You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Sad Souls.
It’s a Saturday Night at the bowling alley.
The vibe is loud and bright.
The ambience is rock and roll accentuated by the constant crackle of pins exploding.
Imagine what it’s like to be inside a lit fire cracker and now you get it.
“It’s a 20 minute wait,” the man behind the counter tells me. He is affable, smiling.
“No problem, we’ll hit the snack bar,” I say.
Nothing quenches the thirst for life like bowling alley food.
We walk into the bowling alley café.
I don’t remember a shift in the time space continuum, but obviously it happened as we crossed from the carpet the color of vomit to the carpet the color of bloody crime scene.
This food alcove is little more than a counter, a few sporadic tables and some misplaced bowling alley equipment tucked into the corner of the room.
The air is whipped by 3 giant over head fans.
The cold air smells like microwavable cheese sticks.
The ambience is anthem rock from the 80’s mixed with the thunder of balls striking greased wood.
I am not an idiot. I realize this is not a five start restaurant. I know that the culinary selection here is akin to gutting a carp on a dock in the Philippines.
But there’s something decidedly off in the bowling alley café.
It’s one part Twilight Zone and one part rude.
I approach the counter. I am the only person in the cafe.
I look at the employee. The man ignores me. So I stand, politely, quietly and wait.
I look at the menu and the beer selections.
I clear my throat and make hard eye contact with the man.
Nothing.
I look at the employee who is 3 feet away. He is so close I can touch him. Yet his eyes avert me. He is working, doing something behind the counter I cannot see.
What is so important? I wonder.
Did the soda machine break? Is the counter full of slushy? What’s the problem that I am so insignificant?
Does my presence not merit so much as a glance?
Maybe it’s me. I look down wondering if this is the place you order.
The employee is so dismissive I wonder if I am possibly standing at the wrong end of the counter.
Did I miss the sign? Is the café closed.
No, this is the right spot, the only spot, I decide.
I look at the white man behind the counter. He is perhaps in his early 30’s. He has rock and roll long hair and a scruffy beard from the Miami Vice collection.
He is doing something, anything, but paying attention to me.
WTF? I am the only customer in the café.
I mean there is nobody else here!
The man looks like a Bonnaroo refugee. His hair is scraggly, his ear is pierced. He is wearing a plaid shirt from a Pearl Jam concert.
I watch him and wonder why he won’t approach me.
The café appears to be open. I am in the spot where you order. Yet I am invisible.
I grab a menu, and begin picking out items, trying to be helpful to this process.
God forbid if he ever does decide to wait on me, I don’t want to slow him down.
Pizza. Beer. Maybe a ham and cheese, I silently decide.
After what seems like an eternity, or a 3rd Bon Jovi song, I feel a pulse of anger.
“Hey man. You open?”
He looks up at me, as if he never saw me standing there. He looks at me with blank disdain as if this is a test or a hidden camera prank.
He looks like he is going to throw down his note pad and quit.
There is a tremendous amount of tension in the air, and almost all of it coming from him.
“What can I get you?” His voice is a dismissive, So What, a recalcitrant, Who Cares.
I am quiet for a moment. I stare at this human belch and think to myself.
No hello.
No welcome to Café Bowling blah blah blah.
He simply assaults me with a blunt formation of words that further agitate me.
“I want a large pepperoni pizza.” I say, my temper beginning to manifest.
He rolls his eyes.
I’m getting pissed. “What kind of beers do you have?,” I say shouting over an Ozzy Osborne love song.
The man seems angry. The man seems to sneer. The man doesn’t even try and feign that he hates his job or himself or his father or perhaps me.
He hates something and right now I’m getting both barrels.
Without looking at me he takes a deep sigh and pauses.
The sigh pisses me off. The pause is infuriating. I take a deep breath.
I can either stay cool or go over the counter like a badly executed SWAT manuever.
I stare at him. He stares at me. Where is this freak show of unpredictable uncertainty headed next, I wonder.
I imagine the consternation swirling in his brain. Did he lose a loved one in a house fire today? Did his boss just scream in his face about his bad attitude on the job?
Is this guy just a F***ing Jerk?
Without looking at me, he stares at the beer bucket to the right of the counter.
He whispers the beer selections. I hear the muffled word “light”. I hear a word that sounds like Amstel.
Thanks Ozzy!
He looks at me and his face droops. His eyes want me to die.
I stare into the face of angst and realize this is what’s wrong with a generation.
He doesn’t smile, he doesn’t try and sell me anything. He is repulsed by the fact that he is interacting with someone ordering food in a bowling alley café.
