Through charisma and flat-out lying, I managed to land a job at the only restaurant in Baltimore that would grant me a walk-in interview. Although it was next to the water and planted parallel to the biggest homeless sprawl I’d seen up until that point, I figured, you know, what the hell. I handed my application to a plump and friendly hostess named Asia, who, I imagine, could make me laugh or cry within two sentences.

As I walked out of the restaurant and sat by the docks not ten feet away, my phone rang. It was a 410 number, but I dashed my own hopes within seconds considering there’s no way the turn-around rate for new hires is 20 seconds.

Either they were desperate or I was played for a fool, but Nikki called me and invited me back in for an interview in the same restaurant I’d left not but a minute before. She was one of the top managers, if I recall, and yes, her name is spelled with an “i” at the end. Isn’t that so cute?

For some reason she grilled me on my college major, recent books I’d read, the length of my penis and other irrelevant lil’ factoids no hiring manager would ever need to know about a potential employee. Like I said, I just smiled a lot and lied, and before I left the restaurant (again) that day, I was a proud employee of SHUCKERS YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD SEAFOOD RESTAURANT OF FELLS POINT, BALTIMORE. On my first night of hosting (nevermind that I was hired as a waiter), we were required to answer the phone with that line.

“HELLO THIS IS SHUCKERS YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD SEAFOOD RESTAURANT OF FELLS POINT, BALTIMORE.”

“Uh, what? I just want to make a reservation. Where are you guys located, again?”

“NEIGHBORHOOD SEAFOOD RESTAURANT OF FELLS POINT, BALTIMORE.”

“Okay, great. Can we reserve a 7:30 slot? I… uh… I believe there will be six people. Wait, shit, what’s the name of the restaurant again?”

“THIS IS SHUCKERS.”

They pretty much frowned upon us deviating from those twelve words, really. Sometimes I got creative, though.

“NEIGHBORHOOD FELLS SHUCKERS YOU HELLO IS OF RESTAURANT POINT SEAFOOD, BALTIMORE THIS.”

My trainer for my first night at the restaurant was Asia, doncha know.

I’m not sure why everyone else in the restaurant was strictly required to wear the appropriate uniform, but for whatever reason they allowed Asia to dress like a Zimbabwean princess. She had a lovely, hearty laugh any pleasantly plump black woman should, and she often gave me candy she kept in her Chiquita Banana woman hat. Eventually Nikki came around and told Asia to clean the women’s bathroom. With a chuckle and a wink, she marched over to the restrooms with a determination to clean toilets; the origin of her motivation puzzled me greatly. I just assumed she was cheery about everything.

As luck would have it, a homeless man with one ear meandered in to the front of the restaurant and spoke to me in a strange, homeless dialect. I attributed his unconventional rhythmic patterns and made-up words to the loss of his ear and quite possibly his mind. I did my absolute best to mask my awkward facial expressions, being that he smelled like a waterlogged bag of garbage. Before I could offer him some delicious candy from the arsenal I’d amassed from my new friend Asia, he looked at me with hollow eyes and began speaking.

“Wha’ yo’ name, man?”

“I’m Ryan!”

“Ryan, huh. I’m Carl. Lemme ask you somethin’, man – what do you want to be when you – wait, are you goin’ to college, Ryan?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Okay – what do you want to be when you get out of college, Ryan?”

“Carl, I really don’t know. I guess I’ll figure that out eventually.”

“You know wha’ I wanted ta’ be, Ryan?”

“Hm?”

“I wanted ta’ be a doctor. Ya know, I’m real good with math an’ shit.”

Honestly, I didn’t really know math had to do with being a doctor, but I nodded and listened to his story. Apparently the dude had lived a pretty rough life, as I’d already determined, but man, some fucking guy ripped his goddamn ear off.

He padded off to the bar and had a few glasses of water before returning to the docks to feed seagulls cigarette butts.

