Tax season was a little rough for me this year. I got it all done but it’s not a chore I relish. I try not to think about it all year which means I scramble to find this piece of paper or that, so I’d be better off if I had a weekly habit of sorting through the mail and filing documents where they belong.
People who take care of things on a regular basis tend not to have interesting stories about financial disasters like audits and having their car repossessed, so I’m not convinced it’s worth it.
When you’re young, you may go through multiple jobs in a year, which means multiple W-2 or 1099 forms. The last time I had that problem was 1989 when I quit my job to go to graduate school and a high school buddy, Jimmy, hired me to work as a bouncer at the nightclub he managed.
We played hockey together so he knew that I was not a fighter. When our team got into a brawl, I stayed away. Just wasn’t my thing. I didn’t wear braces on my teeth for three years just to have some goofball from Olmsted Falls knock them out with a lucky punch.
And my hair: I wouldn’t want my hair mussed up in a fight.
Jimmy assured me the nightclub wasn’t like that. The bouncer was more of a presence to remind people that “security” was in the building. Also, the bouncers had to collect empty glasses from the tables and get them to the kitchen.
As it sank in that the bouncers were more like busboys, I accepted the offer.
I worked Friday and Saturday nights, eight p.m. until two a.m. closing. He was right about the crowd: it was more of a hook-up crowd with the ladies dancing with each other and the young men buying them drinks, sizing each other up as it were.
I’d cruise around the outskirts of this cavernous nightclub, themed like a jungle, gathering dirty glasses, making lap after lap for six hours. I wasn’t getting rich, but I wasn’t getting my hair mussed up or my teeth knocked out either. There were three other bouncers/busboys, and the only rule was that we couldn’t hang out together so that we were constantly seen by the crowd.
For three weekends, it was smooth sailing.
On the fourth weekend, a waitress asked me to stay in her section as she was being harassed by three guys at a table.
“You want me to kick them out?” I asked, silently praying that she would say ‘no.’ Each of these three guys was bigger than me. Combine that with the magical, courage-bolstering elixir that is neon shots of alcohol sold by the test tube and you have a serious problem for the bouncer.
“No,” she said. “Just hang around. My boyfriend is here and he’s already pissed, so if the three idiots see you maybe they’ll knock it off.”
I watched as the three idiots continued their commentary, asking the waitress if they could buy her a drink, see her after the shift, and then, finally, ask why the boyfriend would allow her to work in a place like this. Like women throughout the ages, the waitress tried to ignore them while also serving them drinks and simultaneously assuring her boyfriend it was fine, please don’t make a scene, et cetera.
While the waitress was at the bar retrieving drinks, the boyfriend approached the table of idiots and told them to knock it off.
“What are you going to do about it?” asked the king of the idiots, invoking a rather cliched yet time-honored response to the challenger.
“Step outside and you’ll find out.”
When the three idiots stood up from the table, I confirmed my hunch that each one was larger than me in every dimension. The boyfriend, however, was shorter than me.
He was also outnumbered but he walked out of the bar with the confidence of a Chihuahua confronting a feral cat. I feared it would end badly.
The waitress rushed up to me and said, “You have to stop them!”
“I don’t think I can do that.”
“Please, do something. It’s going to end badly.” (Right?!)
It seemed there was only one thing for me to do: go tell Jimmy.
It must be built into our genetic code because a crowd from the bar gathered to watch out in the parking lot. The three idiots were pumping themselves up for the fight while the waitress was doing her best to convince her boyfriend to let the matter drop. I’m sure this goes back to our origins 400,000 years ago as a way to settle similar disputes between hunters vying for the attention of a particularly comely gatherer.
Anyway, by the time I arrived with Jimmy, the idiots were chuckling it up, confident that they’d prevail should it come to fisticuffs. Jimmy approached them and told them how uncool this was, and wouldn’t they rather go back inside for a round of free drinks and yada yada yada. They weren’t interested.
Jimmy was about my size, 5’10”, and he had to raise his head sharply to address the king of the idiots, who was 6’4” if he was an inch. I stood beside him, scanning the crowd for the other bouncers, who were watching from a safe distance.
The boyfriend approached at a slow pace and called out to the king of the idiots who, obligingly, stepped away from Jimmy. The boyfriend lashed out with a right hook, landing it squarely on the idiot’s jaw, and knocked him unconscious with that one punch.
The big galoof fell backwards and slumped to the asphalt.
The other two idiots pounced on the boyfriend but he quickly landed punches and a kick to one of them, and then turned his attention to the third, who was beaten severely in a matter of seconds.
The waitress, after shouting at her boyfriend to please stop already, told me that he was a champion kickboxer in the state of Ohio.
She was terribly upset because I don’t think it was the first time the boyfriend had done something like this. To be fair, she was a rather lovely young lady, and Jimmy required the waitresses to wear revealing costumes befitting the nightclub’s jungle theme.
I considered asking her if I could buy her a drink—as a joke, to break the tension—but thought better of it.
A while later, an ambulance arrived and scraped the king of the idiots off the asphalt. I’m not sure he was unconscious that whole time, but he couldn’t get up, so we had left him where he landed, bathed in the rose-colored glow of the parking lot light pole, drooling from the side of his mouth. The paramedics didn’t seem too concerned, other than being careful to lift with their knees to get him in the ambulance, as the guy was quite a load.
The other two idiots went along for the ride to the hospital because it seemed pretty likely they both also had concussions.
That was it for me, though. I told Jimmy that my bouncer days were over.
My total pay on my W-2 for the eight nights of work was $240.
Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…
I’ve gotten the book cover for my recently completed novel, whose name shall be: The Spreadsheet. Yes, it’s set in a business office, and if you’ve ever used a spreadsheet you know how they can make you want to commit murder every once in a while.
Maybe You’d Like
This Picayune I’m in two different group promos so give them a click and go judge some books by their cover. I hope you find something you love…
https://storyoriginapp.com/to/tUxtWB3
https://storyoriginapp.com/to/kEGoMHs
Recommended Reading
I just finished Hell Gate Bridge, A Memoir of Motherhood, Madness, and Hope by Barrie Miskin and it was amazing. Reads like a thriller, then makes you sick with worry about the situation. That’s the way it’s done.
Next Picayune
The next Picayune will be in a month due to circumstances beyond my control. In the meantime, thanks for reading this Mickey Picayune, and be safe out there. We’ve had crazy amounts of rain around here but it was much worse up north, so I hope you’re doing well wherever you are.
All the best,
Mickey
P.S. For those of you who picked up a copy of Ashley Undone recently, nothing helps like reviewing the book. It can be anywhere you’re comfortable reviewing books, and here’s a link to the Amazon page where you can do that if you don’t know anything better. (Thanks in advance.)