Limping.

I work in a shopping mall these days, in retail. I punch a time clock and report to an assistant manager. I remember a certain dignity to retail employees in Manhattan that doesn't seem to exist here. I remember feeling that, in general, people working retail jobs probably led interesting other-lives and, if nothing else, were noteworthy and dignified by virtue of being New Yorkers.

Here, people are nice enough. They have friends and family and hobbies. For me, there's just no sense of being involved in something bigger. Local politics bore me to tears and I couldn't care less about daily news items. I don't think I've ever bothered to pick up a local paper in the year and a half that I've lived here; didn't even consider voting.

Anyway, back to the shopping mall. It's located near the hotel i worked at last year, out in South Portland. It's a one-story affair, trapped in the 80's, with the usual mall suspects: Sears, JC Penny, Macy's, Best Buy. Four or five giant jewelry stores (why?), a food court, a smattering of shitty wagons that sell iPod cases and sunglasses and stuff. Crazily bad piped-in soft-rock (think Lionel Ritchie, Elton John, Michael McDonald).

Oh, and if showing up and pulling open the doors to the shopping mall every morning wasn't bad enough, I'm greeted not only by the likes of Air Supply but to a creepy hodge-podge of elderly exercise enthusiasts: the mall welcomes senior citizens to walk laps around the mall from the early morning before the stores open to the late night.

So as I weave around the geriatrics, through the teal-bathed corridors, forced to listen to god-knows-what, the sickly smell of Cinnabon and BenGay in the air, I ask myself: What the Fuck? What the Fuck am I doing here? Before I got this job I think I went to the mall maybe once during the course of a year. I am 100% alienated.

On my lunch break, I'm forced out into the wilds of the mall to fend for myself for an hour. For the first few weeks, I ate at the food court. McDonalds, Panda Express, Taco Bell, whatever. I can think of few things more depressing than eating shitty fast food in a sea of wiggaz and mall rats, forced to contemplate the lyrics to "Solid as a Rock" or "On the Wings of Love."

If I'm feeling more anxious or have less money, I would go to the TCBY/Pretzel Time at the other end of the mall and just get a frozen yogurt or pretzel dog and sit in a public seating area, often next to mouth-breathing seniors taking a break from their workouts, completing WordFind puzzles and hacking phlegm.

Yesterday, by accident, I was two hours late to work. I forgot that a week ago I'd agreed to come in early to cover my team-leader's dentist appointment. He makes the schedule and he hadn't adjusted it so i forgot. I've been "written up" once already for being late and since then I'd been making a real effort to get to work on time. So yesterday I thought I was 10 minutes early but when I got in I found that I was in danger of receiving a "no-call" infraction which would put me on final notice for termination. It's so humiliating to be treated like a teenager. I mean, I think my boss at Little Cesar's Pizza was more lenient and I was 15 then.

So when lunchtime came around yesterday, I was so depressed that I had to leave the mall during my lunch break. I thought some fresh air would do me good, so I decided to traverse the mall parking lot and cross the main drag to buy some dog food at Petco. All the walkways were blocked by snow piles from the parking lot plows and I had to snake through in a funny way that led me by the Wendy's. I felt depressed and people were looking at me like a homeless person because nobody walks out by the mall.

I decided to drown my sorrows in a Number 2, large, with Dr. Pepper. I saw a manager interviewing a prospective employee and felt so sorry for the kid, before I realized that my job is about the same. By the time I finished the giant box of french fries I was full. I forced myself to eat the hamburger anyway and then, feeling bloated and disgusted with myself, finished the walk to Petco.

I walked back to the dog food section and then realized that I had spent the dog food money at Wendy's. I was $2 short. So I trudged back to the mall, through the teal corridors, past the limping seniors, the chair massage place, past the baby portrait studio and back to my store where I punched back in from lunch. It's a good thing my dog likes cat food.

Chocolate Rain.

This and This.

Cabbin' Fever.

A few years ago I lived in Manhattan. One night, I was returning home from SoHo to TriBeCa, walking down Broadway. It was one of those windy winter Manhattan nights that cuts through layers of winter clothing and burns your face. It had started to snow and the slippery sidewalks were almost empty of people.

