Reality

Reality hits home today when a new guy shows up to work at the pizzeria. He's hispanic, soft-spoken, and a bit short. He moves around slowly and looks tired, too tired for his age, which I find out to be 16 later on in the day.

I find this information out along with the fact that he's a father, and he's got another one coming. "16, but I'll be 17 in November and I'm excited, because in one more year I'll be 18, and then I'll have a big party." And I look at him, trying to make sense of his situation, of the immeasurable maturity and immaturity it takes to get to where he's at--but when I hear him talk, he's just a child. "And I'll have beers at the party," he snickers, and I tell him that's very legal of him.

I joke around with the men at work that this young guy is like my little project now, my baby, and that I'm going to raise him and teach him the inner-workings of this deceivingly difficult job. And I say that because there's always a chance to mess up. Every move is a potential burn, cut, what have you. But it's still just a job at the end of the day, like any other. Except this boy's daily salary will go towards diapers, and baby food, and whatever else babies need to survive. But work continues, and the salacious (using big words doesn't make you smart) attitudes of the men I work with become increasingly discomforting.

My co-workers have become violent in their sexuality. They continuously threaten to shove cucumbers and squashes up my rear. They ask me every morning if I've gotten with a girl (to put it angelically) and they're blown away when I tell them I have not, since I actually have days off for the grand and never-ending pursuit.

But it's difficult for the men with no women. They gawk at any passing female, and anatomize her best features, whether it be her lumpy ass, or her short shorts.

I never understood the need for prostitution until I started working at the pizzeria...or the need to compulsively drink after a hard day's work, like cliche alcoholic fathers in Lifetime films. And it's the gross monotony that does it, the willing imprisonment of the position--being an immigrant, legal or not, and being geographically, as well as socially entrapped. The alcohol, liquid-earplugs, a damper to the requests, "One slice to go, not too hot."

When you consider that these men work 84 hours a week, for years, you start to understand that those inherent biological needs supplant any pride or reservations towards the professionally promiscuous. I've been asked at least ten times if I was interested in calling a prostitute after work, sharing or taking turns, I imagine. And the 16 year old watches us and catches on quickly.

An hour before we close shop, the father of soon to be two, looks at a girl who passes by the front of the pizzeria with a bunch of other loiterers and says "wow, she's one pretty girl," and he wages serious bets with the men that the girl being lusted after is twelve years old.

A picture from two months ago. Original caption: Tequila Tuesdays, and sometimes Saturdays

Ugly Shoes and Dangerous Driving

First of all, not all English majors are good at Scrabble. I'm pretty terrible in fact, but I bet can still beat Chris Wallitsch at it, fairly consistently.

Speaking of Wallitsch, here's a prank we played on our town after being annoyed by the prolificacy of a "Lost Parrot" flyer.

The morning after affixing approximately 100 of these flyers underneath the originals, some mother on a mission took them all down. And I remember the person who actually posted the parrot flyers eventually contacted me and tried to make me feel bad about it all.

Secondly, Vibram's (which is pronounced Vee-Brahms for some Italian reason) FiveFingers KSO model is pretty kewl. $85...when you're rich like me, you can buy these shoes just to look at them, or microwave them, or bury them in the woods.

Today was the first day I used these mother-fuckers and I found that, during my three mile jog, I felt more comfortable running on the grass than on the cement. You can still feel the impact and the intricacies of each sidewalk, but I'm going to have to say I prefer my regular running sneakers for the asphalt.

My shins and ass definitely felt this run more than usual...so I know I'm a little closer to my work-out goal of crushing apples with my toes. I had no problem sprinting in these, and my feet felt very secure. These shoes are definitely for hiking. I also made sure to purchase the all-black versions of these shoes since I figured they would dry quickest in the sun after having splashed around a bit, but Vibram recommends you don't do that.

