Patience Says it is Past Her Cure

I'm out of patience.

Not even during my immersion into Buddhism was I particularly patient. I blame television, the interwebs, liberalism, pornography. I was raised on electronic boxes. When electronic boxes were the hip, new thing on the block. Technology is so passe these days, anything not an electronic box is hip in certain circles.

But patience has never been an adjective I've worn on my hat. Meditating for hours in rainy Oregon winters, poor, celibate, and uncertain. I look back to those memories as my finger tips brushing the cool glass of self control. I look back and can hardly identify that person, like seeing oneself in a dream. But, I'm the kind of person who will hold a grudge against someone if they upset me in a dream.

One day my boss asked me if I knew that I'd be washing dishes next week. It reminded me of a poor, rain-soaked Bodhisattva on the coast mixing soap in a greasy sink. All that my roommates would eat were bacon, cheese, and beef. Saute'd with vegetable oil. I hated it then, and I was the closest I have ever been to patient in those days.

I told her, "I hate washing dishes. Dishes aren't sexy. There's no sugar in dishes."

Her unilluminating sleeve tattoos wiped non-existent sweat off her brow. She was the opposite of a snake only because she refrained from eye contact. She muttered something about it being good for me, as it was the objects in the world around them that the Dutch painters would turn to. Baroque.

I was out of patience.

"I don't think I'm enjoying this." I said to B. He was a male, but practically female, so our boss liked him. She even made eye contact. I went to the bathroom and punched a few things. Is anything as joyous as the sound of knuckle connecting furiously to an aluminum towel dispenser? Or a cheap boot to the back of a bathroom stall? I don't know what they're constructed of, but I'd love to purchase some scrap just for anger management. I'm sure it'd be cheaper than all that rifle ammunition.

I emerged and my boss asked if I wanted to talk about it. I told her I liked to keep it inside. Let it bottle up. Let it explode violently. Women hate this characteristic. She looked like she wanted a cigarette. Confirming my observation, she told me to meet her outside in a few minutes. I decided they'd be my last minutes here. I Scrounged my fleeting sense of entitlement. It was like the spoons that fall through into the garbage disposal. Clanging against the blades when you flipped the switch, making your fingers tingle.

"B, sorry to do this to you. But I quit." I told him.

"Really? You're quitting?" He asked.

"Yeah, I'm gonna go outside and tell Hairam right now."

"I think you should. Go for it man, you don't need this." B said, always strangely optimistic.

Outside I made her go back in and grab her cigarettes so I could have one.

"I thought you didn't smoke?" She asked. I shrugged and used her lighter. "Smoke 'em if ya got them."

Joining me at the table, she asked if I remembered what we talked about in my 3 month review. I exhaled. I nod.

During my 3 month review, she had taken the liberty to provide a book passage especially for me. It was from some drab paperback about how to run a business. The pages were bent and she had highlighted certain passages. I feel as though she had moved on only very recently from such books as, "Managing for Dummies", or "Money, and Why You Need It!".

The excerpt she had personally selected, and read, to me was essentially a parable. According to the author, I was like an actor. Even if I was having a bad day, I needed to perform, and I must not let outside influences affect my performance. Because people wanted a good show.

I didn't mention that serving deep fried tofu wasn't a performance. Or that professional actors got paid more than professional vegan food spooners. In my mind, I could've made a hell of an actor.

"I'm going to quit." I told her. She rolled down the sleeves of her loose shirt, over her generic colored arms. Koi fish-domesticated common carp. Her skin reminded me of the wallpaper from a room someone would keep fishing trophies in.

"What kind of notice are you going to give me?" She asked.

"This is your notice. When I finish this cigarette, I'm going to go home and rest."

"I'm sorry you're walking out on a shift." She stomped her cigarette out and angrily got up. I didn't turn to watch her walk away, or try to stop her. The actor inside of me didn't want to ruin the scene. It may have been the two beers I drank before work. Or the cigarette. But I felt extremely serene. Patient almost.

I like the feeling that comes with quitting your job. It's really quite liberating. Anything is possible as all those prime 8 hour chunks are no longer spoken for. I've had around 15 jobs in 10 years. I've lost count, and remembering what I did as a 15 year old is like seeing myself in a dream.

I don't fear being poor and out in the rain. That's the closest I've ever come to gaining patience. And it reminds me of something I once read from a drab paperback with the edges of the pages folded and paragraphs highlighted.

One day I had everything. The next day I had nothing. Except my life.

Aquatic Mammal

thats me
sitting in the back
drinking and thinking away
buried under numb being
the tender smiles drifts for miles
and gives me a free drink
as i fade away
because sooner or later
i'll have to pay
sooner or later i'll pay

Tauroctony

I was scrubbing at dried organic rice when one of the more focused of the new girls at my work mentioned that the rodeo was in town.

"That sure is interesting," I told her, even though it really wasn't.

I didn't like the rodeo, and I knew that our relationship would never blossom the way it could potentially have if she didn't mention her infatuation with the rodeo.

It was like when the Cheesegirl didn't understand my metaphor linking NASCAR to sex. She'll probably become a judge when she's older.

I knew something was up, because when I was downtown 'socializing' in bars the other night, something like my 13th or 14th day straight drinking/drunk, I noticed a large influx of young, drunk people asking me where I'm from. I didn't start in this city, and most likely won't end here unless of course that pain in my side really is my liver, not a bruise from when I crashed my bike a week ago like I've convinced myself. Foreign. But I live here, which set me apart from the drunk married couple that kicked my ass in pool.

I figured the commotion must've been over one of the music festivals this city holds each year. But that's a week away. The rodeo was in town.

Watching bulls get individually slaughtered for sport under the Mexican sun is the closest I've ever come to attending a rodeo. That was another lifetime ago. I didn't consume two mamosas made with champagne available on the corner drugstore everytime I left the house. A beer and bourbon before work. 2$ beers across the street during lunch break. Bottle of wine at quitting time. The bulls would get exhausted and collapse before their brains were thrusted with a thin sword. Like a toothpick in the free cheese samples at the new H.E.B. There's a sign out front that says it's the pride of the whole avenue. And it's true.

Another new girl at my work was sitting in a boat and had the chance to save her drowning friend from sea monsters. But her mother wouldn't let her off the boat. She dreamed this last night and woke up crying. She asked me what it meant. Shrugging, I suggested that perhaps her friend was an alcoholic.

She said, "No, he's just European."

"Maybe it was the strange place you were sleeping at." I said. "Before I had a bed, I slept on the floor and it gave me the weirdest dreams of my life."

These days I dream about the first real job I had as a manager of a buzzing capitalism store. They're not nightmares, but they're scary because in the dreams I am relieved. I also drank during that job, because I could. Not because I had to.

I left the bullfight three-quarters of the way through. I assume it was almost over, although they could've continued for hours more, who knows. But I grew tired of the show. And slightly disgusted with myself for paying some pesos to experience it. I'll probably stop drinking for the same reasons, but hopefully not until I get fired from my job because of it.