Hi again Reddit I posted here before about the time I helped get my old department head Mitch fired. I think the title of this particular post is already a TL;DR. I know I tend to ramble or as my wife says "my imagination goes to prom and drunk-dances all night."
She's sleeping now, we took our daughter to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time today. An usher gave her a free roll of Egyptian mummy stickers because she's cute. My daughter, not my wife although she's cute too. I bought her an espresso in the cafe. My wife. My daughter drank apple juice. I drank an espresso that would otherwise have gone to her plus also two or three Pepsis so I've been up all night and also peeing a lot.
When I was in college my friends Sal and Marlon and Xavier and me were in a rock band. They were in college too but only me and Sal graduated college and are professional racers. Marlon and Xavier opened a taco truck even though neither of them knows the first thing about tacos and they think Taco Bell is authentic or at least they used to. They're both married to Mexican ladies so I guess the men furnish the truck driving and business savvy while the wives provide the non-cultural appropriation cooking skill and business savvy.
Marlon's wife Heidi told me that I am as about as comfortable as a broken futon to listen to and I respect her opinion because she cleared over $1000 in cash money and free lingerie product just last month alone wearing bras on Instagram and that's good side hustle clout.
Sal and I rat race every day. I think he's winning because his job offers PPO insurance whereas mine is only HMO and all the doctors in my network are dicks except my therapist she's more of a vagina but that's not nearly as effective an insult because vaginas are awesome at least my wife's.
We are still in a rock band but our Facebook page always says "on hiatus" and all of us forgot the passwords and emails we used so we can't change the status and just gave up and refer people to our Instagram or the guys follow my idea and just carry business cards (I made 1,000 at FedEx Office) that say we do weddings and bar mitzvahs and school dances "rates negotiable." The original business card had a band photo but the photo shading made us look like people of color and we didn't want to false advertise when we are clearly White other than Marlon who claims he's part Native American but he looks more native Canadian.
I worked at a math tutor place too because I am good at numbers even though I'm stupid everywhere else. The band was the "fun" job at least in theory.
We got a lot of bar gigs and it became our regular thing to rotate and play at different bars around Queens. I like to think we developed a following but I think our rotation just coincided with some people's bar crawls.
We never signed any paperwork with any of the bar owners it was strictly cash under the table even though literally the owner would hand it to us in an envelope at the end of the night and we'd divide the money if it was small bills or we'd go to the liquor store to break the bill if it was a big one, usually we would break a hundred with a bag of Doritos and the worker would say "don't you have anything smaller?" and then they'd write all over the bill with a special marker.
I don't blame them because I wouldn't trust me either.
I kind of look like an addict, but I don't do any of that stuff I just have a fast metabolism.
The guys would usually try to give me a bigger share like "Give Tommy the fifty" when there's a bunch of twenties and a fifty because they said I worked hardest because I was sweatiest from drumming but I thought that wasn't fair because we're all in a band and I think I'm just sweating because I'm nearest the wall and surrounded by speakers. So it was always an even split unless the money was an odd number then one of us would get an extra dollar. I liked it when I got the extra dollar because I'd put it in a box labeled "USPS flat rate" at home I called my safe. It wasn't a real safe though it was just a box and you don't need to pick the lock or use a combination to get in, you just open the flaps because I never even peeled the adhesive.
Finally this one bar owner named George who owns a big dive sees us audition and he says "boys you have a unique sound and by unique I mean you sound like a nice ripoff gay version of Iron Maiden so you're hired." I think he was just tired of this one girl he usually had play sad acoustic songs, and he said it made people not want to drink just think about baby seals that need saving.
He says we can play Monday through Saturday night but that he won't pay us until closing on Saturday night. He looked at me like people sometimes do and said I seemed a little weird, but my bandmates said I'm just being me and to pay me no mind. He told me I looked really depressed (I'm not, I just have resting sad face) so he told me some jokes but I heard most knock knocks and your momma's already so I saw his joke and raised him a camel joke. It wasn't even lunch yet but he seemed a little bit drunk already.
Since he was drunk I thought I had a better chance of being funny because growing up I realized people tolerated me better with liquor.
If you want to hear read the camel joke I told it's in italics below but if you hate jokes or hate me and hate yourself for reading you can just skip to the regular printing after.
There was once this British soldier serving in India when it was part of the empire.
He was about to go on leave but realized he had no gift for his wife, who lived in in Punjab, and whom he hadn't seen in many weeks.
