Waffle Home For stories you won’t find online, grab my book on Amazon here. Three times, at three different locations I’ve seen Waffle Houses provide for a regular beggar. The first was in South Carolina. Some sunburnt scarecrow hobbled through the door. A waitress tapped the manager on the shoulder. I assumed the manager had the tricky job of running off vagrants. Instead, she brought the beggar hashbrowns to go, and coffee with two sugars and three creams. She knew how he took his coffee, which is how I knew he was a regular even though I was just drifting through town and never saw that location again. On a second occasion, in Georgia, when a homeless guy wandered in, a cook shouted, “Dale’s here!” And Dale left with a plain waffle, a sweet tea, and a cigarette cadged off a landscaper. Somewhere in the indistinguishable middle neck of Florida, another Waffle House manager did the same thing. Short on teeth, this beggar preferred grits. Now it’s impossible that such a rule is written in any corporate booklet or slideshow, but some spirit of Southern Hospitality, maybe even Christian charity, does seem alive in Waffle House management. At least, I choose to believe it is so, elbow to elbow with two friends in the yellow-orange light of a Florida location. There are a million like it, but this one is ours for now. Which is not to say it’s all roses at Waffle House. Once, when served coffee in a mug with the last customer’s lipstick print on the rim, I asked the waitress, “what’s this?” “Givenchy Dual-Tone,” she said. “Very in this year.” She swept the mug away and came back with a clean one. But thank goodness for soft yellow light. Sterile fluorescents are for jails, morgues, and public schools. Plus, they’re brutal on hangovers. What better white noise than the vast metal field of the sizzling griddle to our right? Its sputtering fills the dead air in our sparse conversation. There’s nothing to say this late in the weekend but re-cap the events, the boozy barbecue, the lazy river, drinking card game, and the goofy volleyball game that would affront any decent volleyball rulebook. And now, mostly quiet, we wait for something to starch out the mean ghosts of white rum & tequila. Speaking of which, our order has just arrived. “They gave me a pecan waffle instead of peanut butter chip.” “The cook probably read PC for shorthand. They scrambled my eggs over easy, too.” The remember the poor, but forget my egg order. “It’s all good.” We eat. When Americans go abroad, even if they only eat healthy at home, even if they have sophisticated palettes, some night in their trip they will awake craving flavors such as these. The crispy hashbrowns. The greasy bacon. The artfully weak and endlessly replenished coffee. It does a diner’s spiritual work, and that’s to feel like home, like a refuge, no matter where you are on the road. If you’ll tolerate such a slim and esoteric category of analysis, if you have any patience for deaf cooks & sloppy dishwashers, if you’re attuned to any such thing, you must rate Waffle House poor in practice, but five stars in spirit.
Sharing a Surfboard | Florida Enjoy this piece, and grab my book for stories you won’t find online. *** They make it look easy as a dream. Riding green, foamy curling waves on a surfboard. I rented one while I was back in Florida for a wedding. Now, in the water off of Cocoa Beach, I’m getting chafed red by a giant, oblong, wobbling blue surfboard that wants to tilt, dip, and pitch me under the water at every second. I can see other beginners not having much luck on their own tropical colored boards (yellow, pink, key lime green). The board is twice my size. Squeaks and slips right out from under me. The water is cold, but it’s clean. No seaweed. Cocoa Beach both sounds nice and is nice. After getting swamped by a few more waves, I swim the board into knee-deep water. The new plan is to catch a little wave and just stand on this thing for once. It works. I ride the board standing up for maybe ten or fifteen feet. Feels like being a billionaire. As I’m sinking down into the now ankle-deep water, I see my small success has not gone unnoticed. “Can I try that?” a young voice screams. It’s a bunch of kids. Maybe five of them. Three girls, two boys, and a mom. One of the girls is asking. “What’s your name?” “Gemini,” she says. “Ask your mom.” “She says it’s OK!” I need a rest anyway. “Sure, give it a try.” I un-velcro the strap from around my ankle. Gemini, her brothers and sisters swarm the board in a flash. They’re screaming and fighting over it like a game of