The Honest Truth

All Larry wants to do is sleep. The guy beside him, who wreaks of Listerine, won’t let him. The two men sit in chairs as weathered as their faces, with their backs to the library window. Infront of them, people read studiously, trying to hide their discomfort.

Larry’s thinning black hair is slicked back in stringy pieces. His friend wears a black toque, and an oversized red coat that matches the colour of his face.

Larry’s expression is a mix of regret for whatever he’s done earlier that day and relief to escape the winter cold. He sits with his chin down and his neck bobs him in and out of sleep.

His friend sits antsily, reading a magazine about women’s health and mumbling to the roomful of people pretending not to listen. His wisdom comes out watered down with booze.

“I’m 56 years old. Been crazy since the day I was born,” he says, looking up from the magazine. “I ain’t dead yet. I ain’t even got arthritis. I don’t know what they’re talking about.”

He continues to read the magazine for a few more minutes while periodically mumbling “Shannanigans” and shaking his head.

“What time is it Larry?” he says, looking over at his sleeping friend.  
“25 past two,” says Larry, barely opening his eyes.
“We have some time then.”
“Yup,” says Larry, disinterested.
“Three hours,” says his friend and pauses for a moment. “I’m sorry I got you fucked up,” he says sincerely. “You look tired Larry.”

Larry doesn’t respond. His friend looks down at the magazine again and starts mumbling something about microbiology. The librarian putting away DVDs on the shelf beside him looks too shy to say anything.

“It’s okay Larry,” he says. “I knew in a warm place you would fall asleep. You just doze. You don’t want to go to sleep Larry.”
“Yes, I do,” says Larry, quietly.
“You know what the alternative is?” says his friend. “Fucking tramps come and get you from the cop shop.”

Larry doesn’t look up or open his eyes.  
“Larry’s going to sleep,” says his friend dedicidely to the room after a long pause. Then he turns to Larry. “You gotta stay awake.” He pauses again. “Larry,” he says, laughing a little. “Stay on top of the situation. I’m not one to brag but like, I feel like that too sometimes but I can’t because, you know, I can’t get into it…”

Larry rests his cheek on his fist. His friend keeps mumbling until he cuts off his own ramble with a long burp, followed by a series of hiccups.

Then he catches his breath: “You’re in a crossfire. You don’t know what is and what ain’t. It’s sort of confusing,” he says, looking over to see if Larry’s listening. “Larry,” he says, laughing. “Sitting there all cross-eyed and bow legged. I got a book here that would just startle you. I mean it would startle you. It’s about the habitual, like something that went on and went on and they say about that.”

He stops and laughs. Then he puts the book down on a nearby table. “I ain’t dead yet. I ain’t dead yet. I’m getting there but I ain’t dead yet. Swigger swagger. I gotta do what I gotta do and then I’m going to die. We’re all going to die sooner or later. Ain’t going to get you nothing. It is what it is.”

He looks over and notices Larry as if for the first time. “Larry,” he says, amused. “What’re you doing? sleeping?” He pauses but Larry doesn’t respond. “Wanna go get a bite down by that thinga-majigger? I can’t do that free stuff. I can’t get into it. I just exist.” Still nothing. “Larry, Larry. Larry’s gone,” he says to the room. “Larry’s still Larry but he’s there when he wants to be. He may be sagging but he’s still Larry. Larry my brother.”

Other than the turning of pages, the room is silent. “If I could save time in a bottle…” he says, trailing off. “Is there a cook in the kitchen? Cause I need something to eat. Chicken? I don’t care. Whatever, I’ll eat it. Even salad as long as it’s a good salad. You know, like not as much greens as vegetables.”

He pauses and starts on a new tangent. Larry’s still trying to sleep. “I don’t care if they’re bank robbers or whatever,” he says. “As long as they stick together. I’m a bird of a feather, stick together. That’s what I like.”

He pulls up his chair beside Larry. “You wanna go?” he says.
“No” says Larry, nodding out of sleep.
“You don’t want to go have a drink?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m going, I’ll be back in a couple half hours.” He sits for a few more minutes.
“You look so tired,” he says.
“Ya, I don’t sleep properly.”
“Are you okay? Are you sure?”
“Ya, I’ll be over here,”
“I’m going out to check things out.”
“Be careful.”
“Thanks for the hat, Larry.”
“No problem.”
“Keeps my head warm.”
“Hmmm.”

Instead of leaving, Larry’s friend grabs another magazine, and moves his chair back. He reads for a couple minutes, and then falls asleep himself. His head is cocked to the same side as Larry’s and his mouth is twitching.

The friends sleep for twenty minutes with magazines open on their laps, before a man from the library walks over.
“You can’t be sleeping here,” he says. “If you don’t wake up they’ll come up and take you away. Stay awake, or I’ll have to call the police. The choice is up to you. Stay awake or that’s what will happen.”

Larry sits up boltright, like he’s just been caught dozing in class, and starts flipping through his magazine.

His friend lets out a long sigh, and mumbles something incomprehensible back to the library man.

