Rob looks, in my memory, exactly like Crispin Glover. I have one clear vision of him giving me a ride home and blasting "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown" followed by a string of ahead of their time Tommy James & The Shondells songs.
Wanda persisted in believing that I didn't want to date her because of race, despite my best efforts to explain that a) I already had a girlfriend and b) I didn't think dating my supervisor was such a good idea.
Chaz sits front and center at the reading. After the out of town guest poet reads her first poem he oozes forth with, "It's really about fucking, isn't it?" Then proceeds to remove his overshirt to expose his sleeveless undershirt.
Chuck and the newbies around the twenty gallon mixer. "Never, NEVER turn it on without checking its on low speed." He pushes the button. A column of salsa erupts to, showers from, the ceiling. "Now clean that up!" he deadpans.
Dale has one speed: casual. He'd rather work a day that's longer, overall, than hurry things up to fit into an eight hour day. He was born to mosey. But he traded in his beloved Formula Firebird for a Corvette.
Don got picked nearly last when the popular-boy captains were choosing up sides, which made no sense to me since he was way better than most of the popular kids who got picked before him. I picked him third.
Jeannette must have smiled at some point in her life, but, in forty years I have never seen it, though I must confess I have missed far more family gatherings than she has. This was true after I missed one.
Jack is the Poet Laureate of Scranton, PA, and the longer the people whose job it is to make it official wait to do so, the greater the shame and embarrassment they accrue for their catastrophic failure of civic duty.
Hector and his boyfriend were out looking for a car. They found a Nissan 300Z that was--miraculously--within their price range. When they asked the salesman why it was so affordable he cooed, "Gentlemen...always move FORWARD in life."
Dave was shady from the start, "impressing" us with "Dear Penthouse" style stories of ladies he'd helped out with their first month's rent. He kept is physical address a secret, and did the bulk of his business from his car.
Melissa was known as the Sledgehammer of customer service. I once walked into her office to hear her ramming "Sir, I am NOT arguing you. SIR, I am NOT arguing with you." into a customer's ear. He didn't believe her.
Vito was the kind of a guy who took great delight in hiding pennies in the places a lazy mop might not reach. We used to move them to new places he didn't put them, or, replace them with nickels.
Rob was the banquet manager on autopilot after too many years at the same job. He told me his million dollar idea was to sell wedding insurance to parents so they could recoup the wedding costs when the union dissolved.
Mark is a guy I would have loved to have spent more time talking to--our views on the evaluation of quality in art track along similar (not identical) lines. Turns out the circles we run in are magnetically repulsive.
Jane was responsible for more than shaping the clay that made me who I am today, she was one of the very few who affected the armature the clay hangs on. Never romantically involved, I never wanted to disappoint her.
Fred is for floundering, puts the f in fubar, is another way to spell Derf, is surrounded by a flurry of flying, festering fecks that affect his faculties, and feigns a fake forgetfulness when failure finds him. F! for short.
Marita has impeccable but always original taste in everything that has to do with color and/or texture. She married a man who taught music until the family business called for his considerable talent for numbers. Opposites seem to attract.
Tony said, "Whaddya eatin'?" I said, "Whaddya got?" He said, "Sit down, Maria'll setcha up." He then proceeded to give me small dishes of a variety of slurpily good Italian dishes "Sos that next time you'll maybe know whatcha want."
Andy became the kind of kid who'd pull a pair of scissors on his grandmother. I say "became" because he wasn't always so overflowing with rage at one person (who deserves it) that it had to spill out onto others.
Sandy was a career waitress and a grandmother at the age of 32. When the purity test in Cosmo asked her if she'd ever had sex with a foreign object she said wistfully, "Well, there was that one Italian guy."
Kathleen was the closest thing to a girl next door I knew, but she was my half-sister's age not mine. I recall a slight speech impediment and a laugh that wriggled like a pack of weasels in a pillowcase.
Tony occasionally needs to make good on the promises his over-enthusiastic friends make for his abilities. The good news is, his talents are such that those promises are trifles to fulfil. He makes music like most people make excuses.
Mike is the guy in the playwrighting critique circle who doesn't hesitate to respond to the question, "Is it working?" with "No, not really," when it isn't. He'll also tell you how to fix it if you're able to listen.
Bobby looks like he could be a race car driver, but I'm not so sure most people would guess he races midget cars (and not because it's tough to picture him racing open wheel cars or on a dirt track).
Jim was the new kid in seventh grade who stole girls' hearts. He had smiling eyes, or a squint. He was smart, or laughed at everything. He was athletic, or, with fifteen boys everyone who tried out made the team.
John got hired during my week off. My first day back I said, "Hi, how's it going?" he said "I have the most tremendous urge to drop my pants, spread my cheeks and spray liquid shit all over this place."
Lucia looks like an artist, dresses like an artist, speaks like an artist, dances her hands like an artist, expresses outrage like an artist, nods her head emphatically like an artist, and, despite all these signs, actually is an artist.
Dave is the kind of tall that has been so tall for so long that it now appears to have been compacted and compressed over the years into the shortest possible tall that still allows him to stand up straight.
Jude would be an egret if people were birds. She is the one proton nucleus around which her hyperkinetic boss swarms an (almost) impenetrable electron field. She's more than the right hand, she's also the left foot, and the backbone.
Juan was 81 and working at his night job when he told me, "You work a lotta hours. Probably you gonna be rich some day. Yeah. That's what they'll say, alright. There his is, the richest guy in the cemetary."
Scott was an actor to the core, and as talented at the craft on stage as off. I am certain I never knew the real him, and I don't think anyone else did, either. But I always believed he did.