“Are you still waiting, honey?” the waitress asked, coffee pot in hand as she approached the booth. I wondered how the answer wasn’t obvious since I was still sitting alone. I tapped my cigarette with my forefinger just over the rim of the ashtray as I nudged my mug toward her.

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered as she filled the cup, a motion so smooth and exact it could almost be called graceful. “Thanks.”

Her smile held an admirable amount of teeth for a Waffle House waitress. “No problem, sugar.” Squinting to prevent smoke from getting in my eyes, I exhaled audibly and reached for the sugar dispenser. Sweetener poured as I counted to three in my head, the last number stretched long enough to warrant a few more E‘s were it spelled phonetically. I stubbed out my cigarette with my right hand while stirring coffee with a spoon in my left, the jaded, young adult equivalent of patting your head while rubbing your stomach. Continue reading…

From the beginning, everyone told me, “Oh, that is a good job” or “Post Office jobs are hard to come by, you’d better hang on to that one!” Mind you, this advice never came from an actual postal employee, but from people like my Aunt Carolyn. Her only job was in the mid-eighties, cleaning dog hair from the drains of over-sized sinks at BarkenWoof Pet Salon before she got married.”You better not fuck this one up,” she warned me during Thanksgiving dinner of 2003, trying her best to sound omniscient with corn in her teeth. “Government benefits? Damn right.” Her lips glistened with grease as her mouth issued words of admonishment.

The job itself wasn’t terrible, mind you. The mail carriers never smelled that great and paper cuts were the biggest on-the-job hazard; but the customers, the needy fucking customers, became my biggest issue. After just a few months of slinging stamps and mindlessly asking, “Anything, liquid, fragile, perishable, or potentially hazardous,” (as if someone would scoff in disbelief and announce that they’ll be taking their nitroglycerin-and-kitten-shipping business elsewhere)  it became apparent some of these people thought of me as their friend. My courtesy and professionalism were readily being mistaken for genuine interest and affability by a segment of the population who collected fucking stamps and still wrote letters. Continue reading →

“What’s your number?” he asked as I used the straw to rearrange the ice in my glass. Never feeling completely comfortable in gay bars, I spent a fair amount of time seemingly contemplating the liquid/solid ratio of my Long Island Iced Teas.

“Uh…like, in inches?” I responded. Intention and sincerity have a hard time keeping their pants on in places like this. You can never tell with some of these guys if their first question is going to be, “What is your philosophy on life?” or “Are you a bottom or a top?” He wasn’t exactly exuding intelligence, so I assumed the latter question to be poised shortly.

He laughed a bit too hard and placed his hand on my arm, ceasing my stirring. “You are too funny!” he squealed. “I mean like, your number, like notches in your bedpost. How many guys have you been with?”

Up to that point, honestly, I had never considered keeping count; I never quite saw the point of it. The only tally that ever mattered to me was when the number changed from zero to one. Continue reading →