An Honest Living

By Katie O'Reilly

'God, how could Choctaw Nation and Mother Gaia have so much in common?' Jenny wondered, a self-abhorrent thought, as she deemed herself woefully ill-fit to deserve to attempt to comprehend either. Considering the intricate, femine conch shell as well as the astronomically melancholy Trail of Tears as they both related to tangible energy put out into the universe, energy that must be apportioned, preferably in a beneficent and woefully willed fashion, with the limited time she had here, she felt helpless and frozen. She hated herself for not recently spending more time coaxing the 'good' energy to herself, for not willing it to people she knew were in need. If there were an ashram in her backyard, though, she'd hate herself for taking supper breaks. Jennifer Marie McDuff was that hard and that guilt-ridden, in matters material and spiritual alike. It was just the latter that caused her the existential pangs.

' What if I'm totally just catalyzing cosmic joy now and in the long run cleansing people's pathways to inner joy?' Jenny rationalized, waving curious-looking tubes above her head and calling out, 'Jelllllllo shots! Five bucks! Best deal in the bar!'

She reasoned people were here to unwind a little. Indulge the soul. Liberate the spirit. Get lit up. Lighten up.

'A full shot and a wicked photo opp! Just five dollars!'

A sweat-drenched man lurched straight into her out of nowhere, causing the five foot four shot girl to nearly capsize. He caught her by the small of her back right before her heels yielded, quickly and drunkenly sized her up and down, and then just as swiftly grabbed the whistle around her neck. Once he'd gotten himself completely hedged into her personal space, the customer ceased screaming along to Bon Jovi lyrics long enough to stuff the whistle into his mouth and blow. A shrill tweeeeeeeeet cut through the background cacophany of piano percussion and booze-fooled buffoonery to flood her eardrums. For a moment Jenny wondered whether her hearing could ever be fully salvaged. She deftly managed to escape the drunken klutz and ducked into a quieter corner to untangle her whistle.

'Jesus, the Tao is probably laughing at me right now,' she mused, fully descended into the present by this point. She was primarily referring to her appearance; more specifically, her hooker at a soccer game get-up. She was in fact dressed so professionally. A jello shift. Perhaps a sensible career outlet for a natural redhead with an above average rack who couldn't walk the walk in recessionary PR.

Working and living to your potential is one of the most commonplace and evasive of post-collegiate pursuits. It is the one that has put many a narcissist in the emergency room for panic-induced breath shortage and has plunged countless others into the directionless depths of depression. It has certainly fueled an imaginative range of escapist plans B, C and D. An intense pressure and a self-perpetuated luxury, it's a force that specializes in manufacturing twenty-something anxiety machines. Luckily, there's a breaking point in sight. Sometimes you just need to push self-actualization aside long enough to scrape up your rent.

'Hey sweetheart, how about some early St. Paddy's Day festivities?'

She tilted her head to the side and cartoonishly cocked a plastic syringe filled with gelatinous green amunition skyward, as if she were a spaghetti western starlet. She took the canister of reddi-whip chaser from the holster on her waist and shook boisterously, lest the full effect of her ridiculous sales pitch be lost on this unsuspecting male patron, one of many in a sea of vertically-striped button-ups. After a moment, her self-consciousness kicked in, old reliable, to overshadow her enterprising spirit. She became suddenly haunted by her 'official' job description.

'Fuck, be sexy, you awkward, stubby-legged geek!'

Jenny had never really identified with alpha females; she'd always opted for drama, debate, and literary pursuits over cheerleading, gymnastics, early promiscuity, et cetera. Provocative allure wasn't exactly missing from her vocabulary, but it wasn't yet an autopilot switch. She took a deep yoga breath and smiled. She was going for seductive but feared that once actualized, her grin came across as unsettling bordering on maniacal, not unlike the joker's.

It was easier just to slyly tug at the bottom of her snug referree top and let her cleavage take care of the rest. It really was.

The target customer's eyeballs nearly popped out of his balding head. 'What is that?!' He jerked the jello shot from her hand. After a few attempts to comically mime shots into his buddies' arms and various orifices, the syringe appeared to have lost his interest. He looked up, and caught Jenny's eye. Then his lips curled into a roofie-rider's leer. His beady eyes strayed down from her eyes and she willed hers to wander from the globules of seedy perspiration multiplying across his brow.

'That bra fits you real nice honey,' he praised her.

'Excuse me?'

'Your bra. A real good fit!'

'Jesus Christ, do you work in intimacy?!' is what she wanted to ask.

'Five dollars please. Do you need any change? Oh no? Well thank you so much sir. You have a real nice night,' is what she said.

