I could probably clack out six or seven blog posts about the events that took place between Thursday and Monday. Unfortunately, those events have left me way too damn tired to pull something like that off while working. The combination of typing and talking is too much for my bedraggled brain to handle right now.
I will try to summarize some of the story.
You know how, in the movies, someone is always running through an airport with four pieces of luggage attached to various appendeges. They look like biped beasts of burden being chased by a swarm of bees. Well, imagine that person dressed in a black three-piece suit, about five-foot-seven, with curly bleach-blonde hair running through the Des Moines airport. That was me Thursday morning at about a quarter to eight in the morning. My flight was at eight-fifteen.
I've heard it suggested that you show up at least an hour before your flight leaves. Apparently the new security checks can take a while. Luckily, I can dress and undress quickly, so it only took me about seven minutes to get through security. (A note to anyone flying in the near future: I learned that the security process goes a helluva lot quicker if you just take your damn shoes off and put them through the big x-ray machine. I could have avoided a public strip-search, and a very strange security guard awkwardly waving a wand over my crotch repeatedly, had I just taken my shoes off.)
I haven't flown for eight years so there was some pre-flight anxiety. Luckily, a couple of lovely young ladies decided to sit next to me and keep me company. They diverted my attention from the fact that I was in a metal box with wings that had jet engines welded to it. They were welded on pretty well, though, and the three of us survived our flight to Minneapolis.
The view was amazing. Iowa was so stunning in the light of the morning sun, so impossibly wide and green, that I actually stopped flirting with the girls sitting with me to marvel at it for a while. It was also fun to see if I could guess what towns we were flying over.
The peaceful flight was countered by the utter madness of Minneapolis International. I stepped out of the jetway into the future. And, I've come back to tell you, the future is fucking nuts! In the future, there are internet terminals all over the place that charge about a buck a minute to use. Everything is made of glass and all of the storefronts are wild artistic wonders designed to draw customers who are overcome by their sheer size and color. In the future, an airport food court will serve sushi (which is really good, by the way), will have 12 different coffee vendors, will have dvd players you can rent by the hour, will have ATM machines around every corner, but will hide it's bathrooms like pirates hide fucking treasure. And the maps by which you are supposed to find the bathrooms are apparently drawn by the same pirates.
There are some good things about the future, though. For instance, in an airport where the distance from the terminals to baggage claim is in exess of three miles, there will be conveyor belts that will speed your walk and halve the time it takes to cross such distances. Best of all, in the future they have evidently passed laws that force every good-looking female to wear super-tight and revealing clothing, while the unattractive females must wear serapes.
Somewhere in all the bustling mess I lost (or got ditched by) the two attractive females that had accompanied me to the future. I just assumed they were off to buy some regulation clothing.
After about an hour of wandering in the airport I ran into them. Their flight to Houston was leaving about an hour before mine left for Aberdeen, so we just exchanged phone numbers and said our goodbyes. If anyone is interested, they mentioned going to House of Bricks this coming weekend. Then again, if you fellas don't come that might just mean more fun for me.
I probably should have skipped the long goodbyes because it took me about fifteen minutes longer than I had anticipated to get back to my terminal. They paged my name over the intercom system, informing me that it was my absolute last chance to board, about thirty seconds before I came running up to the attendant.
The "running through airports" thing became common for me on this trip.
When I finally got to Aberdeen I was pretty jazzed-up on coffee, so all of the introductions at the newspaper were really interesting. I found out later that I shook one guy's hand so hard that his wrist was sore the next day. They seemed really nice, though, and I think they liked me.
Thursday was just a day for tests. No formal interviewing or anything like that. And the tests didn't seem very hard. Mostly just correcting intentional mistakes in artificial news stories. I did find the headline writing part to be difficult. I just sat there staring at the stories unable to think of anything good to write. I started to run out of time, so I just jotted down some half-assed headlines.
When the testing was over I was whisked away to be wined and dined by the veteran copy editor of the newsroom, ostensibly. It was actually root beer and burgers with some crazy old guy. Crazy is probably the fate of anyone who works at a newspaper for 40 years, but he seemed like a cool guy. He told a great story about how he got his gold pica ruler (a gift for employees who work at the same paper for a long-ass time) and immediately tried to hock it at a pawn shop. A few of his co-workers caught wise and attempted to stop him, so he attempted to stab them with his golden ruler. He said he decided to keep it because it made the perfect non-lethal weapon.
After dinner he drove me back to my hotel room. Which is when the pain really began.
I was staying at the Comfort Inn, but it may as well have been called "The Hotel that is located the farthest away from civilization." They explained that I was staying there because it was close to the airport. I think they expected I might go crazy from boredom and want to hop an early flight, so they placed me within walking distance of my only escape option.
