Pocket Dispatch from a Lockout
“Corner. Hey Paul, are we out of that Kenyan dark roast?”
“Hmm? Uhh… yeah.”
“K. Th-.”
“Wait a sec. You better get in here.”
“There are customers, dude. I’ve got a line—“
“Fuck em.“
“Oh… K?”
“You guys still with us back there?” Some douche in an button-down shirt is in the back of the stock room, trying to hold the attention of the rest of the staff. My manager, Paul, who never looks worried, is trying to look at the douche and the exit at the same time. He looks like he’s thinking fast.
“Anyway, you’ll all be paid for your final shifts today. All stores will cease operations effective immediately, and you’re dismissed as soon as you can close the store. I’ll be on site to answer questions and take the keys when you’re done.”
I look at Paul and mouth WTF? but he’s already shaking his head and closing his eyes slowly. My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Paul, who is standing right next to me.
closing all stores. Now. we have to get customers out, then leave.
My eyes go wide, then narrow. I turn around and push the swinging door hard. I don’t say corner. I can hear the douche’s voice rise behind me, then get muffled by the door. “Hey, we’re not done here. Hey!”
“OK,” I tell my customer, who is clearly doing Pissed Texting on his phone, ducking back under the bar. “I have bad news and I have bad news.”
He makes the same face at me I made at Paul’s text.
“We’re out of that Kenyan dark roast, and the store is closing.”
“Can I still get my coffee?”
My eyes blur and my mind goes somewhere else for a second.
“Brother, the way I see it,” I say, glancing halfway over my shoulder as I pull a coffee cup from the stack and start filling it, “You can have anything you want.”
I hand him his coffee with a muffin from the case, then pour myself a Hopewell Going Places Hazy IPA. It is 7:30 AM, our busiest time of the day, and my line is now 10 people deep.
As angry as I am over losing my job, it suddenly dawns on me I get to tell people to get the fuck out while simultaneously demonstrating generosity and benevolence with stolen goods. Whatever corporate leech or VC bros own the inventory on the shelves surrounding me, I figure they won’t send anyone around to collect it until long after these customers and I are gone.
I turn the baked goods case around on the counter with its back door open.
“Help yourself, folks. What else can I get started for you?”
After about 5 minutes I’m having the best time ever. Most customer interactions go something like this:
“Did I hear you say you guys are closing?”
“More like someone is closing us.”
“Has this been coming for a while? Did you know about it?”
“Nope. Just found out myself. Help yourself to something from the cooler on your way out.”
“Can I take these flowers,” one woman asks.
“Ma’am, I insist.”
But of course it was too good to last. Eventually the douche in the button-down appears next to me at the counter, puts a few fingers on my elbow, and says quietly to my ear that I need to send the customers out of the store and clock out. Paul is standing behind him, looking bored. There’s no fight left to have, and in this sobering moment I realize that if I’m being honest for once, we are bourgeois vs. bourgeois. There’s no struggle here, no injustice, no privation. There will be no uprising, no martyrdom. We are college educated baristas working in a chain of overpriced convenience stores, acting like basic business is denying us our rights somehow.
“Sure, Brian,” I say to the buttons on his shirt. “My name is Sean, act-” “HEY EVERYONE, SORRY, BUT BRIAN HERE SAYS YOU HAVE TO LEAVE. STORE’S CLOSED.”
The collective scoff from the line, which still stretches to the door, is one of the only crumbs of satisfaction I’ll savor in this experience. Most people turn around and leave quickly. One guy grabs a tray of our terrible sushi on his way out, and Sean, Paul, and I all pretend not to notice—our first and final action as a collaborative unit.
“Thanks,” Sean says to me. “I need to make a call while you guys close down and clock out.” “Sure thing, Brian,” I say.
It’s just me and Paul at the counter now. The front door is locked and the closed sign is up. Paul unlocks it every few minutes for an employee to leave.
It’s now 8:15. I’ve had about three beers.
“I’m fucking taking this rosé,” I say to no one in particular, mostly Paul. “Fuck The Man, man. This is… this is the people’s rosé.”
Paul gives me a look that’s a mix of bemusement and pity. He’s a lot older, like 30, and even though we’re not friends, sometimes he treats me like his little brother.
One time my actual older brother walked in while our parents were out of town and I was having a party. Or at least I’d tried to throw a party, but the only people who came were a couple dudes from the newspaper, and we hadn’t been able to figure out the pony keg he scored for us.
I remember him giving me the same look, like I couldn’t even get into trouble right.
“Amen brother,” Paul said. “Grab me one too. Then get the fuck out. I’ll text you later. We gotta find new jobs.”
Classic big brother shit.
Pocket Dispatch from “Flying to America” by Marco Parisi
Was the soft pounding sound coming from the music, or the apartment above? Or was it inside my head? It was gentle enough, not unpleasant, but persistent and mysterious. My suspicion aroused, I strained obsessively to hear it.
