by Trevor Dodge
Ranch Cheese?
Here they come, entire armies of families and co-workers, shuffling feet and eyes across the floor as they queue to pay their entrance fee, the magnificent shame of the all-you-can-eat gimmickery of it, all of them prepping to gorge and forget. This is the grand mastication, the literal chewing of the literal fat, two full floors and over 10,000 square feet of hollow metal-framed chairs parked in front of the dining tables that are fashioned like short prep stations, the chairs deceptively light, tubular aluminum like a racing bicycle, the walls aflame with plasma televisions and neon bar signs, the entire $6.00 wonder of it all.
Chicken Bacon?
The servers do their best to divide the space into columns, each responsible for a rough “I” which covers just over 3,000 square feet of each kill floor, three Is on the main and another three below, separated by a steep carpeted staircase fenced with real wrought iron with real spikes on the poles and fleur de lis snaking between. With a full crew, Bertie’s brick oven can belch out a fully cooked pie in just under three minutes, and within another three minutes that pie will have traveled approximately 25 frisbee rotations through the serving area until all its pieces have been claimed by the crowd, forever waiting for that One More Slice, that magic one that injects the endorphins straight into their bloodstreams, pushing to their mainlines, up into their pleasure centers floating above all the grinding and swallowing below.
Ranch Chicken Bacon?
The kitchen team keeps a short rotation of the most popular pies rolling, but sexes up the menu with wild combinations of vegetables, carbs and proteins that surprise new-comers and keep the regulars guessing.
Buffalo Chicken?
Dustin is the shift manager. He works neither inside the kitchen nor outside it, neither upstairs nor downstairs, neither behind nor in front of the cash register. He is both everywhere and nowhere; the owners trust him implicitly, which is why he’s paid $1.50 more per hour than anyone else in their employment. Dustin looks more 31 than 21, and his servers more 26 than 16; this is going to matter someday in the future, especially to the owners, and especially a lot more than $1.50.
Ranch Chicken Cashew?
Aimee, Trina and Veronica are the downstairs I’s tonight. These aren’t their real names. Dustin calls them these names and always assigns them to work downstairs together if he can at all accomplish it. Dustin makes the schedule. That’s what the extra buck-fifty is for.
Sauerkraut?
Aimee, Trina and Veronica. Dustin calls them ATV collectively because the calendar isn’t big enough to write their full names. The owners always see the schedule but don’t know what ATV stands for and aren’t terribly interested anyway; this is going to matter someday in the future, especially to the owners, and especially a lot more than $1.50. Dustin’s friend is named Jef. Jef tried working at Bertie’s for exactly 9 minutes and 14 seconds. Jef doesn’t need a job and never has. Dustin, however, does and always will. Jef is actually the one who came up with the ATV thing, by the way. He is also downstairs tonight, but not as an employee or a paying customer. Dustin let him in through the service door right before the dinner rush ebbed its always predictable last big hiccup.
Hot Mama?
Bertie’s least requested pie is called “The Hot Mama.” It’s a blend of linguicia sausage, pepperocini and jalapeno peppers. It is neither spicy nor digestible. The only reason it is even on the menu is to appease the owners, who both find it tasty and an aphrodisiac. If Dustin knew this they would pay him an extra $5 per hour, no question. Even though the overwhelming majority of Hot Mamas return to the kitchen like tweens in an orphanage, the owners require one go out at least every 20 minutes, just in case they drop in unannounced and feel the desire to feel the desire. Neither of the owners are named Bertie. Bertie is the name of a miniature bi-plane bolted high up into the rafters above the kill floor, which before becoming Bertie’s Brick Pizza Oven was a storage barn for the Union Pacific railroad, whose rusty line of steel and pressure-treated ties ran just to the south. The reason Jef didn’t last a 15th second past his nine minutes is because he just so happened to be in Bertie’s cockpit at the perfect timing and angle for the owners to stride in and have a go at each other. Needless to say, a Hot Mama didn’t go out for at least an hour that night.