Considering Shuckers was privately owned, an employee of such an establishment is free from the corporate red tape that comes with chain restaurants. Unfortunately this also means that you’re at the mercy of the owner(s); in this case, the owners were three drunks with a taste for, well, alcohol and sexual innuendo. They were also huge cocks. Huge cocks. Huge cocks. I said it three times, just so you know. I don’t want to sound like a defeatist or anything, and as much as I’d like to say I stuck it out for six months before throwing in the towel, I quit after five days. I shouldn’t say quit, really, since I just did what I’ve typically done at any given job I’ve ever had. That is to say, I went home angry and decided I was never going to step foot in Shuckers ever again. Brent, my roommate, worked at Shuckers as well. He chastised me for quitting the job I really didn’t even need (or so I thought) and continued to work at the restaurant for another four days; he then realized I was right and never went back again either.

I’m not entirely certain of the distance between my apartment and Shuckers, but Fells Point is at least 15 blocks away, if I had to guess. When I moved to the city I dreamed about riding my bike everywhere and began to loathe cars in general. Well, let me tell you something right now: I couldn’t have made a bigger mistake with that estimation. While it’s true that public transportation is a marvel of this century and the one before it, I was not granted such a luxury and had to walk everywhere (bike locks are really heavy, or at least mine was). Boo hoo, right? Well, considering my bank account was slowly depleting because of the extravagant purchases I thought I could afford, on top of the fact that I had to park my car 12 blocks away at some shady Haitian bar, and you’ve got a problem on your hands. That and last summer was particularly awful, so I had to change my clothes at least twice a day, which means I’m doing a lot more laundry than I have to. At $1 a pop to clean and another to dry, it can get pretty expensive fast. Oh, and every time I went to the laundry room I’d find a box of dirty clothes some unknown woman would leave out – apparently this woman didn’t believe in absorbing her menstrual cycles because goddamn, you know? You know.

As I said, I was spending money I should have been saving at a shockingly irresponsible rate. Oh, this container of strawberries and half gallon of milk from Whole Foods is only $34, you say? Sure, just go ahead and charge that shit on my Visa!

If only I’d known, really, because three weeks later I was sustaining (if I can even use that word) on boxes of Mike & Ike and salted peanuts from the vending machine in the weight room in my building. My diet was well-rounded and consisted of all the major food groups: sugar, high fructose corn syrup, high amounts of sodium and heavily processed nuts.

But I’m getting ahead of myself! On this particular night, Brent and I decided to survey the roads close to our own in hopes of finding some convenience stores should we ever get a craving on some godforsaken night. I can’t tell you why he thought this was a wise plan, but Brent walked out of his room (the loft) dressed in an skin-tight olive green t-shirt, black shoes and a pair of damn capri/parachute pants hybrid that were tighter than anything I’d ever seen before in my life. In Baltimore. At night.  I shrugged and we cycled off into the unknown.

Now, I can’t say I knew trouble was-a-brewin’ or anything, but I had a bad feeling about those pants. For starters, they didn’t have any pockets. Being the unique soul he is, Brent preferred to employ a wallet/money clip hybrid (he loves things with dual purposes) rather than your standard leather wallet. He was a pretty dedicated vegan, anyhow. Anyway, no pockets. He shoved that thick wallet/monkey clip into the back of his impossibly tight capris to the point where it was at least 60% exposed. You know how women look when they’re nine months pregnant – like they’re about to pop at a moment’s notice? Well, it was a pants and wallet equivalent of that.

We’re ridin’ through the city, a little wind blowing through my hair and sweat forming on my third change of clothes that day, but I’m feeling pretty good. Maneuvering through traffic usually proved to be a stressful and frequent occurrence and despite being hit by cars several times, I always did my best to avoid driving through city traffic. Brent basically just plowed into oncoming traffic and zipped in between buses and other large, dangerous moving vehicles. I pedaled gently from afar, the neon glow of the city sometimes daunting and identical. Eventually we found a 7-11 and stopped off for some delicious beverages. Vitamin Water was all the rage at the time, so we downed a couple of bottles and set off down a partially empty road to air-dry our clothes in the metropolitan fog.