It was on the very edge of town. Next to it was the Ramada ("The Hotel that is located the second farthest away from civilization") and a little farther down the road was a Taco Bell. I figured the Taco Bell might save my sanity in a pinch, but a hotel bar would have been much better.
I had considered having one newspaper employee or another drive me to the grocery store before they took me home so that I could pick up some supplies, but I reconsidered when I thought about how it might look when I returned to the car with three whiskey bottles, a twelve-pack of beer, nacho chips and a copy of Maxim.
So I was stuck in my hotel room with no booze, no food, and only basic cable. Thank God for Adult Swim.
Most of the rest of my interviews were uneventful. Just a lot of questions and a lot of answers and a whole fucking LOT of talking in general. It got tiring. I should mention briefly my interview with the publisher. I had never heard the job title in relation to a newspaper before, but I'm guessing he's the big cheese. And he deserved it. He was cool as hell. He's Scottish though, so after I heard the accent it wasn't hard to impress me. He did seem very intelligent and was just a really neat guy.
Friday and Saturday nights I was being trained to actually do the job I was applying for. It was a very intense interview overall. I felt like I was working, rather than applying for a job.
When I went back to my hotel Saturday night I noticed there was a significant increase in cars at the Ramada next door. And people dressed up ... in tuxedos? and ... a limo ... OH SWEET JESUS, IT'S A WEDDING RECEPTION!!!
I could just hear Angels singing vespers. I had despaired, but here was salvation. Again, ostensively.
It looked too good to be true. Here was food, booze and women brought, literally, to my doorstep. I waited until my ride drove off and then I slipped into the convention hall and made a dash for the banquet table. After filling my tummy with turkey sandwiches I headed toward the beer. Much to my dismay, everything had a price attached to it. However, that dismay was nothing compared to the dismay of discovering that this booze was being provided by a bar located
in the hotel! There was a sign proclaiming that beverages were being provided by "Murphy's, which is convieniently located to the east of the hotel lobby
." Shit! Of all the things I would have loved to have known while I was sitting in my hotel room, stone cold sober, masturbating to anime, the existence of a bar not even 100 yards away would have been very fucking high on the list!
From where I was, the bar was probably 250 feet away. I covered that distance in twenty seconds--easy.
I rolled in, huffing and puffing. There were only ten people there, it wasn't a very big bar. It could have seated about twenty people comfortably. They had a few tv's showing two football games and one news station covering the hurricane. It reminded me of the White Buffalo lounge. Dim, fairly old, primarily brown decor. The most important difference between the Buffalo and Murphy's: Murphy's packs a bottle of Jameson. I ordered a glass and began sipping quietly, watching one tv or another.
It wasn't long before I was noticed by another patron who came up to the bar to get a drink. He was black, about twenty-seven or so, just under six feet tall and slender (how many descriptions after convenience store robberies have sounded like that I wonder). He wore a soccer jersey and fake bling that looked like Amish's. He also had a couple of fake diamond rings that he swore were real. He said he bought them with money he got from selling dope. He also informed me that he was a rap artist and the fellow sitting with him was his guard.
Besides all the obvious bullshit that flew from his mouth, he seemed almost likeable. We talked for a few minutes until a short, pale redhead(likely dyed) with a bony face walked up beside him. He introduced her as his wife and she asked a few questions in a very high-pitched voice. She was joined by a taller blonde girl with a very full bust, wearing overalls and a tank-top.
We all drank a drink and talked for about fifteen or twenty minutes. "Fake bling man" and his wife started whispering which made for an awkward silence as the blonde and I sipped our drinks quietly. After some lengthy whispering, the wife recoiled in disgust and stormed off to the table from which she had come. The blonde followed, confused. The husband chased her yelling, "Baby, baby. Damnit, let me explain you sumpin!." I stayed in my barstool and pretended to become interested in a football game. Fake bling came back after a minute or so and started mumbling something like, "Awww, fucked up. Fucked up, man. Shouldn'ta but ah did." I finally asked him, "What'd you do?" In retrospect, I shouldn't have asked. I should have left, content to have gotten at least a buzz out of the whole deal.
"Man, I been wantin ta fuck her frien' eva sin we lef. I tol mah wife she could fuck you, if I could fuck her frien'." I excused myself to the bathroom. I took my glass of whiskey with me. Unless you can't read my bastardized rendition of his accent, he told me that he had offered me sexually to his wife. Apparently where he comes from, one man can offer another man to his wife without the other man's consent. I guess his wife isn't from that same planet. Or she just didn't want to fuck me. Either way, I said, "To hell with drinking, I'm going to bed." Whiskey, no matter how good, was not worth that shit. Not by a long long way.
It was probably for the better that I ended that night early. I had to wake up the next morning at 5:45 to catch my 6:45 flight out of that fucked up town. I'm not sure if they'll offer me a job there, but I know what I
should say if they do.
