[301] Screed City

[301]

10/06/2024 Sunday. Red metal end table. Pool House. Old Chatham, New York.

I need to be brief. I have to get up by 5a and be on the road by 5:30a to get to Queensbury to help load a couple trucks and then drive to Syracuse. G's mom is in California and their step father went out for some music thing somewhere and G has strep, so it is just me and the dogs and an hour and a half of tickling.

Poor G. Aside from the strep, they have me as a father. Yesterday we drove to Hudson to pick up Professor Curly from the train station. We had lunch across the street. G got an egg thing with rice and cilantro. PC got a salad with boiled egg and I got the pulled pork on a baguette. It was mediocre, but expensive. The sun burned me for most of the lunch. After that we drove to Chatham proper. There was a street fair and I bought those two a thing of cotton candy to share. We puttered around and were looking for iced coffee which we couldn't find. We settled on two donuts and a hot coffee with half and half that only I drank. We sat down at a table and things were going fine until G's boss showed up. We were introduced and she was telling me and PC how much G loved working with babies. For some reason I said:

"Yeah, they were telling me they liked babies so much that they were thinking about getting pregnant."

It was a joke. G is not thinking about having a baby. They are 16 years old. Not only that, but there are other reasons they are very, very unlikely to become pregnant. It was a joke of poor form and unnecessary. Their boss, who is a Quaker said: "Yes, all in good time." She politely excused herself and left. The damage was done though and there was no going back. It was maximum awkwardness. G, I am sorry, I did not mean to cause you grief.

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The office holiday party was last night. After humiliating G we drove back to their house and me and PC drove up to Queensbury. We got there just in time to check into the hotel and I was able to iron my outfit. The Queensbury Inn is a ripoff of a hotel. I spent last week at the Holiday Inn Express in Cicero and my room was bigger, had nicer beds, was cleaner and 1/5th the amount of money. But we were across the street from the party, so that was good.

The party was fun for a work party. Hors devours flowed like wine and wine flowed like beer and martinis. The party started at 6p and dinner wasn't served until 9:30. My guess is that half the revelers don't remember eating dinner. I got the pork chop. PC got the scallops, I think, Scott was there and he got the fish sampler. Jayboo got the filet mignon for the second year in a row and was disappointed a second time. Me, Scott and Jimmy all got awards for showing up to work. Mine was for five years, Scott's for ten years, Jimmy for 20 even though he is officially retired. Jimmy brought his granddaughter to the party. He is teaching her the ropes about how to scavenge metal scrap and sell it by the pound. The owner of the company was wearing ear rings and when he thanked me for my service he said:

"Joe has been here for five years and nobody really knows him, so, um. Thanks, Joe!"

When we were leaving the party I tried to tell him that I was an artist, that I wrote novels, he couldn't understand, in his defense he was quite drunk, I changed tack and bitched about I Weiss instead and told him to avoid using the company. That they steal from their employee, then I realized that all employers steal from their employees and my feelings were unimportant, but at least I put him on notice, I guess, at the party he was throwing for his employees. I am sure that G felt an acute cringe at a distance about it. Like Einstein and his spooky action. After that me and PC and Scott stumbled across the street to grab a few winks.

In the morning me and Professor Curly ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Something that cost money, but would have been free in Cicero. There was nothing special about it. Well, our waitress was special. She was like if you combined Grit and my niece O, Charley and Megan's kid and made that combination a teenager. Freckles and everything.

After that we drove down to Hudson to drop PC off at the train station and then I had to go back to Old Chatham to pick up G and take them to the urgent care.

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I don't know. It looks like I am going to be upstate for quite a bit of time. Greg told me at the party that he will keep me employed until I, "Cry uncle." Whatever that means. I want it. I need it. I have this project that I need money for. The problem though is that, like tomorrow, I have to get up at five all the fucking time. At night I should be doing editing and I am too tired to do it. I can only write new crap. And I don't need new crap. I have a plethora of crap so deep and thick I have officially lost novels now that I don't know where they are. And one of my computers just stopped taking wifi so I can't upload art work for covers. It's a shit-show over here and I don't see a way out of it. I can't edit when I am exhausted, because what is the point in doing that? Unless of course your job is to edit. My job is not to edit.

However, if I work really hard and believe in myself, all my dreams will come true.

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The party at Tom's was great. I over-booked it. And I will never, ever have a reading-reading ever again. I mean, perspective. Does anyone know about perspective? Where it comes from and how you get it? Years ago, seven maybe, eight? I was in Seattle visiting my friend J Gbaur and I think maybe going out to Montana afterwards? It was early days of Whiskey Tit and things I was writing. He was doing a show at Hattie’s, I think, with the sister of the singer from Soundgarden. The seminal grunge band. Somehow I got involved and everyone involved thought it would be good if I read from the book that had just come out, I remember being very nervous about it, but thinking it was the perfect environment for the reading. The idea was that I would go on in-between bands. And that is what I did. I went on in-between two bands. I must have read maybe a page and a half before Soundgarden's sister cut me off and said, "Sorry, but you could just keep reading that forever, am I right?" It was humiliating. I was humiliated. However, all these years in the future, I get it. I really do. There are rules to entertaining and just reading from whatever junk you have to read from does not make for entertainment. I feel like I have learned the final lesson about doing readings. Like D.A.R.E. taught me back in middle school, the best way to live your life is to Just Say No.

[insert photo probably]