When I was a kid I always wanted to be a garbageman. Some of my friends wanted to be professional athletes, some wanted to be doctors or lawyers, but I wanted to be a garbageman.
When I turned 21, I was attending an elite university and my dreams of pursuing a career in sanitation technology seemed just as out of reach as they were when I was a child.
Shortly after my 21st birthday my friends from Loyola threw a house party. I took an inordinate amount of birthday shots and ended up departing around 4 in the morning in an excessively drunken state. After saying my goodbyes I grabbed a road beer and headed to the street to hail a cab. In the dark of the Baltimore night I was unable to properly see the cars as they approached but after several minutes I saw a car coming my way with a light on its hood. I stepped out into the street, threw my hand up in the air, and realized I had just hailed a cop car.
As I recall it, one of the cops was a reasonable guy while the other was really something of a prick. The "bad cop" started writing up a ticket for an open container which sent me into a rant which included the words "it's not like there's any real crime going on in Baltimore," which set the bad cop off and the good cop was forced to step in to restore order.
After several minutes and some well place humor I had gotten on the good side of the cops to the point where they both laughed when I asked if they could change the "Busch Lite" on the ticket to a Heineken. Unfortunately this did not keep them from issuing the ticket which required me to be in court several weeks later.
The day of my court appearance I waited in the halls of a sterile Baltimore courthouse for upwards of four hours before finally getting my case called. I was then offered to have the ticket removed from my record in exchange for 5 hours of community service. I accepted the "plea" and was issued the 5 hours at the "Department of Public Works - Solid" the following Friday at 7 am.
That Friday, I woke up to my alarm blaring at 6:00 am and felt like the grim specter of death. I had not spent many 6 am's awake in my college career and the few that I had did not include sleep prior to that dreadful hour.
I got showered, got breakfasted and started on a 2 mile walk to the "Department of Public Works - Solid."
When I arrived I was sent into a trailer and forced to sit with the type of people who inhabit Pimlico race track on Tuesday afternoons. If there was a hell, I was not far from it.
After half an hour, a gum chewing woman with hair as big as her body called me into her office and introduced me to a black dude named Allen. I shook hands with Allen, was told I was going to be working with him that day and was tossed a jumpsuit and gloves. Allen and I then walked outside where he told me to put on the gloves and suit and "hop on". Initially, I didn't know what Allen was talking about but after looking up at him I noticed he was talking about the gigantic yellow garbage truck parked across the street.
I felt like the Yankees had just won the World Series while I was drinking a Guinness, smoking a Cohiba and eating lobster. It was miraculous.
I quickly put on my jumpsuit, ran over to the truck and hopped on the back (attempting to hide my glee the entire time because Allen was a full-time garbageman and did not seem to be a fan of his profession). As luck would have it, the first area where we were picking up garbage was Charles Village, a mere 2 minute walk from the Hopkins campus. I was in heaven. Not only was I fulfilling a life long dream but it also occurred to me that someone I know might see me and think that I had become a garbageman (I don't actually know if this happened but the mere thought of it was enough to delight me).
The end of the day was somewhat less exciting as we moved further and further into shady neighborhoods but all in all the day was a wondrous experience and the fulfillment of a life long dream all thanks to an open can of Busch Lite.
Side note: Several years later I was out drinking with coworkers when apparently the jones to dispose other peoples garbage caught me again. As the story goes, I was standing across the street from them when they saw me hop on a garbage truck that then drove around the corner. I have no recollection of the event and woke up in my room the next day without any idea as to how I had gotten there.
Showing posts with label Tales. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tales. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Friday, April 6, 2007
The Asian Chick
I went to college with a ton of Asians.
I mean like a wildly disproportionate amount of Asians.
This wasn't really a positive or a negative; it was just something that struck me as different. I grew up in a town that was whiter than loose-leaf and the change in atmosphere was conspicuous.
I took particular note of the cliquishness with which many Asian students seemed to socialize (In retrospect I imagine they thought the same thing of many of the white males at Hopkins but hindsight is always 20/20). It bothered me for a variety of reasons, most notably that I found myself attracted to a number of my Asian classmates.
