The Rumpus!!!

I am thrilled to have an essay up at the fine literary mag, The Rumpus. A piece about me, my mom and Joan Didion - a writer who had a profound effect on both of our lives.

Click here to read!

Coming Home

I'm home for the first time after officially moving to Northern California in December, and it's both comfortable and alien at the same time. Or maybe it was only alien before I got here, before I remembered I would know what to do when I saw my mom, and how to take care of her. I spent the day or two before coming home incredibly anxious about it all, but not really able to understand why.  I know my mom is dying, she's been dying for two and a half years, and I was there for almost every day of it, so it's not like I would be walking into something unfamiliar or unknown. But there have been changes for her since I've left, more changes than have happened in a short period of time up until now. Or so it seems. Being away from it, I've realized how hard it really is to gauge accurately what's happening - although being close to it may be just as hard, as it's difficult to realize what is changing, if the changes are permanent or if this or that change (from sleeping to eating to speaking) means that this is it, it's happening, she's really dying. Really, really, dying, which seems to me different from what she's been doing the last few years, which is more like a slow fading while living, not exactly dying. But of course, she's dying all the same. 

However, it's hard to deny at this point that things really are changing; she's sleeping more, talking less and/or just not struggling as much to talk, more easily overwhelmed and a bit more exhausted by the small things, like getting dressed. My stepdad, Jim, has very diligently kept me in the loop, letting me know there has been a handful of rough days recently that aren't like the other rough days we've seen. This is especially poignant to me, given that Jim is a master of the gloss, as in glossing over a bad situation and making it seem like everything's fine. Best example? When he flunked at EKG so badly a few years ago that the cardiologist immediately stopped the test only a few minutes in.  Just afterwards, Jim appeared at the door to his hospital room where we were all waiting, with a frozen smile that seemed to say everything was fine. Sometimes it is difficult to to discern exactly what smile he's wearing, given his psuedo Sam Elliot moustache, but the "everything is actually fucked" smile is one he holds for a longer period of time, and then it dawns on you that holding a smile for that long isn't quite natural. At any rate, he was admitted for surgery that night - his "widow maker," a major artery of the heart that someone in the medical field decided to give that lovely name, was 80% occluded and he could have had a massive heart attack at any time.

Now, I've been here for a few days, and I'm entirely comfortable being home and happy to give Jim some hours to himself everyday. I've been thinking about those days before I flew out, how my anxiety rode backseat until I was curbside at the airport and saw Ma and Jim drive up, Ma waving and half-smiling, adorable and sweet in a white poncho sweater.  I think part of the anxiety was that in the last month, I'd acclimated to having my days alone (for the most part, although many mornings were just plain strange with no one to talk to but the cat) no one to take care of, and suddenly I was headed back into that world. Or as Matt put it, "Of course you have anxiety! You're going home to see your mom, who is dying. That's not exactly fun." I guess he has a point, although I love her so much that I assumed that would wash away any other issues I might have.

I know Jim and Ma have a had a nice month together in my absence, not to mention a small return to the privacy of their marriage and living in their house alone, together - but several caregivers have either been injured or on vacation, so Jim hasn't had a lot of help. As in, he hadn't really left the house for more than 20 minutes at a time since I'd been gone. They need to hire help, and so when the two of them picked me up from the airport, I didn't even ask how they were - or maybe I did, and then I launched into my caregiver campaign.

"Well, we've done fine. I'm fine," Jim said, smiling that frozen smile.

"I know," I said. "But you can't keep doing this for months on end."

He shrugged, and then I told him I was interviewing a potential caregiver and that he really needed 8-10 hours a week of help, and it wasn't really a suggestion. He shrugged again. That was all I needed to understand that he was giving in, because if he wasn't, he would have fought me tooth and nail and hammer and screw.

Sidebar: As my boyfriend, Matt, pointed out before I left, "I know Jim will miss you and your help, but you've got to know he is the tiniest bit relieved to not be bossed around anymore." Me? Bossy? Yes, it turns out, incredibly. Especially when it comes to Ma. Within minutes of arriving, I was right back into my caregiver/advocate role and trying to control and organize everything. Trust me, it's for their own good. (And, it's working, the new, lovely caregiver, Ray, started this week.)

