The World Vs Richard Young

The intricacies in the mind of Andrew the Bartender

Andrew stood behind the bar thinking about his weight issues. These of course were all in his head, but he couldn’t help shake the feeling that ‘beer’ (the word, not necessarily the liquid version) was the main reason for his faulty thoughts. His shoes were on too tight, forcing him and him alone to believe that even his feet were getting fat. He could not understand why he was getting so fat, his water intake had increased by an average of two litres a day since his mental diet had started nearly three weeks ago. He began  the diet on the recommendation of a coworker of his, a server named Ashley who had enough troubles of her own being filled with thoughts of nails stuck into her back three ribs at all times. Andrew placed a lemon in a nicely iced water and watched it float around for a bit and wondered about things such as how argyle socks would work as filters. The canopy outside the bar was already being sat by the clueless hostess, who at the time believed that A. there was a table out there, and B. that there was someone working that section. She was hired on the assumption she was decent at customer service, regardless of her having no prior pub experience. The rest of the workers in the bar all knew it was because she had brought a peanut buster parfait in for her interview which she had prepared to give to the manager she was surely to be interviewed by. He was a blank-staring type guy, who both through his obsession with sweater-vests and man-thongs, also wore sandals to work in order to claim his position of power above his polished black leathered employee base. The author of the ongoing story of the pubs life took a break to sip at his tall glass of an overly hoppy brew, and continued on with thoughts of how the girl sitting next to him’s leg was very slightly nudging his left knee. The author was contemplating offering this girl a bottle of Canadian* beer to repay her for the kind nudging, she however was oblivious that any of this was happening, and very unaware of how slight a touch could turn on a simple small town boy such as this author in such a way that he may feel the need to play superman and buy this woman a drink, accompanied by a sly wink and easy smile.

                A man coughed in the background and another rushed to the bathroom surely to throw up his overly battered fish and chips (the tartar sauce was off)  and would surely ruin the freshly placed urinal cakes in the gentleman’s station. Andrews eyes floated upwards to watch a very depressingly atrocious game of darts being played by two eighteen year olds who each had no idea how to play the real game, but were simply playing ‘for drinks’ and getting much to inebriated in the process. He hated his life. Andrew felt as though this is all he knew and all he would know. The dreams of running some sort of sex hut that he conjured up in junior high were all but gone, there was no way he was ever going to get laid, whether he owned a sex hut or not. It was his hairy fat toes, he knew it. Damn it. If only he had more confidence, it was this realization of a lack of confidence that actually shattered what little confidence he actually had. There was no way he was ever going to amount to anything or go anywhere exciting or even be honourably mentioned within a semi-exciting speech from an overly-excited prom queen. He was trying to pinpoint the exact moment in his life when it all went to shit. It didn’t take long, maybe three minutes of ignoring customers. It was the time he decided to eat that moldy hot dog on a bet, forcing the losing party to go to the premiere of twilight’s new moon with his best friend Sam’s little sister. He had won the bet, in a very Julius Caeser kind of way, and as the ‘et tu, Brutus’ forced the bet-man to go to the movie covered in sparkles with flour fluffed onto his face. Ah yes, his one moment of success. He thought he could revel in it for at least fifteen years, but it turns out that three was all he could muster up, because once again, he was depressed.

                Normal people take normal things with a grain of salt, but no, not Andrew. He was the type of guy who would take everything with a pinch of salt, and as a result his whole life was overly saturated with salty grins and overcooked asparagus.

   “This is ridiculous!” he finally screamed out in a sort of horror-fear-adrenaline combination.

   “Ridiculously good?” The man at the far left side of the bar asked, motioning  to his white Russian, which was in fact the most delicious one ever created in the history of mankind, but was ignored by a raging Andrew and resulted in being the most consumed white Russian of all time, and was lost for all time, inside the stomach of the man on the far left side of the bar. This man was the kind of man who looked his best when running in a trench-coat through a dimly lit street. This man was the kind of guy who could do anything he wanted at anytime, much like a movie star. This man was, David Duchovny. This fact however was also overlooked by Andrew’s raging depression and Andrew himself would have been sad to note that he had missed a chance to talk to the one and only David Duchovny, and if he had noticed this fact, he would have, quid pro quo, been even more depressed.

He bent his knees and leaned against a cooler, for exactly three point two seconds he wished he could have it easy. It of course being life. And easy of course being the kind of life similar to that of roadkill. He stood back up to get another extra hoppy beer for one of his patrons, only to spill it onto his pants, sigh heavily, and pour another.  He hopped up and down and flung his hands obsoletely at his pants, hoping it would help dry them and keep them from getting that odd sticky yet coarse feeling of dried beer on non-denim pants, but instead only managed in appearing like a clown to his customers, which resulted in the throwing of many citrus wedges, such as lemons and limes in his general direction.

Andrew did the only thing he could do in this situation. In order to not anger all of his guests and lose all possible tips from them, rather than yell and do copious amounts of random stomping around, he popped a few pieces of bubblicious and began chewing uncontrollably, he had that feeling where his ears were hot, he could hardly believe that this job could get him this angry, he had only been this angry once before, he felt like turning green and smashing all the glasses in the pub, he wanted to rip the building out of its place and hurl it towards the sun. His ears only got hot when his face was beyond red, when it was chilli pepper hot, when it was (to be politically incorrect), ‘indian’. His eyes fell upon one last yet new member to the pub, it was his replacement.

   “Don’t panic,” The man said, “Your shift’s over.” 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 I hope you made it this far down the page, I know reading that may have been difficult. it was a writing exercise done between me and Andrew the bartender. I was sitting at the bar, and every time he walked by he would say a random word, and i would have to incorporate it in some way. sometimes I would have two to work with at a time and it was very hard to make anything happen with so this is how it turned out.

Richard.

Word list(that i can remember) in order :

Beer

fat

water

ashley

argyle socks

canopy

pub

peanut buster parfait

man-thongs

superman

urinal cakes

darts

sex hut

moldy hot dog

Sam's little sister

Ridiculously good

David Duchovny

cooler

roadkill

clown

copious 

bubblicious

don't panic