Mr. Nice Guy

Uneventful smooth jazz Sunday, I woke mid-afternoon, dick hard and STD free, surprisely sober. The sun was annoying-- creeping into my lonely apartment reminding me I had no love, lover or money. I figured I needed to get drunk. It was a no special Sunday, really a rerun like everything on television. I wanted to venture out. I needed humans around. I needed to flirt and lie about my life or maybe get lucky and get laid. I got on my laptop and started searching for drink specials. I didn’t care about the bar. I just wanted to drink as cheap as possible. I got on Google, typed in cheap drinks, dc and Sunday. I got excited when I saw one particular bar drinks were only $2 from 5-9 p.m. It was almost six. I quickly got dressed. I knew the bar was a fucking “hole in the wall.”


"I gave you a ten dollar bill and you only gave me back five dollars!"

The bartender looked at me strategically as I held the five dollars in my hand like a piss off mother who was given the wrong baby. My face quickly contorted and looked disturbed because I felt as if I gave birth to a black baby, saw it come out my pussy and was handed some white blonde child. Something ain’t right Michael Jackson!

My first instinct was to be as nice as possible as a ghetto kid can be when someone owes him money. I figured he just made a silly mistake. I smiled to say I am nice guy. And then he replied that he had given me the right change. I didn’t understand. Was he smoking crystal meth? Queue the argument.


I looked at my watch. It was only 8:05 p.m. I knew I still had an hour. I remember I ran into the same mistake with one of the bartenders upstairs. I thought he was just dumb. I corrected him and he gave me my change back, no problem. But for some reason, the downstairs bartender decided he needed an attitude.

Back story, its DC, 2010. The bar had been around for over seventy years. It used to be segregated. The blacks always went upstairs and the whites stayed downstairs. Current day, the blacks still went upstairs because the dj played urban music and downstairs was mostly pop, country and rock. The music had separated the people. Time changed a lot of sociological issues but people still acted the same like integrated high school students who sat at table with their own kind. With any type of segregations begets prejudices. The bartenders upstairs were usually black or negophiles and the bartenders downstairs were always white or Latino. Living in DC, I thought Martin Luther King’s dream look pretty in advertisements but hearts and lust hadn’t really changed that much. Most of got along but we weren’t fucking. Maybe that’s was MLK dream, to get everyone to take off their clothes and fuck each other. The bartender upstairs who I corrected was black, no problem, the bartender downstairs was white. I was young and black. He was young and white. I’d slept with enough white men to have perfect credit. I had no subconscious issues.

I figure I correct the problem. I told the bartender the paper said rail drinks were $2 until 9 p.m. He said the paper made a mistake. I told him that wasn’t my problem. He said he could give me my money back but I could no longer order anymore drinks from him. I felt that was a little harsh. It wasn’t like I was making shit up. It wasn’t like I was trying to get over the bartending system. I was right. I was fucking right. I told the asshole, I could do him one better. I wanted all my money back. He grabbed my drink violently. Angrily poured it out like rancid piss that sat in the sun for a week. He then slithered over to his cash register, yanked out a ten dollar bill and slammed it on the bar. He said I would have to leave. I replied, “No shit, Mr. Obvious.” What was I an idiot? When I asked for my money back, I wasn’t going to order another drink like putting the quarters back in a slot machine. Obviously I had been misinformed. And if it wasn’t a Sunday and I had bail money, the conversation would've turned physcial. I gently took my money off the bar. I smiled and put it back in my pocker and gave him the middle finger. I grabbed my dick and raised deuces to the air.

I still had money to spend and there was another bar across the street. I hoped the kept their promise.

As a kid, anything someone would ask me, I’d do it. If they asked me to remove my designer sport shoes and give them to them, I would do it. Of course I was probably being robbed, but I still did it. If some stranger about to get arrested on a public bus asked me to hold on to their drugs and deliver them to such and such address, I’d do it. Of course, my aunt would find out, yell at me, tell me to give it to her, and then smoke it. I still did it. I was what my cousin growing up called a “flunkey.” I was a doormat. A natural pacifist but in the ghetto aka “punk bitch.” I never liked to fight. I often cried at a drop of a fist. It bothered me. Until one day I said “no.” I turned fifteen years old, a month away from running away from home for good. My grandmother asked me to go to the store and pick up her weekly stash of beer, cigarettes and KY jelly. She went through a lot of KY jelly. I didn’t ask questions. And I said, “No.” She slapped the shit out of me, pointed a gun towards my head, and I still said “no.” I wasn’t going to do it. The public school system told me smoking was bad and I wasn’t going to support her habit any longer. I wasn’t going to buy her beer anymore. I wasn’t going to pick up tampons for my aunt anymore. I wasn’t going to do shit. The gun pressed against my head, I just walked away. I felt the nice guy in me that day took the bullet. I watched him die. I laughed because in the end nobody ever remembers all the years he slaved to be nice and one time, it only took one time before they turned on him. And that was life.

I had gone to that bar seven years, no complaints. Always tipped. Always smiled. Followed the rules. And then some asshole came and changed the rules. I could’ve ignored it, but I said “no.”

Twenty minutes later at the bar across the street, no problem. They had the same drink special but vodka rail only. The crowd was old refugee AA runaways, but I didn’t care. The bartender wasn’t an asshole. I was walking to the bathroom when I found a wallet on the ground. I immediately picked it up. I looked through it. I And suddenly I became aware that I was black. I could’ve gone over to the bar and handed them the wallet. That would be what a nice guy would do. But I knew he probably thought I’d pick-pocketed it or something worse. I’ve been accused of that once also. I could’ve found the guy and gave it back. It would’ve meant nothing to him. He would’ve said thank you or and forgot about it. Or I knew I could just keep it. Or throw it in the trash.


