Hurricane Season

"If you could sum up your entire life," he said, rolling over top of her, kissing her forehead, her bottom lip, her neck, moving down to her collarbone, down over her still-damp skin, to her navel, where the girl, eyes closed, concentrated on the sound of his shoulders slipping underneath the covers, receding like an ocean, his soft lips and tongue dancing gently over her body, going farther still, she the world, his mouth a careful traveler, his hot breath a hurricane, moving south, slipping past her hips, the equator, where it was clear and warm, where everything inside of her began picking up speed, where she cracked her toes and grabbed the sheets and sighed and with a sharp breath said, "Why ruin it with words?"

Trash.

Sam was exhausted. Six months after Eric left for Chicago to pursue his acting career, she could no longer live with the burden of her constant and overwhelming loneliness. Every night its weight pressed down on top of her until it became so heavy she could no longer draw a full breath. The strain of her loneliness reminded her so much of Eric, of his heaviness, of his body on top of hers, she feared that without it there would be nothing left to remind her that love was a tangible thing.
“I miss you,” she would say, quietly into the phone at night.
“I miss you, too” he said, his voice distant and reassuring. “We’ll see each other soon. I promise.” But night after night his promise felt farther and farther away.
Sam sat up in bed one night and stared at the phone. She admitted to herself that she was lonely, but refused to present herself desperately, and decided against calling Eric. An hour passed with Sam sitting up like this, staring at the phone, clock ticking. Taking a deep breath she nodded to herself and bit her lower lip, reaffirming her own quiet contemplation. Pulling off the covers she stomped confidently to the closet and swung open the doors. She felt around blindly on the top shelf until she located an old shoebox. Bringing it back to bed with her, she opened it to reveal a small handgun. She picked it up and frowned, bobbing it to test its weight.
“Sigh.”
She hated guns. She pleaded with Eric to take it with him to Chicago when he left, but he instead insisted she keep it for her safety. Setting it aside, she closed her eyes, looking deep inside herself in search of her loneliness. When she found it, with great deliberation and care, she plucked it out.
Loneliness in hand, she bounced it up and down to test its weight. Aside from the fact it was lighter than she expected, it was a different color, too. She folded it delicately and carefully placed it into the box. Having been satisfied with this arrangement, she picked up the handgun and fitted it snuggly next to her solitary ribbon. She returned it to the closet and hopped playfully back into bed for her first restful night of sleep in six months.

With the absence of loneliness, Samantha got along swimmingly. There was noticeable improvement in her demeanor, especially at work. She smiled more, helped more, and was friendlier with her coworkers; especially their most recent hire, Brad.
“You seem lighter,” He said one day, after a group of them had gone to lunch. It should be mentioned her appetite was better, too.
“Are you saying I was fat before?” She joked, in that annoying rhetorical way all women do, in matters regarding weight and size.
“Not at all,” he smiled. “I just think you look unburdened, is all.”
She touched his arm. She liked that idea.

That night, Samantha told Eric about her day, he about his.
“I miss you,” he said.
Samantha smiled through the phone and nodded her head. A warm silence filled the line. It quickly became hot and uncomfortable. Eric cleared his throat.
“Don’t you miss me, too?” he said.
Samantha furrowed her brow. “Well, I remember you more than anything else,” she said. “But, it’s strange; I hardly miss you at all.”
Silence.
“Oh!” She exclaimed, suddenly remembering. “And I love you. There’s that, too”
“But you don’t miss me?”
“Not really.”

Samantha fell into a deep and despairing depression. It must be recognized that a symmetry exists between all emotions. If one becomes engorged or shrinks (or in Sam’s case, disappears entirely), other emotions, when triggered, will overproduce as a means of compensation. Realizing that without loneliness she lacked the capacity to miss Eric, Sam was filled with sadness. This sadness ballooned and doubled in size to fill the spot where loneliness once belonged. It sank down inside of her with a weight that Samantha had never before experienced with loneliness. At least with loneliness, there was optimism. But her sadness was so thick and viscous it was all she could do not to think about the handgun she had neatly tucked away.
Dragging herself out of bed, she scrambled to the closet and ripped open its doors, falling to the floor to look for more shoeboxes. When she found one, she again looked inside of herself and – without the same generosity she had applied to her loneliness – tugged out her sadness and shoved it in the box. She sighed, relieved.
The alleviation was momentary.
Unhappiness inflated inside of her, three times its usual size. Samantha groaned, bloated with melancholy. Frantic, she tore through the closet for another shoebox. She jerked out unhappiness, threw it into the tiny, cardboard coffin and firmly shut its lid. Her relief was again abbreviated. She was filled with four times the usual amount of dejection.

