On Interior Switches, and what may or may not be plugged into them.

or,

How reality TV and unemployment are causing me to slowly lose my mind.

Ok, here’s the thing. The blog has been neglected for quite some time for a reason, and not my usual laziness as a writer. Lately, I honestly have felt that the only things I have to say are not worth writing, and not worth reading or listening to, because they are all extensions of the same gripe.

My job sucks.

How tiresome is that? Of course it sucks, all jobs suck, that’s why they call them that. The pronunciation is different but it has never been lost on me that the name of the most legendary of Biblical sufferers short of Jesus H. Christ himself, and the activity we all engage in to ensure our continued way of life share the same spelling. If jobs were 100% fun all the time, you would have to pay cover, and you sure as hell wouldn’t get medical benefits. So this is where you, as a reader, want to tell my whiny ass to shut the fuck up because your job sucks too.

Or worse, you are one of those unfortunates lately in the George W. war-time economy that has lost their jobs. While there are signs that the worm may be turning there, there are undoubtedly some of you who want to scream at me, “Hey you little shit, at least you have a job!”

And here in lies the first part of the rub, my friends. I both do, and don’t, have a job. Weird, huh?

The bar has been closed for remodeling for a while. 5 months and change as a matter of fact. I am getting paid a meager manager’s salary, equivalent to about 35 hours a weeks pay with no tips, and it is just barely enough to cover rent, bills, truck payments, insurance, etc. Considering the company has no money coming in, and the salary allows me to keep my full coverage health insurance, this is a godsend. I have had work to do related to reopening the bar, work related to the business nature of the bar, accounting and orginization, much work to do in planning the re-opening of the bar. I just have no idea when that will be. No answer that has been given to me has turned out to be true. I was told Thanksgiving, then New Year’s, then Super Bowl. These have all come and gone, and I have yet to see even a chance that it will be soon. There is still a MOUNTAIN of work to be done on the building.

I am not merely feeling stress, I am WASHED in it. Lately, it is starting to show in ways that are frightening me. (This is where this seems to turn into a totally different rant all together, but it’s not, so bear with me.)

As many of you may know, or will soon find out if you are coming to town for SXSW, MTV’s the Real World is currently filming it’s newest season here in Austin. When this was first new in town, my friends and I thought it would prove to be a hoot, though I had some reservations. This is because I loathe reality television. I watched the very first season of The Real World, more than a decade ago, and I enjoyed it. It was, at the time. original, and I was curious to see if so many people from such different walks of life would be able to learn from each other, to grow and become friends, to bond. I saw in that first reality television show the possibility for some of the same things Kevin and I years later now strive for with 20X2, the honest attempt to connect with other people and share new ideas.

Apparently, everyone else was hoping they would hit each other. The Real World degenerated into a manufactured soap opera that helped spawn a multitude of other shows in which we no longer strive to reach our better selves but rubber neck the lowest common denominator in humanity like a car wreck. We long to vote each other off, get somebody fired, form alliances, screw each other, hit each other, hurt each other, feel better than those around us in a desperate effort to convince ourselves that we are better than they are. After the very first episode of Survivor aired, I never watched reality television ever again, and I am proud of it.

It makes you stupid. It makes you petty. It makes you mean. It makes you less than what you are, and keeps you from achieving all that you are capable of. I firmly believe that.

So what does this have to do with my crappy job unhinging my delicate mental balance? I’ll tell ya.

As a gag, one of my friends said to me in jest that she would bet me 50 bucks that I couldn’t get one of the Real World female cast members into bed. Since most of my friends have day jobs, and I work on 6th street in Austin, it was naturally assumed that I would most likely have a great deal more contact with these kids than anyone else we knew would. Also, there is the continuing myth that bartenders can get any girl they like to jump into carnal embrace with them, and as I have said before, that sounds great darlin’ but it just ain’t so.

