How’s the Writing Going?

I get this question a lot, and it’s a hard one to answer. Usually I go with something innocuous, like “It’s going alright” or “It’s kicking my arse” or “I hate it with the passion of a million white-hot suns.” Sometimes, if circumstance permits, I might go into a bit more detail, but I have to stop myself from opening the can up too wide, because I could literally talk for hours and most people don’t have time to hear, much less digest, the full report. I’ll give you an example.

There’s a story I wrote last summer, about woodworking and a zombie apocalypse, among other things. Call it Story X. I worked on it for a few months, did some research, got it banged into what I thought was a pretty good shape, and went ahead and submitted it a couple of times, receiving (relatively) quick rejections. I knew the beginning, vivid and prettily-worded though it was, wasn’t accomplishing enough, so I went over it again, basically rewriting what I’d written before in a way I hoped would be more compelling. As I learned when I submitted it to my writers’ group (which is what I should have done in the first place), I was not particularly successful, and every one of my estimable colleagues saw through my prosaic hand-waving and called me out on it (for which I thank them). At the time I’d started in on a novel, so I set Story X aside and tried not to think much about it. A month or two later I took a hiatus from writing altogether, and have been slowly easing myself back into it for the last month or so. Since I’m not quite ready to get back into novel mode I decided to bang my head against Story X for awhile and see which cracked first.

So far I’m slightly ahead.

Continue reading “How’s the Writing Going?” →

A Failure of Enlightenment

I’m both proud and ashamed of myself this morning, because last night I did evil in the service of good, or so it seems to me. It was my girlfriend’s company holiday party (usually well after the actual holidays for those of us in the Industry, for obvious reasons), and though I had a soccer match that kept me away for the first half, I tagged along for the latter part of the evening while she and her co-workers got silly and cut loose, as folks will do in such situations. Having run for most of ninety minutes, I wasn’t in much of a mood to join in, and spent the evening on the fringes conversing with friends and watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on the tv behind the bar. I had a total of three drinks over the course of three hours.

Around 1am, it was decided that there should be karaoke, and the party absconded to the closest bar where karaoke was known to occur. I shan’t say which, only that if there were a French Quarter for hipsters, this joint would be in the heart of it. Garish, lurid, and loud as absolute fuck, though the staff was friendly and fun.

Except for the karaoke guy.

Now, one thing about my girl, she loves to sing her some karaoke. And she absolutely kills it. She’s got a beautiful voice, and inhabits the stage as if it were her natural environment (really, she’s one of the most charismatic people I’ve ever known personally). So of course first thing she does when we get there is go try and sign up. But karaoke guys blows her off. She mentions it’s her company party, that she bartends around the corner. Offers him fifty dollars cash. He calls her a dumb bitch and tells her to fuck off. He spat so much contempt into her psyche it nearly derailed the good feeling the whole party had going.

So I called him out. Continue reading “A Failure of Enlightenment” →

Dealing with Your Hangover

Good morning. If you’re reading this, you’ve survived last night’s adventures and are most likely not under arrest or locked in the trunk of a car. Good job. Now let’s deal with your hangover. It’s a doozy, I’m betting.

First thing. If you feel like you might throw up, just go ahead and do it, even if it requires inducing. It’s unpleasant, but it’s going to be way easier getting the poison out of your system directly (there’s a reason they call it intoxication) than it is to put the extra load on your liver and kidneys, which are likely already working overtime. Seriously, you’re going to feel a lot better.

But maybe it’s not as bad as all that, or you just aren’t ready to take that step. That’s cool. There are other things you can do right now to help yourself out.

The best way to process out a hangover is vigorous athletic/aerobic activity. Work up a sweat. Get your heart rate up. You’ll feel really sick at some point on the upswing (and again, go ahead and puke if you have to), but even twenty or thirty minutes should be enough to burn up all the poison and replace it with adrenaline and endorphins.

I understand that most people will also skip this option. It’s a perfectly reasonable response, and one I’ve given many times, myself.

