The Appalachian Trail

There's a monster living in Clarksville, Maryland. This hick town where aging wives like to show off their karats on the other side of a Wendy's drive thru, this pristinely taken care of village center where the arm rests on all the benches are freshly painted a slick black with every severe seasonal change, here I'm the only pedestrian. I walk a mile just to scout for likely looking butts where the slaves smoke in front of the Giant. “Do you like your job?” “No.” Then at the River Hill Sports Grille. But I don't linger too long, I've been fired from there, second cocktail waitressing gig in one month. Then at the liquor store, maybe. The boss knows my weekly activities and gives me beers on loan. But usually there's nothing.
I'm walking down the street, cell phone in hand, about to go get my kicks, but my ride tells me he couldn't find the exit. I turn around. “Yeah, you stay in that cul de sac!” I hear a watchful father supposedly talking to his kids. Does he have any idea what I'm planning? I have to get out of here, I've decided to hike the Appalachian trail from Maryland to Maine. Maryland will be easy but Pennsylvania has “rocky ridges broken by fairly strenuous climbs in and out of gaps.” New Jersey has an active bear population. New Hampshire has snow at any season, so I'm bringing a total of two outfits: one summer, one for winter. I'll wash in the river. Maine has 4,000 feet mountains that are so strenuous to climb you have to rely on tree roots. It sounds like the perfect foil to what I've been dealing with. I used to be in San Francisco!
I don't get out too much. Stalking the same tracks is getting old. “Can't get my hair cut there, I walked off without paying. Can't go there either, I was also fired from there.” I treat my local supermarket like a pawn shop. Don't have money for beer? Return that exorbitantly expensive bottle of hairspray. I still have the receipt.
I can't wait to hike the trail. I have a few prospective companions, all of whom I've met on youthink.com. It's where I hang out. One of the guys is from Wireclub. He just got back from Iraq. He hated it. If I bring him I won't have to ask my friend Michael for his gun.
Michael took me to a party in Baltimore. His drug dealer was getting something up but we didn't quite know what to expect. I wore stretchy pinstripe pants and a neon pink top that really shows off my curves. And yet when I apply to jobs I have all these people asking me if I'm over eighteen. “Yes, I just graduated college.” “Oh. I was just checking.” The party was straight ghetto. There was a pole for dancing in the empty VIP room. Free chicken wings and french fries. And the best f^cking music I've heard from a dj in a long while. I got the dancing started. One thing I'll say for me is that I know how to move to music. I have an innate talent, if you will. When I got there it was just a bunch of shy people vaguely swaying to the music. Within twenty minutes I had everyone dancing. There were all of three white people there besides myself. They didn't do themselves any credit. The girl bent over and the guy humped her from behind. Is that the way people dance? Seriously!
I have an interview today with The Melting Pot, a swank fondue restaurant, easily $150 a person. Before they hire me, I should be able to clear my necessary grand for the trail. If they even hire me in the first place. Wish me luck! Do you want to hike the trail for me? Get in touch with me, seriously. Let's talk. I'm about to have the time of my life.

I'm a monster, nice to meet you.

Do you know how to play gin rummy? If you're my friend I'll probably ask you at some point. My name is Stephanie and I love to play but am terrible at gin rummy. There are a lot of things I'm not very good at.

I'm a budding alcoholic with no respect for my superiors. “Will you throw this away for me?” my ex boss asked me, handing me an insignificant piece of crumpled paper. I did it, but I was seething inside. I felt entitled to a smoke break after that. I stood right out front where you're not supposed to stand, monster style. Fuming. I'm glad they fired me.

“Stephanie blows!” shouts Kevin, a server, to all the kitchen, thinking I'm not there – but I'm within ear shot, rolling silverware. A dutiful hostess doing her best. “What!” I yell back at him. He gets embarrassed, mutters something about how he “was just kidding.” What a wimp! He could at least have said “I meant it, b*~%~!” and then things could have gotten interesting. But instead things had to be lame, like always.

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm cursed. I have the curse of being a pretty girl and the curse of being a slacker on top of that. The first curse is not something to be underestimated. I'd challenge Kevin, a frustrated drag queen living in the same hick town that I do, I'd challenge him to live one hour of his life, ten minutes, as a sort of pretty girl. He wouldn't last. Everyone loves you if you're a gay man. I'm not opposed to them, of course not. I don't have hate in my heart exactly. But gay men steal my target audience all the time. The horde of rowdy women I should be roaming with has been sidetracked by these hipster f*z$ with aristocratic looking legs and bicycles. I know a few of them that are in San Francisco right now, and they've got my friends. It couldn't be my fault, it couldn't possibly be.

I've got my hair pulled back in a James Joyce senior seminar. I'm a junior and a smartass amid a bunch of elitist hipsters. “Isn't it true that according to some cultures, when a woman has her hair pulled back it means she's on her period?” asks Greg, their leader. What the hell? I couldn't even think of a reply. I wish I'd had the courage to speak up more in that class. I remember every word that was said, it was me against them all. I think I won in the end. The professor gave me an “A” and a great recommendation. Ulysses has always been my favorite book, even if I'm not male.

“Stephanie, we have to have a talk.” I've been fired from my hostessing job and rehired as a cocktail waitress. But now my boss has to talk to me? Why? “I've never had this problem before. But after your first day of training you asked somebody for two dollars in order to get a shot. And after the second day you asked for two dollars for a shot. This is unacceptable.” They told on me? Those little rats! What a cold, cruel world where a broke girl can't even borrow two bucks for a night cap? Even as I'm sitting there taking this rebuke from him I love my seediness. There's no word for it, but I love the way I pick out likely looking butts from the ash trays, pinch out the tobacco into an old bowl and smoke it that way. It's been awhile since I had any money. A girl does what she can.