As with any bad-weather day, there were no cabs to be had. I craned my neck every few seconds to check their fare lights as they approached and finally i saw one letting someone out a block or so upstream near Spring St. I was on the corner of Grand and I jumped into the street and flapped my arms. The cab hit at a red light at Broome and I felt sure someone would claim it while it sat there. But no-one did and the driver kept on coming, almost passing me up but coming to a stop a few buildings down from where I stood.

I ran toward toward the car and as I did I noticed a man running up from Howard Street, the next corner down. It was a race and I would be damned if I was going to lose. I grabbed the door handle first and tried to open it but the other guy shoved me back and I slipped a bit on the icy street. "I don't think so!" he said. And then I saw he was carrying a young boy in his arms.

I regained my balance. "Fuck you. It stopped for me."

"Hey, I have a child here!"

"That's not my problem asshole." I flung the door open and into the man's body, forcing him to slip and fall to his knees in the street." He began to howl at the cab driver that he and his boy needed to get out of the cold and that he would report the driver to the TLC. I jumped into the warm car and the guy grabbed at the door trying to wrestle it open as I wrestled it closed, which I finally did. He was up on his feet again, slamming his fist on the hood of the cab while the boy stood by startled. The man kept yelling, but the swift wind carried the sound away uptown.

The cab pulled away from the curb and the man and his son watched as I rolled down the window and flipped them off. It felt like the right thing to do at the time, the violence, name-calling and all. That's where I was, in my head, when I lived in the city. Reliving this story now makes me feel terrible. Embarrassed. Sad.

Maine 2009 Registered Sex Offenders In The Workplace Calendar!

Each month we'll take a look at a local citizen who has gone above and beyond to make Portland a better place to live and work. Mister January, Carl H. Anderson, is an employee of the Shipyard Brewery and has achieved the distinguished honor of a statutory rape hat-trick! Yes, three counts of gross sexual assault, or "Engaging in a sexual act with another person and the other person is not the actor's spouse and has not attained the age of 14 years."

Congratulations to Carl and his family. Who ever said mustaches were creepy? Look for him on the Shipyard Brewery tour!

Landlords Without Boarders.

Wow. There are a lot of shitty apartments in Portland, Maine. And it feels like we've seen them all in the past few days. All were two or three bedroom places priced between $1,000 and $1,350 per month: not top dollar in Portland, but not bottom dollar by any means. All were advertised either in the local paper, craigslist or just by a sign in the window. Most were either on the peninsula, near downtown or out by the University.

So let's see... there were three apartments that looked out onto gas station parking lots, one that had been painted black and pink by this weird African dude named Lado (the bathroom ceiling was also collapsing), one with laundry machines in a basement accessible only from the outside of the house, one next door to a Midas muffler shop on a busy street and four with dropped styrofoam ceilings (one of these with florescent office lights built in).

Then there was the basement apartment or "sub-dwelling" that the happy-go-lucky landlord "sometimes" occupied a part of. I recognized this man from the night he almost backed over me with his SUV in front of that very apartment as I walked my dog. He had yelled "Why don't you try wearing some other color besides black, moron!"

There was the place where we'd have to mow the lawn ourselves, the place with a loud common stairway above the only place a bed could go, the place that we'd need to flush out the furnace water every 30 days and the apartment with the bedroom looking out onto a home for mentally retarded adults. That place had a sweet non-functional fireplace and a landlord with a dyed mustache who lived upstairs.

There was an apartment that, during the day, always had a stretch Hummer parked in front, as there was a neighbor who moonlighted as a chauffeur. It was the early evening when we saw the place and we were lucky enough to see her leaving for work. She was about 21, tall and emaciated with a tight black polyester suit on and a cocked top hat, made-up like a prostitute.

Another place smelled so awful I almost threw up. There was a poor Pug dog crated in the bedroom, large feathers strewn about and a cat with no tail running around peeing on things; there was also a large boat stranded in the front yard. The landlord drove his Vespa across the grass to greet us, wearing a bicycle helmet.