On his way to the army transport, he saw a camel trader. Like a car salesman, but for camels.
He bargains back and forth and finally buys a camel.
He thinks his wife will love the present!
No need for army transport now! He will ride the camel home in style, and surprise his wife with it.
So he rides it many miles all the way through towns and villages like a White maharaja, until he reaches his house.
His wife says, "Oh, my love! How wonderful to see you! But what's that you got there?"
"It's a camel, my dear. And it's for you!"
"A camel? How nice!"
"Yes, I know. And may I add, in case you're wondering, it's a FEMALE camel."
"Female camel?" she exclaims, "why does that matter? And, how do you know?"
"Well," he says chuckling, "it doesn't matter really. But all the way home, all these Indian guys kept pointing at me and saying, 'look at that fucking pussy on the camel!'
Anyway...
George's payment arrangement might seem strange but we've done things like before, like play three nights and then at the end of night three get a big payout. But we never did six nights, that was a record. Whatever, he said we'd get $80 apiece for sure for each night (or, $1920 at the end of the week). He said he was feeling generous and would guarantee us $2000. His bar had divey vibes but it was popular so we didn't doubt him.
We should have gotten a contract in writing but we were young and dumb then.
We're still dumb now or at least I am but whenever we get a gig at a wedding we make sure the bride or her mom pays us in advance, none of that after the wedding shit because whenever we do that, we get stiffed.
So anyway, at George's.
Our first night wasn't so good, and Xavier took a half IPA in the back for me.
The crowd was big but a lot of it was drunk already because the bar is next to a train station and the Knicks just lost a nail-biter and a lot of people were angry. I'm thinking why are you acting surprised the Knicks hardly win.
Some chubby bald guy said "hey drummer you look like a fucking retard!"
Even though Sal sings really loud and we play loud, I still hear stuff like that because I've heard it all my life and know what to look and listen for. It's like breathing or morning boners, it's natural.
The guy calls me a retard again and aims a bottle at me and I know every beat of Flight of Icarus by heart so I don't need to look at my hands or think, I just see other things, like being awake but dreaming too. The drunk guy misses because he's drunk and Xavier is facing me to play bass and the beer bottle hits him in the back. It was only half full when I looked after the show and Xavier said it didn't hurt, but mentally I promised to give him extra money when we got paid for taking a shitty beer for me because even though I didn't take any damage even splash damage that was still pretty heroic like being skinny and donating blood.
No one else in the band saw the beer hit Xavier and we lasted the whole night without further incident other than Sal got hit in the face with a pair of panties that he said smelled like fart. A different non-fart-smell girl in the crowd said I had good concentration when it was quiet between songs but I said you can thank Sal because we all follow his lead if he doesn't sing the note we don't accompany.
It goes on five more nights and every night George is happy like a fat Polish clam because we are bringing in a lot of people from the college who know us already and everyone is willing to pay $8 for a Pabst Blue Ribbon and $15 for the "homemade wings" that I know Mario the bartender just has microwaved in back from a frozen box. Even some of my teachers come to see me play even my English teacher Doctor Lonneville who works with me even when she doesn't have to and gives me extra help, so when we write essays and I pass even though my "C" should be an "F" because she feels sorry for me, it's cheating because no one else got the professer herself to stay with them when she didn't have to. She said we were "interesting" when I saw her in class the next week. I think that's PhD lingo for "you guys changed my life."
That same girl who said I have good concentration came to the show every night and she'd tell me every day that I'm the only band member who never smiles or has any expression on my face. I say it's just my face I have resting sad face and she says "sad is an expression" but I explain I'm not sad. She drinks a lot of Heineken and I ask her if she likes Heineken but she says she doesn't and after our set when the bar was closing I told her that camel joke and she said it was retarded.
But then she said OMG sorry not for hating the joke because it is a stupid joke but for using the word retarded as an insult. She has a girlfriend with her every time but the friend looks bored to death like she would rather be doing lots and lots of meth to drown out our music.
Every night the crowd would get bigger or at least as big as might be expected in a small bar the size of a Shakey's Pizza with no arcade but a bigger salad bar.
By Saturday night closing George couldn't get rid of his customers fast enough after 2am. It was time to settle up and we asked him for our $2000 just like he promised the previous Monday. His register was always vomitting cash so much that he'd empty it a lot during the night and put the money in a real safe not a USPS box in the back near the broom closet.