While it's taken me two years to leave Ma, and many false starts and claims of, "In six more months I'm going, no really, I'm going" by finally leaving and spending an extended time away, there has been a feeling of relief and freedom. However, these feelings come with them more than a twinge of guilt; as in, shouldn't I miss my mother so much that I can't eat or sleep or think? What is wrong with me?!? Shouldn't I be worried all the time, and sobbing intermittently throughout the day instead of merely teary every once in awhile?

I know Ma would shake a finger at me for feeling guilty, and probably eek out an empathetic, "Please!" but I didn't expect to feel this way.  I think part of why I do is because I have a gut-level knowledge that I made the right decision -- and it's what Ma and I agreed upon. Plus, we Skype several times a week, which helps with the angst quite a bit. Then there is the sort of giant fact that I'm finally with the love of my life after two and a half very long years. It's great, but let us remember the wise word of Maroon 5, "It's not all rainbows and butterflies, it's compromise that moves us along," and this is especially true given my crumb-bly habits and/or the fact that he feels I eat rice cakes like the Cookie Monster, and that I'm know to use a "grotesque" amount of toilet paper, but there have also been diamond earrings, a book tree, beautiful meals and many lovely, lazy days together as we both adjust. (His cat, Miles, is still adjusting, but for the record, she did curl up and sleep on my lap one night when Matt went to bed. This is nothing short of HUGE.} It is not easy when two almost 40-somethings move in together, but at moments, it's hilarious in it's utter absurdity, as anyone who's ever had to live with another person can understand.

So all of that helps in the wake of leaving Ma. Not to mention I have someone who almost every night tells me it's going to be ok, no matter what happens, and that I can go home whenever I want, for however long I need to. (This may, however, just be a rouse so that he can have his weekends back to watch football and not have to leave the house. Whatever the case may be, he is one of the only reasons I'm surviving any of this, and being with him every day is just the sort of balm I need.)

I think I struggle against or feel guilty for being relieved from my caregiving duties because I never felt oppressed during the time I took care of her -- I knew I was doing what I should have been. Not that I didn't get antsy or feel as if someone had pushed a pause button on my life; but that would be for an hour or an afternoon and then I'd have some moment with her that would remind me of why the pause was important, why the pause was the exact right thing.

I've grown so used to being with her that now, having my days to myself feels indulgent. I vaguely remember living this way several years ago, although I can't really recall then what I did with my time. Tried to write, I imagine, waited tables, daydreamed about finally meeting someone, worked out and was amused by my terror of a pug, Wally. My days are not so different now, except Wally's gone (RIP, buddy) and I no longer wait tables and I know I'm coming home to the person I've always wanted to be with. It is the only thing that would somehow make it ok to not be coming home to Ma. I lucked out.

This first trip back, I've stayed longer than I planned because Jim needed the help, and I'm glad I have. With all the changes happening, it occurred to me that maybe I should just stay, as it feels palpable to me (although I've said it before god knows) that her clock is winding down. But to stay is to go right back to where I was for two years, on permanent pause, exactly the place I know Ma doesn't want me to be. All the same, I had to ask her just to be sure.  She's managed to communicate that she feels things are shifting, that she's changing, so I asked if she had any sense of the timing of when she might go, and if I should stick around.She said she didn't know for sure, but that this phase could go on for awhile too.

"But I feel guilty for leaving," I said.

"Whoah, whoah, whoah," she said. This has become her favorite phrase as of late and it can mean anything from joy to shock to excitement, but I took this one to mean, "Jesus Christ, you have to be kidding me."

"I do, though, you know?" I said.

"Really. Really," she countered. This is her second favorite phrase, and sort of means the same as the whoahs, and I also took this to mean, "Jesus Christ, you have to be kidding me."

"Ok, Ma, I'll go," I said. "I mean, I'm not going to miss it, you know? I'll be here when it happens."

"Really, really," she said, laughing.

So it's settled, and I'm going back Thursday. Back to my future, you might say. Back to where I'm supposed to be. 

Ode to Waitressing Part 4: Wherein the Word Douchebag Enters My Lexicon Full-Time

Good God. I am so late with this final installment of the waitressing series, I don't even know what to say. So here goes. This is dedicated to all those who have asked me several times to complete this series. All 3 of you. You know who you are. Ok, so where were we? 