After the jog, I stretched on my front lawn, and a neighbor that always lets her dog shit all over the place made small talk with me and eventually asked "...but do you feel all the pebbles underneath when you run?" and I told her I did, if I were to scrutinize every step, and that our ancestors never used Nikes. And she understood, and her little mutt of a dog got a good whiff of my sweat-soaked shoes.

Thirdly, deliveries.

I made twenty-five deliveries yesterday, and around twenty on Saturday.

Breaking everything down: Sunday alone, I delivered $565 worth of food. I was tipped $147.

I delivered some food to a woman in the Hampton Inn's lobby and noticed a small tattoo on her shoulder of an om symbol, except it was torn at, ripped, burnt. There was actually a marble-sized blister disfiguring the sacred syllable of quite a few Indian religions.

Being nosy, I asked her what had happened, and she gave me an uneasy smile and told me it was a long story, and I believed her.

At some point in the incredible heat of the day, I stared straight ahead at the road while waiting for a light on Jericho to change and the road seemed to stretch itself out before me as if I were hallucinating--and then geese flying overhead sent down a breeze, changing the light green. Throughout the day, I learn that the marijuana habit is alive and well and very ubiquitous.

Back at the pizzeria, a snarky boy asked if we sold free ice cream and I couldn't help but laugh in his face and then laugh harder when my explanation failed to amuse him.

"You can't sell something that's free. Get it? Understand me?"

So I gave him a cup of ice water and told him to pour sugar on top.

"Right next to the coffee machine."

But what do I really want to inform those of you interested in a pizzeria career, or perhaps just those interested in the inner-workings of such an establishment? You should know that delivery boys, excluding those from major chains since they usually have multiple drivers, are usually very reckless when driving--especially when you're as terrible with directions as I am.

I must have blown fifty stop signs, and by blown I mean given joe-blobs to. At any given moment, I would be adjusting the 2 liter Pepsi in between my legs (which is where the cold drinks always go on hot days), juggling orders, deciphering scribbled addresses and belting Miike Snow songs.

I have an amazing falsetto, I've discovered.

Making deliveries provides the perfect stage for singing your favorite songs. Forget high school chorus and forget those college theater productions you never took part in--it's you and your voice under a sun-roof amidst people just as self-absorbed about the road and its ways as you are.

Deliveries for the Liveries and General Contempt for Pedophiliacs

My readers should understand that this blog was started because before I began working at a pizzeria, I literally googled "Pizzeria Experiences" because I'm a wuss and I wanted to know what I was getting myself into. It seems like a generic-enough job, but what about the intricacies of each day? The idiosyncratic annoyances each customer poses?

I delve into this for you, and for my sanity, otherwise it would all go unnoticed and I would be suffering and laughing and sweating alone and as Mephistophilis gracefully put it: Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris--misery loves company.

For the past two days, I worked the counter and I made deliveries. Working the counter means: tending the register, spinning pies, wiping down the counter, arranging the slices behind the display case, actual congenial for the customers and occasionally microwaving rice-balls.

Nothing special with counter-work, but the deliveries, oh the deliveries.

The deluge on Saturday flooded Old Country Road and stranded everyone, but more importantly, me and my deliveries. And when I got to one of the houses, I was greeted by an amiable creature, a calm golden retriever. Out of the thirty or so houses with a dog inside, this was the only one that didn't bark like an idiot when I arrived. The owners let me pet the dog, with very little reserve. They introduced me.

"This is Max."

And I fell in love.

I remember there was some other dog, some mutt somewhere that whined quite a bit, really anxiously, ahh yes, I remember now. The mutt belonged to a family packing for a surprise disney trip--what happy little children they would soon have--the delivery boy, being made aware of such things, such privilege.

At another house, a man answers his door buck-naked, barely shielding his johnson with a towel when I show my disgusted surprise.

"Woah! You alright over there?"

"Yeah, yeah I'm sorry about this, just got out of the shower."

"Alright, $22.50, sir"

I don't remember at what point he says it, but he says "...still hot out there, ain't it?" and it was...And when he gets back, he's still cupping his crotch with the goddamned towel, and I can't believe his audacity, leaving me feeling anxious/harassed, but he tips me well, the hairy bastard.