Goddamn. Was this karmic punishment for all of the self-righteous 'feminist' accusations hurled at suitors, fathers, brothers, unspecified mankind over recent years? She knew that her sociology minor had made her that much more obnoxious. But with a long-held financial aid kid mentality and a solid south Chicago lineage, Jenny was more hardscrabble than bleeding heart when it came down to it. Besides, this job was campy. The jello girls were titillating in the benignly nostalgic style of pulp novels. The costumes were simple and silly, the premise straightforward enough. Lord knows there were more perverse things people did for money from the insconspicuous asylum of cubicles.

'Do you know what time it is!? It's GO TIME!'

A performer's vibratto bellow cut through the nightclub noise, employing the code word that signalled for Jenny and the rest of the bar staff to drop what they were doing and convene on the small stage in front of the pianos. Once there, it was up to them to wave, smile suggestively, and coax the crowd to stand up and follow along with the rousing waitress-led choreography. Due to last week's emergency staff meeting addressing the need to smile more during Go Time, the shift-desperate servers were hamming it up Easter dinner-style tonight. Jenny waved mechanically as her struggling actor co-workers struck caricatured poses and blew kisses. Luckily, the chosen number involved a relatively straightforward jazz hands and twist rotation to the Spice Girls' 'Spice Up Your Lives.'

Jenny had never been a stellar dancer, but she figured she could fake it 'til she made it, however elusive that end goal might be. She endured a few spirited ass slaps from co-workers as she shimmied through Go Time, and then the applause (largely in the form of jeers and whistles) came and went, and she was back on the floor as before, explaining the killer bargains to be secured in taking a jello shot versus a legitimate shot (at least two dollars) to the now louder, livelier clientele.

'There she is!'

A lanky woman grabbed her by the waist and steered her like cattle toward a small group gathered beneath an electric blue Busch Light sign in the corner of the bar.

'My husband thought you were really hot up there,' she whisper-shouted into Jenny's ear.

A suburban visitor to the city for the weekend, probably out for an office or birthday party, Jenny figured, based on the hybrid stench of peach schnapps, orange and vodka on the woman's breath. Sex on the beach. A favorite among forty-something housewives who appeared to experience some sort of giggly liberation in simply ordering the damn drink.

'I want you to give me a shot with whipped cream, and make it extra slutty,' the woman commanded in a harsh whisper.

Jenny attempted a carefree giggle and before she knew it had a fifty-dollar bill tucked into her brassiere along with a business card for one Bill Chmielinski (presumably the husband). And all she'd had to do was have some well-off drunk broad sprawl on a barstool so that Jenny could hop up and straddle her while she manually injected some goo and whipped cream into the woman's mouth. Jenny's final touch, a languorous peck on his wife's cheek before she'd dismounted, had really seemed to get poor Bill worked up. He'd demanded another shot, this one for his hefty self.

She found herself wondering yet again whether she had the best or the worst job in the universe. As the Blues Brothers once so eloquently put it, 'Life is a shit sandwich; the more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat.' And sure, she'd like to change the world, but so far, various non-jello pursuits hadn't gotten her much further on that front.

She'd been unceremoniously spit out of the daytime economy when the western world initially began to split at the stock index seams, and so had taken a gig as a cocktail waitress at a dueling pianos bar downtown. The venue wasn't exactly a lascivious gentleman's club. In fact she could imagine few nightlife options less erotic than this never-ending sing-along favored by paunchy tourists and bachelorettes in penis hats. Jenny had quickly learned, though, that Elton John devotees and degenerate creeps who should likely be in prison were far from mutually exlusive. She'd recently found herself in trouble at work thanks to a British businessman who kept buying shots from her for all his colleagues. He'd begged her to please unbutton a bit more for that guy because he was shy, ham it up for the boss wouldn't she, give the cigar-smelling glutton 'the full works,' et cetera, et cetera. Jenny finally had her fill when he not-so-tacitly hinted that a bigger tip was in store if she'd shake her 'nice Yankee cans' a bit in the men's faces.

'Oh really?! How much will you give me if I just shag him right here, right now at the table?' she'd retorted. ' Where the hell do you think you are anyway? A Bangkok massage parlor?!'

She'd continued to rail for a few beats longer before her manager showed up to pull her aside and apologize to the pervert. Larry had then instructed her, somewhat sternly, to come to bar authorities first in the case of another 'guest conflict,' and get accusatory and racist last. She'd reluctantly promised to always go to management for conflict intervention and say 'fornicate with' instead of 'shag' from then on.

'We'll get a door guy to kick him out if you let us know, sweetheart, but we can't have you running your mouth and giving anyone an excuse to tell corporate that we verbally abuse folks,' Larry, a former Louisiana shrimphouse manager, drawled. 'The thing is, as far as the guys upstairs are concerned, the customer really is Mr. Right.'

'I promise to only ever be a big mute whore at work from now on,' is what Jenny nearly said aloud before she considered the precarious composition of her aura and stopped herself.

