My Father is Pissed

This thread is kind of like a Simpsons episode because at the beginning you are going to wonder how in the hell it ties into the point, but just trust me that it does.

I worked from 9 to 6 today, and it is the rare opening shift that I work about once a month. My father picked me up downtown at about five to seven, and we prepared to go to the house where my brother was hosting a barbecue for the basketball team that he is coaching. I arrive at my house to a group of 17-year-old boys who laugh at my jokes. Hooray!

I feel like hot shit because I am wearing my new Hugo Boss suit, but I change into casual clothing and mingle with the kids and their parents, then accidentally poke my brother in the eye. Good times are had by all.



But I cannot help but feel stangely nostalgic! Perhaps it is because it is 75 in Minnesota, and it may as well feel like summer, and at the risk of sounding maudlin, I have not had an enjoyable summer in my life since three years ago, the summer of 2005, when I cashiered at Walgreens and foolishly THOUGHT that life sucked since my three closest friends at the time were living in China, San Diego, and Iran, but in retrospect it is where I grew, not to mention the emotional affair I had with the boy from Texas whose name I still randomly hear when the wind blows.



After the barbecue is over I prepare for an emo walk with my iPod, complete with recently downloaded tunes like "There Is" by Boxcar Racer. As I have made it about half a mile I am approached by my best friend Erin McCloskey from her Ford Taurus just as Mariah Carey is blaring! We venture to Jake's Sports Bar and Grill, my father's home away from home, but the bartender he hates is working, so we go to the Village Pub instead.



Long story short. My father meets us there and we meet up with the pub's owner, whose son is currently living in Los Angeles and doing improv and OH MY GOD LET'S ALL BLOW SMOKE UP HIS ASS and hey you know buddy I could have been something too but now I live with my parents and work at the mall, and Erin goes home because she has been feeling ill for the past ten days but knows it is karma ever since April Fool's Day when she broke up with her boyfriend as a joke and made him cry (yes, in her mind this was hiliarious), and while my father is outside smoking I reunite with Sue, who was a teacher's aide when I was in middle school and would wake me up during math class!

Here is where the conflict ensues. Sue has me talk to Julianne, an acquainance of my father's who ran for City Council the same time he did (they both later lost to the incumbents who have continued to fuck over our fair city, but you can't be bitter forever). Julianne once asked me to baby-sit her twin daughters but later found someone else. I have never really talked to Julianne. She is apparently a bitch when she is drunk.




"My daughters are scared of men," she explains. "But they probably wouldn't be very scared of you."
"Yeah, I'm not like The Hulk...." I downplay in a voice so SUE KNOWS I AM PISSED.
Sue sympathizes with me and Julianne goes to smoke with my father. Upon their return, my father and his cursed weak bladder go off to pee. Julianne returns to Sue and me (who have been having a WONDERFUL! conversation) and I do not know where my father is.

"Where is my father?" I cry.
"Oh my god," Julianne scoffs. "Could you be any gayer?'
"Um, so back to the big dick I was sucking," I immediately respond, and Sue playfully slaps me, and I will never know if this was because she was genuinely offended or to downplay the moment.
"Your father is peeing," Julianne says.
"Well, he has diabetes," I say.
"Really?????" the women gasp.
"Well, Type II, nothing serious," I say.



My father comes out of the bathroom. The women grill him on his diabetes. He is pissed.

"I would appreciate if you wouldn't air my dirty laundry," he says later in the car. "I don't air yours." WELL, MY DIRTY LAUNDRY CAN'T BE TOLD FROM MY VOICE, DAMMIT.
"Well, I was trying to change the subject," I defend. "Julianne made me feel bad."
"Yeah, I smoked with her," my father said. "She was like 'did you know your son is gay?' and I said 'yes, we've known forever'."
"Well, I'M SORRY," I continue. "I was feeling attacked and I wanted to change the subject. Apparently I chose the wrong topic."
"Yeah you did," grumbles my father.
Now I feel bad. And sober, despite the five vodka drinks I had. Ho hum.

I Dreamed a Dream

I joined a gym yesterday. It happened by complete accident as I was only there to do a Body Works class with my best friend Erin. We had half an hour to kill and ended up talking to the director, who happened to be in a shirt and tie and laughed at some of my jokes. How could I resist? Besides, I always had excuses to not join a gym and have realized that, expenses be damned, I have to stop using them. The director explains to me that on Monday I will be meeting with a personal trainer. In my head, I hope that my trainer is a five-foot-tall girl named Mindy who will be firm but sweet and won't make me feel bad for not being able to lift more than 15 pounds.

"Uh, your trainer's gonna be Jason," the director says. "I don't see him right now. He's the tall, blondish guy."
"Jesus Christ," I mutter to Erin.
"Oh, there he is! Come say hi!" the director says. No, I do not get the five-foot-tall girl named Mindy. I get Jason the hulking muscle god. I will spend all of Monday alternately trying not to be embarrassed and trying not to blush. Jason got more of my jokes than the director did, though. Also, Body Works KICKED MY ASS. So much for my goal of "getting my shit tight."

I had a customer today who used to go to Stout. He looked like a million bucks and I looked like a bus hit me. He acted like he didn't know who I was. Maybe he didn't. But I could not help but feel that he was judging me behind his perfection. I was not a rock star or anything, but I cannot help but feel that this is not where I am supposed to be. However, I will not be returning to New York City until I find a bag of money or actually finish my damn book, whichever comes first.

On the way home from the light rail, two girls from work and I were discussing our colleagues. In other words, gossiping. Whatever. When you spend 47 hours a week at the same place together, it's what you're gonna talk about. This lady in front of us said "I'll bet her ears are burning", and then thirty minutes later she asked us what store we worked at. I ignored her but should have told her we worked at Macy's.

Ouldves

I am going back to school.

It is two more years. For a degree I don't even know I want.

I want to act. That was fun. They said I was good in Brooklyn. "You have a lot of talent," she said. I wish I would have been awake then. I am trying to stay away from the "ouldves", but Brooklyn College and that whole New York City thing sure does have a lot of them. Could've would've should've. Or if's. Lots of if's. If only I had not been depressed for nine months BEFORE I find out I was going to Brooklyn College. Y'know. That kind of stuff.

I run into people who went to Stout when I am at work. Today a boy came in and he stared me down, like he knew me from somewhere but wasn't sure how. He was never that nice to me anyway, and I know things about him, like the time he slept with one of my friends while she had a boyfriend.

I'm allegedly doing comedy. Like actually gonna DO IT AGAIN. I haven't gone up there in a year and a half. I am worried I will bomb.

I got my heart broken. It was very surprising when it happened and I never thought it would ever happen to me. I mean, it did in tenth grade when the boy I liked said "I like women" but that is different. This time it was by someone who liked men, too. He stepped out of my life for several months and when he did he told me he was in AA and sober for 72 days. I wanted to be happy for him but instead I just got confused. Should I go to AA? But then if I go to AA it will only be another thing that reminds me of him and it will just make me sad, and when I am sad I usually drink but I am not going to drink tonight because it is Monday and I think I am going to drink tomorrow and Wednesday and you just have to balance these things.

Then I thought empty sex would make me feel better but I couldn't go through with it because I kept thinking about other people, so instead I took a cab home at 4:30 in the morning and gave him a fake phone number, and maybe it wasn't the nicest thing to do because he was begging me to stay the night, but I just couldn't get myself to do it. Also, SO MUCH HAIR.

I am waiting to push a button and for everything to make sense.