The Second Alarm

It is important that I don’t die a fuck-up. I will redeem this empty life.—Who is Sean?


The second alarm

They say it’s your life, the first alarm. Then it goes off | like a ghetto pissed off girlfriend when I turned twenty seven years old. Disappointmen a wet Foxy Brown weave dancing |in a dry texas wenesday—neck spasming and shouting at the top of her lungs, waving her index finger in my face ending with a threatening palm against my forehead--telling me I aint shit!
Something I already knew with the overwhelming statistics. And I just hit the snooze button like blinking a thunderstorms or a child’s tantrum until nonexisgenc. Make unaccepatbale noise comaose with more liquor and weed. Figured I wake up eventually.

And For the next six years the snooze button kept going off. I just didn’t want to awake. Maybe I was lazy. Maybe I was a no good nigga drunk. My I was just an arrogant self-righteous bastard. Maybe the world needed to break me. Humble me. Then I would see. Then I would learn. My grandma would always say a hard head always made a soft ass. But the many beatings I got as a child never made me any weaker, just the opposite. I think I jus go craving for the violence. Until I woke up homeless and without a job.

Not every black male is dumb. I am just tha nigga.

Seven o’clock in the morning. I heard my sister’s voice on the answering machine. She was wishing me a happy 30th birthday. I hated her voice. I thought we weren’t speaking since I told her inssuferable existence to go to hell. She sounded like she’d been eating chedder cheese grits for days. The coarse judgement gave me a headache. She made a joke that I was probably passed out somewhere. I’d picked up the nearest thing, which was my first alarm clock and threw it at the second alarm clock. I missed. But she was wrong. They were all wrong about me. I was wrong about me. My luck was changing. It turned out I wasn’t a mental patient. I could be good. I could be just like them. I was no Linda Blair, I had learned to hold down my resistant vomit.

Getting dressed for the first day of my new life, I remember they changed the ending of The Last Laugh, a 1924 German silent film in which the doorman for a famous hotel loses his job because he’s considered too old and infirm. To avoid humiliation and rejection, he tried to conceal the fact from his friends and family, but to his shame, he was discovered. In the end, the doorman inherited a fortune and was able to dine happily at the same hotel he used to work for. The screenwriter was forced into this happy ending in order to help the film appeal to a mass audience. The intended ending, because of the cruel rejection of family and friends, the doorman hung himself after he won his fortune, leaving the family to fight like dogs over the money.

Brushing my teeth, I knew I had been once cursed with chronic unemployment, so I spent many nights watching old black and white movies. I liked the melo-drama. The night before, it was Helen Keller. I had never seen it. I found it odd like the fact I’d never seen Gone with the Wind or Casablanca. I took it as a sign. It was like I was finally catching up to the rest of the world.

I loved that movie. It was like watching my life story ignoring the fact I could see and hear, but metaphorically, given my frustration struggling to communicate or be understood. It turned out that I wasn’t a wild animal, just like Heller Keller, I was just misdiagnosed. I just needed a good consistent slapping around until my knees buckled. I just needed some stubborn teacher who wouldn’t give up on me until I communicated to the world that I understood my interpretation of water. I’d personally, would have given up on that horrible child or beaten her into a bloody pulp. But that’s life, just like Helen Keller, I just needed one person to believe in me enough to prevent my inevitable suicide. Maybe I just needed to believe the world wasn’t such a bad place of me bumpy around in its darkness and everyone around just concluding I was hopeless. I wasn’t an animal. I had hope. I could still have a happy ending.

I had been known to make a lot of mistakes, to curse out and rebel without a cause. As I washed my face, I remembered that a year ago I stared into the same mirror acting out the same scene of a young man getting ready for his interview. I wasn’t so compliant more disturbed. I remember that my first mistake that morning was having a rum and coke for breakfast. I figured it better my mood for the interview. I hated mornings. I hated interviews. It was like begging for something I didn’t want in the first place. It was my fault. A year ago, I’d waited until my back was against the wall and then I got rudely pushed off like a lynching. I was two months behind on rent and out of friends to loan me money. I’d robbed Peter so many times to pay Paul that he finally called the cops.