He told us that the bigger than expected crowds every night meant that he had to hire more cleanup crew and that it was more expensive than he expected. We always watched him as he locked up and never noticed any cleanup crew. It was always just Mario and sometimes his girlfriend who was also a bartender (you'll never believe it but her name is Zelda) and one other guy in back who bussed tables. I never learned his name but wondered if it too was a Nintendo character's.
George looked really angry and said that we drank and ate a lot of food every night and said that as far as he was concerned "we were even Steven." There is no Steven in our band and Marlon the guitarist looked like he wanted to punch George but Marlon is even skinnier than me and if he punched someone as fat as George it would be like throwing a half empty Trader Joe's beer into a kiddie pool filled with pudding, it's just going to get lost and anyway it's a pool full of dirty pudding.
The "food and liquor equals you got paid" claim was bullshit because he told us at the beginning that we could drink all we wanted and eat all we wanted and as far as I saw no one ate his crappy chicken wings or frozen Ore-Ida fries and I'm not even allowed to drink because I'm not twenty one, only nineteen then, and the doctor said I could get poisoned if I ever have alcohol with my sertraline.
But George will have none of our complaining, and he has Hugo his bouncer that used to play for Arena Football but broke his shoulder throw us out and George tells us we're all just a bunch of stupid kids. We're not kids everyone is 21 or 22 except me, but George tells us we don't have any contract and to just pack our shit and get the fuck out before he ruins our rep and makes sure we can never play Queens again. Hugo fake-kicks at my drums but I'm glad he doesn't actually kick them because he looks like he probably was fifteen pounds when he came from his mom's genitalia.
What can we do? We load our stuff in Xavier's Ford Econoline van and leave.
For the record I think the band probably drank $250 worth of beer, retail, tops.
We're sad, and for the first time my resting face matches my awake face.
I wanted revenge.
I noticed that when we were auditioning that Monday, George got a delivery from a company and I I didn't see the name but saw the phone number and I remembered because I remember things well even though I don't do well in other things in school, just data and numbers.
I googled the phone number later on my pornography machine and I saw that the company was a distributor for liquor and lots of bars relied on them. I couldn't do it in the van because I already used up all the data on my phone.
George also threatened us after he claimed we had consumed a "fortune in product," that if we tried to complain his lawyer would have us for breakfast. I'll assume for breakfast George eats lots of Pop Tarts and sausage links and knows much about morning meals.
Sal and Marlon say we should just forget it.
I don't forget things.
I talk a lot and ramble but I have a good memory.
The next Monday I see the same truck again because my mom and me live not far from the bar and I studied it. She never approved of me being in a band but she liked that I was going to college. So I left out the part of me playing in bars and played up the tutor thing when I tell her what I do with my time. She says that as long as I'm not catching the AIDS then I'm doing alright and she goes back to watching Sex and the City with her neighbor Olga whos husband tells us he is a plumber but I think he's more likely an electrician. Just a feeling I have.
Anyway I see the truck makes a delivery in the morning before the bar is open and the man delivering it uses a hand truck that is in back of the bar. He brings in lots of crates of beer and other liquor but leaves the hand truck.
I do a lot of other non-spy-on-George's-bar things that week, like go to school, and also call the girl who gave me her number by writing it on my pant leg because I promised her I couldn't sweat it off, that same girl who told me about how I'm always with resting concentrating and sadding face. We began going out and I learn her name is Maryanne but she says everyone makes Gilligan's Island jokes to her so she goes by "Ariane." I know how it feels because my name is Thompson and everyone calls me Thompson submachine gun so I say "call me Tommy" and now they call me "Tommy Gun" so I think I defeated my intentions.
Her dad is a lawyer who does mostly immigrant stuff. I'm not an immigrant I'm Italian but my people came over about a hundred years ago and so don't have any green card stuff. But when I explained to him what happened he came with me the next Monday with his partner to George's bar. Right on cue the liquor truck comes and leaves the door open in back while he makes his delivery. When he sees me, George looks like he's going to yell at me some more and tell me to get that stupid look off my face, but when he sees me with a suit (I'm not wearing a suit, Ariane's dad calls himself a suit) he shows respect or maybe fear. Kiddie pool full of pudding fear.
Ariane's dad starts talking to George who is the only worker there because it's nine-fifteen and he doesn't open until eleven. I know because we auditioned right when he opened and he said "you boys showed up even before all my unemployed guys."