She hated herself a little bit when she got like this. She knew she shouldn't let people's bad energy get to her. Though she had never been one to shy away from the sauce, Jenny was well aware that booze ultimately brought out the demon in people, and she struggled to keep bitter, dark toxins from accumulating and clouding up her aura by striving to forgive those who smeared whipped cream on her or otherwise treated her like their porno messiah. When someone tries to posess another individual, sexually or otherwise, she reminded herself, he suffers the psychic consequences of that unnatural act. So she reasoned it was not her place to inflict any further punishment. And she also ran into nice people at work, funny people who tipped her more ostensibly for her tongue-in-cheek sales approach than for her jump and pump jello delivery. Plus, she often made good on entire student loan bills in a night.

'I really am sorry, Larry. I won't get so worked up all the time,' she'd apologized. 'It's totally not my place to teach anyone to not make asses of themselves.'

'You run into idiots at every job, throughout your whole life, baby girl,' Larry assured her. 'Now get out there and sell some more jello. Let's see you reach your sales goal for tonight.'

She had her share of indignant moments, but summa cum laude English major Jenny wasn't anywhere nearing a full-time wide-eyed idealist. She was well aware that sex sells, that sex is the paramount salesangle. She didn't expect that reality to change, nor did she see virtue in any sort of market system decreed by eunuchs. She'd long figured enlightened liberals weren't any better than fundamentalist pious zealouts when it came down to squelching human nature in the name of higher principles. So by partaking in sexual capitalism, by employing her feminine wiles and suiting up in cowgirl or referree or policelady garb to beef up sales for a national chain outfit, she determined she was simply being resourceful.

Conversely, Jenny considered objectification an abomination of the sacred gift of sexuality. She was honest to a hard fault when confronting her own values, and so depending on the day, she either felt like an ethical and metaphysical outlaw or else she settled for the fact that the world didn't make enough sense for anyone's values to have to adhere to steadfast rules. Besides, it's not like she was sleeping with her customers, or giving out real numbers, or even letting them touch her (except in those rare cases when it became painfully obvious that lechery preceded an enormous tip). So Jenny was making a straightforward system that wasn't going to budge anyhow work for her. It was possibly less pointless than most white-collar tasks she'd undergone. And it served as a good reminder that her fancy college degree wasn't her absolute ticket to monetary rewards and personal satisfaction.Tunnel vision, which can serve young romantics well throughout high school and college, becomes detrimental fast in the real world.

'A buck twenty for 'Sweet Caroline!'' a piano player shouted ecstatically, flinging dollars up from the request jar. 'That's what we like to see! This means it'll only cost you Journey fans over there a hundred and twenty-five dollars to prove to the world for the rest of time that 'Don't Stop Believin'' is the best song in the world!'

The crowd took to the instigated duel with high spirits. It was safe to call it a good night for business. Pretty bachelorettes and their sororitastic entourages seemed to be on a pre-wedding season warpath. Tourists were flocking in with the unabashed, effervescent quality of free agents gone incognito in an unfamilar town, and thusly drinking like just-released fish. In the employee lounge, rumors buzzed that a certain reality TV star, propelled into notoriety for the decadence of her living style and cosmetic undertakings as well as the brashness of her personality, was impatiently waiting outside in line. The musicians were ferocious on their babygrands; they seemed to be out with a vengeace to honor Stevie Wonder and Rolling Stones requests over college fight headaches and those damn rival Chicago baseball songs, much to Jenny's satisfaction. The city was freshly entering its five-month grace period from sleet and despair, and she briefly considered bumming a cigarette for an easy excuse to step outside and soak up the relatively balmy night breezes.

After some quick mental wrestling, she opted to be good and do what she could to keep her vice-ridden nighttime vocation from taking much of a toll on her health. So far, so good on that front. For perhaps the first time in her life, she seemed to get enough sleep. But try as she might, Jenny struggled with eastern philosophy's answer to instant zen: living in the moment. She'd be mid-shift and half drunk and suddenly in an anxious tizzy over the alignment of her chakras. It seemed that the more paths toward enlightenment she equipped herself to explore, the more bent out of shape on the nebulous matter of 'being' she became.

'Just close your eyes for a moment, call upon the prosperous blue ray to embolden and shower you in positive energy, and get out there,' she willed herself, forcefully envisioning her bucket of jello painlessly diminishing and her bosses cheering for her talents as they tallied up staff sales on the kitchen chalkboard throughout the night. She was aware she sounded like a straight-up nutjob, but Jenny was a full-time cocktail waitress, and while that came with its unique set of substantial challenges, her brain was hungry for a stretch, a different view through the looking glass.

'Time out, ref! Come back over here!' someone shouted in the tavernous distance. Jenny paused mid-current injection, causing a reluctant young girl pressured by her party into taking a shot to lose her jello rhythm. Red goop sliding down her chin, the relative teetotaler, horrified, shrieked as a pool of pink formed on her white blouse. Jenny skirted away quickly in an effort to get lost amongst the throngs before anyone demanded a refund.