An old lady living on some obscure cul de sac made me very aware of her fragility, just watching her live for our little shared moment, the quick and ungainly pitter-patter of geriatric feet.

There was a delivery to the Hampton Inn's front desk, a 10-15 minute pain-in-the-ass drive from the pizzeria, and when I tell the manager the price, he looks at me and tells me, very calmly, as if he's practiced this very monologue, "Full-price, huh? I can't believe you would disrespect us in such a way, such a slap in the face to my employees. "

Instinctively, I want to laugh, because he used the phrase, "...a slap in the face," but I try to understand before jumping on the defensive--bringing up how we normally do give discounts to our partners and how whoever handled the order just didn't realize at the time the egregious error they had made in forgetting to deduce three or so dollars from our standard price.

I tell him a simple phone call could rectify the situation, but he outright refuses to negotiate; the price, in his mind, is finalized. It has become personal.

"After all the business we've given you, after every reference we've given our customers. You can tell your boss we're no longer interested in doing business with you." And he hands me the little stack of menus from behind the desk, and I open up his pizza box and throw this dog poop I keep in my pocket for emergencies right in the middle of it--the steam from the pizza liquifying the whole mess surprisingly fast.

The poop part isn't real, but the manager leaves and I ask his quiet minion, who was standing next to the manager the entire charade, "Am I crazy?" And he tells me something obsequious to the effect of "Whatever the boss says..."

And you know, fuck it.

Later, I deliver a pie to someone's backyard, where there's a pool with three children jumping in and out of it, screaming ebullience, and three adults, lounging along the perimeter with mixed drinks, a happy calm between them all, and now exuding outwardly: "...Want to jump in?"

And short story short, I do, and it's more amazing than I imagined and the kids jump in right after me, screaming, "I can't believe it! I can't believe he jumped in! Yay! YAY!"

It was basically like this, but in a pool, and I got paid for it. And when I reluctantly hoisted myself out of the pool, the two little girls pushed me back in, proving that happiness can love company as well.

My car's thermometer, while sitting in the sun for a few hours reached 136 today, I remember it reached 148 at Bonnaroo.

...Sitting in the traffic between these destinations, these strange people, often wonderful, and entirely intriguing...

Ugly looking thing

traffic at a dead halt

beneath a bright beacon of green

trying so hard to signal the opposite

And no refreshing air to be had

just the muggy throwback

swimming in an ocean you could sweat in

--

That was an impromptu poem. Redundant? Maybe.

And as to the pedophiles mentioned in the title of this post, I just had to ask Bobby, that old veteran who comes in just to watch the phone girls work, what he was looking at today, since he was very obviously scrutinizing the movements of one of my co-workers. And he told me some bullshit about trying to "figure out [the girl's] dowry because women are the most expensive beings to maintain," or something, and then I had to make sure he was talking about "...women, right, Bobby? Not girls, women."

And even though he defended my freedom at one point or another, I still hate the bastard, and I wrote so on my drinking cup today, to distinguish mine from the rest.

"I HATE BOBBY"

The weekend fades to darkness and I drive home, my car still emitting the pungent scent of seafood fra diavolo. I arrive at the intersection of Glen Cove Road and Westbury and the light is yellow and I know I can make it. I drive through it and before I reach the beginning of the next street, I'm cut off by another driver making a quick turn in front of me, and I notice a flash of light behind me. A ticket. A $50 traffic violation as automatic as my ensuing anger. I scream one obscenity, bang the wheel of my car once, and allow the give-and-take of life to settle in like smoke.

Creep Killer

Surprise, I worked the pizzeria today, and as I walked through the door, I was told, "Hurry up, Anthony, we're backed up," and I see the most experienced pizza men, frantic, rushing between the entropy of deliveries and orders and slices in the oven...there's no clock really, it's just the few seconds you have before everything burns.