As time passed I found my inability to crack the impenetrable shield of the Asian clique to be quite disheartening. I went through three full academic years and a trip to Tokyo -between freshman and sophomore year - without ever hooking up with a single Asian female (the trip to Tokyo is the only time I will ever regret hooking up with a 19 year old blond chick from North Carolina, without a doubt).
By the fall of senior year, I was fairly well convinced that my attraction to Asian women was forever to go unrequited, and then out of nowhere, it happened. I met a real cute girl on the dance floor of my fraternity house one Saturday evening. She was from Hong Kong and we ended up spending the evening with one another, drinking wine and discussing our philosophical and theological influences (David Hume and Thomas Aquinas primarily) then passed out in a blaze of passion.
When we woke the next morning, she reminded me that she went to the University of Rochester (a fact that she apparently had informed me of the evening prior but that I had inexplicably forgotten) and that she had to be on her way. Heartbroken, I walked her to her car, wished her the best in all her future endeavors, told her to call me if she was ever back in Baltimore and bid her farewell.
That Monday I had class from 6:30 to 9:30 in the evening. The class was Business Ethics (not an oxy moron I learned) and the professor was a bit of a stickler, so I made certain to turn off my cell phone ringer before class. The three hour class passed slowly but uneventfully and on the walk home I pulled out my phone to check for missed calls/messages.
I would be lying if I didn't say that I was surprised to see five missed calls from the same unknown area code within a half an hour time span. Confused, I decided to wait a day to return the calls.
When I phoned on Tuesday, AC apologized for the flurry of calls from the night before and informed me that she would be returning to Baltimore that very weekend. This was highly unusual as Rochester is at least a 6 hour drive from Baltimore. I told her we could hang out Friday night but Saturday was my sister’s birthday so I would be spending it with her and her friends (quick thinking bullshit).
AC arrived at my place at around 8 on Friday evening in good spirits and full of enthusiasm for an evening out on the town. Unfortunately, that town was DC. She and her friends had made plans to go see Tiesto (a famous trance DJ) spin at a club in DC called the Nation. This would have been fine except she wanted me to go with them. By this point in my college career I had already gone through a club-scene-phase and was not interested in that type of nonsense but her continual coaxing finally got me to cave.
Her 3 friends arrived at my house at around 10:30 and the five of us walked to her car. The AC-mobile was a black Volkswagan Beetle with standard transmission. Unfortunately, she and I had both drank too much to drive and her friends (two girls and a guy) didn't have any experience driving standard. The guy ended up giving it a try but right when we got to one of the really shady neighborhoods in Baltimore he burned the clutch. So There I was, with 3 Asian women (all about 5'4) and one Asian dude (somewhere around 5'8) in the middle of East Baltimore standing next to a broken down Volkswagen Beetle. This was a nightmare
.I called Hopkins security and upon hearing of our location they dispatched a security van immediately. Thankfully the van arrived in short order and we headed back to my house for the evening.
The following morning we woke up around noon, an hour before the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame were to play Florida State. ND was something like 7-0 at the time and I was really fired up for the game. AC said she understood that I wanted to watch the game but asked if she could make breakfast for the two of us. Not one to deny home cooked meals I agreed and we went to the supermarket to buy food.
She collected a good $35 worth of food and when we got to the checkout counter there was a wordless showdown as the cashier rang up the total. Finally she reached into her purse and pulled out a credit card (this seems somewhat crass to me now considering the night before her car had incurred several thousand dollars worth of damage, but I had planned on spending about $5 on breakfast and was dumbfounded by the amount of food she had purchased).
We went back to my apartment and I set her up with the supplies to cook the vegetable soup she had planned. Coincidentally, the only pot we had that was large enough to cook the soup was a wok. When my roommate awoke, several minutes after she began cooking, he stepped out of his room to see a diminutive Asian woman cooking on a wok in our kitchen. The look on his face as he stepped into the common room could not be accurately described even if I devoted another 5,000 word post to it, it was truly magical.