A group of middle-aged men and a couple of their wives was waving her down in the bar's back deck. A gropily ebullient bunch, they had taken a few shots earlier and had racked up a decent enough tip record. Jenny smiled big and made her way toward the birthday boy, a forty-five-ish, dark and hairy half-wit. The men hollered louder, the nearer she drew.

'ONE more! You can do it! Just one more!' they kept yelling, punching the guy repeatedly in the shoulder.

He looked up at her oafishly, beaming the trademark grin of one who is over-satiated yet quite obviously open to baleful suggestion, cheeks flushed fuschia and eyes mischievous slits.'Ohhhhhhhkay. Bring it here, babe,' he slurred heartily.

'You got it, birthday prince!'

She stepped onto the rung of her customer's barstool, slid a knee in between his legs for leverage and hoisted herself to an elevated position, cupping her hand around his thick neck for one of her more theatrical administrations of the night. As she ripped the cap off of the six-inch-long syringe and began to pump, Jenny became aware that she was being loudly berated.

'I said no and I'm his wife!'

She looked back over her shoulder to see a portly blonde woman lunging across the bar table with a hand shot toward her skirt, clearly intending to remove Jenny from her perch. Her first feeling was one of passive annoyance. People who got all worked up were the worst. Jenny knew she wasn't exactly curing cancer for her life's work, so she minded when people made a big deal about the spectacular tackiness of her job.

'Cap's off ma'am. That means the shot's bought and he's taking it. No refunds.' She continued to inject. The man continued to ingest.

'You listen to me, whore,' the lady slurred. 'You've overserved him. He gets shick, he wraps my car around tree, it's all gonna be your fault. And I'll sue.' She raised her arm, a sloppy threat. 'I'll fucking close this place down.'

Now Jenny was ruffled. She narrowed her eyes toward the frump-shaped wench obscured in cheap yellow hair dye and a dated black smock.

'That's a damn classy move of you, ma'am. Putting the birthday boy beind the wheel,' she said over her shoulder. 'And you know what? He's the paying customer. He orders a shot, he's been paying for the shots, I'm gonna give him that shot.'

'I told you I'm his wife!' the red-faced pug screeched.

'And I'm an employee of this illustrious establishment. I say what's policy. And policy says you and your husband owe me five bucks. Now.'

She resisted a very real urge to dispel the remaining whipped cream all over the man's face and her own chest, smuttily lick it all off, and clock the bitch in the head with the empty aluminum cylinder. If this woman wanted to cry whore, she'd get whore.

'Your aura! Murk! Clear it out!' called some voice in the back of her head. 'You are getting your undies into a mammoth bunch, considering this is merely the physical realm.'

She was struggling.

'Let me ashk you something,' the woman menacing slurred, pulling Jenny off the stool. ''Cause I guessh I'm just goddamn curious.'

'Go right on ahead ma'am. But you'll be hauled out of here real fast if you lay another finger on me. And before you ask anything, someone's gotta show me five dollars.'

Her request was issued in vain.

'Does it make you feel good about yourself or something to look like a whore?'

She said the word slowly, sneeringly, as if Jenny had the mental capacity of a child in a schoolyard, when the world is small and words can seem big and powerful. She gazed down from the barstool at the squat woman with a mixture of pity and righteous confusion. The older woman leered back squintily, hands on thick hips.

'Oh I'm shorrrrrry. Is it Halloween? Are you putting on a costume ball for the men here?'

Jenny tried to keep in mind that people who were mean were only so because they themselves were miserable, that she stood to gain nothing real in fighting back, that this pathetic woman's despair served as her own hellish sentence. But Jenny was a woman of considerable pride, and cosmic justice just wasn't cutting it at this point.

'Yes. It's March fourteenth. It's Halloween.'

The woman glowered.

'All right smarty pants.'

'Don't you mean smarty whore skirt?'

'You idiot little overserving clown slut!'

Some of the couples' friends tried in vain to calm the wife down.

'Relax, Suzanne, babe. Let's get the car. Everything's fine here.'

The birthday boy wouldn't make eye contact with Jenny nor his wife. He teetered precariously on his stool, back and forth, shoulders slumped, the short-lived glory phase of a night of continual imbibing long overshot. At one point he fell forward and his forehead pressed a sweat stamp into Jenny's shoulder. The wife, an irate, pink-taloned goose, squawked and shoved her away violently, lest the contact last longer than a nanosecond. Her husband, with the loss of Jenny's support, tumbled out of his stool and fell to to a heavy heap on the ground.

