Employer, No Guns!

“Get fucking real!, ” she said to me as I walked out of the apartment and down the street to the Green Room where Peter and a table were waiting. It wasn’t like I had not done this every Thursday night since I we got married back in the spring of ’96.
She used to like Peter, but refused to like him anymore. She didn’t like the way he refused to prune the facial hair… and he drank too much. Drank himself into oblivion three nights a week and just into a stupor the others. She never laughs at his jokes. Peter is a funny guy, especially when he’s tied a few on.
I met Amelia in college and we hit it off immediately. She was the kind of girl I had waited for all through HS, but that alas never came on the scene. She was there under the tree at the Hare Krishna free dinner. My mother told me it would all be better in college. Girls would respect brains. Like I was ugly, maybe I was, or am, I don’t know.
Peter and I go back to Bethesda and Lowes Grove Elementary. he provided the first beer I ever drank, and it was with him that I shared my first alcoholic buzz. As a prerequisite for joining the little social group the two of us had created, he would ask if the male applicant masturbated. If the answer was yes, we would laugh and say that was sick. If the answer was no, we would say, “why wouldn’t you? Liar!”, and as equally dismiss them. Tough crowd.
Peter believed in the importance of baseball. The way in which a rock show really could change your life (hopefully for the better). Amelia and Peter initially thought the world of each other. Peter told me that she was the woman I would marry. In fact, he was the first of the friends to sign the virtual petition permitting us to make such an action. I don’t know what has happened.
Peter comes over to watch the games on most Saturdays and some Sundays. He brings cheese dip and the occasional woman that he finds himself sleeping with. Most of the time it’s just cheese dip, perhaps a six pack of light beer.
The other engagement is the weekly Thursday night at the Green Room where Peter buys the beer and takes me to the cleaners for the sum total of about $20 a week. Once a month he lets me win, but he has the billiard muses riding his back. It’s like a social obligation.
Amelia took a job as a paralegal with a law firm two years ago and has since gotten all uppity on me. That is when the problems with Peter began. She was alright with me for awhile until the last six months. Her crowd has changed and she want me to change mine too. She bought me a suit for Christmas, replacing my graduation one – bought my parents – that is about 30 pounds too small now. We go to firm “socials” on Friday nights, twice a month. I did not join a fraternity in college for a reason. She talks of going back to Law School, and I pretend to be interested. She tells me I should do something with my writing. become a journalist or something. Write for the local entertainment weekly where I do have inroads. She is dissatisfied that I am the senior staff member at Visart Video on Hillsborough Road. I like it though. Not the seniority, but the contact with people, the service provision, and most of my co-workers, except Micah – who incessantly talks of his fecal fetish and wears a dagger on his belt while on his shifts. I remember the internship summer at the agency when I felt the suffocation. The suffocation of what my life SHOULD be like upon graduation. Videos are good enough for me now. Five PM until midnight is alright.
Peter has been landscaping since dropping out after our junior year. He “couldn’t handle the oppressive administration and structure”. He’s read more books since then that I have. He wants to be poet laureate of the United States one day. A desire which i have tried to talk him out of repeatedly.
Amelia doesn’ t think that Peter is the type of person “we” should be tarrying with now in our “new life”. Peter is just dragging me down and keeping me from accomplishing my goals. She doesn’t understand that without him I might me in the bottom of a river with a cinder block chained to my left foot by now – self-imposed.
I do love her despite how all this may sound. I love the way she gets sweet at bedtime. The way she works a party. The way she loves Detroit the same way I do, despite the fact all of the friends think we are crazy.
She told me today she was pregnant and I took three steps back. Not that we weren’t planning, but we weren’t planning for now. Everything is alright as she has health insurance for us all through the firm. She asked for me to start searching for a writing job tomorrow, and I guess I will.