Pinkerton's Weblog

She's an Alcoholic

I was in a Chinese restaurant on a lunch break yesterday, by myself with a newspaper. (My co-workers are, to a man, uniformly vegan. This is LA — I eat meat, so I'm the outcast.)

Sometimes we go to a place that manages to accomodate both of us. Other times my coworkers get lunch at places that serve meals in small cups. Disinterested in the merits of liquified spinach and organic wheat germ, I decided to eat alone.

In typical Chinese restaurant style, my table was sandwiched against the tables of my neighbors. At the risk of sounding racist, I have to point out that this is a phenomenon I see most often while eating asian cuisine. I remember reading a sociology text once mentioning that Asian cultures have a different sense of personal space than Caucasians, as a result of their per capita population and, thus, daily proximity to one another. I don't know if that's the reason, or if I've just had the bad luck of frequenting every asian restaurant run by an asshole, but I've yet to dine on Korean, Japanese, Thai or Chinese food without getting shoehorned into a tiny eating space consisting of a chair, a table, dozens of blurred flailing stranger elbows and at least three simultaneous loud conversations.

The restaurant was almost empty, but the waiter seated me in a clump of seats next to the only other six people eating in the entire restaurant anyway. It gave us a more soothing communal experience, allowing us to gaze on the ocean of empty tables stretching out all around us.

Among this small clump was a duo of 14-year-old girls—a breed of teen so simultaneously self-conscious and over-confident that it makes my temples ache talking to them, and whom I typically try to avoid. Most likely sensing this, the ballsy one of the pair immediately started talking to me (actually, talking to the paper I had held up to my face and was reading) about how hungover she was from all the weed she smoked? And all the drinking she did? And, omigod, how she was probably an alcoholic? And last night? At a bar? This guy totally bought her like, omigod, $300 worth of free shots!

And so on for minutes. The quiet, dumpy one giggled, rolling her eyes at me in an "I can't contain her -- isn't she one in a million?" sort of way.

"You wanna know the best way to get rid of a hangover?" the alpha female continued.

"Sure," I said noncommitally, still reading my paper and avoiding eye contact. "What's the best way to get rid of a hangover?"

"A shot or a beer."

"Uh huh."

It was like having a conversation composed entirely of conversational openers, without any of the subsequent conversation that would usually follow. I suspected I could have been any 20-to-29-year-old at all and heard the same things.

Though I don't talk about it often on my blog, I've battled with alcoholism for some time. I've long since passed that point in my life where drinking was a monument of social significance ("I drank SOOO much last night!") and have since hit the point where the opposite is true, and I find myself downplaying my habits to coworkers on a regular basis because it's so lame ("What did I do last night? Certainly not sit at home and drink! I went to the library and made out with girls, of course.") But when you're actually in a situation where a fourteen-year-old is telling you ludicrous fiction about how much she drank, it's easy to remember how mysterious and forbidden drugs and alcohol used to be.

I didn't have any idea how to respond. A high five sent a hypocritical message, I suspected; conversely, a lecture wouldn't do any good either, and besides, I had a meal on the way. If I reamed her out I'd have to sit next to her while I ate my egg rolls. Awkward. I decided to be polite but non-committal.

"I swear I'm like an alcoholic," she said, oblivious to my indifference. "You smell like pot. Were you just doing it?"

"What?"

"Were you just smoking? You smell like it."

"I smell like pot? I just came from work."

"I don't mean that in a bad way -- I just love the smell of dope."

"I smell like dope?"

"Do you smoke a lot?"

"What? No. I don't smoke dope anymore. It makes me paranoid."

"I get that too!"

I moved in for checkmate. "So why do you do it?"

"Because I'm such an alcoholic. Do you smoke?"

"No."

"Why not? Smoking's amazing."

"I quit a month ago."

"That was stupid. Why would you do that? You stop liking it or something?"

"Yeah. I stopped liking it."

"I also love sex."

"Uh huh."

"Do you love sex?"

"I'm not talking about sex with you."

"Why not? Does it make you embarrassed?"

"No. It makes me arrested."

