Chapter 2 "Jessica Simpson"

That night I had a dream that I was in a rock band with Jessica Simpson. I truly loved singing and playing with her because our vocal harmonies were the best. I can remember her and I watching another band play from offstage. We were both wearing baseball caps and sunglasses so that no one in the audience would recognize us. She was wearing a Boston Red Sox fitted baseball cap. I love the Red Sox. Something about the underdog that I just love. Jessica and I were holding hands and walking around through the audience. Now, I know you're thinking that this could turn pornographic at any moment. It was completely platonic... she just seemed, in the dream, like a very good friend. I woke up with a very warm feeling for Jessica Simpson. Strange dream.

I also woke up with a mid-grade hangover. It was about a 4.5 on the hangover scale. 1 being mild and 10 being dead. I was somewhere in the middle. Just above intense thirst and just below pounding headache. Above hazy memories, below total blackout. Above the desire for bacon ham sausage and scrapple, below the desire to stick my fingers down my throat and just get it all out. My mouth tasted like cat shit, and when I got up to sit on the edge of my bed the room took it's sweet ass time catching up with my head. My head floated just above my neck with the sickening motion of a bobble head doll. I looked down at my feet. Both shoes were off, but only one sock. I was still in my clothes from last night.

I one-socked it into the bathroom and found a huge movie theater cup half filled with dead Sprite. I dumped it out and began to fill it with water. The water from the sink came out rusty brown at first. I dumped it and waited for the clear water and started over. I opened the medicine mirror and pulled out my industrial size bottle of asprin. I swear this thing is as big as a freaking Bell jar. I chuckle at it every time I pull it from its home in the mirror. I took out three little white pills and swallowed them down with about half a 64oz cup full of water. A good drinking habit requires hydration... and asprin. Not Tylenol or Motrin or Aleve ... fucking old fashioned ASPRIN...I I swear by it. I closed the medicine mirror.

And there was my face ... not too bad ... although I did have some grayish circles under my eyes. That happens quite easily to me. I have very fair skin. I'm a red-head. And yes, the carpet matches the drapes if you know what I mean. Too be quite honest I do have that kind of "Opie" look. Complete with the freckles. A genetic homage to my pastey Scottish and Irish ancestors. I'm fairly tall though. At least I've got that going for me. I'm nearly 6'4", and I have a good back and shoulders. I can be, and have been, quite phyically imposing on occasion, but I'm mostly a pussycat. To spite this my hands and feet are kind of small for my size and now as I look at myself naked in the mirror, I could use a bigger penis, but I'm thinking most guys think that. An unhealthy fascination with this has appeared in my life as the intake and proliferation of pornographic materials has increased. An ex-girlfriend once told me that I was a grower, not a show-er. Whatever the fuck that means. We had quite an active and fulfilling sex life, so I guess it's just one more thing to be paranoid about around the ladies.

I love my shower. The plumber who installed and designed the shower set-up of my Capitol Hill apartment in the 1920s, well, let's just say his hand was touched by God's own. The nozzle must put out as much water as a backyard swimming pool every couple of minutes and the water never gets cold. It has it's little fluctuations in temperature. For instance, it can go from hot to super fucking hot in about half a second, but I've toughened myself to that since moving in. All that wonderful water...

I had about thirty minutes before I had to be at work. It was going to be another close one today. While I was showering I couldn't help thinking about Jessica Simpson, and that caring intamacy I had felt for her in my dream. It was love without the need and the jealousy that comes with "girlfriend love". It didn't hunger, it wanted for nothing. It was just there. This present and warm orange cloud between us. I really enjoy my dreams sometimes. I sleep more than most people I know.

I live on Josephine and Colfax in Denver. Dear reader, I don't really expect you to know where that is, but for the sake of detail, for the sake the of the movie in your mind, I will describe. I have a ground level apartment on the corner of these two streets with a cement patio that faces a 7-11. There is a large high school across the way. This area of town is quite colorful. The 7-11 attracts all manner of folk who live in and around Denver.

First of all, the drug and whore trade are alive and well. There have been more than a few mornings over the past couple of years where I have roused a sleeping indigent or drug addict from my front porch, and more than a few evenings where the pleasant din of my front porch was disturbed by crackheads and hookers. To be honest, I actually don't mind all that much. I even know a couple of the "regulars" in the neighborhood. As a matter a fact, I have been known to buy them malt liquor every now and then and hang out with them on my porch. (Probably why many of them consider my porch "friendly territory".)

Once, an old crackhead named Benny was running from the police and ran headlong into my open screendoor screaming, "Homebase! Homebase! No tag backs!" The police didn't buy it.

There are also a couple of trendy bars in the neighborhood. This brings some of the rich, college age kids from the suburbs into my seedy little Capitol Hill neighborhood. Lastly, add to the mix the East Highschool students and 20-something losers like myself, and you have a regular old war zone of a neighborhood.

I own a 1978 Lincoln Town Car. It is the biggest car ever made, or damn near. It reaks of mafiosa, or senior citizen style. It is maroon, has red valour seats, gets 8 miles to the gallon, (that is not an exaggeration) and has a problem vapor locking on really hot days. Other than that, the huge V-8 purrs.

