You Gotta Be Cruel To Be Kind
I’m tight suddenly. Peter my window dude’s back in the window business. So I drive to Hayward this morning and grab a check for a cool grand…a little seed money…which I intend to cash at his local branch. He don’t 1099 my ass. This means I’m back under the radar. If he can hang on, keep it together, my financial worries are over…theoretically. Anyway, fuck looking for a real job. Or even a real under the table job. I can go back to blogging.
A weird little dog
I’m sitting at my favorite table here at The Office. Good old Starbucks. I’m staring at a weird little dog. Looks like Yoda the star war goblin. Somebody braided its ears. Probably the Chick in black tights he trotted in with. Man, what a weird looking dog.
People put Dogs and Cats on Facebook.
I got a Blog here.
Kim puts her cats on Facebook. What the hell.
I snap a photo of this weird little dog.
Okay, so I’m looking for the dog on my phone’s camera screen.
Jesus…how’d that get on there?
A woman’s ass, apparently.
How’d I miss the dog?
Maybe I should erase this woman’s ass. She might see the photo. Catch sight of her own ass right here on a perfect stranger’s screen.
“Hey! That’s me! Did you take that picture of me? ARE YOU SERIOUS! I’m calling 911. There’s laws against what you did.”
I could end up branded a sex offender.
Perfect Coda to my pathetic life:
Seventy year old sex offender goes door to door introducing himself. Those are the rules. Convicted sex offenders need to register when they move into a neighborhood. You’re life gets complicated.
I don’t see her anywhere. Must’ve been a to-go order. I need to delete her PROMINANT ASS.
The smelly Irish dude’s buddy
I’m trying to delete her ass. This guy squeezes in right next to me! There’s three other empty tables against the wall and he sits at the table next to mine. I want to tell him to not sit so close to me. But I don’t want to engage with him. I hate it when this happens.
Okay, he looks familiar. One of those that play backgammon with the smelly Irish dude. They all dress like retired construction workers. This guy wears sideburns and a goatee. Bushy as hell. All the hair on his face makes up for his bald head. I’m sniffing the air around him.
Nothing.
So far so good.
The Smelly Irish dude hasn’t been around lately. Last time I saw him he was sitting outside in a wheel chair with tubes running from his legs. He looked a dirty shade of green. Bad liver maybe. I don’t know. All I know he hasn’t been around lately, smelling up the place.
This is his buddy. One of them. A loud dude always laughing. Today He’s got on a fat sweater makes him look Professorial. He’s all alone and he’s staring at the table like he forgot something. Okay, enough time wasted on him. I got a blog to write.
Oh, man.
What’s going on now? The dude is shivering.
He covers his face with his hands.
He’s weeping!
Shit.
What the fuck am I supposed to do now? I’m looking around. The Baristas are going about their business like this weeping dude is no big deal. You could sacrifice a chicken to the storm god in this place and the Baristas would ignore you. That’s the beauty of The Office. Nobody cares what you do as long as you don’t spread chicken guts on the coffee displays. I mean, the Crazy Dude wanders in and talks to himself real loud about the Titans of Zarkon and nobody cares. Why should a weeping old dude bother them. A weeping old dude, sitting beside me, weeping like a refugee on a cold shore.
Oh, for Christ’s sake:
“Hey, man. You okay?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Oh, come on, man.”
He drops his hands and stares at me.
“You’re in a public space here,” I tell him. “You need to take it outside.”
He shakes his head. Staring at me. Shaking his head. At least he stopped crying. But he keeps shaking his head.
“Sorry,” he says.
“Look. I don’t need an apology. What I need…”
I second that emotion, by Smoky Robinson and the Miracles, plays on the loudspeakers. This song catches his attention and he breaks up again. It’s like the song threw gas on his fire. Man, he’s going to town now, crying like hell.
“Okay. You win! I’m out of here.”
I’m gathering up my shit when he stops crying.
“You don’t understand,” he says.
“You’re right. I don’t understand and I don’t want to–”
“–That’s her favorite song!”
“What?”
“She knows it by heart. Sings it around the house.”
“Who?”
He’s glaring at me. “Who? Did you say, who?”
“Yeah, who?”
“My wife! My God Damned Wife. That’s who.”
Now I get it.
He leans into me and says emphatically, “Didn’t you see her? She was in here! Just now! I came in with her!” His voice drops to a whisper: “She had something to tell me. She wanted to do it in a public place, the sneaky Bitch.”
“Listen–“
“I never hit a woman, you understand?”
“Look–“
“Never in my life. Except the one time. She wouldn’t stop. I begged her to stop. She just wouldn’t lay off. You know how they get. I had too much to drink.”
“I’m not interested–“
“Twenty seven years. That’s how long we been together. Twenty seven fucking years. Pissed away like nothing.”
“I think you need to–“
“You know what she said to me?”
“No.”
“I begged her. I mean, I’m on my knees. I’m begging her! And you know what she said to me?”
“No!”
“She said, sometimes you need to be cruel to be kind.”
“She said that?”
“Those very words.”
“No shit. She really said that?”
He nods. “Just like May West in that old movie.”
“May West, eh?”
“Just like May West…”
I get an idea suddenly.
“Hold on a minute.” I swing my computer screen around, point to the woman’s ass on my screen. “Is this your wife?”
He looks at the woman’s ass. He’s confused.
He glares at me.
“You’re fucking kidding, right?”
Now he’s laughing. He’s laughing like a crazy dude. He gets up and storms out. Laughing as he goes.
I move my stuff to one of the solitary booths.
Another day at the office.
3 thoughts on “You Gotta Be Cruel To Be Kind”
yeah good one Don lol
so i guess what you are implying is that this woman is hideous with her big ass and the dude is crying over some woman with a hideous ass. i guess thats why he is laughing when he leaves right? cruel to be kind……yeah thats about right.an annoying alcoholic . when he drinks ,
every vile and cruel thing in his mind comes out.because you have to be cruel to be kind
I’m at a loss what it all means. It’s all about THE OFFICE. THE OFFICE is where I sit and write all (most all) of my blogs. I sit like Toulouse Lautrec and observe. I’m a freak observing freaks. Now I see it. IT took a while but now I see it. NOW I observe. It’s finally dawned on me (I’m not too bright) that I’m part of this scene. A piece of Americana worth observing. I’m referring to the clientele. Not those who come for coffee and leave. The regulars. There’s plenty of these regulars to write about besides the smelly Irish dude… These people spend the whole day at the office. Tutors meet students. Coders build websites. Book clubs, neighborhood groups, high school punks, all kind of social groups occupy the big tables. Sad sacks with nothing else to do occupy the smaller tables. They show up and spend the whole damned day reading their phones or laptops. The smelly Irish dude used to show up everyday with his cronies and play backgammon. Crazy people wander through, babbling. It’s a place to be when you got no place else to go. Because it doesn’t cost anything. You don’t need to buy a coffee to hang out at the office. All you need to do is not create a huge scene. The baristas are like orderlies at a human zoo. They remain behind the counters except to dump trash and mop the floors and clean the bathrooms. Starbucks is way more than a coffee shop. It’s a library without the books. It’s a social club nobody needs to join to be a member. I know. I’m a member. So far, I’m the only blogger there I know.