how to not succeed in business by really, really trying [part 1]

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[this one wasn't supposed to be next in the beau and mike series--god knows there's paper routes and a crazy week in london that need to be talked about first--but (a) flipping through my ratty old portfolio and finding the pictures, this is what came to mind tonight; and (b) noblesavage requested a post about this chapter of my past awhile ago, so i'm figuring what the fuck.]


so one night in early 1985, beau and i are sitting around his apartment playing backgammon, he's drinking more than a little and we're both attempting to brainstorm our way outta our mutual poverty.

i'm maybe six months into my first job outta architecture school, disillusioned as hell, turning out working drawings for shlock mcmansions of some anonymous hack's design

[and, once they found out i could, coughing up pretty promotional pen-and-ink renderings of whatever abortion i'd just finished drawing

 you know--slap a little lipstick on the pig, never hurts]

all for the princely adjusted-for-inflation equivalent of $11.75 an hour--great, huh?  yeah, i thought not, too, and by the time the events of this post took place, i was looking for a way out.

and beau?  see, this is why i shouldn't skip ahead, because a lot had happened to beau in the ten years since the fox's lair debacle, but now's not the time--let's just say he was between gigs and leave it at that.

the night in question, i'm over at his place and i happen to mention, "get this--chinese guy i work with was talking today about his cousin in new york pushes a noodle cart around manhattan, makes a couple hundred bucks a day."

this gets beau's attention--stops him in mid-roll, actually.  "noodles, you say?"

"yeah, noodles--the cousin boils up some noodles, makes a chicken broth or some such shit with spices and chunks of meat in it.  guy orders, he dumps noodles in a little cardboard container, fills it to the top with the broth, hands it to the guy along with some throwaway chopsticks, collects three bucks.  wife comes by a couple times a day to refill the cart, and that's it--they're cleaning up."

and then, the fatal question:  "hell, why couldn't we do something like that?"

the fatal answer:  because beau and mike don't think that simple, or that small.

three hours and no small amount of vodka later, the noodle cart has morphed into a 28-foot customized RV, and the noodles and broth have become a full menu featuring stir-fried chicken, beef, pork and shrimp with a choice of six different sauces.

we'd aim it at the UT crowd, and move as they did--park near where they were most likely to need lunch, and then maybe drive over to a different location for dinner.  and spring break and summer?  padre island, baby!

by the end of the night, we even had a name for our little walk-up chinese operation--WokUp (clever, huh?)--and grandiose plans to franchise the idea nationwide.

we congratulate ourselves on our brilliance, and i head off home to prepare for another day of low-paid drudgery.

i didn't give it much thought after that--hell, if i'd had a nickel for every wild-ass scheme beau and i'd cooked up over the previous ten years, i wouldn't have had to go to work the next day--but a couple days later he calls me and asks me over for dinner.

"what's up?" i ask suspiciously, because twice a week's outta the pattern.

"come over--you'll see."

i walked through the door, and holy shit, he had it all worked out--the apartment was filled with the intoxicating aromas of all the food we had talked about, and spread out before me on the coffee table were scale drawings he'd executed of Unit 1 [as that first RV would be called].

turns out beau had been busy.  on the day following our conversation, he'd grabbed every chinese cookbook he could find in the library, and--an amazing cook in his own right--distilled several intricate, time-consuming recipes down to five simple, workable (and incredibly delicious) sauces.

next, he found a motorhome similar in size to what we'd need, taken a few measurements and come home and transformed it into a fully-operational mobile chinese restaurant [on paper, anyway].

finally, he'd searched out a chinese market from which he'd gathered not only the necessary spices, but also an authentic spun-steel wok very much [ok, exactly] like this one:

between bites of hoisin-explosion chicken and sweet-&-sour pork, i point out on the plans where we should probably move this here and adjust that there, and i ask questions like "have you talked to the city yet?", but beyond petty niggling, i can't find much wrong with what he's come up with--it's impressive as hell.

as far as money goes, [as usual] he doesn't have any, but [also as usual] he's already talked a potential investor into coughing up half of what we figured it'd take to start up.  the other half?  well, there's always the mkf graduation-present BMW sitting out there just begging to be borrowed against.

i ask him:  "you really wanna do this?"

he says, "yeah."

so we did.