King of the Hill. I have thrown an entire family into chaos. Gemini secures the strap around her ankle. While this may sound like snatching the crown, it’s a serious tactical error. The weight of her three siblings carries the board into shin-deep water. She’s being pulled along as it surges up and down in the water. I have thrown an entire family into chaos. The blue board seems as alive as a giant eel, bucking and chucking brothers and sisters into the water. They’re trying to stand on the sinking board. Look-amme-momma-look-amme. This doesn’t last long. In under a full minute, they figure they’ve got my money’s worth. They shove the board back to me. It floats towards me in the water. Their mom calls, “Thank you.” I return to trying to do short standing rides on the board in shallow water. I can pop into a standing position and ride the board ten or fifteen feet at a stretch. Tomorrow I should do even better. The sun is setting. The water is lighting up warm orange. It makes a shimmering, blurry reflection of the sky. Cold water wipes me out. After one more standing ride, I figure I can’t top that this evening. Tuck the board under my arm and return to the shop as the sun goes down. End
You could be like me Enjoy this story & grab my book here. None of the stories online appear in the book. It’s a warm evening on South Beach. Fish bowls of blue cocktail drink on the table, and friends from back home visiting. Reggaeton blasting. Crowds of people tramping up and down the block. The beach is just across the street. You can’t hear, smell, or see it under the music, cooking food, and darkness, but it’s there. Steve and I are raving drunk. Laughing about something moronic. Our dates are getting to know each other. “Buttons for sale, buttons for sale.” A Rasta man with his head in a giant wrap wears a coat completely covered in pin buttons. He rattles one lapel at me. “Buttons for sale,” he says. Jesus, Sinatra, Hailie Selassie, Marley, Marylyn, Elvis, Bogart all on buttons. “Hey!” I say. Lurching a little at this point. “That’s Idi Amin! He’s on your jacket with Elvis and Jesus and whoever.” “So what?” “He eats people!” “So what?” “So Rastas don’t even eat meat but you got a guy who eats people on your button.” “That’s not my problem!” he says. I think about that. Deeply drunk, it sounds like logic. I mean, who’s problem would it be, then? “You want to buy that man eater button?” “No man, I’m good.” “Can’t be thinkin’ you’re above other people,” he says. But with good humor and a smile. “I don’t, in fact, I was probably a guy like you in another life.” Steve drunk laughs at the mental image. My date looks at me suspiciously. I think I’m slurring my words a little. “You could be a guy like me in this life, too. You don’t need your things.” “You’re right, take my jacket,” I say. I unhook it from the back of my chair. Shove it right at the Rasta man, who is shocked. Steve puts his hand on my jacket. “You sir, are officially drunk,” Steve says. He’s swaying a little himself, though. The Rasta man is laughing hysterically now. He walks away, still laughing. You can hear his jacket buttons jingling for a mile.
Images of South Carolina Falling in with squatters and getting my stuff chucked out the window in Brooklyn. The violence and trash talk of a college rugby club. Read these stories and more in my book, Odd Jobs & After Hours Boards of a two-block-long pier on the shore of Lake Marion slither in the waves like the spines of a great creature, creaking and groaning all the while. Sunburnt strangers, white stripes of sunscreen striping the rounds of their bellies and slopes of their noses, wave from a passing pontoon boat. On shore, fishermen bring just-caught catfish, grouper, and flounder to the back door of a wooden restaurant. Soon the catch will be fried, basketed, and served with coleslaw. Nearly all of the boats fly the Stars and Stripes on the top of their masts. Three stray cats stretch themselves under trees dripping with Spanish moss, or they make moon eyes at outdoor diners for scraps of fish. The sun is behind a grey haze of clouds. The air carries clean water smell, and is loud with the senseless, perfect music of water. Blonde women, one in a cut-apart flannel tank top and bathing suit, the other in a pink mega church t-shirt reading, “Jesus Loves this Hot Mess” sun themselves on the shore. Smoke comes and goes in the air, brought by a cobblestone chimney on shore. Trailers and RVs are hitched up for the night in a nearby parking lot. It’s a sleepy southern evening, and Jesus loves this hot mess.
