty much every saturday for the next two months, along with two or three nights a week. it's gonna suck, but it'll help me get ahead for the impending tone that i know is lurking in the shadows somewhere. you can be sure you'll hear all about it when i find out what it is. hopefully it's something huge so i can rant ad nauseum. that being said, let me prove that i'm not as miserable as i make myself out to be sometimes with a hilarious three-part tale that happened at work recently. most of my friends didn't believe me at first, but there are pictures to corroborate the climax of the tale (or should i say "tail?"...you'll catch the bad pun later.) i may or may not turn this one into a short story and/or screenplay at some point in time, depending on the feedback i get, if any. i swear to god this shit only happens to me.





part one:

as a lowly apprentice, it is my customary duty to see to it that the mechanics working with me are supplied with their coffee and egg sandwiches every morning at nine. the new hannaford grocery store my company is plumbing the shit out of at the intersection of routes 32 and 44-55 in modena has a small cafe called babba louie's across the street from it, so that's where i've been going since the job started a couple months ago. the owner is a twenty-six-year-old guy by the name of lou who probably used to take ritalin and switched to coke after junior high. he's a bit on the high-strung side and a little too friendly. i like making casual conversation with people i see on a daily basis, but there's a line that shouldn't be crossed. lou does not realize this, as you will soon learn.

lou saw my tattoos one day, the picasso "old guitarist" painting in particular, and asked if i i play guitar. i reluctantly said yes and his big, goofy eyes lit up. he asked if i was in a band and i immediately said yes, goes on to inform me that he plays drums and sings and is looking for a band to start or join. i start to feel awkward and come to see that this is not going to be an easy one to get out of. he asks what my band sounds like and i shrug my shoulders and say "rock?" asking how those egg sandwiches are coming along does not give him the hint, he's fucking relentless in his quest to relive his musical youth. i dodge questions left and right to no avail, he tells me to show up at his store early the next morning so he can play his old band's demo tape for me. i try not to grimace as i hear this and walk out the door hoping it'll blow over. it doesn't.

the next day my fellow apprentice, jd, is working on the roof with his partner. he comes down the ladder at around 8:30 with a confused look on his face, proceeds to tell me that lou's blasting some godawful music and rocking the fuck out to it, air drums and air guitar and "singing." my face drops as i realize that this means that he actually brought his high school band's recording in and is about to force me to listen to it with the hope that i'll be impressed and ask him to try out for the Mile. balls. it gets to be that time and i walk towards the road i have to cross to get to babba louie's. i hear the "music" for myself for the first time and cringe. lou spots me, runs outside, screams "LET'S ROCK, MOTHERFUCKER!", and hurls one of the patio chairs in front of his fine dining establishment a good fifteen feet towards route 32. i stop dead in my tracks for a few seconds and instantly wish i made the other apprentice go for coffee.

lou's music turns out to be as lousy as the food he makes. he's so enthusiastic about the damn songs that he doesn't notice the pained expression on my face. it's not even on cd, it's a fucking cassette tape. after the first torturous track he asks what i think and i tell him it's not really my cup o' tea. he reassures me that i'll like the next song better because he wrote that one. wonderful. i just want my goddamn breakfast order and all this loser wants is a friend. the thing is that he's so persistent about the whole thing that it comes off as obnoxious. do you like fucking a needy person? then why would i want such a desperate person to play in a band with me? lou finally gives me my food. then he asks when he can try out to sing for the band, i tell him "never" and he laughs. i try to keep a straight face so he understands my stance on this one. he laughs again, though a little more uncomfortably, and says he'll be expecting to get directions to the band's practice space soon. i walk out of there and instantly want to call every girl i've drunk-texted at three in the morning and apologize sincerely for coming off as such a pathetic leech; not that i foresee an end to my bad habit of drunk-texting until someone invents a breathalizer that prohibits my phone from working after eight drinks, but that's another story altogether.