This cycle continued into the early morning.

When she wrangled out dejection it was quickly replaced with depression. After depression she wrestled with gloominess, despondence, glumness and misery. When she ran out of shoeboxes she scrambled into the kitchen to fill her pots and pans with woes. Tightly securing their lids, she treated her heartaches like shamefully burned dinners. When she ran through her cookware, she used Tupperware containers, her laundry hamper, and vacuum bags.
As the early morning light dusted its way through her windows, Sam sat upright on the floor. Breathing heavily, she registered her surroundings. Containers stuffed with low spirits – all shapes, sizes, and colors of them – littered her apartment. There was vagueness to the clutter in front of her, and it made her feel strangely unbalanced; like someone had snuck into her body and hollowed out her bones. She tried standing. Wobbling to her feet, the soft fingers of the sunrise slowly stretched into her apartment and warmed her. There was lightness inside. Without sleeping, she showered, dressed, and left for work, elated.

“What is it with you lately?” Brad asked, squinting into the bright afternoon sun as they left the diner. It was just the two of them at lunch. “You seem light as a feather!”
“I don’t know,” Sam said, unable to keep herself from smiling. “I feel like I don’t have a care in the world anymore!” She closed her eyes and let the sunlight lap at her face.
“I don’t know how you do it,” he said. “I think it’s incredible you can live like that, ya know? You’re just, WOW.”
Smiling even wider, she hugged him. She enjoyed the broadness of his shoulders, the softness of his cheek. She wanted to hug him longer, but needed to get more shoeboxes.

That night on the phone, Samantha looked out to the street curb where she had brought out the garbage. Droplets of water formed on the black bags in the night’s drizzle, making them glow orange under the streetlight. She found this both symbolic and beautiful. In fact, everything was beautiful. Without anything inside of her to make her sad, there was nothing left in the world but beautiful things. Like Brad and his shoulders.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am right now,” she said to Eric. “I can’t find a single thing to be sad about. Everything is wonderful!”
“What about the fact we’re not together?” he asked. “Doesn’t that make you even the littlest bit sad? It breaks my heart everyday.”
With the onset of guilt, Samantha felt like she swallowed an anchor. She assumed (wrongly) that she had ridden herself of weight related emotions, but guilt differs from sadness in the way it’s self-inflicting. Without saying goodbye, she hung up the phone and clawed her way into the living room, where a new stack of shoeboxes longed to be filled with her feelings.

Unburdened by guilt, Samantha slept with Brad. There was no reason not too; none that she could think of anyway. She was free to scratch his strong shoulders, free to have him kiss her on the collarbone; free to call out his name during sex in the bed she used to share with Eric. She was curious at first as to why her love for Eric didn’t intervene with her decision to sleep with Brad, but she hadn’t taken into account that without loneliness, love has no balance. For Sam, love lost its vigor – its shine.

Everyone knows fear of loss is what makes love so strong.

After sex, Brad became affectionate with Samantha, nuzzling her neck while he whispered about how wonderful he thought she was. She enjoyed this at first, but soon grew bored with it. She took out her boredom and put it in a box. Without boredom, there was no way to contrast excitement, no way to discern between dullness and enthusiasm. To avoid Brad’s affection, she removed her own. Now, whenever they slept together, Samantha laid perfectly still; like a cold, rough brick.

Eric called. “Why haven’t I heard from you?” he wanted to know. With great ease, she told him about Brad. She went on to tell him that since she wasn’t lonely anymore, she hardly noticed he wasn’t around.
“I don’t even recognize you.” Eric cried through the phone. And while Samantha could no longer feel guilty, or sad about the way she had treated him, she did understand where he was coming from. Nodding to herself while he sobbed, she quickly scribbled down understanding onto a notepad. When the phone call was over she put it in a box and tucked it away with the rest of her collection, so it too could gather dust and grow stale.

Brad stopped sleeping with Sam after growing tired of her indifference. Sam would have removed her indifference but was indifferent to it. Eric no longer called. Love withered up and bounced around uselessly inside of her like a dry, dead fish. She casually tossed it aside one day like a tissue she had used to blot a scab with. Her relationships at work began to suffer.

