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El Words
It’s not true. I just don’t really know how it got to that point. Like two crazies get together and get kind of drunk. I think the only person who knows is Lexi, and that’s ok. I was terrified of him. But it’s ok and he’s alive and I guess we’ll survive. I’m not a good person in this story. This is Paulina. There’s no way that that’s acceptable. I’m really excited about it. What are you guys doing to tonight? Kisses. Bye. How could you live being so negative? I mean, for a mother you can’t expect much better. What’d she say? They have to get on at Addison. Shocked? Did she say she stopped caring? This is Belmont.
Damen to Belmont
Brown Line
2:24-2:37 pm
October 29 2011
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All right all right. I hear ya. I hear ya.
So it was my first month living in Seattle and I had just begun graduate school. Didn’t know anyone, didn’t have a job, and I was living in a tent in the back yard of a house full of guys in Madison Valley on 29th and John. They invited me to move into their house before I’d even moved to Seattle, but they weren’t going to have a vacant room until 3 weeks after I had arrived. So, tent, and it was summer and wonderful outside. Actually it was a tarp roped taught between the fence and some stakes in the ground. They let me keep my boxes of clothes and books in the house. “Hey. Shitbrake is here,” were the words I heard upon entering the house for the first time. I had been nicknamed and that was an OK thing. Signs of home, I suppose.
The first few weeks in Seattle were spent walking around looking for jobs. Here is a list of a few jobs I’d held between the ages of 0 and 25:
• janitor for 4 years
• Shell gas station employee on State & Maplecrest in Fort Wayne, IN
• Shell gas station employee on Illinois Rd. just off of US 69 in Fort Wayne, IN
• Marathon gas station employee on Maplecrest and Stellhorn in Fort Wayne, IN
• Marathon gas station employee on Coldwater and St. Joe in Fort Wayne, IN
• worked in a warehouse stocking large boxes and unloading semi-trucks for a summer
• NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball line judge in college
My résumé was prestigious and my beard was mighty. I took a shower and walked around passing out résumés to a few shops on the blocks near my school so that I could walk back and forth between work and school. I applied at this little café in the shadow of the Space Needle. It was a small coffee joint, nothing fancy or remarkable, but nice enough. I walked in and told the owner I was looking for a job and she said I should come in and interview in two days. I told her I’d wear cologne. She said “Thank you.”
Two days later I pulled up to the shop for my interview. I was talking on the phone to my buddy Matt back in Indiana as I was looking for a parking spot on the street. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but I remember the end of our conversation with precision. Matt and I were talking and I was putting money in the parking meter. Very suddenly, without any forewarning, I pooped my pants. That is the truth.
“Hey Matt, I gotta go. I just pooped my pants.”
I think I remember Matt saying OK.
Looking back, what is most worrisome about the entire scene is my lack of surprise or panic. Life, since I was a kid, has never stopped happening to me, and I think it happens more to me than most people. But now I’m stuck, because I’m 30 feet away from the store front, and I need a job pretty desperately, and my underwear is completely soiled. Truly, I have no idea why I shit my pants. I wasn’t sick and I didn’t feel it coming, but it was unstoppable. It happened mid-sentence. I thought, Well, I have to go in for this interview. I really need a job and I already paid for parking.
I went in to the café and walked directly to the bathroom, where I took off my underwear, cleaned myself up, and discarded the soiled underwear in the bottom of the trash can. I then surrounded it and covered it with an obvious amount of paper towels. Here’s a tip for you. If you see a trash can in a bathroom and it is stuffed full of unused paper towels, you can be assured that some 25 year old kid was just in there throwing his undies away.
The worst part, if you can imagine something worse than pooping your pants as an adult before an interview and throwing your underwear away instead of just going home and calling to reschedule, was what happened in the middle of the interview. While I was sitting and talking with the owner of the shop, I see another employee, a female employee, go into the men’s restroom. No no no no no no no. I did have a thought of Hey, this is Seattle, and people do things differently here. Maybe she just likes to use the men’s restroom. But of course not. She exits the men’s room carrying the trash can full of unused paper towels and my soiled underwear and empties it into another trash can right in front of us.
Anyway, I got the job. 2 years later I told my boss what happened that day we first met. She barely chuckled and said, “Yeah that sounds about right.”
El Words
You know those people who call you to just call you? So you’re working? This is Southport. That’s all I do for 8 hours. Doors closing. I said before: you’re fine. I feel better. Like I said it was a good deal. This is Paulina. That’s why it’s so funny. Doors closing. Yes. Yes. I…, Super Mario Brothers and Wii. That was the one that burned up. Stainless steel beats it. I’m saying sixes. You got an extra towel? She’s from Slovenia. Doors closing. Let’s go home. I hope I have food at home. I think I’m going to try to run the Columbus Marathon next year. If I didn’t have to train for it. Montrose is next. Yea yea yea absolutely. Doors closing. Damen is next. Don’t text her. Marshmallows roasting. This is Damen.
Belmont to Damen
Brown Line
1:50- 2:04 am
October 21 2011
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My greatest failure, one of my greatest failures, is that I keep waiting for someone to say something that is courageous and beautiful and difficult and so full of truth that it is crippling. The failure is in my own silence and my own fear of saying it myself. I fear that I will make an impact, and moreso I fear a reaction from others of delight and change. I wait and I wait and I listen for someone to speak of a God who runs toward the son who has abandoned him and is filled with fury at the older son who is contemptuous. I think Maybe it is over here or maybe it is over there, but I rarely find it. Where I do find it is where I find the prophets; they are in the museums and they are in the libraries. They are the bar fighters and the beat poets, the murderers and the adulterers who have come to find a redemption. They are considered crazy and unfit for normal society. They are odd and off and misunderstood by their parents and peers.
It is no wonder that prophets live in the desert. Away from normalcy and complacency! Prophets are not welcomed, and so they are secluded to their studios because prophets do not make sense, or at least they do not make a palatable sense. The sense that they make is a hard word on the ear. I do not want to hear that! I do not want to see that! the masses shout. But they cannot keep silent. Prophets would rather stand on a podium in the desert and speak to no one than remain voiceless. Holding it all in would be a far greater sin. Hell, for them, is silence.
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El Words
It depends like. Southport is next. It’s warmer and it’s faster. It’s about a Sharpie. Paulina is next. Doors open on the right at Paulina. I think Julie has done it. It was almost like a jumbo Sharpie. It depends, too, what kind of yarn you want. Standing passengers: please do not lean against the doors. We just lay on top of it. For a long time I took pictures. Irving Park is next. You know what I mean? Glue. My ultimate goal is to have old windows. He took the red line. This is Montrose. Damen is next. I miss that. It’s very therapeutic. This is Damen.
Belmont to Damen
11:35-11:43 pm
October 19 2011
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Me & Jack
October 17 2011