So that happened. My sister got breast cancer at 28 and I moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington to help take care of her. It was terrifying, exhausting and all-encompassing, but there was a personal freedom in it that I had never experienced before: I no longer worried about what I was going to do with my life. What was the point? What mattered was making sure my sister didn't die, and is there any higher calling than taking care of someone you love? This is a dangerous game, however, as the problem becomes this: what in the hell will you do after? Whether they live or die, you still have to move forward. Our lives couldn't continue on the in the cocoon that had formed during her diagnosis and treatment once she was better, and that was a huge adjustment. Also, two weeks after we moved together to Portland after her treatment, she was in love. Two months later, she was engaged. It was a lot, to say the least. What was I doing in the meantime? I was back to waiting tables, this time in a man's shirt and tie, working one double after the next. A "double" is perhaps the most innocuous term for one of the most depraved thing that exists in the restaurant industry- that is, you work the lunch and the dinner shift with a break in-between that is too short to actually get anything done and long enough to be really fucking annoying. Then there was the shock of being on my own again with no life to go back to as my sister sprinted into a whole new one without me (remember, I had just left LA and moved home, all primed for my sabbatical at 32, and then my life became about saving hers) was almost more than I could take. To put it simply, the situation was complicated and as a result, I wrote a whole memoir about it, so I won't prattle on about it here.
 
I will say it was one of the darker times in my life, working doubles at Harrison, a new and fancy restaurant downtown, decorated with a smattering of avant-guarde art, blue velvet booths that needed constant crumbing and a seemingly endless supply of crystal glassware that I spent the better part of my days polishing. Then there was its completely insane manager, a man named Sam, who looked as if he never slept and although a diabetic, rarely ate. He lived in that restaurant and expected everyone else to do the same. 

"I need you to work 9 shifts this week," he would say, and before you could answer, he would for you, intoning, "Please and thank you." He'd even clap his hands together, like everything was a done deal, maybe shake yours, and there you were, pouring ice tea for businessmen in the afternoon and wine for them at night, and none of the day or night was yours anymore.

If I'd actually had any free time, it remains vague what I would have done with it. I didn't really want to go home, as my sister and I were still living together and any time I came home to her and the boyfriend, they were doing something annoying, like giggling and making nachos. And then I just wanted to be alone, forever alone. I couldn't write to save my life. (Hell, I could barely get out of bed. Also, I had planned to write a memoir about the miracle of my sister's survival from a wicked cancer and the spiritual journey our whole family was involved in, the Hindu mysticism that guided us and they way my sister and I sort of fell in love with one another when she was sick. Now, however, none of it was exactly true. We sort of couldn't stand each other, and it was nearly impossible for either of us to see the others point of view. "You both certainly have your perspectives," Ma said, during a period where she refused to discuss any of it with either of us.)
What I remember most from those months were buckets of red wine and running. It was the running that saved me, runs through the neighborhood in the dark, in the pouring, sideways rain, blasting Liz Phair and Pete Yorn and The Garden State soundtrack and, embarrassingly, Maroon 5. That first album was pretty decent, right? Right?

Anyway, I recovered and gained some semblance of a life.  I managed to get out of Harrison just before it closed and secured a sweet gig cocktailing at O! (The name has been changed to protect me from random internet searches, etc., but I think we all know what we are talking about here, at least anyone in Portland). The best thing about O! is that if you work in the bar, they let you run with more tables than anyone is allowed to outside of a third world country, and therefore, lots of money can be made.

I guess O! was where I was finally on the other side of that glass, inside the cocktail lounge, with all the beautiful people.  But 18 years ago, there was no such thing as a Douchebag. Apparently, they are multiplying so quickly now, that they spring from the sidewalks in the Pearl if you pour enough Mojito down certain cracks. I'm sure you are all familiar with this species, born sometime after 9/11, right around the time our country rediscovered irony.  Ours are the old school versions, (pre-Jersey Shore) with terrible designer jeans and huge pointy McShiny shoes, tight, air-brushed and bejeweled tees. They crammed themselves into the bar for years, hitting on that certain breed of girl who thinks a belt can double as a skirt and orders either a "skinny girl" margarita or a Mojito that's "not too sweet."* I can't say for sure when the Cougars officially marked out their territory all over God's green earth, but now, they and the DBs make O! into big, fat, hot mess.

 Yep. That's about right.

