Working for the Clown

The summer before my freshman year at college, I had very specific plans. I went away in June, participating in a month-long workshop at my college designed for students thinking of going into medicine. I can’t say that the workshop cemented the deal for me—I spent lectures wondering about taco night in the cafeteria (I was concerned about the government cheese they were serving me) and if the cashier at the bookshop had a Siamese thumb or if it was the result of a bad shotgun incident. I came back home looking for an additional two months of relaxation before school properly started, hopefully by my parents’ pool.


By the second day of my sunbathing, my mother put her foot down and insisted that I get a job until I shipped off to school for good. She used scary words like “responsibility” and “self-worth” and “pride” and she laid out workplace options like local clothing stores and book shops, none of which interested me or were in the market to hire someone for two months of work. You can imagine the look of disbelief on her face when I came downstairs the next morning and defiantly said “I’m going to get a job at McDonald’s.”

The sound of my mother choking on her toast said it all.

At 8:00 AM that following Thursday I reported for duty and walked into the restaurant. Although I hadn’t been inside many McDonald’s up to that point—and was by no means an authority on them—I was certain, however, that this one was trapped in some sort of time warp. The tables were dirty brown with yellow plastic seats that attached to the tables by an under bar. Against the wall where I entered there was a mural of an alternate universe in which trees fruited hamburgers and a milkshake stream flowed. Parading across a bridge was Ronald McDonald himself, holding a staff while fries poured out of his stuffed pockets. I took a look at my surroundings and mentally pumped myself up. “They’ll like me, they’ll like me, they’ll like me.”

My manager didn’t like me. That was apparent from my first minute together with Megan. I knew her slightly from high school, and while we didn’t exactly run in the same circles, I was aware of her social status. She was a “vo-techer” which means that she spent her day going to vocational classes like plumbing and restaurant management. She was a tough girl in school, or at least that’s what I assumed. At 13 Megan began dying her hair a flat jet-black—where it lacked in shine, it made up in being badass. It was down to her back and she teased the bangs up off of her forehead, which was powdered a constant shade of Goth-white. But when I saw her that morning, her hair was tied back in a ponytail, poking out of the back end of a purple baseball hat with golden arches embroidered in its center.

“Well, well, well...you know, when I saw your name on the roster this morning, I didn’t believe it,” Megan said to me, while looking me up and down. “I thought you were off to become a doctor or something, right?” she continued while handing me my own purple shirt and hat that, with the black pants and shoes I was told to wear on my first day, completed my own uniform in hell.

I decided against any comebacks and just nodded my head and chuckled with her. “I have some time before school, so I thought, why not, right?” I replied. Megan squinted her black-lined eyes—some make-up habits were hard to break, apparently—and immediately began her new employee tour with me. We walked behind the main counter as the breakfast crowd began to come in. She stopped in front of a large clear plastic bank that was in the shape of a house. The chimney had a slit in the top of it that people were supposed to drop spare change in, the bottom a pile of copper.

“Now this here, this is so customers can donate to the Ronald McDonald House,” Megan explained while smiling to the elderly couple silently waiting at the counter with their order.

I turned from Megan to the elderly couple and asked, “Just how elaborate of house does this stinking clown need?” The couple silently stood there—or rather, they didn’t have a chance to respond to me as Megan drew me into the back kitchen. She led me to the double grill, stopped and looked at me.

“Jesus,” she said.

“Jesus,” I said.

For the next four hours Megan stood behind me instructing me on how to properly grill frozen beef patties. When I asked when I would be briefed on the special sauce, she wordlessly pointed to the grill with her finger and I threw more beef circles on the heat. After four hours I was dizzy, dehydrated and my ears rang from Megan’s constant play-by-play yelling in my ear, Deer Hunter-style. I went home smelling of grease and despair. Two shampoos later, I passed out in bed.