The curdling scream that followed caused a pianist to cease playing for a moment, lending Toto's 'Africa' an appropriately wilder feel. Bouncers rushed over. Patrons cleared way. However, it became almost immediately clear that this was not one of the bar's 911-calling occasions. Once heaved up, the confused customer was pulled off to the bathroom by a fellow middle-aged lout, leaving his wife in a puddle of hysterics, unable to formulate complete sentences to Larry, who had suddenly appeared, looking more gruff and official than usual. Jenny had somehow never noticed the contrast of his crisp white-collared shirt to the tanks and tees of the other staffers, nor the NASA-like authority of his walkie-talkie. She braced herself.

'YOU! The referree whore!' Suzanne snarled, sobbing, flailing like a velociraptor toward Jenny. She entreated to the manager, 'The umpire girl oversherved him! I said straight to her face he'd had too much and she shook her finger in my face and said he wanted it and got on top of him and, and and...argh!!!!' She convulsed into a trail of indeceipherable sobs and accusations.

'Ma'am, he...'

Before she could go on, Larry held up his hand to stop her from speaking.

'I'll handle this from here Jenny. You just meet me in the kitchen, and we'll discuss.'

She was apprehenstive, but she would have feared much more for her job and respectability had the woman not then completely lost it, emitting a hyena yowl as she lunged forward and made a grab for one of Jenny's ginger pig-tails.

'How much better are your tips with men, with people's husbands, the more you dress like a common prostitute?!' she shrieked. Is every unbottoned button that should be fixed another hundred bucks in your pocket?! Another shot bought for you?!'

Larry grew visibly startled and summoned bouncers. Before they even made it from the door to the deck though, he was standing defense in front of Jenny, holding his T-bone steak-sized hands up to Suzanne. His height and girth proved a considerable obstacle to the puggish woman, who still carried on as if she had every intention of scratching a big red 'W' into Jenny's flesh.

'Not only are you verbally abusive and publicly intoxicated, but you really think you're going to physically strike one of my servers and then tell me that you have grounds to sue?'

Jenny had never heard Larry's syruppy southern twang take on such a steely tone. She belatedly took her exit cue and retreated to the kitchen, physically shaking a bit. Her brain didn't know whether to retreat to existential meltdown land, fuel up for righteous indignation, or to go into resourcefulness overdrive, assuming she'd need a new job soon. She sighed. Maybe she'd just inject herself with jello shot after jello shot and then lie down like a junkie in a pile of depleted syringes for Larry to find her in for her firing. Might not make any difference at this point. She could still hear the yowls of Suzanne, who was at the moment repeatedly screaming the word lawyer, and then all of a sudden the high-pitched pandemonium just stopped, a loaded pause, no more sonic hysteria. The suspension was palpable even above the brash piano clamor. The starkness of the change compelled Jenny to stick her head out of the kitchen and re-visit the scene.

'Oh, shit.'

She knew the stance. She knew what the practiced scurrying of bouncers meant. She understood exactly why the eyebrow of the nearest bartender was arched ceiling-high. Suzanne was doubled over, heaving, not producing a peep for once. The others in her group were off tending to her semi-conscious husband. Larry stood a few feet in front of her, managing to look concerned, irate and bemused all at once. The woman's meaty shoulders heaved...up, down, staccato shrugs. And then the vomitous floodgates were opened up; karmic glory joined forces with acid vodka reflex and slapped idiotic choices in mixing high five. Suzanne, she just spewed.

Jenny brought her hands to her face. She could not recall ever having been simultaneously horrified and overjoyed to quite this degree. She quit attempting to process a thing and just gaped. A detailed account of the woman's lurid regurgitation would likely sire the same effect as any excruciatingly nuanced description of sexual intercourse or the miracle of birth; a classic 'too much information compromises the magic' scenario. Needless to say, Suzanne's retching finale was epic, disgusting, and made for eight intensely memorable seconds.

Slumped over, the woman was seized and escorted out by two of the more red-alert doormen. She resumed speaking, this time around lower, meaner and even more slurred than before. Jenny thought to run and grab a water bottle from the bar to give to the dehydrated woman, a parting gift on the house that might just be better received than that last jello shot.

'I only warnt that you get a better job or go to shkoool,' Suzanne quite literally drooled, reluctantly taking and then spilling the water from Jenny. 'Thash all I'm sayyying, shot whore girl.'

'Yeah, not much of a future in jello, is there? It's all I've got for the moment, though, so while I appreciate your concern, it'd be nice if you wouldn't try go prohibilition crusader or anything on our asses,' Jenny responded, smiling sweetly.

'My hushband doesn't like your type anyway,' Suzanne slurred, falling forward. 'Ladies who run their mouths like slut whores.'

The doormen picked her back up, making very little effort to hide their laughter.

'Well, that's good. Tell him to keep it that way.' Jenny said, pulling open the door for the snickering bouncers. 'Maybe next year throw him a jello-free birthday party.'