“Sam’s a bitch,” Brad said. “A stone, cold bitch.”

But this did not bother her. By the time this was said the only emotions she had left to speak of were practicality and indifference. She felt it impractical to have friends in the workplace, and removing practicality seemed too impractical.
Sam went on to rent out the extra room in her apartment where she stored her emotions. She felt it very practical to do so.
“What should I do about all these boxes?” The grad-student renting the room asked.
“Just do whatever,” Sam said. She was very indifferent about it.

Sam lived practically and indifferently for some time. It made the years go by very quickly. Worrying about things or celebrating holidays or looking forward to anything seemed redundant. It wasn’t convenient and she no longer cared.

One day, Sam searched her room for a missing sock. Reaching under her bed, thinking she found it, she grabbed hold of a soft texture and pulled. It was a long since discarded emotion. Turning it this way and that in her hand, she tried to place it. It would be impractical of her not to find out what it was before throwing it away. It turned out to be worry. Once it took root deep inside her, she erupted into tidal waves of anxiousness. Her insides felt like a washing machine.
Samantha was distraught. When did she become so barren? She worried she would never laugh again. She worried she would never cry again. She worried she would never love again.
Oh God, she groaned.
She worried about Eric. She worried she would never see him again, or speak to him again, or make love to him again. Frantically, she made her way to the phone and called him. A brief conversation revealed he was engaged to be married, and very happy. Also, he would like to never hear from her again. She hung up. She worried she waited to long to reach out to him. She worried where the time went. She worried she would soon be too old to ever be in love again.
Where did her love go?
Samantha pounced on the door of her tenant’s bedroom. “Tenant!” she cried, beating the wood with her fists. “Tenant!”
She never learned her occupant’s name. She never cared to. She now worried this approach was too impersonal. The tenant came to the door.

Sam: What did you do with my shoeboxes?
Tenant: Threw them away. You’re not angry are you?
Sam: No, but I’m terribly worried.
Tenant: Maybe they’re at the dump?
Sam: Yes, that seems very practical, but I’m worried it’s too late.

At the dump, Sam took one look at the mountainous range of hot trash before deciding that diving in to look for anything would be impractical. Then she worried. Then she didn’t care. She wanted to cry, but couldn’t because she had no sadness. She concentrated hard on what it might feel like, but it was no use. It was like trying to draw a picture with an eraser.
“See anything you like?” a voice behind her asked. She turned to find a dirty man in a dirty jumpsuit, walking up to her and smiling. She looked him up in down. She worried he might try to kill her and then bury her in garbage. “You don’t look like the usual crowd of people who comes around here looking for stuff,” the dirty man said, smiling and wiping his hands off on his jumpsuit. “I’m George; I work here.”
He nodded to her. He knew better than to offer his dirty hand.
“I’m Sam,” she said, turning back to the garbage. “I’m looking for shoeboxes.”
“Shoeboxes?”
“Yes, shoeboxes. There were very important things in them and I’m worried I might not get them back.”
“Things like, Jewelry?”
“No. Sentimental things.”
“I think I know what you’re talking about,” the man said, fishing for something in his pocket.
“You do?” said Sam, turning, conscious of the fact she was supposed to feel optimistic.
From his jumpsuit, the dirty man produced a small, colorful article and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. He looked down at it fondly. Clearing his throat, he said: “A few years back we got all these shoeboxes. They were piling up all over the place, a big Mountain of ‘em. We thought it was a shoe recall so we opened ‘em up hoping to get some crappy free shoes. But instead it was just these textures and colors.” The man looked up and smiled. “All of these beautiful consistencies.”
“Did you find any love?” Sam asked.
“There was a box that kind of gave me that feeling,” the man said, looking up. “I mailed it to my sister, though. I thought she would have appreciated it more.”
“Can you tell me how to get in touch with her?”
“She lives in Chicago,” he said. “I think she’d be pretty reluctant to give it up. You can have this one, though.” Reaching out his hand, he handed her the material he was holding. “Sorry it’s so dirty. I found it in one of the boxes, next to this lonely little handgun. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away; it was the most beautiful color.”

