Exterminators?

Dan, a SUNY sociology student, opens his email box to find an ad by one of his fellow sociology graduate students that reads the following:

Due to a family emergency, I will be moving to Hong Kong in December for an as of yet indeterminate amount of time, leaving my nice cozy room in ideally situated 808 Washington Ave. Apt 1 vacant. Fellow sociology students Jeff and Salvatore occupy the other two rooms in the apartment. Take a look at the details below if you're interested, or if you know of anybody who would be!

Some other details listed in the email made it seem like quite an attractive place to live, a steal at only $300 a month, ideally situation on the bus line and only a pleasant 5 minute walk from all sorts of shops, restaurants, grocery markets, and a small movie theater. Now, Dan, a married man who is in the final stages of his dissertation, soon to get his PhD, doesn't need an apartment, he's just curious as to what kind of a place I live. Getting a glimpse into someone's personal space is somehow like taking a glimpse into their psyche after all. "Wow, these pictures aren't bad either," Dan exclaims to himself.


He turns his head sideways to get a look at the picture of my room.

"A bit small, but cozy. Felix is a pretty neat guy. Oh look at that, he's even got a little teddy polar bear on his bed." What he doesn't know is that when I sleep, I put the bear on the meditation cushions facing my Buddha statue, and when I wake up and start my day, I sit him on my pillow on my bed.

Dan looks at the final picture. "The outside looks a bit dull, but let me click to enlarge this photo..."
And lo and behold, he sees the enlarged photo:
"Wait a sec..." he says to himself. "Is that?..." He gives the picture another careful look to confirm his suspicion. Confirmed, he chuckles to himself.



Dan sees me later in the day in the corridor, after I've spent a good chunk of time putting sublet fliers around. "So you're lookin' to get rid of your place huh Felix?" I make small talk with him about it. "By the way," he started abruptly, "were those exterminators going into your house? Or somebody else's?"
"Exterminators? What exterminators?"
No calls about the apartment yet...

The Breakup

In my office...

"Man, I don't want to hurt her feelings. What's she gonna say? How's she gonna react? It's not her really, it's me," I say to my friend.

"Nice Seinfeld quote. Whadya mean it's you?" he asks.

"I mean, I'm just not ready for this commitment. I feel like I could keep going if I really wanted to. But if I do, I really should give it my all, and I don't have my all to give now," I say.

"Yo, that's deep..." he says.

"That's it, I've decided to do it!" I say, slamming my fist to the desk causing my friend to jump out of his seat. "I have to break it to her! Now!"

Several moments pass...I'm pacing around in my office.

"Where is she? I'm getting so nervous. She was supposed to be in her office half an hour ago!" I exclaim.

"Calm down, jeez. Why do you worry so much?!" my friend says.

"Ohh...damn it. Maybe I should just suck it up and keep going. She's not that bad, I can stay with her. I dunno man. I just can never make a decision. Oh wait, there she is! She just got into her office! Oh no man!" I say, pulling hair out of both sides of my head pacing ever more frantically in my office. "Never mind, I'm going home! Forget this!"

"No man, c'mon! It's not that big a deal, just go and tell her!" my friend says. "You're done with her, through! That's it! Go tell her."

"You're right," I say. "Here I go!" I walk over to her office and sit down across from her. "Um...how exactly should I put this," I say. She gives me a quizzical look. "Well, I remember from one of your emails you sent to me while I was in Thailand, um...yeah, about the PhD program, that the PhD program requires a...a umm...a single-pointed concentration, to get thr-, to uh, to succeed."

Her expression is blank, but I know there's more going on beneath her facade.

"Well, I'm just not at that point," I continue. "I don't have that concentration. So I wanted to discuss with you my options for just getting the masters degree and dropping out of the PhD program." I sense some disappointment from her, and an obligation welling up in me to console her. "It's not that the program isn't good or anything," I stress to her, "or that I don't want to be an academic in the future. Actually, I think I do want to, eventually, just not now. I'm just not at that point in my life yet to make that commitment. Maybe if we're really meant to be, then some day I can apply for the program again, and come back."

Several moments later back in my office...

"So how was the breakup?" my friend asks.

"Meh, not bad. She took it a lot better than I thought. No begging for me to stay at all. Hey, that Boston University sociology program looks pretty hot huh? What's their number?"

"Dude, you just broke up! Man, you're such a PhD whore!"

Hudson and W Lawrence

It was Friday night and he just got out of work, a ritzy restaurant where he's required to wear a tux. Nobody really cares much for him, he's just a bus-boy, not that customers have any interest to talk to the hostesses or waiters, but at least they had more standing than a lowly busboy. On top of that, nobody pronounces his last name right, which starts with two jarring consonants and finds its origins from Russia. His parents immigrated from there.

As soon as it was midnight and his shift was over, he untied his bow-tie leaving it dangling at his neck, got into the driver's seat of his 2002 gold-colored Honda Accord, and called his girlfriend. "Hey, I just got out of work. I'm driving over."

"Okay," she responded. "See ya soon Chris."

He drove quick, popped in a CD that blared fast rock music - a screaming lead singer soaring his voice over a hyper drum-beat and spastic guitar chord. For Chris, this was like putting his life on fast forward so he could pickup his girlfriend and be at the party faster than his car or even his rock track.