I quickly pointed out that this would be more difficult than she thought because the bar has been closed for God knows how long and seems likely to remain that way for God knows how much longer. Any one of us had as much chance to interact with the Real Worlder’s as I did. This spawned an interesting game (I also suspect all of my friends and I have a mild gambling problem but that’s another story).

Thus was the Real World game created. Sighting a Real World cast member or members is worth one point, interaction worth two, physical contact worth 5, entrance into the House itself worth 25, and any points that end up in an on-air episode are doubled. All sightings must have a verifiable witness, and be recorded on YOUR REAL WORLD GAME PIECE (about the size of a business card carried in the wallet or purse.)

So far I have 4 points. For three of these sightings I had witnesses. For one, I had only my cell phones tiny digital camera. I was downtown ducking into my bar for a bit to look something up on my computer a few weeks ago, around 10 o’clock on a Thursday night, college night on 6th street, and regretting yet again that the bar was not open and I was missing out on good tip money. I look up, and here comes the entire Real World cast, with a full MTV tech crew in front of them, and a HUGE entourage of hangers on following them. There must have been about 60 college kids in their wake, I am not kidding. My thought at the time was, “Jesus, they’re not even famous yet.” My next was, “Crap, I don’t have anyone here to witness this, I am gonna miss my chance to score a point in the game.” Thinking quickly, I whipped out the phone and snapped a picture, making sure to get the lighting crew in so it was obvious what was going on. As I was doing so, a little girl about 21 or 22, dolled up for 6th street the way the college girls do (which in the past year or so more often has me thinking “No way I’d let my daughter out wearing that” than “Man I’d like to get a piece of that,” as sure a sign that I am getting old as any). She looks right at me and says, in a very snotty way, “Jesus, get a life.” My response was out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

“I’m not the one following them all over town you stupid bitch!”

I was furious, and spitting obscenities at a complete stranger. I have had a very bad temper for most of my life, born of years of being the smallest and the weakest and constantly being bullied when younger. I outgrew the smallest part, but never quite lost the chip on my shoulder, not until well into my college career. I used to snap a lot. I got beat up pretty badly a couple of times in college for spouting my mouth off. It took me years to learn to put that temper away, to let things slide off me. Until recently, I was sure I had it whipped.

The reason I knew I had it whipped was because I am so good at my job. I spend all my time dealing with drunk people at work. They aren’t violent, I don’t work in a biker bar or anything. But take all the annoying people you have to deal with in your job every day, and then imagine they were all loaded on top of that. Now, deal with them all at once, instead of one at a time, and, make sure that the only way you get paid is if all of them think you are the greatest thing since sliced bread. You lose all chips of all shoulders real quick, or you starve to death real quick. I am not kidding or bragging when I tell you that I am one of the best bartenders you will ever even see. I am a student of the game, I watch other bartenders, good and bad, pick up their tricks, teach tricks to others I work with, learn all that I can. I read customers like open pages in your favorite book. Behind the bar, I’m not just smooth. I soar.

And I never lose my temper.

I’ve lost it four times in the last month, and in scary ways. Yelling at the girl in the street was the mildest. A few weeks before that, I lost it with Kevin, my best friend in the world, and I broke things in front of other friends. Over an argument about football. A few days before that, I lost in with my boss. We screamed at each other for almost an hour. When I got home, I smashed a glass mug into a mirror in my bathroom without realizing I was doing it until I heard the crashing in my ears. This week, when I broke my computer monitor by knocking it off my desk, I didn’t just throw it away. I swung it by the cord like a mace, slamming it first into my storage shed in the back yard, then against the drive way in my front yard, screaming my head off the entire time. My neighbors have little kids, toddlers, they must think I am a lunatic. Maybe they’re right.

So, as far as blogging is concerned, I’ve been keeping my mouth shut. I think, looking back on the length of this post and realizing that it seems only a few moments and has actually been more than an hour, that maybe keeping quiet was a bad idea. Please don’t be afraid of me, I won’t hurt you. I just need my job back. I need something to be good at again, even if it is as trivial as bartending. I need another chance to soar.