Sometimes Cupcakes are All it Can be About

i'm sleep deprived and confused. i'm feasting on a $3 cupcake while typing this sentence with one hand. simon is off in travis' room, eating an orange. in some ways it's neat we're doing it at the same time because fruit is basically mother nature's treat and cupcakes are humankind's treat.

anyway, the cupcake can be explained in the end. firstly, it is important to know i woke up at 7am to open the shoe store. secondly, know that i closed the shoe store last night and went out in between.

it's a strange morning at 7am, but much more strange when you wake up wondering if you've broken up a lesbian couple.

usually bad mornings mean only slightly better night-befores.

and this was no exception.

i have a crush.

i have a million crushes these days, but i also have a few real ones.

she's a girl i work with (maybe this is why i wanted a side-job?) and the first co-worker to go for drinks with me. we actually only had one-- she a martini, and i a manhattan-- but we stayed in the rain on top of macy's for over an hour, chatting.

"should we put it on separate cards?"

"let me pay for it," i said, "and you owe me a drink."

"deal."

"see, and it's a trick," i said, "because now you have to do this with me again."

she giggled a good giggle. i don't know how else to explain that and it's unfortunate because that giggle felt like it played one of the most important roles of the evening. it was a good giggle.

anyway, the lords of chaos would have it so i was scheduled the opposite days of her for the next week. there would be two days we would both work, but she'd be off at 3pm and i'd come in at 3pm.

during the week i texted her a few times, but very carefully. we had talked about guys who'd text her random off-putting cutesy wishes like, "sweet dreamz, beautiful." or "mornin', cupcake." i didn't want to be that guy.

though i did at one point text her, "sweet dreamz, honey bunches of oats!" to which she replied, "you too, babycakes."

this is not where the $3 cupcake comes in-- that's still at the end, though i do recognize i'm having a horrible time getting to the point or staying in order with this story. it's just i feel there are a lot of small details that are meaningful. like the fact the cupcake costed $3.

so. i didn't want to creep her out with texts, but if we were to go without talking for an entire week we would be basically erasing any magical feeling left over from the night on the top of macy's. so i texted her a little. a very precise little. i even made sure not to keep her texts in my inbox too long so that drunk-me couldn't find her name and text-harass her whilst whiskey-drinking.

okay, but more to the point:

we worked together last night.

i was more or less waiting for the shift to be over to go drink with this girl. it's amazing what a horrible worker i am when i'm thinking about a girl.

"my friends want me to go to a drag show now," she explained.

"ah," i said in my best me-not-being-sad voice, "well do enjoy."

"will you come with me?"

score.

"i want nothing more than to go to see drag queens with you," i said.

we walked from work to truck on folsom and sixteenth. that walk was half because of the muni and half because she had told me she liked going on walks and could never find someone else who did.

truthfully, she spent a lot of time explaining roommate-related drama that was currently on edge-- but i suppose we're all victim of something similar.

so i met her four friends whom i have named anna, joe, ben, and betty.

the drag show was about what i had imagined, and for a moment we had her friends convinced i was a drag queen on the side. the shoe store was just for the discounts.

somewhere in there, i traded jackets with betty because hers was a lengthy red coat with fake cheetah fur on the wrists and collar.

i figured i might be able to score more free drinks in that outfit. there was no real success but i realized she was carrying her passport as an id and she realized i was carrying a bacon sandwich in my pocket. and i realized i probably should've finished the sandwich but was already having my buy-one-get-one-free whiskey on the rocks.

there are gaps in a lot of parts, but i know we didn't stay at the drag show long before heading to another bar. our muni had the right number, but was headed the wrong way. though, technically, it was headed the right way and we were just on the wrong bus.

we did finally end up at q-bar. i'd never been there and i can only describe it as a sort of miniature club with flashy lights and a little stage with a sofa and some dancing patrons.

please note in the above sentence "patrons" is pronounced "pay-truns" and not "puh-trones" as that would be an entirely separate image.
more importantly, there were about ten australians and one belgian who had all booked a stay at a nearby hostel and stumbled into the bar unaware that it was a gay bar.

they were hungry for women and liquor, and until we showed up they were only able to solve the liquor problem. our group consisted of three guys and three girls.

also, to my knowledge, everyone in our group was single.

i'm not sure what the australian [whom i have named turd-waffles] whispered in my crush's ear, but he kept at it and certainly abused the "this music is so loud" excuse to be as near to her as possible.

i never thought i would be cockblocked at a gay bar.

at one point, i returned from a cigarette with ben and realized my crush was gone. and, according to joe, she'd left with the aussie. fuckin' turd-waffles. the one belgian man confirmed only before asking whether or not my two lady friends were in fact ladies-- he was more than paranoid in san francisco, but it makes sense given the location of his hostel.

"i just met them today," i said, "but i'd say they're ladies."

