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Mr. Hogg Gets Paid
Sep. 10th, 2006 09:22 am2pm is the Little Store's weekend bellwether. If we're up to $200 by 2pm, we'll make my projections for the day.
By 2pm yesterday we were at $76. I resigned myself to a shitty day. I wasn't even particularly upset over it.
Dr. H tells me I'm suffering from post-traumatic-stress syndrome, that I stagger around in a dissociative fugue state in order to avoid painful, overwhelming feelings brought on – presumably – by the dissolution of my family.
Personally I think the dissociative fugue state is Buddhistic enlightenment, an existential choice. Life is fleeting. Why attach? I mean, sometimes you can't help attaching – as in my ongoing angst over Robin's misbehavior. But that's not really me, that's primate parenting instinct, Great Ape behavioral response mechanisms programmed into my brain at a deeper level than enlightened frontal lobes can mitigate.
I exist in a happy present tense like Chance the gardener. I watch TV. I have a deep and meaningful relationship with Lorelei Gilmore, Tim Gunn and the police team on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. I have many, many best friends – they come to visit me at the Little Store; for ten minutes or so, we chat and banter, basking in the radiant glow of Best Friendship. Then they give me money and take away a teeshirt, or a book, or a piece of ceramic kitchenware or a couple of bottles of hot sauce. When they come back a couple of weeks later, they expect me to remember their names or their faces, which frequently I do not. Their expectations are a manifestation of ego. But Best Friendship is not about ego. Best Friendship is all about the perfect now.
Poor little Mr. Hogg in Mesa, Arizona will not get paid if all I can take in on a Saturday is $76, I think.
I imagine Mr. Hogg for a second. My mind's eye paints him as a cheerful, overweight character, maybe 5'2", living in a trailer camp, supplementing his social security by pimping his chili mixes. For a moment I feel a rush of nervous concern for little Mr. Hogg, disturbing my perfect existence in a perfect present tense. What if Mr. Hogg goes hungry because I can't afford to pay his $212 invoice? What if he's forced to add dog food to one of his chili mixes and eat that for dinner?
The moment passes.
Hey! It's survival of the fittest, fuck-face, in this competitive, cut-throat world of ours and you just didn't cut the mustard, Mr. Hogg, your claim is waaaay down there beneath paying off the American Express card and cutting the Cannery Row Company its (still) exorbitant rent check. You deserve to eat dog food, you optimistic, garrulous, folksy little fuck! So long, sucker!
I wander out on to the plaza to talk to Mike, the face painter.
"So the big auction is next Saturday," says Mike.
"What big auction?" I ask.
Mike gestures to the upper floor of the vast Cannery Row building on the opposite side of the street, home to a popular pool hall called the Blue Finn. "The Blue Finn went bankrupt. Didn't you hear?"
"Wow! They've been around forever!"
"Not anymore," chuckles Mike. "Anyway, next weekend they're auctioning off the fixtures. A lot of good deals."
Now's my chance to pick up a cheap refrigeration unit so I can sell over-priced beverages, I think to myself. It can be done. I only have to stiff a few more of my vendors.
But I'm still marveling how the Blue Finn could have gone bankrupt. It was a popular local hangout.
"They say the owner drank," Mike said and I think, Aha! That's because he never learned the skill of living perfectly in the perfect present tense!
When I wander back into the store, something peculiar happens: I am overwhelmed with customers. Literally. The line in front of the front counter is so long it snakes out the front door and for the next three hours I am Best Friends with nobody, I have no personal relationships at all, I'm a clerk in a store punching receipts into a cash register.
By the end of the day, the Little Store is up a grand and the first thing I do when I get home is write a check to little Mr. Hogg.
"What's for dinner?" Robin asks.
"Pasta," I say. "But you'll have to wait a second."
I put the check in a stamped envelope, leash up Xena, and walk to the mailbox. "Would you like some of Mr. Hogg's award-winning chili mix in your Alpo tonight?" I ask her.