My second day began with the morning lesson of the assembly of a Big Mac, and I finally learned about the special sauce (it comes in a tube gun). When I was asked to retrieve more hamburgers from the walk-in freezer, I left the door open for about half and hour and my co-worker flashed me queasy eyes and I retreated in the back. My manager asked if I could throw out the trash, which was easy enough until I set off the fire alarm throughout the place—not a good look for a room full of senior citizens eating pancakes from white Styrofoam containers. Megan told me to follow her outside for a break and offered me a cigarette.

“Marlboro Red? No thanks, I’m not a rapist,” I offered in return. Megan shrugged and between puffs told me that I could go home early and report at 11:00 AM the next day.

My third day I woke up to dark skies outside and drove into work. All in all, the day started out quietly, and I was stationed in the back. Around lunch time a school bus pulled up and kids started to pour in the doors, on their way to a summer field trip. Megan ran to the kitchen and screamed, “We have a McNugget emergency!” She barked out orders for me to fry up a batch—a task I wasn’t properly briefed on.

I ran in the freezer and tried to find the right bag in the chaos (what kind of degenerate would leave a bag of shredded lettuce in a freezer?) and grabbed a giant paper bag with “MCNUGGETS” in a large black font on the front. I ran to the fryer and looked around, hoping for help on how to work this vat of grease. I could hear the kids, by now inside the place, and I truly panicked.

“Um….Megan? Can you come here?” I yelled, the co-workers too busy in their own chores to help.

Megan came up to me in a huff and looked at me holding the bag in my hands. “What are you, slow?” she said with a sneer. “For god’s sake, Mr. Doctor can’t cook a kid’s meal!”

I ripped open the top of the bag and poured the contents into the fryer, never breaking my stare with Megan. What was once a dark sea of oil--so hot that the surface appeared calm and hypnotic--turned into a raging pit of boiling poultry. The oil rose and pulsed into the overflow tray and my jaw dropped at the instant storm. Megan looked at me with wild eyes and yelled, “What are you doing?”

I looked at her, I looked at the fryer and I closed my eyes for second. When I opened them up I said, “What I’m doing is trying to be a good sport. So. I’m going to go now. And I’m not coming back. Ever.”

I laid my hat down by Megan’s station in the back and as she yelled “You quitter! What about your paycheck?”

“Keep it,” I said, walking to my car. “I don’t really deserve it.”

I started the engine, not moving as the storm rolled in. And so I sat for a few seconds, hating to admit to myself that I couldn’t hack it at a simple summer job and anxious to reinvent myself at college. Eventually I shifted the car into drive and went home in the direction of the storm, blissfully unaware of the long line of Megans that were waiting for me, and smiled.

One Day at a Time

Yikes.  Father's Day was aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwkkkkkkkkkward.

Last Night

I gotta be honest with you, I have some messed up, Whitney Houst-on-smack dreams all the time.

Last night I was battling these gigantic aliens that came to my parents' house--they were in the shape of a modernistic, gleaming white dinosaur skeleton with red laser beam eyes.  Another alien was a gigantic tutle that was green and orange and kept on laying demonic babies while I kept on yelling at my friend who said "They're just here to be friendly."

I have to stop inhaling paint before bed.

RIP PS

How I'll Remember Pat

I'm a Little Schoolboy

I started a writing class last night.  It's a course to develop personal essays and for our first assignment, we were asked to write something about our childhood.  The class was pretty encouraging and I'm going to be posting the writings as I go along...

THE CHRISTMAS JACKET

Looking back, my parents really should have known better. I didn’t want to go to the Christmas party and had they taken previous incidents into consideration such as when they forced me to attend one of my co-student’s birthday party and I responded by crashing her new go-cart on purpose, I would have stayed home with my toys in my playroom. I would have avoided the suspect looks from my father on the ride home. But listening to an eight-year-old whining about such things was not in the cards, and I had no other choice other than to just surrender and go.