'You have bra shraps, brassiere, showing in public,' Suzanne accused, scowling comically as she was poured out of the door and abandoned into the night, under the generous assumption that her husband and his party would remember to retrieve her. 'Have some dechency for Christ's sake.'

'And you have eyeliner on your chin,' Jenny called after her. 'Good night!'

Back inside, she saw that the rest of the waitstaff was clambering toward stage at the announcement of another Go Time. Jenny scurried through the now-even-thicker crowds and arrived front and center just in time for the Rocky Horror Picture Show intro. She performed the time warp with something beyond gusto, but her moves could barely keep up with the formation of her shit-devouring grin. Maybe this would be her last Go Time, but she was going to worship at the altar of the divine creator of all-powerful showbiz, damnit. Her inner energy flow felt rejevenated, uncircumvented; her chakras seemed to be spinning vigorously. Jenny was a jello girl; that was her story, and she fucking owned it. She'd arrived.

She was effectively a transporter of something special. She knew she now fully ascribed to the gelatinous magic of brilliant-hued, primary state of matter-defying jello shots, the fanciful weirdness of this substance gliding smoothly through syringe, through midair, through the esophagal threshold and to a place of sweet impact, honorable vehicle of merriment and zest. Bill Cosby certainly seemed to get it; now she was in on the enchantment too.

It hit her. It could be her little secret. Others' bad energy could try to ruin the sanctity of her secret, but that didn't matter; they didn't deserve to be in on her confidence with the universe.

She hopped off the stage with zero hesitation, landed on her feet with uncharacteristic feline agility, and made her way to the kitchen for her chat, bucket swinging in hand. Larry stood filling the doorway, chuckling, his red face in his hands.

'Baby doll, you had enough homewrecking for one night?'

She set down her bucket so she could wipe off her brow. She'd broken a real sweat from Go Time hijinks. She was perspiring and laughing with no desire to control herself.

'Gonna go pick on some more vapid old ladies? See whose husband has a hankerin' for some jello with a side of trouble?'

'Larry, can you imagine walking down the street with that woman?!' Jenny asked. 'How pissed off she must get over regular civilians? Non-dessert prostitutes from the dark side? However does she lord her superiority?!'

He laughed again.

'Well handled, Jenny. You kept your cool nicely,' he said.

She beamed and treated herself to a squirt of whipped cream off her finger.

'Jello's not for everyone,' he continued. 'We've had about thirty, forty girls quit or get canned in the eight years I've been with the company.'

Jenny bowed with a grin, genuinely experiencing the sensation of energy rays of the brightest corners of the spectrum washing through her aura.

'Well, I don't know what to say, Larry,' she said with mock sheepishness. 'I'm up for pump. I guess you could call me a....solid jello jiggler.'

He guffawed and turned away to head back toward the office.
'Whatever you say Jennifer, you still got that sales goal.' He then stopped, turned and looked back over his shoulder. 'Jello jiggler?! Jesus Christ, Jennifer, weren't you an English major? You got more free analogies where that winner came from?'

She was too high on figurative whip-its to care about her gaffe.

'Ha! I'll come up with something better than that sometime, boss man,' she sang back. 'But tonight I'm just gonna concentrate on unloading all this delectable jello here.'

'It's a done deal, doll.'

Epilogue: Jenny surpassed her sales goal by a long shot that night. Her progress on the great American novel is yet undisclosed. However, she was inspired to throw herself a celestial vernal equinox party when she was crowed April's employee of the month. No jello was served.

journey on the T

Hey, you?

Yes, you, standing there, facing me, in my own personal-space-bubble.

You, with the skin-tight pre-holed jeans, pants that are so small they only go halfway up your butt and are snugly held up by a black belt with those stupid metal studs. Yes, I see how your shirt is so thread-bare that I’m sure you got it at a thrift-store, and how you’re wearing a frayed black sweatshirt with the name of some obscure band on it, probably one either you or your friends are in, and how the hoodie is pulled up even though it’s not raining and you’re inside the goddamned T. And your long, black hair that is so intentionally unwashed and probably even artificially straightened.

But still you stare straight out the window, almost imperceptibly bobbing your head to the music coming from your ipod, traveling to your ears through the token earbugs. It’s the best way to be alone no matter how many people are around. Oh, you have a black ipod, how antiestablishment. Obviously, no one understands your pain, no one could appreciate the inner, tortured depths of your existence. It’s only the music, man; it’s the music that gets you through.

Despite the fact that I’m staring directly at your face, and there’s no way you don’t know I’m not-so-subtly trying to get your attention, you determinedly look everywhere but at me. You keep giving disgusted looks at the girl with the big fucking bag behind you, the one that keeps hitting you uncomfortably every time the train hits a bump. I know man. I can commiserate. Let me give you a conciliatory look, a look that says, yeah, people can be such assholes.

