2 a.m., bar just closed. I was walking her to her car. We were deciding where to go eat.
That's when I heard voices escalate in an angry tone. I looked ahead and Brandon was faced up with a white guy, spiked blonde hair, a breath separating them.
I quickly stepped between them and pushed Brandon back.
"Stay out of this," the white guy said to me, and he put a hand on my chest. Instinctively, I drove my body weight into him to push him off.
He quickly started to recoil as if to charge at me, but I stepped back in a defensive stance, extending an arm as if to say, Wait. "Step the fuck off," I demanded.
He stopped, lowered in a kind of linebacker stance.
"I don't know what happened here. I don't know what was said. Frankly, I don't care. What I do know is that that's my boy. And I don't know you.
"Now, that being said, I am a grown ass fuckin' man. I don't got time to play. I don't squab no more, I don't scuffle no more, I don't rassle no more. I won't throw punches. I won't throw kicks. If you buck to me, I'm just gonna slit your fucking throat. Do you get what I'm saying to you?
"I'm gonna protect me and mine."
Friday, September 25, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Could be Considered Career Suicide
Tuesday evening, The Company had its monthly hoo-rah meeting at its Midtown office. The obvious subjects were touched, with an expected longer-than-usual piece about the state of the economy.
After the meeting, folks stuck around to meet and greet, as consultants tend to do to broaden their network. I was approached by a Chinese fellow, seemingly in his late thirties or forties, with a leather jacket and diamond earrings. He introduced himself to me as my assigned career manager, whom I've exchanged e-mails with but had not yet met in person.
The introduction was brief; we told each other who we were, and he quickly invited me out for a drink.
-
I met with my career manager at an open deck bar a few blocks away from where the meeting was. We were joined by two other consultants, one of whom was a new team lead that recently joined my department at The Client.
The guys drank together routinely, and they wasted no time, splitting up immediately to open a tab, claim a table, and wax a shuffleboard table simultaneously.
Our first match teamed my career manager and myself against the other two. In a game of first-to-twenty-one, we blew out the opposing team by a hair. And as my career manager began openly taunting, I too joined in the jeering.
About an hour into the night, we were joined by the local unit bigwig. This is the guy that signs all the checks and makes all the decisions. I knew he was a boozebucket, but had never seen him outside of a formal environment.
He wasted even less time than the others and had a bucket on the table before I realized he had ever arrived. And before he even played a match, he was jawing at how terrible and amateur our shots were.
As the night got later and I got less sober, our taunting got cruder and my shots got lousier. Between the five of us, we drank probably as many buckets.
At the end of the night, the bigwig tried to have a somber discussion with me, welcoming me to The Company and emphasizing how much we needed to keep our customers happy. But he was sloshed out of his mind and kept stumbling and staggering about, and the rest of us had a tough time taking him seriously.
It was well past two in the morning before we called it a night. The new team lead said to me, "If you see me staggering in tomorrow, you'll know why."
And I replied, "I'll stagger in with you. And we'll both think the other is walking straight."
-
Next morning, I dragged myself into the office, head hung low, bloodshot eyes, and sat at my desk with a 32 oz. bottle of Gatorade. I peeped over, and the new team lead was wide-eyed and perky, carrying on business as normal.
After the meeting, folks stuck around to meet and greet, as consultants tend to do to broaden their network. I was approached by a Chinese fellow, seemingly in his late thirties or forties, with a leather jacket and diamond earrings. He introduced himself to me as my assigned career manager, whom I've exchanged e-mails with but had not yet met in person.
The introduction was brief; we told each other who we were, and he quickly invited me out for a drink.
-
I met with my career manager at an open deck bar a few blocks away from where the meeting was. We were joined by two other consultants, one of whom was a new team lead that recently joined my department at The Client.
The guys drank together routinely, and they wasted no time, splitting up immediately to open a tab, claim a table, and wax a shuffleboard table simultaneously.
Our first match teamed my career manager and myself against the other two. In a game of first-to-twenty-one, we blew out the opposing team by a hair. And as my career manager began openly taunting, I too joined in the jeering.
About an hour into the night, we were joined by the local unit bigwig. This is the guy that signs all the checks and makes all the decisions. I knew he was a boozebucket, but had never seen him outside of a formal environment.
He wasted even less time than the others and had a bucket on the table before I realized he had ever arrived. And before he even played a match, he was jawing at how terrible and amateur our shots were.
As the night got later and I got less sober, our taunting got cruder and my shots got lousier. Between the five of us, we drank probably as many buckets.