They sit quietly like scolded children, staring straight ahead with glassy eyes. “Larry?” says his friend, predictably breaking the silence. “Want a drink Larry?” Larry doesn’t say anything and his friend stands up and walks out.
 
Larry sits there silently, staring through his magazine. A couple minutes pass, and a young man with a full head of hair sits in the chair beside him. The young man reads quietly, and Larry closes his eyes for some hard-earned sleep.

http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2008,Feature+Writing

I see it. That brown piece of fluff with legs, scurrying along the wall and gone in a second. I scream into the phone. “What?” says the person on the other line. It takes me a second to recompose myself and somehow he guesses. “You saw a mouse?”

Yes. I’ve been seeing them everywhere. I go in the kitchen and turn on a light and they flee from the counter like children with their hand in a cookie jar. Guilty. They know they shouldn’t be there. They know its not their house. But the winter’s cold and our leftovers take good and you know what, if I was a mouse, I’d probably squat here too.

A fear of mice is in my blood. My mom is terrified. When she was a kid she went to the bathroom one night and a mouse crawled up from the toilet seat. She screamed. My nonna screamed. The women in my family can’t stand those furry creatures that flee when they sense a human.

Why are we scared of mice? I mean, they’re not rats, which means you’re living in dirt. We pay money to have furry things in our house and more money to take care of them. So why can’t we deal with the ones that chose our homes as home.

The first thing I find frightening about mice is I never know how many there are. 1? 20? 200? They all look the F&*(*ing same. There’s something comforting about having your pet mouse, naming it Jimmy, and trying to get a hello in everytime you see catch it running from under the couch. But mice are a mystery, they move fast, so there’s no way to tell them apart, and you can’t whistle and know they’ll come out from where they’re heading.

The second thing I hate about mice is they contaminate your food. It’s like your in competition for you own groceries. I feel like grabbing Jimmy by the neck and saying “get your own part time job. I paid for that.”

I hate that they defy science. The can collapse their skulls and back and fit in a hole the size of a pencil. Freak shows.

They remind me of my pet hamster from grade three, scratching at things all night and waking me from my sleep. The most disgusting mouse story I ever heard was from my friend chloe who said in one of her old houses, you’d hear so many mice running in the walls that it sounded like rain. Last night it was raining, but all I could picture was heards of mice by my window. It was the worst sleep.

It’s so complicated to kill them. There’s forums dedicated to the best way to get rid of mice. Either way you have to deal with the dead rodent. Wanna use a live trap? Be prepared to take a hammer to its head or drown the poor thing. Wanna use poison and forget about it? You’ll be reminded when you smell their rotting stench. It’s a lose lose. They die, you feel like death dealing with the aftermath. Apparently getting a cat and 49 cent traps are your best bet.

You start thinking they’re cute. My friend and roommate Ruth lived with me when he had mice. At first, we were scared, jumping of the couch and standing on the edge of the room with hockey sticks waiting for it to come out again. Even lifting a couch corner made us scream. Then, Ruth started getting attached to the mouse, and we realized she looked kindof like a mouse. That’s when we started getting lazy with the problem and they probably started breeding. That’s how mice roll: fooling you with their good looks, then shagging eachother and infesting your house.

Mouse poo makes you sick. Maybe this is actually what I like about Mice. Let’s get this straight, I don’t like that mouse poo is linked to a deadly virus, but I do like that it gives me an excuse to kill them other than being freaked out.

The last thing I hate about mice is that they love piles of things. My room is made up of piles of things, which mice like to make their nest from. So now I have to rearrange my room to keep mice out? My parents could never get me to be cleaner, but all of a sudden I’m buying shelving and picking up clothes from the floor so my bedmates not a rodent? This seems unfair. It’s one thing for my parents to tell me to clean up, but to be forced into different habits by mice?

It seems like mice get a good deal. Free lodging and food. Different nesting spots to chose from. Eight hours of dark a night. I’m not so sure I feel so bad about this killing them thing. But, I do feel less bad then this creepest guy I stumbled on in a mouse forum who kept readers updated on the progress of his mouse murders.

He writes:

So far, the best luck i am having is with those regualr old 49 cent victory rat traps. Hell, i have caught now i think 6, and today i hear one trying to lick the peanut butter right off the already sprung trap with his brother dead caught in it! I took him out, put more butter on there and set it back where it was, not even 5 minutes later, seriously the other came back and was killed haha!

stupid mice, i can do this all day they never catch on. even when thier siblings are dying one right after another. hehehe

just wondering really if there is a good mouse repellant i could use outside or inside. I can take care of the ones that are here now, just dont want them to come back. My cat’s odor was the best, mice never even came to my block. but id rather have a better smelling house

He feels the need to come back and say this:

its amazing how stupid the are. theyre nothing more then eat sleep bump machines. i couldnt believe they watch another mouse die in a trap and then go right to that trap and lick off the leftover peanut butter. they dont even notice death.