They Don’t Know About Evil in Warren, PA Warren, PA These free stories are not in my book. Grab the book here. *** Trucking the final ten miles to my first stop on the way out west. I’ve been driving since just after 5pm. I’m charging towards a wall of milky fog. The fog is slithering all over the road. It’s rising up my windshield as I drive farther. Yellow diamond-shaped signs with ‘Deer X-ing’ are posted every few miles on this road. I hit a high wall of fog. Now I’m driving blind. High beams make it worse. I ease off the gas even though I just want to plow through these last ten miles and get some sleep. But there could be a deer standing in this stewy, soggy fog. There could be anything in here. Mind phantoms dance in the fog. Shapes that look like an animal or a human face with a giant forehead. Big teeth. It’s like picking shapes out of storm clouds. The green glowing numbers on my speedometer flicker. Every light on my truck dies. I’m bowling blind through the night. Release the accelerator completely. The lights return. No explanation. Then the needle on the speedometer jumps from 40mph to 60mph. But my pedal pressure is the same as it has always been. The RPMs are the same. They are not whining louder. Though the fog makes it hard to tell, I am driving the same speed. The needle quivers and dives down to zero miles per hour. But I’m still going at a speed that feels like 40mph. Now the speedometer licks up to 40 but then crashes to zero. Whips across the entire dial to point at 100mph. All lies. My speed is not changing. The needle is possessed. The truck is old. She’s mechanically sound, but she has emotional problems. Just under ten more miles to Warren. I got sick of hearing my music and wanted some quiet. Running in silence. Deaf to the engine hum after these hours. Rhodie, the truck, starts beeping. I slap the dash. The beeping stops. The engine starts hiccuping and coughing. It makes the ride bumpy. If I break down, I can pull the bike out of the bed and get to town. And then…what? Nothing will be open. Still. I can bike somewhere. I can do something. Or I can pull over, pull my sleeping bag out of the back, and nap in the cab till dawn. Let some cop rap on the window with his flashlight. Demand to search the truck. Rhodie, get it together. We are this close to town. Get me a few miles more and tomorrow, I will buy you everything you want and anything you need. Fluid top off, new spark plugs, spa day, you name it. The lights flicker again. Those clunking sounds in the engine jolt the driver’s seat. Little farther, please. I pull off the road, cross a bridge, and drive through a brick downtown. My Airbnb is only point eight miles away. I park in a garage across the street as instructed by the host. Grab the two most important bags from the bed. Pull the bike out too. Pull a tarp over the landscaping supplies and food. They’re not as attractive to thieves as the bike would be. With two backpacks and one guitar on my back, I bike to the Airbnb. The first-floor door is unlocked. That’s weird. I walk the bike up three flights of stairs. My Airbnb’s room is unlocked, too. I call into the room to see if the unlocked door is because the host or last guest is still inside. Or if someone broke into this Airbnb. No answer. Tiny kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom are all empty. All closets empty. There’s a key on a red piece of yarn on the table. I lock the door and go to bed. Good morning. I find a note on a chair I didn’t see last night explaining the unlocked doors. Honor system. The place is very clean. The bedroom and kitchen are squished into one room. The closet-sized bathroom with a plastic cubicle for a shower crammed into it. It looks retrofitted. Like the apartment didn’t always have a shower. Showered and shaved, I’m walking on the same street I drove down last night with brick buildings on either side. I pass a stone statue. The bridge over the river I drove across. I want to check the bed of the truck for missing items. A woman in a parka and gloves is walking past me. She says good morning and smiles. I say it back, surprised. Two more people do this. In the parking garage, nothing is missing from the truck bed. This town. No litter. Nobody sleeping behind dumpsters. No locks on the Airbnb. Every stranger says hello. Clearly, they don’t know about evil in Warren, Pennsylvania. I need to do one more day of