I've been so strangely uninspired lately. I would hate to believe I have to suffer in order to be creative. Life hasn't been painful at all. Hunter and I have been redecorating and I seem to do well when there is a project at hand. Although writing itself has been stagnant. I think Southern California tends to suck any artistic stimulation right out of you. L.A. and Orange County are like a little, plastic, pink cockroach that feeds off of Mexican food and silicone, shitting out surf board shaped, white, stucco feces all over it's palm tree infested streets. How can one be honest or interesting in a world where they stage everything from their homes to their alleged natural habitat? Sometimes it feels as if I'm the only woman in all of Southern California that wears a B-Cup and has an actual bikini line. Thank God Hunter's not from here. He shares my distaste for "Bros" and BMWs. For those of you who don't know, a Bro is a bronze asshole with jet, black hair, who lives in a beach town, surfs, drives an over-sized white pick-up truck, looks like a pin-up model standing in for one of the beach boys and lives under a much overly diluted notion that he crossed over his rite of passage upon exiting the womb. I don't regret moving here but I can not wait to get out! Eat my ass Hotel California, don't tell me I can never leave!
Anyways, I'm sorry if I offended anyone, but, if it makes you feel any better, they don't really like me either. Well, other wise life has been really good. Although, I hate my job. I'm a waitress at SOL. SOL High. My boss reminds me of Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus. . .but worse. We call her D. D for Dragon Lady, Demonic Device, Degenerate, Depraved, Distressing. D for Drag me naked through the gates of hell on a carpet of hot coal rather than to sustain her presence for more than 5 Dreadful seconds. If D hates you, which she always does, at one point or another, she will follow you around, yelling at you for every decision you make, action you take, and expression you display. If she makes you cry, she will yell at you further. If you apologize she will put you down until you are 8 feet under (because just being good and dead isn't good enough) and then will still not be satisfied. She has criticized me for the direction I've given someone to the bathroom and once told me off for not knowing what my customer wanted from me prior to my actually asking. D wants you to suffer for any disappointments you might have caused, to show no fear but always feel threatened, and, at the same time, to constantly entertain her, make her laugh and be her pal. On top of that she expects each of us to be the head cheerleader and student council president of SOL High. I guess just being a hard worker and a good waitress is no longer enough in this world.
It really is so much like being in high school again, but worse because I'm an adult and therefore should know by now how to deal with bullying and pettiness. I don't. SOL continues to blow my mind in spite of the fact that I've been employed there for over two years. I don't leave in tears everyday but there is definitely no place on earth that makes me hate myself the way SOL High seems to. My goal every day is to A: not kill anybody, B: not lose my job and C: not kill myself. I suppose I should be grateful because I could honestly say that for over two years straight I have managed to, consistently, achieve goals. Nobody is dead or unemployed because of me, woo hoo! Yesterday, one of my co-workers, Shrek, decided to ignore me when I had 5 hot plates of food in my hand-I kept calling her name to get her attention and she proceeded to talk to Eeyore and pretend like I wasn't right behind her, then, later on that day, she criticized my work ethic and made a joke about how I'm always standing around. I stared at her wide eyed and she laughed and said, "I love fucking with you, I really do, it's so fun to see your reaction." So much for the term "she's not doing it to purposely upset you." SOL is the job I just can't seem to get away from, no matter how hard I try. D and her cheer squad are like that bad acid trip in the movie Natural Born Killers, except the acid is 700 pounds of hash browns and the rattle snakes are my co-workers and instead of a shotgun I have 32 bottles of Tabasco and a tumbler full of dull, serrated steak knifes. And, also, rather than all the annoying characters being brutally shot to death, they live, in good health, and I have to be nice to them and keep a shit eating grin on my face the whole time.
So that is my job and I hope one day not to have it anymore. Until then, it pays my bills and, supposedly, is teaching me a very important life lesson. I'm sure, 5 years from now, I will have a strong grip on what that life lesson is, but for now, I just have to keep looking in other directions for happiness and hang on to the hope that there is something better out there for me.
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