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June 27, 2006
Frivolity and conviviality... on the clock.
A lifetime ago, I was the Webmaster for the world's largest mail-order retailer of comic books and science fiction memorabilia.
My boss clearly enjoyed his work. He'd been toiling for the company since college and was thrilled that I was creating an Internet presence for the firm. So thrilled, in fact, that he scheduled our weekly conference for Friday evenings after work in a local watering hole known as "Carlos O'Kelly's."
There'd we be on Friday evenings -- at a corner table in an increasingly noisy Irish-Mexican bar. He'd start off with lame attempts to talk business, but the ambient noise in the room rose in concert with his blood alcohol. Before long, his side of the conversation consisted largely of loud, speculative observations about the women in our office.
I'm a go-along-to-get-along sort of guy, but I hated this job AND it was thirty miles from home. Walking in my front door at 8 on a Friday night, coming from a job I despised helped me to find my voice after a month and a half of this bullshit.
"Any chance we could move our Friday meeting to the afternoon?" I asked him. As I recall, he sat backwards in his chair, elbows on the table as he drummed to "Walking on Sunshine" with swizzle sticks.
"What? But we can't come here for lunch! Well, we could, but -- you don't like meeting here?" The first two margaritas had made his tongue thick, but the third put some color on his cheeks and nose.
"It's just that I like to get home after work." I looked into his bloodshot eyes. "And you live a lot closeer than I do."
It was easy to read the disappointment on his face. He may even have started to formulate a managerial response that would have detailed how talking shop in an informal setting after work was the best kind of team-building. Instead, he sighed and called the waitress over for a fourth margarita.
The above is just preamble to the fact that there is a full bar in my office, and that the accepted way of introducing new employees or marking special occasions is to get everyone together for drinks near the kitchen after work.
As much as I like the individuals with whom I work, drinking in the office is not my bag. I imbibe with meals, and very seldom, in bars. This makes me a cheap drunk, which doesn't mean I'll end up photocopying my ass after a few drinks.
I generally introduce new hires by walking them around the office and introducing them to folks, but that's just me. Here, it's cocktails.
Also, I don't think I have that much to chat about with my co-workers. Strike that -- I know exactly how much we have to chat about: enough to get through the work day. Feeling a drink grow warm in my hand while I strive to make conversation that isn't controversial or personally revealing is actually my idea of a bad time.
And so, I will act like a poorly socialized individual. I'll make an awkward, self-effacing excuse to the group that's gabbing it up, I'll introduce myself to the featured new hires, and I will skedaddle home.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2006
Bait and switch
I woke up at 7:10 this morning.
By 7:15, I was grogging around the kitchen, looking for carbs or caffeine that would give me enough energy to shower and dress. I've been burning the midnight oil this week, and it finally caught up with me.
Peering into the fridge, I saw a pint of chocolate milk, something I don't keep in the house, but pick up at the corner market when I'm feeling the need for some comfort. The taste of chocolate milk has a Proustian effect on me -- recess, the Six Million Dollar Man, dodge ball.
I opened the carton and took a few swigs, then put it back in the fridge before filing cat bowls with kibble and fresh water.
As Polly crunched breakfast, I reached back into the fridge to polish off the chocolate milk. I took two slugs from the carton before realizing something was terribly wrong.
I managed to swallow, then took a second look at the container in my hand:
Half-and-half.
Yuck.
I need to drink about a quart of black coffee to offset the cream coursing through my system. And maybe a Lactaid patch behind my right ear. Urggh.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)
June 20, 2006
A fop comes back down to earth.
I was locking the front door yesterday morning when our downstairs tenant stopped hosing down her minivan and wished me a good morning. I smiled and returned the greeting.
"You look very ... L.A. today," she said, looking me up and down.
I wore painter's jeans with frayed cuffs, a striped navy shirt and a tan gabardine sport coat. Orange Italian sneakers tied the ensemble together.
I checked myself out in a car window.
"Very L.A.? Well, thanks -- I guess."
Mary raised her left eyebrow one-sixteenth of an inch and cocked her head ever so slightly.
"No. Not really."
Posted by Your Protagonist at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2006
Master and Commander
At the helm of a 40-foot yacht, taking her under the Oakland Bay Bridge at full sail. The wind was mercurial, gusting from 12 to 30 knots, then dropping down to 6, leaving our vessel, Rapture, lolling in the doldrums.
I leaned on the wheel and turned the sleek boat into the wind. More than once, we rolled so hard, I had to fully extend my right leg to stay upright. The salt spray left a tang in my beard, and a lone seal bobbed near the Ferry Terminal, clearly weary of the tourists at Fisherman's Wharf. San Francisco squatted on the shore at a most unfamiliar angle.