A year ago, I was two minutes late to the interview. I knew I wasn’t going to get the job when she commented that serious people about work usually arrived early. I wanted to give her the finger. A year ago, it seemed pointless to be polite anymore. It was obvious she was an intrasigent watchdog and I wasn’t going to win her over. Her type hated my type. I crossed my legs and the interviewer saw that I was wearing gym tube socks with penny loafers. I heard that women looked at the shoes and made judgments about men. My shoes said that I had dirty dishes in my sink, bad credit and probably a STD. I crossed my legs and immediately she wrote something down in her notes trying to look professional and not like she was wasting her time. I felt defeated. My grandmother used to call me a “Free Spirit.” I didn’t think it was a compliment. I knew she really meant that I was lazy and unemployable. She probably thought I starve and prayed I didn’t have any kids. I had no mendacity. The interviewer was obviously the OCD--Type A personality. Men look at a woman’s hair and fingernails to determine the maintenance. Her hair was designer cut from the latest magazine TV star. Her fingernails were French manicured sharp like a knife with clear polishing. It was obvious she was no fun and probably had too many rules about what she wouldn’t do in bed. The interview was short. She kept her hand over her nose the entire time like I stank of the men’s bus station bathroom. It didn’t matter that at heart I was a good guy, the type who would probably push her out the way of a bus. She only saw me as a burden, not romantic. It made me nervous and I found myself trying to discreetly sniff the air around me and remember if I put on deodorant. A year ago, I knew I wasn’t going to get the job. My luck was so bad. I’d stopped pretending like I cared but I was desperate. I was all wrong. I knew I could’ve worn a suit. I had dress socks. But I needed to rebel. I had broken all the rules of interview first impressions. The interviewer asked me why I left my old job. I told her the truth. I had originally practiced the creative differences speech, but truth was I thought I could do better. I was wrong. When the interviewer asked me if she could call my former employees for a reference, I laughed. I told her it wouldn’t be a good idea. Every job I had, I not only burned the bridge, shit I nuked the ingrates like Hiroshima where life or a kind word wouldn’t grow for at least another hundred years. I left my interview feeling like a failure. My life wasn’t a sitcom. There was no audience amused by my shenanigans. The interviewer wasn’t some paid actress. It was my pathetic life. After the interview, I was scared. I felt the bored watchdog was what wrong with the western world and probably was a Republican who voted for Bush, believed in right wing family values and watch the 700 club with Pat Roberson. She probably believed Teletubies were turning children gay. I hated her rehearsed demeanor, her thick plastic black eyeglasses to make her seem more intelligent or sophisticated, how she stressed every syllable and her frizzy bond hair. I just hated her. People like her got to rule the world. I was just a resistant slave. I wondered whom did she sell her soul. I didn’t care about impressions, materialism or making my family proud. I was comfortable with my failure. I wanted to cry after the interview but decided to get drunk instead. I knew time was running out. I was going to have to grow up fast. I worried it was too late. Sitting at the nearest bar at ten o’clock in the morning, I tried to comfort my low self-esteem by telling myself that I was going to do something special with my life one day and finally get the last laugh. I had no idea what my special thing was going to be, but the doubters like that watchdog were going to find out about it. It was going to be something big. I even expected to get my own religion and holiday.

I got the job. It was an interview with a temp agency, so I don’t know why I was so concerned because they will hire anybody.

I sat on my Ikea king size bed with the Martha Stewart comforter and polished my Banana Republic black leather lace-ups. I knew I paid a ridiculous amount of money for the shoes but I liked how women looked at me when I walked down the street like I was Michael Jackson in that Billie Jean music video. I thought about all the friends who stopped speaking to me and laughed if only they could see me now. I didn’t grow up fast enough for them. I kept borrowing money. I kept getting into trouble. I was exciting when were young and in college, but after we graduated, I suddenly became a liability. It seemed unfair. Maybe I took my role too serious. I was the “Mike, would do it. Mike would do anything.” Maybe I was too fearless, too free. I was the one for laughs. I was the one who made the memories, but I didn’t see they were just laughing at me. I thought I was the life of the party and when I was young it was sexy and suddenly after twenty five years old, I was just another drunk. I thought we be friends forever. They had other plans. Maybe I stayed at the party too long, the last to leave and got left behind. But that was a year ago, I put my on my expensive shoes and laughed if only they could see me now.