At the end of the night, the bigwig tried to have a somber discussion with me, welcoming me to The Company and emphasizing how much we needed to keep our customers happy. But he was sloshed out of his mind and kept stumbling and staggering about, and the rest of us had a tough time taking him seriously.
It was well past two in the morning before we called it a night. The new team lead said to me, "If you see me staggering in tomorrow, you'll know why."
And I replied, "I'll stagger in with you. And we'll both think the other is walking straight."
-
Next morning, I dragged myself into the office, head hung low, bloodshot eyes, and sat at my desk with a 32 oz. bottle of Gatorade. I peeped over, and the new team lead was wide-eyed and perky, carrying on business as normal.
Friday, January 23, 2009
And Then There Were Two
The Company converted my contract to a full-time position this week. My conversion was made official as of Monday.
In reality, negotiations had been going on for over a month. Their initial offer was, to say the least, insulting to me, and my morale had taken a pretty hard hit over the past month. My résumé had been updated and floating around job search Web sites since then.
Despite the economic climate, I gambled on the job a bit, turning down the conversion offer twice before finally reaching an agreement.
On day one, The Company sent me a brand new laptop, fresh with all the manufacturer stickers and protective transparent film still attached, top of the line specs and configurations -- an expensive machine that I'll probably never use because I'm on client-site all day. It's almost hard to imagine that eight percent of the nation is unemployed and fourteen percent of folks in my age demographic can't find a job right now.
I spent the entire first full-time day on conference calls, being introduced to the who's who of people you need to know when shit hits the fan. Most of the week was spent watching on-boarding training videos and taking relating tests. Apparently, The Company frowns on sexual harrassment in the workplace.
-
I met up with a couple of guys from The Ex-Company after work on Thursday for happy hour at a micro-brewery in The Village. There were four of us that met during our introductory training bootcamp at The Ex-Company, and we regularly come together every couple of months for drinks and shit-shooting despite my departure from the company.
One of the guys, a former University of Texas student, had left the company as well as of last week. He had told us he was game for a drink, but sold out and, instead, packed his stuff and left out of town. He was leaving the job to go to graduate school and was taking an internship before the Fall semester started.
Despite it being a Thursday night on the edge of a college campus on the first weekend back to school, the bars were dead. There were no rowdy crowds or drunk college girls. The three of us shot the shit amongst ourselves and played games of Erotic Photo Hunt.
Somewhere along the way, somehow, the conversation devolved to the subject of armpit fucking. The question was: if you met a smokin' hot girl, but she would not have vaginal or oral sex with you, but she was willing to fuck you with her armpit and it still felt good, would you be okay with it?
I decided that it couldn't be that much different from a handjob or titty-fucking, so why the hell not?
Then we asked: if fucking her armpit turned out to be the best sex ever in the entire universe, better than any blowjob or vaginal sex or anal sex or any other way to skeet in the entire universe, would you take her to be your wife -- with the caveat that her armpit will be the only part of her you ever get to fuck?
I decided that mediocre vaginal sex and blowjobs still had to trump any sort of armpit-fucking on any day of the week, so no.
And finally: if you were Muslim and could marry up to four wives, would you take armpit-fucker as one?
I decided yes.
-
Within my first forty-hour work week with the new position, I showed up to my desk with a hangover.
In reality, negotiations had been going on for over a month. Their initial offer was, to say the least, insulting to me, and my morale had taken a pretty hard hit over the past month. My résumé had been updated and floating around job search Web sites since then.
Despite the economic climate, I gambled on the job a bit, turning down the conversion offer twice before finally reaching an agreement.
On day one, The Company sent me a brand new laptop, fresh with all the manufacturer stickers and protective transparent film still attached, top of the line specs and configurations -- an expensive machine that I'll probably never use because I'm on client-site all day. It's almost hard to imagine that eight percent of the nation is unemployed and fourteen percent of folks in my age demographic can't find a job right now.
I spent the entire first full-time day on conference calls, being introduced to the who's who of people you need to know when shit hits the fan. Most of the week was spent watching on-boarding training videos and taking relating tests. Apparently, The Company frowns on sexual harrassment in the workplace.
-
I met up with a couple of guys from The Ex-Company after work on Thursday for happy hour at a micro-brewery in The Village. There were four of us that met during our introductory training bootcamp at The Ex-Company, and we regularly come together every couple of months for drinks and shit-shooting despite my departure from the company.
One of the guys, a former University of Texas student, had left the company as well as of last week. He had told us he was game for a drink, but sold out and, instead, packed his stuff and left out of town. He was leaving the job to go to graduate school and was taking an internship before the Fall semester started.
