Next to Nothing Clark Handlebar Chapter Four As I said earlier, the decision to leave northern Virginia was a rash one. I was at work at the Border Café and I was trying to remove the clutch from one of the blenders. The A.M. bartender was at court for possession or D.U.I or some such stupid shit. Being the bar manager meant that every time a bartender called out of work, I had to come in. Days off were few and far between. For $35,000 a year they owned me. It came to roughly $500 a week. I always knew I would sell out one day, I had just figured it would have been for much, much more. I decided to call Justice. He and I were bartenders in Oakland together a couple of years earlier. Oakland TGIFriday’s was one giant scam. If we rang in half of what we charged people I would be quite surprised. The place was about as ghetto as it gets. It’s hard to keep a positive attitude when you are surrounded by such ugliness on a regular basis. I can guarantee you that none of the TGIFirday’s commercials that you see on T.V. were filmed at Oakland Friday’s. At 10PM on a Friday night the bar would be four deep with fake ballers, paper gangsters, and the most awful women you could imagine. All screaming and loud and wanting stronger drinks and something for free. It almost felt like a practical joke. It was as if any moment Ashton Kutcher was going to jump out and tell us we’ve been punk’d. Sadly these folks were for real and serving them was my profession.   In fairness, there were some cool customers. There were in fact some real bad mother fuckers there too (as you would expect in a place like Oakland). But you always got trouble off the fakes. The ones who had something to prove were always trying to give you a case of the ass. They needed to look hard so they figured fucking with the bartenders would help them achieve that. Most of the time it would just get them kicked out. We weren’t in the habit of taking any shit of anybody in that place. It was our bar and if we were going to keep it that way we had to let people know who was in charge.      As you can probably imagine, the threats flew in that place. I must have been threatened to be shot just about every shift. I wasn’t too worried. I’ll be damned if I’m going to be shot by some fuck face who holds his gun sideways and has his pants hanging half way off his ass.   Besides, anyone who tells you that they are going to shoot you when they are not actually holding a gun up to your eyeball probably doesn’t even have a gun to begin with. For the most part the tips were shit. We compensated for the lack of tipping by over charging the customers or by hitting “no sale” on the register and just sticking the money in the draw. When the manager ran our reports we would just keep what was extra and split it. We had a manager for a while who was on the level and he would let us know exactly how much we owed. This made things quite easy. The four bartenders would throw in $25 a piece or so and we’d pay him off. After he left we actually had to keep track of what we were stealing and pull the money out before the closing manager came to collect the drawers. The new management knew what were up to and it became quite a game for a while. They were determined to get rid of the “old crew” and they managed to do so. At first one by one and then one day all four of us on duty got the ax when a secret shopper came in and reported that we were giving away drinks and doing shots behind the bar. Drinking at TGIFriday’s was strictly prohibited as was giving away free drinks and that was all that they needed to shit-can us. We all went our separate ways, but Justice and I managed to keep in touch. We were good friends. I knew he had ended up at a bar in Fremont, California. He was the only person I could think of who knew how to remove the clutch from those shitty blenders so I decided to give him a call. “Hey you slurpy slinging a- rab. What the fuck are you doing?” I said when he answered. We had a habit of calling each other all types of Middle Eastern slurs. Neither one of us was Middle Eastern. In fact, Justice was a 6’3 white guy. He looked like he might be Italian, but he was tanner than your average white guy and this led me to start calling him an Iraqi. In wasn’ t as if either one of was a racist. We just thought it was funny. Much in the same way my Dominican friend, Lincoln, calls me Cuban even though I’m Puerto Rican. (He’s actually Panamanian. See how this works?) “Oh Jesus fucking Christ!” he said, “God damned camel humping Iraqi. What the fuck, over?” “Shit, man. Not much going on over here,” I answered. “Just down in Virginia working at my shitty job.” “Yeah. How’s that going?” he asked. “Shitty,” I replied. “60 god damned shitty hours a week for a god damned shitty fucking pay check. Fuck!” “Wow,” he replied. We bullshitted for while and he explained to me how to remove the blender clutches. At one point in the conversation he told me that he was managing a restaurant in Freemont called City Beach. He told me that if I ever came back to California he could give me a couple of shifts a week bartending. I told him I would think about it, but as I said earlier, I knew what I was going to