Ranch Idaho?
Bertie’s most requested pie short of the pepperoni-based staples is a potent combination of cheese, fried hashbrowns and oregano layered on top of a hand-tossed thin crust slathered with Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing instead of the conventional tomato-based sauces served on their other offerings. It is no exaggeration to say that 1 out of every 2 people in the establishment tonight will either steal or scavenge a slice from an abandoned plate or the neighbor’s table. Jef calls this pizza something else. He calls it Sex In The Field. On the night Jef “retired” from Bertie’s, Dustin brought two gigantic boxes of Sex In The Field to Jef’s retirement party. A totally trashed 15 year old gave him a blowjob in the trailerhouse’s bathroom for a slice; it was just the beginning, Jef said later, of something beautiful.
Raspberry?
The final wave of dessert pizzas are starting, huge sugary cookies with entire cans of pie filling spilled and smeared over the top, thin spokes of whipped cream radiating out their centers. These come fast and furious, and at this time of the night, are the Bertie’s equivalent of dimming the lights in a department store, that nonverbal yet completely clear communique: you need to pack up your children, dust the crumbs off your shirts, and waddle the fuck out of here. Right now. I mean, please.
Cookies and Cream?
Dustin is making sure the last pies are on their way around and the ovens are ramping down and ATV have enough side work in the darkening columns to keep them busy until the last customer plods through the door.
Butterfinger?
Jef is double-checking the service door’s outside lock and pulling the big metal rectangle back towards him until the full shape and weight of it clicks. He is rolling a keg of light beer in front of the doorjamb. An ounce of prevention. Yadda yadda yadda.
S’mores?
The kitchen is dim. The only energy is the residual heat from the ovens. The upstairs crew let loose surprisingly soon by Dustin, who is already on his way down the stairs after silencing the televisions and latching the partition gate where the kill floor meets the carpet. That’s Jef’s cue and he cuts the lights, giggling. He and Dustin fumble for bodies in the black, their voices in stereo:
Ready To Ride?
Lessons My Grandmother Taught Me
#1: Never trim your mustache while holding your sig.other’s favorite dildo. But if you absolutely can’t help yourself, make sure to sit down first.
#2: That man hunkered into the booth may have been served two plates of salisbury steak, but you can rest assured I am not eating one of them. Not tonight.
#3: If you do not drink whole milk you are not only a commie pinko fag but kicked out of the family. Do I make myself clear?
#4: There is no proper way to chew tobacco, but if you must, do it the way great-grandmother did it: with a hickory-handled knife and an old tin can.
#5: He. Is. A. Monster. Just lie still until I’m home.
#6: When the Foot Locker denies your credit card, it is imperative you use their phone to call the bank right then and there.
#7: Glen Campbell is a great lay. You don’t need a copy of Playgirl to tell you that.
#8: Keep your typewriter and sewing machine in the same room, and keep them both covered at all times.
#9: Cable television will rob you of your soul. The Food Network is the only proof I’ll ever need to back that up. Have you seen Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives? I worked at the Depot Grill for nearly 40 years and no one ever filmed jack-shit there. The closest thing I ever saw to a camera there was when Mister Soran brought in his Polaroid Instamatic, but you’re not nearly old enough to hear that story.
#10: Officially, your grandfather died of a heart attack. I gues
s.
#11: Your uncle David used to wait up for me when I went out on dates. He wanted to make sure I always made it home okay so he would sneak into my room after Mom put him to bed and thought he was asleep. You remind me a lot of him even though…well…you know.
#12: When someone says “I love you,” you have their implicit permission to beat them within inches of their life. Seriously. Watch and learn.
#13: I’ve spent a lot of time in my kitchen, and that’s why I’ll never cook a frozen pizza. Listen carefully to how I say that word, by the way: PEES-ah, with an S instead of a Z. I don’t have your fancy-ass education, remember? But I still have standards and I won’t serve that garbage. Not even to your grandfather.