And so I work. No big deal. Just Friday. And by the end of the day, my callouses are back from the hundred pies I cut. I could have cut more...I used to joke that I kept count.

One old man walks out on me because I kept him waiting too long for four regulars, and it really must have been ten minutes, tops. But I watched him in the corner, standing, brooding...letting his pride take over his patience, letting it all swell into something personal, and I wondered about him after apologizing, somewhat profusely, "Really, sir, it's really my fault, just a few more minutes." Is this moment really happening? Am I the cause of this man's utter discontent?

What happened, exactly, you ask? Well, three people came in, one after the other, and ordered four slices each, and while attending to these ridiculous orders, the old man caught my attention for a moment and ordered another four...and pizzas only grow on trees in Mali...

Later, the men drink. They offer me tequila shots and I accept them. And it's just another Friday, except this time I'm limping around with a hematoma discoloring my right toe, and I'm thinking about the previous night, having slept over an apartment in the lower east-side with the two fantastic girls I'll be driving to Bonnaroo with. I woke up in the middle of the night confused, for only a second, disorientated by the lemonades and vodka, the homemade pizza with sauteed yellow peppers and onions...the night still, with a general calmness you can only find on a semi-rigid pullout.

On the drive home from work, after delivering slices to friends, I see a group of girls walking and I tap my horn a few times, as I normally do when passing a group of whoevers, and I hear one of them say, "can you give us a ride..." and their voices blend in with the wind, and I keep driving, thinking, if this was any other place, I would do it. And so I turn around, and I fit all three little girls in the car, after the serial killer test.

"I was just kidding before, you know, but if you really do need a ride, I'd be more than willing to help."

"No way, no way! You're not, like, some creepy guy that's gunna kidnap us, are you?"

"Haha, no, I assure you."
(I am, I am, you rotten little bags of skin. Hop in this car if you want to feel pain before death.)

And they hop in and I take them to where they NEED to go, so desperately in the night, the Mineola Pool, so they can dangle around little men, and I marvel at the idea of human trust, and murder, and general human kindness, if there is such a thing, since it's all obscured by societal conditioning and John Walsh's precautions.

Albert Fish used to write letters to the mothers of the children he had kidnapped, sodomized, tortured and eaten, and he would explain all of these things in horrific, mind-bending detail.

Having Never

Working a pizzeria has me all confused, confundido. I argue with faceless strangers over change and orders and misunderstandings. I argue with co-workers over different methods for different and equally unimportant things. I daydream about nothing and I feel hungry when I'm not. I think about all the different ways you can waste your life, and it really is amazing.

"Trapito". The Spanish word trapo, means rag or cloth, the kind we use at work to wipe down counters, tables, everything. There's some wacked-philosophy to the thing, which attempts to explain how there's always something to do, to wipe down, always something to replace, refill, clean, put away...to prepare for the Rush, instead of relaxing. When I'm too relaxed, I'll hear it from Neris, Trapito.

Look busy.
Wipe those tables.
They left cheese everywhere.
Hijue...

I've heard that insanity is doing something repeatedly and expecting a different outcome, and I really don't think the second part of that is always necessary. I believe it's insanity to work men out of fatherhood, a decent pay, and a respectable living, just because of their inability to secure another means of survival. And then what? No prognosis, no labels of insanity...just the cherubic boy at the counter, eye-level with the counter, repeating over and over

"excuse me...

"excuse me...

"excuse me...

for an ice after his ice cream.

There's an old man, an ancient, barely-living man, who comes in occasionally and orders a slice and he always has a scratch-off in his shirt's pocket...and he always make me think, but I'm not sure about what.

"What's the difference between the grandma and grandpa slices?"

I like to think about flesh, and the way it can burn, mostly within the job setting. I think about the brown oil in the fryer, the oil dripping off pies, the instantaneous brandings, heat rising out of an open oven, and how watching a miniature pizzeria run by curious children would be a terribly gruesome show.

