There’s this one place I hate to go. It’s a triplex on a cul-de-sac in Arlanza. Actually, it’s a trailer behind a triplex, occupied by a smelly motherfucker with a big, old-man-of-the-mountain beard and hunched posture. Know that scene from Indiana Jones when the Angel of Death comes out of the Ark of the Covenant in and melts all the Nazis? That’s what happens to you when you smell this guy’s living space.
I wish you could hear my impression of the way this guy talks. Just imagine Gollum’s hiss when he inhales, Popeye’s growl when he flexes his vocal chords, and when he’s relieving his lungs of the excess air, a horse flapping its lips. In fact, he does that every single time he exhales, often to saliva-spattering effects.
He always has his fly down and doesn’t seem to have a pair of underwear to his name. I’ve only ever seen the bare skin of his leg, and luckily not any part of him I wouldn’t want to see (but then, I really don’t wanna see him in the first place). So as not to catch a glimpse of any shriveled sex organs, I have to focus on his face, which isn’t much better with the beard and the missing teeth and the nasal secretion and the O2 tubes strung around his chin and behind his ears.
His favorite item on the menu? Sandwiches. He always orders 40 or 50 dollars worth of sandwiches, usually with an armload of sodas, and despite the fact that he always pays with a 100 dollar bill, he never fucking tips.
I understand if someone is poor. I understand this guy is old and feeble and may not be able to drive. But there are public transportation methods here. There’s “Dial a Ride.” Heck, he probably lives close enough to one of the grocery stores that offers shuttle services. 50 dollars can buy so much more food at a market than at a restaurant.
But this motherfucker orders 12 diet Pepsis. Almost cleans out our fridge. Seriously, there’s only one left. I can only bag them four 2-liter bottles at a time, using two liners so they don’t break and spill all over the place. It takes three trips to and from my car, it’s not a short walk (because triplexes are somewhat deep), and it’s fucking heavy.
Even though I may profess to the world that you do not fuck with anyone who handles your food, I’m still not the type to spit in a drink or jizz in the dough. That’s just gross. But you better believe I give each and every one of these 2-liter bottles a shake. I can just imagine them exploding in the old fucker’s face.
You know, I hate to say these things, because I don’t wanna be in this guy’s situation. I don’t wanna be old and lonely, dying in a trailer with oxygen tubes sticking out of my nose. I know I’m gonna get old, too. I want a family (or someone) to take care of me.
But if I pay the delivery driver with a 100 dollar bill every fucking time, I’m gonna at least spare a buck. Maybe two or three.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
Jabberwocky
I’m at a house near the end of a cul-de-sac. If I kept going, I’d be in the parking lot of an apartment complex. I knock on the door, and suddenly get the funny feeling someone’s watching me.
Something that cracks me up about delivering pizzas: people seem to think their windows are built using two-way glass, as if they expect me to not notice them staring at me. And they also think they’re soundproof. What really gets me is that they don’t answer the door sometimes. They just stare. This window to my left, where I can clearly see several small fingers holding the blinds open, it doesn’t have a screen. In fact, the glass isn’t even there. It looks like it broke sometime in the past, and not even all that recently. It’s got dust and cobwebs attached to various corners of broken glass. Like this kid thinks I can’t see his fingers sticking between the blinds.
“Jabberwocky!” He whispers loudly, if that’s even possible. “Jabberwocky!”
What I wanna do is toss the pizza at him through the window. Or at least tell him to get his mom and dad and open the fucking door. He obviously has no idea what he’s saying. He goes out and sees a poor adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s work and thinks it’s something original simply because he’s never seen it. And it’s not that I hate Tim Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland. It’s that kids are gonna grow up thinking this is the real story, and when they inevitably encounter the real story, they’re gonna think, “What the hell? That’s not Alice in Wonderland!”
It happened to me when I was told that whenever Ariel walked, it felt like she was walking on knives. And that her thick-headed love interest never figured out it was her all along, the one who really loved him. And she didn’t get her man. And she died and turned into sea foam. At least, that’s how the story was supposed to go, but this is, as Propagandhi once called, “a Disney-fied history.” Things have been fluffed up for today’s audiences, who apparently can’t stand a sad ending.
Even when the dad finally answers the door, even when he’s standing there handing me the money, this kid never shuts up. “Jabberwocky! Jabberwocky!” He whispers it over and over again. Dad’s acting like he doesn’t even notice. I hand him the food and go back to my car. Some day this kid will encounter the real “Jabberwocky” poem. What a shock it’ll be when he sees how drug-induced imagery actually is.
Something that cracks me up about delivering pizzas: people seem to think their windows are built using two-way glass, as if they expect me to not notice them staring at me. And they also think they’re soundproof. What really gets me is that they don’t answer the door sometimes. They just stare. This window to my left, where I can clearly see several small fingers holding the blinds open, it doesn’t have a screen. In fact, the glass isn’t even there. It looks like it broke sometime in the past, and not even all that recently. It’s got dust and cobwebs attached to various corners of broken glass. Like this kid thinks I can’t see his fingers sticking between the blinds.
“Jabberwocky!” He whispers loudly, if that’s even possible. “Jabberwocky!”
What I wanna do is toss the pizza at him through the window. Or at least tell him to get his mom and dad and open the fucking door. He obviously has no idea what he’s saying. He goes out and sees a poor adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s work and thinks it’s something original simply because he’s never seen it. And it’s not that I hate Tim Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland. It’s that kids are gonna grow up thinking this is the real story, and when they inevitably encounter the real story, they’re gonna think, “What the hell? That’s not Alice in Wonderland!”
It happened to me when I was told that whenever Ariel walked, it felt like she was walking on knives. And that her thick-headed love interest never figured out it was her all along, the one who really loved him. And she didn’t get her man. And she died and turned into sea foam. At least, that’s how the story was supposed to go, but this is, as Propagandhi once called, “a Disney-fied history.” Things have been fluffed up for today’s audiences, who apparently can’t stand a sad ending.
Even when the dad finally answers the door, even when he’s standing there handing me the money, this kid never shuts up. “Jabberwocky! Jabberwocky!” He whispers it over and over again. Dad’s acting like he doesn’t even notice. I hand him the food and go back to my car. Some day this kid will encounter the real “Jabberwocky” poem. What a shock it’ll be when he sees how drug-induced imagery actually is.
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