Back at home, Sam looked at her discarded practicality and worry on her floor. She tried doing away with indifference but didn’t see the point. The clock beside her bed read 11: 41 P.M., while she played with the soft texture in her hands. She decided that it was, in fact, a beautiful color. Looking deep inside of her, she carefully put it back in the spot she had pulled it from, and immediately felt the weight of it push all the air from her lungs.


-Ian Rowe

New (old) town

And in a fury of optimism, I am off.

March, the only reference to the clock,

Spinning, Sings:

“It is dark here.

There is newness where you cannot sleep.”

I am waiting.

For that sudden ease of optimism, again

Inside.

With my coat on

My heart, sagging, like an old elephant’s face,

only just as grey, speaks softly

“It is dark here. You have slept here before.”

You can speak up now, I say

It is only me.

Smilodon

You blink hard, squinting to double-check what you’re looking at. You can’t believe your eyes. There is just no mistaking it. You are looking at the fossil of a house cat. At first glance, you believed it to be a Smilodon, or Saber-toothed Tiger. You and your colleagues had come to believe you’d made a startling discovery, changing the placement of the saber-tooth from the Pleistocene epoch to the Mesozoic era.
“My god,” you say. “Can it be? The saber-tooth first emerged in the late Cretaceous? This is revolutionary; this will change everything; this will make us famous!” But upon closer inspection it is revealed it is not the fossilized skeleton of a baby saber-toothed tiger, swallowed whole by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It is a house cat. And what’s worse, you have reason to suspect it is your house cat. After all, you are a respected paleontologist and your cat is missing. You have many respected friends, in many respected fields, in many respected scholastic communities. Scientists. Physicists. Mathematicians. Surely, one, or all of them, could have broken into your home and played a practical joke on you, sending your cat back to the Cretaceous.
But why? You think to yourself. Why would they do such a thing? You tell yourself to be rational. After all, you are a respected paleontologist. You have done nothing wrong to provoke this kind of misconduct from your friends. You praise their accomplishments. You répondez s'il vous plait to their social galas in a timely fashion. You even gave one of their children an Iguanodon thumb on their birthday.
Surely, this cannot be the case.
But it is, and you realize this shortly after the X-rays have confirmed your greatest fears. This is your cat. There are fillings on the cat’s teeth from the time your wife made you take the cat to the cat-dentist. There is a sudden bubbling of resentment in your stomach. It rises up through your esophagus and seeps out of your throat, filling your mouth with a hot, sour taste. You try to place it. Your indignation tastes like asparagus.
Your first thought is to be angry with your wife for making you take the cat to get fillings in the first place. The bill from the cat-dentist was unbelievable. Who started this monopoly on cat fillings? And, of course, she made you pay for it. It wasn’t even your idea to get the cat; technically the cat belonged to her. This makes you even angrier. There is a second gush of anger. It fills your mouth with an even hotter, sourer taste. It is directed at your respected friends in the scholastic community. There is no longer any doubt in your mind. They are responsible for this. You are sure of it. This is the only explanation for the placement of your cat. By filling your T-rex’s belly with your housecat, they have completely overshadowed your fossil findings by unraveling the mysteries of space and time. They have time traveled your cat.
People will not even recognize the massive bulk of T-rex fossil that took you months to uncover, you think. Week after week of your sweating and scraping, your scratching and persistence, undermined by a Felis Catus! Anybody who lays eyes on this gorgeous discovery will immediately look past it and instead see a housecat named Wiggins, whose three back molars are covered with dull, metal fillings. Even your colleagues, those same colleagues who dug by your side for days and weeks and months, dusted and toiled and labored with you under that hot, Arizona sun, can now only see that stupid fucking cat.
“This is so exciting!” they say.
“Wait until people find out about this!” they say.
“Wait until we share this with the world!” they say.
“Now, now, now,” you say, trying to calm the hysteria. “There is no reason to get excited. For all we know this cat could have just wandered into the Cretaceous era by accident. Poor little kitty probably just got lost.” But you know this is a lie. The second these words dribble from your mouth and fall flat onto your shirt, you feel the same sensation you feel when you scratch sandpaper: agitated shivers. Your neck grows hot. You feel angry, betrayed. A few of your colleagues stifle their laughter at your wandering cat hypothesis. Maybe they’re in on it, too, you think. Maybe they all thought it would be funny to spoil your hard work in the desert. Maybe they all thought it would be hilarious if they cheapened those hours you spent in front of your dinosaur books as a child, dreaming about this moment, about this moment of yours they have ruined. You suspect your wife is behind this, too.
This her way of getting back at you for complaining about how expensive the cat’s fillings were, you decide. Maybe she’s sleeping with the Scientist. The Mathematician. The Physicist. Maybe she’s sleeping with all three of them. Maybe they’re all fucking right now, you think. Humping and groping and sweating and laughing, thrusting and coming and howling at your expense – at the idea of how ridiculous you look. You were a rational and respected paleontologist. Now you are certain of nothing. The only thing you can be certain of is this: no one will ever believe you when you tell them your cat sauntered in the Cretaceous era and was eaten by a dinosaur. No one is ever going to believe that at all. It is probably one of the most stupid things that any one person can hear. Telling somebody that your cat got lost, and was eaten by a dinosaur?

