What I learned on my memorial day weekend.

By Hobobarista.
Age 23.
Grade 18.

The first thing I learned on my memorial day weekend is that nice girls from south suburban boston can drive into cities without sponteneously driving the wrong way up a one-way street, off a cliff, burst into flames, bounce, end up in a river, and drown because the seat belts are jammed. This is only accomplished by good directions, however. Otherwise, flaming, blistering death followed by unnecessary drownings, I'm sure.

The second thing I learned on my memorial day weekend is that Brooklyn is very large. As I am not a mapologist or mathologist, however, I cannot compare it to Rhode Island in size, using fractions.

The third thing I learned on my memorial day weekend is how to bowl. Bowling is a game, where you mostly sit, but sometimes you throw something at something. Which makes it somewhat like baseball, except bowling happens indoors, near women named Carol. I also learned that staunchly heterosexual men can protectively cradle sparkly things that they've named after members of the E street band.

The fourth thing I learned on my memorial day weekend is much more thinky. Who you are is what you do, even if you don't do anything. Especially if you don't do anything, but significantly so otherwise. I'd managed to take this trip while my host and his friends were attempting something they've called the psuedo-sport olympics, which to me seems to combine all forms of gaming that can be accomplished without major physical conditioning, while drinking, with many visits to bars, for drinking, when gaming is not happening.

At the final bar visited Saturday evening, (Sunday morning, at this point) something started to crystalize for me. And not calcium in my gallbladder. Cognitions. Questions. Dissonance. Despite not actually knowing these people, I was having somewhere between 2/3 and 9/12 of a hell of a time. Much like I do with friends from home. But something was different. Around four am, it suddenly occured to me.

My friends were getting up for work.

These guys were going strong.

This was the first sunday that I haven't worked, excluding two brief vacations, in two and a half years. If you are a waitress, a coffee girl, a bartender, a cashier, a salesgirl or boy, or work in any job that requires you to facilitate anyone's outside of work life...you work weekends. That I have saturdays off, and have managed to maintain that for years, is a minor miracle of manipulation, whining, and threats of quitting. If I stopped working sundays, that would be quitting. If I stopped working holidays, that would be quitting. I have worked two thanksgivings, two christmasses, a new year's eve and a new year's day, two halloweens, and this is my third memorial day.

Skilled labor gets holidays. Unskilled labor, despite how hard the job is, stays on. Because without unskilled labor, how would the rest of you fuckers spend your sundays and holiday weekends?

And it gets to you.

The first year goes by fine. While everyone in the world gets up for work, you may be still asleep. Or while everyone is hitting the middle of their work day, yours may be over. You may get tuesdays off, and spend a day strolling through uncrowded museums, see an afternoon movie in an abandoned theater. It's moderately cool. It's almost like finding a loophole. You feel like you're cheating. Then the holidays come. And it's not so bad. You get time and a half. Big tips. Maybe your family holds dinner until you get off.

By the middle of year three, which is where I am, you're just fucking tired. Everyone you know, by that point, works in the same type of job you do. Because everyone else in the world does things on the weekends. And you can't. So people get tired of inviting you to do things that you can't do. So you pal around with the same exhausted, embittered, tip-dependent, apron, smock, and vest-wearers. People who understand that they may never have two days off in a row for the rest of their life People who have gotten used to wednesday hangovers and clear-eyed sunday mornings.

It's not a class thang; it's a caste thang.

And the bright dividing line between the upper castes and lower castes in America is weekends and holidays. The upper castes get them off. The lower castes spend theirs in service to the uppers. We're no longer a white, blue, and pink collar society. The white collar workers experience more instability than the blue, and can't really be distinguished from the pink. Is an administrative assistant really a secretary, or an administrator? Nobody knows. Try getting a plumber on a sunday, though. Or a mailman, mechanic, tow truck operator, electrician- they've got the day off. Manicurist, hair stylist, waitress, waiter, bartender, anyone who feeds you, touches you, or pretends to like you for money- all at work.

Saturday night was my first saturday night with the ivory to lavender collar crowd, followed by a sunday morning being served instead of serving. It feels odd. The whole lifestyle is foriegn to me. Knowing that everyone you know has the day off, all at the same time, and will have tomorrow off tomorrow, seems so foreign to me. But it's the lifestyle of my friend, and his friends. A lifestyle I haven't known since college.

It's a different world.

Another thing that I learned was that a grey-bearded man in a fifteen year old Toyota can get a blowjob while stuck in traffic in front of yankee stadium.

And that I'm a little bit of a bitch when I'm overtired.

And that a mid-sized blonde, fucking a man a little too affable to be entirely heterosexual, in a borrowed bed, can sound exactly like a wounded seal taking refuge in a hefty bag full of water balloons and astroglide.