The Eye-Opener

It all starts with a bowl of soup.

I’ve spent the better part of the last three or four years being bitter. I’ve been bitter about work, bitter about life, and bitter about myself. I’m not sure where this bitterness has come from.

I have my theories. Thousands upon thousands of hours of dealing with drunks is a likely source. Thousands upon thousands of hours of being, not necessarily smarter than, but, certainly, significantly more aware of everything around me than the vast majority of my co-workers and supervisors is another factor. Constant frustration can certainly wear on you. Who knew?

I’ve been given the gift, maybe the curse, of a very acute power of observation. When I bitch to my mom about the things I see at work, she sees it in me. When I talk to my best friends about my frustrations with the public, they see it in me.

But what do I really have to be bitter about? I make good money doing a job that I’m good at and that most people actually have a generous respect for. If you don’t believe me, why don’t you try talking to people in a mostly genial manner for nine hours a day, five days a week? But remember, the people you already know want to be treated like you’ve never met them before and the people you don’t know want to be treated like you’ve been friends for years. Every time you see them. Every week. Every day. Go ahead, give it a try.

I pay my bills, I put some money into savings, and, to a certain extent, I have the freedom to do whatever I want with the rest of my time.

Maybe my bitterness comes from the tediousness. Tenacity? Tenaciousness. Tedinacitiousness? Whatever. I’ve been doing this a long time. And as much as the bar business changes from day to day, in a sick, inversely-exponential kind of way, it stays the same. Yes, I see new faces every day. But at the same time, I clean the same bottles, I make the same drinks, I shake the same hands, I pour the same beer for the same regular like I have four days a week for the last year just to have him tell me that today was the day he was going to try something new but that it’s MY fault that I didn’t wait ask him what he wanted to drink before I poured it, and I deal with the same people who ask for their drinks with “light ice” because they somehow think their drink will be stronger if they get it like that.

Here’s a quick lesson in physics and displacement: Fill one glass full of ice and fill a similar glass halfway with ice. Pour one and a half ounces of rum into both glasses. Now, without adding anything else, you get to fill both glasses the rest of the way with coke. Just by looking at both glasses, which one would you choose? Good. I didn’t graduate college and I can figure that one out. Go tell all your friends.

So there’s this bitterness. It’s quite possible that it exists because I can’t control what other people do and, apparently, I really need to. Strike that. I don’t NEED to. I feel this urge to because I see how things can be done in a good way, the appropriate way, in a bar, but nobody else seems to think that way. Again, it’s the power of observation.

I don’t want to be bitter. I was unemployed (under-employed, to be completely truthful) for five months. That was awful. I was getting unemployment benefits. That was awful. That was bitter. I could be forced to have a job cleaning urinals at the local biker bar. That would be even more awful. Like I said before, I make good money at a good job that I’m really, really good at. So why is there this bitterness?

Before I move on, I’d like to get back to that bowl of soup. Wait, much like Willy Wonka, I have to go back before I can move forward. So I’d better move along.

I used to be cheerful. Like, all the time cheerful. I’d smile and laugh and nothing could bother me. I went through a phase where I literally was saying to my mom, as she ranted about something in her life, “Let it go.” Over and over and over again, I said it to her: “Let it go.” Somewhere along the way, I stopped being able to let it go.

When I worked downtown, I would take the same route to work every day. And every day I saw the same homeless lady with her dog on the same corner. I thought to myself, more than once, “I could do something for them.” I was thinking that more for the dog’s sake than the woman’s. I had this grand plan of getting a few cans of dog food for the dog and a few cans of ravioli for the woman, then delivering them and wishing her and the dog my best. But it never happened. To this day, I still think about them and wish that I’d done something. I couldn’t let it go.

I’d become bitter. Why should I spend my hard-earned money on something for a beggar? I worked hard for my money. It’s MY money.

Yes, it is my money. But I have a lot of it. I have more than a lot of people could hope for. And yes, I have a tendency to spend my expendable income rather frivolously. And yes, it’s my right to do with it what I please.