We knew of a house on our block where the occupants owned a giant lynx with a chain-link collar. That place came up for rent but unfortunately it looked as if the lynx had trashed the place.

One apartment had exclusive access to a storage attic: at least 2,000 square feet of hot, unfinished space. Outside the ground-floor rental unit was a group of sunburned wiggers smoking and drinking at ten in the morning, bobbing and weaving to the sounds from a boom box underneath what would have been our baby's room.

The pièce de résistance was a tiny, dilapidated house out in South Portland that butted up to a sea of mammoth Citgo oil tanks, each seemingly the size of a football stadium. The neighbors had cars up on cinderblocks and kids wove through the streets of the weird little neighborhood on their bicycles alongside big-rig oil trucks.

We did find one place that we love. But it's one of two places that overtly doesn't want to rent to us because we have a baby. And a dog. And two cats. Apparently the downstairs neighbors are very sensitive to noise, so the landlord wants us (including our dog and baby) to meet with them. If the neighbors give us the seal of approval, then we're in! Good thing I didn't mention our snow leopard!

Baby Börn.

It's been a strange time of overt happiness for me this past week, the first week of my daughter's life. Like I don't even seem to care that my taxes, prepared 90 minutes before the deadline, have me owing over $9,000. Or that we gave notice on our beloved apartment and need to find a place by June 1. I guess it all takes a back seat for now.

I tried to take some contract work yesterday and it was a disaster. I was late to both appointments and couldn't do either job; I fumbled my way through and ended up just apologizing and leaving. On the way to the first appointment, I was trapped in a miles-long traffic jam on 295. The next exit wasn't for 10 miles, so traffic just sat there. People were turning off their engines and getting out of their cars to smoke cigarettes and stretch their legs on the median. Eventually I couldn't deal anymore and busted a U-turn across the steeply carved drainage median and found my way via county roads.

At my second appointment, I had to meet with a recruiter at a life insurance agency. He had slicked-back hair and smelled of sugarless gum. His office was festooned with successories and laminated "service pyramids". He looked a lot like Michael Scott and needed me to run wires through his office wall. He was wanting to connect his laptop with a new plasma TV to show powerpoint slides to his prospective recruits. Unfortunately I don't do in-wall wiring and so I told him I'd transfer the work order to someone else.

Then came the soft sell. He started to ask me questions about where I live and my family, angling for a policy sale. He fished out two creepy Lance Armstrong-style wristbands that said "LIFE HAPPENS" from a bulk bag of thousands, acknowledging that they might be "a bit big for the little one yet, ha ha ha."

I was frustrated and dazed when I left the insurance office and drove toward home. I was hungry and a Wendy's drew me into its drive-through. I got my food and drifted into the adjacent WalMart parking lot, shoring up next to a white Ford Windstar. I ate my food, shifting my focus between the Windstar, the Wendy's and the WalMart. I wondered why the Windstar had the word "Sport" splashed in teal across the front quarter panel. Maybe because it had alloy rims?

I wondered why the wristbands didn't say "DEATH HAPPENS" as I tossed them into the Wendy's bag with the detritus of my lunch, crumpled it up and headed home to see my baby girl.

Sketchy Days.

A three-year-old drew this picture of me yesterday. It really captures my state of mind well, i think. When do kids stop being able to see into people's souls so well? Soon he'll be drawing prototypical houses with smokey chimneys and dump trucks and stuff, but for now he's almost clairvoyant. Ellis is the son of a client of mine here in Portland. When he drew this picture, I was three days into major surgery on his dad's only work computer, and I was very stressed about not losing any data and about him being offline for so long.

Also on my mind was the fact that I'm unemployed (I barter with Ellis's dad for picture-framing services). And that rent is past due, and that my former employer is probably not going to give me my final paycheck just to be a dick, and that we can't afford our apartment anymore so in 6 weeks we'll be moving to god-knows-where (someplace where they don't care that I'm unemployed?), and that our car is literally falling apart, and oh yeah, that we're having a daughter two weeks from today.

On the brighter side, I have applied for three good-looking jobs recently, all of which I'm strongly qualified for. Hopefully by the time my daughter can draw pictures of me, I won't look so lost.