u s e y o u r h a n d s

“Whatever, they won’t let me quit,” he said, reaching for another grilled shrimp.

“They have to let you quit,” she responded. Shrimp juice bubbled at the corners of his mouth, threatening to spill over.

He tossed his napkin and shrimp tail on a nearby table. Within seconds, it was whisked away by a blank-faced waiter.

“Well, yeah, they’ll let me quit but they’re just making it hard,” he shrugged.

“You’re being lazy then?” she countered.

The city twinkled before them, unmarred by this tireless conversation. “Not lazy. I’m not lazy, I’m….”

“Unmotivated?” she offered.

“No, I’m motivated. It’s $50 a month. That’s motivation. I’m….”

Until he found the word, she couldn’t leave. And although this whole exchange bored her, it would bother her more to walk away. The perfect word was there somewhere.

“Recalcitrant? Resigned?”

The light went off in his eyes. “Yes, I guess that’s it — resigned. It’s the closest thing.” In a window across from him, a woman gestured wildly while on the phone.

She turned and rested her back against the cold pane. The table skirts didn’t match, she noticed. And the chardonnay tasted gamey.

Jeri’s Grill is located at Montrose and Western. Its facade is aqua and black with a large sign reading “Ham On The Bone.” Good on them, I say, for advertising their wares in so succint a way, but damn them to hell nonetheless! For each time I pass this establishment, I sing “Ham On the Bone” to the tune of one of two songs.

They are:

1) “Band on the Run” by Wings
2) “Head Like a Hole” by NIN

I hate both of these songs. Hate them. And you probably do as wel. But see if you can resist singing them with my new lyrics.

Another Friday in Lincoln Square. After 30 years, I just can’t take this anymore. The neighborhood has changed. It used to be Germans in for pie and coffee. Now it’s these young kids in their twenties with weird hair and notebooks, drinking coffee for hours while listening to these small white boxes. Sometimes I catch them looking at me, trying to look inside me.

I think it’s funny that I’d have any idea what a career waitress would be thinking. While I’ve had my share of crummy jobs (that stint in the bread factory comes to mind) I have a college education and a decent resume. So, unless I have to work a blue-collar job as a condition of my parole or capital-R-Recovery, I’m probably going to remain out-of-touch with the workingman.

These types have been in the diner as long as I’ve been here. They watch me and write little paragraphs in their sticker-covered journals about my life. They theorize about my disappointments, my supposed ignorance. “How did she get here?” they wonder. And the truth is I don’t know myself. How did they get there, drinking weak coffee at two in the morning? I guess someday one of these kids will write some book and I might end up in it.

HAM ON THE BONE!
HAM ON THE BONE!

Ham on the BONE
Ham on the BONE

It is a smoky place where a sundae is just cheap ice cream and dream whip.

Want a refresher, hon’? Oh, got some on your notebook there. Coffee’s on the house.

I went to my doctor last week. She took one look at my sad, carpal-y hands with their nerve damage and muscle atrophy and put me on 24-hour brace use for the next three weeks. “And no more scraping,” she said, referring to the joy of my heart, scraping old mastic off Brian’s kitchen wall with a heat gun and putty knife.

What do I do now that the sheer joy of scraping the stinky, bubbling mastic off, to reveal cracked drywall, has been taken from me? Why, scrape something else! My attentions have turned to the spare bedroom. Brian refers to it as “Kitty’s Den ,” for someday, it will be my special room when I move in, slash, of course, spare bedroom. The walls are covered in layers of wallpaper and paint so think they’re pulling away from the wall. And this is an 80 year old house. I expected the worst.

In previous googling, This Old House et al. suggested a Paper Tiger. This bad-ass fucking tool is a disk with these multi-toothed gears. You glide this across the wall and it scores the paper. I got my putty knife under a good 1/8 inch of layers and layers of shit. Like a knife through butter, the old wallpaper came off in sheets. A wrist-friendly action, btw. It required level 2 of 10 pressure.

The patterns and colors of all the house’s previous residents were on display, layer by layer. On the bottom, the original owners had papered with a faded salmon deco print. Actual paper! Then several layers of paint. Sometime around the ’40s or ’50s though, someone got a little zany with the paper. One wall featured a bright pattern of red flowers with green foliage and the other a complementary blue and white striped number. It’s sort of gorgeous in the way things are when you don’t have to live with them. And then several more layers of paint. And a layer of plain wallpaper. With paint on it. I’ve done half a wall and uncovered most of the blue and white striped paper. The deco paper peeps out here and there.

I keep thinking about the people who put up the paper and paint. We don’t know who all the owners of the house were, but we plan on researching. But I feel so much excitement and energy in the paper. People decorating or redecorating their home, investing effort to make something their own. Or, looking for a fresh start that wouldn’t come with coat after coat of white paint.

We’re pulling all of it off, the hopes of others, down to the original drywall. It’s been nice to see what came before and I’m worried that getting rid of all of the memories this house holds will divest it of some character. That it will make our touches hollow. But that’s probably too deep, and it’s just old paper and paint. We’re ripping down mistakes and the actions of years of lazy homeowners. It should have been done years ago, I keep telling myself.