"Can I have this corner slice, no, not that one, this one"

I don't plan on ever asking somebody how they're doing without actually having the mind to listen.

...I'm such a good person.

Five Pies for a Funeral

I come home and my parents see how dirtied I am. My mom literally gasps when she sees all that soot on my once tan crocs. A catastrophe, trully. And not one of them says a thing about my goatee, even though something has always been said about a spontaneous goatee.

Yesterday morning, while preparing the daily assortment of pizzas, Edwin mentions my developing beard and asks me if I've ever sported a goatee, and I tell him how my Mom (odio) Hates it, and he tells me I would look good with it. So I carve it out of my face the following morning.

According to Mary-Anne, two daily slices, garlic powder and oregano, I look 25 with the goat.

This morning, a woman on the phone actually tells me she needs five pies for a funeral by 11:45 AM and I find out from the man who picks them up at 11:50 AM that those pies are really for a party.



The Hunger hits hard today and I don't know it until it's too late, until after I drink a Yoo-Hoo with great abandon, triggering a nice stomach ache. The Hunger is the effect of being in front of food for long periods of time that you don't really want to consume--making you feel hungry when you're not, pitting logic against instinct.

Mama-Bird surprises me when I see she's brought a geriatric friend along, whose name I only need to hear once between their deliberating--Edna, and even though I've got the concentration of a hawk while taking down their orders, I still find them more complicated than probability. My scribblings, arrows pointing to meals and turning back on themselves thanks to indecision, all sloppy and doubly-so thanks to the carbon copy. I can't help but feel like I'm drawing a Sensosketch, to put it in Cranium terms. There's my endorsement, Hasbro, buncha bitches.

Lentil soups before the salads and sausage slices cut down the middle and fucking metal utensils. After watching Mama-Bird regurgitate an eggplant parm hero and tossed salad, it reaches a surreal climax when I pass her her second sausage slice, and I turn away and she calls for my attention using her quick accent

"Uh, yah gonna hate me, but there's a hair on my slice."

And I do hate her, but mostly I hate this moment, and I find myself upset because either the wind graced us with its serendipity or Mama-Bird/Edna planted it there.

I pick the hair off the slice and examine it closely, holding it up a few inches from my face and there's no oil on it, it's just a thin and short black hair, no longer than five inches. And nobody nearby has this type of hair.

And then the haggards depart, like Titans taking their leave of a battlefield, and Neris described in very vivid detail how he would strangle her to death, allowing her to have one good last breath in between the horror of it all, and then finishing it.

There's a calm that settles in after the dinner Rush, and we take our time cleaning up, serving a random slice here and there, but ultimately preparing to close shop, and even though nobody jinxes our divine break, the day ends violently, with such a torrential shit-storm of orders that it seems personal, a vendetta against the tired and miserable.

Moods are worsened by each ring of the telephone and each customer walking through the door, triggering the motion sensor
beep
someone's here
beep
turn around

"Give me an ice, pal"

Sure, what flavor.

* phone *

"Hey bud, two buffalo chicken slices"

Sure.

* phone *

"One pie, regular, to go, please"

Let me get a ticket.

"Don't burn those pies, Anthony."

Chande's eyes widen, more alert under his black baseball cap, a segue to his thick wavy hair.

I race between the kitchen and the counter and I watch Edwin seethe at the new orders and tap at his leg with the sharpest knife I've ever used.

But it's all over eventually, and then you just shut the radio off, then the lights. And it's another night.


Foreground: Alex, or "Chande," for the sound at the end of Alexander, and in the background baking, Neris.

Buffalo Grandma

The smell coming off the paddle in the morning, dry wood, burning slowly. The moist heat of hand-sweat and Sicilian weight. Edwin shares a piece of excess crust from the white pie, a thin and hot strip of pizza, garlicky and oily and there's even a bit of ricotta and my god does it not feel like a breakfast food. I fill the machine with money. Two kids come in and I tell them to go eat breakfast and then come back. KTU has been playing non-stop Doors and I'm loving every minute of it.