I gave him the wallet back. I told him I found it on the bathroom floor. I took twenty dollars as my finder’s fee like any insurance. I watched him look in his wallet, count the money first instead of caring about his credit cards, metro pass and i.d. I smiled. I wanted him to say something like there’s twenty dollars of the 240 dollars missing. Instead, he said thank you and walked away. I snuck back in the bar across the street. Went upstairs with the unofficial segregated black area, because the white guy who just lost his entire identity was buying my next three drinks. I was still a nice guy. Everything was once again right with the world.

The art of looking busy.

Keep opening and closing a filing cabinet. Take files and walk around. Don’t do it more than four times in the morning and three times in the evening. Somebody might ask you if you’re lost. Don’t file your pencils but keep rearranging your desk. Every once in awhile click on your keyboard. Out of the blue, ask someone if they have seen your favorite pen. Make an excuse to go to the supply closet. Just keep getting out of your sit albeit bathroom or smoking breaks. Stare intensely at you computer for at least half an hour. Open blank computer document and type “I am bored” as fast as you can until you reach the end of the page and start it over again. Then type “I fucking hate my life!” The sound of a keyboard clicking makes the Boss think you are a go-getter. Make sure to always be ready to press “ctrl A” and delete, quickly, if anyone walks by.

Like most mornings, the alarm clock reminds me of a life gone terribly wrong.
Not criminal, just annoying. Some wake up and life is productive. I have no kids. I have no real responsibility. I mostly pretend to be busy or important or somebody. I am on corporate welfare. And there is always the fear they eventually going to figure out I do nothing and stop my checks.

There is an art to looking busy. It’s clever and merticoulsy crafted, mostly personality and ass kissing. It’s rehearsed politiness and hollow compliments. Bullshit can get you really far in corporate America. I wake up and I tell myself to always remember to smile. Always remember to say good morning or afternoon or evening. I tell myself to always have a rehearsed joke at my disposal that I practiced in front of a mirror. I remember co-workers birthdays. I pretend to be excited about their anniversaries and children graduations. Anything to throw them off the scent. I always remember to smile. I always remember to giggle at jokes that aren’t funny. I play my part.

The week before I stood in the food stamp line. I wore my worse tennis shoes, raggedy jeans and a suspiciously stained t-shirt. I didn’t brush my teeth, comb my hair or take a bath. I wanted to look and smell the part as much as possible. I wanted to look as if I was starving. I wanted pity. It was welfare after all. I couldn’t wear a Brooks Brother suit. It isn’t just the “need” but often the illusion of “need.” That’s why there are hardly any homeless Asians. The “fat” homeless probably get lesser donations that the homeless who look like their starving. Its human nature I guess to either be conned or discriminate. Always smile. Always say god will bless you. Always make your hand tremble when you’re begging. It’s Hollywood. We all want to feel six degrees from being somebody or better than somebody else. We always want to feel as if we are the only ones that will get into heaven.

I got to the food stamp office as early as possible. I wanted to get in and out. I stood in line for thirty minutes just to get a number to be called. I was 112 and there were only on 27. I knew it would take an entire workday with no lunch breaks. I took my sit and tried to blank my brain. I couldn’t deny I was out of money and desperately needed some sign of hope for ever eating again.

I was a receptionist once. My job was basically to say good morning and good night, 532 times each a day. It almost drove me crazy like a leaking water facet. I realized it was the silence that probably drove people crazy. It’s not that no one was around, we never connected. My job was to greet them. My job was to make them feel as if they were something special. My job basically was a distraction. They probably hated their job but if someone was paid to care, to tell them good morning or a stupid store bought joke, for a second that college was worth it. The daily annoying irony. I also attended college. It just took me a very long time to kiss ass aka “network.”

The first couple of hours at the food-stamp office weren’t so bad. I was able to surrender to a good meditation until Maria arrived with her four kids under the age of five. The oldest had to be at least seven years old. I guess she was supposed to supervise the younger siblings, a boy around age 4 and his sister around age 3. Maria nursed her infant as her kids ran wild. I was pissed and a little judgmental. I was also jealous. It was obvious she was a shoe-in for food stamps. I made a joke to the girl sitting next to me. I told her that Maria should forget about her kids going to college but instead save up bail and abortion money. The girl next to me laughed. I didn’t. Maria kids were wild. They ran up to people unattended. The fought with each other like a cat and dog. And Maria the entire time sat there and did nothing. They were already getting a reputation. But why was I being judgmental in the food stamp office. I knew I was once those kids. No real boundaries. Always in somebody’s system. I call them “system” kids be it foster care, food stamps, juvenile centers, SSI and Social Security. It seemed my entire life I somehow have been begging. Of course I would grow up to beg.

I got fired from my receptionist job. I apparently didn’t smile enough. I apparently didn’t look busy enough. One of the employees didn’t like for whatever the reason so he made sure I wouldn’t stick around. I figured, apparently I couldn’t be a good clapping monkey. It sort of hurt my feelings.

As I walked home from a job I really didn’t want in the first place, I remembered those kids. Was I just unaware how others were judging me? Was I at thirty two years old running wild with no supervision?