I ask you: Do I need a woman who is only a few years older than me, in white jeans, a matching white vest with only a tank top underneath, orange skin and spider legs for eyelashes snapping her fingers at me because she simply must have her fundido right now? No, I do not. Ditto her "date" for the evening, the douche who, after 3 or 4 Grey Goose and sodas, informs me that what he is drinking is in no way Grey Goose, who, when I inform him that he is indeed drinking Grey Goose he refutes me? Is it any wonder when I take his drink away and bring him another, that I am forced myself to drink the one he has barely sipped? No, it is not. Once however, on what is termed First Thursday in Portland -- a spring break for Cougars disguised as a high-brow gallery walk -- I got to express my frustration to one Douche in particular.  The above occurred and when he ordered his umpteenth drink, he made sure to tell me, "Hey, hey, Grey Goose and soda."  I actually looked at him and said, "No shit, dude. No shit." It was immensely satisfying.

For five and a half long years I toiled in that bar, making more money than I would have thought possible without taking my clothes off, and despite so many more horrific customers and long terrible nights, I don't remember all that many specifics. It blends and blurs.  I know, however, that there is a tiny bit of magic in a restaurant when you are slammed beyond belief, the whole place is, yet somehow, all the cogs in the wheel fit together perfectly and everything clicks and everyone survives it together - you have run your ass off, you have truly worked, you are worked, and you all come out the other side.

What I will remember and miss the most are the people who survived those five years with me, all the craziness, the late nights, the massive ups and downs, my mom getting sick and finally, meeting the love of my life. Here are some highlights and shout-outs to all of you.

Every 3 am night/morning at Touche, including: Lynsey constantly putting out my cigarettes, wasted on a half glass of wine, adorably oblivious to hot Russel's obsession with her, ditto Jeff's and every other dude at O!'s obsession with her, sweetly falling asleep on my couch with Wally curled up next to her. Katie making me stay for one more, just one more, I mean Mims, what do you really have to do in the morning, really, you don't have to do anything, and we will just stay for one, maybe two. But that's all. (Repeat this scenario at Fratelli's and Low Brow. Then repeat it again the next shift.) I drank more in my five years at O! than I ever had in my life, making up for the relative sobriety of my 20s and getting it all out of my system. This also includes bus boy and bartender crushes.  And for that, everyone, I thank you.

Any shift worked with Lucas Bruckert. Could there be a man with a better attitude after working a year of doubles straight though? I literally would have killed a litter of puppies if I'd had to do the same. The kid was so innocent when he started at O!, he had no idea what he was in for. He had never worked in the industry and was the hardest working busser I've ever seen. And the funniest. (And later, the funniest waiter and manager.) No better audience for my jokes or sob stories in restaurant history.  If I ever get this one-woman show together, Lucas had better be in the front row. I also adore him for latching onto the term, "Glorious!" and shouting it at inappropriate times during service. Ditto when he convinced Keith that a large party in the bar were actually a group of swingers who had come to O! several years in a row and that we'd caught a couple of them the year before doing in it the Havana bathroom. I will also never tire of his rendition of a certain monologue from A Few Good Men, which includes the phrase "faggoty white coat." For the record, this is exactly the kind of coat O!'s waiters wear.

The outrageous mouth and on-demand crying skills of Miss Katie Horley. She's an oxymoron, people, there's no doubt about that. She also forgets that I am *13* years older than her at any given time, so therefore she'll say things like, "That was so '06," which to her, is an epically long time ago. Or is a reference to college? I'm not sure, since I graduated in 1995. She has endeared herself to me completely, mainly by possessing a mouth bigger and more outrageous than my own, which is no easy feat. Crass, bitchy and incredibly sweet at the core, she is the only person I've ever known who claims to have been aroused by a bus boy's forearms. They were nice, however. I've gained a flower girl and surrogate little sister all in one.

The bartending skills and stupendous company of Chino Lee, not to mention Paul, Nitiya and the whole Fratelli gang. This was the place to go after a good shift, a bad shift or an in-between shift, where the bartender would never give you the stink eye if you sat for longer than was polite, reading a book or watching "Man vs. Food" on the flat screen above the bar, who let you have just a "scotche" (read: large splash) of wine and then another and another. Oh, and some Italian bread and olive oil and balsalmic. Or was that just me? Thanks to all the gang for putting up with the "Oba-dose" and for providing such a great place to hang. RIP Bar Due. 

The kindness and general insanity of Jeff Colton** This is a man who, while wasted, went online one night and decided to change his name to Uncle Silky. Also a man I wanted to physically strangle at certain junctures in his O! career, but who's dedication to O! put the rest of us to shame. Not to mention his amazingly in-depth text messages about the cosmos and the books we should write and the (mostly) clinically insane women he dates. Amazing.

