Suggested listening: Cheapskates – The Clash
Went out with the fellas last night. Mid-week wings are a flickering ritual with us; East Side Mario’s has half-price apps throughout the week, and the price gets us off our poor, antisocial asses and into the public sphere. I usually round up a varying amalgamation of familiars once every few weeks and head out for cheap food and cheaper entertainment.
The nights are usually slow catch-up sessions. We all do different things now, what with me in school, and most of my friends working full-time jobs. No one really does anything spectacular, so the nights turn into bullshit sessions in which we try desperately to involve ourselves in each other before September pulls us apart again.
Todd, one of my several electrician friends (I’ve yet to figure out why I’m drawn to people whose primary dinner conversation is the sponginess of foreign wiring insulation), just got back from a month in Japan, where he wired a church for free. He and I are sharing a house with three other guys this year. Todd finished his second block at NBCC in the spring, but was laid off this summer and spent a couple months on EI. The church job offered free travel and housing in exchange for work, so come August, he was Tokyo-bound. Since coming home, his internal clock’s inverted (Japan’s exactly 12 hours time difference), and yesterday he fell asleep in the Superstore. We picked him up outside said grocery plaza and headed to Luke’s place across town.
Luke’s another electrician. Probably the most likeable guy I’ll ever meet, he decided after high school to put a few years in at a call centre, then head for the tech. This always astounded me, since Luke’s a ridiculously talented graphic artist, and an equally fantastic musician. He’s always told me a trade was his fallback plan, but his 50+ work hours a week doesn’t convince anyone.
And last night, for the first time, I brought Robert.
(I write that blunt segue with full understanding of its hyperbolic connotation. But sitting in the booth, cringing when Robert hollers “Do they really spit in the food here?” with complete innocence, justifies any amount of hype.)
Robert is a fascinating young man who once told me with wide, oblivious eyes that he wants to get a job at a Rogers call centre so he could afford a Lamborghini. He’s a sweet, generous kid who graduated from high school a few years ago and now lives with a former teacher. He’s 19, dreams of becoming YouTube-famous, and makes up for his lack of a driver’s license with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Pokemon stats and Halo 3 ammo locations.
“I’ve never had wings before,” Robert said as we pulled into the restaurant parking lot. My parents’ Pontiac choked the whole way there, but its fresh-scented interior sparked a conversation about how all Grand Ams smell the same. Robert proposed a scenario in which the car consciously ousts all other odours with fierce tenacity, and we all laughed. Later, Robert asked me why it was funny, as he was being serious.
So there we sat, a cross-section of young Canadians: two tradesmen who signed up to the tech after promises of jobs a-plenty; one is now laid off, and the other struggles to avoid the EI-inducing hammer as well. I, an arts student, am somehow by consensus considered the most educated of the lot, though two of my companions understand the ebb and flow of electrical charges, while I often have to stop and think if the ‘e’ in receive comes before or after the ‘i’. Our other part is a high school graduate whose call centre job pays only minimum wage, but offers enough stability to dissuade any thoughts of post-secondary education and its debt-laden tail.
The service was slow, so we chatted about Japan, Luke’s metal band, and when we’d get our drinks. When the waitress finally appeared, she asked us to hold on a few minutes more while she fetched her notepad.
“Oh,” Robert said loudly, puffing his chest out. “Take your time!”
Everyone else in the bar assumed Robert told her to hurry the fuck up. It was instead an (honestly!) earnest attempt to impress the waitress with kindness. Luke’s eyes bulged out of his head, which then dropped into his hands. Todd and I cracked up. The waitress glared at Robert and huffed off, not returning for almost 20 minutes.
“She’s going to spit in our food,” I whispered as soon as she was out of earshot.
This is the part of the evening where Robert turned to the (open) kitchen about 20 feet away and bellowed “Do they really spit in the food here? I thought that was just an urban legend!”
“Oh, my god, man,” Luke said between sobbing laughs.
So the night went. Robert wouldn’t eat his wings for fear of spit, but gobbled down his cheese sticks (“What are these? Probalonie?”). We had to appeal to the bartender herself for more drinks because our waitress didn’t appear until bill time.
Robert, of course, ended the night on a high note, writing “I’m not that easy” on his receipt before handing it to the waitress.
“There was a note on the receipt that said ‘Have dinner with us’ on it,” he tried to explain to Luke, whose laughter, by this point, spread like an infection across the parking lot. Luke had fallen out the restaurant doors after Robert’s final performance, a flailing, jittery dance while screeching “Did you read my receipt?” at the waitress. He ended with a hand thrust up in victory (though over what, I’m not sure), and walked out.
I’m sure he didn’t tip either.
(Web-Editor’s note: Sorry for the long delay in getting this online. Regular updates will commence shortly.)
