pit beef

“Pit beef sandwiches for everyone!”

You certainly don’t hear that every day. So, I walk on over to the brick building where a guy was standing outside handing out fliers and telling everyone that there was free meat inside. He looked pretty content doing so, and I’ll give him all the props in the world for that. I’m doing what I thought I wanted to do growing up, and I’m miserable at work. This guy, I figure, didn’t grow up wanting to pass out fliers dressed in a dirty Colonel Sanders knockoff suit, but there he is, smile on face.

“Dude, what’s your secret?” I ask.

He looks at me, smiles and hands a lady walking by a pink flier. Then, turning his attention to me, he says “I do what I do and that’s what I do. You see, this is a stepping stone to …” he trails off as he hands another passerby a flier, this one lime green. “… one day finding out what it is we’re all meant to do.”

“Cool,” I said, taking a bright red flier from the guy. I walk inside. Figure I can’t pass up on a free pit beef sandwich.

Inside, those awful AC/DC wannabes Jet is on the radio. This sours my opinion of the potential of the free pit beef sandwich. Not enough, however, to keep me from getting in line with everyone else. I’m kind of surprised there are as many people in here. I guess free is a good way to get folks in the door. What I do notice is everyone is ordering other food. Me on the other hand, I just want my free sandwich.

A girl at the front of the line is wearing an Oregon t-shirt. I wonder if she went to the school or if she’s a bandwagon jumper. I mean Nike is funding the entire athletic department, so it’s no wonder that they’d be marketed well. She has blonde hair. It’s long, but not too long. Her eyes have a little too much makeup, but it’s a free sandwich.

Next in line is as German looking a person as I’ve seen in quite a while. He seems to not want to be in line with so many other people and soon I realize why. He places his order and he says “my usual for the office.” Seven sandwiches and 12 side orders. Whew. And all of us freeloaders are going to make him wait even longer. Of course, I could be mad having to wait for his order. Damn you German looking guy, why didn’t you call your order in!!! But, I don’t really care. I stumbled here and am enjoying the sights and sounds and actually the smells. Damn, those pit beef sandwiches smell awesome.

Behind German guy is a couple. They’re smitten with each other. Aww. The guy has on a rust colored corduroy jacket and jeans. Also Samba Classics on the feet. I like this dude. His woman? She’s a little fat with big boobs that are pressed way too tight inside a Bob Mould concert t-shirt from his solo tour in 1994. They kiss each other and order French fries with “extra, extra garlic” and two free sandwiches.

In front of me is a smelly dude. He’s been working out or he’s just a sweaty mess. His Co-ed naked lacrosse t-shirt is covered with Greek letters. So, I have to assume he’s in a fraternity. Which one, I have no clue as the shirt has many of them on it. He is wearing long tube socks that reach up to his knees. One of them is falling down, the other is not. His head is adorned with a Phoenix Suns baseball cap. Crooked to one side of his head. I hate it when people wear their hats like that. Of course, folks hated me wearing mine backwards. But, like I always told them, I wear it that way so it doesn’t blow off my head when I’m riding my bike. And I was doing it before Griffey Jr. made it cool.

Ha.

I get to the front, order my sandwich.

The gal behind the counter, probably 19 years old and very cute to boot, asks me if I’d like anything else.

“Nope, just a sandwich,” I say.

“They go great with a soda.”

“You got Nu Grape?” I ask.

“Nope, but we have Nehi!” she says expectantly. I guess she gets grief for folks only getting the free food.

“Nah. I’m a Nu Grape guy, not a Nehi man.”

“Ok. You’re No. 238.”

“Denied,” I say in a murmur.

“Excuse me?” she asks.

“Oh nothing.”

I wait six minutes. I know this because I looked at the clock while I waited for my food. It was one of those Hamm’s clocks with the wilderness scene of a stream with the water flowing. I dig those. If I had a bar, it would have one.

“No. 238!” a voice yells.

I get my sandwich and leave. There were picnic tables outside, painted red. It’s a nice day, why not eat out there.

After finding a seat, I open the wrapper and see a mass of meat, bread and sauce. It’s crusty and burnt a little on the outside, but soft and moist on the inside. Heavenly.

No wonder they give it away, I think. Because I’ll be back for more. Thank you Baltimore. You’ve finally given me something to like about you.

penis grafitti

Never eat breakfast buffet eggs. Especially when you know you’ll be eating and drinking too much of a good and bad thing later.