To my long-term fellow bar maid lovelies, Jenny, Kristin and Lynsey, I cannot thank any of you enough. (A shout-out here too, for less long-term lovelies Frank and Meghan.) For putting up with my once-a-month vacations to keep my long-distance relationship alive, for being there through the shitty-shit-shittiest moments with customers and management, the worst of the douchebags, the crazy, shit-show nights, for the talks over the bar and by the walk in, and for knowing that you always had my back. Hope you know I'll always have yours.

*Listen up, bitches. Enough. Mixed drinks are sweet and they all have a shitload of sugar in them. You sound like a jackass when you order them less sweet.  Also? Booze will make you just as fat as sugar. So order a freaking vodka soda, pull that belt/skirt down over your ass, try not to fall as you teeter around the bar in your clear heels and just please, for the love of cocktailers and bartenders across the earth, shut the fuck up.

**Jeffrey, I'm sorry I was the worst "icing" victim ever. I mean ever. I'm not sure I've ever seen you and Katie's faces look more disgusted. And we all know that's saying a lot.

Grief, Briefly Interrupted (Redux)

Hey!

No, I haven't finished that last piece on my illustrious waitressing (I love that spell check doesn't consider "waitressing" a word) but I have posted another memoir piece on TNB!

Check it:

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/amims/2011/11/grief-briefly-interrupted/

Love in the Time of Glioblastoma

Peeps!

Check out my debut post on the fantastic literary website The Nervous Breakdown!  You won't be sorry.  At least, I don't think you will be.

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/amims/2011/10/love-in-the-time-of-glioblastoma/

An Ode To Waitressing Part 3: The Pony, Waiting on Monica Lewinsky, Graduate School

I know, I know. This post is late. I got sidetracked, kids, with life and whatnot. But I swear I will finish this little series in the next week or so......also, did you know you can subscribe to this blog now? No more pesky checking in to see if I've posted!  In the right hand column on the main page at the top, just enter your email address and you'll get notification when I post.  Amazing.

Ok, so where were we? 1999, I believe. I'd just survived my 4th (and last) corporate job experience and was back in familiar territory, waiting tables.  I went to work at a sister restaurant of Cutter's in Seattle, The Palamino. Yes, it's a chain, yes, it's faux Italian food. Yes, we nicknamed it The Pony. Yes, we had no less than 17 pasta dishes on the menu at the height of the Atkins craze in LA. And I don't say "craze" lightly.  Those bitches had us making cappuccinos with cream instead of milk because that meant less freakin' carbs. Our most popular dish, however, was a crab dip, made essentially of mayonnaise, some crab and some cheese, and nothing delighted me and my fellow waiters more than when some skinny "actress" would come in and say, "Well, I'm not very hungry. I'll just have the crab dip." And 3,000 calories.

I'm not going to lie, it was a long couple of years waiting on the people of Los Angeles.  They tended towards just what you'd imagine - demanding, rude, often unable to make eye contact, incredibly fucking fond of creating their own unique dishes that did not appear anywhere on our menu. We were situated in Westwood, near UCLA, Brentwood and Beverly Hills adjacent, which equals a shitload of older, rich people in St. John sweater outfits. When I first got there, an insane man named James ran the front desk. James felt that The Pony was akin to Spago, and treated it as such. He knew all the names of these horrible people, researched the latest seasons of St. John's, Prada, Escada so as to compliment their outfits upon entry, commented on their "refreshed" faces and made no secret of his own cheek implants and propensity towards MAC powder.  He kissed ass, gave away a Dim-Sum's brunch worth of crab dip on a Saturday night, was slipped more $20 bills than I'd ever seen and drove us waiters insane. He had no ability to say something simply or handle the seating of someone without 100% drama.  Once, I heard a man ask him if we were closed, and he said this: "Why yes, sir, I do believe we have terminated service for the evening." Eventually, however, the pressures of The Pony's front desk became too much for poor James. His career ended one late night when he took off a shoe and hurled it at the head of the manager in charge. Rumors floated around that drugs and sexual favors were involved, but we will never know for sure.