[stay tuned for part 2]

but i can't

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[inspired by tonight's tour of the gay blogsosphere--but it coulda been most any night, really]

as my long-time readers know, i spent the first 34 years of my life swimming against the stream, wishing i'd been born straight.

and then, once i finally not only reconciled myself to the fact that i was dyed-in-the-wool queer but even began to revel in the idea, i found myself in the ensuing years swimming against a different stream--namely, wishing i'd been born liberal.

because, either/or--born straight or liberal--god knows i woulda fit into my milieu, felt i belonged in my surroundings and slept so much easier all these years.

seriously, i can't tell you how much easier my gay life would be if i could just find some way to drink the kool-aid and accept without question the indisputable gospel that

(a) conservatives are by definition extremist anti-american assholes;

(b) anybody who opposes any gay-related issue for any reason is automatically a hater and a homophobe (whatever the fuck that even means);

(c) anybody who calls themselves christian is by definition a malicious, cretinous idiot beneath even discussion; and, finally

(d) liberals are in some intrinsic way more caring--and thus more noble--than everybody else.

god, sometimes i really wish i could.

should i or shouldn't i?

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consider, if you will, the following draft memorandum:

To:  [insert name of office manager here]

cc:  [insert name of human resources manager here]; [insert name of facilities manager here]

Subject:  Was This Really Necessary?

So Friday night at dinnertime i walk into the kitchen, open the refrigerator and reach for my salad, only to find it's no longer there.

I frantically search high and low--and ultimately find it.

In the trash.

And yeah yeah, I know:  Friday's refrigerator-cleaning day.  And yeah, I also know:  bad me, i failed to label and date my salad before i put it in the fridge.

But, seriously, I ask you--even considering the trashy surroundings, does this look like a salad that shoulda been thrown out to you?

I could kinda understand my salad being tossed had it been in an unlabeled, anonymous bag, but it wasn't--it was in a sparkling-clean, crystal-clear Pyrex bowl very much [i.e., exactly] like this one:

Fresh cabbage, cucumber, celery, radishes, tomatoes, red onion, avocado--a gorgeous, five-hour-old salad, its pristine freshness clearly visible through the glass--cavalierly thrown in the trash for no good reason I can see.

Back when we had three floors and twice the personnel i could sorta understand the rigid, unthinking inflexibility that resulted in innocent folks' food getting thrown out, but that is no longer the case--today, i see this kinda crap as nothing more than gratuitously punitive.

I spent half an hour and god only knows how many dollars' worth of organic produce lovingly assembling that salad before I came to work--only to end up being forced to spend an additional $7 for a crappy sandwich and chips at goddam Famima just so i could have something to eat that night.

And yeah, i'm pissed--somebody splain me, why did this happen?

I'm an easygoing guy and don't bitch often--in fact, in all my years of employment at _____________ I don't recall having ever bitched about anything before.  But i'm bitching now.

Seriously--if we must forsake common sense and judgment for this zero-tolerance, Nazi rigidity for no good goddam reason other than "it's just our policy," then could you at least leave our food out on the counter for us to try to save before you mercilessly throw it in the trash at the end of the day--is that too much to ask?

___________________________________

the stakes:  sending the above email would (a) scratch a serious itch i've had for a long time; (b) instantly elevate me to hero status among the rank and file; and (c) seriously embarrass, and thus earn me the undying enmity of, the anal-retentive nazi asshole [insert name of facilities manager here] whom i damn well know was the one who threw out my goddam salad--which could, and probably would, come back to bite me in the ass in any number of ways in the future.

is it worth it?  i almost think so, but then i'm drunk and thus possessed of questionable judgment--what do you think?