We had the soup (which was actually quite good), watched the game (ND won) and then prepared for AC's departure. Unfortunately, when AC called her friend she failed to answer the phone call. This meant that she had nowhere to go until her friend called her back. This meant that she was going to have to stay at my apartment until her friend called her back. This meant that I was going to have to get prepared to go out for my sister’s imaginary birthday until her friend called her back. This meant that after a shower, a button down and a nice pair of pants I was going to walk up two flights of stairs and wait in a friend’s apartment until AC left my apartment.
I was up there for like an hour and a half. Every 30 minutes or so I sent a friend down to see if she had left yet, it was ridiculous. Finally she departed and I felt as though I had gotten my life back. I spent the evening bar hopping downtown with a couple friends and then returned to the local Hopkins bar for a night cap whereupon I re-encountered AC.
She had been talking to a friend of mine (Bretters) and they seemed to be hitting it off. I said hi then got involved in several other conversations. About 30 mins later Bretters came up to me and asked what the deal was with AC. I told him that we had hooked up but if she wanted to go home with him, who was I to stand in the way of true love. Bretters, being the drunken retard that he is went back up to AC and asked if she wanted to leave. She replied that she was with me, to which he said, “Oh no, I just talked to GG, he said he was cool with it,” this did not go over well with AC.
The tears flowed like water through the Yangtze. I was completely baffled by this outporing of emotion from a girl I had met one week prior and spent a total of 15 hours with. I walked her back to my apartment, explained to her the misunderstanding and eventually calmed her down enough to go to sleep (I refused her attempts to re-engage our passion). The next day, we shared an awkward wakeup, talked things out a bit more and then I took her to the bus station for her return trip to Rochester, never to see her again.
I mean like a wildly disproportionate amount of Asians.
This wasn't really a positive or a negative; it was just something that struck me as different. I grew up in a town that was whiter than loose-leaf and the change in atmosphere was conspicuous.
I took particular note of the cliquishness with which many Asian students seemed to socialize (In retrospect I imagine they thought the same thing of many of the white males at Hopkins but hindsight is always 20/20). It bothered me for a variety of reasons, most notably that I found myself attracted to a number of my Asian classmates.
As time passed I found my inability to crack the impenetrable shield of the Asian clique to be quite disheartening. I went through three full academic years and a trip to Tokyo -between freshman and sophomore year - without ever hooking up with a single Asian female (the trip to Tokyo is the only time I will ever regret hooking up with a 19 year old blond chick from North Carolina, without a doubt).
By the fall of senior year, I was fairly well convinced that my attraction to Asian women was forever to go unrequited, and then out of nowhere, it happened. I met a real cute girl on the dance floor of my fraternity house one Saturday evening. She was from Hong Kong and we ended up spending the evening with one another, drinking wine and discussing our philosophical and theological influences (David Hume and Thomas Aquinas primarily) then passed out in a blaze of passion.
When we woke the next morning, she reminded me that she went to the University of Rochester (a fact that she apparently had informed me of the evening prior but that I had inexplicably forgotten) and that she had to be on her way. Heartbroken, I walked her to her car, wished her the best in all her future endeavors, told her to call me if she was ever back in Baltimore and bid her farewell.
That Monday I had class from 6:30 to 9:30 in the evening. The class was Business Ethics (not an oxy moron I learned) and the professor was a bit of a stickler, so I made certain to turn off my cell phone ringer before class. The three hour class passed slowly but uneventfully and on the walk home I pulled out my phone to check for missed calls/messages.
I would be lying if I didn't say that I was surprised to see five missed calls from the same unknown area code within a half an hour time span. Confused, I decided to wait a day to return the calls.
When I phoned on Tuesday, AC apologized for the flurry of calls from the night before and informed me that she would be returning to Baltimore that very weekend. This was highly unusual as Rochester is at least a 6 hour drive from Baltimore. I told her we could hang out Friday night but Saturday was my sister’s birthday so I would be spending it with her and her friends (quick thinking bullshit).
AC arrived at my place at around 8 on Friday evening in good spirits and full of enthusiasm for an evening out on the town. Unfortunately, that town was DC. She and her friends had made plans to go see Tiesto (a famous trance DJ) spin at a club in DC called the Nation. This would have been fine except she wanted me to go with them. By this point in my college career I had already gone through a club-scene-phase and was not interested in that type of nonsense but her continual coaxing finally got me to cave.