"oh good," he said relievedly.

"though we did go to see drag queens earlier."

while my crush was off with turd-waffles, i chatted with anna and betty. joe looked like he was going to pass out, i'm not sure where ben was, and there was a rumor about the four of them snorting a line of adderol before going out.

"do you like her?" betty asked me.

"yeah, i do."

"but do you like her like her?"

"well yeah," i said, "i thought that was what you meant."

"do you want to date her?" she asked.

"you're asking a heavy question there," i laughed.

"because she's weird," betty said, "do you want to date her if you have to deal with her randomly disappearing or doing random things all the time?"

"she's having fun," i said, thinking about turd-waffles.

"she talked to us about you after you guys hung out," she said, "she wouldn't have hung out with you that long if she wasn't interested."

"that's good," i said, "nice. it was fun."

"she said you worked with her and that you were hot," she continued, "but she under-exaggerrated. you're amazing."

i laughed at the sudden change of conversational direction.

"thank you."

and then she came in for a kiss at such a confident speed it felt like she was as sure it would go well as a girlfriend would be about her own boyfriend. and at that speed, i had a short moment to decide and just kissed her, too. i figured my crush was with master turd waffles of eastern australian doing their thang and i'm single-- so whatever, it's better than rejecting the kiss.

she pulled me to stand on the stage and dance with her. i danced. sort of. and she kissed me a lot more.

"it sucks that she left," i said, "because i don't really know anyone."

"don't worry. forget her," she said, "you know us."

and then she kissed me more.

anna kept calling my crush's cell and would occasionally tell me that she was on her way back. she seemed really worried and at the time i had taken it to be that she wanted things to work out for me and my crush. i thought she was trying to get her back so betty would back off and turd-waffles could give her up to me.

it made sense in my head.

we eventually met up at another gay bar and the australians and one belgian man followed. at that point i considered my crush a lost cause and truer to the verb "crush" than the noun. but i was drunk and enjoying myself nonetheless.

i did have to watch my crush give a great make-out good bye to turd-waffles, though. even now i'm not sure how i feel about that. if i care or not. i do know i could've gone without seeing it, though.

"we're going to head home," anna said about herself joe, ben, and betty, "do you want a ride?"

"you should stay with me and i'll cab you back," i whispered to my crush.

"i'm gonna stay," she said.

score.

i figured that no matter what had gone on with turd-waffles and his accent, i could still recover. i don't know if i was sure of what "recover" meant to me, but i know i didn't want the night to end without some form of hope for myself.

plus, denying the chance to bail with her friends seemed reassuring.

and i do promise there is a part about a $3 cupcake. it's just this is a very long story and we're nowhere near the end. but i wanted to let you know that i haven't forgotten and it will be back.

i can't honestly say i remember much about the final moment we had alone, but that is partly because it was short and interrupted by a phone call.

"anna and betty broke up," she told me after the call, "because you were dancing and making out with betty... apparently?"

they were lesbians that entire time? i suppose the three gay bars should've been a hint.

"wait, no," i stuttered, "i didn't know they were together. and she made out with me. if you put a somewhat attractive face near enough to mine quickly i'll kiss it. it was so not meant to cause trouble."

"she saw you making out with her," she said.

"but it so didn't mean anything! i have no reason to lie to you: she was the one making the decisions and i just went along. and she even seemed to be trying to convince me to stay away from you."

"really? that's weird. why would she do that?"

"because," i said, "i like you. it's retarded. i like you and i didn't mean to kiss that girl or break up any relationships. i wouldn't have if i'd known. but i like you. i've got a silly crush."

we talked about how she had known the entire time and then we talked about how i know she talked about me with her friends after our first hang out session. and the whole thing felt stupid because i had only confessed my crush in hopes to prove that i would not have been the one to make a move on someone else.

maybe it also came out because i was just sick of holding it in. but either way, it was hard to tell how mutual the feeling was or was not. it's also possible that she was just so overwhelmed and confused by the night there was no way for her to know what she felt any more than i can expect myself to make sense of it now.

"you should come home with me," i said. i didn't plan to have sex with her, but i wanted the whole "i like you" bit to end with some sort of "me too."

"i have to go to their house," she said, "and play mediator because of the break up."

"bah."