The strings washed over the pounding sound, and over me. They could have been acoustic or synthetic. The slid up and down in a bath of reverb, making small waves, evoking an emotional response that surprised me. It was sad—I realized I was mourning something—but I welcomed it as the first strong feeling I’d had in days.
I closed my eyes and imagined the landscape this music evoked. I imagined the environment that inspired it, and the artist in the space where he created it. The title describes an international flight, and the artwork looks like a view of clouds from above, or maybe a view of sand in soft focus, rippled by yesterday’s high tide.
These images gave way to a montage of my own memories, real and imagined, of making art. Strong emotions giving way to dramatic expression. I remember it in colors and slices of moments, silenced and flitting by so quickly that some are indecipherable.
My life had recently stopped feeling like my own; my memory no longer autobiographical.
Pocket Dispatch From A Light Stroll
It’s a late spring day. The sun is shining and hot, and I am trying to incorporate more exercise into my life, so I will go for a walk outside.
The less I take, the better. I don’t want to be weighed down by heavy things, and it will be easier to clear my mind if my hands and pockets are empty, too. So I will only take my wallet.
And my phone. My responsibilities require me to be reachable most of the time in case something happens with the kids at school, plus I might forget something that’s on the calendar or need to answer a text message. But at least I’ll only have my phone and wallet.
A notebook would be good. What better way to enjoy being out in the neighborhood than by sitting down at a cafe and writing down some thoughts? I love to write in notebooks, especially with a simple ball point pen. Sometimes pencil is best, but if I take both, I’ll be set. Maybe a few colors of felt tip marker in case I need to emphasize something.
Actually, if I write something good, it would be great to be able to draft a text file in my writing app for revisions and maybe even posting later. The iPad is usually my favorite for that, but the keyboard case is in the office where my wife is taking a meeting, and I don’t like typing on the screen, so I’ll just take my laptop.
This is more than I originally meant to take, but it will all fit in my shoulder bag. Wallet, phone, laptop, notebook, pen, pencil, flair pens. This is fine.
I turn to the door and notice the book I’m supposed to drop off at a friend’s house a few streets over. This walk is the perfect occasion to take care of that.
Next to the book is my camera, which I’m trying to get better about carrying on me at all times now that the weather is good for street photography and people are out in interesting dress. I grab it.
My shoulder bag is overstuffed now and I’m a little worried about the camera falling out, so I clip its strap to the bag with a D hook.
I grab my pocket knife—you never know—as I turn back to the door, the bag’s strap digging into my shoulder. I slip into a pair of sneakers and start down the stairs, slightly unsteady under the weight.
Pocket Dispatch from Canvassing in the Rain
This poor bastard is standing outside in a cold drizzle, wearing an ACLU vest and waving at strangers approaching him from 20 paces. He uses all the tricks from training to get their attention—“hey, Chrome bag, all right! High five. Hey, got a second for civil rights?” He’s always got his fist out for a friendly bump, but people point to their earbuds, making a banana with their thumb and pinky. Sorry, I’m having an important conversation with no one about how I’d rather cut off my own gangrenous foot than talk to you.
He’s young, but not young enough for this shit. Grad school must not have panned out. So he’s canvassing while he figures out how he’s going to make a difference in the world. Or if there’s any point in trying.
An older canvasser walks over. They talk sometimes when foot traffic slows down between trains. It’s hard to imagine they’re making small talk, since they make an exhaustive volume of it with the people they stop on the street. It seems more likely they’re trading tips or descriptions of the ones that just barely got away. Maybe they’ll be back. Most people pass back the same way later.
When he burns out and needs a break, he takes out his phone to make a call of his own, little bits of talking followed by long drags on a vape pen. I imagine a canvasser for some other charity walking up to him and trying to get him to talk. Do these guys ever prey on each other? What happens if you locked two of them in a room?
How does the recruitment process work for canvassers? Probably happened on a college campus. No doubt it involved other canvassers standing on sidewalks near the student center, under the train, outside the sociology department. But instead of looking for donations, they needed warm bodies to stand on sidewalks elsewhere. To find donations. Can it be a pyramid scheme if the compensation is hourly and low, or nonexistent?
I picture today’s canvasser walking out of one of those campus buildings, deflated and disillusioned, realizing he’ll never finish his thesis and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference in the world if he did anyway. He probably had sad eyes and a slow, directionless gait. A look the recruiters are trained to spot and jump on. Fresh meat. An ideal candidate.
“Hey there,” I imagine them saying to him. “You look like you could use someone to talk to.” Or maybe, “Hey man, you want to help us make a difference out here in the real world?” Two day-long training sessions and a couple days of shadowing, and he and his clipboard are making the world a better place at last.
The way he points at passing women and beckons with his fingers for them to come over and talk to him seems barely distinguishable from catcalling. He is persistent, even as they say, “Sorry, no.” Sometimes he leans in toward their path, or follows them for pace or two.
Turns out you can get away with a lot when you’re wearing an ACLU vest. A similar windbreaker is available for purchase on the ACLU website. Actually it’s on sale.