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 A Beer at Lunch
By Dave Crackpot
So I meet with this Headhunter.
Nice offices, down on the Wilshire Westwood area. It’s 11:00 am on Tuesday and there all these happy people dancing through the crosswalks. Happy People who don’t work during the day. Happy People I hate with every ounce of envy in body. I check the size of the rocks on all the women on the finger adjacent to the fuck you finger. They’re big. Lips are just a size larger than luscious.
Diner Root Black Hash Browns over easy.
I didn’t want to cough for valet… so I walk five blocks in a French suit. This suit looks good on me.. I look really good… top of my game, maybe even a little svelte. Women stare at me with the “I am not interested” blank expression.
I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 12 years and today I finally understand the language. I wink cocky back because I am finally on to their bullshit. At this moment, there is no way you couldn’t be in to me. Hey Beautiful.. just smile at the suit.
I walk into the main lobby and ask the security guard for the bathroom key.
I get the key from the lobby guard,do my deal and walk halfway down the hall when I realize that I locked the bathroom key in the crapper.
Screw it, I’m in suit. I’ll do what the hell I want. Fuck that $12 an hour chump. Lisa Dornan gave it up for this suit.
Well, Lisa gave it up for everyone. She was a slutty cheerleader type with purple eyeshadow and too much AquaNet… she wore a mesh top. We went to separate schools, I hadn’t heard the stories yet. so it was special… for me. I dumped her when I heard the stories.
That’s when it hits me. Shit, I am in THAT suit. I am in a 20 year old suit. It’s held up remarkably well. Good lines… I’d been in a hurry sneaking away from work and just picked that one in a rush in between scrubbing off the cigarette smell and realizing every other suit was a press job away from an interview.
It was the suit that my Pop bought for me on Market Street, next to the Mitchell Brother’s knockoff theater, the Market Street Theater. We winked and elbow ribbed nudged when we saw it.. but I was only 17 and they were carding that day. He bought the suit, I wore it out and we had beers at lunch at that place with the bricks on the inside with the train that went around. It was called something long and Irish. O’—Something.
I wasn’t carded; the staff respected the suit. Pop was overly excited that his Ceasar was on a chilled salad plate.
“Here touch this…that’s class”
Class is cold.
That suit was last thing of value my father ever gave me. No knowledge, no mentoring, no cash. He didn’t even tell me to quit smoking. He showed me the hidden pocket in the suit so your smokes wouldn’t bulge it.
He was trying to live the dream at some god forsaken accounting department filled with beige. The suit is only a little tight… I lost some weight a few years back and I can wear again.
Shit, I am in that suit. The suit has held up well.
I walk into a room of short sleeves and four dollar Ross ties; A step above clip-on baby blue and brown stripes.
Rudy, a twenty or something UCLA type kid asks me all the questions that are bullshit. What’s your worst quality…
“My worst quality is that I have to waste my time at an unfulfilling job everyday… I mean.. it’s not the worst job.. I don’t gut fish or clean up after the last call crowd at the Lusty Lady quarter booths or nothing…
But I don’t say that. I go with one of my stock cutesy answer-isms.
Who gives a shit? I am looking for another job I will hate six months from now.
that pays more.
And it hits me.. this little boy interviewing me hates his job too. So we have something in common. And he wants me to be just as miserable.
We’re jagovs at the diner. We’re jagovs at the trough.
And we’re dying for a new beige opportunity that pays just a little more.
Just like our fathers
And I have a beer at lunch.
And a Caesar Salad,
sans chill.
In that suit.
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