From the depths: O'Charleys, and a young and naive me

In the midst of doing The Paying Job, someone near me either starting eating something or using something that brought memories swimming up from wherever memories hide when you don't need them. It smells like an orange, only not. Maybe like fake orange. Cleaning supplies, or hand lotion, or orange candies that leave your hands sticky.

And I suddenly remembered when I was working at O'Charleys. It would end badly, when the fact that I was screwing around with the kitchen manager would get us both fired. But it was a good job. My first bar and grill - the money was good, and they didn't notice that I wasn't legally old enough to work there. (In my defense - I put my actual birthdate on the application. And in theirs - it's not like I didn't know I wasn't old enough, and I applied anyway.)

The smell reminded me of cleaning off tables. Don't ask me why this smell triggered memories of that particular restaurant, because all cleaning products used in restaurants more or less smell the same, but there it is. There's a special silence in a closed restaurant, that's not really silence at all. There's clinking and swishing and weird mechanical sounds coming from the dishwasher. There's scraping and cursing and clanging from the kitchen. There are vacuums and mobs and swishing cloth and rustling silverware. And the bar has its own tinks and rattles and clanking glass. But there are no voices. Sometimes the servers sang to themselves, or the cooks swore or kidded with each other, and sometimes you could hear the liquid deluge of syllables in Spanish as the dishwasher and bussers talked. But those aren't voices, not really. Not the way that a restaurant is loud during the day. No conversations all heard at once, no "miss!" floating up out of the din to catch your ear. In fact, your ears are totally at rest. You're not listening for your name, or for that ubiquitous "miss" or "sir" or "hon", or for someone to say "I'll ask her for napkins when I see her again," or the dreaded "where is she?" You don't actually have to listen at all. All the sounds going on around you are quiet sounds that you can, for once, completely ignore.

And I would wander around the restaurant, counting sugars and inspecting the level of salt and pepper; sometimes cleaning gum off the bottoms of chairs. And it was peaceful. Sometimes the cooks would bring a six-pack in and we'd all have a beer while cleaning. (Yes, I know. But there you have it.) Sometimes we'd all gather at the bar and Jim would give us his latest concoction to try.

(I once asked my father if I could date Jim - ten years my senior. He said no, and I replied with something snarky considering his age and that of his wife. Yes, I remember what I said. No, I'm not going to repeat it. It was terribly clever to the 18-year old me, though.)

And then I'd go home, or, toward the end, I'd run off with Jordan, playing games that I wasn't nearly old enough to understand the rules of. And we'd fall into bed and get up in the morning and go back to work, taking separate cars and leaving ten minutes apart. He was a manager and I was not. That was enough to get us both fired, and it did, when someone found out.

And sometimes I would take a coworker home with me, though I cannot for the life of me recall her name now. And she'd stay at my place. And that 18-year old me? Vehemently denied that anything was going on between us. Which it wasn't. I remember taunting Jordan once when he twitted me about there being something between that other server and I.

And I would go on to lose that job, get a tattoo, find out that there really should have been something going on between that girl and myself, and retain fond memories of the smell of Jordan's car. And orange scented cleaning supplies.

Overheard in the Office

I used to follow a blog that was called "Overheard in the Office," or some such. (Oh, hey, here it is.) I found it mostly funny - sometimes a bit crude - but I always found myself thinking "I must work with the most boring people in the world." Well, I work in the finance division of Megabank - that probably makes sense.

Then today, coming back from lunch, I heard "it's only sodomy if - "

Figuring I must have misheard, I inserted myself into the conversation, to have it repeated to me. It was "it's only sodomy if you have to say 'hey, doc, how are you doing that with both hands on my shoulder.' "

Oooookay. Apparently, they're having all the interesting conversations when I'm not listening.

Why I Love my Girlfriend

Last night, we stayed up past 11:00 discussing Mozart, Trent Reznor, David Bowie, Billy Joel, Metallica, the Cure, Alanis Morriset, and Tori Amos, all in the same conversation. Likely more, but I'm probably forgetting some.