A year ago, I hated every job. I seemed to have the worse luck. I found myself a receptionist for the Minority Initiative of the Department of Education. My job was to basically answer the telephone and greet guests. The big problem was that the phone never rung and there were no guests. I was basically a seat-filler with enough silence for me to figure out how much I was wasting my life. Going to prison and being stripped naked and put in solitary confinement would’ve been better than that job because at least I would’ve known why I was being punished. I wasn’t making that much money. I calculated that I made .33 cents a second because that’s what it felt like, that I was getting paid by the second, not the hour. I thought I was going to go crazy. It felt like a waste of time, a joke. I was located at the back of a very dark hall. It was like the twilight zone.

A year ago, I kept getting fired or quitting. No surprise, I got fired from that seat-filler job. It was a slow death. At first I started coming in thirty minutes to an hour late. I started working half days. I started calling in at the last minute. I came up with every excuse in the book. In two months my apartment building supposedly burned down. My grandma died. My roommate died. I got mugged. My beloved pet dog died. I got arrested for mistaken identity. I started to look like I had the worse luck. It wasn’t until I really needed to call in that I got fired. A publisher wanted to see the first 100 pages of my book. I stayed up all night re-editing. I had to call in that day because I was just too tired. The agency wasn’t happy to hear my voice. I was stopped before I could complete my lie. I was told I had too many last minute emergencies and my help wasn’t needed anymore. I couldn’t help but laugh at the word “help” like I actually did anything helpful in the “real” world. A dead turtle could’ve done my job. I was a seat-filler. It was corporate welfare. I wasn’t surprise that I got fired. I kind of saw it coming and wondered why it took so long. I told myself I would get the last laugh when my book about a son and a father bask fishing was published and won the Nobel peace prize for saving the world and inspired the cure for cancer and AIDS. It was going to be that brilliant. Two weeks later, the publisher sent me a rejection letter. They said my words didn’t have imagination or magic. I told myself I would get the last laugh when another publisher picked up my book and it sold a trillion copies in a million countries. I was scared. I didn’t know what it was I was supposed to do with my life. All the good doors seemed closed to me. It was as if God hated me.

As I straighten my Thomas Pink tie in the mirror and then removed my gold hoop earrings, I remembered Helen Keller. I remembered the frustration of trying to fit into society. I felt cheated. It was as if I was waiting for something, something that I was promised like a FedEx package with my life in it but it’d gone missing. I wanted to be somebody, somebody cool, like be one of those people who woke up in the morning and liked their lives and not plotted suicide before lunch. I wanted to be one of those people on morning talk shows who seemed to have it all. I wanted to be a fucking Rock Star but I had no real talent. I wanted to win the lottery yet I kept forgetting to buy my ticket every week. I didn’t want to sell my soul. A year ago, I was lost.

As I gently sprayed on my Burberry cologne, I remembered that a year ago my luck was changing and I didn’t know it. I was working as a cashier at the local pharmacy because once again I had been desperate for a job I didn’t want when that watchdog from the temp agency found herself in my checkout line. Apparently she was refilling her prescription for Herpes wart crème and the pharmacist forgot to stamp the price. It was only my job to get on the intercom system and announce her full name. And when she handed me her credit card, it was my job to ask for two forms of identification and then pretend that the machine wasn’t working and that we didn’t accept checks. I made her walk to the nearest ATM machine and when she returned all sweaty and pissed, it was only my job to pretend that it was my break and she would have to find another cashier. I thought she would call the store the next day and try to have me fired. I thought she would remember me. I worked at her temp agency for almost six months. I saw in her face I was just another stranger to her in the world. She didn’t care. I was that unimportant. She didn’t even remember me.

I still got fired the next day. They were considering pressing charges. Apparently, one of the store employees squealed that I was stealing prescriptions. There was no real proof, and of course I denied it and threaten to sue them for defamation of character but when asked to take a drug test, I declined. I had to explain to my supervisor it wasn’t for the reason she thought. I had enough weed and crystal-meth in my system to set off a drug dog if we crossed paths. On the walk home after being fired from another job I never wanted in the first place, I swallowed a potpourri of anti-depressants. I told myself that when I finally checked myself into a rehab clinic and got sober and told my story of triumph on the Oprah show they would be sorry. I was going to be somebody’s hero.

I was to get the last laugh in elementary when I didn’t get the lead solo in choir because Mrs. Snowflake told me I sounded like god murdering a basket full of kittens with a toothpick. I told myself I was going to grow up and be rich and famous and she’d regret her words. I was supposed to get the last laugh when my high school sweetheart left me for my best friend. I secretly knew that he was addicted to steroids and hoped he’d get violent and beat her. I told myself I would get the last laugh when NYU rejected my college application. I told myself I would get the last laugh when my family didn’t bail me out of jail that time for my third public intoxication arrest.

