YEAR TWENTY TWO: "What do you mean you're allergic to onions? You'll break out or somethin?" "Naw muthafucka...I'm gonna breakDANCE, fuck, yeah fool I'll get all lumpy, shit. I don't even want another meal, you put me off my senses."

Went back to St. Louis for the summer. Had to get a job quick, two times. Eviscerated the collection of cash I amassed in my bank account before the end of my second semester at NYU. Hobbled back to Ma and Pop's extra dusty. Spent the first bit of June scrapping around for a slave.

Worked at an Egg Beaters factory for a week. Elastic hair net gobbling up the mass of springy curls I let vine out unchecked throughout that first drug hazed school year. Disposable garbage bag with arm holes smock covering up my street clothes. Snatching pint cartons of cholesterol free psuedo egg slurry off a motorised assembly line. Prerefridgerated cardboard boxes fed to us in small incriments. Quickly popping them open like a pup tent and throwing eight cartons in them. Shoot down the pick up ramp. Mind drilling boredom.

Luckily, they only needed extra help for a momentary increased production of liquid pretend eggs. I happily collected just one check from them.

Soon after I scored another cooking gig at Mama Talanya's. Four years after ripping off my smelly apron and pissing on it for retribution, believing I'd never stoke the fires of a pizza oven ever, had the wooden paddle and rolling cutter in my hands again. Snarky, I was grateful I had the mad tomato sauce skills to score that miserable gig.

That fucking, "Whoomp, There It Is" song garbled once too often out the dime store ghetto blaster back in that kitchen. Once again I had the sole paleface. I was moderately down with the Luke, rump shaka, Miami style bass when the forties are draining and the shorties are bursting out their biker shorts. The booty jiggling music wears a man down in the seventh hour stretch, Dickies soaked through with garlicky sweat.

By that time I was heavily emitting stonar. Takes a burn out to locate a burn out. Chad, a Napoleonic redneck waiter began inviting me out back to make "Chinese eyes". Often halfway through a shift I was sparkin in the parkin lot. Became an easy over the food warming counter hookup. He would stuff my portion in the dipping sauce Sweetheart take out containers. Lash, my pooch, would zero in on my pocket, nearly vacuuming the pot through the denim fibers. Told the folks that's where I rubbed sausage grease.

I had it out with the manager. Pimp fantasies rolling through his Kangol, he ordered the kitchen staff to all start wearing green t-shirts, so we'd all match and shit. Budget was tight, shelled out for three of them anyway. Homie stops me in my tracks and tells me it's not the right shade of green, he wanted more of a pine look. Not that he specified a hue to me beforehand or anything. He seriously was on my tail on the matter. Pausing from slicing mushrooms, offered him one of my free "you am a bitch" looks through over the tops of my specs, chef knife perched in my hand, I let him know that he could go ahead on and fire me over a t-shirt if it rattled his gold teeth so much. Little over a month and I was headed to New York anyhoo. He squashed it.

Other than the onset quote up top, another favorite phrase was gifted to me. Another pizza cook was watching me eat salad with blue cheese dressing. "Why don't you use thousand island like me?" "I like this better." "Hmmph, you like to eat the shit that make ya frown up huh." Heh, frown up, gotta love it.

I suppose I did wind up leaving out any NYC tales of that year all for a brief three month period back in the gateway cesspool. Maybe I will show the ruby gems of those days next. Maybe not. Just suffer.