Carpet Rash and White Trashed Page 2
9/7/2002

The Cheddar Lounge
and Spot-on Fortune Cookies

After the second load, Diane wanted a break, especially for food. We'd gotten some cheap breakfast that morning at a Jack in the Box in North Sac. I had fish and chips and a diet coke, shades of yobbishness shining through the early morn. Diane got some kind of sausagey thing and hash browns and a coke or something sweet like that. However, when we got to her apartment, she discovered an excess of mayo on the top bread layer of the sausagey thing. This totally weirded her out. She ditched the sani and ate only the hash browns. So around 1:30pm, she was starving.

"Chinese," Diane said. "I want Chinese."

She asked what I thought, and I said, "Cool, I'm totally type B dude today."

Diane didn't laugh at any of my off-the-cuff jokes like "I'm totally type B dude," or "You've got a point and not just the one on your head."

No. Diane always just went, "Okay," and smiled at me with one of those fearful little "you're a freakish one" kind of smiles that indicated that she would tolerate me for the duration of whatever project was at hand and that was it.

Our typing Ms. Eyre did have a conservative streak to rival her Pa's. It just wasn't as menacing. My tales of adventures in LA and SF always drew a kind of blank disgust from Diane as though she were thinking, "Only an amoral freak of a devil worshipper would dare even go to LA or SF." Oh well. She was a good kid nonetheless, especially since she was about to buy me Chinese food.

But this wasn't just any Chinese food. This was Orangevale's famed Happy Gourmet, a food spot so famed that it was frequented not only by the starting lineup of the Sacramento Kings, the mayor, and half the state legislature, but rumor has it that San Fran Mayor Willie Brown makes a monthly pilgrimage to the place. Yep, food better the SF's Chinatown. No fucking shit.

But the fact that the Happy Gourmet was NorCal renowned had nothing to do with why we chose it as our lunchtime laughter spot. No, we were there because the Happy Gourmet was conveniently next door to the Cheddar Lounge.

We made our presence known at the Cheddar. Herb the bartender greeted Diane by name.

"We'll be back. Gettin' some Big Gay Gourmet to go," she told Herb.

"The usual?" Herb shot back.

"Yeah, wait five minutes, though. I don't want all the fucking ice to water it down."

"What would you like?" Herb directed at me.

I raised a finger and opened my mouth, but Diane beat me to the punch.

"Better giv'em a Diet Coke, Herb," she laughed. "Don't want'em to miss another two days at work again."

Herb smiled. "Five minutes," he said.

In regards to the two days of missed work, that's a long story. Your dearest hackmeister went on a bit of a Toxic Yoga Destructo Boy tear through the Haight and the Mission while in the city the previous weekend whilst catching up with some old friends, or that's what everyone in Sacto that he knows thinks. The only Sacramentan who knows the truth is the ever-cute ever-trustworthy Dr. O'Leary. Anyway, that's another story for another time.

Over at Happy Gourmet, Florida State was ripping some poor small school like South Florida Institute of Reptilology and Forensic Parapsychology to shreds. It was ugly, hardly a game. The score in the second quarter was so grossly obscene that I've since forgotten it, putting it out of my mind for the shear horror it was.

Diane ordered Sesame Chicken. I got Sweet and Sour Chicken.

We returned to our roosts mid-bar at the Cheddar, our drinks waiting. My diet coke was as fresh as a daisy. And from the bursting sigh to the gods emitting from Diane, I could say her Chevis on the rocks was in the same premier league.

According to Diane, most women who frequented the Cheddar thought Herb to be ultimately toasty. I didn't find anything remarkable about the Herbster. But I will admit that there is always something especially sexy about those who enable your vices. My vice is coffee. I've never met a female barista who wasn't the sexiest woman alive. Coffee is so important to me that even a few male baristas have started looking good. Yet in the case of at least 90% of the baristas over whom I've fawned, it is doubtful that I would have found them attractive outside such context. "The power of the bean" as they say. So one would assume not a distant stretch to "the power of the brew and spirits." I understood completely the attractiveness of Herb.

To our right, at the end of the bar were a few members of the Geratol set. I'm not sure specifically what the fuss was about. They were a little overly attentive to the television above them which featured some golf tournament. Their animation toward this event was quite incongruous. Their howls and laughs and playful indignation at the progress of the match was obviously fueled by an excess of time and tasting at the bar.

To my left were two guys that looked to be in their late forties or early fifties. They too were fueled and animated about god knows or cares what. They were getting low on the dough, so Herb fronted them each a White Russian. They praised him to highest heaven as if he'd descended from it and bestowed the drinks upon them.

"Hey, what's that say?" asked one of the guys to my left pointing to my cap which I'd placed upside down on the bar and in which I'd placed my shades.

One chair separated me from the two guys to the left. The guy asking the question wasn't the guy next to me, but the guy two chairs over, so his arm was practically in his friend's nose as he pointed to my cap.

I revealed the logo on the cap to the Inquisitor.

"Ah! Kings!" said the guy next to me, and he high-fived me.

The Inquisitor just shook his head.

"Never mind him," said High-Fiver, "He's a Lakers fan."

"They got lucky this year," I said, playfully pointing at the Inquisitor,"The Kings choked and gave it to 'em."

High Fiver shook his head.

High Fiver revealed that he worked for the Kings Broadcast Network. He was a replay tape operator. He went on and on about how he loved his job and that during the off-season he got lots of work from people he knew and how when he couldn't do a job, he'd pass it on to someone who'd helped him before.

"TV, Movies, showbiz in general," High Fiver told me, "Is about favors, connections, and creating good Karma."

I shook my head in agreement for about fifteen minutes. Diane placed my Sweet and Sour Chicken under me along with a pair of Chopsticks and a plastic fork. I chose the plastic fork.

I ate and listened. High Fiver slammed down his White Russian and Herb fronted him another one.

"It's about the love," went High Fiver,"It's all love. I can't believe how many people are out there everyday not only doing jobs that they don't love, but that they actually hate. I'm so lucky. I'm so lucky. I can't do anything that I don't love. It's that love that creates more love and more work."

I smiled.

"See how that works," he said, lightly popping my left arm with the back of his hand to reinforce his point.

"It's all about the love. The more love you have, the more things come your way. The less you love, or the more you hate, the more things move away from you. You isolate yourself. You get stuck in something you hate and it's a downward spiral. I can't believe people let themselves get bogged down like that."

This theme played for about an hour. High Fiver went on about how his sons were now in their early 20's and were actually working together with him on some projects and how that made him so happy to actually be able to work with his kids and teach them a trade and watch them learn and grow and mature.

"It's love," he said. "See, my love for the job has brought my love for my boys together. It's great. Love and good things happen."

He was glowing.

I finished off the chicken and felt that kind of contentment you can only feel on a full stomach and with a pleasant aftertaste in the back of the throat.

Diane nodded toward the door. Herb took the empty Chinese food containers from the bar to throw them out.

"Don't forget your fortune cookie," he said, dropping it in my hand. "Everybody needs good fortune."

"Uh-huh," I thought, the eternal cynic.

I shook hands with High Fiver and Inquisitor.

"You're alright for a Lakers fan," I told Inquisitor.

High Fiver laughed loud enough to be heard in Chico.

I settled into the passenger seat of Diane's Dodge Stratus, rolled down the window, and took a deep breath of warm dry air.

"Nice place," I said.

"Yeah," she replied. "That's what I like about the place. Strangers just start talking to you."

I opened my fortune cookie and read it.

A stranger will tell you what you need to hear.

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