We have a love/hate relationship. I love the car, because it is huge, roomy, powerful and distinctive. I hate it because gas is really expensive, it's hard to park and maneuver in the city, and I can't figure out the vapor lock problem. I named him Guido when I got him back in 1999. One owner, 68,000 or so original miles, 650 dollars. Quite possibly the best 650 dollars I've ever spent. Six years later, he still runs like a champ, except for the vapor locking.

I was coasting along to work, feeling better from the shower and the asprin, and humming along to the radio when my thoughts traced back through the haze to Nelson. What exactly was going on there? I remembered the whole exchange, it was later in the night where my actions begin to get hazy in recollection, but the intensity of Nelson's conversation had escaped me at the time. Now, I was beginning to get curious about his fancy swingers club. I'd have to do a little investigating. Well, no time for that. I'm almost late for work.

My job sucks. I'm an assistant manager at a local King Soopers Deli. I'm the guy who hands you samples of meat with a gloved hand, and while you masticate on said meat, I try not to look disgusted as you mull over your choices. Then you buy a pound of this and a pound of that and you marvel at how I can get within a few hundredths of a pound just by eyeballing it. I'm that guy with the apron and the hairnet and the little name tag. I'm that guy with a college degree who now works with and for high school graduates, partially because a sociology degree means fuck all to ones future. I'm that guy who blames his career laziness on his choice of degree.
Yes, I am that guy.

To spite this, there are certain perks to the job. Health insurance, paid vacation, union membership and a competetive salary are all benefits I enjoy. Also, the particular King Soopers that I work at seems to have the highest per capita ratio of babes to non-babes as clientele. Speaking of clientele, my King Soopers is nicknamed "Queen Soopers", because of the local patrons. It lies on the corner of 9th and Downing in a neighborhood that is famous for it's gay male population. Hence the nickname. The neighborhood also has quite a few college to college graduate type apartment buildings, and other such affordable housing. Hence the babes. It's a little nicer than my shithole neighborhood.

I got to work with about two minutes to spare. Two minutes according to my pager, (yes...I have a fucking pager) which is standard satelite time, set by some atomic clock in some cave that measures the time it takes for a chunk of cesium to degrade into a less harmful chunk of lead. The assistant store manager, Dean, goes by his own time. He is of the opinion that if he sets all the clocks in my supermarket ahead five to ten minutes that he somehow controls the time that the the rest of the world is accustomed to. He's fond of saying,"If you're five minutes early, you're ten minutes late!" Fuck that.

So, I parked Guido in back of the store near the loading dock, and hopped into the back of the store. Sure enough as I rounded some pallets full of produce heading for the punch clock with my employee badge in hand, there was Dean, in all his sniveling glory.

If you imagine every faceless asshole manager you ever had, hurled them at a wall at about 300 miles per hour, scraped the peices that stuck to the wall into a bucket, and shoved the bucket into some kind of douche bag incubator, if you waited a few minutes, Dean would pop out, fully grown.

I was about 40 yards away from him in the warehouse, and he was closing that distance at full waddle. Dean was an extremely pear-shaped man. Disgustingly so. His shoulders and arms were only about half as wide as his hips and ass. His head was fat and pasty and soft, like a baby's head, but with blunt yellow teeth and little white peices of spittle at the corners of his mouth. He was probably borderline diabetic. His tiny unexpressive eyes sat magnified behind large, square, plastic rimmed glasses that were constantly affixed to him via a flourescent tie strap that
sometimes allowed the glasses to hang around his pudgy, sack of crap neck. He had a full head of hair, but it was usually greasy and messy. How he got this far in life, I'll never know.

"You know you didn't finish all of your cleaning last night." He started in immediately. He was still quite a few paces behind me, and I was walking fast.

"Darrell still had to use the slicer when I left, Dean."

"As an assistant manager, you are still responsible for the people under you."

"Yes, Darrell is a butcher, and I am in the deli, I fail to see how that is in my jurisdiction."

"You are responsible for your work area!" I was almost at the punch clock.

"I can only do what I can when I'm here, Dean."

"Well, maybe you should try a little harder, you know you're under review pretty soon, and I am one of the people who you should be trying to impress." I stopped abrubtly at the time clock, and Dean plowed into me like a feather pillow, wheezing from the exertion. I looked down at his big fat baby head and got real close to his face. The sight was revolting and his cheesy, stale odor started to get my stomach rolling. I was still fighting a hangover, and for a moment I played with the image of launching a stream of vomit all over his pastey, fat face. I even inched a little closer and sniffed. He flinched.

"Excuse you," I whispered. He was frozen. I slowly backed away from his head and looked him in the eye. I usually avoid looking Dean directly in the face because I have the desire to stick my fingers into his cheeks and chins and mold his head like cookie dough. This was no exception. He was sweating.

"Oh, uh so now your a, uh tough guy, he stammered.

"You're in my way," I said motioning to the punch clock. I wasn't going to let him break eye contact.

"You're six minutes late."

"Prove it," I swiped my card in the punch clock. He looked over at it. 8:OOAM on the nose.
He backed away two steps and staightened his tie.

"I've got my eye on you, try not to be such a darn ninny," he whined. I streched my hand out and he went to shake it, but instead I grabbed a Sharpie from his pocket protector.

"Can I borrow this, thanks."

He snorted and waddled off.