My parents have belonged to a country club for over thirty years near their home in Pittsburgh. Giving into my father’s wishes, my mother agreed to join and over the years developed a go-to answer on why they were still members: “It’s a nice place where they serve nice food on nice white tablecloths.” Nice food, that is, if you enjoy gray prime rib in a pool of dull, beefy water or side dishes of soupy pasta. When I visit my parents now, I have to admit that I do enjoy this WASPY food—there’s that definite kitsch factor to the club’s baked Alaska, but when I was a kid, I hated it. I hated the way the servers placed the food in front of me on the table with a loud thud, and I especially hated having to wear a starched oxford shirt with a clip-on tie and a sport coat.

For normal dinners at the club, my mother dressed me in a dark blue blazer with brass buttons, but for the children’s Christmas party, she brought out the antichrist of boy’s clothing: the red blazer. This one was my archenemy—it was fire engine red wool and the smell of moth balls wafted out from it when I moved my arms. She paired it with a cream colored turtleneck with an American Institute of Architects pin of my father’s on the neck—the silver AIA standing out like a beacon.

“Perfect,” she said, as she admired me in my bedroom.

I stood there perfectly still—I was nervous that if I made any sudden movements, the turtleneck would inch up and choke me further and I would build up more internal heat under the sweltering blazer. As I walked downstairs, I stiffened up my back and limbs, and I’m sure if a stranger saw me moving like this from afar, they would have mistaken me for a midget salesman with severe body burns. My mother picked up speed and passed me up, holding my London Fog raincoat, the cherry on this hellish sundae. She folded my arms into the coat and attempted to tie the look together with a scarf.

“I’m hot,” I whispered.

“It’s snowing outside, honey,” my mother tried to reason with me, “plus it’s only for the car ride over,” as if my father and I were about to make the trek over in a topless Model T with snow blowing in our faces.

As I neared the gigantic Lincoln—already with its engine running and my father peering with impatient eyes behind the steering wheel—I pivoted on my feet and made one final plea: “Don’t make me go,” I calmly and matter-of-factly said to my mother. I learned from an early age that crying just didn’t solve things, so I adopted a steady determined way of speaking to adults, which fascinated and disturbed them in equal parts.

“Oh honey, it’s going to be fine, you’ll going to have a nice time with the other kids there. Plus you’ll get a gift from Santa, who came all the way from the North Pole.”

Here’s another skill I developed when I was a kid—I learned how to differentiate between knockoffs and the real McCoy. You name it—handbags, clothing, accents, I can spot a fake a mile away. Santas were my earliest specialty and I didn’t want what these Santas were selling, free gift or not.

I awkwardly entered the passenger seat of the car and sank into the cushioned seat. While the outside of the car was a sea of white metallic angles, the inside was dark and cave-like. The seats, ceiling, and floor were navy blue, and the leather released a steady wave of heavy fumes. As we traveled in silence to the club, my mouth started to water and my palms got swampy. There was no turning back and decided to play the joker in my hand—the one thing that I thought could turn the car back to home. So I vomited all over my raincoat and the car seat.

My father looked at me with shocked eyes and because of his own weak stomach, began to dry heave, still silently driving down the road, never breaking stride, determined for us to make an appearance and thus ruining my escape plan.

The car lumbered up to the building and the parking attendant opened my door, staring at my sweaty face and vomit stains on my coat. I swung my legs out and slid down the seat onto the curbside when my father guided me to the men’s room. He wiped me down and muttered “You don’t look so bad. I mean, compared to the other children.”

Compared to the other Stepford children, I was the most lifelike, my own filth aside. The girls had mistletoe bows in their hair and stood in their patent leather Mary Janes, the boys clinging to their parents like barnacles. I knew my participation in the festivities would have to be catch and release—I needed to grab my gift from Santa and run.

As I walked toward the front of the ballroom where a Santa and a pride of elves stood guarding a pile of wrapped presents, I stopped to look at a plate of garlic toast and platter of crudités on a nest of crushed ice and wondered what one of the giant black olives that glistened under the lights tasted like. I grabbed one and bit into the flesh and was pleasantly surprised by their basic taste. I spit the pit out on a napkin and immediately ate another one. And then I had another one. I shoved a piece of the garlic toast in my mouth as I stared silently at Santa and then shoved another olive in my mouth and decided to seal the deal.

