I write this having just been terminated from my little ‘watering the brunch spot’ job. It’s the longest job that I have ever held. (I think of the identity of my employment as 1 year contracts. Renewed or reinvested. I think of relationships differently.) I was their longest continuously employed person. This job, interestingly, wasn’t about the money. This was a relationship. And I definitely just fucked that up.
There was this moment today where I was speaking with Jimmy. (Which really galvanizes that Jimmy is my absolute favorite person to work with.) Where we both talking into some mutual understanding that there is this inherent adrenaline to the fight; there is a thing that takes place in the heat of the moment, where everything becomes silent. This, is not won cheaply. It is through violence that we are made hard, strong, or enduring. It is through the heat of contest that we are made complete.
There is this African proverb that has been ringing through my mind all week, it comes to me in traffic, it comes to me in meetings, it comes to me right now: “The child, scorned by the village, will burn it down to feel its warmth.” And I think about this often. Almost involuntarily. Like some reminder broadcasting across my mind, as the Hort meeting drags on with the same empty displays that they always seem to have.
I worked that brunch place for 50$ a month. Unchanging for inflation, unaffected by covid, or taxes. One Grant a month. Sometimes they gave me baked goods. Sometimes they gave me a 10% discount on food when I made a reservation for breakfast. Sometimes I'd have a beer with the owner after they had closed. And still, every time, the experience was that of a sitcom. The micro interactions of the employees always soft with a certain tranquility. Always in-character like the bit parts that make a budding actor’s career. Often it felt like some modernized Steeve Urkel making his appearance to fawning applause at the 4th min of an episode of Family Matters. The scene was full of teasing jokes, then a complete overhaul of the ambient music to something either extremely gay or extremely ghetto, peel off the apron and eat a quick egg as the day reached the final stretch. ...and here comes fkn chess to water the plants... roll the intro—
There is this part of myself that disassociates, caught in the propensity of the moment— a certain strength emerges. Sometimes it feels unnatural, like I am the conduit of something else. Sometimes it feels uncannily familiar like exhaling a deep breath. I can cite several examples where this has proven itself true and still, there is always an odd underlying theme: I cannot be sure if I am doing it deliberately. [This will come up again.] But like, I’ve done strange things with my mind, with my body. I’ve created and destroyed so many parts of myself over the timeline of my existence. As if I am some dynamo, churning pieces of itself into some sort of deer-god nightmare. And the results are like those crocodile-tongues in James and the Giant Peach; whatever they touch, whatever vulgar object suddenly becomes enchanted at random (save for the family-friendly songs about kindness and caring) and I am utterly unsure of how to contain it. The level of supernatural weird shit that I have done in this space is hard to quantify.
There is a part of my soul that is a monster. There is a part of my soul that is like Archimedes reincarnate, and there is a part of my soul graced by the forest spirit. The interaction of these things is in some sense, is me in my entirety. And yet, the intersection of those powers simultaneously is somehow both profound and devastating. I learned it, sometimes I wonder if I was bred for it. But it makes no difference. It comes out of my hands and mind like some expression perfectly timed for the occasion. Some gesture so flawless and moving to the aesthetic, that the recipient suddenly understands ballet for some brief and terrifying instant. Because the truth is so blatant, and often external to ourselves, the sting does not come from the injection of some great poison, but rather from the absence. The ability to create void is more powerful. This is something I am darkly obsessed with. And still. As if by natural law; the galaxy is nothing more than the material spurred into motion around the profound pull of a singularity. Electricity itself is negatively charged. Loss is what stays with us longest. We seem to be incapable of truly understanding something until it is gone.
The problem with Denver is that it has no sense of quality. Not to say that none of its people have any sense of this, but as a whole it suffers from this systemic lack of quality. I know this, because I have seen quality before, and some of the horseshit that this city in large (and many of its people) seem to tolerate as normal is absolutely, un-fucking-forgivably, ridiculous. It, awakens in me something that is familiar and, not great. And I aim to give it due attention here but it comes clearest to mind as this one apocryphal example:
I think of some buster in the hood that everyone rips off because they are weak, or slow, or whatever. (Maybe trying too hard to fit in, maybe they have more money than sense, maybe they’re just plain fucking retarted) The outcome is always the same though; you rip them off too. I don’t want to be seen as sympathetic to the whatever-ness of the situation. Sure, I’m down for people with special needs, LGTBQ, weird kid in the back of the room, the chill sheik guys at the gas station, whatever. What's intolerable is the way that there comes a moment in (seemingly) every relationship that you’re either about it or you're not.
