| "Welcome to my job." |
| - Carlin, 1973 |
| "Welcome to my nightmare." |
| - Cooper, 1974 |
You wonder what I have to say. You must. You're here.
I just looked rant up in the dictionary. "To scold violently."
I could quit.
This is my job: The cooler needs to be stocked. The floor needs to be mopped. The clerk must go do something productive, soon.
I could quit.
"I don't care if you're the Antichrist, if you don't turn off your radio you're outta here." Art Bell just said that.
This is my job: My stomach aches. My stomach bleeds. This job is juvenalia to the Nth power. Do you have any idea how many people I do or have worked with whom I went to high school with? This job is me, spinning my wheels, making an epic out of denying a pack of smokes to an underage kid, as if in the grand scheme of things any of it matters.
The grand scheme of things? What the hell am I talking about?
I presume way, way too much.
I must quit.
My exhaustion is without measure. I am burned out and bitter. I had nothing left to give her, and what she could offer me, I could find no sustenance. "Your milk is my shit." Kurt Cobain said that. I understand, now. He quit his job. He quit it all.
I am tired of talking. Everyone presumes way, way too much.
Take my last customer. Jesus Christ, Son of God.
Yeah. Hanging out with Christ is just joy upon joy.
This is how the conversations go: "Wanna go to the movies?" I say. "Something decent must be playing."
"Nope."
"You haven't seen anything though."
"I'm the Son of God, though. Anything we see I'll hate. I know that in advance. I know everything."
"I might like it."
"There's nothing playing you wanna see."
"That new movie, the one with Jennifer Love Hewitt..."
"You hate J.L.H."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"When you were five and she was three. When you used to live in LA, Mike. She was playing on the playground and she peed on your head when you were going up the slide. You hate her."
"I have no memory of that, J.C."
"I do. I know everything."
"Wanna get a burger, then?"
"If we eat at Steak n Shake you'll get food poisoning. If we do Waffle..."
All men think they're Christ. All men, white males in particular, think they are Christ. Kim Gordon said that. I agree. It's hilarious. And Christ wasn't even right.
It's wonderful to know absolutely everything, guys. But please keep it the fuck to yourselves.
Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine. Patti Smith said that.
I want somebody to die for my sins who was a total zeeb, a loser, someone who didn't know already that he would rise from the dead, all glorious, etc, etc.
Four years. Four goddamn years and she left me.
What could I have offered her? My religion is that in which God is an occasional deity, i.e., when I can believe in him - her, whatever. My religion is ten times stricter than the most devout Amish.
This is my job: I listen to NPR. I listen to Art Bell and other talk radio. I read the two daily newspapers and try to piece together the truth. I read novels. I play video games on the computer. I write novels. I spend silent hours contemplating theology. I play baseball using a stick and a pack of smokes. I smoke a lot, on my job. I hang out with friends. I talk on the phone, to the annoynance of the customers, who themselves are constantly glued to cell phones. I eat candy coated crap.
"What good is it if you gain the whole world, yet lose your immortal soul?"
Jesus said that.
"I have lost my soul, and gained nothing for it." I said that.
I could blame my job. I do blame my job.
My job is not the problem.
My job is a symbol of everything that's wrong with my life.
Symbols are never the source, they're only...symbols.
She left me. I hate her. I pray for her death. I love her and want her back. I don't blame her. I want her more now that's she is gone - old story, cliché song. Memory has a way of airbrushing out the bad shit. We ran out of things to talk about years ago. She wanted to ballroom dance and play with her cat and walk in the sunlight and smile. I wanted to shut the rednecks the fuck up and make a billion dollars and denounce and kill the rich in a glorious socialist revolution. I wanted to join a nice church. I wanted my goddamn stomach to stop aching.
I will not quit. I will never stop. Woo-hoo, motherfucker.
"I am the whore and the virgin." I believe God said that. Well, the Tao incarnate, which is ultimately the same thing, which it also isn't, fuck your Western duality. I am possessed by some very strange ideas.
The point is, lots of things about this job make me happy. Yet they're all things that I shouldn't have been doing in the first place. The video games, the screaming at the eejits, the pages and chapters written here. They started out as fringe benefits and now - the only reason I stay here? Or the only reason I don't leave?
What the hell am I talking about?
She took the cat. She took the computer.
M.P. Madden can go to hell. White male sexuality and aggression can go to hell. Refusing to sell beer to an underage kid - that's my job. Enjoying it - that's my problem.
If you're still reading this, you obviously have serious problems of your own.
This job, I have pointed out, is not the problem. It is a symbol, a symptom, of the problem.
This job is something to do when I'm not doing my real job, writing, and occasionally I do some writing here - often I do "real" writing here - this job is not so bad.
I want my stomach to stop aching.
Fuck it. Let's get together. Let's all hold hands and sing cumbaya. Let's stop the madness.
This is the point: I was wrong and I'm sorry, Natalie. Whoops - too late.