After the truck leaves Ariane drives into the alley with her Toyota Tacoma that she bought from her job at Five Guys burgers. I tell George I need to pee and he is nice to me because I have a lawyer with me, but I really don't pee, I go to the back and take the hand truck and count a lot of beer and remember the prices George charges for bottle and multiply times crate. Most is just crap that Sal and Marlon said "tastes like a girl with the clap" when they drank it on Wednesday but what can I do that's all that's in this shipment. I don't take any of George's good stuff like his Glenlivet because we didn't have any of the harder alcohol and anyway I didn't see what George charges for those because the serving sizes vary.
I take four boxes of frozen buffalo wings from the freezer because that was all that was in there and I remember that Hector my friend from history 208A "The American Century" told me it was eight wings to a serving and the box had 40, so that's $300.
I counted up that we had $1750 give or take in beer and wings. I didn't care about tax because I didn't have to fill out a W-2 for this job only my job for tutoring at the agency. George is yelling trying to explain himself to Ariane's dad and the law partner but it's yelling like when you're defending yourself coming home at 2am knowing you're guilty and getting a bedroom slipper to the shoulder, not angry yelling. I write on George's dry erase board near his refrigerator where he writes whose band is playing and when, and write in green Expo marker that he still owes our band $250 and he can pay in food and drink if he wants but I took $1750 worth of his shit. I wrote my address in case he wants to talk to my mom about it. In this case I'm willing to accept the slipper, because if my mom thinks someone is being bad to me she stops acting like she does at home and stands up for me like TV moms.
Ariane's dad didn't exactly get us our $2,000 but after explaining to George that Ariane was only 20 and that I was nineteen and was only allowed to play in bars if a legal guardian was with me (Marlon, Xavier, and Sal didn't count), George tried to backpedal and give us our money. I wish Ariane's dad took it but he told me later that George was in hot water. That's cool but I wish he could give us our $2000 and then get into hot water.
Ariane's dad told me later that what George did get was the state of New York to charge him for selling liquor to underaged persons because even though everyone I personally invited was 21 or more, Ariane's friend was only 20 also and she bought like eight shots and Ariane had just as much and that is why personally I think she was able to endure our crappy covers. It turned out that George was knowingly letting a lot of customers into his place with fake ID or even no ID at all if they flashed a bit of titty to Hugo the broken shoulder guy.
Not long after, George's bar was shut down and he was doing a year in jail. I don't know if it was for the selling to kids thing or for other stuff, but his bar was gone and so some Knicks fans now have to walk another half block to find a shitty bar that charges $8 for a Pabst Blue Ribbon whenever they want to forget another double digit blowout.
George never did try to come for his beer or wings, but he also never tried to give us our extra $250 either.
He wouldn't have gotten his alcohol and buffalo wings even if he tried, because Ariane and me drove to Marlon's, Sal's, and Xavier's and gave them an equal share. I didn't get a share because I don't drink and aren't allowed to anyway but I divided my share equally with everyone, except I gave Xavier a little more because he took an IPA to the back for me. He got my box of wings, too.
Later he said thanks for nothing asshole those wings taste like ass and I told him then why did you eat them fuckface?
I did get something out of all of it because less than two years later Ariane and me got married and I got a job earning $54,000 a year to sit at a desk and add and subtract and divide and make charts. I don't know exactly why I'm making so many charts but Chuck and Gary my bosses say it's very good and helps them see how our ads make money over time.
Whatever, just don't throw shit at me.
I don't know what happened to Mario and Zelda but I like to think they're in the gaming industry now. Let me dream.
Ariane tells me to listen when she talks, to look at her when she teaches Sissy how to say things, how to be economic with words just like I am with money. I feel pretty dumb learning how to speak along with a four year old but I suppose we all dance to our own music in the prom in our heads.
I lied about my job.
Even in traffic coming and going, I love it.
I love that I get paid because whenever there's extra dollars I put it in that box.
There are thousands of them now but it's not really a box anymore, or even a safe.
(It's in an account named "Sissy: for college, or whatever")
Thanks for listening, Reddit.
By the way suck my dick George yeah my camel joke was stupid but your momma's so ugly when she tried to join the ugly contest they said sorry no professionals is totally inaccurate because my mom is objectively average looking.
Submitted June 23, 2019 at 05:40PM by BrokenTricycle http://bit.ly/31HZJqu
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