Her 3 friends arrived at my house at around 10:30 and the five of us walked to her car. The AC-mobile was a black Volkswagan Beetle with standard transmission. Unfortunately, she and I had both drank too much to drive and her friends (two girls and a guy) didn't have any experience driving standard. The guy ended up giving it a try but right when we got to one of the really shady neighborhoods in Baltimore he burned the clutch. So There I was, with 3 Asian women (all about 5'4) and one Asian dude (somewhere around 5'8) in the middle of East Baltimore standing next to a broken down Volkswagen Beetle. This was a nightmare
.I called Hopkins security and upon hearing of our location they dispatched a security van immediately. Thankfully the van arrived in short order and we headed back to my house for the evening.
The following morning we woke up around noon, an hour before the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame were to play Florida State. ND was something like 7-0 at the time and I was really fired up for the game. AC said she understood that I wanted to watch the game but asked if she could make breakfast for the two of us. Not one to deny home cooked meals I agreed and we went to the supermarket to buy food.
She collected a good $35 worth of food and when we got to the checkout counter there was a wordless showdown as the cashier rang up the total. Finally she reached into her purse and pulled out a credit card (this seems somewhat crass to me now considering the night before her car had incurred several thousand dollars worth of damage, but I had planned on spending about $5 on breakfast and was dumbfounded by the amount of food she had purchased).
We went back to my apartment and I set her up with the supplies to cook the vegetable soup she had planned. Coincidentally, the only pot we had that was large enough to cook the soup was a wok. When my roommate awoke, several minutes after she began cooking, he stepped out of his room to see a diminutive Asian woman cooking on a wok in our kitchen. The look on his face as he stepped into the common room could not be accurately described even if I devoted another 5,000 word post to it, it was truly magical.
We had the soup (which was actually quite good), watched the game (ND won) and then prepared for AC's departure. Unfortunately, when AC called her friend she failed to answer the phone call. This meant that she had nowhere to go until her friend called her back. This meant that she was going to have to stay at my apartment until her friend called her back. This meant that I was going to have to get prepared to go out for my sister’s imaginary birthday until her friend called her back. This meant that after a shower, a button down and a nice pair of pants I was going to walk up two flights of stairs and wait in a friend’s apartment until AC left my apartment.
I was up there for like an hour and a half. Every 30 minutes or so I sent a friend down to see if she had left yet, it was ridiculous. Finally she departed and I felt as though I had gotten my life back. I spent the evening bar hopping downtown with a couple friends and then returned to the local Hopkins bar for a night cap whereupon I re-encountered AC.
She had been talking to a friend of mine (Bretters) and they seemed to be hitting it off. I said hi then got involved in several other conversations. About 30 mins later Bretters came up to me and asked what the deal was with AC. I told him that we had hooked up but if she wanted to go home with him, who was I to stand in the way of true love. Bretters, being the drunken retard that he is went back up to AC and asked if she wanted to leave. She replied that she was with me, to which he said, “Oh no, I just talked to GG, he said he was cool with it,” this did not go over well with AC.
The tears flowed like water through the Yangtze. I was completely baffled by this outporing of emotion from a girl I had met one week prior and spent a total of 15 hours with. I walked her back to my apartment, explained to her the misunderstanding and eventually calmed her down enough to go to sleep (I refused her attempts to re-engage our passion). The next day, we shared an awkward wakeup, talked things out a bit more and then I took her to the bus station for her return trip to Rochester, never to see her again.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Bobby don't call her Whitney
I haven't had a cogent thought over the last several days so I'm going to recount a story from the past to compensate for my decided lack of personality in the present:
When I was a senior in college my roommate and I signed up for an intersession course (a course that meets for a month between first and second semester) in Italy. We arrived at the bus stop early one morning and met our professor and fellow classmates. They were not ideal companions for such a trip but there was an attractive female and a guy who seemed like he might be cool and we were headed to Italy for the first time so everything else was ancillary. We started drinking on the plane and arrived in Florence in jovial spirits.
By the time we checked into our hotel we had established enough of a relationship with our classmates to venture out into the Florence night with one another. We decided to go to a local Irish bar (as all Americans seem to do upon initial arrival in a foreign land) and started drinking heavily. I recall several Guinness' a bunch of shots and maybe a car bomb here and there.