But why couldn’t I do something for someone like that woman? Why couldn’t I take ten bucks a week and deliver some canned and ready to eat, albeit cold, ravioli to a homeless person? Why not?

And now I’ll get back to the soup.

Two nights ago an older homeless gentleman came in and sat in the middle of my mostly empty bar. How did I know he was homeless? Well, his missing teeth, scraggily clothes, and general lack of good hygiene were three sure signs. I eyed him suspiciously as I approached him, as I’d removed homeless guys from my bar and seen homeless guys removed from bars in which I frequent, and I wasn’t sure what to expect.

He calmly and quietly asked if he could have a glass of water, as he was waiting to meet someone. I obliged, as he didn’t seem to be much of a trouble maker, although I did doubt his assertion that he was meeting another person. He sat there for about fifteen minutes and drank his water and watched the game that was on tv. I went to ask him if he would like some more water when he leaned over a little and humbly asked me if we needed any kitchen help that night. I told him I was sorry, but that we were fully staffed for the evening. He thanked me and started to gather himself together to leave. I abruptly told him to wait and he got this worried look in his face. I smiled and said it was nothing bad, just that I wanted him to wait.

And that’s when the cheerful, non-bitter Kevin in me came out. I went in the back and poured a bowl of soup into a to-go container. That night we happened to be serving New England clam chowder with a garnish of bacon. If you know me, then you know my love for bacon. I put extra bacon in his soup.

I went out to the front and gave him his soup and wished him the best, just like I wish I’d done for that homeless woman and her dog. He didn’t ask for anything else. He didn’t say he’d be back. He didn’t try and bless me with God’s love. He simply said thank you and walked out the door. And for the simplicity of his gratitude, I will be eternally grateful.

It made me realize this: I have no reason to be bitter. I have a good life that I get to enjoy the way I want to.

And I want to say that I didn’t write this for me. Well, maybe a little, I did. But I didn’t write this to receive praise from you. I wrote this FOR you.

Don’t forget what makes you happy. Don’t forget the people that make you happy. Don’t be bitter about the things you can’t control. Laugh about them, instead. Give what you can, if you want. But things could be worse and there’s really no reason to be miserable in our good fortune.

I liked that the “old Kevin” came out for a little bit. I hope that homeless man comes back. I’d like to know his name. I’d like to buy him another bowl of soup. But mostly, and a little selfishly, I like what he brought out in me, and I’d like to see that again.

--TheKevin--

The Genius of David Foster Wallace

I am not an envious person. When I come across someone doing something extraordinary--a football player throwing a perfectly-placed spiral 50 yards downfield, a comic book artist whose artwork moves something deep and reptilian within me--I may think to myself, "It would be cool to be able to do that." But I almost never feel this thought in the tiny little hematocyte-spewing depths of my bones; sure, it would be cool to be able to do those things, but it's not a powerful desire.
This is not the case with the work of David Foster Wallace. I truly wish I could write like DFW. He was, quite simply, an unparalleled genius. We throw that word around these days, and it's pretty well devalued at this point, but I mean it in the literal sense. He was a man with a profound intellect, as well as an ultimately fatal sense of the human condition (borne, if you ask me, out of the curse/gift that is depression). He made a habit of explaining the ebb and flow of life in an extraordinary way, in a way that seemed both profoundly revelatory and, once you'd read his take on it, exceedingly obvious. He was a master wordsmith.
I'm finishing up his book, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, which is a collection of essays and arguments. I'm currently reading the titular essay, about a 7-day cruise he took at the behest of the magazine Harper's (this is a perfect example of what I meant in the last paragraph about being a genius; he got paid to go on a luxury cruise because just his take on the entire affair would be fascinating enough to justify the expense--he was that good). 
About 35 pages into the essay, I ran across a section that--to my mind--is one of the greatest things ever written. It's not flashy. It's not pretentious. It's not even particularly deep, in the "what does it all mean" sense. It's simply quintessential DFW; effortlessly witty, penetrating, and, somehow, gloriously innocent. I've copied it below so that you may experience DFW in all his glory.
I hope you enjoy it.