“It'll never happen again,” I assure him. That's the last time I confide in anybody.

I do have my good qualities though. I'm a bum living with her parents after graduating college, but I am very studious. Even out of school I'm reading all sorts of books. I'm even doing a lot of work for my current job. I'm memorizing the ingredients of all the food. I'll be tested upon my return to work. I've been given a few days off because somebody put some ghb in my whiskey sour after work. I ended up in the hospital. But anyway! When I return to work I'll ace the test that everyone supposedly fails. Maybe he won't fire me after all.

Should English be the "Official Language" of the United States?

So I finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude awhile ago, and I guess the joke is on me. But now I get to decide whether I want to die with my face to a wall.

The job I have isn't as easy as it looks. We see hundreds of people during the week. There is ice to be hauled, pieces of equipment to be degreased with a purple solution, and grime and hair, which needs to be wiped off the toilets with a solution in a red bottle, before closing. That purple stuff really eats away at any blisters that may exist from sweeping. One of the women I work with tells me to wear gloves, but I don't see the point. The sink is deep enough to hold a lot of water, and when washing other dishes at the same time the solution and water get under the gloves.

Thirty minutes of Spanish a day was too much for me to handle. I tried that for about two months, naively thinking I'd use it to communicate at work. What happens now is I listen for the precious inflection. I stare at the fries and the nuggets under their warm lights, pretending to zone out but actually witnessing the daily phenomena of social hierarchies. “Be quiet, Cristina,” says Adele. “Be quiet!” It's just me and the women today because Adele is managing. They are talking, laughing, screaming with joy and I creepily listen. Cristina's younger, wears make-up to work every day. She's only had three kids. Rosalva has had ten children and has also been working at Wendy's for ten years. She always gets to talk.

I had to do a research project recently about the Official Language debate. Not only should English not be made the official language, but public schools should be taught in Spanish in certain areas, is the radical conclusion I came to. It's a matter of autogenesis. As long as writers like Julio Cortazar are taught, and people aren't introduced into academia with the message that their language is “wrong,” then everything will work out. Of course the learning of English is necessary. Debora just turned 18 and is the only other worker under 40. I can see how learning English has impacted her life.

It is difficult working in a service position. Customers are always asking you to “describe the spicy chicken fillet” before ordering chicken nuggets. I work up front a lot because I can speak English, and this is the hardest position. I'd much rather be back there smashing meat patties, even though the grease from the wet grill flips up and burns the arms often. Some people pretend you've got their order wrong in order to get free food. You'd be surprised at how often this happens. But sometimes a guy with a red hat comes in and tells me, genuinely, to have a nice day. It's a very simple gesture, but in the frenetic environment of the day it means a lot to me. I'd marry such a man if I were thirty! I pretend he's Thomas Pynchon come to visit me – even though Pynchon hates women. Academia is mostly indifferent to women. To love literature is a funny thing. Antagonistic acculturation with everything.

I miss the beautiful pair of men who came to the place after high school football games. The first one came on so strong, giving me the eye, “I'd like a sprite,” like he wanted me to react in front of his friend, unfortunately less beautiful and knows it. Maybe I made too much of a show of being indifferent, even hostile – then later, giving in a little with a smile to his presence. The most likely explanation is that there is no connection, there is no communication in the events. But I like to pretend there's something.

Rosalva's daughter Stephanie often comes to the restaurant with her little brother. I think they're waiting for someone to pick them up after school. In a rare moment of bravery, I ask Rosalva how her kids are doing. It's small talk, and God! I can't do it! I rarely can do it. I'm going to die.

“The other day, she tell me. When she want to watch a tv program and I say no. Listen, Stephanie tell me.” Rosalva is talking to me about her daughter. “She tell me, 'Mama, it's a free country!' and I slap her across the face.”
“Oh my God!”
“Yes.” Now Stephanie needs dental work.
“Do you think it is? A free country?”
“I don't know, that may be, but I'm her mother.”
“Yes.” I think tv is more dangerous than drugs.

But the point is that there's something wrong. I can't work. Can't go to school. The teacher's a fool. The preacher's a jerk. Aw, that's too bad. Violence, violence, it's the only thing that'll make you see sense.

“If you want to talk with us, you have to learn Spanish,” Rosalva told me upon my initiation. But when I tried to speak Spanish to her, I couldn't bear her sarcastic responses. She's very smart. She owns the place. “Oh, Dios mio!” she's always saying. Odio mio. Or just simply: “Dios.” I love her inflection. I'd hate me, too. I'm there because I crashed a car. She's there because she has bills to pay. The Spanish was making me compromise with my Italian, anyway.

Sometimes I hope to think it's a generation thing. Debora likes me conditionally. When it's just the two of us drinking coffee or drinking beer, it's fine. But her grandmother works there too. I don't know. My own friends are very iffy with me as well. They educate me, I like their taste in movies and music, but they pretend to sign off whenever the conversation gets to real, whenever I ask questions about politics or s@z. Wonder why ha.

I'm young enough to change, I think. I could get a grip and talk to people. But why did it take me so long to figure out that Aureliano and his whole family are dried out old oak trees? Isolated, proud, crazy. That part about eating dirt really hit me. This is what I mean about literature destroying me. But now I don't even have literature. This is getting really intense.

Cigarettes really are the hardest to kick. I've had four while writing this. I go out like a monster into the suburbs and find trails where I can still see houses through the trees.