Oh, and the celebs.  Tyra Banks used to come in for lunch all the time, when she was a little chubby and had not yet lost her mind. She was very sweet. Warren Beatty nice, Lisa Bonet was picky and weird. John Cusack was also nice and although I didn't wait on him, I contemplated attaching myself to his ankles as he left the building. And then, one quiet night, I waited on Monica Lewinsky. And her dad. Both were polite and quiet, and my heart sort of broke for her. It was only a year or so after the scandal, and she was about my age. All I could think was all the mistakes I'd made with men along the way, men far less famous and charismatic than Clinton, and all the baggage that entailed - yet it was nothing compared to hers. She could never go on a first date without the images of cigars and soiled dresses dancing through her dates' heads. Never meet a potential mother-in-law who wouldn't assume she was a slut, which is sort of what I assumed, until she was a flesh and blood girl in front of me, young, insecure and wanting to be loved.  I did my best to smile at her as much as I could and pretended she was just another customer.  I like to imagine she was grateful and relieved.

In the meantime, I did my best to adjust to my new life. I, once again, had no idea what I was really doing, I just knew I was elated to no longer be trapped behind a desk. I took my first fiction class at UCLA, then continued on with Lisa's private workshops. I learned that waiting until the day before a story was due to write it didn't really work, and that overall, writing was very, very hard. But I loved it. It was unlike anything I'd tried to do before, this spinning of words into a story out of thin air.  Most of my first stories were thinly veiled autobiographical pieces, mainly focused around all the crazy men I had dated.  When I discovered I had a lot more material than just that, something in me knew I could do this for real, and I started researching MFA programs. I had been writing a year and thought I should wait another year before I applied, but Lisa said no, do it now, why wait? And so I did, and was accepted to UC Irvine. My future was back on track, and I was headed to a mecca of artistic ingrity and, I assumed, unadorned appreciation for my writing. (I blame Lisa for this naivete, as she would simply write "Brilliant" on the top of nearly everything I wrote.) I would get a stipend there to teach unwitting undergrads, so after 2 1/2 years at The Pony, I was all like, "See you later, bitches, I'm done with all this and off to write a brilliant bestseller!"

As with all the best laid plans, this theory quickly unraveled. I, like an asshole, volunteered to be up first for workshop, and in that excruciating 45 minutes, I knew several things: 1. I was a piece of shit writer. 2. Graduate school was a terrible idea. 3. No one here was ever going to say that my work was brilliant. 4. I had to smile while my guts were ripped out of my body and spread out on the table. 5. I had approximately 2 more years to go of this bullshit.

That first year, I nearly came undone. We were also expected to teach the youth of America with exactly one week of training, and on top of writing piles of shit, I wasn't doing that all that well either. The workshop is a bizarre place, full of egos and insecurities and projections and judgements and hatred and jealousy, and sometimes, love and respect. It's a long story, but aside from a few people there, I felt universally misunderstood in those rooms and entirely lost. My usual charisma failed, my charms thwarted or ignored. By my second year, I had more free time and was longing to go back to something I had some footing in, something I knew I was good at, a place where people appreciated who I was and what I had to offer. Also, I thought it might be a good idea to not have a ton of debt for something that amounted to pure torture. So? I went back to The Pony. Just three days a week, but I went back. Cocktailing instead of working in the dining room, but baby, I was back. 

And ironically, I felt a lot better. I had this other world to escape into from graduate school all these people who didn't care about how much interiority my characters' had, if my characters' were really just whiny, self-pitying women underneath all that interiority or if I'd ever read T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland." I had not, and I still have not.  There was a guy in my class who could quote that fucking poem on demand, most likely tell you what page the line he was quoting was on. It was nauseating.

It was a horrifically long two years.  I stayed for an extra year teaching to finish my thesis, a collection of (surprise!) thinly veiled autobiographical short stories. And suddenly, it was 2004.  I had a master's degree and. . .  I was waiting tables.  I was also very, very tired of Los Angeles, and I missed my family. By then, I had been away from them for 15 years. I mentioned to Ma that I wanted to come home. Of course, she said. Take a sabbatical! she said. A sabbatical at 32. Only my mother would have championed this.  And so I did. I packed my shit and left, with no clue as to what was going to come next.  I would teach, I figured, write my novel.  I knew, of course, that whatever happened, I was done waiting tables.

I moved home in July. Two months later, my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer at 28.  In an instant, my life was no longer my own, and whatever plans I had were erased: firmly and completely.