It's rare that I find myself having such a good time doing something totally unexpected and outside my frame of reference, but there you are.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2006
Rhymes with "rich."
Just like the basic concept of a job well done, I'm sure the title of this post is over your head. To be fair, it was before your time, a quote by a priggish politician's unpleasant wife that was used to demurely demean an opposition candidate.
But I am not your opponent, just a guy trying to work on his cardio. Was I snappish when you eventually returned to the front desk sucking on your smoothie? You see, I'd been waiting there for three minutes, only because I wanted to pay for a bottle of water and pick up a towel. I know it was three minutes, because I was watching the clock. Just like I imagine you do.
I've had shitty jobs, so I can empathize with your lack of, uh, empathy for the customers you were hired to greet and occasionally, hand towels to.
After my workout, you seemed entirely engrossed by the magazine and sandwich you were sloppily consuming. That's why I may have appeared surprised when you sneered, "yeah, you have a good one, too" when I had one foot out the door. Either way, I was glad to see the effective, friendlier woman who's usually working the desk was back at her post.
Just seeing you both reminded me of good cop/bad cop, only with customer service, instead of law enforcement. Too bad they didn't give you a nightstick so you could break balls literally, and not just figuratively.
I apologize if I didn't make you feel more welcome while you were at work. I'll do better next time.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2006
Congratulations, Reed and Meredith!
"Wanna meet my baby?"
I made a skeptical face. David's a funny fellow who wouldn't think twice about pranking an old friend he hadn't seen in a while.
He shrugged and pointed to a woman several feet away. After a half-second, I recognized his wife, Jin Hee, whom I'd met for the first time at Michael and Judy's wedding two Junes ago.
She was cradling an infant while shifting the weight of a shoulder bag.
Huh.
This is the part where I got a little misty.
I headed toward David's family, weaving around the last row of chairs lined up for Reed and Meredith's wedding.
Jin Hee smiled a greeting, and we turned our attention to the tiny person in her arms. Six weeks old, squirmy and contented just to kick at the air and make eye contact with everyone and everything.
If I'm lucky enough to know Timara when she's of drinking age, I'll relate a few anecdotes about some of the wedding guests -- including myself -- that might cause her to see adults in a new light. After she gets over her initial denial, of course.
This was a great room in which to marry; a venerable, funky old synagogue built in 1849 that had evolved into an art center on the Lower East Side. It was a Pantone riot, the effect largely achieved with imaginative lighting in fuchsia, gold and blue, among other shades. I liked that a bit of plaster had fallen away to reveal the lathing beneath in one of the ceiling vaults.
Some friends have gotten married, most haven't. As a result, weddings are still a rare occurrence for me -- unlike some folks I know who've had to choose one wedding over another on the same sunny Saturday. You'd better have a good excuse in reserve, because "I already agreed to go to Sandy and Jim's" is not an acceptable RSVP.
And this was the first wedding I attended with Liz. I've usually gone solo. It's good to watch two people you care about commit to each other in a room full of friends and family. It's better when you can hold someone's hand throughout.
It's impossible to see these people and not be mindful that I've known them for longer than half my life. And that they've known me.
Some arranged arrivals and departures around the babysitter's schedule, others were still pregnant or very recently so. For at least two people I knew, this wedding was their first time "out" since the baby. I could never have predicted who or what any of these people would have grown up into. Some I know better than others, but it strikes me that they're all extremely decent people.
And the ones who aren't are people with whom I'm no longer in touch, and that might be adulthood's greatest perk.
Michael DJ'd after the ceremony, freshing the wax with vinyl properly sorted in an anodized crate. It was sublime to dance with friends, many of us well lubricated by the expert mixologists brought in from Milk & Honey. Still, I was sweating my ass off inside my suit, feeling closer to 36 than 18. I used to dance every weekend! Now, going out is meeting friends for dinner, and if I haven't taken myself to the gym sufficiently, I'll refuse the creme brulee and feel virtuous.
Eighteen years ago, we washed our bacon cheeseburgers down with milkshakes and enjoyed a nice cigarette afterwards.
We spent the following afternoon walking around Chinatown with Michael and Judy, eventually settling in at a subterranean Vietnamese place where Elena joined us for dinner. Another Obie was a few tables away. Afterwards, drinks in the Village in a back booth with a good sized group.
I'm always wistful when I leave New York. The city aside, some of the best people I'll ever know live there, and I don't see them nearly enough. During the blank times between, we're growing up separately; leaving one job for a better one, marrying and divorcing, birthing children. I must go to New York more frequently.
Letting too much time pass between visits can be jarring. These are old friends, but they're also a clock and mirror that should be consulted regularly.
P.S. Michael -- thanks again for the LP!
Posted by Your Protagonist at 09:45 PM | Comments (0)