Sometimes the city’s leadership strikes me more and more like buster-ass-Trey at the end of the block and it’s hard, at an almost primal level, for me to take it seriously. As if I am pantomiming my way through the day and then people begin to take that at face value. And I think the reason for this is a conflict of credibility. A sort of quality of personhood. Something Denver, it seems, knows nothing about.
and I've said this often, painted it even more often;
Don’t talk about it, be about it–
And this, in a large sense, is part of the loss that I feel daily. Not with our crew, definitely not with present company. But there is this moment when I wonder if the city wants to hemorrhage money into immigrants or have an organization with any credibility. I wonder where this buster-ass authority comes from. And this weighs on my mind gently and often, as if Trey claiming to the barrio urchins that I have his back for some recent bullshit-thing he’s up to; you gotta go down the block and set that boy straight. (In whatever context that means.) In a similar but different way: to tolerate fascism is to condone it. Which seems to loom in the background like a cosmic pink elephant occupying every instant out of work; but this is for another time.
The city has so many abundant weaknesses, whole businesses are probably saving tens of thousands of dollars monthly with their bad practices that are borne largely on the city’s resources. (Lorraine Granado died of cancer from living in Swansea after a lifetime of fighting the local coal industry and many others in community-equity activism, and met her end from the effects that those things cause. You can't even make this shit up.) The fact remains the same: at some level we need to be about it or we’re not. And I know that the people around me are, I have shaped them into what I need; but some of the people within our organization are so detached that it seems right to watch them be ripped off. And I have no interest in taking drastic action to help them. And the detachment is deep, so observably avoidant of being in the field, that it’s obvious that they have no idea what’s going on.
To this end, I think about that scenario you mentioned with your daughter returning the wrong change, or how you handled Justin’s boot voucher experience; deep down we all recognize the opportunistic nature of a come-up, but just as quickly know what the right thing to do is. We do things (as best we can) the right way, even if it’s harder, even if it is more emotionally taxing, the right thing is the right thing. The truth is the truth. And I; for all of my cunning and guile, do live by this. I am proud that we live by this. Justin is a good dude, and I like to imagine his buttery personality simply distracted the clerk from filling out her paperwork correctly. I like to imagine that the universe wants to do itself. That things happen in a way greater than just causation. The universe wanted him to get a break. Though the deepest way to experience this, I find, is to do things the right way. Build the fence as best you can. Do good business.
But this also makes bad business more recognizable. It makes me recognize the inept leadership. The flawed efforts, the pointless, uniformed ego-tripping in the same measure. And it’s pathetic. Some of the most pathetic and embarrassing, performative leadership I have ever seen. Your fence sucks. Dilapidated, bare chain-link is for poor cowish people to be herded from one rental trough to another. Transposed by a plank fence built backwards for aesthetics but then also uselessly easy to climb. (I honestly can’t even think of a better representation of gentrification in this city) and at it’s end, it all sems to miss the mark, neither is of quality.
Quality leadership feels like something else. A forestry department that isn’t wholesaling me bullshit smells like something else. Machine shops that are properly staffed aren't so painfully disorganized. It's embarrassing. Its embarrassing to have to go through channels that are unable to (literally,) literally do their job. And it starts to look like an experience I could name. Because I don’t want people thinking we’ve gone soft because other aspects of the organization seem to have forgotten the code. And I think they forgot it by not doing the right thing —by not being about it.
The challenge is for people that haven’t stayed true to themselves, they get detached. Thinking they are leaders when they’re not. Thinking that they are about it because they read an article on the topic for some mediocre understanding, talking about shit like they got something to say. It’s infuriating. I think it is there in the push-and-pull between some lack of quality and some lack of credibility that I am annealed with the daily experience of the Northside. I feel the absence of desert in my bones. I feel the absence of the rawness that made me like this. Where every trespass feels like gullible ignorance dancing stupidly in front of me. Like a barking chihuahua that deserves to be punted into a (remarkably shorter than you’d think) justifiable oblivion. And the only solace seems to be the off-the-cuff sarcasm for which these cheap, dubious motherfuckers can be dealt with. Who gives a fuck what kind of power they have; they’re idiots.
Where the circuits cross for me is when these people have a will to power. (The marjarie taylor greenes of the world) It puzzles me deeply, how stupid people vie for power. To the point where I am almost incoherent to the opposition. (this is said lightly, but speaks dark volumes) And for better or worse there is a quote of my own design that lives within me like the collapsed rafters of some ancient cathedral:
‘you will come to see it my way.’