An Ode to Waitressing Part 2: My So-Called Corporate Life

I must preface my next stint in waitressing with an outline of my largely unsuccessful and highly traumatizing post-college time in the corporate world.  Of course, I waited tables at a pub on Telegraph Avenue while at Berkeley, and the usual college nonsense ensued. We were also entertained on a regular basis by the crazy, homeless people who ran the city, including my favorite, a guy we called Rare. He would stick his head into various business and simply shout, "Rare!" on a regular basis. And then: graduation and a move to Seattle to be with my boyfriend at the time, Pat. What followed for the next several years was a series of horrific personal and work experiences unparalleled in my life. In other words, my 20s.

1. PONCHO. $21,000 a year, kids. My first real job out of college, at a time when you still sort of had to dress up for work. And wear hose if you were a lady. The only ones I liked were these Donna Karan "nude" ones that cost $18 a pop. I ran so many fucking pairs of those that it was a wonder I could afford to eat. PONCHO (the terrible acronym for Patrons of Northwest Civic, Cultural and Charitable Organizations) was a non-profit that raised money for the arts via two auctions a year, and I was supposed to do PR for these events.  What I was allowed to do was change the date on the press releases and send them out exactly as they had been worded the year before. I was also allowed to transcribe lengthy, overblown letters of thanks to rich patrons, recorded by my aging boss, Judy, who often smelled of garlic and could not type. (I was so bored most of the day I think I slept with my eyes open for at least five hours of it.) When she retired, a woman named Carol took over. Carol dyed her white hair red and subsisted on three Triscuits and 1/2 a cup of  cottage cheese a day.  She was also having an affair with a married man, had no idea what she was doing in terms of running PONCHO and was kind of a total bitch.

I was, in a word, miserable, my misery only compounded by the fact that I'd broken up with Pat six weeks after arriving in Seattle. Why, you ask?  Well, he didn't seem to notice I'd moved there to be with him and it was sort of getting on my nerves. Two months after our break-up, he was living with a stripper, buying her jewelry and paying her rent.  This was extra depressing, as I hadn't been able to get the guy to buy me a beer. So what did I do in response? I dated a terrible jackass who ran a direct mail warehouse named (I shit you not) Treg Vandenberg and got my belly button pierced as if to say, "See? I'm totally living on the edge and super sexy." I took the stupid thing out a month later, because that shit caught on everything and never really healed. The only thing that saved me during this time was my co-worker Nina, who brought snark to a new level (she called Treg "Dregs", joked about pushing Carol's skinny ass out the office window and taught me the joys of prank calling the Pacific Northwest Ballet, just to hear the receptionist answer the phone in some kind of fake English accent, wherein the word "ballet" was accented and drawn out to the point of ridiculousness). Needless to say, I often caught myself contemplating the idea of Nina pushing me out of that fourth floor window instead of Carol. It was a very long year.Or nine months that felt like five years. I can't remember.

2. Bennington Capitol Management.  In a panic, I sent out my resume and took the first job I was offered, anything to get me out of the hell of PONCHO. Enter the perfect match for my skill set, marketing at a mutual fund company!  Me, who hated math, didn't understand finance and had zero interest in the stock market. I took over the job from a woman who wasn't quite human - she was unbelievably perky, worked 10 hour days, got up at 5:30 every morning to jog six miles and would then bake something for the office, make her husband breakfast and arrive at work before anyone else got there. You can imagine that hiring me was a bit of a letdown for my co-workers.

Not surprisingly, I was just as bored at this job as the last one, as my day consisted of pie charts and bar graphs, deciding which shade of cream-colored paper to print the quarterly reports on (and once chosen, my boss, who worked two days a week and was paid a hundred grand a year would veto it, and go with a different shade of cream) and mostly, talking to my new found friend in the legal department, Joe. He was just as cranky as I was. At the time, I was dating a silver salesman from LA, who would eventually ask me to have threesomes. I would decline, but the whole experience left a mark. (To my younger readers, keep in mind that this was way back in the early 90s, when you were probably eight or something, a quaint time when it wasn't trendy to be a total slut bag, i.e., Paris, Lindsay, Snooki, etc).


