From Justin Gawel: Eccentric Dirtbag
Dressed in suspenders and a silver tie clip, it was only fitting that the most important man in the office was also the best dressed. No doubt about it, Jonathan Porter knew the business, knew the people, and knew how to run this place.
It was nearly lunch when Jonathan called Natalie, his assistant, into his office.
“Shut the door,” he ordered, not looking up from his laptop. Natalie abided.
He looked up and looked her over, “I think it’s time we address the elephant in the room—”
“Sir, I’ve been trying to diet—“
“No, it’s not that; relax, kid,” Jonathan said, his magic words flowing like they did during that regrettable magician phase that he had all but repressed with painkillers now.
“No, the elephant I’m talking about is trickier; you’ve been here, what, ten months, now?” He said, standing up now and moseying towards Natalie.
She slowly nodded, “What’s this about; you’ve never said anything about my body of work.”
“Well, that’s mostly because I’ve had so many objections about your physical body. , However, I must say, there are some qualities I find less-objectionable—“ and in a swift, hostile takeover Jonathan used his position to leverage Natalie into position underneath him on top of the desk.
Puzzled, but not resisting, Natalie was flooded with confliction. After all, Jonathan was her boss, and, despite his remarks about her weight and odor, she didn’t mind working here and didn’t want to jeopardize that. On the other hand, it had been awhile since she had a man make a direct deposit in her, as she had grown accustom to using the proverbial “Easy Button” and saving herself a disappointing evening at the bar.
“Sir, I’m not so sure. This isn’t so cut and dry, like the business.”
“I agree,” Jonathan suavely whispered, taking her hand. “I mean, I’m pretty cut,” he continued, moving her hand across his toned stomach and back. “But,” he breathed while discretely finding his way up her skirt, “You’re anything but dry.”
Natalie let out a low moan; it was clear she had a weakness for the sensual combination of his dry, clammy fingers and stupid wordplay. There was no turning back; Natalie had drank the Kool-Aid, and not even the threat of awkward encounters or a boring trip to HR was going to stop here from going after that sweet, throbbing company pen in Jonathan’s slacks.
It’s anyone’s guess if it was merely Natalie’s enthusiasm for lunch or was it just because she was a former hot-dog eating champion, but she wasted no time flipping around on the desk and horizontally aligning herself to better take his hot product out of it’s wrapper and into her mouth. As she hung there, upside down, between two pillars of the industry with a third pillar in her loading dock, she couldn’t help but compare this to that iconic kiss in Spiderman. Yeah, it was weird; and in this objective author’s opinion that’s a odd thing for her to think now, but what was even stranger was the fact that Jonathan was picturing the same thing in his mind.
“Did you get lost?” Natalie asked Jonathan between heavy breaths. “This is a business transaction, not a charitable contribution.”
“I’m still going to write off the damages as business expenses. And don’t worry about this—you should know I’m a team player around here.” He shot back as he ripped her stockings off and plunged his face into her grubby thicket.
“Good, she’s definitely looking forward to some quality face-time with the boss,” Natalie played back between lick after lick of Jonathan’s low-hanging fruits.
She always knew Jonathan knew the service industry, but it wasn’t until now that she realized he knew a thing or two about servicing. Truly, thinking outside of the box, Jonathan propped her legs up on the desk and dug his face due south into the scruffier and swampier regions of her rainforest. He raised his right hand, like a snorkeler requesting air, and brought it down repeatedly in a SWOT analysis of Natalie’s dumpy, fat asset until said asset was it was so far in the red that bankruptcy would be the only way out.
Natalie couldn’t move, her muscles were paralyzed with the pleasure coming from Porter’s Five or More Forces of tonguing swabbing he was unleashing on her. It wasn’t long now and Natalie knew it—her books were cooking in a hot, frothy stew.
Moments later, through a lot of moving parts and synergizing, Natalie belted out a wail, while Jonathan erupted everywhere, flowing like a perfect supply chain with no bottlenecks.