Highlights:

Me: "See, it's when Trent Reznor stopped being pissed off that his music stopped being so good."

---

Shoryl: "Then David hit the 'I'm an artist, but I have a coke habit and need to write hits' years..."
Me: "That's the section of his music I like, right?"
Shoryl: "yeah."

I’ve finally picked up a book that’s been in my TBR pile for … well, I can’t quite remember when I bought it. And I can’t quite remember what actually made me want to start reading it.

I’ve started reading Neal Stephenson. This is fairly far away from my normal reading habits, and I don’t think the story would keep me entertained for long if it weren’t for the absolutely amazing grasp of language and nuance. Stephenson is a master of language. And even if I don’t understand the mathematical and scientific principles he’s espousing (I don’t), and even if I don’t know my English history well enough to get all the of the events (I don’t), I could never fail to thoroughly enjoy a book that has pearls such as this strewn carelessly over every page.

Many words are said, but they make no more impact on Daniel than Mrs. Goose’s incoherent narratives about cutlery leaping over coelestial bodies and sluttish hags living in discarded footwear.

There’s a vivid joy in Stephenson’s writing that transcends every aspect of his work. The narrative, the characters, the history, and the science – it’s all there, but all the elements act like mirrors to reflect that luminescent prose.

Oh, yes. The book is Quicksilver. There’s no doubt in my mind, a mere 80 pages into the book, that I’ll be buying the other Baroque Cycle books, and likely Cryptonomicon and Anathem as well.

I’m also amused that – 80 pages in – I’ve finally put together that one of the characters is a Waterhouse, come to Massachusets from England. I am,distantly and oddly, related to this man.

Suns keep marching

Another 700 words on Suns last night, and I'm very pleased with them. The sculptor still wants to be a crotchety old man, but I'm resisting. I've just introduced his partner, found out that said partner is also a sculptor, and broke off right where Maatrya is trying to find some way to let them know she's family.

I worry sometimes about the subtext of the novel. I'm not out to write about the challenges of being queer in a world where fertility is the highest blessing, but it feels like that's where it's going. On the other hand, with so many forces tugging Maatrya every which way, I think I can turn this into a suitable theme. Love, real love, brings you home. And it doesn't really matter who you love, or how much of an outsider you feel like before it happens. Sounds mushy? Yeah. I dunno; blame Shoryl.

I'm having a lot of fun writing this scene, even though I'm more than a little convinced that it's meandering and probably not going to survive the revision intact. But I'm having fun, and that's the point. I expect to finish this scene tonight, giving me a satisfactory close to the first 3 chapters. This weekend, I'm sitting down with printouts and trying to make those chapters a little more coherent, then handing them off to Shoryl to read.

Out of the morass, and into the city

I finished the no-good scene that was giving me trouble, and I was off and running last night with about 600 words of some pretty good description and dialog. My sculptor seems to be having a personality crisis, however, as half the time he's written as a crotchety old man, and the other he's much younger. I think I want him to be younger, else I risk running into a trope I don't plan on using.

'Sides, a young gay couple ... I could run with that. And it would make the sculptor the one person who really doesn't want anything from Maatrya - which is exactly what I need him to be.

Mostly Good

So, I've got Suns plotted, mostly. I have the first 3/4 plotted thoroughly, at any rate. And the weekend yielded about 1200 words (200 more than I was shooting for). All of this is good.

The words themselves, however, are crap. I cringed when I wrote them, cringed when I reread them, and cringed when I couldn't figure out how to make them better. The information in the scene is critical - the delivery is quite a bit less than stellar. But I'm moving on. I hate to leave such a big chunk for the rewrite, but hopefully by that time I'll figure out an entertaining way to present the information. Right now, it's all talking heads. And subtext? There isn't any.

But, hey, I finished the scene, so I get to go to the next one. Good, yes?