And then this:
i think i scored a victory with the 49 cent victory traps, no bites last night at all.

i am really surprised a peta banger hasnt rung in and told me to use live traps yet, those are a joke! if i were to use live traps i would just flush them down the toilet anyway

anyone hear of those electroic traps? theyre like a box, and when the mouse goes in for food its zapped by voltage and the amps kill it… cool i thought… too much money compared to what im using though

Let’s just hope this dude sticks with mice. I started this post scared by rodents, but this guy is way scarier.

So I started working at a bar. That’s right. Me who likes to be in bed by twelve so I can get up at 8 a.m. and work on being a “writer.”

This is what I’ve discovered so far. Bars are sad places. Well this bar is anyway. It’s called Boomers and it’s a big ol’ room with tile floors and wooden booster chairs. The upstairs is nice and intimate, but the downstairs part is to bare and dark to be cozy.

I work with the two guys who own the bar, Scotty and Johnny. Then there’s the female bartender, Sara, who’s platinum blonde extensions and tight jeans threw me for a loop when I first got there. I thought this was supposed to be a bar for old people. A jeans and a t-shirt type of place.

I started on a Friday night. A busy Friday night. Scotty was running around frantic because I wasn’t trained, people were filling in, and Johnny was late. Sara was doing her best to get me acquainted with the system, but she had her customers to tend to.

So there I am, tray in hand, wearing a t-shirt and jeans feeling like a boy beside my barbie doll co-worker. What the fuck. My job is to go out to the floor where people are sitting, take their drink order, tell the bartenders those orders, and bring out the drinks. Yes, I get to keep my dollar tips.

I also have to bus the drinks, which is not a problem because I’ve bused tables in restaurants before. My eye can spot an empty glass miles away and my body propels me toward it.

I’m surprised by the Boomer’s crowd. Given the name, I really expected everyone to be over 30. I actually spotted a couple of kids that looked 12. People ranged in style from a hockey team, to a group of artsy kids, to the lonely 30 pluses staring aimlessly drinking alone, to the group of obnoxious men, one of whom knocks over my tray while asking me if he can take me home. That’s when I learnt there’s a fine line between being nice and too nice. Give a smile, flick your hair, but don’t show too much tooth or interest. Drunk men interpret this the wrong way.

The night went slowly and I found myself fading quickly after having woke up at 7 a.m. that morning. I had no idea if I was doing the cash right, and based on the amount of tips I made (too much), I assume I probably wasn’t. Oh well, I see it as financial compensation for a stressful night.

Scotty and Johnny were nice, asking me if I was doing okay, and demoting me from corporeal to captain every time I screwed up. I appreciated the humour. Nobody yelled at me and I don’t think they will.

The music was badly done by DJ dolla. I’ve evolved into somewhat of a music song, but that aside, his playlist hasn’t evolved from the songs I heard in the clubs when I was 14. Later I was informed it was retro night, but that still doesn’t make things okay.

But DJ Dolla was nice, and I forgave him. That’s my general feeling about this job. I don’t particularly like the bar, or the people who go there, but everyone I work with/for are nice so I stick around.

The night was fairly uneventful aside from a guy getting kicked out for drunken antics like taking a chair, flipping it upside down, and spinning in the middle of the dance floor.

Everyone cleared out about 2 a.m. and then the clean-up happens. It’s an odd thing when a dark bar suddenly turns light minutes after the D.J. has declared last song. It’s an even stranger thing to know that’s when the worst part of your shift starts, cleaning toilets and whatever liquids came out of people for the night and mopping shitty floors. At a restaurant, you leave this stuff for the morning, and generally the washrooms are being visit by polite patrons. In a bar, a washroom is a place where puke happens, piss happens (not always in the toilet bowl) and sex happens. I will never look at a guy coming out of the washroom the same again.

So at 3:30, the time I usually find myself heading home from a bar or party to my warm bed, I find myself slapping on latex gloves and following sara into the washroom with a bucket. I can’t describe how hilarious it was to see sara, wearing a white tank top, tight jeans, and high-heeled boots, slam down the bucket in the men’s room and start scrubbing the urinal without flinching an eyebrow. It’s par for the course at Boomers.

After the tidy up, which wasn’t actually that labour intensive safe for the fact it was almost dawn, it was time to reward ourselves. And do you reward yourself after a night of serving booze? Apparently with doubles. About six of them. Me, Sara and Johnny, sat drinking and smoking cigarettes till 6:30. I was a combination of being so hungry and tired and terrified of not fitting in that I slammed back at least four whisky gingers and smoked a cigarette and a half.

Finally, after Johnny had declared it was his “last one” for the past five drinks, I realized if I didn’t stand up and go I would be taking a cab to McDonald’s with Johnny and Sara to eat a breakfast burrito. This is what they did. Seven a.m. to them was not seven a.m. to me.

So I stood up, thanked everyone for the booze and promised to be back again at 9 a.m. the next day. Then I slept till 3 in the afternoon. But hey, in my bar star alternate universe, 3 p.m. is the new 8 a.m. and double whiskey ginger’s go down like water.