Then the night turned black.
When I came to I was sprinting through the streets of Florence.
I wasn't really sure why I was running, in fact I had no idea why I was running (think Memento) but I figured there must be a good reason, so I kept up my frantic pace and dipped behind an alleyway corner after a couple blocks to evaluate the situation.
After a couple moments I peered back and saw nothing. I had no idea what I was running from but more importantly I had no idea where my run had brought me. I was in Florence without the slightest idea where I was, without any idea about the whereabouts of my hotel, and no clue as to its name.
I was fucking lost.
I stumbled around for a while trying to figure out how this had happened and how I was going to remedy the dire circumstances I had found myself in, when I remembered that there was an internet cafe across the street from our hotel called the Internet Train. So I went up to the first person I saw and asked them if they knew of the location of the Internet Train.
Apparently Internet Train in Florence is like Starbucks in New York because the person started pointing in about fifteen directions telling me the many locations of the Internet Train.
This was not good.
I began aimlessly walking around Florence approaching cabs and cop cars asking if they knew where my hotel was, getting blank stares in response and then stumbling away in frustration. I had no idea what to do and kept coming upon various Piazza's thinking I had seen them a million times before.
Finally, at around 5:30 in the morning, angry and distraught, stumbling through the empty streets of Florence, I came upon an Internet Train that looked familiar. I turned to my left and there was my hotel in all its glory. Rarely have I seen such a beautiful site.
With spring in my step I went up to the reception desk, got my key and called it a night.
When I was a senior in college my roommate and I signed up for an intersession course (a course that meets for a month between first and second semester) in Italy. We arrived at the bus stop early one morning and met our professor and fellow classmates. They were not ideal companions for such a trip but there was an attractive female and a guy who seemed like he might be cool and we were headed to Italy for the first time so everything else was ancillary. We started drinking on the plane and arrived in Florence in jovial spirits.
By the time we checked into our hotel we had established enough of a relationship with our classmates to venture out into the Florence night with one another. We decided to go to a local Irish bar (as all Americans seem to do upon initial arrival in a foreign land) and started drinking heavily. I recall several Guinness' a bunch of shots and maybe a car bomb here and there.
Then the night turned black.
When I came to I was sprinting through the streets of Florence.
I wasn't really sure why I was running, in fact I had no idea why I was running (think Memento) but I figured there must be a good reason, so I kept up my frantic pace and dipped behind an alleyway corner after a couple blocks to evaluate the situation.
After a couple moments I peered back and saw nothing. I had no idea what I was running from but more importantly I had no idea where my run had brought me. I was in Florence without the slightest idea where I was, without any idea about the whereabouts of my hotel, and no clue as to its name.
I was fucking lost.
I stumbled around for a while trying to figure out how this had happened and how I was going to remedy the dire circumstances I had found myself in, when I remembered that there was an internet cafe across the street from our hotel called the Internet Train. So I went up to the first person I saw and asked them if they knew of the location of the Internet Train.
Apparently Internet Train in Florence is like Starbucks in New York because the person started pointing in about fifteen directions telling me the many locations of the Internet Train.
This was not good.
I began aimlessly walking around Florence approaching cabs and cop cars asking if they knew where my hotel was, getting blank stares in response and then stumbling away in frustration. I had no idea what to do and kept coming upon various Piazza's thinking I had seen them a million times before.
Finally, at around 5:30 in the morning, angry and distraught, stumbling through the empty streets of Florence, I came upon an Internet Train that looked familiar. I turned to my left and there was my hotel in all its glory. Rarely have I seen such a beautiful site.