Sitting at the table, I’m hung over. The decision to just “go back to Shula’s” was definitely Joshy’s. I had no desire to sit in that awful pit of lousiness for another minute. An afternoon and a late night there should have been enough.

Must not have been for him. I’d like to think it isn’t because it’s easy. The easy way out is always the wrong way out. Well, I’m sure there are times when it’s not, but it sounds better to say always. It’s more dramatic. Nah, that’s the wrong word. Emphatic. That’s what I was feverishly searching my slowly eroding vocabulary for. I always tell myself to read more. Those words will come back to you if you read. Instead, you continue to write (well, I don’t write anymore) and work for a newspaper. And the drivel that gets in the newspaper I work for, it dumbs me down just a little bit extra each day. Something to look forward to. Kind of like driving almost five hours to get to work today as the end of my little mini-vacation ended.

I do think I worked all of two hours today. That’s always fun. I did send a message to the redhead that doesn’t. She responded via text. I haven’t responded to that. I want to go to this show. I tried to get Joshy on board. He balked. Ditto Alli. Now the redhead that won’t seems interested. And, it’s her birthday weekend. Funny how that all seems to happen. Now, the question is do I dare try to take extra time off of work? We’ll be down a person again. I really don’t give a shit, however. Life is for living, what’s living for?

Where the hell was I?

Eggs. Yeah.

I ate lots of eggs at Shula’s. Quite possibly the worst sports-themed restaurant in the world right now. I’d much rather sit in a NASCAR themed place in Pickeral, New Jersey, than Shula’s in downtown Baltimore, Maryland. Fuck, I already hate the city with a passion just because that’s the place that pretty much ended what I thought was the best thing that ever happened to me. But, since it shat on my head, it couldn’t possibly be that. But this bar sucked.

And really, just because of the televisions. They were all old. Not flat screens at all. Just big-ass televisions from the late 1980s. All over the place. Hanging in the air, waiting for the old pieces of wire and metal holding them up to collapse from the shear weight of them all. Shear? Sheer? Fuck. There goes my awfulness again.

The televisions are so shitty, you can barely make out an image in some of them.

We watched LSU and Alabama play. We watched the Breeder’s Cup. I boldly proclaimed that Zenyatta would lose and I’d bet my life’s savings on Blame about a half hour before the race. When the race began, I was the only one cheering against Zenyatta. Baltimore being a horse-racing kind of town. Right? I cheered when I was right. Then I realized I didn’t really win anything but bragging rights with Joshy. And that won’t take me far. Kind of like picking the trifecta for the Derby in 2005. Didn’t put the money down, so it don’t matter a bit.

Anyways, the bar proved to be a good place to get a buzz, though. Which we did. Then we walked to the show.

After the show, we went back to Shula’s. Seems dumb, but we did. There I met Jennifer. But that story will have to wait, as I was talking about eggs.

Eggs. And bacon. And French toast. And sausage.

I ate them all. And 10 hours and 250 miles or so later, I was sitting on a toilet in the Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville as my favorite band in the world started to play the opening chords to their opening song. The girl I came to the show with was standing out in the pit by herself.

And I’m staring at graffiti on the wall. “Bob Dylan sucks. Long live Ha Ha Tonka!” It said. That and a penis. Why do guys draw penises on the bathroom stall doors? It baffles me. At least draw the old half McDonald’s trick.

This is one of those shits that you try to keep from coming out. I was wary of eating a cheeseburger and fries when I did about 45 minutes earlier. But damn, I was hungry. Hadn’t eaten since the eggs. It also kept me from drinking at the show. I had planned on getting drunk, finally (well, maybe) making a move. Who knows?

Now? I’m on a toilet. Embarrassing myself in a Dumb and Dumber way. But at least the only people hearing it, and smelling it, are random dudes at a concert venue. And that goodness for a door at the Jefferson.

Anyway, I finally finish and go out. Wash the hands and enjoy the end of the second song. I get the look, the knowing look, from my concert-going friend. She hands me her ginger ale. I take a swig. I start to tap my feet and sing along.

By the end of the night, we’re outside, cold, but happy. Sometimes things work the way you planned, and sometimes you get the shits.