The office was in shambles; all varieties of company ink coated the desk and carpet.
Catching his breath while assessing the damage, Jonathon exclaimed, “Well, looks like the Children’s Hospital just spent their annual donation.”
Sundays are not for football. Sundays are not for chores. Sundays are not for God. No, Sundays are for buffets. I know, it seems unorthodox, but these directives are the only gospel I abide by on Sundays.
Buffet Sunday is my one chance a week to return to my unrestrained natural element. I’ve left my shame, inhibitions, and non-elastic waistbands at home—I am a gladiator ready for battle in my coliseum. There aren’t any cheering fans, there aren’t any sponsors, and, frankly, most people present seethe in disgust and contempt.
Restaurant owners fear me; I see it in their eyes and I see it in their soul every time I saunter in on a Sunday morning. Broken men, conceding defeat every time they ban me from their respective buffet, as the no-prisoners, full-frontal food assault I’ve unleashed is too aggressive, too unsanitary, and too costly for them to endure again.
Call it tradition, call it personal culture, but I’m not one to conform codes and restaurant regulations. The grease scars and calluses on my fingers say it all, and that’s that I wait for no man—if you’re going to take your sweet time with the bacon tongs then I’m give you the ol’ reach around and pluck me up a fat serving of that juicy meat post haste.
It’s time to suit up, I put on my Sunday best, as in ripped sweat pants and a t-shirt that reads “Hot Mess” that’s been covered in syrup, egg drop soup, and gravy stains from past wars waged. I board my moped this Sunday morning in search of connecting with a higher power, that power being large quantities of salted meat.
A mere twelve minutes later, I’m pulling off into an unfamiliar diner with a sign that reads “All-You-Can-Eat Breakfast Buffet $6.48.” So, to break even, I just need to eat six-and-a-half-dollars worth of bacon? This hardly seems fair.
I stroll in, the hostess seats me, and I begin scouting the opposition: eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, a waffle maker, syrup, and gravy, plus assorted cereal, oatmeal, and fruit, but, since I’m not an old woman on a diet, I’m choosing to ignore those last three.
The waitress approaches, asks me if I have made a decision, and I say something glib like, “How does the buffet work?” Convincingly, she acts as if I had asked a profoundly deep question instead of something blatantly obvious. She’s sweet, entertaining my answer like I’m the title character in Nell and I’ve haven’t grasped the concept of a restaurant yet; it’s truly a shame I gave up tipping as my New Year’s resolution.
First round is always all meat—we’re building something great here, so we need a solid foundation. I douse my plate of processed and fried meats in that sweet, sweet mortar of yolk—because nothing holds a foundation together like delicious, unborn baby birds.
My plate, stacked with protein and flavor, towers over other plates. The manager gives a look to the waitress that says, “He hustled you; I knew we were dealing with a professional.”
Like the value of World Com stock in 2002, the first plate went down with little resistance. The yolk served as a lubricant to slide pork down my gullet so chewing and slicing were kept to absolute minimums.
I’m closing in on my break even point, as that plate contained at least an entire package of bacon and sausage respectively.
Round two and that waffle iron is calling my name. It’s not a traditional waffle I’m after, but rather I’m just pouring in batter mixed with yolk, gravy, bits of bacon, and hash browns. My franken-food cooks into a patty that’s partially burned, partially raw, and completely delicious. I cover it in syrup, cast my knife and fork aside, and eat my glorious creation while onlookers gape and swoon in fear, disgust, and astonishment.
My heart is beating with adrenaline, oddly directed sexual excitement, and because my blood has a roughly .09 level of yolk and gravy that requires more pressure to pump. I clear my plate, make my way to the warming trays, and grab a bowl—a move that elicits murmurs and whispers from the restaurant crowd.
With my stomach feeling fairly full, I know there is one very viable option. Namely, create a soup with a yolk-gravy base that’s filled with bacon and sausage. This is the bonus round—I’m past the $6.48 mark and am playing with house money right now.