I’ll remember it like this: I was trying to get into the restaurant, knocking on the door because we have to lock it otherwise the homeless will come in and bother the lead of the waitstaff or the owner for something irritating. I’ve seen it firsthand several times. I'm knocking on the door and there are these three women standing in the entrance. They glance over their shoulder to my knocks and look away from me as if I am a homeless person. And in this moment i think about the amount of homeless bullshit I put up with all day; these entitled white bitches have no idea what it was like to watch some unfortunate disassemble an, obviously, stolen air conditioner with a rock (literally bashing it apart) for 3 straight hours in the Argo parking lot.
And I won’t let it go, the dismissive, beneath me look they tossed in my direction. As if to justify why they weren't going to open the door for me.
And I thought about those little classes; “...Homelessness causes trauma, ...trauma causes homelessness...” But what they don’t say is the ‘contamination factor’ that dealing with the homeless can make you numb to it. They don’t know anything to the nature of meth, manipulating reality around it; destroying or altering everything it touches. Until they’re trying to kill every tree in the park. And in this moment I looked homeless to these people, literally baring my way to work, like I was the vulgar unwashed masses to be ignored. And I'm filthy today because I was doing the labor for these same vulgar citizens. Picking up their trash, handling their inconsiderate bullshit, and it set my ass on fire.
As I pounded on the widows to be let in, eventually the team must have pointed out that I work there and the same blonde woman that turned a cold shoulder to me moments earlier let me in.
“Sor— she begins.
“You can get fuckin’ rekt for that.” I snap. Heading back into the kitchen to get the same pitcher I use every week to water the plants. I make some pithy comment to the line cooks, and then the chef, and when I come back out the woman is bawling—
“You... just need to know ... that today... today ...was my birthday... and you’ve absolutely ruined it!” She cries. Tears streaming down her splotchy red face; ulgy crying. She storms out of the restaurant.
I stand there in awe. Confused by the whole scene. Her friend meets me at the counter a bit more reasoned and in control of her emotions. “You know you really did ruin her birthday.” She states at me flatly. And I stand there dumb-faced for a moment.
She makes this face that is both mocking and disdainful, not unlike the one her friend made before not letting me in.
I pause absorbing this, and then ultimately beckon her with a subtle gesture leaning across the counter, slightly I whisper: “When I was a child, after my mother picked me up from daycare, after screaming in my face for hours, if I cried she would get an implement, like a broom handle or like, a bat, and beat the living shit out of me. While screaming that I was a fucking faggit.”
She reels back in disgust. Dismissively announcing: “Oh, you’re just a fuckin’ asshole.” She turns to leave. And I whisper in the same tone after her; “I’m aware. I was made this way.”
40 minutes later I'm receiving a stream of texts about conduct, and how the owner isn't satisfied. And I don’t give a shit. Today should have been payday, and wouldn't-you-know-it, they didn’t have my 50 bucks on hand. It was only later that they get wind of what took place. It feels almost clairvoyant, or at least worth not having to chase after $50. The waitstaff agreeing with me, that they closed over an hour ago and the response seemed over-the-top for people that were just lingering around keeping them from cleaning.
The entire experience sends me reeling. Filling me with this cacophony of emotions that it's hard to calibrate or quantify. But there is a part of my soul that could be described as a manticore;* and there is a part that could be described like the forest spirit. Apocryphally, The forest spirit is a god of life and death. I have often written on this, the nature of such psychological values. And on this day, for the trespass upon my sovereignty, I removed from them, their birthday. And this is a weapon so infinitely sharp it feels like I have practiced it forever. And in that, many times I have cut too deeply into myself and others, when learning. And i will always be learning it seems. As if it can devastate whole rooms of people or lift some from wretchedness to redemption. Its really just how I choose to use it.
And These entitled white women will never know the scene of my mother, destroying my things, flipping over my mattress. Smashing my legos against the walls and destroying my artwork in uncountable fits of belligerent rage when I was small; I remember this behavior sometimes on, or days before mother’s day. Sometimes lasting for weeks on end.
Once on my own birthday, where she beat me until couldn't stand— or the time she threw me out on Christmas Day to sleep in the streets. This shit goes on and on. But it doesn’t amount to anything, because void, inherently, by definition, cannot amount to anything.
I think about 50$ and what that doesn’t mean to me, to give three self-aggrandizing white women a lesson in humility. They have been made weak in their own self-importance. But I learned it well and I learned it hard. Be it the city, or my family, or diminutizing white people:
You deserve what you allow— and I don’t tolerate this shit for an instant.
What so many are unprepared for, is the manner in which they will be brought to heel—
So when Jill wants to mansplain her personal head cannon about the city, or some tweaker wants to grift some commodity metal, or the Venezuelans walking into oncoming traffic with their children in tow; like the belligerent, ignorant, slobs that they all are. I know they aren’t paying attention.
but I am.
And the moral of the story is this:
These people can put their money where their mouth is; or they can shut the fuck up.
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