Bar job (3 of 6): Queso jokes.

So far, I love how we have queso on the menu.

One trainer made a little joke, and I'm totally going to make use of it if someone has a hard time deciding whether or not to get the queso with their order:

"Queso?", I'd be like, mirroring their hesitancy.  "I'd say so."

Also, on one of our training manuals, they had misspelled "queso" as "gueso".

"Ah guess-so," one of my (black) (middle-aged) (former caterer) coworkers was like, to the group.

Bar job (2 of 6): Job expectations.

I totally love having a job that's active and social, but you really don't have to plan anything ahead of time like with teaching, or repeatedly deal with problem people over and over again for the people who you most interact with.

The studying of the menu and specialty cocktail ingredients was a bitch, and so was all of the job training, but so far I think it's worth it...

I was sitting there one day during training and the (very gay) (slim) (Texas-born) (redhead) corporate trainer with a (very gay) voice was all like, "Remember, always verify which [gimmicky name] burger people want" since there's 3 burgers with similar names, and all of a sudden, I was just happy at how easy and how different this was from everything else I do in my life.

Bar job (1 of 6): A coworker.

So, with my new bar job, one of my (middle-aged) (straight) (white) (female) coworkers looks a lot like the Latina transwoman I know from the trashy club I sometimes go to, since they both are around the same age and have dark hair in a similar style and similar coloration and shape of face.

So, the first time I met her, I was like, "You look a lot like this woman I know from clubbing." 

"Oh," she was like, "Did you got to a lot of raves in Detroit in the late 90s?".

She actually just moved here from Michigan, and was saying that the later bar times here in the city were tough for her.

"So what was closing time in [name of the city she moved from]?," I was like.

"Two," she was like, "But then you could go to the motorcycle clubs."

One day after training, too, people were going out, but she said she had to go home since she was too tired.

"I'm feeling that too," I was like, "I just want to go home and curl up and read."

"Yeah, totally!", she was like, and then she said that she had a couple graphic novels that she wanted to finish.

I've noticed working with her that she's always keeping busy and helping people out, so all around she seems like a totally great coworker.

Homeless man on the subway.

The other Saturday I was coming back from (new) barhopping on the far northwest side of the city, and I boarded at like ten o'lock at night on a cold night a decently crowded train.

As I stood there in the entryway of the car with my bike, I noticed that a(n older) (black) man opposite me appeared to be homeless, and all of a sudden he began shivering and jumpily brushing off his arms like bugs were crawling all over them.

Then, after we shifted due to people coming on at the next stop, he all-of-a-sudden lashed out with his right elbow and whacked the glass partition behind him, making people jump.

Without noticing, he calmly proceeded to roll up his shirt, pull up his sweatpants underneath his pants, and then pull up his outer pants that were over his sweatpants, readjusting them so his layers covered him more, presumably against the cold, though it wasn't that cold on the subway car.

Suddenly, he began sniffing the air - a slight smell of piss was beginning to spread in the car - and then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a stick of deoderant, and without any sign that anything was out of the ordinary, he uncapped it and began rubbing the stick up and down the sides of his face.

So, at the very next stop, I calmly walked out of the car, and as soon as I was out of sight of the door, I booked down to the next car to board it before the doors there closed.

That homeless guy's behavior seemed erratic and was making me very, very nervous.

New library job: The flavors of the different sections.

So, I got a part-time job at the university library pulling books from a gigantic list necessary for some  big digitization project.

It's interesting to see the flavors of the different sections.

Usually, you get a pretty good sense pretty soon of if a section is going to be difficult to work in or not.

In one section where most everything was out of order or missing, I couldn't find a title, and then it turned out to be this very very small one-by-two-inch book that was wedged up underneath some other book when I pulled it out to check its call number.

Another time in that same section, I couldn't find a book, and then when I was scanning 2 rows down for another, that book I was looking for was missing, but the other book that I had just been looking for before was right there in its place, oddly enough.

Perhaps my most memorable day was when I was double-checking the books via bar code.

When you go to a section, the call numbers look alike, so if you start checking the last three digits of the bar code numbers on the back of the books, that method tends to be faster, since the bar code numbers are all over the place and can't be confused as easily.

But, within three books of each other, I found bar codes with the same last three digits.