The alpha female was being incredibly loud by now —not angrily, but just in that vapid, clueless way typical of the fourteen-year-old. It's not even like she was being intentionally rude. She was actually really this clueless. I could feel the stares of everyone in the restaurant around me, urging me not to encourage her further.

After a few minutes it became clear it'd be impossible not to. She just kept lobbing conversational assault after conversational assault at me. She wasn't trying to be intrusive — she just really really wanted me to think she was cool. And, of course, an alcoholic.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" she asked.

"No."

"Why not? You're all employed and shit, dress nice..."

"...smell like dope..."

"Yeah. You're funny. How come you don't have a girlfriend?"

"I'm shy."

"You're shy?"

"Yeah. I dont go to, like, clubs and stuff. I'm shy."

"Oh. I went to a club last night. I swear I must be an alcoholic."

"Uh huh."

"Are you an alcoholic?"

"Actually, yes."

"It rules, huh?"

"Not really. Being an alcoholic means you can't drink. It doesnt mean you can drink as much as you want."

"Yeah. I wish I had some dope right now."

"Uh huh."

"What are you reading?"

"Just... nothing."

"I should have known you didn't smoke dope when I saw the newspaper."

"Why?"

"You know. Nobody who smokes is gonna read."

"If you smoke dope you don't read?"

"Well. Not as much."

"Uh huh."

"What do you do in your job? Do you know that sauce made your lips red?"

"Really?"

"Yeah. Your lips are bright red."

"Shit. Thanks."

Shit. Stupid sauce. My meal'd gotten there by this point, by the way.

"So what do you do?" she continued.

"I write."

"What, all day?"

"What do you do? You go to school?"

"Not today. I'm too hungover. You take it from the Man?"

"What?"

"You take it? From the Man?"

"Do I take what from the Man? Like, anal sex?"

[shower of giggles] "NO!" [shower of giggles] "Do you hate fags?"

"No. I don't hate gay people."

"Oh, yeah? What if one like wanted to kiss you?"

"They wouldn't want to."

"What if they did?"

"What?"

"What would you do?"

"I wouldnt let him kiss me, I guess."

"But you dont hate fags."

"No."

"Hey, there's Brent. I totally want you to meet Brent!"

At this point Brent, in his Radio Shack uniform, showed up with three other guys, and I apparently had to meet them now, and go through basically the same entire conversation I'd just had about alcoholism and why it rules more than anything else has ever ruled. My embarrassment started to mount, since no matter which way this ended up leaning — they all thought I was really cool or a huge loser — either way I was a huge loser, because I was 27 and had somehow gotten involved in the ongoing soap opera of fourteen-year-olds.

Not only that, but I started to get distinct vibes that Brent thought I might be moving in on his lady. That sounded bad for at least five reasons, three of which ended with me in jail.

Part of me wanted to tell Brent his girlfriend was letting guys buy her shots all night, but most of me just wanted to leave. I'd already had a bad day, and now I was rapping with teens in a Chinese buffet in a mall about what big alcoholics we all were. I didn't need this.

I got up and decided to pay at the register, my meal half eaten.

"Are you leaving?"

"Looks like it."

"Well, it was nice meeting you."

"It was nice meeting you too."

"Your lips are still red."

"Thank you. I'll take a look at it before I go back."

"Don't let the Man get you down."

"I'll try not to let him take me from behind, thank you. Bye."

On my way out, Brent shot me a glance that let me know I'd made the right move, and alpha-girl shot me a look that let me know that, if I'd had the inclination, I could have easily gone to jail. I nodded curtly at both of them, avoiding the temptation to say something. Part of me remembered their world fondly — when drinking wasn't a monkey on a back but an adventure to be uncovered; when sex was both foreign and yet lurking around every corner; when bothering other people while they ate wasn't a concept that existed yet.

Another part of me remembered the first time I uncovered the end of that grand drinking adventure, and wound up puking up stomach lining on the floor of my bathroom at three in the morning; a time when sex was fumbling and unfulfilling, little more than a tit grab and a few desperate, confused thrusts; a time when, it now occurs to me, I probably acted exactly like these idiots and didn't even know. Looking at Brent now, puffing out his salllow chest and covered in polyester Radio Shack uniform and acne, I realized that youth was a beautiful curse we should all experience. Once.