No? I’m just trying to be friendly, just trying to strike up a conversation with you. Jesus, we’ve sat next to each other in class twice a week for the past four months. It might be awkward if we started talking now, it’s been so long, but isn’t it more fucking awkward now that, for the love of God, if we were any closer I’d be bearing your child in nine months?

But then I’m not sure. I’m kinda pissed. Not because I’m interested in knowing you, really, but because isn’t that just what people are supposed to do? Exchange pleasantries with familiar strangers? Or do you have the right idea, just cutting out the bullshit of social exchanges with people you have no interest in talking to? But now that 10 minutes have passed with your glaringly forced ignorance of recognition, isn’t it weirder to tap you on the shoulder, to say, hey, you’re in my class, when that’s been the case you’ve been avoiding all along? And if I do, do you take out your earbugs and pretend to have a conversation with me? If it’s painfully awkward, what happens at the point where we have nothing to say, but it would be rude to re-insert the music-device in your aural cavities?

So I just turn, staring out the window myself.

I guess I’ll see you in class.

Harmless Quirks or Totally Berserk: An Investigation into a Could-Be Psychopathic Boyfriend

Harmless Quirks or Totally Berserk: An Investigation into a Could-Be Psychopathic Boyfriend

By Katie O'Reilly

'Found out about a thai restaurant with bugs on the menu. Interested? Even if u dont eat caterpillars i could use the support cause ill need a push.'

Lump that one into the 'texts that don't help the cause when you're trying to convince yourself that you're not dating a serial killer' category. This singular pursuit had been taking a lot out of me as it was. Nothing like a mid-workday missive like that to put you straight in the front row of that theater in your mind specializing in unsettling recent memory montages.

The tongue burrito your new boyfriend ordered for lunch the other day before your cat circus date. His high-concept bathroom design scheme that involved row after row of naked wighead mannequins. That story about hookers in the upper peninsula of Michigan. That time 48 hours ago when you were cleaning up after your good friend's birthday party and came across a mask made of baloney abandoned facedown on the sticky floor alongside makeshift ash trays and pinata candy. Yup, his.

Now, I can appreciate creative liberties as they pertain to a theme party. I consider winning runner-up for best costume at a raucous caucus presidents' day bash one of my proudest moments. Not only had I made the black eye I'd earned in a recent concussion really work for me as Betty Ford, but I had somehow rendered my portly grandmother's flowered fifties smock sexy. (Hint: safety pins can be your next messiah.) I have a friend who once scored while dressed at Sputnik. What I'm saying is, there's an art to this.

But what does it say about someone who hears 'under the sea' and immediately thinks not of the scores of adorable and potentially comical underwater creatures and fun aquatic concepts to be tapped, but rather seeks the opportunity to twist the name of some obscure fish into an excuse to glue processed lunch meat all over his face? I'm sure I would be a kinder critic were the correlation between 'all baloney' and abalone more readily apparent to a room full of drunk people and less attractive to squirrels on the porch. But the baloney wig? My initial diagnosis was 'Trying too hard,' but that of most of my friends was, 'Jesus Christ, Katie, what is wrong with you? You are clearly dating a serial killer.'

At first I tried in vain to paint him as misunderstood. It's not that I was particularly attached or saw much of a future with this guy. But self-reliant feminist righteousness shines much brighter in theory than in practice. In female brunch company I'm all about 'I am not a midnight snack!' and similar proclamations in the vein of empowerment. But after someone buys me dinner and a wine buzz, a wave of guilt, possibly of Catholic origin, seeps in and overrides all of that, leaving me feeling indebted. Not necessarily sexually, but I mean, I'm probably not going to snicker diabolically over someone's long johns or predilection for jager bombs until a couple of days after they pay me nice compliments and all of the cab fare. Not returning duds' phone calls gives me an ulcer. It took my ex ending a serious long-term relationship over Skype for me to manage to not rationalize away all of the sentiments of disgust I'd long harbored and finally tear him a new one. And baloney face had thus far been living up to his astrological expectations as the prince charming of the zodiac. He refused to let me chip in for any tapas and hadn't date-raped me. A veritable ray of sunsine. And while he did up show up at the party I'd invited him to over the weekend smelling like a butcher's worst nightmare, he'd brought along a whole bottle of tequila. So I feebly protested that he was merely artistic and generous, not creepy and presumptuous.

My friend L, who has been one of the most sage forces in my life since sixth grade, broke it down for me. 'Your strongest attribute is also gonna be your greatest downfall.' I asked her to elaborate. 'You don't let the small stuff get to you and you're not a judgmental bitch, but that really just ends up meaning that you're a magnet for sociopathic freaks.' she explained.

Was I courting my own delusions in going out with this nice, avant-garde guy? I reexamined my mental list of pros. The meat mask may have been a stretch, but he was generally witty and articulate, always quick with an entertaining, often ludicrous story. I can appreciate the gift of gab. Maybe my friends were just petty and closed-minded. I resorted to independent research to address the serial-killing-sociopath-or-not hypothesis at hand.

