"why i dont go out" or "that creepy guy is staring at me again"

so the afore mentioned christmas party was sunday. extra fun. it was touch and go as to wether i was going to be able to get out of work to go (you cant make up excuses to get out of work so you can go to your job's christmas party, especially when the party is downstairs), but i made it and i looked jazzy as haelll( thats how you say i when you looked as jazzy as my ass did).

let me recount the day. i went to work, blabla, and creepy guy was there. creepy guy is a man(a man. he's 28) who works with us who still lives at home, smiles all the damn time and has this afro/dreds combo compareable to the adoreable crabman from "my name is earl." all this is fine in pieces, but when you put it all together it is what we like to refer to as too many adjectives. and: he's creepy. he likes every girl in our restaurant and has the mental state of a 13 year old when "flirting." i assume his still living at home has something to do with that. he's a vegetarian, which is cool, but one day when refering to a hunting show he said, "why do white people have to kill animals? animals are of color too." of color- meaning cows and deer were a part of the civil rights struggle and marched on washington too? i thinkest not.

so anyway, creepy guy went somewhere after his shift but before the party, and proceeded to come back to work high. squinty and smelly high. all cloudy up in his crabman fro. it was the dumbest thing i had ever seen anyone do. and i have seen some things. he must know we dont like him and would rat him out in a heartbeat. our shift manager was RIGHT THERE!!!! he isnt an actual employee as much as a seasonal one, so he had to be escorted into the party.

meanwhile, kesi is lost on peachtree street. my co worker had given him shady directions so i had to get a map to maneuver him through the series of one way streets that is downtown ATL. once at the parkinglot, he informs me that he has no cash and drives off to a lot that takes cards, which is CLOSED. so i must once again maneuver him back to the hotel i work at, scrounge up some money from the co worker who gave us bad directions in the first place, and go out to the lot, without a jacket, in 20 degree weather to pay the lil machine.

he was at the wrong lot. the one i wanted him to go to DID take credit. and i am cold. its time to party.

i change from a burgundy uniform to an equally burgundy but way sexier dress. kesi, who had never seen me in the dress, said something to the effect of, "wow." i told you i was jazzy. we enter the party and sit with two coworkers, one who looks like james cagney in his suit and another who looks like the pastor's wife (in a whitney houston way). and creepy guy, who is wearing a beige suit i can only assume is made of hemp. kesi volunteers to sit next to him so i dont have to. what a guy. and he looked good too. in my favorite color on him: baby blue. -drool-

we get drinks, eat a lil, the electric slide plays and of course we dance. at one point a slow song comes on and he gets prom-reminiscent and smiles all goofy at me. his "i really love you" smile. as stoic as he can be at times, he breaks out the emotion every once in a while, and its always when i least expect it.

my friends show up, we give each other compliments, i run my hands through my friends dreads and traumatise myself at how grossly sweaty they are. the dj talks over and through really good songs- at one point stopping the new T-pain song cause there were only "10 people on the floor." BASTARD. those 10, myself included, were in love. with strippers, no less. my sweaty dredded friend was singing to his "date"(another seasonal worker who asked him to take her so she could get in) and the dj messed up that moment. we didnt like him much, but when he wasnt talking he was playing the jams. i even taught kesi how to dance to latin music as best he could in tims.

i NEVER stopped dancing. not when i got soft shoed on, not when someone spilled a LITER of alcohol on the dance floor, not when creepy guy was staring at me...need i mention he had only the big chick with bad breath to dance with? and almost every time i happened to look in his general area, he was staring at me, with that goofy ass smile he has. but i just kept on dancing. reggae, salsa, hiphop...dj talksalot's remixes... til midnight.

but before midnight, my homegirl got drunk and started dancing on me and kesi. i am so sure smitty's got a pic of that. after she walked away she fell, and the dishwasher, who has a crush on any 20something that shows him slight attention, caught her and didnt let her go for the rest of the night. it would have been cute, if i didnt know she barfed all through monday.

so all in all a good night. i woke up monday morning with a burning pain in my thighs and realized i need to do this way more or not at all. i'm sure lauren has the answers to that.

i was not screening...i was at work

i am always at work. i live there now, didnt you hear?

i am always at work, or school or in transit, or rarely sleeping. i am 22 for god sakes!!!!!

i was listening to the radio yesterday morning (on my way to work, naturally) and they asked the question "who out there hasnt been out in ages?" and they wanted the best stories as to when you had been to a club or a party, and how long its been. and i thought about it...lets just run down the list:

*october: went to fur(?) in DC, waited for 1.5 hours. didnt get in. cam'ron got shot.
*april: lauren came to town. went to 112 and got there an hour before last call but still woulda paid $20. we went to intermezzo instead and had a bad time.
*february: turned 21, went BOWLING and had my first legal drink. had a great time with 5 friends.
*december: job's christmas party which kesi didnt come with me to because he "couldnt find his slacks."
* october 2002: went to some club in DC whose name sounds like b2k... lauren's friend's girlfriend whined the whole time.