That’s just going to sound fucking ridiculous.



-Ian Rowe

I'm (not) going crazy.

Me, me, me; me – me: me, M(e), [Me]. {ME}, and of course (me).

Infinitesimal: A summation of the concept of self. I (we); a meager stream of consciousness, taking up physical space, left to entertain the grandiose delusion that I’m (we’re) supposed to be important, that I (we) matter, that I’m (we’re) meant for something "bigger." At a young age, I (we) learned about and formulated a shaky comprehension of life’s briefness. One day, I will die. It was terrifying. Then I (we, still) got older, again, and accepted the fact that death was inevitable and universal, still terrifying. (knew it was coming, knew it wasn't about me anymore, about us!) So I ignored it and continued to waste my time as though I (We, we, we! Us, us, us!) had an endless supply of it. Someday I’ll (We’ll) get older again, and then (WE WILL ALL) die. I'm thinking about salt. Now the universe. Now, eternity. Infinity. Because they are one and the same. The universe is eternity, eternity the universe, infinite. Because eternity is everything and nothing all at once. Because eternity is God and God is both eternity and infinity, everything and nothing, simultaneously all at once within a consciousness(us); those of us who believe in something, the rest of us in nothing, because eternity is the only truth and the only one remaining constant because it is the only constant. And even then, it can't be real, because it will outlive us all and be a memory of an idea. You can try to concoct meaning from its abstraction, but in the end it will swallow you (us) whole. There is bigness that exists outside of self (outside of me! Outside of us!), but we don’t really look outside of ourselves long enough to get there. Or maybe we do. But just in case we don’t, take everything I say with a grain of salt, because I’m only an optimist, after all.

I (We! & You! & Us!)

Don’t

Really

Know

Anything.

Good.

Having spent time reading this, you’re already that much closer to eternity. We are (in)finite. We are all part of it right now. And now, and now, and now, and now, and always. But don’t panic, (Live! While there's still time!) because now is what’s important. Here is what’s important. The(y)re (You!) are!

And now

And now

And now

And now

And always,

I am happy. And I hope you (we) are, too.

Jesús & Alma

And so it began with a spat of irreverence. They couldn’t believe he had said it. Or she. The story hasn’t gotten to a point where any kinds of characters have been established and there is no discernable sex for our protagonist, if the story even has one. After all, irreverence is just a word in the dictionary. But this is trite and circumstantial because the story is, after all, (indirectly) about Jesus, as he was a Nazarene. There was a great hullabaloo about his homecoming –given it was only his second time returning to this perpetually uninterrupted, spinning blue tear we call earth –and everybody was besides themselves with joy, and everyone could hardly believe it; with the exception of a young girl named Alma, who lived in the Port of Spain and didn’t believe it was Jesus at all.

“Alma,” her Father said. “Why is it that you cannot see what’s in front of you? Why is it that you cannot see that it's Jesús who has come back for us?” Alma only half listened to her father while she drew circles in the sand using a stick. Without looking up, committed to her unremitting nonchalance, she said: “Pero Padre, it cannot be Jesús, because where is his great, big, round belly?”

Perplexed, her father cleared his throat and squinted at his daughter. “Alma, mi Dulce,” He said. “Jesús does not have a great, big, round belly.”

“Pero, he does,” she said, looking up. “And where is his great, big, bald head?”

“Mija,” her father continued, “Jesús does not have a great, big, bald head.”

“Pero, he does,” Alma insisted, putting her hands on her hips and stomping her small foot into the hot, dry ground. “And where is his great, big, toothy smile!”

“Mija, Jesús does not smile because he sees all that is wrong in this world, and so, for that, he weeps for us.”