Back in my seat I begin attacking my concoction with the zeal and gusto of a pack of wolves devouring a rogue plate of hot pockets at an obese family’s reunion. Noticing my relentless, the manager intervenes and pleads that I take a refund and leave after I finish my “weird-breakfast-soup thing.” With my stomach nearing capacity and my legacy effectively spread to these parts, I’m okay with calling it a day. Plus, with a full refund I can stay within the parameters of my New Year’s resolution while still leaving twenty percent.
I finish my soup, pick up my coat and helmet, and head for the door. With a little, relieved grin the manager pats me on the back and discloses, “I knew you were trouble when you walked in.”
I don’t blame you, AAA, no; I blame myself for trusting you. You’re a charlatan, a snake-oil salesman, or that magician in Ohio who stole my identity for six months. Scarring, grotesque, reeking of eggs and mayonnaise, all words and phrases I would use to describe my hotel experience at Big Rudy’s Feed N’ Sleep along I-80—a place you gave one diamond rating to and wrote a review that made generous use of phrases “up to all building codes”, “open”, and “technically satisfactory”.
I arrived mid-afternoon, eager to see what my $26.75 plus sheet deposit bought me for the night. In the past, nearly twenty-seven dollars has been proven to buy a lot of fun, be it in the form of a twenty-seven-dollar case of breakfast meats covered in yolks, one-hundred-and-eleven gumballs, or one photo of me dressed up like a cowboy—truly Big Rudy had his work cut out for him.
AAA had described the lobby as having a “Mediterranean” style to it, but from the missing plaster, concrete floor, and chain-smoking clerk missing an arm I’m going to assume AAA was referring to the Syrian part of the Mediterranean. Technically correct, I suppose, AAA. However, being correct doesn’t stop it from being disgusted while watching that tiny child repetitively lick a pink stain on the counter after being told not to several times from the clerk.
With his one good hand the clerk gives me a slip of paper with “41-7-22” scribbled on it. Expecting a key and confused, I round the corner into the single corridor with about eight rooms on either side each with a combination padlock affixed to their door. Swanky, AAA.
On my third try the rusted lock pops off and I start speculating they aren’t going to have complementary tetanus shots. The room itself is decorated in a classic Russian decor, meaning that there’s a single bed, nothing on the walls, and a desk with a phone and toaster nailed to it—perfect for a family of seven to share during a cold Moscow winter during the 1950’s while they sat sipping their last jug of potato water and picking at the carcass of their pet crow.
The bathroom is nothing more than a single toilet-sink fixture like you’d find in a prison accompanied by a tub consisting of more hair than porcelain. I close the door hastily knowing I’ll never be able to return to a point in my life where I didn’t know that tub entity existed.
Okay, so I’m not here to spend time in the room anyways, and AAA did say this place has a pool, a restaurant, and an entertainment center. I’m going to explore, and, ideally, I’ll just fall asleep once I’m back in the room after I barricade the door with the desk-toaster-phone.
I take my book and make my way to the pool in the back. I survey the above-ground monstrosity, complete with broken chairs and old stumps strewn about the area. I approach the pool wall and discover there’s only about six inches of brown, filth swill at the bottom of the pool. My eyes pan up and at the deeper end and I immediately shudder—it’s an overweight Italian man with a gold chain, thinning, yet greasy, hair on his head, and pseudo-rug of midnight black strands covering the rest of his body. He’s in the water up to his shins and he’s making passionate love to an equally overweight woman whose pasty thighs resemble stained-glass works made of varicose veins.
The woman notices my embarrassment and as I’m scampering away with my head down I hear the man bellow, “Lighten up; we just renewed our vows!”
Truly, there is so much beauty in this world. However, none of it can be found at Big Rudy’s Feed N’ Sleep.