work before my vacation begins. I work from my laptop in a cafe all day. It has a few tables and big leather chairs with a coffee table near a gas fireplace. “I don’t recognize you,” the barista says when I order an Americano and breakfast burrito. She is surprised to see someone new. I’m surprised she expects to recognize her customers. I explain the truck. The journey west. The land. She beams. Halfway through the workday, I step out to buy a phone charger. When I come back, the manager makes eye contact with me. “How’s your road trip going?” she asks. “How’s the truck?” I ask how she knows about those things. “Word gets around fast here,” she says. The coffee shop empties out. I’m still working. “Are you closing?” I ask the manager. She is wiping tables down with a rag. “Oh, we closed ten minutes ago, but you looked so busy we let you stay. I just can’t let you back in once you leave.” I thank her. Finish work. Bag up the laptop and cables. Say goodbye. It’s time to check the truck’s fluid levels. Test a couple of theories about what caused last night’s moodiness in drive performance. I come back to the parking garage with my bags. A yellow parking ticket is tucked under the wiper blade of the truck. Thirty-five dollars. Payable by mail or online. Wow. I just became the only criminal in Warren. Time to hit the road. To be continued
Unknown Destination Death, baby! Death. That’s what’s was on my mind here in the unmanly station of second seat on a moped hurtling down a rolling Colombian highway, somewhere in Medellín. But beyond the mild seating indignity is the discomforting presence of twelve chainlink fence posts sitting in the truck bed to the front left of us. If you like this story, grab my book Odd Jobs & After Hours for stories you won’t find online. The posts in the truck bed are a mere arm’s reach away, as Colombian roads are much narrower than I-95, and the vehicles are smaller than the Ford F-150 by a long shot. The hollow ends of the fence posts are dark as gun barrels; they seem capable of lance-like flight at a sudden stop. This helmet with its scratchy visor simply isn’t enough. Cars and trucks merge on and off the highway with all the order of popcorn kernels on a red burner rocketing upward to burst and bloom. Now Colombia’s mountains are a joy to see, a delight to hike, and no doubt a thrill to motorbike through, but second seat gives you no control over your fate, it’s more of an act of surrender to each steep tilt and turn. Why then, am I here? I was promised a monumental and world-famous piece of Colombian history, something I would never forget seeing. My friend and guide at the hostel, Andy, told me about it, but he didn’t tell me exactly what it was or where we were going. Who can say no to a mystery? Off we went. We finally shoot off an exit and roll onto commercial streets, followed by a short road with little development on either side of it. Surprisingly, we then pull into the parking lot of a church and park there. Where are we going? Confession? We walk around to the back of the church to a cemetery. “Now you will come face to face with a man who shaped this nation.” We walk over well kept grass, then a border of black marble with white patterning, then a bed of white polished stones till we finally come to a black headstone with cursive gold lettering. “Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria.” Here they are, six feet below. The bones of a guy who drowned Colombia in blood. The wealthiest criminal in history. Now here I am, a Gringo whose mental image of Escobar is the Netflix actor more often than his historical face, but our fellow visitor to the grave feels much closer to Pablo. The other visitor is a bald, heavier guy in an old collared nightclubbing shirt, jeans, and black dress shoes. He is keying himself up, tipping forward on the balls of his feet, trying to absorb the atmosphere around the grave. He speaks suddenly, his story bursting out of him like shaken up soda. Must be something about my appearance, because he knew to use English. “I am Escobar’s blood,” he says. “I am his nephew.” Andy the guide and I nod, and give him a little space. “Yo brother, this guy’s trash,” Andy mutters to me. “Every bastard in Colombia calls himself the son of Escobar.” Maybe he’s Pablo’s blood and maybe he isn’t, but pacing and prowling around the white stones on Pablo’s grave, the so-called nephew is surely