#14: Never write anything long-hand except grocery lists and the checks you use to pay your bills. Nothing else is so damn important that you have to show yourself naked like that.
#15: Coffee isn’t good for you. Neither is reading. I’ve always chosen the lesser of two evils, even if it’s the more bitter.
#16: Go ahead and pick out anything you want in the house. You can have it after I’m dead and sell it or whatever you like. I am having you do this now because I need to know how much you think you value me. C’mon now. I have to get to work.
Reapersession
They would have had a torrid night that night but it was the middle of the month, the bank accounts probably overdrawn four figures, got credit cards all maxed, so they skippin they usual hotel and just stay at her place instead. And last night the bank fax in. So I was there, 3 am, engine humming and heater full blast, knockin the snow off my boots before I climbed into the cab of the tow truck and drove off with that flashbulb white Intrepid spinnin its wheels counterclockwise, headlights pointed in the opposite direction, like some kid gettin drug to his bedroom by a fed-up parent.
But first, out the door, that was a hims. And it’s almost always a hims and the hims always, I mean always, come out. It was so very obvious he didn’t want to be out but there was really no alternative, and even though he had zero chance of talking me out of hooking it up, that was his only play. And I’ll give hims credit, I mean, really give hims credit, because me hooking it up is one thing but hooking it up with this other thing goin down? Oh daddy.
You wouldn’t believe how honest and real people can be in these moments, you really wouldn’t. Would never say I’ve heard it all, but I’ve damn well heard plenty. This hims, this night, he says way more than he should. Which isn’t unique because they always do that, especially the hims. He says…
…No, hold up. I do not judge these people as individuals. I do not know they individual situations. But I do judge them in general, in stereotype, in sweeping categories. I am not a moralist, and I could give two fucks about them paying they bills, so that ain’t even part of it. I mean, how could it be? Because if they pay their payments on time and in full, I’m somethin else for a living. Somethin else I don’t enjoy doin’ nearly as much as doin’ this. Somethin that don’t afford me such rich opportunities to study what it really means to be a human.
I should take back that part about not judging them as individuals. Here, I take it back. And I take it back because I do in fact judge them individually. You know what I judge them by? The shoes. Kind of shoes they wearin. If they wearin shoes at all. This hims with the Intrepid? He shirtless and pants-less and socks-less and hat-less, but he had on a tight pair of Jordans so vintage and so fresh they looked once-a-season worn. Retro AJ2s, I figure them, but in the pitchy, cold-blurred night maybe they was original. Maybe even deadstock. Like the hims busted these out in a hurry because a person’s shitty shoes are never on instant recall. No one can remember where they stash they shitty kicks. But those precious kicks, that they know, and where they at. This hims, he couldn’t find so much as a pair of sweatpants or T-shirt in his girlfriend’s apartment, but he knew damn well where those deadstock Jordans were. Probably a present from her, maybe from his wife. This hims, he come out bookin in those AJ2s when he probably had a ratty old pair of Air Force Ones right there at the door. Which don’t ingratiate this hims to me one bit mind you, because a man who can treat a pair of kicks like that—leave em on the stoop of a porch for a fall-spring cycle in this part of the country? Shit, man. That ain’t no man. Definitely a hims, but ain’t no man.
It’s not all hims in these situations, either. This needs to be said. And I’m not talking about last night couple. Back to generalities, then, you could say. The hers in these situations, they the ones you have to for reals watch out. They the ones once they realize you ain’t gonna lower the stinger no matter what, it all goes six hundred and sixty-six degrees of sideways. You see these movies and TV shows where the hims are all wearing wife beaters and camo shorts and come out all chromed up. That just ain’t what it is. At least not what I’ve seen. The ones wearing them beaters usually a wife themself, or about to be a wife, or just got done being a wife, and something ladies these parts learn early on is before you get yourself any kind of line of credit, you go get yourself a carryin piece to guarantee it. And they learn it from their mommas, not their daddies. And the bigger the credit line, the bigger the piece.