“I’ll take a Shiner Bock and an Amstel Light.” I say.
He turns from the counter with no reaction. No words. Nothing. Silence, contempt, a glare.
He grabs a plastic cup and he pulls the tap.
He fills the cheap, plastic cup to the rim and places it before me.
“That’ll be $33.00,” he says with the passion of chewed gum.
I hand him my card. Now I’m pissed. I realize this is a bowling alley. I realize that this guy is probably some wanna be song writer and he feels waiting on bowling alley schmucks like me is beneath him. But you know what Wannabe; this is America. Nobody is forcing you to be here on a Saturday night. If you don’t like your job, quit, get another job. Chew on some food stamps. I don’t give a crap. But don’t humiliate me. Don’t make me feel like I’m the bad guy for buying a pizza and a couple of beers.
As he takes my money charging me for cardboard pizza and a beer in a cheap plastic cup, I feel disqualified as a customer. I feel diminished. I feel disrespected.
He stares at me waiting for me to sign.
I sign my name. With a dramatic pause, I push back the slip, leaving the tip line blank.
I stare back at him with the angst of Green Day’s lead singer.
I walk away.
Part of me wants to kick his sorry ass.
Part of me wishes I had tipped him.
Why would I think this?
Because now I’m afraid he is going to spit on my pizza.
It’s then that I see a man I nickname Calliope.
Why Calliope? Because in Greek Mythology, Calliope was the muse who presided over eloquence and poetry. In circus lore, Calliope is something brightly adorned that celebrates life.
This man was the antithesis of that. He is a heavy set white man wearing shorts and high tops. He has a large round face and beard.
The man’s hair is dyed bluish green. Perhaps it was purple and red. It was like a mood ring of sadness.
I stare at Caliope’s face. It is one of despair, hopelessness, pain.
I watch the heavy set man move through the café working as if he is an indentured servant.
He is wiping down tables and pushing a carpet broom.
He is moving without life, without a pulse.
The negativity coming off this man is distressing. He is a walking vacuum suck.
If the man behind the counter was rude, Calliope is a black hole of hopelessness.
He is a contradiction. He is brightly adorned with blazing blueish green hair. But he is sullen, sad, sunken.
He is the circus clown who cannot speak, who will not speak, whose pain is masked behind his colorful face paint.
After a few minutes, I walk up to the counter to check on my pizza.
I see Calliope come out of the kitchen with plates that look my order.
“Hi, I think that might be for me.”
He turns to me. He has no words. His face is expressionless. He holds the food toward me to see. It’s as if he is a mute and unable to communicate.
The vibe at this food counter is surreal.
Between the angry angst filled wanna be and this gigantic mope, I am uncomfortable in a twilight zone of family fun.
He begins handing me the food without checking, without words, without any connection to my order.
“Is that mine?” I ask loudly.
Wannna be turns to Calliope and says “Yes. That’s yours.”
“Do you have a tray?” I ask angrily.
“We’ll bring it to you,” he says not answering my question.
I am frustrated as I sit down at lane 11. Is this a bizarre social experiment? How much denegration will customers actually take?
Calliope delivers the food. He has no emotion, he has no words. The sadness on his face is a cemetery on a rainy day.
“Are you OK,” I finally ask.
He stares at me. My words somehow connect.
He looks possessed, frantic, his eyes probing, darting.
He shakes his head slowly and mouths the word NO.
Then he walks away, a sad cockatoo of color and faux hair and high tops.
Calliope is dressed like a circus smile, but in reality, he is a piece of mud being flushed down a storm drain into oblivion.
I drink my beer from my cheap plastic cup. I watch a fat married couple bowling in front of me.
They drink their beers and smile and high five one another.
Calliope and Wannabe are not part of their evening.
I swallow my ham and cheese and pray I don’t taste another man’s spit.
I watch people bowl and listen to the cacophonous mix of rock and roll and pins rattling.
I watch Calliope do odd jobs around the alley, always returning to Wanna-be behind the counter.
What happened in there, I wonder. What horrible thing has happened in there to rob one man of courtesy and another of hope?
I turn my gaze away from Satan’s Cafe.
I decide not to look at these two again. They are ruining my night.
I transform my mind, and focus on my group.
I let the light and rock and roll and excitement of the lanes fill my soul.
I enjoy those I’m with and sip my beer with or without the accentuated flavor of spit.
I breathe in another AC/DC song and rattling of pins.
Life’s Good here.
In the café?
Well that’s a place for a simmering knife fight between tortured souls and misguided angst.
Life’s Crazy™