More Truth

Anyway, so in Iowa City, where this story starts, the name thing got REALLY complicated. Besides the name of my closest (male) friend, whose name was Chris (the same name as my co-worker), I met a young filmmaker named Chris, though we’ll get to him later. I used to frequent a restaurant called Hamburg Inn #2, which you can tell is a REAL restaurant name, because who would ever call something by that name, especially if you never ate hamburgers there? Also, there was no Hamburg Inn #1. Okay, I admit to having frequented the place not for the bad coffee or average breakfasts, but because I was infatuated with a waitress. This is hard for me to admit in the days, now, that I no longer find my myself infatuated by waitresses, but maybe the younger (male) readers of this journal could find themselves sympathetic with such folly. SO where this gets particularly complicated is when I found out the waitress’s name (they didn’t wear name tags, customers referred to her by name CONSTANTLY) was, yes, Chris. It now occurs to me that it would be GREAT if that wasn’t her real name, but a WORK alias which she used, realizing that the fantasizing, infatuated hoards who learned her name and thus recited it in an almost abusive fashion, was a name of a fictional personae, the cute waitress, and she was no more that person than she was the fantasy of that person contrived by the drooling (mostly male) clientele. But, actually, probably, her name WAS Chris.

This might be a good place to relate a medical condition I have, a gluten intolerance called celiac sprue, which I discovered while living in Iowa City and during my tenure at the Hamburg Inn #2. See, my initial infatuation at this place (besides the fascination with ALL non-chain establishments that serve breakfast to customers who can sit down for and drink coffee for excessive time periods) was the very, very large cinnamon rolls, one of the regional Iowa specialties I grew fascinated with while living there. These cinnamon rolls were nearly as big as a dinner plate, and baked fresh and hot were covered with about an inch of thick, glistening, white frosting. To eat a whole one by yourself would be enough to end your day right there, and indeed, many of my days ended in such a fashion. The wheat gluten involved, and in the toast, in such breakfasts didn’t help matters. When the crack medical team at the University of Iowa Hospital discovered my condition after a couple years of very expensive head scratching, I was quickly on the road to a renewed healthy, and a new life, though I kept one foot comfortably in the grave through heavy drinking. The reason I mention this is because it doesn’t exactly make for good fiction when everyone is drinking beer except for you (beer is made from fermented barley, which is wheat, and off limits) or you go out to a pizza place and eat a salad. But this is a true story, so there you go. And the thing about this detail that makes me feel better, thinking about it now, is that I am not entirely sure that I didn’t develop this waitress crush AFTER giving up the cinnamon rolls, and so perhaps I can be forgiven for replacing one infatuation with another.

Now, if this isn’t all complicated enough, the new woman who would soon enter may life went by the name of, yes, Chris. This will come a little later, but I just want to mention it now because it is kind of crazy. I was considering changing THAT name right from the start, but I am just worried that doing so, changing ANY names, would compromise the integrity of the truthfulness of this story. So I’m not going to change it, no matter how much confusion it causes. That just reminded me of something I read awhile ago in the local newspaper from my home town, Sandusky, Ohio. Apparently there is a couple there, a man and a woman, and they are BOTH named Chris Smith. You can imagine when they met, it was funny, something to joke about, and then to their horror and delight to find out they were attracted to each other. It wouldn’t be so weird once you got used to it, but it might be an ongoing source of annoyance anytime you met new people. Anyway, what is even WEIRDER is that the newspaper discovered that there was ANOTHER couple in this SAME TOWN (of only about 30,000) who were also both named CHRIS SMITH! I could barely believe this when I read it, but there is was in the newspaper, one would like to believe they check their facts and all that. So there you go. There are odd coincidences with names all the time, and this is the real world.

Oh, the fact that I suspect that anyone reading this might think I’m making it up, reminded me of another odd occasion involving names that came up during one of my less illustrious jobs over the years, vacuuming the large carpet at the Lerner’s clothing store in the Northland Mall in Columbus, Ohio. I was the only man working in this woman’s clothing chain store, and all the women addressed each other by Miss or Mrs. Or Ms. And then their last name. Miss Smith, and Mrs. Jones, I can’t remember any of the names now, except for two, which were so shocking to me that I was nearly derailed by a surrealistic, hallucinatory distraction every time either of them were referred to. The names of these women were: Miss Liberty and Miss Justice! Now this is a true story (and if you stop to think, why would anyone make up something so idiotic) but EVERY TIME I tell this to anyone, I get the sense that they simply do not believe me. I can see it in their eyes, in their body language. I say, “yeah, and their names were Miss Liberty and Miss Justice,” and the person I’m telling it to is overtaken with a weariness, a sadness even, a disappointment in me for not making up more interesting, more meaningful, and more BELIEVEABLE lies.

But it’s true, Goddmamnit.