"i'm gonna be here everyday," she explained, "we're gonna have other chances to hang out. i just have to do this."

not a bad response to "bah."

i went home furious. i mean i went home in a cab, but furiously. and i was only furious in my mind-- on the surface, i was calmly drunk with a strawberry blonde resting her head on my lap. but i was furious and it was 4am.

no one enjoys potential rejections from crushes, but it certainly doesn't make matters easier when you find the escapades may have caused a lesbian couple to break up and you still didn't get to kiss her because she was busy with a tourist.

and it also doesn't help to have to be up at 7am for work.

waking up with a mind full of that kind of chaos reminded me of the time i woke up with a sore fist, sore butt, seventeen empty forty bottles, and a shattered plank of wood laying nearby. it was one of those detective days. simon equated it to his morning-after halloween, wondering why he was punched nine times in the neck and how he had ever found a baby anaconda.

those mornings are always strange mornings.

luckily drunk-me was trained enough to properly set two alarms. but i was still furious when i woke up. furious and confused.

i didn't change my clothes. i just rolled out of bed, put my shoes back on and grabbed my jacket.

oh, my jacket. my whore of a jacket. drunk-me did get that jacket back. but that jacket was missing $12, a small olympus audio recording stick, and a pack of gum. my cigarettes were smashed in their box and covered in brown fluid which was not scary enough to cause me to avoid my morning smoke this particularly horrible morning.

on the bright side, my burt's bees chapstick was not missing. though it's a terrible world when the bright side is that i still have some burt's bees.

i couldn't smile at the starbucks cashiers, and i couldn't smile at the tourists or my co-workers. i clenched my jaw into itself and my hand around my coffee and just stayed furiously confused for about fifteen minutes.

"okay," the manager said, "huddle topics: there's a new contest."

the before-shift huddles have always reminded me of flight of the concords and murray hewitt. this particular huddle was explaining that any store that sells more gift cards than it did last year will get prizes. and the winner of each district would receive one of three prizes:

"you can choose to win a $10 gift certificate to the store," she started, "get $5 and a lunch, or have one whole day of free food for everyone."

"pff," i laughed.

"what's that for?" the manager asked.

"the free food thing," i said still furious and still confused, "we were promised free food on black friday, too."

"there was pizza and cupcakes," she said.

"no, i know," i explained, "but i worked the night shift so i didn't get any. actually, i came in early and saw three sheets of ice cream cupcakes in the freezer and thought i would wait till my break to grab one because there were only twelve people working. but then i came back and people were licking their fingers and there were no cupcakes."

that was, quite possibly, one of the dumbest things i have ever complained about. but i was mad and perhaps not handling the previous night's chaos so well. i needed to complain about something and that something happened to be cupcakes.

i was assigned to the men's floor, which-- on a monday in the ams-- is about as action-packed as a sloth doing whip-its. it was empty shy of me and the minnetonkas and asics. the shoe horns and footie-socks. the sound of the endless escalator and the freedom of vacationing tourists outside.

after about fifteen minutes, christmas music came on the store speakers. christmas music is the worst medicine for hangovers, puppy-love triangles, and drag queens.

and for an hour, i was alone up there with the shoes and jingle bell rock.

at times i legitimately considered walking out of the store. even on its most interesting days, the job was never very mentally stimulating and it seemed that the giddiness of seeing my crush at work would probably no longer exist.

but i made it through the day. somehow. i remember realizing my wrist still had truck's stamp of approval: "genius" it said. that stamp allowed me to drink two-for-one whiskeys while watching drag queens dance. genius.

i felt like a moron.

at 12:55pm, just five minutes before my shift would be over and my nap could begin, my manager came in through our radios:

"steven," she said, "before you clock out to go home, i need to talk to you. come by the office."

god dammit.

i take the shoe store job only as seriously as i take ke$ha, and there could've been a number of reasons i was called to the office. i've discovered i am not nearly as great a worker when my rent does not rely on the job-- and i've hidden in no way the fact i do not understand the concept of shoe-shopping.

part of me was pretty sure i was going to be fired on account that i smelled like a gay bar or three and was glaring at every customer who entered the establishment. that same part of me would not have cared so long as the firing process went quickly enough for me to get home and nap before 2pm.

"you called for me," i said.

"ah, steven!" my manager said with a smirk.

there were three managers in the room, actually, and it reminded me of the winchester mystery house: any time i would get in trouble they would sit me before three bosses in order to intimidate me the same way lyndon b. johnson's swivel chair was designed to intimidate.

"ah, me!" i said back, "what's up?"

she pointed at a small box on her desk.

"that's for you," she said.

"what is it?"

"it's for you," she said again.

"why?" i said with a reasonable amount of paranoia after the night before.

"because," she started, "you didn't get a cupcake on black friday. so i bought you one."

well, god dammit indeed.

"oh, wow," i said, "that is so genuinely nice. i mean, thank you. that's almost just too nice. now i feel like a dick for complaining."

"no, no," she said, "don't feel bad. you need to complain so we know what we can fix. enjoy the cupcake!"

"oh i will," i said, "thank you-- seriously-- it's been a rare few days. i'm going to eat this at home so i can first prove to my roommates this really even happened."

and that is the cupcake i'm eating now. i mean, i'm not eating it anymore. i finished it way back during the first paragraph. and it was delicious.

it was a $3 cupcake.