With spring in my step I went up to the reception desk, got my key and called it a night.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Here's to America's Freedom
From an email I wrote a friend following July 4 weekend, the names have been nicknamed to protect the innocent:
Whats up man, I was going to email you yesterday but I got sidetracked, anyway the impetus of my email was the fact that Godzilla (sp?) already has your Sony email address...Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahtttttt?!?!?! How the hell did that happen, shocking. Anyway, friday we hung out at [overattended college bar in NYC], and Pretty Boy got us all trucked, I obviously don't remember the latter course of the evening which was to become my m.o. for the weekend. Sat we all went out to the Drift and had a good time, saw about everyone we've ever met from that wonderful outstretched island, pretty impressed with the clientele all things considered, not too (don't know how to italicize on lotus notes but that "too" would have been) steak face-ish, so we got by. Took a cab back to Cue Ball's place late night, Angry and Tiny passed out immediately while Cue Ball, Pretty Boy and I proceeded to polish of three Becks a bottle of 8 month old pre-made egg-nog and call 90% of our collective phonebooks (I don't explicitly remember calling you, but I'm sure you were in the mix). Lost track of things toward the end of the night and woke up on the floor sun morning...headed directly to Lobster Roll. Ordered the same thing Armand Asante had, delicious, dropped Cue Ball off back at his place and went to Pretty Boy's sister's beach house, hung out on the beach for awhile then drove back to Club Blue's place in Long Beach. Played poker with Sunshine, Shift Four and Psycho, I won which I'm rather proud of (beating Shift Four), drank some more and went to the Inn. Ran into [high school girl we hadn't seen in a while] at the Inn she looked special, left the Inn and went to Minnesotas, hung around there for awhile, saw a buddy of mine from the Point, bar backing did a bunch of shots with him realized I was no longer with everyone else and didn't know where my buddy from the Point was walked out of the bar, realized I had left my phone in Pretty Boy's car and had no idea how to get back to Club Blue or Mic Dego's place, walked in the pouring rain for a bit, blacked out and woke up in the hospital. Asked a nurse if I could leave, filled out a bunch of paperwork and hopped in a cab, realized I was still wearing a hospital gown (with jeans), and had the cab driver ask me if I was sure I was allowed to leave. Had him drive me to a department store, bought a shirt, put it on at the checkout counter, got back into the cab and dipped. All in all I think its only a matter of time before I start getting recruiting letters from AA. Later
Whats up man, I was going to email you yesterday but I got sidetracked, anyway the impetus of my email was the fact that Godzilla (sp?) already has your Sony email address...Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahtttttt?!?!?! How the hell did that happen, shocking. Anyway, friday we hung out at [overattended college bar in NYC], and Pretty Boy got us all trucked, I obviously don't remember the latter course of the evening which was to become my m.o. for the weekend. Sat we all went out to the Drift and had a good time, saw about everyone we've ever met from that wonderful outstretched island, pretty impressed with the clientele all things considered, not too (don't know how to italicize on lotus notes but that "too" would have been) steak face-ish, so we got by. Took a cab back to Cue Ball's place late night, Angry and Tiny passed out immediately while Cue Ball, Pretty Boy and I proceeded to polish of three Becks a bottle of 8 month old pre-made egg-nog and call 90% of our collective phonebooks (I don't explicitly remember calling you, but I'm sure you were in the mix). Lost track of things toward the end of the night and woke up on the floor sun morning...headed directly to Lobster Roll. Ordered the same thing Armand Asante had, delicious, dropped Cue Ball off back at his place and went to Pretty Boy's sister's beach house, hung out on the beach for awhile then drove back to Club Blue's place in Long Beach. Played poker with Sunshine, Shift Four and Psycho, I won which I'm rather proud of (beating Shift Four), drank some more and went to the Inn. Ran into [high school girl we hadn't seen in a while] at the Inn she looked special, left the Inn and went to Minnesotas, hung around there for awhile, saw a buddy of mine from the Point, bar backing did a bunch of shots with him realized I was no longer with everyone else and didn't know where my buddy from the Point was walked out of the bar, realized I had left my phone in Pretty Boy's car and had no idea how to get back to Club Blue or Mic Dego's place, walked in the pouring rain for a bit, blacked out and woke up in the hospital. Asked a nurse if I could leave, filled out a bunch of paperwork and hopped in a cab, realized I was still wearing a hospital gown (with jeans), and had the cab driver ask me if I was sure I was allowed to leave. Had him drive me to a department store, bought a shirt, put it on at the checkout counter, got back into the cab and dipped. All in all I think its only a matter of time before I start getting recruiting letters from AA. Later
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