Despite it being a Thursday night on the edge of a college campus on the first weekend back to school, the bars were dead. There were no rowdy crowds or drunk college girls. The three of us shot the shit amongst ourselves and played games of Erotic Photo Hunt.
Somewhere along the way, somehow, the conversation devolved to the subject of armpit fucking. The question was: if you met a smokin' hot girl, but she would not have vaginal or oral sex with you, but she was willing to fuck you with her armpit and it still felt good, would you be okay with it?
I decided that it couldn't be that much different from a handjob or titty-fucking, so why the hell not?
Then we asked: if fucking her armpit turned out to be the best sex ever in the entire universe, better than any blowjob or vaginal sex or anal sex or any other way to skeet in the entire universe, would you take her to be your wife -- with the caveat that her armpit will be the only part of her you ever get to fuck?
I decided that mediocre vaginal sex and blowjobs still had to trump any sort of armpit-fucking on any day of the week, so no.
And finally: if you were Muslim and could marry up to four wives, would you take armpit-fucker as one?
I decided yes.
-
Within my first forty-hour work week with the new position, I showed up to my desk with a hangover.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
I, I Bring the Fire
Trinh threw an after-new year's gettogether at his place. Trashcan punch and some traditional Vietnamese finger foods: egg rolls, spring rolls, and some other stuff. And a pitcher of some nasty Mexican shit called Chalada, which is a mixture of Clamato and beer.
We watched Peyton choke and allow the Chargers to edge the Colts out of the playoffs. I quaffed a couple of cups of the trashcan punch, and Don and I bailed to head out to Midtown.
-
We met up with John, who was home from New York for the holidays, and some of his friends at a rooftop bar in Midtown. John hangs out with a lot of guys that went to high school with us, but I sleepwalked through too much of high school to know or remember any of them.
The place filled out, and I bumped into all sorts of familiar faces, both friendly and otherwise. After making a few rounds about the place, visiting with folks and pretending it was good to see them again, I sequestered myself off at a table, hanging out with John.
John had a friend swing by from the north side of town, a girl he went to school with in college. She was an average-to-cute looking Chinese girl, confident and social. She adorned awkward accessories -- a roomy beanie that looked like a wool showercap, colorful scarves, etc. -- the way people who spent four years living in a college town tend to dress.
She scored a seat on the couch next to me and we kicked off. We shared stories about how we knew John. It turns out she met John while they were taking salsa lessons, and I teased John a bit about taking dancing classes.
The girl had a monstrous zit on her forehead that night, which I'm sure she was aware of and self-conscious about, and I spent most of the time averting my eyes, trying not to take notice. She had a cute laughter, but a crooked smile that made creases in her nose. The nose-creasing smile was kind of unattractive, but being that she was the only girl in the place sitting on the couch and talking to me, I convinced myself that it was a nice smile.
At the end of the night, she was sober and so we did not exchange spit. The bar closed, and we parted ways. And because one of the first questions she asked me was, "So what do you do for a living?" we did not exchange contact information.
We watched Peyton choke and allow the Chargers to edge the Colts out of the playoffs. I quaffed a couple of cups of the trashcan punch, and Don and I bailed to head out to Midtown.
-
We met up with John, who was home from New York for the holidays, and some of his friends at a rooftop bar in Midtown. John hangs out with a lot of guys that went to high school with us, but I sleepwalked through too much of high school to know or remember any of them.
The place filled out, and I bumped into all sorts of familiar faces, both friendly and otherwise. After making a few rounds about the place, visiting with folks and pretending it was good to see them again, I sequestered myself off at a table, hanging out with John.
John had a friend swing by from the north side of town, a girl he went to school with in college. She was an average-to-cute looking Chinese girl, confident and social. She adorned awkward accessories -- a roomy beanie that looked like a wool showercap, colorful scarves, etc. -- the way people who spent four years living in a college town tend to dress.
She scored a seat on the couch next to me and we kicked off. We shared stories about how we knew John. It turns out she met John while they were taking salsa lessons, and I teased John a bit about taking dancing classes.
The girl had a monstrous zit on her forehead that night, which I'm sure she was aware of and self-conscious about, and I spent most of the time averting my eyes, trying not to take notice. She had a cute laughter, but a crooked smile that made creases in her nose. The nose-creasing smile was kind of unattractive, but being that she was the only girl in the place sitting on the couch and talking to me, I convinced myself that it was a nice smile.
At the end of the night, she was sober and so we did not exchange spit. The bar closed, and we parted ways. And because one of the first questions she asked me was, "So what do you do for a living?" we did not exchange contact information.
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