do. I hated living in Virginia. Since I arrived there all I had was my shitty job and my shitty car. The only thing I that I had that was worth a damn was the room I was renting in this huge town house. I had four room mates but the place was big so we rarely got in each others way. There were some women. Not too many and none really worth mentioning. I humped a couple of servers. Strictly against company policy of course. I dated a tall curly haired brunette very briefly. I suspect she was on the rebound and went back to the ex. I was quite bored. As far as pussy goes the place was quite barren. I was used to being San Francisco where you couldn’t throw a rock with hitting a pussy. Now I was spending my hard earned cash on porn and smacking my boys around on a regular god damned basis. The situation looked pretty grime until I met Olivia. When it was time to leave, I suppose she was the biggest thing holding me back. We had met a couple of months before I decided to move, but had only been dating for two weeks when the decision was made. Olivia was the manager and part time bartender of the restaurant next door where we would some times go to drink after work, and occasionally before. The place was called Red Rock Grill. It was a nice place. Modern and as swank as a Centreville Restaurant could be. It was one of those places that you could see the kitchen and the pit where they cooked the rotiserre chickens. But not in a cheesy Boston Market kind of way.   Olivia was petite. Just under 5 feet tall. She had sandy blonde shoulder length hair and green eyes. She always seemed to be hustling around the place and never paid much attention to me. I asked around about her and found out that she had a boyfriend, an ex-husband and a three year old son. “Fuck it”, I thought. I was gonna go for her anyway. I began the process by smiling and saying hello to her a few times. I used the old tactic of telling some of her co-workers that I thought she was damned cute, but I always urged them not to say anything to her knowing full well that they would. One evening in early January she came by my restaurant near closing time. We sat at the bar for a while and talked. She told me that she couldn’t believe that I would be interested in her. She thought that I was too good for her. People who don’t know me tend to think that I’ve got my shit together much more than I actually do. I suppose it’s because I naturally look like I couldn’t be bothered with anyone. I’ ve often been told that I seem unapproachable. Not necessarily true. I just try to carry myself with confidence. I don’t bounce when I walk. I don’t bebop around like some kind of teen aged knuckle head. And I don’t walk with a limp (except when I fractured my shin falling into a rocky pond at some party last June. Details to follow…possibly). I just appear at most times to be in control. In my opinion, you don’t have to act like a hard- on or an ignore-fucking-ramous to show confidence I feel a string of damning rhetoric coming on. So...Ok. Let the damning being. There are a lot of people who feel that being dark skinned is a disadvantage, Truth be told, in my life it really hasn’t. It makes me feel sorry for all the folks who struggle with it on a daily basis. I’ve encountered my fair share of racists. I’ve been arrested for “fitting the description” several times. I saw the Rodney King beatings on T.V.  Despite all of that, I will never wear a bow tie and recite the kuran. I don’t believe “The Man” is holding me back.  I know that neither Muhammad, God, Oprah, or you have the answers. I think (and please pardon me, dear reader) that you are all idiots. I’ve always felt that any given person could do anything with their life despite of race or religion or any of the hardships of discrimination that we face in … holy shit. 2005? (Wow! I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a water fountain. Let alone when I wasn’t allowed to drink out of one.) Our struggle is nothing compared that of our ancestors. It bugs the living shit out of me when I see a black person or a Puerto Rican or anybody else of color walking around proving all those white racist cunts right. I don’t know when being ignorant and obnoxious became cool. You don’t have to be abrasive to prove that you are tough. I was in the army. I’ve know black green berets and rangers who were articulate and intelligent and polite who could easily kill you more ways than you know how to die. Nothing bites my ass more than when some asshole tells you that you are trying to be white just because you can form a sentence without using the words “yo” or “nigga” in it. I’m not going to apologize because I paid attention in English class. God damnit! I’m on one. Let me get back to the story. First, in a last attempt to redeem myself, I’ll say this:  Malcolm X was a visionary, Martin Luther King Jr. is Jesus as far as I’m concerned and one last damning statement for the kids in the back row:  Louis Farrakhan is a fucking hack. Some of you fucks may not want to hear that, but I think he’s too responsible for defending the choices that fucks like me make when we see no other way. The fact that I’ve done noting with my life has got