“Than that is why it is not Jesús,” Alma said. “Because he is looking at all the wrong things.”

And with this, the little Spanish girl named Alma, who lived in the Port of Spain, put down her stick and ran laughing, carelessly and free, towards nothing in particular. Hence why it is that all children are Buddhists: because they are happy with nothing and believe happiness to be the only one true religion.

My Two Weeks

This is the actual letter of resignation I turned in to South Beach Grill

To whom it may concern, regarding further employment at the South Beach Grille

Theodore,
It is with great disdain that I write to you this letter, as it signifies the end of my employment here at South Beach Grille, a job that I have grown to love dearly over these past one-and-a-half years. It pains me to inform you that my last day of employment will be on August 14^th, 2010, as I will be pursuing greener pastures in the shapely form of drunken sorority girls in Gainesville – specifically those in Delta Gamma, who have a reputation for being especially slutty. But I must confess. The real reason for my departure is not just my dislocation from the greater Saint Augustine area. No, I have decided to seek further employment elsewhere, where the employees are rewarded for their heroic efforts in the workplace with shift drinks; where the shift drinks flow like the waters of Ponce De Leon’s fountain of youth and into my mouth; a fountain of shift drinks. My untimely employment here at the South Beach Grille did not properly prepare me for the removal of the shift drink. For three months I toiled and slaved into the spring season, eagerly awaiting the arrival of my 21^st birthday, anxiously anticipating that ice cold, alcoholic token of appreciation: a draft beer. And then, in a flash, it was gone. Ripped from my tired and thirsty fingers, a certain anxiety set in. Without the promise of shift drinks awaiting me at the end of a busy Friday night shift, there was no light for me at the end of that perilous tunnel - only endless droves of Southerners requesting – nay – demanding that I bring them a four-ounce cup of ranch for their twelve-piece, fried shrimp dinner. The endless refills of sweet tea, the recanting of our (unlisted) salad dressings six times per table (why, why, why doesn’t anybody listen to me when I explain to them our menu! Hell, why aren't the salad dressings listed on the menu!?), and enduring the endless repetition of the phrase: “What do you mean you’re out of seafood platters?” Yes, without that lukewarm Bud Light glowing for me on table seven, I can simply bear it no longer. And it’s not just the customers that have lost their sheen – even the past times here at the Grille have grown dull and stodgy. Gambling on sporting events, whispering “balls on chin” past the tables, singing along to the original South Beach musical “weeded in the square,” even the penis jokes, at one time making me burst into uproarious laughter, have gone (much like their counterparts) flaccid and soft.

But it wasn’t all bad times at South Beach Grille. There were good times. Losing $100 dollars in fantasy football, burning my fingers on our shoddily poured hot white chowder (hilarious!), getting roofied at the Christmas party, fifty percent off food, stealing corn bread, 86’ing happiness, and last but not least, all of the sexual harassment - truly glorious amounts of it. (Although, I must admit, I am disappointed by the fact that every single time I stood naked in the supply closet, covered in our pasty bulk-order whipped cream, the only person to ever walk in and partake was James, from the kitchen. And I mean no disrespect to the man, but I simply cannot be involved with someone whose face is ninety percent beard.)

South Beach was so much more than just a job to me. It was a test of my truest character. Something changes about a man who drinks until four A.M. and then wakes up at six o’clock for a breakfast shift (still drunk), where he is again hassled by Southerners for a 4 oz. cup of ranch to go along with their pancakes and early morning cup of sweet tea. Seriously, Ted, whose idea was it to serve breakfast at a seafood restaurant? To quote the famous philosopher, Daft Punk, South Beach has made me “harder, better, stronger, faster.” The accumulation of so much rectitude in such a short period of time has been, to say the least, truly awe-inspiring. I will never forget my time here at South Beach Grille. All of the memories at table seven, all of the laughter, all of the hangovers, all of the write-ups, being weeded in the square, and how you totally didn’t fire me. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, a thousand times, Thank You.

Sincerely,

Ian C. Rowe

P.S. The purpose of this letter was to inform as well as to entertain. Most of these “facts” are made up. Nobody whispers balls on chin past tables, never have I waited naked in the supply closet (although James’s face is ninety percent beard), and never have I waited tables still drunk. (Or have I?)

Seriously though, please don’t fire me before my two weeks.