A year ago, I had decided that maybe they were all right. I was a loser. I saw my future, me begging on the streets, and that watchdog from the temp agency shoving a couple of nickels in my dirty hands and me chunking them back at her because I was still waiting to get the last laugh. I was still waiting to prove the world wrong. But then a calm ease came over me when I was at McDonalds spending my last five dollars on a double quarter and fries. A homeless man walked in, took out his shame and started pissing on the floor. It was the greatest moment of my life because he just didn’t give a damn. And seeing the horrified faces of the customers, and the manager rushing from the back with a broom screaming bloody Mary, the homeless guy just laughed and then started cursing at the manger as he was forced out the door and thrown to the ground. The homeless guy just as nothing happened, pulled up his pants up, cursed some more, and walked away. I stood there jamming fries in my mouth, watching other people react to the madness and the employees fighting with each other who was going to clean up the piss.

The nonchalance made me think of my mother, how she left me in the hotel when I was eight years old to score her high. She never came back. I told myself that she would regret it. Drugs eventually took her life. It took her mind and body. It took her heart. She never got to regret her decision. I was never going to get my last laugh. I waited for the day she would come crawling back. I prayed for it. I figured she asked for my forgiveness and the world would be right again. My luck would be good again. I had been waiting for over twenty years. It turned out I wasn’t hopeless. I was a romantic. But like the homeless man who pissed on the floor, I was going to have to forgive her insanity and just clean it up. That was the real world. My mother wasn’t coming back to make the world right again. She didn’t even care and that’s what hurt me the most. My life wasn’t some Lifetime television show. Some people in the world never do the right thing. Watching that homeless man piss on the floor with no care in the world, I realized I was going to have to find my own happy ending or spend the rest of my life being misunderstood. I was Helen Keller. I finally understood water. It meant the beatings could stop. The teacher of life had taught me the lesson no matter how brutal.

A year ago, I knew my luck had finally changed when I got home and on the answer machine was the Temp agency. It was that same lady who I interviewed and fired me. I thought it was a joke. I returned the phone call. She didn’t even remember me. I set up another interview.

I wore my best suit. I bought expensive dress shoes. I brushed my teeth and cut my hair. I shaved my skin baby smooth. I got to the interview 15 minutes early. She seemed happy to see me. In the interview, we talked about college and Shakespeare. She didn’t even ask about my last employments. She flirted. She took off her rigid glasses and played with her frizzy blond hair. She promised to call me with a job. During the interview I wanted to tell her we’ve met before. I wanted to laugh in her face that she was so easy to please. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to spit in her face like she had mine once before, but I didn’t. I laughed at her jokes. I flirted. I smiled pearly white teeth. I took the job she offered with much gratitude. It was that fucking easy. I finally had words which meant I could play the game.

As I sat in the interview, I knew sometimes we think we’re mad at the world and it’s really just one person. I knew that in the art house version of my life, I would’ve kept rebelling and stumbled into a deeper and darker depression of dugs and alcohol. I would’ve gotten myself killed or committed suicide. It would’ve been sad and pointless like adolescent Goth poetry. Secretly, I had always wanted the Walt Disney happy ending. I wanted the ending where I lived happily ever after, got married, moved to the suburbs, had kids, got really fat and coached a little league team. I was thirty years old, the same age as my mother the day she abandoned me in that hotel. She wasn’t coming back. It was time for me to grow up as much as it hurt. I never felt like I had a childhood. I was wrong. I had a thirty year childhood.

I remembered a year ago, after the interview with the watchdog, Lucy that was her name. I remember that she didn’t tell me her name the first time. She walked me to the elevator. She told me that we should do lunch. I told her it would be my treat. She laughed like little girls who were still happy to see their fathers or after they kissed their first boyfriend. I couldn’t believe how ruthlessly she flirted. I had become her type. And then she farted. It wasn’t a silent fart, more like a bomb had gone off in a swamp. It sounded moist and sticky. She wasn’t finished. She did it again. Her face reddened. I could feel her clutching her butt checks together holding on for dear life. I tried to pretend like I didn’t hear or smell it. I continue the conversation until the elevator doors opened. I shook her hand and told her I would call. I never called. When the elevator doors closed it was my chance to laugh, but I didn’t. It seemed childish to laugh.