We talk and blah blah. We drink at the end of the night...let it soak in like we have it the worst, but there's always worse, although I'm in no real position to say so.

The other night I was on chat roulette wearing nothing but a bathrobe.


"You look how I feel"

Teaching Old Dogs to Bark

or old men to clean up after themselves, is like any other unnecessary task--tiring and ultimately self-defeating. Neris tells me this today, the old dogs saying, and I might have heard it before but it sounds new to me, and very fitting.

84 hour work-weeks...not for the weak, or the prideful. It's nice to hide in the kitchen, work a few pots and pans clean, away from the dizzying commotion of ignorant customers. The most annoying part of my day had to be the man who insisted on having the slightly larger napkins as opposed to the napkins already on his table. Boneless BBQ wings and two slices. A real splurger. I daydream about the annoying customers, because they are memorable, and they are creatures of incredible habit. I daydream about putting them all on a plane and flying them into a secluded patch of woods, somewhere in Canada, I guess...and letting them fend for themselves. Letting them get by without the extra side of sauce, or S.O.S., letting them get by without the slightly larger napkins, or that extra slice, not too hot, because they just can't wait.

Are these posts getting more and more gripey? I'm sorry if they are. These are things on my mind...you don't have to read them, even though I know many will. I would like for somebody to google "Pizzeria Experiences" and have this pop up. I think it's important to disseminate these ideas.

I splurge with Erin at Bigelow's on Sunday. We take the drive down to the Long Beach area and eat at our favorite seafood joint and I converse with a man named Anthony. And he tells me he's been working the place for twenty years and he tells me not to get caught up in my new job.

I wonder about this, and how I suppose being paid weekly, off the books, seems alright, except for the fact that there's no real progress in this. It's just hour after hour, never really improving as a person because you don't function as one. You're just a talking pit-stop in the alimentary canal of every average Joe's day.

Bigelow's Anthony has the "jitter" or that incessant habit one develops over time working at such an establishment, where you continuously wipe down, rearrange, prepare, greet and serve. There's no standing still...there's always something or someone. It's no way to live, unless you're nomadic, and even then, you still have some time to enjoy your meal, grunt about something, and maybe adjust your beautiful baby-maker.

One last thing I have to get off my chest because it makes me giggle everyday. There's one customer who looks Exfuckingactly like Jack Kehler...the guy who plays the obscure character of the Dude's landlord in The Big Lebowski.


This fucking weasel--and he always orders an entire loaf of bread with whatever he orders, lightly toasted. I never watch him consume the thing, but I assume he eats it all.

$14.12

Is a number I almost forgot while trying to remember just now--but it's also a number I thought I'd never forget, and I haven't for the past few days. It's the cost of a regular pie, taxed. And it's easy because it's nice and compartmentalized within this brain. Anything memorized in customer service is a great advantage.

Today a woman finds out she has to pay for the extra side of sauce (50 cents), and then tells me she's never coming back again.

Later, a 12 year old boy makes gesticulations of handjobs, violent ejaculations, facials, and the smearing of spunk on very circular, imaginary boobs towards a couple of perhaps 13 years each, sitting on each other. And they laughed and the shitty little kid laughed while I watched them surreptitiously and nearly died inside from terror and bitch-smacking disillusionment.

I'm damn near mortified to have a child, but more specifically a girl, but it helps to reaffirm my immaturity. I imagine when I become a Man, I'll be able to tackle these issues while feigning complete control and exhibiting my hostility through the tactful presence of an able firearm.

What else happened today?

I played WQXR on the radio while we prepared all the pies for the first hour and a half. Mahler rang through our morning routines and changed something within the men. I could tell. These three Honduran men, with as stout a work ethic as you could possibly envisage, worked quieter and somehow more efficient. It wasn't a Whitney Houston song, or a Phil Collins tune, which it usually is at that time of the morning--and it certainly wasn't anything overplayed, (Ahem, clears the throatGaga). I'm sorry to all my huge blog fans because I know a great deal of you are die-hard Gaga fans but it's not my fault Long Island radio stations cannot comprehend moderation.