I put my hands in my pockets and went back to work, hoping I didn't actually smell like pot.

Leftovers

Hi, everyone. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. In the spirit of the turkey sandwich you no doubt have packed in your lunch today, I present some leftovers for you — a piece I wrote months ago but never posted, entitled "82 Reasons To Empathize with Your Government."

Carol Burnett said that "Comedy is tragedy plus time." I think that's why I never really got behind this one enough to show it around. I'd scribbled it on a legal pad while I was waiting in a government office, and the entire thing lacks distance. I wasn't giving the tragedy enough time to mellow in my brain and become funny to me. Also, at 2500 words, it was sorta long. So I shitcanned it.

Still, it has some funny bits in it. And writing it did get me through a boring afternoon in a government office. And recording everything around me in real-time was an interesting experiment.

So what the fuck. Here it is months later, edited and re-written a bit, but essentially little changed from my original scrawled notes. Hope you like it.

82 Reasons To Empathize with Your Government

“Forty-three? Forty-three?”

This is a bad number to hear when you’re holding a ticket stub with an 82 on it. It’s an even worse number if you’ve ducked out for a half hour, and when you left they’d been calling 39. Under these circumstances, 43 takes on an ominous significance greater than its sum—one that tells you to get comfortable, as you won’t be going anywhere for quite some time.

I’ve taken the day off work to go down to a government office and get a replacement birth certificate, so I can travel later this month. When I’d told someone this the day before — that I’d booked an entire day off just to get a birth certificate — I’d gotten a look of naked and confused shock, like I’d expressed an interest in spending the day purchasing child pornography.

Having some experience in this area (waiting in line, not purchasing child pornography), I can assure you: if the sign says 20 minute wait, you’ll be there all day. If it says two-hour wait, you’ll be there, again, all day. Basically take any number they give you and multiply it by two. Then multiply that by two. It won’t give you anything remotely accurate as to your waiting time, but it’ll kill a few minutes while you’re sitting around in a sterile government office all day.

I thought I was pretty slcik showing up as soon as the doors opened at 8:30am. I assumed I’d have the place to myself. So the fact that I can count some forty people ahead of me in the ticket stub line leads me to conclude they fell asleep in their chairs while waiting here yesterday and got locked in for the night.

I used to get furious at the designed incompetence of my government in action, but somehow over the years, repetition hardened my fury into a calcified ball of resigned irritation. This is most likely how the government can continue to get away with the same laughably bad service and not be mobbed in the street and rage-fucked to death. If any of us had actually retained that sense of betrayal from the first time we recognized our representative governmental body as slow, stupid and outright idiotic, we’d have rousted them out of office with pitchforks by now and used the real estate for something more useful, like planting corn.

Government workers survive only through an ironic fault of our species, in that we only demand competency in the most inconsequential aspects of our lives. Put up a headline declaring criminal misuse of our tax dollars and we’ll shake our heads with a knowing, rueful smile; deliver our pizzas fifteen minutes late and we’re making long distance calls to Papa John’s head office to issue the sort of threats that’d make Charles Bronson look at us awkwardly.

I’d be more simpatico with governmental inefficiency if its workers could at least muster up the courage to be smug and villainous about it. I know I would be, if I was getting paid to watch you watch me waste large amounts of your money and time. It’s somehow worse to endure incompetence from someone who isn’t even aware to what a huge degree they’re biting. It’s like getting invited over to Christian Slater’s place and discovering to your horror that he’s about to throw on ‘Kuffs’—it’s more bearable if he at least gives you a pained wink and says “Yeah, I know.”

Waiting in line, it gradually becomes apparent to me that the government claims no monopoly on stupidity. I shit you not, a government worker is actually having to explain to some ten people in front of me that they’ll need both a filled-out form and proper identification to get a birth certificate issued to them.

The scene baffles me. Who just shows up for a birth certificate? I’m a pretty self-absorbed guy — if asked where the sun rises in the morning I’m apt to point to my own ass with a knowing wink — but even I’m aware that the government is probably going to require more than a pinky-swear before issuing me federal identification. Watching these potatoheads yelling at a government worker that the length of their drive to the government office is grounds enough for obtaining potentially fraudulent ID, I begin to understand why getting one of these things is such an all-day ordeal.