part two:

a few tense weeks go by during which lou consistently bugs me about trying out for Eis. Mi. in between taking my order and making it come to fruition via griddle. annoying little verbal exchanges such as "how was the weekend?" "oh, it sucked 'cause i was supposed to try out to sing for this band but it never happened." yeah, keep it up, asshole. i get fed up with his groveling and start alternating the coffee responsibility with my fellow apprentice more often. one day i fail to read my horoscope and mistakenly enter the lion's den unaware that my life is about to change for the worse, though not the worst (see part 3). lou's (fat, tattooed and pierced) wife is ringing me up when she notices that i have a bugs bunny tattoo on my left arm. "oh, lou has one,too! he's gonna love that!" she calls him out of the kitchen and points out my bugs. his eyes light up again like the time when he first learned of my musical endeavor. "dude, i have a bugs bunny tattoo, too!" i glance at his exposed skin and don't notice any ink. "oh yeah? where? on your ass? haha." his face doesn't break into a smile, mine goes from a smile to a fearful frown. "yeah, wanna see it?" i reach for my bag of food as i say "no," but he pulls it away and says i can't have my food until i see it. he's dead fucking serious. all of a sudden he turns around and drops his shorts right in the middle of his diner. out of the corner of my eye i see his hairy ass, and just barely make out the shapes of elmer fudd chasing bugs bunny (no, not into any hole). his charming wife chimes in with "i did it for him, didn't it come out good?" he goes on to say that now i have to let him in the band because of our similar tattoos, and the band should change its name to "Bugs." i'm still speechless at having been forced to see this man's ass at nine in the morning and quietly retreat back to the jobsite.

the four plumbers waiting for me see that i'm three shades whiter and seem a little distant. they ask what happened and i tell them. two of them laugh and two of them are so creeped out that they suggest me not going over there anymore. i decide that maybe that's a good idea. word gets around the construction site that the plumber kid doesn't go for coffee anymore because lou's a pervert and pulls his pants down in public. a few of the laborers are friends with us since they dug our trenches for our sewer lines early on in the job and they see fit to egg on the whole ordeal. they ask lou what the hell he did to me and probably put a few ideas in his head. this is where it gets surreal, like out of a bad teen movie. or anything with ashton kutcher.


part three:

a week or so goes by without lou and i seeing each other. this all changes one tragic wednesday afternoon, though i didn't actually see "him," per se. it's about two in the afternoon and all the guys from all the trades on the job are all working in basically the same vicinity. all us kempton boys are standing near each other gearing up for the next task of the day when all the power tools and lifts on the job go silent, right before a shitstorm of laughter. we turn around to see what the commotion is and are suddenly stunned and horrified at what we see. take a look at the above photograph taken by one of the laborers for an exact representation, i'll try my best to describe it in words here.

you know those fluffy animal suits that one would wear on the side of the road while waving to passing cars in order to attract simple-minded customers to a business? well apparently our boy lou has one of those, a bright blue dog suit to be exact; and he also has some cardboard and a marker, on and with which, respectively, he wrote "I LOVE MIKE" with a heart next to it. then he came over to the building we were working in, walked right up to the side where we were and held up his sign. oh, but it gets better. he detached the dogs tail before coming over and reattached it to the front of the suit, like a penis. naturally, he proceeded to stroke this "penis" in my general direction as he held his heartfelt little sign. my esteemed colleagues and i could do nothing but look at each other hoping to find an answer in each other's eyes at first. were we dreaming? did this guy really have the balls and/or mental disorder that would deem this a good idea? would years of therapy ever even begin to undue the damage done to my fragile mind by this traumatic ("traumatic" is an adjective while "traumatizing" is a present-tense verb, people who can't comprehend that irritate the ever-loving shit out of me!) event? is he naked under that suit? after several seemingly eternal seconds we turned and walked away, still not knowing quite what to say to each other. this time, all four of my fellow plumbers agreed that i might want to lay low for awhile and have the other guy go for coffee. i agreed wholeheartedly, even though all apprentices secretly enjoy the coffee task because it gets us away from actual work for awhile and we can usually get our food for free with the change left over. some things just aren't worth a few minutes in an air-conditioned deli and a free egg sandwich, though.





so there you have it, the latest work-related fiasco worthy of mention in the annals of my life. hope it made you laugh a little, and convinced you that i know how to do the same, even though i tend to piss and moan here a lot. life ain't that bad, it's just nice pretending it is sometimes for some strange reason. and sadly, if i were in lou's shoes and had the big blue dog suit i probably would have done the same.








Currently reading:
"The Motel Life" by Willy Vlautin.
"Betting On The Muse" by Charles Bukowski.