At any rate, I spent a lot of time in Joe's office, complaining or crying or trying to get him to approve some outrageous sales presentation the CEO had put together.  Here is a little piece from a story I wrote about that time, and although it's fiction, it's pretty much the truth:

"Jones is at least 10 years older than me and a few inches shorter. We work together at a small investment firm that hawks financial advice.  Jones is the head of the legal department, I am the marketing assistant. I was supposed to be a lot of things by now: an actress, an academic, a Vice President of Very Important Things, married. I have, as my mother says, been sidetracked.
Everything I do has to be approved by Jones. Often, our conversations go something like this:
"Do you like the color orange?"Jones will say.
"What?" I will say.
"Orange," he will say, shaking a sales presentation in my face, "because that will be the color of the jumpsuit they will issue you and me and Mr. CEO if anyone who has any fucking idea what they are talking about
sees this. We can't promise these kinds of returns!"

And so it went. For two very long years. My only saving grace aside from Joe was the view from my office. We were on the 30th floor in downtown Seattle, and had a 180 degree vista of the Puget Sound, the Cascades and the Olympics.  However, the beauty of nature when you are trapped behind a desk and making pie charts, can only get you so far.  After I broke up with Threesome Guy and Joe uttered perhaps the wisest thing I'd ever heard in terms of my dating life, "I don't think a flatware salesman from LA is your guy," I was so restless and bored that I got a job cocktailing part-time in Pike Place. A few months later while slinging drinks I met my perceived salvation, a man we shall call insane Phil, who offered me a job. Where else? Los Angeles.

When I quit Bennington to move to LA, Joe said this to me, "Congratulations, you've just survived your first
traumatic work experience."

Before I left, he also wrote me this little thingy that I loved so much I've kept it for all these years, thinking that I would use it somewhere, and that somewhere is now:

"It was a damned good market. It climbed like a singed mountain lion with steel it in its guts. it was lean and tough and graceful enough to make a bishop weep." --Raymond Chandler

"It was cocktail hour
The yield curve was inverted.
Bonds were falling up." --some long-dead Japanese dude

"We are not interested in the possibility of a market decline." --Queen Victoria

Domestic stocks went up for awhile and went down for awhile too. International stocks moved around in both directions, but didn't really go anyplace. Interest rates were about like the previous quarter although sometimes they moved up and sometimes they moved down. The economy continued to do what it had done before, only slightly differently vis-a-vis inflationary pressures. All in all, the forecast looks difficult to predict." --Alan Greenspan

"The market was still going, I think. But I really didn't give a shit; not so much." --Abby Mims

3. Entertainment Marketing Group. I wrote about this blessed experience a few years ago here, and I don't think I can top that post. So here it is: http://abbymims.blogspot.com/2007/09/getting-fired.html

4. Davie-Brown Entertainment. Remember my crazy roommate from Los Angeles with the giant bird and 58 house plants? (See above post). Well, her boyfriend got free stuff from Reebok, which led me to my next amazing job in product placement! What it really consisted of was giving free shit to rich people and/or getting Reebok's shitty product on equal shitty TV shows. Does any one else remember a time where the WB only aired shows staring black comedians? Ahem. So I shilled a lot of track suits their way and also a few to the Sopranos set. Sounds glamorous, no? It was not at all, for a couple of reasons. Often, I had to drive to the wonder that is The Valley, where it is usually at least 80 degrees on any given day and usually closer to 97 degrees and my '91 Integra did not have air-conditioning. You heard me. So I would arrive on these various sets to give Reebok catalogs to the wardrobe department sweating profusely, not that they noticed, because they could have given a shit about Reebok.  You know why? Because no one wanted to wear their crap, even then. Did I have any Nike or Adidas or Puma? No, I only had shitty Reebok shit. Come to think of it, no one has wanted anything from Reebok since 1986, when white-velcroed high tops where all the rage. At any rate, when I wasn't being humiliated out in the world trying to give this shit away, I was being humiliated in the office, as the girl who had been made my assistant did not want to be my assistant and did nothing I asked her to. Eventually, she went on my computer after hours and printed out emails of mine (one of which was about her, where I had made a rude comment about her attitude and weight - not my best moment) and tried to get me fired. Not long afterwards, my boss stopped including me in meetings and was talking shit about me to the clients behind my back. All of which she denied to my face saying that she thought everything was going just great.  She kept saying this when I gave her two weeks notice and said I was going back to waiting tables.

Can you blame me?

I had also just signed up for a fiction writing class through UCLA extension, the first I'd ever taken. That class, my teacher Lisa Glatt and quitting my day job would be what changed the course of my life forever - although this course change would inevitably involve many, many, many more years of waiting tables.