Lucky for all of us, there are less radical steps that can also be taken. Continue reading “Dealing with Your Hangover” →

How to Get Good Service in a Busy Bar

Another year is about to come to an end, and New Year’s Eve, that most amateurish of amateur nights, is upon us. Many of you will have the sense to stay out of the bars, and attend house parties or ring in the new year at home with friends and/or loved ones, far and away the safest, smartest, and, to this cranky old curmudgeon, most enjoyable thing to do on a night when the whole fking world likes to come out and get stupid. But I understand that I do not represent the mainstream view on the biggest party night of the year. That for many going out and painting the town red is both desirable and the done thing, that the madding crowds, the turbulent sea of celebrants washing against the bar in wave after wave to negotiate their social lubrication are in fact a source of attraction. To those folks I’d like to offer some insight into the lives and experience of those harried souls on the other side of that negotiation, that you might use that knowledge to the benefit of all involved (but especially you).

The first thing you have to understand is this: for the staff, this is the worst night of the year, rivaled only by St. Patrick’s Day for biggest shitshow and highest douchebag-to-cool person ratio among the customers. Even the money isn’t that good, not for what it costs you to earn it, anyway. So a basic understanding that the bartender and the server and the door guy and the manager are having literally the opposite of your experience is helpful. I’ve worked bars where the crowd at the bar was ten across and two or three deep from nine-thirty til the lights went up and the clock on the wall said go, and every one of them wanted to be next. Even for someone who’s done it half a thousand times, it’s stressful as hell, and while you try and be as fair as possible getting to people, you find yourself making decisions about whose turn it is and who gets expedited service and who gets ignored til there’s literally no one else who wants a drink.

Here are some things you can do to be that person who gets helped quicker, who as a result gets to spend more time dancing and carousing and enjoying time with friends old and new instead of waiting in line for a drink because the bartender doesn’t like or remember you. Continue reading “How to Get Good Service in a Busy Bar” →

This Guy Last Night

So I’m outside the restaurant last night, taking a break while we run down the clock, hanging out with the kitchen boys and soaking up the night air. There’s lots of bars around where I work, and weekends we’re overrun with revelry and the shit-show that goes with it, so it took us a minute to notice the guy on the corner, screaming his head off at his woman, who is sitting crumpled in on herself on the trim of the building while her friend stands helplessly by, unable to do anything. After another minute I decided I had to intervene, and I wondered if things were going to get violent. The guy was really riled up, so it looked like a real possibility, but my guys had my back and it’s not like I haven’t dealt with ten thousand drunk people in my day.

I walked up to him, and asked how it was going. He kept ranting, but I got him to start paying attention to me and not the woman, so I figured I was ahead. I kept asking questions, got him talking, distracted him while the friend got his woman away. I could’ve called it good right there, but I wanted to buy her some time, so I kept asking questions, kept the guy talking. What he told me broke my heart a little.

From what I could tell, he wasn’t even specifically mad at the woman. He was just worn down from working seven days a week to support his wife and mother. He was literally in tears with frustration at a paycheck-to-paycheck grind in a bad economy, and it’d got to him so bad he couldn’t believe that anyone could understand. He was so at his wit’s end that he wasn’t ashamed to cry in public, and he kept reverting to fight postures out of a lack of any other options to express himself. The guy was literally having a breakdown, right there.

There’s only so much you can do for a guy like that, but we did what we could. We let him speak his truths, and validated the good parts. We shook hands all around a few times. Then we walked back in and closed the restaurant the rest of the way, and he went off to who knows where.

It’s a real shame, I think, that the only coping mechanisms most men are taught is to turn pain into anger, and to hold it in until it bursts, usually under the influence of alcohol. What this guy needs is a safe place to explore his frustrations, but he’ll probably never have it, because the only way he knows how to give himself permission even to engage with the whole tangled mess is to undo his inhibitions with an intoxicant. I’m not saying it excuses his public berations. I’m just saying it’s a shame. I’m just glad I didn’t have to fight him.