Santa looked at me as I chewed my olive and said in a deep voice, “I have a gift for you,” as he simultaneously put his arm out for an elf to put a long rectangular box in his hand. I was relieved it wasn’t a wrapped basketball or football, which were wrapped without any imagination, proudly showing their shapes in the gift pile. Since no one was behind me, I took the gift and unwrapped it, only to find a cheap knockoff version of Candyland called Sugar and Spice.

“I don’t want this. It’s not real,” I told Santa and tried to hand it back to him.

My father, sensing that I was up to my fussiness, came up as I said “He’s trying to give me a fake Candyland. I’d like to go home now.” My father laughed nervously to the Santa and suggested that I take the game and participate in the round of carols that were going on the next room. I stood, looking at my father who couldn’t take a hint, at the counterfeit Santa sitting in a gold throne in front of me, and because I couldn’t say what I wanted to say, because I was a little kid who was getting ushered around town in a red coat, I did the only thing I knew that would end this afternoon. I held the game in my hands, stared down at it, and promptly threw up on both it and my red coat. When I was finished, I placed the game down on the floor and my father sighed, gave up and took me home, promising me Candyland and the disposal of the red jacket and, in return, I promised that I wouldn’t eat garlic toast and black olives again.

Labor Day is around the corner and I'm escaping the city to visit my parents in Pittsburgh---you know what's odd?  It just dawned on me that I'm writing these posts and no one is reading them.  So basically, what I'm going here is writing a public diary, only no one cares.  SO...I'm just putting my plans down on a website just in case I have a stroke and can't remember what I'll be doing or have done recently.

Just so I'm clear.  Glad I'm not crazy.

Anyway, I gotta be honest with you (and by "you" I mean "me")...I'm getting nervous about visiting the amusement park on Sunday--the park I visited all throughout my childhood.  The fear of throwing up on a ride that goes round and round and round is very tangible right now.  Must drink lots of club soda there.

Day three of me not eating any chicken or beef or pork.  Or tongue.  Definitely not tongue.

Last night I started a writing course to "explore my personal history."  I've said it before and I'll say it again:  as long as I don't need a hand mirror, I'll do it.

Sigh....need dog.  Worried that I don't have enough time for dog.  Cats are out of the question--I'm not into animals with more issues than I have.

I gotta be honest with you, I'm wondering why there aren't key parties here in NYC.  No one drives here, so the one person who does end up driving to the party would seem to have good odds for an orgy.  Just saying.

Kicking It Off with Chicken Marbella

A couple years ago I hopped on the blogging train and started one.  I can't remember what it was called or what I even wrote about. 

I guess I didn't have anything important to say at that time.  And maybe I still don't.  We'll see.

I gotta be honest with you--I didn't know what to write about in my first posting until today.  I'm so bummed out about the death of Sheila Lukins who was a co-founder of The Silver Palate here in NYC and wrote the cookbook by the same name that--literally--changed American cooking in the '80s.

Listen, you gotta understand this--I was this little kid in Pittsburgh, hiding behind my glasses, and I treated that cookbook like a novel.  I used to read my mother's copy page by page, looking at the illustrations and wondering what the hell basalmic vinegar and chutney was. 

In essence, it gave us hope that we could aspire to be good at-home cooks if we wanted.  There was more to American cooking that pot roast and Sheila was our guide in the grocery aisles, pointing out goat cheese, fresh figs, and capers.  Stuff that nowadays wouldn't make you bat an eye.  But back then, it was something else.  It was educational, delicious, and guess what--fun.

So thanks Sheila.  Hope the heavens like your Chicken Marbella as much as the rest of us.

Oh, and this blog won't be gushy like today.  I'm just in a mushy mood.