Rogers and Hammerstein

Chapter 2: She Wants

“I Ain’t Going to the Bar Tonight…No, I’m not going to the bar tonight….”

Not exactly the theme song for this place that I would have picked, but it fits. No one is coming to the bar tonight.

“Stop being a fucking pessimist,” she says. I still don’t know why I only call her she. She calls me Want, I call her She. Guess it fits.

“It’s reality, honey,” I say taking a quick swig of Shiner. “There’s no one fucking here.”

“It’s 9:45 in the morning, you asshole. And this shitbox just opened after it being closed down for seven damn years. Did you tell anyone to be here?”

“Yeah, I told a couple of folks, most of don’t live here, though.”

“You don’t want to succeed do you? Just like with women, you fall in love, then you push ‘em away. I’ve known you for, what, six months? And I have that part of you figured out.”

I think back six months ago, damn, to the day even. I hate that I’m good with anniversaries. She walked by the bar wearing a Husker Du shirt and Umbro shorts. I didn’t even know they made them that short anymore. She looked at me, trying to sand some wood on the porch.

“Why are you building a porch for the bar?” she asked.

“Have you ever seen Tarantino’s Death Proof? I want this place to be like the bar in that movie. All the way down to the jukebox…” I said looking up through my sweat.

“What about Stuntman Mike?” she replied.

“Sure, he’ll be here too…”

“If you want it, make it so,” she said walking away.

“What’s your name?” I yelled out, kind of desperately.

“Later,” she laughed.

Yeah, that was a good day. Two nights later she’d come back again. Ended up hanging out on the finished porch -- the inside was still too much of a wreck, drinking Shiners and listening to T. Rex. That went on for four months.

Then, I met Sid. Her ex-boyfriend. Well, now he’s her ex. Then, he wasn’t yet.

It was December 22nd. The night before I was going to get in my beat up Hyundai and drive the 15 hours to my parents’ house for Christmas. I’d asked She if she wanted to go with, being that she didn’t have any family that she cared to hang out with and all. She said she’d tell me later.

Well, here it was an hour before I was leaving, and I had no answer. So, I called her up. No answer.

Her apartment was near enough to I-10 that I figured I’d just stop by. I did. Big mistake. Or not. It’s all about perspective.

I got out of my car, walked up to her front stoop and knocked on the door. She lived at house number 237. That made me chuckle. I hear some commotion inside. She has two big dogs -- one a lab, the other a mutt -- but it’s not them as I see both Rogers and Hammerstein in the back yard looking at me. I notice they each have this forlorned look in their eyes. I’m good at noticing signs, days later.

“What the fuck do you want?” comes a yell from the front door in a voice I don’t recognize at the moment, but will soon come to know as Sidney’s voice. Damn, that’s the name I always wanted to give my dog. The dog I was going to get in a few weeks when I finally open my bar.

“Ummm, is She here?” I spit out nervously, forgetting that this fucktard isn’t going to know who She is.

“Natalie! Some shit bird is out here, asking for She. That’s got to be you, isn’t it? Fucking whore.” And he slams the door in my face.

Two minutes later, She comes to the door.

“I’m sorry,” She says. “I should have told you.”

“Yeah, might’ve been a good idea.”

I went home, had a miserable Christmas. But that’s par for the course. Invited my family all to come to the grand opening of my bar in a few weeks. They laughed. Isn’t that strange reaction, I thought for a second, then remembered this is my family.

The drive back to the dirty city isn’t quite as bad as I thought it would be. I just put on Lucero and sing at the top of my lungs the entire time. If I’d had a bottle of whiskey, probably would have drank it too. And then ended up pulling off the side of the road to sleep somewhere.

By the time I pull into my driveway, my throat doesn’t work anymore. Neither does my voice.

On cue, my phone rings.

“Hello,” I meekly say into the old flip phone. I won it on e-bay to replace the phone I broke back in 2010. Ironically, because of a redhead. Old habits die hard.

“Hey, it’s me,” she says.

“What’s up,” is all I can muster.

“We need to talk. He kicked me out. We’re not together anymore.”

“I have a feeling this has happened before.”

“Stop being an asshole. I’ve been in my car the last four days. Couldn’t face going anywhere else.”

“Where are you?”

“About six cars down from you, Want.”

When you put that pet name at the end of certain sentences, it can fuck with your mind. I think that’s why she does it.

“Ok, come on in…”