My name is Mike. I work in a convenience store. There is no worse job. There is no better job.
If you're still reading this, you obviously have serious problems of your own.
This is my job, typically: Stupid, stupid people come in and make absurd requests of me. "Hey, man? I'm only eighteen and I ain't got no money but can I have some beer?" "Hey, man, I'm real drunk and I'm driving but you wouldn't call the cops on me, would you?" "Hey, man, I need somewhere to smoke a joint, can I use your bathroom?" Etc. Etc. I am not exaggerating.
This is my job: I jump up and down and scream at drunken eejits and the other veritable plethora of idiots that parade up to the counter. I rant at them. I turn it into performance art. I insult their intelligence, their lack of, I mean; I try out a variety of accents while screaming; I blatantly engage in belligerent, abusive behavior and I do not get fired because half the rednecks are too stupid to understand I am insulting them and should the wiser half complain, well, nobody cares. I tell them that. I tell them, "You are a worthless waste of oxygen. Your entire drunken existence is without meaning. You personally are a symbol of everything that is wrong with the United States." As I may have stated, symbols, ultimately, are not the problem. But I don't tell the gits that.
I say: "I blame you - yes you, personally - for everything that is wrong with my life."
Which is both true and a lie. True, I do blame them. A lie, for I damn well know they, the idiots, are not responsible. And lying is definitely one way to lose one's soul.
Everything I have written so far is a lie.
No, that's a lie.
I envy them, and that is the truth. That is why I hate them. I wish I could be satisified drinking beer and smoking pot and watching NASCAR and annoying the clerk at the store. I wish that for me, not getting beer were a great tragedy, and abusing the clerk who wouldn't sell it to me were a great victory.
I suppose it's worth mentioning: In the begininng, when the clerk's mind was void, the clerk greatly enjoyed abusing the eejits. These days it's habit. Autonomic. Wanking without orgasm. A joyless exercise in returning hate for hate and utterly failing to follow the teachings of any of the two truly sane people to ever walk the earth (Christ, Buddah).
Actually, these days, I don't yell so much. They annoy me - I simply say LEAVE. My exhuastion is without measure.
I do not want to be the Messiah. The fact that for even one second, the idea that I might be the Messiah crossed my mind should show you how ill I am. This job is not the problem. This job simply does nothing toward fixing or worsening the problem. And for the duration of the last few weeks I have laboured under the delusion that had I another job, it might help.
What were my exhaustion not without measure, were I not burned out and bitter over the fact that I am burned out and bitter, she would not have left me, what?
I lose track. The cooler needs stocked.
About a thousand years ago, this job equalled work. These days the majority of my activities in this store center around the purpose of trying to keep me amused and distracted from the fact that I'M STUCK IN THIS AWFUL JOB.
"Whine much?" You said that. Just now.
This is my job: I clean filthy stinking disgusting restrooms. I clean up the vomit of drunks. I try to convince the woman with the huge gash in her scalp to stop bleeding all over my goddamn floor and go the fuck to a hospital.
Fuck it. I'm not asking for advice, here, or sympathy, or pity. I can't imagine why anyone would be reading this. I'm trying to get to a point - I may or may not know it when I get there.
Here's the point: I used to fear them. Then I viewed them as emotional punching bags, things to take my frustrations out upon. Now I don't know how I feel toward them, the customers.
This is the point: My stomach hurts. My doctor has prescribed the most powerful - and most expensive - acid blockers known to Earth. Problem is, the more often I take them, the less chance there is the pills will help. And I've taken three today so far.
This is the truth: I am sick to death of yelling at eejits, yelling at them because unlike me, they are not fucked up, worn out, pissed off, confused and frightened. Or if they are, they enjoy it.
"My name is Mike M., and I am a clerk." The first step is always to admit you have a problem.
I just looked rant up in the dictionary. "To scold violently."
Let those who know everything, let all those without sin, let all those who are a wealth of info on any and every subject (just ask 'em - ask 'em), let all the little Christs of the world, from Rush Limbaugh to Tom Lykes, from Bill Clinton to Harry Browne, etc, etc, let them violently scold the poor, unenlightened, amazingly stupid masses. Everyone is an idiot; just ask anybody, they'll tell you.
I have nothing left to say. I have nothing left to say. I have nothing left to say. I have nothing left to say. I have nothing left to say. I have nothing left to say, I'm saying it.
Four years. I gave her four goddamn years. For four years, I was with her, and I was happy.
Happy, but not satisfied. There is a difference.
I waited. I waited. I waited.
Well, apparently she was both unhappy and unsatisfied. Obviously. She left me.
Now I am...
Long ago, someone told me, "You will always wait, but you will never be satisfied."
I wait. I wait. I wait.
I have nothing left to say. I have nothing left to say. I have nothing left to say. I have nothing left to say. I have nothing left to say. I have nothing left to say, I'm saying it.
This is my job: The cooler needs to be stocked. The floor needs to be mopped. The clerk must go do something productive now.