* * *

Actually, I mislead. Applying for a replacement birth certificate is an all-day ordeal. Actually getting one takes months, presumably because the government spends hours of perfectly good card-printing time explaining basic office procedure to morons. Since this tends to eat up most of a day, they’ve helpfully added something called “emergency service.” Essentially, if you bring in proof that you need the ID — plane tickets or a hotel room receipt — and are willing to pay a few extra bucks for it, they’ll have it shipped out to you within the week. I’d read about this online, printed out the form they'd provided and made sure that I’d gotten all the proof I’d need to establish my emergency ahead of time.

The elderly couple ahead of me in line, it turns out, is also here for emergency service. I overhear their heated argument with the government worker and learn that they’ve driven all morning to get to this office but, in the lone flaw of their immaculate plan to obtain emergency service, have brought no proof whatsoever of their emergency. In government terms, this is like to showing up at the E.R. with an itchy thumb and demanding a liter-size morphine drip.

When told they need to prove their need for emergency service, the elderly man explodes in spittly geriatric fury. “That’s what they told me in Kitchener too!” he exclaims, damning both offices with the same suave rebuke. “That’s why I came here!”

This man fascinates me, frankly. I’m in love with his funhouse perception of how the government works — that a building could actually exist where filthy sadists demand frivolous proof of emergency to suit their black-hearted whims, and can only be foiled by driving to the good-guy building the next town over. If I’m alone in picturing a knuckle-biting freeway chase between our plucky farmer hero and the villains on the way there, then you didn’t watch enough bad movies starring Michael J. Fox or Hulk Hogan in the 80s, and you should frankly be ashamed of yourself. Was your time so precious?

I am entertained for the next half-hour by the looks of surprise and horror from the people ahead of me as they are turned away – people with improperly filled-out forms; with no forms filled out at all; with no identification at all; people unaware what identification and forms are and just happy to be in line with friendly, non-threatening faces. Every one of them seems to be from that annoying section of society who thinks rules are what other people have to follow to make their lives easier. They’ve raced past an enormous sign that reads “You Cannot Be Served Unless Your Form Has Been Signed By A Guarantor!” and stroll up to the government official empty-handed and confident, fully expecting they’ll be recognized as the swell folks they are and quickly shuffled through while the rest of us wait. You could go on about television or our fame-obsessed culture as reasons for the self-absoprtion on display here, and I invite you to; your boring monologue will distract the police while I run these selfish idiots over with my car.

I’ve watched the government employee interrogate ten people by now, and the lag has allowed me to get everything ready for him by the time he approaches.

“You bring the proper form?” he sighs, expecting another argument.

I hand the form over already opened to the third page, superceding his next question about whether or not I had a guarantor sign it. He looks it over and nods.

“Nice. Is this for emergency service?”

I nod.

“Did you bring proof of this emergency?”

“Day’s Inn and Air Canada receipts,” I say, producing them.

“Jesus Christ,” he says.

He quickly gives me a number stub and a smile, and I’m ushered into the waiting room with two hundred other people to wait for my number to be called. I’m a little upset by this — I’d half expected to get ushered into another room for people exceptional enough to find out beforehand how to do something properly.

Sadly, life doesn’t work like this. A classroom moves at the pace of its dumbest kid; a film is aimed at the intellect of its stupidest viewer; and a government office is custom-fit to address the complaints of its most retarded constituents. I guess the theory is that non-idiots can read the instructions on the side of the tax form without blaming the government for tricking them into giving themselves paper cuts. In other words, if you’re competent enough to govern yourself adequately without needing to complain about it, you’re on your own.

* * *

“Sixty-Three!”

By now I’ve read the newspaper all the way through. I can tell I’m in trouble when I start to read my horoscope. I’m positive I’m in trouble when I start to read the horoscopes of others. After a while boredom sets in, and to pass the time I start writing the impromptu journal you’re now reading.

