silent underbelly

South by Southwest draws to a close tonight. despite a reported 10% drop in badge sales, the 24 hour cafe i cook for was as busy as any previous SXSW. i was busy cooking obscene amounts of carb heavy foods tuesday through saturday. i can't complain though. i'm glad to be employed. i am  glad to have picked up a set of skills that can earn me a living.

not that i am some kind of master cook. i spend most of my days cooking bulk amounts of soup and various sauces. i make a first class pollenta (with herbs) and really good baked mac & cheese. i can say that most of the food i make seems to go away. someone is eating it. i also do a lot of purchasing of supplies, spending thousands of dollars of someone else's money every week without squandering to much.

 the skills i am actually referring to might have less to do with the finished product and more to do with such qualities as being able to stay on my feet for up to nine hours without complaining (too much), or being able to work at a hot stove all day without setting myself or the kitchen on fire. i spend all day wielding a ten inch piece of razor sharp steel (this is a literal description. if your knife won't fling hair off your arm, sharpen it!) without cutting myself more than two or three times a year.

it is also a matter of pride with me that i have called in sick twice in sixteen years. i was given a week off when my dad died. every other shift i have been absent for was covered in advance. i have an annoying habit of showing up and doing my job to the best of my abilities.

i am not some kind of iron jawed super cook. i am driven as much by insecurity as anything else. for a variety of headache inducing reasons, i still feel like i am proving myself almost every day i work. i would be devastated if anyone ever accused me of being a slacker, or of not pulling my weight.

once i get over being devastated, though, god help anyone saying that about me.

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i am currently reading a book called You Can't Win by a man named jack black-not to be confused with the comedic actor. this book was written in 1926.- the book is blacks criminal autobiography, detailing his progression from youthful tramp to sneak thief to house burglar to safe cracker, and on through hard jail time before reforming himself in middle age.

this book was a childhood favorite of william s. burroughs, who was fascinated by this unveiling of the late nineteenth century american criminal underbelly. the book is overflowing with detailed descriptions of thieves and fences, pimps and prostitutes, corrupt cops and shyster lawyers, opium smokers and morphine addicts. burroughs freely admitted to appropriating characters and even whole passages from this book for one of his last novels, The Place of Dead Roads.

early in the book, the author leaves kansas city sometime around 1889 and takes to the road. he falls in with a group of kindly tramps who give him pointers on how to ride the rails and the various scams he can pull to get food and money. one of these involves handing a stranger a card with words to the effect of " hello. i am deaf and mute. i have had all my money stole. i need money for train fare to Great Falls, Mont. i have not ate for days."

black asks a tramp what he would do if he ran into an actual deaf person who exposed him as a fake. the tramps reply: "why, i would do what anyone does when they're caught doing something wrong. i'd cuss the hell out of him."

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South by Southwest kicked in on tuesday. my shift was long and left me exhausted and somewhat irritable. i was riding the bus home and listening to my ipod when a man and woman boarded. from where i was at the back of the bus, i could see that they were both dressed a little odd, sort of like gypsies with lots of scarves and bandanas. they stood out also because they were both somewhat large- i'm 6'2 and weigh around 230 pounds. they were both, the woman included, about my size. they sat across the aisle from me.

the woman leaned over and tapped me on the shoulder. i looked up and slid my headphones off. she shoved a laminated piece of notebook paper in my hand. in magic marker it read "i am a deaf person and i am hungry..." i handed it back and shook my head.

i feel like i have to defend myself here. first, the only cash on me was a twenty, and i needed it. after almost two decades in austin, i have seen plenty of panhandlers. these people just didn't fit the profile. their clothes, odd as they may have been, were clean. these people did not smell bad. i mentioned their size. sorry, but these folks weren't missing any meals. more significant to me, i ride the same bus twice a day five days a week. i had never seen these people before ( and i didn't see them the rest of the week). i believe they were drifting through. were they really deaf? i don't know. if they were, i feel sorry that they have to deal with this, but i still didn't have any money for them. and most deaf people learn to get by without accosting strangers on the bus.

the bus stopped at an upscale shopping center built around a Central Market grocery store.

the man and woman rose to get off, the woman first. as they were moving down the aisle, the man kept turning around and glaring at me. i stared straight ahead and tried to ignore him.

the bus driver decided to keep the bus stopped for a couple of minutes to keep from getting ahead of schedule. the man walked around to my window. he pointed at me, then made the "whatchew got man?" gangbanger gesture of slapping his chest with both hands and then spreading his arms wide. he repeated this, then stepped back and mimicked shooting me with a pistol. not every work day ends with a death threat.

i did not ask for this. i probably should have just ignored him, but.....

as it was, all i could think to do was to meet his i-kill-you glare and give him by biggest, goofiest, "aww shucks" grin. this seemed to confuse him. as the bus finally drove away, i shook my head laughing and turned away. i glanced up and saw him as a diminishing figure standing by the curb, still shooting at the bus.

i could wish all kinds of horrible fates upon this man, fantasize about how i should have stood up to him, kicked his ass. but the sad truth is that, deaf or not, he has let himself get to such a bad place that punishing him couldn't change anything. in a weird way, i found myself hoping that he and his lady friend got what they wanted without any more ugliness.

 

the next day, i told this story at work. my sarcastic friend doug said that it sounded like i was a victim of a mime drive-by.