I make my way back into the building, hoping the entertainment center will have a bar where I can repress this memory with a mason jar filled with whiskey and bleach. Sadly, when I ask the clerk which way to the entertainment center he merely points to the pinball machine and cigarette machine sitting in the corner of the room.
When I inquire about the restaurant he gestures to the heat lamps at the other end of the room that are currently warming a bowl of dirty muffins and a trough of something curdled. I wasn’t hungry, just curious, but I doubt I’ll ever be hungry again.
Out of sheer anger, I’m able to sleep for a few hours. I wake up cold and disturbingly clammy. In a silent, yet frantic, rage I grab my backpack and walk out to the lobby where I give the clerk the sheet of paper with the combination scribbled on it. With his hand he grasps it and says, “checking out?” in a way that implies this is a legitimate hotel. I respond with a grunt and he asks, “breakfast?” and again points to the heat lamps at the end of the lobby.
There’s the couple from yesterday, piling paper plates with a yellow sustenance and a white paste that I’m guessing is the eggs and mayonnaise I smelled when I walked in. The fat Italian man gives me a nod and a wave. I storm out of the building.
You really hustled me, AAA.
Thank you, kind shopkeeper, for not verbalizing your judgments with me. You, me, and the security footage can all attest that I’m not the “catch”, the “philanthropist”, or the “mature adult” my online dating profile makes me out to be. Like my diary, you are sweet to hold your tongue when it comes to my, well, less than stellar habits involving your marketplace.
You’ve supported me unconditionally and have been there at my highest highs, like when I found that loose Sour Patch Kid on the floor and gobbled the little tasty morsel right up. And you’ve been there at my lowest lows, like right after I ate said Sour Patch Kid off the floor and I still had part of a spider web in my mustache which led to me being mocked by a pack of loose children.
You’ve been nothing but kind to me and even helped me with my scratch-off ticket addiction. By helped, of course, I mean that you’ve helped keep this delightful dependence going; always offering them and reassuring me that the one that I didn’t buy would be the winner. You’ve let me take countless dollars out of the Humane Society donation jar in exchange for IOU’s to keep my compulsion afloat. Plus, you never call me out on the blatant lie I tell every time when I say that I’m going to give half my winnings to the Humane Society. Now that’s truly the mark of an excellent 7-11 clerk.
Now, your customer service track record was always flawless, but you’ve taken your lack of oral outrage to the next level when it comes to my behavior with the grill items. It’s like clockwork; every time I come in, I insist I need a closer inspection of the hot dogs and the other pre-diarrhea, culinary travesties that twirl themselves for hours atop those shiny rollers. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, well, I had a gift card. Fool me the eleventh time, well, sorry, body, I knew exactly what I was getting into, but I had a punch card that gave me my eleventh hot dog for free.
After the eleventh such meat-train passed through my mouth tunnel, I was born again over the course of a sleepless night in which I spent nine hours of labor on the commode. Now, through my humanistic compulsion, I find it necessary to thoroughly inspect all grill items whenever I come into the store. Hopefully, through my informal research, we can all get to the bottom of what really went down on September 11th (said sleepless, but stink filled, night coincidentally occurred this past September 11th).
Needless to say, I’m glad you haven’t impeded my research or drew attention to my eccentric and my less than sanitary habits involving the hot dogs and taquitos.
Your resume is stellar already. You are truly a living saint in a red vest and nametag. Why, it was just last Friday, near the beginning of your shift I’m guessing, and I came in and bought one Digiorno frozen pizza, a pack of cigarettes, and one large bag of Twizzlers. Later in your shift, I would return yet again and make the exact same purchase. Disgusting, yes, yet you didn’t lash our linguistically toward me at any point. I felt safe. I felt I was in a judgment-free zone. You may have thought said judgments, you may have tweeted them, you may have even cried about my life to your therapist later in the week, but you held your tongue while I was there and that’s what counts
Now, to the untrained eye, it looks just like two isolated incidents. However, I think most can tell my the necessity of the second trip, just a few short hours after the first, that this was more indicative of a lethargically depressive day during which I underestimated how much damage I wanted to do to my body over reruns of Maury rather than some pizza-cigarette-licorice-fiesta day that I was hosting in which I underestimated what supplies I’d need for my guests.