"Celebrity's fiendish brochure does not lie or exaggerate, however, in the luxury department. I now confront the journalistic problem of not being sure how many examples I need to list in order to communicate the atmosphere of sybaritic and nearly insanity-producing pampering on board the m.v. Nadir.

How about for just one example Saturday 11 March, right after sailing but before the North Sea weather hits, when I want to go out to Deck 10's port rail for some introductory vista-gazing and thus decide I need some zinc oxide for my peel-prone nose. My zinc oxide's still in my big duffel bag, which at that point is piled with all of Deck 10's other luggage in the little area between the 10-Fore elevator and the 10-Fore staircase while little men in cadet-blue Celebrity jumpsuits, porters—-entirely Lebanese, this squad seems to be—-are cross-checking the luggage tags with the Nadir's passenger list Lot #s and organizing the luggage and taking it all up the Port and Starboard halls to people's cabins.

And but so I come out and spot my duffel among the luggage, and I start to grab and haul it out of the towering pile of leather and nylon, with the idea that I can just whisk the bag back to Cabin 1009 myself and root through it and find my good old ZnO; and one of the porters sees me starting to grab the bag, and he dumps all four of the massive pieces of luggage he's staggering with and leaps to intercept me. At first I'm afraid he thinks I'm some kind of baggage thief and wants to see my claim check or something. But it turns out that what he wants is my duffel: he wants to carry it to 1009 for me. And I, who am about half again this poor little herniated guy's size (as is the duffel bag itself), protest politely, trying to be considerate, saying Don't Fret, Not a Big Deal, Just Need My Good Old ZnO. I indicate to the porter that I can see they have some sort of incredibly organized ordinal luggage-dispersal system under way here and that I don’t mean to disrupt it or make him carry a Lot #7 bag before a Lot #2 bag or anything, and no I’ll just get the big old heavy weatherstained sucker out of here myself and give the little guy that much less work to do.

And then now a very strange argument indeed ensues, me v. the Lebanese porter, because it turns out I am putting this guy, who barely speaks English, in a terrible kind of sedulous-service double-bind, a paradox of pampering: viz. the The-Passenger's-Always-Right-versus-Never-Let-A-Passenger-Carry-His-Own-Bag paradox. Clueless at the time about what this poor little Lebanese man is going through, I wave off both his high-pitched protests and his agonized expression as mere servile courtesy, and I extract the duffel and lug it up the hall to 1009 and slather the old beak with ZnO and go outside to watch Florida recede cinematically a la F. Conroy.

     Only later did I understand what I'd done. Only later did I learn that that little Lebanese Deck 10 porter had his head just about chewed off by the (also Lebanese) Deck 10 Head Porter, who’d had his own head chewed off by the Austrian Chief Steward, who received confirmed reports that a Deck 10 passenger had been seen carrying his own bag up the Port hallway of Deck 10 and now demanded rolling Lebanese heads for this clear indication of porterly dereliction, and had reported (the Austrian Chief Steward did) the incident (as is apparently SOP) to an officer in the Guest Relations Dept., a Greek officer with Revo shades and a walkie-talkie and officerial epaulets so complex I never did figure out what his rank was; and this high-ranking Greek guy actually came around to 1009 after Saturday's supper to apologize on behalf of practically the entire Chandris shipping line and to assure me that ragged-necked Lebanese heads were even at that moment rolling down various corridors in piacular recompense for my having had to carry my own bag. And even though this Greek officer's English was in lots of ways better than mine, it took me no less than ten minutes to express my own horror and to claim responsibility and to detail the double bind I'd put the porter in—-brandishing at relevant moments the actual tube of ZnO that had caused the whole snafu—-ten or more minutes before I could get enough of a promise from the Greek officer that various chewed-off heads would be reattached and employee records unbesmirched to feel comfortable enough to allow the officer to leave; and the whole incident was incredibly frazzling and angst-fraught and filled almost a whole Mead notebook and is here recounted in only its barest psychoskeletal outline."




--Gryffindork (all rights belonging to Harper's, DFW's estate, whatevs)