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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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He's got this list of goals and aspirations that he shares with me. Ive seen it before, I just like to see if it's changed any...
He wants to be a musician, a painter and artist, a writer of books, an evangelist, he's just got to work on some personal issues first...
Maybe that's why I like him so much. We have a lot in common....
He tells me that he wants to become a police officer. That takes me by surprise, the last time we spoke he wanted to become a Chef like his father...
I ask him, "Why do you want to become a police officer?"
"I've got my reasons" he tells me meaningfully.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
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He means well. The staff never warned me, but watching them and him interact you figure it out.
He's apologized, it's not Alfred Hitchcock I remind him of, it's Alfred the butler to Batman, he was a bit confused but I seem like the guy who would organize and rule over the gadgets department. And he's sorry he misread me, he thought when I started that for some reason I, like him, was deeply spiritual, but if I'm not that's OK too, and I assure him that I'm not in the least and that it's OK with me.
Tonight he's taking notes.
He's grabbed a pad of paper from the waiter's station, glances at me every few minutes, then scribbles on a piece of paper and puts it in his pocket.
Secretive.
And I think to myself what a great idea this is and so I grab a pad of paper as well and begin my scribblings too....
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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My friend, JN, wanted me to meet him.
We were 16. It was at the now defunct Heritage Mall in South Edmonton.
"He is so coool." he tells me. "His name is Weedeater...."
So I go along and meet him. And as the name might imply, he was a heavy stoner. Wearing a flannel lumberjack jacket, small, slender, perhaps mid 20's with a 5 day growth of beard on his face, greasy blondish hair. crazy eyes. He was a nut. But my friend, JN, liked him, he'd met him at the mall and been ever so impressed.....
When you're 15 you're easily impressed.
Weedeater was going to get us some weapons. Stilettos, switchblades, nunchuks, he had them all.
God knows what we needed weapons for, but the thought of weapons, illegal weapons, somehow excited us...
Weedeater was enjoying his new-found celebrity. So what if we were a couple of 15 year old idiots? Someone appreciated him. He smiled as he peeled the burger off my friends bun, licked the mayonnaise from it and swallowed it whole....
"Didja see that?" JN said later... "He just peeled the burger and ate it ... like he didn't care...."
I wasn't so impressed by that. But I was impressed by the inventory of goods that Weedeater, or "Weed" for short, professed to be able to get. We could start our own gang....
Weedeater arranged to meet us at the arcade in the mall the following week. He'd bring a bag full of Stilettos. $25.00 apiece, they'd cut through a 2X4 at the push of a button...
We met as promised, Weed showed, but there weren't any weapons. There'd been a problem. He'd need some money up front. Maybe $100.00. Trouble at the border. Complications, he didn't want to talk, didn't want to implicate us any more than he had to....
JN was in. "Weed" was his new best friend. Who knows, if we started with the stilettos, we could end up with better stuff...AK47's. hand grenades....
Weedeater nodded knowingly. he could get this stuff too....but he'd need the money up front...
$100.00 was a lot of money when you're working in a mall earning $3.45 an hour. But we were in. We met Weedeater, or "Weed" as JN now called him, outside the arcade in the mall, gave him the money, arranged to meet the following week ....
And that was the last we ever saw of him.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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I'd walked by the restaurant a dozen, 2 dozen times, looking for work, it was always empty and so I never thought of applying.
Finally, though, in the interests of being thorough and leaving no stone unturned I dropped off a resume.
A younger couple, waiter and waitress, South American, took my resume, promised to pass it on to the manager.
That night I got a call. Thick Spanish accent, Jose was his name, wanted to know if I'd applied at his restaurant, I had I told him, perhaps then I could drop round and have an interview? Great.
Now it's not going to be a hot job, I know that, but anything is better than nothing, so I swing round for the interview. The younger waiter and waitress are gone, Jose sits me down, gets my experience, he's a shorter, burly and swart Spaniard. Makes sense, it's a Spanish restaurant. He tells me the other 2 servers, they've been fired, he found my resume in the garbage, they'd thrown it in there without showing him so he fired them both, besides they were stealing and can I start right away and am I available to work days and nights?
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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I worked with Jeremy and Ruth when I lived in London. Jeremy was a Manchester lad, late 20's, perhaps 5'10" tall, but his slender build made him look much taller. He had a rubber face with bulging eyes, long stringy brown hair tied up in a pony tail, creases in his cheeks that made Iggy Pop look like an advertisement for Oil of Olay. The girls loved him, he had a certain rough vulgarity they warmed to, working the counter there would often be a posse of much younger girls vying for his attention. He would say the rudest possible things over the heads of the customers, carrying on preposterous conversations with staff, one suggests he should pursue older women, nods at an elderly lady, Jeremy performing a grotesque pantomime - "But can she pop her teeth out...."
(here an illustration with tongue in cheek and two hands held up to his mouth)
"...Otherwise she's no good to me..."
One man gagging on his burger, his friends patting him on his back, wondering why he's choking, he's overheard one of Jeremy's conversations. Never a complaint, somehow he had mastered the art of invisibility, able to perform the most incredible feats of impudence in front of customers, unnoticed, unobserved.
We had a few of the Manchester lads working for us at the diner. Julien, as rude as Jeremy but forever being caught out, Ade the cook, their loud laughter, cries of "Boyzee" as they shook and snapped their wrists over some shared joke.
And Ruth, the manageress, plump, pleasant blonde who had her own outrageous stories of lovers met in the adult shops of Soho.
She would party with the staff, I'd find out when they developed pictures and passed them round, Ruth drunk in compromising poses with assorted members of the Kitchen. Jeremy calling her down, I asked why the hostility, she was fair, more than fair, with them. He pauses for a moment and gets serious.
"We don't think that Ruth likes herself very much...."
he began.
"...Therefore, we don't like her either."