nothing to do anything other than the fact that I’ve got a hole in my head. There is no white man holding me down. I take responsibility for my own stupid actions. I’m just a person who has nothing to lose and less to fear and that is  nobody’s fault but mine. There comes a time in a person’s life when he realizes that his dreams are not going to be realized. There are several things one can do at this time. He can rob a liquor store. He can become a half-assed gang banger and do some sort of ridiculous shit that he’s seen on some stupid MTV video and He can blame others while doing theses things. Not me, kiddies. I figured I would take the easy way out and write a novel. And if I want to drink 40’s of King Cobra while I’m doing it, that’s my business. So let’s get back to Olivia and my stupid face. It was obvious that I was less than thrilled with the world. I used to catch hell from my general manager because when I walked around the restaurant, especially during the busy times, I tended to look pissed off. “That’s just my face,” I’d tell him. “But yes sir. I will try to smile more.” But I didn’t. And when I did it looked fake. I’m not a depressed person. I don’t cut myself or read Sylvia Plath. My disposition is just mediocre. I’ve often been told that I seem unaffected. Introverted might better describe me. I don’t get mad when I drive. I don’t give shit to waiters. I don’t argue with girlfriends or cry at sad movies. There isn’t a whole lot that’s going to get me truly riled up. Enough about me. Let’s get back to Olivia. At the restaurant that night, she and I talked for about an hour or so. She explained to me how she had a boyfriend, an ex-husband and a three year old son. She told me that she wanted to be my friend. That she and her boyfriend were having problems, but she didn’t want to cheat on him or break with him for another guy. I told her I was ok with all these things. And I was. For a while. After a month or so I got tired of being the friend. She and I would spend hours on the phone talking about god knows what. She was intelligent and beautiful and it was making crazy that I couldn’t have her. It was like I was a fucking chick. A girlfriend of hers she would call when she was bored and wanted to talk (which happened to be fairly often.) Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed talking to her. She happened to have some pretty interesting shit to say sometimes. She liked some of the same music as me. We worked in the same business so there was always something to talk about, but I was tired of talking. One drunken night in mid February, I told her that I didn’t want to be her friend anymore. I told her that I couldn’t because I was in love with her. This took her by surprise as you could imagine. I’m not sure how true that was, but all I knew was that I wanted her and I would have said or done anything to get her. Within a week she had broken things off with her boyfriend and we were dating. Oddly enough, the first time we humped was Valentines Day. So here it was two weeks later. Things were going good between us. She was a strong willed girl and we’d butt heads over little things from time to time. Mostly because of my apathy and the indifference I exhibited most days. Women don’t like to be kept guessing what we are thinking, men. That’s precisely why they ask us things like, “What are you thinking?” The fact that I hated my job and Northern VA as a whole made me hard to deal with at times. I’m not the time to get mad or act out. I usually just get quiet and keep to myself when I’m feeling less than satisfied with being alive.   In addition to other things, I’ve also been accused of being emotionally unavailable. This relationship was no different. I was never one for talking about my feelings. I don’t like kissing in public or holding hands. I believe that just being there is enough, but apparently that’s not true. Most women (and some men) need reassurance from time to time. Flowers and candy and crap like that. If you have a girlfriend, buy her something. I’m an unemployed writer so unfortunately I’m not in the position to buy my girlfriend anything, but you, you rotten bastard, get out there and buy your girl some fucking candy or flowers or some shit. You’ll make her happy for once and hell, you might even get a nobber out of it. Olivia new I hated Virginia. She knew that someday I planned to leave. Now  I had the great goddamned chore of telling her that even though she’d dumped her boyfriend for me, introduced me to her mom and her kid, came over to my house every night and drove home usually around 4 am so that she could get there before her kid woke up. Even though she had pretty much rearranged her life for me and was planning on making this work for the long haul. Despite all of these things, I was going back to California. Not just going back, but going back in a month…and for good. I broke the news to her at the one place I felt comfortable, the bar. She was truly shocked when I told her. I had talked about California a lot. And like I said, she knew that I wanted to go back some day. She just didn’t think someday would be next month. I told that I would understand if she didn’t want