Water

How do we interpret our social interactions? Last night, my wife and I talked with a couple of workers at a Greek restaurant in Chattanooga, Tennessee - April and Diana. April is a manager at the restaurant and Diana is a professional server, having worked at several chain restaurants (including Chili's and Red Robin).

We had a good long talk with and learned quite a bit about Diana, who lived and worked in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area for 10 years and recently moved to Chattanooga to get closer to home (Illinois). She made about $1000 a week in Raleigh, and soon after she moved to Chattanooga she made $250-$350 per week, a steep drop in income. She talked about the lack of the number of business people eating out in Chattanooga versus Raleigh that equated to her drop in income. Having worked with IBM folks in the Raleigh-Durham area, I know what she means. Two different towns, two different populations. She'd like to move to Knoxville or Nashville to increase her take-home pay as a bartender.

When I used to travel to Raleigh-Durham (what I heard some people call RDU (the airport) or RTP (Research Triangle Park)), hanging out in bars was a popular pasttime for many, including my main contact there, Jud. In fact, Jud called the bar at Uno's his office. Fern and I would meet him either at Uno's or Starbucks, depending on the time of day. If it was afternoon, you could depend on us stopping for a few drinks at Uno's and toward closing time going back to Jud's basement bar for a couple of nightcaps where Jud kept photos of his wife's previous life as an exotic dancer. Jud has since moved back to his hometown in the Pacific Northwest so those fun days are over.

April. We've run into April once a year for the past three years, literally and figuratively. April is interesting. I love the flowers that bloom in April. I love the look in April's eyes, too. From our conversation with her, it appears that April moved up from server to hiring manager and prefers hiring young people as servers, paying the price in worker turnover/attrition of folks that age. Thank goodness my restaurant days are behind me because I remember some of the workers who came and went, oftentimes ex-cons who couldn't get a job anywhere else. It was through my former job at a restaurant that I learned about a group called MORTIE. [Or rather, a group that doesn't exist called MORTIE, depending on your view. It's one of those secret groups that has no formal history like the Freemasons. A gang with no gang leader. Enough said.]

I'll get to know April and Diana better with time. There comes a time when familiarity really does breed contempt. When is that line crossed, between still having an air of mystery and knowing too much about another? Well, that's why I asked how we interpret social interactions. That's why some people prefer one-night stands and short relationships.

A term I heard in the news lately, called waterboarding, reminds me that my tinnitus is like the Chinese water torture technique that old Vietnam war movies popularized in my youth. When a constant noise, sound or rhythm plays in/on your head, do you eventually lose your mind because you find yourself distracted by the lack of complete silence?

Social interactions are the same way. How many times must the same superficial conversations take place before you lose your sense of personal sanity? What's with all the talking? Where's the action? Do we waste our time analyzing conversations on the fly to determine what a person is really thinking, like Sherlock Holmes in an Arthur Conan Doyle story?

If, in a conversation, a person repeats to you more than once that she finishes her shift at 11:30 p.m. and must be at work at 6:00 a.m. the next morning, what do you think the person is saying to you? That she's a hard worker? That she has no personal life? What if she repeats the question about whether you're going home to Huntsville or staying in Chattanooga the same night? Is she being polite? A scene like this makes a great philosophical situation to create a story out of - repeat the scene but each time have a different conclusion. Remember, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Insanity is not always a bad thing. Insanity and chaos can equal fun, if you know how to mix them together just right.

As I drifted off to sleep last night, I thought about the story I could write using April and Diana as characters. Then I thought about the people from my youth with whom I no longer have active contact. For instance, what if the people you spent three or four years with 30 years ago now claim that they have changed their lives around and found Jesus? Well, they can get forgiveness from their god but what if I wanted to take the sordid details from their lives in primary / secondary school and write a few juicy books? I've already written a few scenes from that time period into some of my books. Why not a whole novel, creating plots using the drug abuse, sexual escapades, vandalism, juvenile criminal records, police arrests, plagiarism, cheating on tests and other events that people such as my schoolmates would not have shared with their offspring because they want to give the appearance they're now (and have always been) such good religious adherents?

I'm a dying man. I won't be on this planet forever. I have no kids to raise or family to take care of. I'm independent of the need for social interactions that guarantee a secure future for me. I write what I want. I don't even need to write books to make money. Thus, I am free [from commercial need] to write what I want, as long as I avoid the direct use of names or places that would imply deliberate libel or malicious intent. Mischievousness! Serialize sordid stories in a blog like drops of water into a shishi odoshi combined with a tsukubai, a torturous exposure of one's dirt and public cleansing of one's past. Since I have no desire to go to any future high school reunions to see people pretend to be someone they weren't in high school, let my writing fun about people like them begin! I'll continue to throw in stories about current people in my life if the episodes with them are worth writing about. [BTW, have you found my other blog where these stories are posted? I'm only using this blog to work out minor details. The good stuff is somewhere else.]

Success is doing what you want whenever you want. I've always wanted to write and publish stories in the public arena without having to waste time going through the long process of submitting them to bored editors who are looking through stacks of manuscripts for something that appeals to them. I write for myself, not potential editors. I write for free, not to make money. I have found success and it feels great! If someone steals my stories that I've written about lives I stole from others, then life is more fun than I thought. I'm part of the ridiculous process of self/species preservation that's put humans where they are today, toiling away on an anonymous planet in an anonymous solar system, one asteroid away from total destruction. If someone wants to steal my writing to create an environmentally-unfriendly life, then go for it - I may or may not figure it out and I may or may not sue you for damages, depending on my mood. Remember, the future of this planet doesn't matter to me. I just want to enjoy my retirement living frugally on my savings, giving the government my tributes and bribes (uh, I mean, fees and taxes, of course). It doesn't get much more fun than this. Have a great day! Time for me to eat lunch and then work on a few new stories.