And when he was going the wrong way down a one way, he sped up as if that made it okay, as if going fast as a blur would allow him to allude the cops. It was a residential side street. Cars were parked on both sides of the street, creating a narrow gauntlet for him to run. That's why he didn't see the stop sign, because there wasn't meant to be any cars driving this way, because the stop sign was at the other side of the intersection. It was a small intersection, one that looked like any other middle-of-nowhere tiny side-street intersection stranded in American suburbia. Who would have known that my car would drive right into his path as he darted into the intersection?

The whole of his car crushed towards him as his air-bag blew out. My car's passenger side door was completely collapsed inward, and my front-right tire skewed, my car began humming an eerily low grumble, as if pained and weeping over the realization that this could be it - its 12-year life was coming to an end and this was as far as it could keep my company.

And I find myself wishing: "if only I had gone to the bathroom before I left the coffee shop, or if only I had talked to Lai Ying 1 minute longer on the phone before I left, or if only I had woken up 10 second earlier in the morning, or if only I'd decided to get gas before driving back home, then maybe Chris would have darted past me, in front of me or behind me, but at least not into me, then our lives never would have collided at the intersection of space and time merely labeled as Hudson and West Lawrence.

Roslyn...

I walked in through the front door, the fifth restaurant I stopped by on Boston Road, where all the restaurants are located in town. "Hi welcome to Friendly's!" a white teenaged girl said perkily with a forced smile that betrayed her boredom.

"Hi, are you hiring?" I asked her.

"Hold on, let me get you a manager," she said.

"How old are you?" asked a 40-something black woman who was sitting down on a bench on the side. She looked tired, almost exausted. "Are you over eighteen?"

"Yeah." This excited her, and it seemed to give her some unseen energy into her limbs, because she straightened up her whole body and spoke faster.

"Oh, a male and over 18! You gotta apply, they'll definitely give you a job. Just put down you wanna be a closer, and you'll get a job for sure! Especially 'cause your male...AND you're over 18. We don't get too many of those," and at this she expressed a genuine but tired chuckle.

It turned out that she was right. Two weeks later I went in to Friendly's and began hosting. A different hostess who was showing me the ropes was going through the list of servers with me. "...and Roslyn, she's awesome, really friendly, really natural. She was supposed to be here half an hour ago, but she does this all the time, 'cause she's been working here forever!" That must have been her, I thought.

When she came in I greeted her, "hey Roslyn, do you remember me?"

She tilted her head as if a different angle would help her recognize me. "Have I met you before?"

"Yeah!" I said. "Remember, you told me to apply to be a closer, 'cause I'm over 18 and a male?"

"Oh, that's right," she said with a big pleasant smile coming over her face. "And you got the job!"

And soon enough I began training with her. She was really friendly with the customers, had tons of regulars. She got along so well with them that they let her pick up and play with their babies. We had a nice friendly chat one time too when I told her that I was actually a 24-year-old graduate student who had just been in Thailand to teach English. She showed me a picture of her high-school aged daughter that I would guess she's supporting on her own, since she works a day job and then Friendly's at night. That explained why she always looked so exhausted.

But just two nights ago I came in for my third or so night training with her. She was moody. Sometimes she gets that way. But as always, she was open-hearted with customers. "No, where are you taking them?" she asked the hostess who was bringing a dad and 2 girls to a table. "They're with me, they're always with me. You just bring them right over..." and one of the girls just ran right into Roslyn's arms, getting picked up into her big hug.

Later on, I got the feeling what it was that Roslyn was upset about. She didn't like the way the new manager was running things, since the new manager was letting basically anybody be a trainer, and when you're a trainer you get time-and-a-half. There were 2 others training that night, but it used to always be only Roslyn who got to train. I didn't fully catch or understand what happened, but Roslyn called one of the other trainers a bitch...in the dining room none the less.

The new manager, Lou-Ann who had already gotten a reputation for stubbornly running a tough and mean floor, came up to her angrily and said "Did you say 'bitch'?"

"No, I didn't say nothin'," Roslyn said. She had the straightest face on, that maybe she should consider acting as a career.

"Cause I heard the word 'bitch'. Now where did that come from?" She said, with stern voice, chin pointed down slightly. Roslyn said she didn't hear anyone say 'bitch'. "Felix, did you hear anything?" she said to me. I felt her eyes drilling into mine, perhaps trying to mine out the truth, or maybe a "who's side are you on?"

I shrugged my shoulders and said "I dunno, I didn't hear anything." Lou-Ann walked away visibly aggravated. About 5 minutes later, she caught me in the kitchen. "Now Felix, I don't mean to put you in the middle of all this, but she said 'bitch', didn't she?" I paused, thinking about how Roslyn told me to keep my mouth shut about this with Lou-Ann; I thought about lying to my manager; morals, ideologies of truth, right, and wrong, shades of gray? what should I say?!

"Uh...yeah," I said, feeling defeated. "Yeah, she did. But you know, she's my trainer you know? I -"

"I know," she said with a tone of conviction. "And she won't be anymore," she said as she walked away. My trainer was fired. She'd worked there for 10 years already and without even a warning, Lou-Ann fired her. I was given another trainer who had only worked there for 2 months, meaning that she too would get time-and-a-half, and was taking over some of Roslyn's hours. I couldn't help but think that she was moving up because Roslyn was moved out.

We got swamped with a party of 60 that night, all middle-school children who had just had their graduation. In the chaos of it all, I felt like I was learning things so fast because I was taking my own tables, and had to work fast, on my toes...so I was moving on up too, becoming more and more ready to be a server and no longer a trainer. But my achievements didn't give me any good feeling inside at all. Just ambivalence, served up with a side of dismay.