An Experiment

Matt, Mai Linh, and I have been watching cartoons for the past couple of hours. At some point Mai mentioned alcohol, so Matt and I went down to the liquor store on the corner which is also owned by our next-door neighbor. Yes, when he sees cars pulling up to our house for parties he must get big dollar signs in his eyes. "Wait till I'm 21," I want to tell him, "Then I'll see what I can do about putting a dent in that tequila surplus."

The party Mai and I threw this weekend wasn't as big as we were expecting, but it was still good times. I fulfilled my duty as a host and quickly got drunker than everyone else there.

One odd thing: I was walking with Alan and Jenny out and we see this guy across the street throwing up. Everything was pretty blurry at that point, so I asked Alan if he was one of ours. Alan said he didn't recognize him. Then I was a little irritated. I mean, since I know we're going to get blamed for any vomit found in the vicinity, I would prefer it was one of our friends so I could at least give them a hard time about it later. But this guy did look familiar. Then the driver of the BMW that puking guy had gotten out of steps out to see how his friend his and lo and behold, it is my old manager from Gold's Gym. "Will?", he says. "Steve?", I cleverly reply. He seemed drunk too, and I never really talked to him anyway so that was about it for the conversation. We had never been on great terms because I didn't like how he ran the gym and he probably didn't like that the two friends of mine that I had gotten hired for graveyard shifts didn't quite work out. For instance, Brian Young: I had to train him his first night. By training I mean I showed him how to check people in for an hour and then he went off to sleep in the daycare while I watched "Trigun" on his laptop he had brought. Ah, the graveyard shift. My friend Jake also got hired there, but then he got fired so that the friend of the other graveyard guy could get hired. For such a boring job as the 10 pm to 6 am front desk worker, it was pretty interesting. Once I was working on a Friday night and some pretty cool guys brought me a six-pack of Corona. Yeah, I drank them. I think the regulars might have noticed I was a little tipsy, but they didn't say anything. Then there was Phone-Sex Girl, who would call and try to get me to describe in detail my sexual fantasies while I tried to get her to describe in detail what the furniture she was moving into her new place looked like. Then one guy brought his duck into the gym one night and I fed it lettuce while he worked out. And on the night I broke through the internet access restrictions and bought so much stuff online that I was actually losing money going in to work. There was the delinquint member that I mocked over the intercom because he wouldn't pay and wanted to fight me, there was the donut guy who ran in all out of breath and told me that the Circle K down the street was being robbed, the guy who asked me out and I didn't even realize it (we just went out to breakfast after I got off work), the really cute girl who I would discuss literature with (I was all about sci-fi and fantasy, and she was all about realistic fiction), and my favorite, friends randomly dropping by at all hours of the night. Oh, and I could read all night, that was great. I was able to read "Atlas Shrugged" for practically my entire shift for three nights straight. It rocked. Plus, people would see me reading and we would discuss the book and other books the author had written. I had a huge list of books that people told me that I should read.

Certainly not the worst job I've ever had.