The internet was quick to point out that psychopaths are typically amusing, glib and superficial. Come to think of it, this guy usually cast himself in an ironically heroic light in his colorful yarns. Tying a chicken to a kayak 'just to see what happens' and then proudly reporting a barracuda siting?

The World Wide Web was unanimously more discerning than I had been when made privy to that vacay tale. 'Because of their inability to appreciate the feelings of others, psychopaths are capable of behavior that normal people find not only horrific but baffling. They can torture and mutilate their victims with about the same sense of concern that we feel when we carve a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.'

Suddenly put off by poultry and reminiscent of childhood Hannibal Lecter nightmares, I felt a serious need to recall things about this person that put me in a happier, more comfortable place. So I tried to hone in on how much I admired his adventurous spirit. Here was someone who really put faith in his whims and seemed to live an enriched life as a result. He drew churches for a month in Ireland, spent a summer naked and fasting on some island, moved someplace to start up a brewery, and then another three months later to pursue mountain biking and camping. This itinerant hobo of a bartender had certainly stirred something in the wide-eyed, wannabe maverick idealist in me.

Datefraud.com set me straight fast.

'Psychopaths tend to live day-to-day and change their plans frequently. They give little serious thought to the future.' So I was well out of college and apparently still falling for this modern-day Kerouac bullshit? Might as well get a tattoo on my forehead advertising my unquestioning acceptance of derelicts who can rock a convincing bohemian agenda. And what 'free spirit' has enough baloney sitting around to create an entire freaking costume for a last-minute invite?! I may not have the credentials for pop psychology any more than I qualify to operate a space shuttle, but it just wasn't adding up.

This certainly wasn't the first time I'd been pressed to reassess a dude's level of berserk. I used to consider an ex a legitimate writer until I accompanied him to a poetry reading where he drunkenly railed against vegetarianism for forty-five minutes. I once received a fog light for my birthday for no good reason. But the notion that my crazy radar may not be razor-sharp really hit home that time when I got to talking about activism with a flirtatious hostel traveler who claimed to be a key player in the MADD movement. I confessed that I was unfamiliar, and he used his Czech language skills to order us some drinks before explaining. He described it as 'basically gay pride, but for schizophrenics.' Two pilsners in and I was inappropriately sniggering over mental images of parades winding their ways through city streets that featured schizoids rambunctiously rallying for 'mad pride for all,' while showcasing priceless antics unique to the mentally ill. For the first time in my life, I politely excused myself from the situation before becoming too entrenched. Me being an insensitive jerk aside, I had successfully navigated the line between 'different' and 'unhinged' finally.

Surely I could revive that sensibility for the situation now at hand. Was it time to move new boyfriend from the eccentric unit to the unbalanced, demented loco ward? Quirky's one thing, but here was the line, and I couldn't quite yet determine whether he stood on the side of harmless whimsy or was off tap-dancing in the ether of bananasville.

Anais Nin said, 'Each friend represents a world in us, a world not possibly born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.'

It's nice to get your mind blown sometimes. Challenging existing notions of reality is part of what our existence is all about in this ever-shifting world. And people are fascinating. But that's not to say our comfort zone isn't there for a reason.

I suppose I could weigh his mental merits and read up on psychological tendencies and conditions until I in turn go nuts in the process. The fact is, sanity's relative. From what I can tell, it's an issue comprised almost entirely of gray matter. And who am I to establish any norms or decide who's closer to or farther from okay and acceptable? I probably shouldn't go around crying psychopath. But I also don't have to be a martyr for misunderstood freaks.

One thing is sure. If I have to expend much energy convincing myself that someone's degree of eccentricity is palatable, then I should probably just back away. The question shouldn't be about whether I ultimately decide to or not to overlook anyone's alleged serial killer-ness. I'm starting to learn to see value in the poetry of someone's weird existence, to let them breathe some alternative energy into everyday life, without fully incorporating their avant-garde modus operandi. In other words, it's possible to appreciate something new and bizarre without necessarily taking it to bed. My subconscious knows me better than I often credit it. And if I felt over my head in this situation, then it was probably foolish to try to convince myself otherwise.
Maybe the 'crazies' are just ahead of their time. And maybe I'm really just kind of a square who would take the comics over esoteric prose on most days. I'd rather eat peanuts than insects. And that's okay.

'Brave soul. Raincheck? Busy for the next few weeks, but if you survive insect cuisine I hope to hear about it at electroclash cinco de mayo.'

I hit 'reply,' 'send' and relaxed. Maybe I hadn't gotten to the bottom of my paranoid hypothesis, but I'd placed an order for whack in smaller, more manageable doses. Who knew where he really landed on the sane/mental continuum, but I'd finally managed to determine where I stood. Totally in control. Crazy.

First post

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