I hooked it up outside a family practice once. The hers there was a nurse practitioner. She came straight out the front door, past all her patients waiting in the waiting room, a big blue-barrelled .45, shell casing buried in a ring of my towing chain, the hers all in white coat with the hers’ name embroidered into it right at the tit, same name on the early AM fax whose beep-beep-whir yanked me awake and got me to the hers’ office hours before she pulled in. That hers, I heard she lost the job there, lost the house down the way, lost the license to diagnose and dispense, so she started up a daycare, and you cannot even begin to count how many I hook it up outside them daycares.
So the hims from last night. The one rockin’ the AJ2s. He ain’t strapped so the hims just lay it on real thick about how I got to unhook that Intrepid, how it ain’t about the car, how it really ain’t about no car at all, how it about the end of reality and the beginning of a dream. The hims is scared of the dream he says. Scared of what happens when the hers in their house across county wakes up in two hours and the hims’s not there and the Intrepid’s not there. Not scared out of fear. Scared out of happy excitement. Scared out of getting what he wants and getting it for real. Scared how none of it costs money even though the hims spent every dime he had getting to the place where it could be for real. This is hard to explain, the hims said.
Now I don’t never say anything except what’s got to be said and it goes something like this: I don’t want to take it believe me I don’t want to but I have no choice they ordering me to they tell me come hook it up so I do that and give you this number to call so call it.
But to the hims, I say this instead: it’s not that hard and it’s not to explain because I see it. You see what, the hims said. I say this: it. He doesn’t say anything, so I say this again: it. And then I say this: you need to call this number you need to go back inside and fall down next to her and close your eyes and wake up way after I’m gone when the light is new in the room because you haven’t seen that yet have you? The hims still doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to and I’ve probably said too much but the fact of the matter was that I most certainly did see it. The past given flesh in the present. The lettin go of it all.
And that right there is something that can’t be seen anywhere else. To be right there when the hims and the hers finally find they ends and their beginnings but they haven’t quite realized yet. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be in the presence of something so pure? That’s the part you can’t judge. Gaze through they window tonight after all the hims’ phone exhausts itself, and peek under they sheets. That’s the real ends, the real beginnings. The stuff of dreams.
When You’re Dead You Can Do Whatever You Want
You’re going to be terribly disappointed, but it should probably be said up front how much you’ll come to understand that t
he most productive thing you ever did alive was to decide your stance on masturbation. It was far more important than your education, your employment, your family. It’s possible you’ve already realized this, though, so do your best to consider something else that will never take its place. Yes, you get to do what you want now, but you no longer get to feel gratification. Or grace. Pretty much nothing that begins with a “G,” really. This probably already makes sense to you. If it doesn’t, though, just wait and see.
LOVED YOU YESTERDAY, Love You Still, ALWAYS HAVE, ALWAYS WILL
Unsolicited Advice
It is technically possible that you will be able to forge a potentially respectful and even friendly relationship with Ex. But it’s very important you understand the distinction between possibility and probability. If you do not understand the distinction, re-read items 5), 5a) and 5b). At least three times. All the way through. Right now.
a) In the highly improbable but nonetheless technically possible situation that you have forged a respectful and/or friendly relationship with Ex, here is a short list of absolutely forbidden topics in both considered and casual conversation:
—Sexual intercourse: frequency
—Sexual intercourse: ferocity
—Sexual intercourse: culmination in orgasm (yours) (real)
—Sexual intercourse: culmination in orgasm (Sig.Other’s) (real)
—Sexual intercourse: culmination in orgasm (Sig.Other’s) (fake)
—Sexual intercourse: culmination in conception (real)
—Sexual intercourse: culmination in conception (fake)