Neris asked me for a classical mix-tape, and I'll make a good one because you know, Neris <3.

I would write more but there's

Explaining Myself

I'm not sure what to write about at the moment, but it has been a few days and I can tell my blog fans are starting to grow mad with anticipation.

I feel it's high time to exploit the banner phrase of this blog: "Literacy is Key".

I saw that written once on a pamphlet I found at school, and I realized, being the sensitive Nancy I am about such things, that I had very mixed emotions about it. The pamphlet went on to talk about the importance of improving one's literacy through dedication and those other "Succeed" words. And this all lead to an idea I had acquired from browsing a Nietzsche work--something about how dangerous literacy was; how when everybody's given a chance at literacy, the world becomes more and more bogged down by a perennial "fungus". This "fungus" being bullshit, fluff, immaterial writing, does more to screen or hide away the important literature, the words meant to change human perspective and foment progression than those Nazi book burning bashes.

Now we can thank blogs for this accrual of fungus and continue writing fractals of insignificance...so is it key? Supposedly, according to the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc., 1 billion adults in this world are illiterate. That's 26 % percent of the world's population. Something's wrong.

In regards to my previous entry, Good Friday, as it turned out, is the busiest day of the year for Gino's and I had very little rest that day. I remember cutting four pies, boxing them, taking a minute break and cutting four more pies. No rest for the right wrist. We had all ovens going that day. We prepared bag upon bag of garlic knots. I treated myself to a zeppole and I asked a lady if I had any sugar on my face as she was handing me cash, and she looked at me, bug-eyed and asked if I was playing a joke on her.

Bobby was there on Friday.

I took this picture while Bobby was talking to me. I even had the timer on the camera so there was a little orange light flashing all the while. Here he is, hovering over the grandmas and grandpas, probably emphasizing a point about war or the god-damned bible.

And here's a woman every employee at the pizzeria loathes:



It has nothing to do with her corpulence but it seemingly has everything to do with
it as well. I positioned my camera right on top of the cash register for this shot. I've nicknamed her 'Mama-bird' for her strange eating habit and I also would've taken a video of her picking at her cheese calzone and regurgitating bits of ricotta onto her aluminum sheet, but I might have been caught.

The pizzeria employees don't like her because she continually accuses Gino's of over-charging her when she eats more than she can presumably account for. If I can remember correctly: one roni slice, one calzone, one chicken hero, and one pepsi, all cooked to a crisp, except for the pepsi.

Making Dough

Another day. I can feel my spine, compressed, pissed, wondering why I'm not lying down, and I keep telling my spine that if adult men can do the work that I've been doing, then it can handle it.

Yesterday, I get to Gino’s at 10 in the morning and a man calls at 10 10 to ask for one pie to be delivered but we don’t start delivering until 12 so we speak more and I simply can’t understand the bastard's words. They sound groggy, some slow incomprehensible mush pouring out of the receiver and I tell the man “to try and annunciate” and I hear him snicker. 12:15 rolls around and the man's dead when the delivery guy, Ben, gets to the Edgewood motel. And I can't help but feel bitter towards this man for having framed a vodka bottle and perhaps leaving this world with my voice ringing last through his head. It leaves me feeling cursed but the pies must cook on?

I have to hide my dirty clothes now. I can't leave them in an open hamper anymore because the smell of sweat and pizza works its way into my dreams like a charm. And I can hear oven's opening and people walking into the joint and Joe's directions and orders and phone calls. There are a few things that keep me sane, besides my natural calm, and those things include downtime, free drinks, and Bobby. The eternal Gino's figure/loiterer. A Vietnam veteran with an armory of nonsensical stories that hangs out at Gino's for an average of probably three hours a day. Slow-moving and benign, adding to the rhythm of it all.

Supposedly Fridays are the worst.