hunting for a haunting, the type of haunting that will bring him, perhaps, a little respect. Nephew baldy seems to think Pablo is Scarface or Don Corleone, the type of gangster he can admire on the far side of a flatscreen. And admittedly, it is hard to process that here lies the grinning coke warlord who murdered nearly the entire Colombian police force in a single night and bombed randomly targeted pharmacies. After all, if Pablo couldn’t have the whole world, no Colombian could have baby formula. It’s difficult to believe it was all real, and not too long ago. But if Escobar’s tomb by day is chilling and suspect, consider the following scene by night. Later Same church, same graveyard, bright moonlight shining on the same white pebbles, and black marble border. But around midnight, a gathering begins. Do you hear the chainlink fence rattling? Figures in hoodies are clambering over it. There’s a low murmur of hoarse voices. Pablo’s acolytes are assembling for a street seance. Andy is hanging back eagerly yet uneasily, as am I. The guys in hoodies walk up to Pablo’s grave, and unzip their backpacks. Out come clinking, tubular glass objects. A flick of a lighter, and orange firelight show some of the objects to be Virgin Mary and Lazarus candles, and others to be 40 malts. One incense stick in a sandalwood board with a curled end. Flame for wicks, for the incense tip, and a blunt which they pass to the left in their circle. Now silly with liquor and screwy with weed, they sit in dark communion with Pablo’s bones. With enough chemical distortion, it seems believable that Escobar’s ectoplasm will ooze out between these white polished stones. He will give you a Mercedes and me a speedboat, and we will all live in penthouses. He will be our father, he will once more be El Patron. We have nothing and he had everything, and for that magic trick, we will ignore his every wrong. Like for nephew baldy, Pablo is something of a folk hero to them. But if you ask most Colombians, under these polished white stones are the white coals of Hell. Well, burn all the candles and blunts you want, it doesn’t look like any ghosts are coming out tonight. But what does manifest is sidelong looks, and a cold, weighty sense that Andy and I do not belong here. So quietly, we leave.
Midnight at an Outdoor Gym in a Foreign Land Enjoy this story, and for stories you won’t find online, grab my book here. After a few strong shots of (what’s that powerful pre-workout called? Ah, yes. Tequila.) Yes, after a few shots of tequila, my friends and I are at an outdoor gym in the bustling, humid downtown of Medellin called Parque Lleras. It’s midnight. The yellow streetlights are shining through the mist, and the whole wide nighttime world is a little silly and a little whirly. We’re capping off our first night out on the town. We’ve been holed up for COVID measures for a day or two, and now we’re uncaged and running a little wild. The city is surrounded by rainforest landscape. Overhead, big green jungle palms are luffing a little bit. There’s a creek somewhere nearby. We can hear rippling water, but we can’t really see it. Under the palms, there are barbells, pull-up bars, and dip bars. The weights have chains on them so you can’t steal them. All the metal bars are painted yellow. We’re in our night out collared shirts, dress pants and shoes. Not exactly gym wear, but who cares? I’ve got a deadlift bar that’s linked to a big rattling chain running to the ground. I’m yanking the bar upward. We’re all counting each other’s reps in Spanish. Uno! Dos! Tres! Two Colombian gym bros are pumping chained-up barbells in the corner laughing at the drunken Gringos. Cuatro! Cinco! Seis! Then a new friend of ours, some mobile phone millionaire who expatriated, is wandering out in the middle of the road, walking off some soreness from the squat rack. A yellow cab whips around the corner and screeches around him. “What? Come at me bro!” screams the millionaire, arms spread out. And what intoxicant can make a creature of flesh and bone look at two tons of 65-mile-an-hour metal and say, “come at me bro?” It’s Colombia. Use your imagination. All is well once more, but we just have to keep it that way. It’s clearly time to go home, to get off the street. We say sorry and gracias to the gym bros in the corner. They laugh and say no, no, thank you guys. And on that note, we stumble back to the apartment.