If the two trips didn’t give it away, I’m sure my lack of eye contact and apathetically broken posture denoted the nature of said visits. Still, you were nothing but delightful to me and, for that, I tip my hat to you.
You truly are the yin to my yang.
Great empires fall, the brightest stars burn out, masterpieces fade, and minivan backseats inevitably become sticky, disgusting, and uninhabitable places. The enfilthment of a backseat is like erosion; a slow process, but, given the time, sediment from all regions will be deposited in the minivan’s backseat usually taking the form of spilled colas, spilled Kool-Aids, and spilled science fair projects.
You can’t fight the machine on this one. Like a moth to light, the backseat of any minivan is going to attract a certain level of nasty, stank trash-doody. Frankly, you’d be better off trying to get water to boil at sixty degrees Fahrenheit or tying to teach a mentally impaired horse how to read rather than trying to keep a minivan backseat clean. I realize it would still be near impossible to teach a non-mentally impaired horse to read, but it would be extra tough if the horse was, how should I say, wealthy in the chromosome department. I’m off topic, I don’t mean to debate the tenants of equine literacy, but, basically, what I’m trying to say is that it’s a pseudo-law that a minivan backseat will get disgusting.
If you’re not taking care of children currently because you never had kids, you’re kids abandoned you, or maybe they’re dead or something then I can safely assume that you’re not in the market for a minivan. But, for the experience, flashback to 1997—my mom, taking care of two kids who take up every spare minute of hers with bickering over watching Clarissa Explains it All or The Wonder Years, decided to purchase a 1997 Plymouth Voyager. Flash, swag, prestige—driving off the lot I can assure you the minivan had none of those qualities, and, somehow, had even less of those qualities years later when my mom sold the vehicle in exchange for a partially used gift card to Applebee’s.
The lack of resale value was not my mom’s fault. In fact, I distinctly remember wiping boogers on everything I touched in that van. I remember the time I started digging in the crevices of the seat only to discover a treasure trove of Jolly Ranchers and Skittles that were all fused together in a hair-covered, sugary cluster that was big enough to choke a dog. I put the wad back in the seat; knowing that it would be a fun surprise for someone else down the road. It didn’t stop there though, every vacation in which fast food was ingested over car rides resulted in a few rogue fries escaping into the seat folds and sodas being spilled in the cup holders thus creating sticky pools of syrup which were resistant to any cleaning attempt.
The field trips didn’t help. A seventh-grade trip to see an afternoon performance of the musical Grease turned sour after a fat, mean girl was assigned to ride with us. I mean, the knowledge of having a chubby child in your car is already going to hurt the resale value, but that wasn’t enough for Little Miss Two Mayonnaise Sandwiches For Lunch, no, even though we were leaving for the play right after lunch she still saw it necessary to bring a goodie bag filled with pretzels, Slim Jims, and Ring-Pops that she proceeded to hoard and munch on during the ten-minute ride to the show. In the spirit of Grease I won’t tell you more, tell you more anymore detail about this large mammal grazing in the backseat of said van, but the result of her presence was a half-eaten and melted Ring Pop jammed in the seat pocket, a bunch of wrappers in the storage compartment, and a streak on her seat that we all prayed was just chocolate.
The Kelly Blue Book rated the brown stain as “undesirably tragic” and proclaimed that it was certain to doom the re-sale value of the vehicle. By the end the person we sold the van to declared he would be selling it to the booming Detroit ashtray industry that would turn said minivan into several hundred trays for ash. A fitting afterlife for an existence spent being filled with garbage. And, akin a morbidly obese scuba diver dying after being mistook for a trophy fish and harpooned, it was a sad end to a sad life.