How often does that happen?

Given a big library, every great once in a while, I'd say.

It almost felt like Borges's "The Library of Babel".

(I know that's pretentious, but that's actually what I thought at the time.)

Also, my most moving experience was in the musical score section the other week, when I began thinking of all the music locked away and all the time that the composers had spent on it, aisle after aisle after aisle.

Simply horrific dream: Accident and injury.

The other week I dreamt -

I'm in a kitchen and the burner is on, and there's gaps a bit here and there in the floor near the stove, and through some just-visible pipes gas is escaping and there's miniature flames visible like little accidental unreachable burners.

I'm shucking an ear of corn, and as I do so, some corn silk falls on the floor and down through onto one of these flames, then lights up and floats above me and onto the back of my head, and I feel a searing fire.

I panic, and the next thing I know I have a towel and I'm wrapping my head in it and am snuffing out the flame from all of my hair on fire, and I can feel this horrendous pain over the back of my head and my right ear.

I know that all my hair is gone, and I have a huge bright shiny white patch all over the back of my head, forever,

Suddenly, I worry about my bar job orientation the next day, and how I'll look for that, and how I have nothing to cover my head with like a scarf or nice-looking hat that falls the right way so that I look normal and so that everyone there doesn't notice.

I also suddenly realize that my right ear is damaged, and the top just flops over, and even more than that, when it does so, the top half of my entire right ear is aching and starting to come off on a big fold of skin down and away from my head.

I take it and look in a mirror, and that part is a bloody mat where the skin is peeling away, and I look at it and keep hoping that the blood will start to scab and keep it in place.

Next, I talk to a few people in succession, and as I show them my ear, the scabbing blood gives away and the flesh starts to slowly peel down off my head, and I'm forced to hold my hand up against the flap to keep it in place, and I'm worried that my ear will tear even more until it's totally irretrievable and lost forever.

I also know that I haven't gone to the doctor in time because nothing is open, and so my overoptimistic procrastination might leave me unnecessarily grotesque for the remainder of my life.

. . .

(In real life, I had bar job orientation the next day, and the kids in the apt. upstairs were noisy at like 6:45am and I so I stuck my head under my pillow in order to sleep some more, which I think my mind translated into the towel and weird pressure on my right ear in my sleep, and it became malevolent and foreboding since my sleep was uneasy due to the noise.)

City discovery: Jewish deli.

The other week I was in this mall-y and semi-industrial part of the city just south/southwest of downtown, and I hadn't had dinner and remembered about this one deli I'd seen for years in a one-story building just off the strip with a sign out front for corned beef.

So, I go in, and it's actually cafeteria style, and Jewish.

Their stuff was about $4-5 pricier than you'd think since it's kosher, and the hand-painted menu above the cafeteria line had stuff like tongue on it, and in the cafeteria dishes one of them was just this huge pile of matzoh balls in really fatty chicken broth.

The (older) (mustachioed) (Jewish?) pulled out a plate and gave me a strip of corned beef, a strip of pastrami, and a strip of brisket to help me decide between them if I wanted a sandwich, and then he said that he could actually mix up meat on the sandwich if I wanted it, and there was a half-sandwich-and-soup deal that wasn't on the menu, but was good if you weren't up for a whole dinner.

"And I can't even finish half of one of these sandwiches," he was like.

So, I got half a sandwich with mixed corned beef and pastrami, and a bowl of matzoh soup, in the half-sandwich-and-soup deal.

At the end of the cafeteria line, too, this (younger) (Mexican) guy pointed out a bowl of donuts and was like, "Jewish donuts for dessert?".

"Those look good," I was like, "But I'm trying to lose some weight," and at that I patted my stomach and pulled out a roll of fat like I always do when I say that.

At that, he just started laughing, and pointed at my pastrami.

"With that?!", he was like.

The inside was incredibly homey, too, and they had a sign up how every Saturday for a couple hours around lunch a magician comes in and walks around and does tricks, which I take that they do so that people bring their kids in to eat.

I was struck by how vestigial the place was, and marvellous.  Both its storefront and its schtick were like something from decades and decades and decades ago.

I couldn't believe I was in the same world that I live in, and that I'd walked by this place forever and that reality had existed for years right near me without my knowing it.