08. Excerpt from Anthony Stephens’ Mood Journal

December 20 2002

Morning: 5 out of 10

Afternoon: 5 out of 10

Night: 2 out of 10

Pretty consistent for most of the day, until I went to work.

I was on the line and I’d just dropped an order of cheese sticks and was waiting for the fryer to beep while Raul the cook over on grill side was fixing two peppercorn steaks, and then Gabe that guido-looking Puerto-Rican server from up front came back and him and Raul got to talking about some girl they thought they’d both fucked the same night at some Christmas party last week.

Actually, this might be significant to what you, Doc Silver, say is “my social reintegration.” This is where the problems come up Doc, when this is the type of shit I’ve got to listen to everyday.

These assholes spent like twenty minutes, three overcooked burgers and a couple of dropped steaks trading clues about this girl, what her tits and ass looked like naked, where her birthmarks were, what she sounded like when she came, what time it was, the whole deal. Serious detective work for those two.

You could tell one was trying to catch the other in a lie too. Neither one of them believed the other, not because they were jealous or nothing, nothing like that. These dudes,  I’ve hung out with dudes like them my whole life. They’d not only have sex with the same girl on the same night, they’d fuck her at the same time if she was willing. Her and her friends. And not because they’d think it was like their only chance to get a piece but because it would be another story to share in the kitchen at Shambles. I’m telling you Doc, I hate working at that fucking restaurant.

And I swear, these two, they kept studying each other every time they described another part of her, like they were playing poker or something. They disagreed on her name, but then Gabe said something about a tattoo on her pelvis and Raul said, yeah, a scorpion, and then they laughed and slapped each other’s backs and it was like Fourth of July back there.

Anyways, point is all that’s going on and I’m on fry side trying to mind my own business “in the event of something making you uncomfortable”—like you told me—and this song came on the radio my manager’s got set up near the broiler.

I didn’t know what song it was at the time, not until I came home later and looked up the one line of lyric that stuck in my head like a fucking virus: I just hit the floor/don’t ask for more. Over and over again, like this constant ticker spinning around behind my eyes.

So I Googled it, just typed in the words and this song came up: “Wasting My Time” by Default.

Never heard it before. Couldn’t have, actually, not before today. I checked. It came out last week, and I don’t listen to the radio unless I’m at work. I stick to my CD’s and MP3’s: Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Tool, Busta Rhymes, Eminem, Method Man, anything that I can choose myself. I hate waiting for them to play something I like on the radio station, and they never do anyways.

So I’m completely confused why I responded to hearing this one song (which wasn’t even that good) by throwing myself in the walk-in cooler out back of Shambles and, for like five minutes, crying until my eyes were little slits and my tears were burning against my cheeks from the cold.

I’m never going to live this down at work, seriously. I think I might quit. I don’t need the money, my mom and the lawyers left me enough to take care of myself. But then there’s what you said, about me being bored and acting up and shit.

But, I mean, what the hell do I look like going back into work?

I’m forever going to be known as “that fry cook that started crying in the cooler like a bitch.”

And the most screwed up part of it is I don’t even know why. I mean, I like music just as much as the next guy but it’s like, every day now there’s another song that sets me off.

Couple of weeks ago it was that Gorillazrecord “Clint Eastwood.” That one’s not even sad.

Seriously, I need to get a handle on this shit. This isn’t normal. You say, Doc, that it’s good that I recognize this, recognize that it’s not normal to act like this. You say that’s step one of treatment.

But seriously, Doc…how many fucking steps are there?

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