and next week the christmas party comes back around. i am going and i am gonna have a damn good time if i have to give that man i date a pair of my pants to put on. then comes christmas where after my best friend (who i wrote about in the 10 minutes i had time to do so when i was taking a break from my sociology project, and could have done a better job describing how much she means to me but i was rushed as the project was due the next day and didnt have any other time to do it) reads this she will surely drag me out of the house to Compound and make me drink like the irresponsible 20something i am not. and then new years where my mother in law will try to get me to smoke weed with her, which i will decline beacuse it makes me more dizzy than anything else nowadays.

until then i have 2 finals, 3 more days of work, a song analysis i an supposed to be doing now, and a secret santa present to buy. also getting my car fixed so someone else can drive it cuz i dont have a license nor time to get one.

so no dear, i wasnt screening you. i would have loved to pick up, but i was at work. i am am always at work.

my buddy and me!!!

shani-o said...
Hey Joy... I've really been enjoying your writing... it's similar to Lauren's, but quite a bit less depressing.Take care...


so, lala and i had our first friendaversary this year, after 9 (or to hear her tell it 10) years of friendship. i told her this was proof of the kind of unconventional relationship we have.

it all started when we were 12. she and i were both new to this school where people would soon weave in and out of our futures. whether it be our math teacher or fellow students or stupid boys, they came and went. we went and came.

long story short, someone told her i said she was a whore. i would never say that about a person who i had just met. i'm from ct, for god sakes. i have a higher sensibility than that. ;) so we werent friends at first, but we had mutual friends. that brought us closer and while other best friends came and went- holly, nyshia, the other lauren, brandi, symone....the list goes on people- she and i were always there.

we listened to each other, read each others diaries, read each other's poetry...listened to the same music, kissed the same boys- which i must say did niether of us any good cuz those boys were ragedy. we envied the other's strength and aspired to be because the other was. neither of us had sisters and our mothers were (are?) nuts, so we were it.

9 years later, we are adults. we still affect each other and know that no matter who comes and goes we will be two old, crazy women together. any man that i love has to love her, and any man who loves her must be loved by me, and any variation of the sort. but who doesnt love her? she and kesi are constantly in this A-town bond that i cant ever get (hellyoutalkinbout....?).

and so i love her. i can see what shani was saying. we have had the same influences, but i dont think i am less depressing than lauren. i am generaly in denial. i force myself to see the smallest of bright sides where she is the realist. isnt that more depressing? who knows.

but if she's there wont there always be a bright side to see?

the whore and i...

Does every hotel have a resident whore? Mine does. It also has a ghost, but thats another story for another day.

i dont know her name, and clearly thats for a reason. The first time i saw her she had on see-through pants. The moment she walked into my gift shop i thought: stripper? She asked if we carried condoms, and if lifestyles was "all we had." i then thought, prostitute!

It was wild. I had never spoken to someone i thought might actually do something so irreprehensible. She came by many times and had a routine: condoms out of the box, no receipt, exact change. she was the woman whom i would talk about behind her back: "i wonder how much she makes? people have sex with her? her boobs are sooooo fake." i was the ultimate in this seasons hater fashions. she was 6 foot garbage walking to the bar. a person i could look down on with VERY good reason.

but...
as time went on something weird happened. i realized she looked like a girl i used to know. a girl i used to laugh with but had lost through the years. that girl had a name: lindsay. I even mentioned them -lindsay and the unnamed whore- in a poem i wrote. Thats when she became human. Thats when i started to think of how she spent her day.

A few weeks ago she came into the shop in a cute outfit (Over the past months she'd realized dressing like a whore wasnt the key to making money). Before i knew what i was doing, i complemented her. We joked about how before someone bought it for her, she had no idea how to even pronounce enyce, a point i could relate to (NYC? ennice? e-nee-cee?). here i was, this person who believes i am so much better than this girl whose only source of income was between her legs, talking and laughing with her.

the othe day, i watched a documentary which included this group of asian transxexual cabaret performers. of course i watched in awe and novelty as i relayed the things they said and did to kesi over the phone. "they look like women! they have boyfriends too! there's 300,000 of them in thailand!" then one of them said something like, "we may be different, we may be men or women or both, but no matter what we look like, we are all alike in our emotions."

all this is is to say, everyone is human. I at one point looked at the prostitute as something to not be. Everything about her was wrong. and while i cannot follow in her particular choice of career- at the same time, i couldnt be a nurse or an accountant- there's got to be some redeeming qualities in her and anyone. god loves her- and me for that matter and i have done some dumb shit without taking money- so who am i to judge?

in conclusion, stop hating.

-from "searching for michelle"
"there's a girl
a prostitute who comes by my shop
buys condoms and pays with exact change
she hands me the box and the reciept
she looks like lindsay
and every time i see her i want to ask
'did you ever shave your head?
do you have a sister?
what happened?'
but i dont
who wants to ask why youre a prostitute?"