Day 189

The Drawing of the Three



I try to use a different bookmark with each new book I read. It's fun. I got this one from one of the ladies in the top inset picture of Day 159. It's actually a sticker, so I hope that the back doesn't peel off without me knowing. I'd permanently be on page 127 if that happened.

I got my remote trigger in the mail yesterday and didn't realize that it was in the mailbox. I therefore technically got my remote trigger today! Yay. I however can't find anything in the metadata that tells me that I took the picture remotely, so that's kind of lame.

I also got some of Nikon's software that allows me to control my camera from my computer. Expect to see a time-lapse in the next week or two. Double yay.

My next project: stop motion. It's coming soon, just wait and see.

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I wait tables, I'm a server at a restaurant, I get food and drinks for people. I know most of you know this, but my friends in Afton, WY (who always visit my blog via Ally's...I found out today that you can cross-reference some of the data Google Analytics records.) might not. I work at a place called Boulder Café which is just blocks from Boulder's most tourist-ridden areas. Our restaurant gets all different kinds of crowds from the elderly during the weekdays, to the financially burdened (such as college students) and drunks during our bomb happy hour, to the wealthy business-types of Boulder during our way overpriced dinners.

I have a pretty successfully little spiel I deliver to my tables to bring us from pleasantries to them ordering. You know, like a "what can I getcha" kind of thing, but slightly more elaborate. Most restaurants, especially corporate or upscale ones, require all of their servers to say the exact same speech to every table. For example, I once had an old high school friend (one that I had even gone to a dance with) wait on me, and after we said our "how've you been"s, she introduced herself to me and asked if I would like her to explain any of the wines to me. It's like she turned into a robot and spat the lines her employer had forced her to memorize. It was weird.

Anyway, the Café doesn't do that. The servers can basically say whatever they want to to get their tables to order as much shit as possible. I therefore have the freedom to modify my spiel given the situation. It varies slightly from table to table, but even differences as small as "Good evening folks" to "Hey, what's up guys?" can be purposeful depending on who's sitting in front of me. Also, depending on how the table reacts to me, I modify my demeanor appropriately. I call these different styles I have my 'characters'.

If a couple turns out to be the quiet, angry, sulky, I-don't-want-to-be-here type, I become as over-the-top cheerful as possible. I love pretending to be overly happy around unhappy people. They don't know what to do with me, and sometimes it works enough that they give me a good tip and maybe smile once by the end of the meal.

We get Asian customers in occasionally, and as soon as I can see that a conversation is going to be nearly impossible, I just bow/bob my head a lot. It's strange, I don't do this in any other situation, but they always do it back. That's nice.

I say 'howdy' to the Texas A&M fans that come into town for CU games.

I talk about the Café's organic garden with the old hippies that come in. Side note: we used to have a hippie that worked there, and I overheard him talking to a fellow child-of-the-earth (who happened to have the give name Bhavani, as in other hippies gave her that name because 'Erin' just wasn't cutting it anymore.) about how his girlfriend saves her 'menstruations' and pours it over her garden because it has positive growing energy in it. Fuck that. No I don't want any of your homegrown tomatoes, Grossy.

Here's where I start getting the point:

Tables full of pretty twenty-something girls are my specialty. At first, as always, I start out semi-generically but always stay acutely aware of how they're acting. As soon as I can tell that they might be the type of table the would respond well to charm, I turn that shit up to 11. I lay it on thick, I smile a lot, I bat my eyes, I call them 'ladies', I tell jokes, give them some extra attention, and throw them the occasional sideways glance. I do this because I know they can often be some of the best tippers, especially if they're happy. It's all just a part of that 'character'. "What would Joey Tribbiani do in this situation?" I ask myself.

Here's the kicker, though. I've never gotten a girl's phone number. I'm not upset about that at all, (I'm not on the market, so it really makes no difference), but it's become a thing my coworkers know me for. It's actually expected to happen once in a while for most of the servers. I've seen even the biggest goobers get numbers from their tables. But not me. Well, that's not true. I have gotten many phone numbers, but every single one has been from a man. I once had a table with two gay guys and two gay ladies, and they left me a note saying that they all, including the lesbians (they called them "the dykes" in their note. I don't know why I remember that specifically), thought I was a tasty dish. Now I have to admit that sometimes I kind of play into if I think a guy is giving me the eyeball, because just like with the table full of girls, I'm just looking to make them happy and get my tips (boy do I sound like a stripper/prostitute right now...), but only when I'm pretty positive they're interested. I have gotten several numbers from guys that I would have never guessed were interested in me.

My generic 'character' is actually pretty much my regular personality, so if numerous guys and zero girls have expressed interest in me, then I'm lead to question if I give off a 'vibe'. Do people think I'm gay when they first meet me? Again, it's not really a big deal if they do, but it's becoming really bizarre. Am I being completely misjudged, or is that what I actually portray? I can understand one or two people miscalculating my sexuality based on my serving style, but it's happened rather frequently.

Tonight I met a nice young man named Robbie. He was the first of my customers to actually ask me out to my face. I was thinking about it later, and I realized that it must take one of two things for a gay man to ask another man out: 1) He must be sure without a doubt that the guy he's asking out is also gay; or 2) He must have extraordinary courage. I don't think that if I were single I would ever have the guts to ask someone out to their face, much less someone I just met. Then if you added being gay to that, then I don't know how I'd ever find love. Walking around in a straight, bigoted world has got to make you very conscious of who you do and don't ask out. Apparently I'm the kind of guy that you do ask out.

He was very polite and asked if he was completely out of line and innapropriate, and I simply told him that it was very flattering but that I was seeing someone, and he quickly recanted and told me to forget about it. It's not often that I have to let people down to their face, so I hope I did it nicely enough. I keep thinking about Beth Pritchard's face back in 6th grade when she sent Molly Brown ask me out for her and I scrunched my face up and said "bleck!" I hurt her feelings and I still remember that.