Xena wags her tail.
By 2pm yesterday we were at $76. I resigned myself to a shitty day. I wasn't even particularly upset over it.
Dr. H tells me I'm suffering from post-traumatic-stress syndrome, that I stagger around in a dissociative fugue state in order to avoid painful, overwhelming feelings brought on – presumably – by the dissolution of my family.
Personally I think the dissociative fugue state is Buddhistic enlightenment, an existential choice. Life is fleeting. Why attach? I mean, sometimes you can't help attaching – as in my ongoing angst over Robin's misbehavior. But that's not really me, that's primate parenting instinct, Great Ape behavioral response mechanisms programmed into my brain at a deeper level than enlightened frontal lobes can mitigate.
I exist in a happy present tense like Chance the gardener. I watch TV. I have a deep and meaningful relationship with Lorelei Gilmore, Tim Gunn and the police team on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. I have many, many best friends – they come to visit me at the Little Store; for ten minutes or so, we chat and banter, basking in the radiant glow of Best Friendship. Then they give me money and take away a teeshirt, or a book, or a piece of ceramic kitchenware or a couple of bottles of hot sauce. When they come back a couple of weeks later, they expect me to remember their names or their faces, which frequently I do not. Their expectations are a manifestation of ego. But Best Friendship is not about ego. Best Friendship is all about the perfect now.
Poor little Mr. Hogg in Mesa, Arizona will not get paid if all I can take in on a Saturday is $76, I think.
I imagine Mr. Hogg for a second. My mind's eye paints him as a cheerful, overweight character, maybe 5'2", living in a trailer camp, supplementing his social security by pimping his chili mixes. For a moment I feel a rush of nervous concern for little Mr. Hogg, disturbing my perfect existence in a perfect present tense. What if Mr. Hogg goes hungry because I can't afford to pay his $212 invoice? What if he's forced to add dog food to one of his chili mixes and eat that for dinner?
The moment passes.
Hey! It's survival of the fittest, fuck-face, in this competitive, cut-throat world of ours and you just didn't cut the mustard, Mr. Hogg, your claim is waaaay down there beneath paying off the American Express card and cutting the Cannery Row Company its (still) exorbitant rent check. You deserve to eat dog food, you optimistic, garrulous, folksy little fuck! So long, sucker!
I wander out on to the plaza to talk to Mike, the face painter.
"So the big auction is next Saturday," says Mike.
"What big auction?" I ask.
Mike gestures to the upper floor of the vast Cannery Row building on the opposite side of the street, home to a popular pool hall called the Blue Finn. "The Blue Finn went bankrupt. Didn't you hear?"
"Wow! They've been around forever!"
"Not anymore," chuckles Mike. "Anyway, next weekend they're auctioning off the fixtures. A lot of good deals."
Now's my chance to pick up a cheap refrigeration unit so I can sell over-priced beverages, I think to myself. It can be done. I only have to stiff a few more of my vendors.
But I'm still marveling how the Blue Finn could have gone bankrupt. It was a popular local hangout.
"They say the owner drank," Mike said and I think, Aha! That's because he never learned the skill of living perfectly in the perfect present tense!
When I wander back into the store, something peculiar happens: I am overwhelmed with customers. Literally. The line in front of the front counter is so long it snakes out the front door and for the next three hours I am Best Friends with nobody, I have no personal relationships at all, I'm a clerk in a store punching receipts into a cash register.
By the end of the day, the Little Store is up a grand and the first thing I do when I get home is write a check to little Mr. Hogg.
"What's for dinner?" Robin asks.
"Pasta," I say. "But you'll have to wait a second."
I put the check in a stamped envelope, leash up Xena, and walk to the mailbox. "Would you like some of Mr. Hogg's award-winning chili mix in your Alpo tonight?" I ask her.
Xena wags her tail.