An alarmingly deep-tanned woman in a floral print dress is, as I write this, walking from person to person asking what forms she needs to fill out. Naturally, this is one of the many many people with a ticket stub lower in number than mine, whose needs will have to be addressed prior to mine. People like this irritate me to no end—they’re the same personality type who can wait in a McDonald’s line for twenty minutes but not have a clue what to order when they get to the register, craning their enormous empty heads up to the menu as if seeing it for the first time. I kill five pleasant minutes imagining her being chased shrieking around the room by a pack of wild dogs.

As much as the floral-printed woman is getting on my nerves, I grudgingly approve of her wandering around the waiting room, since there’s a possibility she’ll accidentally step on — and thus silence — any one of the eight shrieking children bashing at their dead-eyed mothers’ legs with sharp plastic toys. I kill five pleasant minutes imagining each of them being swallowed in two big bites by a pack of wild dogs, while their mothers maintain their oblivious straight-ahead stares.

* * *

“Sixty-six? Sixty-six?”

There is a police officer sitting calmly in the corner that I notice for the first time by the time I’ve been there three hours. As I write this, she’s viciously interrogating the nail on her ring finger with her teeth. It’s disturbing to imagine how badly you’d have to fuck up as an officer of the law to get assigned birth certificate duty. Officer Mallory fires clip after clip into the gas tank of the bus driving the children with cancer to Disneyland, convinced of the drug dealers hidden in the wheel well. Officer Mallory pauses to wonder if she’s making the right play, before tightening her suffocating headlock on a beet-purple U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan.

Why is a policer officer’s presence required in the waiting room of a birth certificate office? I suppose fraud’s a serious enough offense; I just hadn’t realized a botched job necessarily led to knocked-over tables and a firefight. After three hours waiting in the same chair, I’m praying someone will commit fraud soon. I don’t care about the body count; I’ve merely achieved a level of boredom so profound that only the use of deadly force will entertain.

* * *

The large coffee I downed two hours ago is threatening to explode out of my bladder at high speeds and shower the row ahead of me. But I can’t leave. Common sense dictates that I’ll be here for another hour at least before #84’s called. Still, so far people are being given all of 0.00005 seconds to stand up when their number’s called before the next one is called. After a half-hour of total inactivity, for instance, we suddenly rocketed forward from #58 to #66 in the space of ten seconds. What happened to poor #61? She went to the bathroom, of course, assuming that she still had a good forty minutes to wait. After three hours, I refuse to get similarly caught with my pants down—or even up but with the fly down. “I ain’t got time to pee,” to paraphrase Jesse Ventura’s immortal turn as That Guy With the Chaw and Helicopter Gun from Predator. Wise.

A child stops crying briefly, and 80 heads turn to see if he’s died or something. Not the case, sadly.

I am about to return to my horoscope for the twentieth time when a woman with casually enormous breasts sits down across from me. Normally I wouldn’t gawk, but by this point four hours have passed. I know from memory that Geminis will be successful with a new business opportunity today. If getting an eyeful of tits for a minute makes me Hitler, I’m prepared to deal with that.

I think I might be able to spot a nipple through the tight fabric, making this officially the most interesting thing to happen in this room since someone dropped a pen at 10:43. I get the beginnings of an erection, easily the second.

* * *

“Seventy-three!”

I’ve begun checking my number stub obsessively—to see if it’s still in my breast pocket; to verify that it still says #82; to check for any fine print to see if I’m in the right room. This is the sound of your brain with the leash off in a very small yard.

I’m wishing now that I’d brought one of those phone booth-thick Stephen King novels.

As if testing me, the number of available tellers drops from four to one in a second. Evidently they’ve coordinated their coffee breaks to better give me an aneurism.

”Forty-eight? I think we missed you. Forty-eight?”

Jesus Christ. They’re going backwards now.

I see one employee return from the bathroom happy and smiling, and I curse his empty bladder with every drop of the twelve quarts of piss in me. He stops to chat with a co-worker, leaning against a filing cabinet like he has all the time in the world. He does. We all do. We have all the time we’ll ever need to sit here all day, and listen to it pass by.

I check my stub again. To my surprise, it still says #82, so I check it again to be sure.