to see me for the rest of the time that I was here. She thought about it for a while and decided that she wanted to spend as much time with me as she could before I left. The month went by pretty slowly. I put in a months notice at work. I told my roommates and land lord that I would be leaving and told a guy at work that I would sell him my dodge for two hundred bucks. My plan was to fly to New Jersey and rent a car. I would stay with friends and family for four days and then fly out to California on the 4th of April or so. When I told Olivia of my plans she said she wanted to go with me. She had a car and said we could drive up if she could get the time off from work. It seemed like a good idea to me. So instead of renting the car and buying the plane ticket, I rented us a room at the East Brunswick Hilton. During my last month in Centreville, Olivia handled the situation pretty well, except when we were drinking. One particular night we went to O’Toole’s to have some drinks with a co- worker of hers. A tall comical brunette named Megan. She wasn’t a bad looking girl, but she wasn’t necessarily my type. O’Toole’s was a restaurant/bar that like most places in the area stopped serving food at night. The laws in Virginia are such that no establishment can be just a bar. Thay had to serve food at some particular ratio to the amount of liquor they sold. Fuck if I know what that ratio is. We stopped in around 10pm or so. I wasn’t feeling much like drinking that night. Olivia was going to get drunk with Megan and I had no problem staying sober to drive us home. After a few shots and beers, Olivia began to act strange (as most people tend to do after a few shots and beers). She would try to suck face with me in the bar which wasn’t really my thing. To me there isn’t much worse than sitting in a bar trying to drink away some terribleness while some couple is slobbering all over each other next to you. After I would refuse to make out with her couple of times, she would tell me to go fuck myself, tell me that I didn’t love her, and run into the bathroom and cry. This happened several times through out the night before I got fed up and told her we were going home. The car ride home was horrific. She cursed and cried at me the whole shitty time. She made me stop into a CVS because she absolutely had to have something. As it turned out, the thing that she just had to have was a piece of poster board and some markers. She had a thing for writing these large colorful letters to me when she was drunk. She didn’t only write them when she was drunk. When she was sober and bored or waiting for me to shower and get dressed she would write them. Those times the letters could be quite sweet. She would write about how much she loved me and how much she was going to miss me. She was a good writer.  She wrote mostly poetry and such, but not the kind of sappy poetry that you force yourself through and say, “Wow. That’s really deep,” when you are with some goth whose girly parts you are trying to touch. She wrote some good stuff. And this is coming from a guy who’s not so big on the poetry. These kinds of stops became frequent in my last weeks in VA. When she was drunk she never believed me that I still had markers in my room from the last time she was drinking. We always had to stop and get more. When I packed up my room I must have thrown away about 80 fucking markers. No lie. At CVS that particular night she threw a god damned fit. She started screaming at me and crying such. One of the employees, a tall goofy 40 something guy in large glasses, took an interest in what was happening. “Jesus! Quiet down!” I told her. “People can hear you.” “Do you think I give a fuck what some CVS worker thinks about me?” she snarled. I remember thinking, “Christ! That was loud.” I looked over at the goofy fuck. He looked wounded by what she had said. He didn’t even bother to tell us to keep it down. He simply walked away staring at the ground. “Real nice,” I told her. “Real fucking nice.” I was finally able to get her out of there. It wasn’t the last time something of this sort would happen. I couldn’t blame her though. She tried her best to deal with things. When she was sober it was easy, but as soon as the booze started to flow, the flood gates would open right the hell up. During her drunken emotional outbursts she would say to me, “If you love someone you don’ t leave them.” I once told her that leaving them is exactly what you do. We were in the frozen foods isle of Giant. We were drunk and looking for those microwavable White Castle cheeseburgers. I was feeling a bit melodramatic and I told her that, “Everyone I ever loved has left.” “What makes me so fucking special? Or you for that god damned matter?” She didn’t answer. She knew I was on one and there was no right answer. I felt bad about that one. There was truth to what she was saying. If you really do love someone you don’t leave them. Why would you? Maybe she was right about me not loving her. Maybe until her no one ever really loved me. I didn’t know what bothered me more, the fact that I knew that I could very easily live with out her and without love or the fact that I was in such a hurry to do so.