I’d been keeping an eye on that wallet/money clip for some time, considering I was always behind Brent and, for whatever reason, he saw fit to raise the seat on his bike up so that his ass extended into the air well above the level of his head. Just picture that for a moment and then continue reading. That wallet was hanging on to those inarguably flamboyant pants by a thread and OH FUCK IT JUST FLIPPED OUT OF THE BACK OF HIS CAPRIS AND EXPLODED ALL OVER THE ROAD IN FRONT OF 30 PEOPLE. In half of a second, it had flung into the air by his vigorous trot and eclipsed beneath the pollution and neon before showering the pavement with credit cards, change, and at least $100 in fives, tens and twenties. With the first, seventh and sixteenth presidents of the United States chillaxing in the middle of the street before the eyes of 30 or so spectators, I tried to be discrete as I could.

“Brent!”

He continued to pedal on.

“Brreeeennntt!”

“What?”

“Your wallet!”

I’m sure he can hear me, but he keeps on-a’ pedalin’ away.

“YOUR FUCKING WALLET HYBRID IS SCATTERED ALL OVER THE FUCKING ROAD.”

Within seconds he had turned around and began collecting his money, dressed to kill with a sickly pale complexion. I surveyed the surrounding bus stops and realized we’d become a newly-fallen wildebeest carcass amongst an audience of cackling hyenas. He hurriedly scooped up his various credit cards like a deck of cards and stuffed the bills in every which way in those capris, and we sped off into the night a little older.

Apparently we took one or two many wrong turns, because we eventually ended up in the shallows of The Block.

In case you’re not familiar with it, The Block is one of the scarier stretches of concrete and brick in Baltimore – and if you haven’t been to Baltimore, the whole fucking city is scary if that’s any indication of how terrifying our discovery was. The Block is home to sex shops, strip clubs and Baltimore’s prostitution ring that I wouldn’t have otherwise known existed. On a Saturday night in the summer, it’s filled from street corner to street corner with hustlers going to hustler clubs, gangsters doing what gangsters do and scantily-clad women serving as nothing more than arm candy to hustlers and gangsters. At the time I was a young, unemployed white boy riding a mountain bike with a man I shared an apartment with that felt it the perfect night to adorn himself in Guatemalan capri pants. And yes, before you ask, that’s a Subway in between a porn shop and a strip club.

I could tell from the crazed look in those dark eyes of his – those eyes which flared with the morning star – that he wanted to venture The Block, and he wanted to venture The Block hard. I recognized where we were, alright? I’d read the fucking Wikipedia article; I’d read those news articles. I’d done my homework before aimlessly spelunking the depths of Charm City.

“No. No fucking way. No.”

“I’m going!”

Before I could say, “Cool, have fun dying – I’m going home,” he darted off in a breezy daze; his arrogance seeped into my pores.

I spoke to the air, “Have fun dying – I’m going home.”

And home I went. Now, I may not be a very athletic person by any means, but I prayed to Lance Armstrong for the strength to carry me home on His wings, and carry me He did. On the strenuous path back to the safety of my unsafe apartment building, I mentally prepared myself for the phone call I would likely receive regarding the death of Brent. The police would surely go on to tell me that he’d been strung up and crucified above Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club by the olive green garb he’d been so fond of – his wallet/money clip emptied and his dreams broken.

A slightly obese woman approached me from the shadows three blocks from my destination as I waited for the traffic to trail off so I could make my escape.

“Hey honey. You gonna buy me dinner? I know you gonna buy me dinner. Momma’s hungry.”

I was definitely not about to buy this woman dinner, if in fact food was what she was after, so I took my chances with the traffic rather than have stuck around in the lion’s den.

With the last of my energy draining from my fingertips, I circled my own block to once again air-dry in avoidance of changing my clothes for a forth time. As I fumbled to have the keys ready for when I entered the building, a bench caught my eye. Written in faded, chipped paint above the head of a sleeping homeless man, the bench read:

”BALTIMORE
The Greatest City in America”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

To be continued in “World: Fucked”.